#wait i think i’ve mentioned these specific kids before. if you recall my cousin’s husband who used to tease me for reading all my ya fantasy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

movedkagen · 3 years

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right back at ya, @guroshi !

He’d never been caught before.

Despite his very obvious restriction regarding cursed energy, Toji Zen’in ( ‘Fushiguro’ was a name that would come later ) had never been caught by a person he was pursuing. He moved soundlessly, like a panther in the nocturne jungle, and struck precisely. It was the one reason why despite his lack of ability, calling him weak was a sore mistake. They therefore treated him like he were a curse himself; they loathed him, they were disgusted by him, but they dare not say his name lest he appear in their midst. Toji Zen’in had a tendency to appear like a bad omen. When people caught him, it was only when he wanted them to, and it rarely ever ended well.

It turned out that being the boogeyman paid pretty well; he’d made a living out of that rejection. And maybe, just maybe to a certain extent he felt a sense of vindication whenever he closed in on a sorcerer. Outwardly, thriving off of the disdain was a survival tactic. I’m just not a likable guy, he’d say, usually with a sardonic laugh. But inwardly … sinking his blade into the flesh of someone who he knew thought him worth little more than an animal brought him a slight sick sense of pleasure. The jobs mean nothing to me: truth. But it would be a lie to say that he didn’t like fucking up the order of the food chain just by drawing breath. When his very existence served as a shameful thorn in the side of his family, Toji made sure to do so with an expertise that made it so that even ridicule was too dangerous an acknowledgement. If you’re going to be bad, be the best at it. If he was hopeless as a Zen’in, he would therefore be a source of hopelessness to them in turn.

In nearly all other things, Toji was a man who lived aimlessly; fighting, fucking, food, fortune. Those were the only motives that propelled normal men, and for Toji his motives were no different. So, when his phone rang and revealed the voice of his uncle, Toji nearly hung up. They’d provide him no benefit, after all.

“Toji?” The voice echoes again when his initial greeting doesn’t earn a response.

“Ojisan.” His voice is groggy, but the snide way he calls him uncle is still palpable. “If you’re calling me because my old man finally decided to kick the bucket, save your breath. I’ve no interest in his funeral.”

He can hear the way his uncle grimaces on the receiver. “That’s not why I’ve called. We want you to come to the estate.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“We have a job for you ------”

“Not interested.”

“------ and we will pay.”

Toji paused at that. His family was shit, sure, but they were also swimming in cash. Inversely, looking over his shoulder at the woman he’d been sleeping with in exchange for a bed in January, he couldn’t be any less liquid. “...How much are we talking?”

“Name your price and we’ll negotiate.”

It was the right answer; he knew if he went, strong - arming the amount he wanted would be easy. “I’ll be there in an hour. You waste my time, I walk.” Without waiting for a response, he hangs up and pushes up off the bed, disappearing to shower.

He arrives at the estate feeling tense. He’s got bad memories of this place; being born without an ability meant he’d spent most of his early teenage years serving the family, but looking at the other servants, it could have been worse. I could have been born a woman, he thought, watching with morbid horror as a cousin he barely spoke to struggles to soothe fussing children as her husband glances at her with annoyance without daring to lift a finger to help.

The Zen’in estate was like a sepulchre; opulent and pristine from the outside, but filled nothing but rotting stench and decay internally.

He hides his unease well, despite it all. Bile builds in the back of his throat, but in the room appointed to be their meeting place, Toji stands with a bored expression and seems as though nothing bothers him at all. The door slides open, and he smirks when only his uncle walks through. Typical. His father didn’t show.

“So … what did you do for them to dump this meeting on you? They must not like you these days. Have you fallen out of favor, Ojisan?”

His uncle ignores his comments, taking it as an obvious ploy to provoke him. Instead, he simply sits and folds his arms. “You’re a man who always has his ear to the ground. Have you heard the rumors?”

“You’re going to need to be more specific.”

“About the Gojo clan.”

