Sunday, December 24th, 2017.
Gojo Satoru was feeling impatient. No, he supposed that was a euphemism. He was stressed—beyond belief. Beyond belief because he was Gojo Satoru, and to many people—to even the people he knew and truly cared for—stress was a state of mind that could never belong to such an existence. A monster at birth, they called him, he had no prior identity. No equals. No peers. No hope of ever being anything but the strongest.
Gojo Satoru had been raised for a singular purpose. To be a pillar of Jujutsu society; a marble column designed for no other reason than to support a load. So no, he couldn't even blame them for their misconceptions. One rarely ever looked at a piece of architecture and wondered how it felt.
The man blocked a punch with his face. The man tanked a strike to his solar plexus. The man weaved around a palm strike to his temple. He wasn't. Going. Down. And for every blow he levied, for every hit the man endured, cortisol boiled in Satoru's brain.
Should he have just gone himself? How long could Toge and Panda stall him? Had Suguru fallen so far that he'd be willing to kill them too?
He had faith in his students—in Yuta—in their potential. But they weren't there yet, so he had to be better. Be stronger. Be faster.
"Out of my way."
Red.
He aimed his palm at the curse spirit across the street, and an entire row of buildings was brought to ruin. Satoru then aimed his focus on the man in front of him.
A roof vent was uprooted and flung at him. But he could see what was, and what wasn't covered by the cursed technique embedded in the rope. So, he let it shatter against Limitless. The foreign sorcerer closed the distance and swung. Satoru weaved, then stepped into his guard. Palm strike to the chin. A body blow.
Now the man was running. He never expected to win, but stalling for time was in and of itself his own form of victory.
Satoru was pissed now. Was that an emotion people believed he could feel? After today, he'd ensure that it was.
The foreign sorcerer leveraged his rope. Swinging off lampposts and infrastructure. He whipped through the air like he was some kind of cursed-energy based Spider-Man. But Satoru wouldn't let him keep the distance.
His hands clasped together, and then he was simply there. The man crashed into Infinity, and Satoru grabbed him by the shirt, flinging him hard into the asphalt.
This. Was. Taking. Too. Damn. Long.
He thought again of his students. If what he assumed of Suguru's plan was true, Yuta would die. If what he knew of Suguru's beliefs held true, Maki would die for certain. He gritted his teeth and considered Purple. Too wanton. Too reckless. More harm than good. And the curse within the rope might just no-sell the sure hit effect of his domain.
"Damn it," he muttered, and as always, he was the only audience to his own frustrations. No one ever pressed their ears to a pillar and listened.
He stared at the downed man, who was already getting back up. What an annoying technique.
Satoru examined him with his vaunted eyes. Really took the time to examine him. Maybe the fight wouldn't last much longer, but for a sorcerer of Suguru's calibre, not much longer could be the difference.
He readied himself for another attack, but that was when it stepped into view.
A nigh apocalyptic cache of cursed energy—one he didn't recognise—made itself known before his Six Eyes. Less than Yuta's, but greater than his own. He saw it before they felt it, and the sorcerer he was fighting must have wondered why he stopped, before the man felt it too.
Another planned distraction? No, he could tell from the way everybody weaker than himself—and that was everybody with lungs—was trembling. This was a third party. An anomalous actor on the scene.
For a moment, all the fighting in Shinjuku simply stopped. Even the curses, prone to instinct reared their equivalent heads in the direction of the source.
Satoru saw the lips move on one of Suguru's kids. A soundless 'why,' was muttered, but he didn't have the time to wonder what it meant.
The entity—sorcerer—was already acting. The tell-tale signs of cursed energy moving to fuel a technique. He considered interfering, but his instincts told him he should just...watch.
And so, he did.
He watched how chunks of tarmac ripped out of the ground from somewhere unseen and shot with unerring accuracy through swathes of Suguru's cursed spirits. Anything weaker than a Grade One was extinguished with the ease of a waterfall on a lit matchstick.
He watched as a chunk of rebar fired towards the foreign sorcerer, and distracted as he might have been, he reacted just in time to shield his head with his arm— shattering what remained of that blasted rope in the process.
He observed that brief instance, that couldn't have been longer than three seconds. And for the first time since the terror attack began, Satoru felt relief.
He raised his hands, focusing his eyes on a silhouette only he could see in the distance. Ready to clasp them together. Ready to meet whomever it was that had borne the load with him, but that was when he heard her voice, despite the distance between them. Near to the ear like she was standing beside him, and he was caught off guard by just how young—and further still—by how severe she sounded.
"Don't you have some other place to be?"
How about that? He smiled. He did have some other place to be.
So, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age watched strands of white hair vanish around the corner of a building.
Saturday, December 16th (8 days prior).
Light broke through his window, giving colour and form to his room. It bounced off the checkered wallpaper, traced the lines along his dresser, before transforming a sheet of paper on his wall into a poster of Jennifer Lawrence.
Eventually, it had fallen on his face, and the growing intensity brought his sleeping state to a close. He could still hear the sound of roaring water as he sat up. Yuji rubbed the images from his eyes.
"A dream?" he said.
The boy pulled his blanket off and braced himself for the December chill. But it was warm. Odd. The central heating had been busted for weeks; it was one of the reasons he could accept his Gramps' full time stay at the hospital so easily.
This was the first anomaly.
