December 8th, 8:00 p.m.
Gojo Satoru pulled a ridiculous face at the incoming call on his phone and refused to answer Akiya Asou's call.
"Serves you right for tricking me. Serves you right for messing with me!"
The same caller kept dialing relentlessly, the ringtone echoing again and again for a full ten minutes.
"Hahaha—" Gojo Satoru was happily binge-watching the anime Naruto, shoveling chips and fried chicken into his mouth without pause.
December 9th, 8:00 p.m.
Gojo Satoru was training in the courtyard, and as usual, he ignored all calls that came in at this hour.
The phone rang for nine minutes straight.
After swaggering back inside, he cast a casual glance at the call log, then plugged his low-battery phone into the charger, making sure it would still be able to receive messages from the Tokyo Jujutsu High group chat.
December 10th, 8:00 p.m.
This time, Gojo Satoru's phone rang for only eight minutes, and his temper began to flare.
"Eight minutes?"
"You've really got the nerve to make it shorter and shorter!"
"If you've got the guts, keep counting it down. If you've got the guts, then don't call me at all!"
December 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th…
Akiya Asou called at the exact same time every single day without fail, while Gojo Satoru—his anti-scam awareness now at an all-time high—steadfastly refused to answer any of Akiya Asou's honeyed words.
December 17th, 8:00 p.m.
The ringtone rang for precisely one minute, not a second more and not a second less, before it stopped.
Gojo Satoru: "..."
Gojo Satoru: "Are you seriously timing this down to the second?!"
Sitting cross-legged and fiddling with his phone, Gojo Satoru made a bet with thin air itself. "If you call again tomorrow, I'll answer."
December 18th, 8:00 p.m.
—No call came at all.
December 19th, 8:00 p.m.
Having completely given up on waiting, Gojo Satoru dialed Getou Suguru's number instead. "Suguru, chat with me for ten minutes, yeah?"
He proved with concrete action that he had other friends to talk to!
December 20th, 8:00 p.m.
Gojo Satoru thoroughly tossed Akiya Asou out of his mind and began calling Getou Suguru every day without fail, settling in for a solid hour-long phone chat each time.
Thanks to Gojo Satoru's unwavering persistence, the Gojo family head once again confirmed that Lord Gojo and the cursed spirit manipulator had become inseparable close friends, and that in the future the Gojo family would gain yet another special-grade sorcerer as an ally.
In the blink of an eye, two days passed.
December 22nd, 12:00 a.m.
A new message appeared in the "Jujutsu High Same-Year Quartet" group chat. After reading it, Gojo Satoru tossed his phone aside, rolled over, and went right back to sleep.
[Akiya Asou: Happy Winter Solstice, everyone.]
[Akiya Asou: Don't look for me on Christmas Eve, December 24th. I absolutely refuse to go out.]
[Akiya Asou: But we can set something up for Christmas in advance.]
7:00 a.m.
Gojo Satoru woke up.
7:05 a.m.
Still lying under the covers, Gojo Satoru scrolled upward through the chat history, only to find that he couldn't reach the beginning no matter how far he swiped.
"Are you two chatterboxes or what, Akiya, Suguru?"
Among the four, there were two DKs who couldn't sleep in the middle of the night and zero JKs. Akiya Asou and Getou Suguru had started out chatting in the "Jujutsu High Same-Year Quartet" about Christmas plans, and somewhere along the way it had turned into Getou Suguru arranging late-night snacks offline.
Gojo Satoru looked at photo after photo of midnight food—skewers paired with beer—and couldn't help but look down on the two of them.
"Only kids drink beer."
"Big deal, drinking alcohol while underage."
After a while, a servant from the Gojo household came to ask whether Lord Gojo was awake.
Gojo Satoru yanked the blanket over himself. "I'm not awake yet!"
Sneakily, Gojo Satoru dialed Getou Suguru's number, deliberately dragging him out of deep sleep. "Morning, Suguru!"
Getou Suguru answered groggily, his voice thick with sleep. "Satoru… I pulled an all-nighter. Let me sleep a bit longer."
Gojo Satoru demanded, "Why sleep at all—stay up and chat with me."
