Chapter Text
Gojo Satoru is the brightest of his generation.
The beacon to the new age, the dawn to the new era of jujutsu. A rising star that is birthed from the love of the gods upon the Gojo clan. His eyes beholding the eternal sky within them and his hair the color of an ever expansive ‘infinity’ of a blank canvas, endless potential, a boundless piece of paper that can be whatever he wishes to be- for it shall never be dyed by worldly colors.
Infinite potential and strength.
Gojo Satoru is favored by the gods, Gojo Satoru is the brightest of his generation, if not more. He is the jujutsu world at its pinnacle, the golden era of it encapsulated in one boy, one child, and soon- one man.
There is no doubt about that. There is no quarry to be had in declaring so.
Gojo Satoru is a star that will one day eclipse the sun, he is the inevitable approaching curtain call to a new age of jujutsu.
If that is to be so, then perhaps, Zen’in Obito is the blight of his generation.
A stain that cannot be washed out.
A breathing taboo.
The first time Satoru meets Zen’in Obito is when they’re four turned five and six soon to turn seven, respectively.
Five is a special age for the Gojo, somehow. Perhaps it’s related to their name, or maybe not. But it carries with it heavy expectation and heavier ceremonials, still. It’s a luxurious banquet, something that’s grand and sparkles to Satoru’s eyes. Something that he didn’t quite know the significance of as a child but nonetheless hated.
He’s dressed in some stuffy ceremonial robes, all ironed out and laying flat against his body. Dressed up like one of those dolls, with his hair combed over thrice and his clothing smoothened over twice and his eyes checked over once.
The fabric was dyed in no color at all, of which Satoru founded bland. It’s meant to match his hair, and, he knows now, that it’s meant to draw out his eyes even more. Pronounce the majesty of the Six Eyes, a speck of the sky within the expanse of white.
(It’s nobility and honor rolled into one stuffy five year old that couldn’t care less.
But the five year old never mattered in the grand scheme of things, not to old men playing games with power that they never had a chance of obtaining in their lifetime.
That’s just how the jujutsu world worked, something that Satoru would soon learn and would sooner hate.)
And so it is, Gojo Satoru paraded around the banquet hall as the Six Eyes first and Gojo second and a Gojo turning five, third. His parents are proud, his clansmen prouder. The rest of the lot is somewhere between unnerved or beholden to his gaze. For nothing escapes the Six Eyes, and for some, it is a cruel god, and for others, it is a merciful one.
But in the end, they all bow down, anyways.
For it does not matter whether he is cruel or merciful, he is a god, nonetheless.
And you do not look a god into his eyes.
So Satoru sits there, bored out of his mind. With sorcerers swarming to touch at his hands or greet him, as though they couldn’t be any more excited to be the one to welcome him into the folds of the jujutsu world.
His replies are empty, at best, and non-existent, at worst. For while his mother could beseech him and his father could scold him, they can’t really make him talk and talk nicely, at the end of the day.
Perhaps some would hate him for that, or perhaps they’ll be heartbroken at his cold reply.
Perhaps that made sense in their eyes, for Satoru is a god in human form and therefore he can be capricious as he wants.
Satoru himself doesn’t know, but what he does know was that he was bored out of his mind. For a five year old like him was never meant to be idle and listen to old coots mooseying away, trying to get into his favor. Nor could he care less about their feelings and thoughts.
Is it the apathy of a child? Or was it the capriciousness of a god?
Who knows, really. Perhaps not even the gods.
In the end, Satoru sneaks off. For who could stop him?
He stands up and leaves with an excuse or two about going to the bathroom or whatever and the watchers by his side relents easily because they cannot defy him, they cannot stop him, because they cannot even touch him.
The hallway is long and winding. It is a grand complex, after all, befitting of the Gojo.
“That boy.” He hears, hushed whispers and lower words behind paper walls. “He’s gone again, even for an occasion like this?”
The words would usually filter through his ears, going in one and out the other, for perhaps Satoru didn’t quite care much for what others might say.
But these words do stick, for he thinks they’re talking about him. And so his steps slow, his head tilts, his ears perk.
They shouldn’t have noticed his absence this early.
“What else would you expect from him?” Another replies, their voice is harsh and sharp. Something like his mother speaking to a servant or another when they made a mistake. “He’s always been that way.”
