Satoru doesn’t think the people in his life really get him, y'know?
Yaga had always been heartless and cruel, so his betrayal came as no surprise to Satoru. “He’s been gone for almost a decade now, Satoru. You have to let it go.” Like it was possible for Satoru to do that– to just let go of something– of someone so tied to him that he might as well be woven into Satoru’s DNA and embroidered on the surface of his soul. His fingerprints weren’t just tattooed on Satoru’s skin, but branded into him in every single place he so much as brushed his fingertips.
So, no, Satoru couldn’t just, “let it go,” Yaga. Satoru thought that advice was so hilariously wrong that he started laughing and didn’t stop laughing loudly enough to drown out Yaga’s bonus terrible advice on the way out the door until he was out of sight.
“Satoru, you can’t drop a first grade curse on someone else just because you don’t want to think about it,” even though Satoru told Yaga it was the first place they ever actually hung out and talked after a mission without trying to rip each other’s head off. They were stranded while the manager in charge of them busied himself with getting a popped tire replaced. So, as you can see, Satoru couldn’t go there yet!
It was too soon. Not when he could still remember the way Suguru laughed at a joke that Satoru couldn’t remember the setup or the punchline of now even though he came up with it. All Satoru knew was that it made Suguru smile and that was all he needed. It was too soon for him to go there even ten years later. He might need another decade or two before he stops seeing ghosts out of the corner of his eyes that mocked him with the familiarity of their smile.
And Megumi– Well, Megumi stopped answering Satoru’s calls a while ago. You know how kids are at that age. Middle school is a tough time! It wasn’t for Satoru, of course, because he succeeded at everything he did. (Except for… one thing. Satoru swallowed to get rid of the lump in his throat.) Megumi, though? He definitely had a weird enough face that people would want to bully him. Satoru knows because he looks at that face at least once a week and has the urge to give him a noogie or shove him in a locker. The bullies wouldn’t stand a chance, but that could still set the tone for his attitude this year.
When Satoru did get the chance to talk to Megumi, he always said something so rude, like, “This isn’t my business. Stop talking to me about it.” Or, “Stop showing up here. You aren’t welcome,” when Tsumiki herself welcomed Satoru in for dinner, Megumi. Stop being mean.
Nanami wasn’t much better. “Stop following me,” was his go-to when Satoru found him outside of his boring, new office job he’s been at for a couple years now. “He slaughtered an entire village. You coddle him too much, even now,” was Nanami’s go-to when Satoru so much as bothered to mention his missing best friend.
It’s funny. Satoru could remember Nanami saying that same thing to Suguru while referring to Satoru when they were still in high school. It was like he stepped into a reality that developed wrong. It had to be the worst timeline if Satoru could be accused of coddling Suguru for once.
Satoru knew what Suguru did. Of course he knew. He could remember being devastated when Yaga stopped him to tell him what happened. He remembered how it felt to have his world crumbling around him in excruciating detail when Suguru, his Suguru, turned his back on him. Suguru was the only person in the world who could make Gojo Satoru feel small period, let alone in so few words.
Shoko, to her credit, was unbothered by anything Satoru had to say as long as he didn’t get in the way of her work. Satoru often found himself in the morgue with Shoko when he wasn’t out exorcizing curses or getting a beauty nap in. Occasionally, she might kick him out when he got particularly distracting, but that wasn’t the case today. He sat behind where she stayed standing. Shoko stood before a table and was scanning her notes to prepare for opening up the newly-deceased corpse that was brought in not even an hour ago.
Satoru was slack in his seat on the bench against a wall that only seemed to have a use when he was in there. His head was tilted up, but Satoru wasn’t looking at anything. His eyes were closed and he could see Suguru’s face glued to the back of his eyelids. At least Suguru hadn’t been able to make the morgue more of a downer than it already was by taking himself away from it. Shoko and, by extension, Satoru only gained access to the morgue when she came back with a fraudulent degree. That was after Suguru left. Funny (Read: It’s really fucked up to him personally) how Satoru’s life felt like it’s been split into two parts: before he left and after he left.
Suguru couldn’t make the morgue worse, for sure. There’s also this encroaching realization that even the hollow feelings he had when in a familiar place devoid of what made it special a lifetime ago were a thousand times better than the hollow feelings he had sitting in a place with no evidence of Suguru’s existence. Aside from, of course, Satoru himself.