As long as Gojo Satoru softened his tone even a little, Getou Suguru was always defenseless against that particular tactic, and so, despite nodding off, he had no choice but to keep him company.
Out of nowhere, for the first time during winter break, Gojo Satoru brought up a certain someone. "Is Akiya still staying at the school?"
Getou Suguru replied with a heavy nasal tone, "Yeah. Lately he's been practicing with daggers."
Gojo Satoru scoffed, "His hand-to-hand is so-so, his swordsmanship never fully mastered, and now he's switching to yet another cold weapon?"
Getou Suguru shot back immediately, "Who was it that snapped a longsword in half? I won't say any names."
Gojo Satoru snorted. "You were there too, weren't you? He's the one who pissed me off. I still haven't told my family about it."
Getou Suguru said flatly, "So?"
Then he added, "What, you're starting another round of sulking now? Fine, then don't come meddling in our Christmas."
Gojo Satoru huffed. "Hmph—then I'll drag you out to play on Christmas Eve."
Gojo Satoru had already made up his mind: on the day before Christmas, he would drag Getou Suguru out, grind down all of his stamina, and leave him utterly spent!
That way, when the time came, Akiya would only get to see an exhausted, worn-out Suguru.
"Hold on, something's going on over here," Getou Suguru said quickly, hiding his phone as a knock came at the door. Putting on the voice of someone who had just woken up, he called out, "Mom, I stayed up late studying last night and didn't get enough sleep. Wake me again at noon."
After successfully brushing his mother off, he pressed the phone back to his ear, only to be immediately bombarded with a flood of mocking laughter.
Getou Suguru sighed. "Satoru, listen—this is perfectly normal."
Then he went on, "Out of the four of us, I'm the only one from an ordinary family with both parents. Akiya and Shoko are orphans, and you're the one who claims you popped out of a crack in a rock."
Gojo Satoru protested, "I never said that!"
Getou Suguru pulled the curtain open a little and glanced outside, where winter sunlight spilled in. "Huh, the weather's pretty nice."
He flopped back onto the bed. "Still so sleepy, though. Satoru, did you call just to torture me?"
Gojo Satoru replied cheerfully, "You figured it out."
Then his tone shifted into a drawn-out complaint. "Suguru, I'm bored out of my mind. Every day those old men at home catch me and make me read history books, my research into jujutsu isn't progressing at all, and Reverse Cursed Technique is such a pain in the ass. Why don't you come over and play with me?"
Getou Suguru squinted. "Your place sounds mind-numbingly dull. Why would I go find you?"
Gojo Satoru said matter-of-factly, "Because you've got nothing better to do."
Getou Suguru snorted. "I'm out every day hunting curses and exorcising them, steadily improving my strength. When school starts again next year, I'm aiming to be a reliable, outstanding second-year senior."
Gojo Satoru dismissed it with a wave of words. "Whether we'll even manage to recruit anyone next year is still a question."
"That is indeed a problem," Getou Suguru said as he rolled over. "Did Yaga let anything slip?"
Gojo Satoru scoffed. "The class rumor mill is Akiya, not me."
Getou Suguru considered it. "If it really comes to that, should we help Yaga recruit students? You could use the 'Six Eyes' to scan the crowd for promising freshmen."
Gojo Satoru's expression twisted in horror. "Absolutely not! I'm a student on winter break, you know!"
What kind of jujutsu-world corporate drone was that—voluntarily working overtime?
"I'll message Akiya and ask," Getou Suguru said.
Five minutes later, a new message from Asou Akiya popped up on his screen: [One of next year's potential freshmen is Zen'in Naoya.]
Getou Suguru relayed the information honestly. Gojo Satoru immediately burst into laughter, clutching his stomach. "Give it up already. That little rotten orange will never agree. His position in the Zen'in clan is kind of like mine in the Gojo family, except his whole body reeks of rotten orange!"
Getou Suguru yawned. "You keep saying he's rotten—how rotten is he, exactly?"
Gojo Satoru choked, then racked his brain for words to describe Zen'in Naoya. "Weak cursed energy, mediocre technique, two-faced as hell—one thing to your face, another behind your back. He's polite to me on the surface, but inside he's arrogant to the extreme, and he's always got a bunch of maids waiting on him…"
Getou Suguru commented objectively, "Aside from the mediocre technique, isn't that basically a fusion of you and Akiya?"