The mention of the Gojo surname reaches deep into a past Toji barely remembers; not only is this history old, but it’s also near inconsequential. It’s only ever been mentioned in the story of their great victorious ancestor who killed the vengeful spirit that fathered that clan, and how while the Zen’in clan grew in glory, the Gojo clan continued to fall from it. But oddly enough, Toji does recall something he’d heard, which he only remembers because it’s odd to mention the burnt - out family in the first place. “I heard they have a new kid.”

His uncle gracefully pulls out a kiseru and lights it, then puffs on it lazily before continuing. “...The rumor is that he possesses both the limitless and the six eyes technique.”

Toji frowns. The longer he’s here, the less he understands why he’s been called. “Get to the point.”

“It’s been years since you’ve left, Toji, but you surely can’t forget one of the most prolific battles of our family history. The ten shadows shaman versus the limitless many - eyed spirit.”

“Spare me the lecture, old man.”

“We want you to verify the rumor.” Seeing Toji pause, his uncle doesn’t need to wait for him to ask ‘why me?’ before continuing. “Your lack of cursed energy means that if it’s true, you’d be able to get in easily without being noticed. Since the birth of this boy, the family has been in utter seclusion. It’s almost as though they’re trying to hide him from the world.”

For a moment, Toji is silent. But slowly, he chuckles. The chuckle builds until it’s a booming laugh, bordering on a cackle.

“Is this funny to y ------”

“Oh, this is rich! A little kid has you all shitting yourselves, is that it? What’ll happen if the rumors are true? Will you all go sick with grief because you don’t have anyone with the ten shadows ability? Is that it? Are you sure you want to know, old man? After all, if it’s true, then your prolific battle story means dog shit. Unless … you’re asking me to off the kid? Because if that’s the case, I won’t do it. Not because it’s a kid, but because watching a primary schooler ruin your entire dynasty just by being alive is too funny to let pass by.”

Clear irritation is written across his uncle’s expression, but he forgoes an argument. “No one is asking you to kill anyone. We are confident the perfection this family produces is enough to rival one person. The Gojo clan can’t be rebuilt on the shoulders of a single man.”

“------ But?”

“But, that hasn’t stopped them from trying. They’ve managed to weasel their way back into the upper ranks based off of these rumors alone. If they’re a threat to our own influence, we must know.”

Toji waves his hand dismissively. “I don’t care about any of that. How much are you offering?”

“Five million yen.”

“I want twenty.”

“And yet you’ll only get ten.”

Toji pauses. Ten million yen. He would have walked with the five, but to give him this much … they really were uneasy about this, weren’t they? It didn’t matter. These politics didn’t matter to him; it was a job, and it paid well. With ten million yen, he’d never have to sleep at that dingy apartment in Kabukicho again. “...Deal.”

This all brought him back to the beginning point: being caught for the first time. Sneaking into the estate was so easy it was almost comical, and dressed properly, he was easily believed to be a servant himself. The Gojo estate was different from the Zen’in estate. The Zen’in clan was big, lively compared to this place, where he could hear a pebble being kicked across the gravel he walked upon. This place was a graveyard. If the Zen’in estate was like a palace of bones, the Gojo estate was like the temple of a god that had died centuries ago. Big, but brittle. Quiet. Prayed to only by the wind that passed through it, as if out of pity, echoing the hollowness of it all.

But it would seem that god had returned at long last.

He made sure to keep a safe distance behind the boy; he was followed by two men on either side of him at all times, who Toji deduced to be bodyguards. If that was the case, he could only assume the rumors were indeed true. Why else would a child need to be guarded in his own home? As he walks behind him, Toji feels something unpleasant. Pity is too noble a word; but it was like gazing upon a lovely bird in a zoo. Did it know that it was captive, or was it content with the magnificent cage it lived in?

This kid is going to be one hell of a puppet, he thinks.

It is at that moment that the boy stops walking, then turns and looks at him. There’s no mistaking it. His eyes lock with Toji’s, and Toji halts in his tracks. It’s not like him to stop like that, but his body freezes of its own accord. Fighting, fucking, food, fortune. He’d always believed those were the four things that motivated the average man, but he forgot the last motive; maybe because he didn’t remember the last time he felt it, if he’d ever felt it at all before this moment.

Fear.