“I’m just saying. The higher-ups are wrong and I know what you’re thinking,” Satoru began and mimicked Shoko’s voice poorly, “‘But Satoru! What else is new?’ See, they’re pretending all of their problems are a part of some evil plot that Suguru has going on behind the scenes.” Satoru’s mouth cradled the name like it was something that could either break in his hands or break him; An elaborate art piece camouflaging a bomb. “And, sure, Suguru might be doing something murder-y every once in a while like the rest of us, but this is a sorcerer. Suguru’s never been a threat to sorcerers. It’s the only reason they haven’t put him higher up on the priority list. So–”
“Satoru,” Shoko interrupted rudely while she looked over the notes on her clipboard when Satoru was only fifteen minutes into convincing Shoko he was right. “I know this isn’t part of Suguru’s body count.” Which was, frankly, a terrible way to put it. Satoru knew Shoko was referring to how many people Suguru had killed. (Around 203 now if Satoru was right in his guesstimate of his modus operandi and he hadn’t missed any deaths in his time scouring the news both in the wider world and in sorcerer society in the past few years.) Satoru wondered distantly if his Body Count™ was still at one even if that “one” encompassed a few years of hormonal hookups.
“Oh… then why are you dissecting those bodies?” Satoru finally asked before the spark of jealousy he felt was given more space to burn. “Haven’t the higher ups been breathing down your neck about him?”
Shoko didn’t even look his way, but Satoru could still see the bemused, if annoyed look on her face she always wore when Satoru was pouring out his heart to her. See? No one gets him. “Just because Suguru wasn’t involved doesn’t mean I shouldn’t determine the cause of death, Satoru.”
“Oooh, ‘cause of death,’” Satoru tried to mimic the voice of a grizzled detective from a western movie he watched so long ago; a different time in a different place with a different person that sent a familiar pang through his chest. “Fancy words from someone who cheated through medical school!”
“That still only makes one of us with a medical degree, Satoru,” Shoko almost sounded like she was daring Satoru to go to college so he could have a stronger claim on giving her shit.
“Well, one of us is busy guiding the next generation of the sorcerer world into the future,” Satoru said pointedly and waved away the thought of medical school. “That deserves my undivided attention! Maybe I’ll go once you start to wither away from years of alcoholism and poisoning your lungs. It could be a fun hobby.” For now, Satoru knew enough about his own biology to maintain himself with reversed curse energy and that was good enough in his humble opinion.
In his mind’s eye, Satoru pictured the candidates for the first years that would be moving in at the start of the new school year.
Panda was a done deal. Satoru spent plenty of time with him since he was made and he could say with certainty that it was going to be absolutely hilarious watching his classmate(s) learn to casually communicate with a realistic panda. There was something endlessly funny seeing new people interact with such a tall animal that visually straddled the uncanny border between a real panda and a man in a mascot suit.
Panda was the only done deal, though. Inumaki Toge was the only other sorcerer they could find around that age that could potentially join. It’s a shame the kid’s continued existence would be a hot topic among the higher ups until he dies. Satoru made a mental note to check in with the higher ups and see what they’ve been arguing about on that front. Maybe he could pull a few strings.
The Inumaki clan wasn’t as famous as the big three sorcerer clans, but it was even more infamous. Official sorcerer history they tried to peddle off to students claimed that the Inumaki clan had always been dangerous. They were criminals, zealots, cult leaders, terrorists, and every other piece of dirt that the big three could throw at them over the years. Satoru didn’t often believe official sorcerer society history. While the personal accounts of his own ancestors were just as biased as the other clans’, he could at least cross-reference records from the Kamo and Zenin clans with his own and piece together a more realistic story. (With a little sneaking around, of course. They might move their clan’s secret illegal records if they realize Satoru found where they hid them again.)
A Sorcerer Society history textbook existed, but it was first drafted by a tyrannical Sorcerer General from the Kamo clan who particularly despised the Inumaki clan head. He died over a century ago and left a text that would sew misfortune into the fates of any curse users born into the Inumaki clan for generations to come. Some addendums were made when any new events impacted sorcerer society in a meaningful way, but the bulk of the text had barely changed with each new printed edition. Satoru read every edition of that damn thing front-to-back after he decided to teach, so he could confidently say that it was never altered more than it was added to. As you can imagine, it only spoke of the stilted view of an old man too self-righteous to recognize his own hypocrisy.
Personally, Satoru found it to be an insult to the intelligence of his up-and-coming pupils to think they would ever fall for propaganda! They might be idiots, but they might not be, so it was rude of the higher ups to assume that all of his students would be idiots when statistically only one or two of them would be.
That was the nature of teaching: Teach indiscriminately! Even and especially the stupidest ones! Anyone can learn to ignore propaganda and recognize the flaws in the system they were being raised in with the right guiding hand on critical thinking skills!
Which is also why Satoru wanted to convince the higher ups to let Inumaki Toge attend school at Tokyo Jujutsu High. Most of the Inumaki clan’s inherited techniques were incredibly powerful in the right (or wrong) hands. The most prominent of those techniques was one Inumaki Toge had been born with– Cursed speech. Satoru did a little light reading through every clan’s oldest and most illegal records once he heard that Toge might end up as one of his precious students.