Asou Akiya: weak cursed energy, a blatant double-standard hypocrite.
Gojo Satoru: arrogant to the skies, surrounded by servants.
Immediately after, Getou Suguru covered the phone's microphone, his palm buzzing violently as Gojo Satoru's voice broke through the speaker.
"I am NOTHING like that, and neither is Akiya!!"
A few seconds later.
Getou Suguru was truly too sleepy, his mind foggy, so he resorted to the old, time-tested tactic. "Hello? Hello? I can't hear you very well—did you shout so hard you broke my phone's microphone? Your signal over there isn't great… I'm hanging up."
Gojo Satoru stared blankly at the phone in his hand, listening to the monotonous beeping of the disconnected call. "..."
Why the hell is the signal in my own house this bad?!
...
Near the school gates, Asou Akiya was practicing sprinting and explosive bursts of speed.
How to reach one destination from another in the shortest possible time—that was the very essence of assassination.
He had found the Gojo family's construction team and had them create a large tree capable of hiding a person inside. The excuse he gave was that he wanted to prepare a "prank" for Getou Suguru's birthday next year.
In truth, that was not the reason at all. His real objective was to locate and prepare an ambush point of his own near the site where Gojo Satoru would nearly die in Jujutsu Kaisen Season Two, Episode Three.
This ambush point had to be chosen with extreme care, carved into a compact hiding space perfectly suited to his own body.
He needed Zen'in Naoya to witness Gojo Satoru collapse in a pool of blood, and at the same time he had to guard against Zen'in Naoya making a move against Gojo Satoru.
Zen'in Naoya admired Gojo Satoru's overwhelming strength.
However, Gojo Satoru was not Fushiguro Toji, and the two did not share the same direct bloodline within the Zen'in clan.
Zen'in Naoya's latent hostility toward Gojo Satoru outweighed his superficial goodwill.
If Akiya's preparations were insufficient, if his assassination skills fell short, if the timeline he laid out did not extend far enough, then there was a real chance his entire plan would be seen through—either by Fushiguro Toji, who excelled in assassination, or reacted to in time by Zen'in Naoya, who specialized in passive counterattacks.
In that case, the future in which Gojo Satoru narrowly escaped death in the original story would instead become an inescapable death sentence.
Even after making thorough preparations, Asou Akiya's heart still pounded with unease. He tried to simplify the entire setup as much as possible, aiming to achieve, under the fewest variables, a future where Gojo Satoru and Getou Suguru survived, and where Amanai Riko still had the chance to choose her own destiny.
He did not want to stain Gojo Satoru's or Getou Suguru's hands; at its core, the Star Plasma Vessel mission was something profoundly repulsive.
In this era, there were three Star Plasma Vessels in total.
First, Yuki Tsukumo.
Second, Amanai Riko.
Third, an individual of unknown identity—revealed in the serialized portions of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga through Yuki Tsukumo herself—that Lord Tengen had never fused with the third Star Plasma Vessel.
Beyond that, Asou Akiya had already made up his mind to ensure that Zen'in Naoya would enroll in school; before he turned twenty, withdrawal would be out of the question.
Two days later, Christmas Eve arrived—December 24th, 2005.
On this day he hated most in this world, Asou Akiya lost all desire to train. Instead, a sudden impulse took hold of him. He asked Ieiri Shoko for the location of the sorcerers' cemetery, bought flowers, and went there to pay his respects.
Though the deceased sorcerers were largely nameless and forgotten, Asou Akiya swept their graves in the capacity of a student.
At last, he stopped before the gravestone of an upperclassman, pressed his palms together, and laid the flowers down.
"Please, watch over us."
"Please let us remain safe and healthy, always, on Christmas Eve."
Asou Akiya lowered his head and prayed with sincerity for the future of every one of his classmates.
December 24th, 2017—Getou Suguru died.
December 24th, 2018—Gojo Satoru died.
A Christmas Eve meant to be filled with family happiness instead fell upon the two of them like a curse written by fate itself, cutting into Asou Akiya's heart like a blade.
—I rejoice for every single day that you are both alive and safe.