The boy’s face is pale and listless, nothing like that of a child. His hair and eyelashes are bone - white, and his eyes, large and owl - like, are a crystal clear blue that shimmers in a manner that makes it seem as though his irises swirl, like pools of fate. Toji shouldn’t be able to see that from here, but for some reason distance doesn’t seem to matter between them. He is several feet away from the child, but he sees him as though he’s inches in front of his nose. Curse … sorcerer … those words didn’t suit this boy at all.

This child is a demon.

The child doesn’t blink. The guards beside him seem to keep walking, but the boy also never seems to move from his place. Did he stop time? Did he pull Toji into another dimension entirely? The boy gazes at him with neither curiosity nor contempt; he simply looks at him, looks through him, and Toji feels as though his soul is being stripped bare. There’s no doubt. This boy knows everything; Toji wasn’t a paranoid man in the slightest, but he felt as though this child had known about it all ------ the zen’in’s, the exchange, the ten million yen, the rumors and the eyes on him, and the task to verify it all.

Well?, his eyes seemed to say. Have you seen enough? You have someone waiting for you. Go and tell them.

Toji would never forget that boy again.

He’d never been caught before.

As the knife is pulled from his flesh, Satoru feels the strange, unfamiliar sensation of being unable to support himself enough to stand. Is this what weakness felt like? He falls to the floor, finding himself incapable of processing that this attack even happened in the first place. He watches his blood pool around him ------ strangely enough, he feels no pain. As his vision goes dark, he knows the truth; the shock is preventing him from feeling a thing. Maybe he wasn’t as untouchable as he thought. “Su …” The name is not even half spoken before he falls silent.

He must be dead.

He stands in an expanse that extends forever, an endless void of vantablack that is maddening to look at. Didn’t people get a rush of endorphins before they died? Why, then, did he see a past that only made him miserable? He watches his life flash before his eyes; he sees his own birth. He sees the countless days he spent in his family estate, learning mathematical theory and physical nonsense all because they hoped he would awaken this latent infinity within him. He sees his arrival to Tokyo tech ------ his first time away from the prying eyes of his family. His first time meeting kids who weren’t hand selected to be his friends. The thrilling sensation of being disliked, being a delinquent. Breaking rules and laughing from his chest. It was a fun way to end things, he thought. I just wish I’d gotten to have a lot more of it.

He’s shown the moment of his demise, and Satoru grimaces. Ugh, how uncool. He looks like a deer with its throat in the maw of the wolf; helpless, surprised a second too late. He sees the horror in Suguru’s expression, and he feels just a tinge of guilt. The strongest duo’s broken up. Sorry I couldn’t stay and help you in the end.

He wants to look away ------ really, who wanted to watch themselves die twice? ------ but just as he thinks to, Satoru’s eyes stop on the face of the man who killed him. Why does he look familiar? He looks at his life laid before him, and watches a bright white string extend from this image and go back, back, back into a very peculiar day in his childhood. He sees himself, six years old, turning and locking eyes with him.

No. Not him. This man.

He met him before.

Great, he thought bitterly. So I was more perceptive when I was a first year.

But then, all of the images hit him at once. They condense and slam him with such force that Satoru feels pain all over his body, like the wind has been knocked out of him. He’s drowning in this knowledge ------ this infinity. Maybe that means in the physical world, his lungs are taking their last shallow breaths. The images continue to condense until they make a small orb; the single source of light in this place. Slowly, the orb opens and reveals an iris that reflects his own: too blue to be human, dimly shimmering in a way that makes them seem like a flowing spring. Satoru feels his own gaze turned upon him. His own voice echoes in his ears. Get up, it says. Or are you really that weak? If you can’t get up, you were never strong. You deserve to die here. Satoru’s hand extends towards the orb.

Get up, dickhead.

Satoru wakes up with a gasp, bolting upright with a shock that could wake the dead. And hadn’t it? No … he looks down at himself, and sees the still - warm blood staining his shirt. Satoru realizes in that moment, he never died at all.

Gojo Satoru had touched infinity for the first time.

He stills himself and thinks. Or, more accurately, perceives. He allows those six eyes to see for him. He’d forgotten that so much of his power worked without his effort, if he let it. Riko is dead. Suguru is alive. He’s still bleeding from his leg. And Toji is …

The rest is a blur.