The second came when he opened his door and stepped on floor. Not the discarded packaging of his various mascot key chains, not the latest volume of the weekly Shonen Jump, not even the homework that he had forgotten to submit three weeks ago, but floor. Honest, earnest, floor.
Had he sleepwalked his way through his chores? He usually did them on Sunday. If by 'usually', he meant sometimes, and if by 'Sunday,' he meant the third Sunday last month. The kitchen and bathroom stayed clean of course, but everything else besides his laundry and the bins were only done when the notion took him, or the smell did. He winced. Keeping the bathroom tidy would be something he doubly focused on after last night. Wait. Last night. Explosion. Mob Psycho.
Itadori Yuji ran to the kitchen, and into a wall of aroma. The smell of onions, garlic and sesame oil hit his nose as he rounded the corner, and there she stood with a wok on the stove—since when had they had a wok? —and her hair tied into a bun. Suzushina Yuriko.
"He lives," she said, not even turning around. Then she tapped the pan itself with her finger. If it burned, she gave no indication, but grains of rice shot into air, before falling perfectly back into the pan with a sizzle. She muttered something that sounded like the word 'less' to herself before addressing him again. "Have a seat. Any allergies?"
Yuji shook his head, as his body reacted automatically. He realised he could only comply, as he became increasingly aware of just how hungry he was. Yuji plopped himself down at the dining table, which was now almost clean enough that he could see his own reflection. It was made of wood.
"Suzushina-san...did you?"
"Hm? Ah, yeah. Sorry for the imposition. I don't know how your system works—" he could have sworn he heard her say 'if you even have one', but she'd done it too quickly for him to be sure. "But I've done a little tidying up. Let me know if you can't find anything, I'm sure I'll remember where I put it."
"But, Suzu—" a bowl landed in front of him with a sharp thunk, followed by the chopsticks with their appropriately softer set of clinks and clatters.
"Eat." She said, her tone brokering no argument as she sat herself across from him and levied an intense stare his way. He was briefly reminded of a rumour that said Suzushina Yuriko had ties to the Yakuza. Not that he believed it, but she'd certainly mastered a certain look that was unnerving as hell.
Yuji gulped, picking up the pair of chopsticks as his hands wobbled. Suzushina's stare intensified as he lifted a golden clump of rice, vegetables and shrimp, then bit. Flavour burst along his tongue but didn't overwhelm his taste buds. She had somehow struck the perfect balance between sensation and the absence of it. Like a pianist leaving space between the notes. This was the best fried rice he had ever had. It was restaurant quality. He didn't even know all those flavours could be found in his cupboards and refrigerator.
"Well...?" Suzushina asked, and her voice reminded him to breathe.
"It's good! No, it's great!" Yuji mumbled through his mouthful. He could feel his face ease into a smile as it lit up.
Suzushina's expression softened. Mollified. She looked away and let out a sigh of what could only be relief. "I'm uh," she coughed. "I'm glad you like it."
"Yeah! Rice dishes are my favourite! Well, I like noodles too, but mostly rice!"
She was scowling now.
"Yeah. I know, Itadori. All you have is rice. Is this how you've been living?"
He broke eye contact and raised his bowl in a futile attempt at hiding his face.
"No..."
"I'm gonna have to do a shop, soon. What's your budget? Don't worry if it can't cover my expenses, I'm planning on getting a part-time job anyway. Also, we need to draw up a rota for chores. Don't worry, I see that look. I'll handle everything but your room. The rota's just so we don't mix up our laundry and—"
"Suzushina-san," he cut in, holding up a hand. "Sorry, but I'm not letting you do the chores alone."
She paused for a moment; he watched her brow knit into confusion.
"I thought I was making myself useful." she sighed. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No! No. It's never been this clean," and Yuji looked around, there was even a sheen on the living room carpet that he must have been imagining, because it didn't look wet, and the only other possible explanation would have been radiation. "But, you know, I live here too," he blinked. Wait, he wasn't the guest! "I mean, we're sharing. Won't be fair if I don't at least do half."
Now that was a look he had only seen on her face when he'd handed her his cheesecake. Confusion. Suzushina Yuriko tilted her head and simply stared at him again. Like she was trying to make sense of something. Then she looked off to her left and frowned.
Since he had personally met her, and even before then, Yuji had found himself watching her expression. She usually wore a guarded neutrality while she was at school, like nothing could touch her. Like nothing could phase her. But after last evening, her neutrality seemed like a... facade?
Suzushina-san was just as flappable as anyone else. She got shy, she got nervous. She even got scared. There was no masking that lost look on her face. He did his best not to look, but with her sleeves, which she had rolled up to cook, there were some...telling marks. Yuji didn't even want to imagine how bad her week had been, let alone what she had gone through even before that.
The call he had overhead. The hostility in his voice... Yuji had known people before who didn't have good home lives to speak of. No matter how stoic she had tried to seem, the way she'd tensed up reminded Yuji of people he had known. She'd tried to hide it, but when Sasaki brought up her father...well. A few things he'd been thinking about clicked into place.
"Just tell me know what you want me to do, and I'll do it," he promised. "I can handle anything!" After all, it had helped his other friends to know they could rely on him.
"Well..." She said, still looking confused. "I was running low on sanitary products."
"Don't worry," he said. "We've got lots of soap!"
Yuriko threw a flat stare at the boy.
"You...did mean soap, right?"