Tokyo never really sleeps.
Even at three in the morning the city hums—electric lights bleeding into fog, trains sighing through tunnels, vending machines glowing like scattered talismans. The smell of rain lingers on the pavement, sharp and metallic, the way ozone always clings to a freshly purified barrier.
Gojo Satoru walks alone through the wet streets, hands buried in his coat pockets, blindfold draped loose around his neck. He tells himself the job's done—curse neutralized, casualties zero, property damage "within acceptable limits." The higher-ups will still complain, but they always do. Tonight, though, something feels off in the air, like the faint buzz of a television left on in another room.
A taxi rushes past and splashes his boots. He looks down, half amused. Infinity should have kept the water off him. He hadn't consciously dropped it, but there are tiny droplets beading on his coat anyway.
He sighs. "Guess even perfection gets tired."
A flicker at the corner of his vision—an orange streetlight stutters and goes out. The world exhales into darkness for half a heartbeat before the lamp flares back to life. When it does, the puddle at his feet is unbroken again, his boot dry, the taxi's roar gone.
Gojo blinks. The city rewinds in the smallest of ways, barely noticeable. If it were anyone else, he'd call it fatigue, but Infinity hums faintly around him like an animal shifting in its sleep.
The gates of Tokyo Jujutsu High loom ahead, wet stone glistening under moonlight. He pushes them open without ceremony. The barrier recognizes his cursed signature and parts, rippling like silk.
Inside, the campus is quiet. Dorm lights are out except for one in the faculty wing—a soft amber rectangle against the rain. He follows it, footsteps echoing under the awning.
Someone's still awake.
She's standing by the open classroom window, hair pinned loosely, wearing a cream sweater instead of a uniform jacket. The newcomer—Rin Kiyosawa, the recent hire Shoko had mentioned with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. A non-combatant specialist in cursed-energy field dynamics. "Smart as hell," Shoko had said, "and brave enough to argue with a higher-up." Gojo had instantly decided to like her.
Now she looks up from her notes as he knocks on the frame.
"Gojo-sensei," she greets, polite but not deferential. "You're back late."
He grins, easy. "Curse exorcised, Tokyo saved again, all in a day's work. Thought I'd check if our newest genius was pulling an all-nighter."
"Almost done." She gestures at a whiteboard filled with looping symbols. "I'm trying to model energy oscillations near the Shibuya fault line. It keeps resetting to zero every few hours."
That word—resetting—snags his attention.
"Resetting how?"
She shrugs. "The sensors record identical readings at identical timestamps. Like the same second repeating itself. Probably an instrument error."
Gojo leans against the doorframe. "Or maybe time just has bad manners."
Rin laughs softly, a low sound that surprises him. She has a calm presence—not meek, but grounded, the opposite of the chaos that follows him. For a second he imagines sitting here drinking coffee instead of explaining temporal anomalies to the higher-ups.
"You look tired, sensei," she says, breaking the thought. "Do you ever sleep?"
"Of course. I just prefer power naps in alternate dimensions."
"Right," she says, unimpressed. "Typical male teacher response."
He laughs. "Ouch. You wound me."
"Maybe you should let yourself be wounded once in a while," she murmurs, almost to herself, erasing a formula. "You keep everything out—including rest."
For reasons he can't name, the words stick. He feels the quiet weight of them long after she turns back to her notes.
The rain starts again—he can hear it against the glass—and then, inexplicably, the same drop pattern repeats. A second identical clatter, like the sky is replaying itself.
He glances at the wall clock. 2:17 a.m.
He blinks. 2:17 a.m., again. The second hand twitches back one mark.
Rin doesn't notice. "Do you ever miss normal life?" she asks.
He could joke, but instead he answers honestly, "Sometimes. Then I remember what normal cost."
Silence stretches between them, comfortable and heavy. Outside, lightning flashes, freezing the world in silver for an instant. When the light fades, he feels the same déjà vu—a second flash, the same shape, the same sound. Two identical bolts carving the sky.
Something's looping. Not just around him. Through him.
By dawn, the rain has stopped. He walks the empty corridors toward his quarters. The air smells faintly of coffee and ozone. His phone buzzes—Shoko, predictably.
SHOKO: You alive?
GOJO: Always. Why?
SHOKO: You sent me the same mission report twice. Same timestamp, identical wording.
GOJO: …Maybe I'm just consistent.
SHOKO: Or maybe you broke time. Go sleep.
He pockets the phone and chuckles, but unease pools under his ribs. If Shoko's data duplicated, and Rin's readings reset, and his own night just replayed itself… then Infinity isn't holding the world apart anymore. It's folding it in.
He reaches the courtyard. Morning fog drifts low, pale over the stones. For a second, he hears laughter—his students' voices—but the courtyard is empty. The echo fades like static.
He closes his eyes, steadying his breath. Infinity hums faintly, thinner than usual, as though stretched too far. When he opens his eyes again, the fog glows gold with sunrise.
"Okay," he murmurs to no one. "Let's pretend everything's fine. I'm good at that."
He walks toward the dorms, the world perfectly still, each step leaving ripples in puddles that shouldn't exist anymore. The clocktower bell tolls once.
Then, somewhere behind him, the same bell tolls again.
And again.