Were they talking about him?
If so, they are braver than most, Satoru would say.
“He should be glad Zen’in-sama brought him at all,” they continue. Hushed words that leak through the thin walls. “At least Zen’in-sama brought along Naoya-sama, perhaps now we have a chance of Naoya-sama being able to get along with the Gojo heir.”
Naoya, Satoru doesn’t think he knows that name. But he thinks he knows the name ‘Zen’in’ well enough. They were important or some such, though Satoru couldn’t care less about them, too.
Conclusion is, they weren’t talking about him. For Satoru was a Gojo, and certainly no Zen’in, let alone knowing Naoya or even the supposed head of the Zen’in.
Who was it, then?
The question passes Satoru’s mind quickly enough, after realizing that they weren’t talking about him. The annoyance he felt before dissipating with the wind as he continues alongside the winding hallways out to the outside instead.
And it was then that he knew who it was they were referring to. Though this revelation only comes after.
There’s a boy awaiting on the outside, sitting atop the tiles to the wall that circled the estate. His head tilted upwards at the moon, his hair a charcoal black, and his eyes, darker still, an almost impossible dark. There’s barely any light reflecting in it at all, as though it has swallowed the light from the moon itself.
He tilts his head to the side, looking away from the moon and right at Satoru from the moment Satoru took a step closer, as though he’s been waiting for Satoru all this time.
His eyes fixes on Satoru, like- like-
Something.
(Something meaningful, something important, something like-
Satoru still can’t define it, not even when he’s older.)
The boy parts his lips and he says-
“It’s you.”
Satoru stares back.
“Yeah,” is his reply. Informal and short. Perhaps a bit clipped. For he had felt, at that time, that the boy was entrenching himself in Satoru's quiet time alone. And he wanted him gone, wanted to show his displeasement so that the boy could pick up the cue and leave.
The boy does not, he looks away, his eyes passing over Satoru as though that’s all he needed to hear. The boy doesn’t spare him a second glance, instead, taking another look up at the moon as though seeking something. As though Satoru was less than the moon, as though somehow Satoru wasn’t as good as the moon.
And it felt insulting, somehow, to Gojo Satoru, recently five.
“You’re not meant to be here,” Satoru admonishes, his words are shorter, still. Something like annoyance welling up inside him that the boy still wasn’t leaving or even looking at the owner of the place.
“Neither are you,” the boy replies, it’s quick and simple. His voice is the same level of young as Satoru is, but he feels older, somehow. Satoru doesn’t know how, but it bugs him, anyway.
(It’s the cadence, Satoru would later learn, the slow, deliberate cadence filled with pointed words and even more purposeful sentences. With his impassive expression that isn’t petulant but instead leans on austere, and the slow drawl to his words, filled with confidence that doesn’t belong on a child, alongside eyes that are too dark and too cold, all at once.
That was what made Zen’in Obito, six, nearly seven, feel much older than he was.)
“Well, I’m Gojo Satoru,” Satoru says, as a rebuttal. “And this place is mine.”
He’s sure he hadn’t quite claimed this place as his, and he’s only the heir to his father.
But in the end, it’ll all be his- won’t it?
He is Gojo Satoru, after all.
The boy shrugs, it’s a motion that seems adult, somehow, and not like how Satoru does it.
“You’re not the owner of it, yet,” the boy corrects. “And for all I know, Gojo Satoru is still in the banquet hall and you’re just a random child.”
“You’re a random child, too,” Satoru rebuts.
The boy nods, as though it were simple at that. “We’re both random children, then.”
The annoyance wells up inside him again, as the boy spares him not a glance. His face washed in the moonlight, his hair tousled by the wind as he sits atop the tiles, quiet as can be. He seems almost fascinated by the moon, and, for the life of him, Satoru can’t fathom why.
It’s just a pale ball in the sky, sometimes it’s not even that. Sometimes it’s like someone having bitten a piece out of it and left the rest out for someone else to finish. It’s something relating to its cycles or whatever, but Satoru found little interest in it. You can’t even touch it, nor see it during the day, so Satoru doesn’t get the fuss nor why the boy continues to look at it rather than look at Satoru. Satoru, who is a bundle of godhood stuffed into a body and forced into clothing that resembled a doll moreso than a sorcerer.