At the heart of it, the Inumaki clan was as flawed and had as much blood on their hands as any of the big three. The Inumaki clan had some users who used their abilities for personal gain, but they had just as many who cooperated with the big three that were sneered at regardless of their humanitarianism.
Sure, there were thieves, manipulators, and bastards sprinkled throughout the clan’s extensive history, but that was par for the course with any bloodline, let alone clans with nearly unlimited power. There were just as many healers, protectors, and leaders in their bloodline as any other. It only took one geriatric asshole with a pen to set an entire bloodline up to be ostracized into the current age. They still had a practice of preventing any Inumaki born with one of their clan techniques from marrying or having children. In the past, it grew to the extreme lengths of body mutilation. Now, Inumaki sorcerers were just strongly discouraged from having children.
Get this: It’s illegal for any Inumaki with an inherited technique to have biological kids and it has been illegal for only half a century now. Thinking about the numbers, that meant a completely separate group of clan leaders idolized their ancestors to such an extent as to perpetuate a problem.
Throughout the years, many cursed Inumaki clan members still found love, married, and all that entailed, but had to choose to adopt children or surrogate instead. Some even chose sterilization surgery so they couldn’t be suspected of breaking the law. Any Inumaki who was accused of having biological children often died for the offense regardless of the blood-relation of their children. It became a witch hunt throughout history full of unnecessary death and carnage because of one clan head.
There was one particularly old story about a mysterious curse user with a technique that was suspiciously similar to cursed speech. It was told to many young children in the sorcerer world as a warning to stand up to evil and protect the innocent. Satoru’s pretty sure it’s about the old guy that the Kamo clan head hated enough to curse his entire bloodline. It told a tale of a town controlled puppeted by the curse user. They lived almost comically tortured lives at the hands of the curse user. Then a mysterious sorcerer came and saved the town from the evil cursed speech user’s control.
The Gojo clan head at the time had been a dispassionate sellout who hardly had opinions or strong feelings toward anyone or anything, which would usually be annoying if he wasn’t so conveniently impartial in his writing. He even got a few personal accounts from some members of the village after the events, and after reading those, Satoru had a theory that the Inumaki clan was only trying to protect their home from invaders. Satoru wished that their clan had records he could snoop through from that time period, but there was this whole fiasco a generation after the fact where all of the Inumaki clan’s records were burned to ash. Their lineage restarted on a blurry canvas of half-remembered histories from before then. There were no original copies aside from mostly burnt scrolls that were meters long before they were burned down to a few scraps of text.
It was a messy history that set Toge up for a messy future– one Satoru wanted to make sure he could warn his precious future student about and protect him from! He might know most of that already, but they might be able to bond over their hatred of the higher ups, which is equally as important as Toge knowing that he isn’t inherently evil.
Satoru had never subscribed to a “good vs. evil” dichotomy and now was no different. If anything, he had only doubled down on things having more nuance thanks to… well.
A genuine smile and bright purple eyes that crinkled at the corners with an outstretched hand that flashed forward to numbness dulling the color in his eyes in a look sent so callously over his shoulder as he walked away.
…
There’s this cute thing Suguru used to do where, if Satoru could make him laugh hard enough, he couldn’t contain it down into something quiet and subdued like he typically did to avoid the judgmental stares of passersby. He would laugh so hard that he would get lightheaded and have to tell Satoru not to look at him or talk to him for a second while he settled his laughter and breathed.
Satoru still talked and looked at him until Suguru had to cover his mouth to get him to shut up, but the memory stirred something warm in his chest that felt empty when Suguru was all the way somewhere else and Satoru was stuck alone talking to a busy Shoko or the unfortunate corpse she would have to cut into that day. Yaga tried to tell him that feeling was called, ‘nostalgia,’ but Satoru would disagree. It was hard to put a finger on the exact term, but ‘nostalgia’ just felt too toned down. Nostalgia was more like a quiet mourning for the past that was ultimately harmless.
What Satoru felt was more like Suguru decided to hollow Satoru out until he was nothing but flesh and bones before he left. Satoru could start to find the right things to feel less hollow, but it opened a latch to hollow him out once more every time he thought about Suguru– If Suguru would be proud of him for all the hard work he did, how Suguru would probably get a kick out of picking out souvenirs for their friends and students with him, if Suguru had lost anymore weight, whether Suguru would like the new futon Satoru splurged on for their bedroom, or if Suguru even still had the same phone number since no one ever answers when he calls. (Satoru clearly wasn’t blocked since it rings more than once every time, so Satoru keeps calling. Even a potential line to Suguru and a robotic, personality-less voicemail box was better than nothing.)
