Chapter Text
The air in the Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High courtyard smelled distinctly of old cedar, ozone, and impending paperwork that Satoru Gojo had every intention of ignoring.
Spring had settled heavily over the campus, turning the surrounding foliage into an aggressive, vibrant green that Satoru usually found intensely tedious. Everything about Jujutsu High was tedious. The higher-ups were fossilized bigots who communicated entirely through passive-aggressive scrollwork, the curses were getting uglier and less imaginative by the week, and Satoru—at nineteen years old, standing at a towering one-hundred-ninety centimeters with the boundless power of the Six Eyes humming behind his eyelids—was profoundly, agonizingly bored.
Leaning back against a weathered wooden pillar of the main hall, Satoru slid his black blindfold down an inch, resting it lazily on the bridge of his nose to survey the incoming batch of first-years.
It was, on paper, a thoroughly lackluster group. There was Megumi Fushiguro, a sullen first-year blessed with the Ten Shadows technique and a permanent expression of mild existential exhaustion, currently looking like he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into a dark hole and sleep for a century. Beside him stood Kugisaki Nobara, a sharp-tongued country girl who had spent the last ten minutes loudly and colorfully complaining about the absolute lack of decent coffee vending machines within a five-mile radius of the mountain temple.
And then there was the third one.
Satoru’s Six Eyes flared, a sudden, involuntary spike of sensory input making his brain itch. Beneath the mundane layer of the courtyard, his cursed vision caught an enormous, swirling mass of dormant, predatory energy wrapped tightly around a kid who looked like he’d rather be eating a plate of hot gyudon than standing in front of an ancient facility dedicated to exorcising grotesque monsters.
Pink hair cut in a jaunty, messy style, an athletic build that screamed field-track champion, and a smile so blindingly, aggressively genuine that it actually made Satoru’s optical nerves stutter.
What on earth is that? Satoru thought, his brow furrowing as the information poured into his brain faster than he could filter it. The cursed energy wasn't just large; it was layered, ancient, and humming with a malice that should have turned anyone else's stomach. Yet the kid was standing there swaying on his heels like he was on a field trip to a botanical garden.
"So," Satoru drawled, his voice cutting effortlessly through Nobara’s ongoing rant about instant coffee. He pushed himself off the pillar and began to float—literally gliding across the courtyard with offensive levels of casual grace, his long legs eating up the distance in seconds. "You're the little vessel everyone's been squawking about."
He stopped inches from the kid's face, towering over him by a good half-foot. Through the sliver of space beneath his slipped blindfold, Satoru inspected him up close: wide, expressive brown eyes, a speck of chalk dust on the collar of his uniform jacket, and a pulse that beat with a steady, irritating calmness.
The kid blinked, completely unfazed by the sudden, aggressive invasion of his personal space. Instead of shrinking back or looking intimidated like most normal humans did when confronted by the apex predator of the jujutsu world, his face lit up.
"Uh. Yeah! I'm Itadori Yuji. Nice to meet you, senpai!"
Senpai.
The word bounced around Satoru's brain for a fraction of a second longer than it had any right to. He was used to being called teacher by the kids Masamichi Yaga dumped on him, or monster by curses, or that annoying bastard by the senior executives. But senpai had a crisp, annoyingly youthful ring to it. It implied a hierarchy, a proximity, a weird little bridge between his age and the new kid's.
"Gojo Satoru," the third-year muttered, quickly pulling his blindfold back up into place to hide a sudden, uncharacteristic twitch of his eyebrow. He needed the darkness back; looking at those wide, earnest eyes without a filter was doing strange things to his equilibrium. "Third-year. Which means I outrank you, I'm infinitely cooler than you, and if you touch my personal stash of Kikufuku mochi in the communal fridge, I will exorcise you myself. Got it?"
Yuji grinned wider, completely missing the mild, half-hearted threat buried in the warning. "Got it! Thanks, Gojo-senpai!"
Behind them, Megumi let out a long, long-suffering sigh that sounded like a man aging five years in a single exhale, while Nobara muttered something under her breath about the school being full of weirdos.
Satoru turned on his heel, shoving his hands deep into his uniform pockets as he sauntered away. His heart gave a strange, erratic little thud against his ribs—or maybe it was just the residual shock of the cursed object the kid had apparently swallowed.
The kid was loud, obnoxious, and possessed an energy signature that tickled his nerves in a deeply confusing way.
As Satoru walked back toward the main building, listening to Yuji excitedly ask Megumi where the cafeteria was, a slow, dangerous realization began to form in the back of his mind.
Today was going to be a very, very long school year.