Before Satoru could open his mouth again, there’s a man in his peripherals.
The man is tall and has the same shade of black hair that the boy does.
“Brat,” the man says, it sounds more like an insult. “You’re here.”
The boy tips his head, it’s a motion that’s quick and yet natural. “Toji.”
The man’s lips curl, Satoru can’t tell whether it’s malice or humor.
The boy stands up atop the tiles before jumping off with more grace than any other at Satoru’s- and the boy’s- age.
“I’m here to find you,” the man says, it’s more a statement of fact than anything.
The boy makes a noncommittal sound as he walks away from the walls. Away from Satoru, without even a single glance back.
No-
That’s wrong.
The boy does glance back, just once.
And he says-
“Goodbye, Gojo Satoru.”
And so, their first meeting ended.
Satoru is left with the bewildering realization that he doesn't even know the boy’s name.
They’re both sequestered near the fringes of the halls. No sorcerers care to speak to the failure of a Zen’in who didn’t have curse energy nor the unassuming boy next to him. Toji thinks that he’s being used as a deterrent somehow, and he’s not sure whether to be annoyed or impressed at the strategic mind of a six year old who does not want to interact with his peers or anyone, for that matter.
He sighs, as though taking on a great undertaking as he drags his hand down his face. “Out with it, why are you here in the first place?”
“You found me and dragged me here.” The boy looks at him as though he were stupid, Toji would like to give a boy a good, hard nudge, if he didn’t know that the brat would dodge it somehow.
“If you didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t have found you in the first place,” Toji points out, which is true enough. Zen’in Obito has the miraculous talent of evading notice and attention if he so wishes. His curse energy already low enough and Toji was never the one to be sensitive in the first place, so it’s usually a game of hide and never bothering to seek.
Meaning that whenever he’s caught he usually is just waiting for Toji to come and pick him up from his weird, desolate spots where no humans usually roam and nature seems to bite with a vengeance.
This equates to Zen’in Obito choosing when to grace the world with his unpleasantness, if he deigns it worthy of his attention. It’s annoying, but Toji would usually do the same, so he can’t even fault the brat for that.
There’s a moment of silence, then two. Where Obito seems to chew over his words and mull over it, a behavior that doesn’t quite match the childishness of his face.
“I was curious.”
“Then why’d you leave before greeting him?”
There’s a shrug, again, more mature than it has the right to be. The brat is annoying, that way.
“He wasn’t what I was looking for.”
And no further questions from Toji could draw a more clear answer from the brat. Toji knows it, the brat knows it, so there’s a lull of silence between them. No one bothering to break it nor caring to.
He’s always been this way, to Toji’s remembrance of him. From babe till now. He doesn’t know where the hell the brat got it from, but in the end Zen’in Obito is about as freakish as a kid gets. From his weird maturity to his even weirder austerity.
From the day Zen’in Obito was born, he was an odd thing.
For he only cried once, and never again.
It began with a whisper rather than a shout.
Toji remembers that year well, even if he were a child.
It began with hushed whispers and muted words that leaked through the thin walls of the Zen’in compound.
Even back then, Toji knew of the tense blood between the two main factions of the clan. Split between who would be set to inherit the Zen’in clan.
They were two brothers, one a drunkard, the other a cold blade of a man.
If it is said to be favored, then perhaps it would be Ogi, for he was always more in line with the expectations of the elders. Always a bit more serious, a bit more austere, a bit more like a sorcerer rather than a lout.
But one aspect that Ogi failed to check off was his failure in an heir.
Though, at that time, neither did his brother.
It was a deciding factor, so to speak. Perhaps not the deciding factor. But it certainly mattered, from Toji’s reluctant knowledge of his clan.
And so it was.
The year that the balance broke.
For it was Ogi that had the first strike.
For his wish had struck true.
Though it was not to be his wife who would birth the child.
A scandal, it was, that Zen’in Ogi had seeked comfort from another woman. Perhaps in his hubris, thinking that it was his wife that was the problem, that perhaps she was unable to bear him an heir and so he reached to the outside world.
And so it was.
The woman was brought within the clan compound.
Toji had seen her a rare few times from within the months she lived within the compound. Dressed up in soft fabrics and covered in softer silk.