“Yo. Long time no see.” It’s all he can say, when he’s intercepted Toji. Why is he here? The job is done. They failed. There’s no reason for Satoru to come here.

Ah, that was a lie. He was here to kill Toji. Infinity … he’d touched it and seen it; he’d be the strongest, now. No more goofing off, no more avoiding his own holiness. But the thing about being a god is that gods can’t be killed. And if there was someone who could kill him, that person had to fight him. Yes, that would be his true trial of divinity; he and Toji would fight here and now until one of them died, and whoever left standing would be the one truly bound to heaven.

The shock on Toji’s face doesn’t matter to him at all. ... Are you serious?, he says, but Satoru hears it like a dull echo. He’s barely listening to him.

Toji is weak, after all. And he hates weak people.

The shock is enough to make Satoru giddy, however, so he grins and pushes his hair up to show him the healed wound to his head. “Oh, yeah. I’m alive and well.” His eyes are owl - like and large again, though they don’t shimmer like quiet pools. They churn like a riptide, and they focus on Toji with malicious intent.

“A reverse technique,” Toji breathes, more to himself than to anyone else.

“Correct!” Satoru chirps. “I gave up on fighting back when you crushed my throat. I poured my all into perfecting this technique. Cursed energy uses negative energy. It can fortify the body, but it can’t cause regeneration. That’s why it’s necessary to multiply it with more negative energy to create the positive. That’s the reverse technique!” He laughs and his grin widens, and he can tell his elation is too much for Toji to understand. But it can’t be helped ------ this isn’t about Toji. He’s giddy because all along, the secret to reverse technique was math. Simple math, whereas Satoru had mastered complex number theory ages ago. All this time, the ability’s secret had simply flown over his head. If he had known it was just the application of a basic mathematical principle, he could have used reverse technique ten years ago. “The theory is easy enough, but I couldn’t do it at all ... until now. The only person I know who could do it can’t explain for shit, either. But I finally got it when I was on my deathbed … the core of cursed energy.”

Satoru grins and sighs euphorically before continuing on. “You lost because you didn’t cut off my head, and because you didn’t use a cursed tool when you stabbed me in the head.” Doesn’t Toji understand how funny that is?

Apparently not. Toji’s eyes flash all of a sudden. “Lost?” He says, pulling a cursed blade from the throat of his worm of an accessory. “The fight has just begun.”

“------ Huuuuuuuuuuuh?! Ah, yeah, I guess so!” Satoru realizes he’s right; he’d already seen the end of this in infinity, but he supposed he couldn’t say it happened until it did, right? He was getting ahead of himself. It’s not like Toji could see the future. He starts to laugh. “I guess you’re right!”

Toji gives him no time to even finish his sentence. He’s a real warrior, Satoru will give him that. He flies at him with the same beast - like grin from before, only this one is different. They both fight with the full intent to kill, and it’s not a matter of work. It’s a battle for the crown; one that Toji was for better or worse proud to have, and not willing to give up easily. Good. Toji understands.

He slashes at Satoru with terrifying force, but he has evolved since their last fight. The once devastating prowess of the sorcerer - killer is little more than a mild inconvenience to him, now. By the time Toji’s slash reaches the end of its arc, Satoru is in the sky above him, and even more terrifying than when he gave him that maddening smile, he looks upon him with a wide - eyed, barely perceptible grin. Though he’d already reached a new height, it would seem he was evolving again, right before Toji’s eyes. He was fortunate to witness it.

The positive energy that is born from the reverse technique … that energy is channeled into the infinity technique I’ve carved in myself. He understands, now. Reverse rotation technique.

“Red.”

It repels Toji back hundreds of feet, through a building and into the side of the concrete.

One: “The power to stop.” The neutral infinity jutsu. Up until this point, an ability that required vigilance and effort, and why he’d fallen to Toji.

Two: “The power to attract.” The reinforced infinity jujutsu, “blue”.

Three: “The power to repel.” The reverse jujutsu, “red”.