The only thing that kept Satoru reading these goddamn history texts was remembering the warmth in Suguru’s voice when he used to say, “You worked hard. Good job, Satoru.” He could hear it in the back of his mind every time he knew he did something Suguru used to approve of. Satoru was starting to wonder if Suguru meant to do that to him when he smiled at him like that. He wouldn’t be surprised. Suguru could convince Satoru that the sky is green if he said it with that same proud smile– like Satoru’s successes, no matter how big or small, were feats meant to celebrate and not a bar that only raised higher each time Satoru leapt over it.
“It’s just,” Satoru’s lips curled ever so slightly downward, “I know him, y'know? And it’s like people are just trying to blow everything out of proportion with all that. Suguru slaughtered one village which, don’t get me wrong, not the best. That doesn’t mean he’s the source of every problem that pops–”
“Satoru,” Shoko rudely interrupted Satoru once more and set her clipboard down. “You’re starting to justify mass murder again.”
“Yeah…” Satoru admitted and sent a thumbs up Shoko’s way that she didn’t see. “I’m still right, though.”
“Statistically, it takes at most a year to get over a breakup,” Shoko mentioned as if that was somehow at all relevant for Satoru’s situation right now. “Sure, there are outliers, but eight years might be extreme even on the far end of the spectrum.”
“Technically, we’re on a break. Suguru didn’t say he was breaking up with me, so.” Satoru could remember that among every other minute detail down to the eerily steady way Suguru spoke while he took a sledgehammer to Satoru’s entire world. Shoko actually looked at Satoru with raised, judgmental eyebrows.
“What?”
“He still has his ring, too.”
“How do you even know that?”
“It wasn’t in his room when he left.”
“The ring that you spent a ludicrous amount of money on?” Satoru hummed proudly as an affirmative. “How do you know he didn’t just take it so he could sell it or get a pawn loan with it?”
“Because–”
“Look, that isn’t important,” Shoko said even though it was the one thing important enough to keep Satoru from going completely numb some days. “Satoru, when was the last time you talked to someone new who wasn’t just conveniently around you?” Satoru opened his mouth, “Strangers trying to run away from you don’t count.”
That was more of a head scratcher. Satoru didn’t put the time in to scratch his head over it, though. Instead, he pivoted. “Geez. I’m gonna have to start carrying a, ‘Get over it, Satoru!’ jar for every time I hear something stupid like that.”
“I was close to Suguru too, but the world moves on. He left and we have to accept his decisions. Plus, if you keep stressing over this, you’re more likely to die young.” And Satoru might have listened to her if he wasn’t too busy scoffing at the attempted comparison.
“Suguru liked me more,” Satoru interjected just to keep the facts straight.
“I’m not going to argue with you about this. I don’t have the time for a lecture from you. I barely have time to talk to you about this right now,” Shoko punctuated her words by pulling a mask to hook around both of her ears. “There are millions, if not billions of people in the world who might look, act, or treat you like Suguru did, but you choose to cling to someone who rejected you.”
Satoru was stunned enough that his jaw went slack. Nothing about that made any sense. When he could finally form words, he scoffed, “Why would I cheat on Suguru like that? I didn’t know you took this kinda thing that lightly. Man, you almost made me feel bad for Utahime.” When Shoko didn’t respond, Satoru rolled his head back again.
“Suguru’s not replaceable,” and that might be the most serious Satoru has ever sounded. Then his voice dropped into something low. “He was my best friend…”
At what point do individual instances become mere drops in an ocean of memories shared between two people? With most people, the experience eventually faded into a single, solitary mass. With Satoru, he could run through every individual drop in that ocean where he was around Suguru in painstaking detail. (Admittedly, Satoru doesn’t think he spent nearly enough time unabashedly admiring how pretty Suguru was when they were still getting to know each other, but he had most of the details down.)
“The only one I had,” it was a solemn murmur that Shoko’s heartlessness offered no sympathy to. Satoru didn’t really want sympathy, but it was better than whatever it is Shoko thought she was doing when she opened her mouth again.
“Well, you’re still young! There are plenty more fish in the sea,” Shoko said. For a moment, Satoru had to wonder if she was even speaking Japanese for how little those words made sense to him.
Satoru tipped his head up to stare at her back while she cut into the latest corpse. He almost hoped this was a joke and he just had to wait for the punchline. Then he remembered that Shoko was a lot less funny nowadays. Did Shoko really not get it either? Suguru was the moon that pulled the tides, not some stupid fish swept up in them.
Huh. Guess Shoko really didn’t get it.
“What an odd thing to say.”