It’s just another fancy word for imprisonment.
For she could not leave, nor would they let her.
She had dull black hair and a duller brown for her eyes, as though life was sucked dry from her the moment she was handed the verdict of being pregnant.
Apparently she was from some minor jujutsu clan, not worth a mention nor care. Handed over by her relatives like livestock to the slaughter.
Toji didn’t even know her last name.
Ogi had obsessed over the child within her. His chance to become heir was right within grasp- if only he could have a decent heir. If his heir could just turn out normal and have a technique- if that child could just be normal-
But it was not to be.
The woman was pregnant with twins.
Boys, they were, but that wasn’t good enough. Not for the Zen’in clan.
They all knew the fate of twins.
Born split into two, a sign of an unfortunate omen looming above. Cursed to become only a half of a whole.
Never quite right.
Zen’in Naobito had laughed at the news. A part of Toji found it sickeningly ironic. And the rest of the Zen’in clan watch with bated breath at the turmoil of the future.
Ogi grew to scorn the woman. And her life became worse than it was before.
If, before, she was a pampered bird within a cage.
Then, after, she was nothing but a carrier of something utterly useless.
She wasn’t even Zen’in Ogi’s wife, nor would she ever have a name within the family records.
So what did it matter?
What did it matter if she wasn’t even going to bear suitable heirs? Was the thought, at the time.
Toji found it laughable.
Apparently, during the last few weeks of her pregnancy she grew mad.
From the whispers Toji had heard, the woman was at her limit. She was grasping for straws. And in the face of helplessness, in the face of the clan she could not even curse and in the face of her family she could not even rely on-
She cursed the children within her instead.
And so it was.
And so, perhaps, that was the only remarkable mark the unremarkable woman left upon the world.
For on the day her children were born-
Only one babe was born.
There was no twin, no other babe.
It was just a screaming, shrieking child with writhing cursed energy that sent the whole clan into chaos. Cursed energy as strong as a special grade, almost like a cursed womb hatching but more because it has already hatched and it’s screaming- reaching its hand out for something and crying because it’s born and there’s nothing awaiting it. Threatening to swallow the clan compound whole if they didn’t appease it.
Zen’in Obito was born that day.
He had no brother and no mother.
It is said that he consumed them both.
Zen’in Ogi had gotten everything he had wanted.
But it’s everything that damned him in the same breath.
For Zen’in Obito is a walking damnation.
A child that killed its mother upon birth and ate its brother in the womb.
That was the curse of Zen’in Obito’s existence. An ominous omen personified within a small child. An unlucky star given form. The unthinkable becoming reality.
A living taboo.
Zen’in Obito was named at his mother’s behest.
It was a name that left you wondering whether it was a shallow sincerity of a desperate woman or a mocking smear from a woman who cursed her own child.
From the day Zen’in Obito was born, he was a child that would not live up to his name.
A great sorcerer, he may become.
But he’ll never be a Zen’in.
Not in the way that mattered.
Zen’in Toji, born without any cursed energy at all-
Zen’in Obito, born with too much curse energy for a child to bear-
In the end, they’re both the same.
A stain upon the Zen’in name.
“I never thought I’d see you here, senpai,” Satoru drawls, obnoxiously.
Suguru wants to shut him up but at the same time, he also knows not to get involved, because it’s terrible business to get involved with a Satoru who feels like being obnoxious at that particular time.
“You’re not meant to be here,” Zen’in Obito, a cryptid of an upperclassman, replies. He looks like he’s about to murder them both.
Though, he always looks like that.
Shoko swears that he’s a hardboiled criminal, Suguru thinks that he’s not because he’s nice to cats.
They have differing opinions.
“Neither are you.” Satoru’s lips quirk, as though telling some kind of inside joke. “And I’ll have you know, the Gojo clan does own this building. And by the Gojo clan, I mean me.”
Both Suguru and Zen’in Obito look at the decrepit, abandoned building. Teeming with curses and malignancy.
“It’s a recent development,” Satoru waves off, easily.
It’s with a maliciously gentle smile that Satoru gives the following ultimatum:
“You can start begging me for permission to enter now, senpai.”
Let it be said-
Suguru really does not want to be the witness to Zen’in Obito murdering the Gojo heir.