Satoru watches him attach his blade to a chain and create a vortex with it. Toji believes that he can fight this. And why wouldn’t he? Satoru had the power to stop from the start, and Toji circumvented it. The power to attract, he could negate either from afar with the spear, or he could outrun it. The power to repel could be blocked with the spear, so long as he got the timing right.

But Satoru still appears on the rooftop with the same peaceful grin from before, appearing madder than ever. He knows all of Toji’s thoughts already. He knows his heart. He knows that unease is slowly settling into his foe, but that despite that, Toji believes he still has a chance.

“No,” Toji tells himself. “It’ll work.” Satoru knew that Toji would say that. “------ I’ll kill you!”

Satoru knew he’d say that, too.

Time seems to go still, for a moment. Satoru reigns himself in, a sobering clarity coming forward in the midst of it all; he would not be a foolish god, after all.

I’m really sorry, Amanai, he thinks. I’m not angry on your behalf. I don’t hate anyone. All I’m feeling right now … Is the pleasantness of this world.

Satoru grins again, and extends his hands forward. This would be the final blow. “Throughout the heavens and earth, I alone am the honored one.”

Toji whips the bladed chain at Satoru, but it’s less effective than flailing a cotton rope at him, at this point. You don’t understand what’s going to happen yet, he thinks. That’s okay. I saw it in the void. You’re going to die here, Toji. Thank you for sending me into myself. I understand everything, now.

The good thing about jujutsu techniques that have been passed down over generations is that the instructions on their usage are clarified by the predecessors. The bad thing is that the information about the technique can be leaked much more easily.

You’re from one of the three great clans … the Zen’in clan, am I right? Satoru recalls the day he met Toji, all those years ago. The man who came to see him for ten million yen. How could he forget? He’d seen infinity before.

You know about “blue” and “red” … and everything about my infinity, I’ll bet, Satoru thinks. But this … even among the Gojo clan … only a select few know about. When the infinity collides with the forward and reverse rotation techniques … this is born. The expulsion of imaginary mass …

And I’m using it to kill you. You should be honored, Toji.

“Imaginary Technique: Purple.”

It is spoken like a final rite; like the decree to end all decrees. The opposing forces converge and destroy everything in their path … Toji, and anything unlucky enough to be behind him.

Satoru fixes that impenetrable gaze on him again. That soul stripping, all - knowing gaze. “I don’t wanna work for free.” ------ you’d usually just have said that and ran away. But the person in front of you is a user of the infinity jutsu, who probably just became the strongest shaman of this generation. You wanted to deny it. To go against it. Against the Zen’in clan that denied you, against the apex of the jujutsu world. In order to reaffirm your identity … you warped your usual self.

You already lost at that point.

“I thought I had discarded that pride …” Toji breaks the silence for them, finishing the thought that Satoru had heard from the depths of Toji’s soul.

Satoru heard every thought leading up to that declaration, but he feels strangely peaceful in the moment. He’d made this prophecy come true; Gojo Satoru emerged victorious, conquering death and the god - killer himself. There would be a new era from now on; for better or for worse, Satoru would be the head of it. “... Do you have any last words?”

“ … Nah.” The look on Toji’s face says he knows that Satoru’s seen everything. But, just in case … “In two or three years, my kid will get sold to the Zen’in clan.” Why was he telling him that? Maybe because he was understanding that if anyone could fuck up the natural order of things, it wasn’t him at all. It has always been this kid. Maybe it was because, in his final moments, he realized that he’d left behind nothing, and given his blessing to the very place that had sculpted his demise. Maybe it was the “regret” those damn shamans never shut up about. Whatever it was, Toji couldn’t bring himself to beg, even on Megumi’s behalf. “... Do whatever you want.”

Before the light left Toji’s eyes, Satoru watched something else die first. What broke then … was the heart. What, did he think he would go and right his wrongs? That he would protect his kid? It seemed his six eyes hadn’t anticipated him doing that. Honestly, what was Toji thinking? It was too late to ask that now, but Satoru only knew one thing for certain.

Satoru would never forget this man again.

#* GOJO » study.#* HOWL » saved.#i have to give u a tag now.#guroshi #* GOJO » rel : guroshi.

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