Chapter Text
This meeting could have been an email.
Satoru has successfully tuned out most of what’s been said in this room from the moment he sat down, and he knows for a fact that all of it could have been an email. A text, even. A string of emojis. Something he could easily outsource to Ijichi and then ignore his summary of it, too, just for good measure.
Instead, they insist on the godawful Gojo clan estate meeting room. The small one, only for the most elite club members, with awfully cold floors and pillows that do nothing for his ass. His tailbone hurts.
The first thing on the agenda – because they have an agenda and multiple points to go over, Lord fucking help him – was that some archivist died recently and now his wife kind of unofficially took over his work, which is, of course, a scandal and not right because, well, woman. Satoru resolved this issue by taking off his sunglasses and staring at the old man who brought it up until his chin started to wobble.
He has half a mind to just replace all six of them with Shoko and have her do their job, whatever it is that they actually do when he isn’t here, besides pestering him about coming over. Turn the Gojo clan into a matriarchy for all he cares, as long as they leave him alone.
The second thing on the agenda, Satoru missed entirely. He busied himself with imagining any of the six old men in front of him trying to send an email and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
Maybe he should get that ball rolling. Cause a little scandal, break with ancient tradition and go down in digitalized history as the clanhead who introduced the Gojo family to the wonders of modern technology. Install dimmable overhead lights, buy them all smartphones and bluetooth speakers. This is Siri-sama. She can play music for you if you ask nicely.
The third thing on the agenda – or is it still the second thing? – apparently warrants his attention. “Pardon me, Satoru-sama,” says the old man to his far left, “is this amusing to you?”
Oh. Shit.
When did he start listening again?
Satoru stretches his legs out in front of him, plants his feet in the middle of their stupid circle, almost kicking one of the lanterns in the process. He rests his weight on the palms of his hands behind his back and schools his expression into a lazy grin. “Sure,” he says. “What are we talking about?”
They share a look between them; it wanders from face to face, something that distinctly isn’t exasperation or disapproval because it’s not allowed to be, but also is exactly that. Irritation only gets this much funnier when it's etched into lines on ancient faces that know not to let it show but can’t quite help themselves. Satoru widens his grin.
One of them, third to his right, clears his throat, manages to rearrange his features into careful neutrality. “There have been…concerns,” he explains diplomatically, mouth moving so slowly that Satoru is convinced he must be doing it on purpose. No one talks like this. Forming words does not take anyone this long.
“Regarding the way our family has been treated by the higher council in the past months.”
This is what he means. That could have been an email. A text. A higher ups r being mean 2 us :( make them stop pls. Would have taken less than a minute.
Satoru eyes the old man’s boney hands, partially covered by the sleeves of an ugly kimono patterned in an uncomfortable amount of blue eyes. Maybe more than a minute. His point still stands.
Another one speaks up; after the wonders of the bluetooth speakers have worn off, he should introduce them to the concept of a group chat. They’d love it. “We have noticed an uptick in council meetings that deliberately excluded our family.”
Ah, well. Slightly different text then. higher ups r having fun without us :(. Satoru leans back and imagines a world in which this conversation is taking place in a group chat he can add Ijichi to and then leave himself. He’s not that lucky, of course, but what a world it would be. He’s always dreamt big.
“It happened again just last week,” says another one. He bets it did. Satoru stares at the giant blue eye painted at the ceiling and waits for it to blink first; it never does.
Last week, one full day after the exchange event, Yaga called him into his office. Spontaneous overseas mission, it’s an emergency, he just got the call for it. It’ll probably take a few days, they’ve already booked him a hotel just in case, here’s his flight information, Ijichi will take him to the airport. Orders from all the way high up. To which Satoru did the only reasonable thing, which was informing Yaga that he would start killing people if he came back and there was so much as a scratch on any of his students.
Yaga sighed very deeply at that and said, “I know, Satoru.” But just in case he didn’t, Satoru reiterated that no, really, he will kill people, to which Yaga sighed even deeper and said, “I know, Satoru.”
Then, like the reasonable man he is, Satoru lined up his students, made them all hold hands, put his own on Yuuji’s shoulder, gave Nobara one of his credit cards and told them that he'd pick them up later, have a fun day in Berlin. He finished his mission that same day, slung all ten of Nobara’s shopping bags over his shoulders and carried his own in his hands when he warped them all back. Then, he marched right up to Yaga’s office, where he proceeded to place a piece of the Berlin Wall on his desk with more force than was strictly necessary and told him not to mention anything to his supervisors, because he didn’t get anyone else a souvenir.
Satoru doesn’t mention this to the old men, because it’s none of their business and he wants to go home, but they keep talking regardless.
“We believe it has to do with our family’s continued efforts to block the execution of Ryomen Sukuna’s vessel.”
That one’s new. He’s not sure when this became a group project. He would like it on digitalized record that it absolutely isn’t.
Satoru bites his tongue.
It’s almost funny, the way they claim everything he does as theirs, just to keep up the appearance that they’re actually a family, a clan, a unit, and he’s not deliberately pissing on everything that’s holy. He’ll just have to keep it up, then. Maybe the smartphones are going to be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back. It wouldn’t hurt to try.
He shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered. They did the same thing with Megumi. Turned it into the clanhead’s masterful gambit to secure the Ten Shadows as an ally to the Gojo family, when really, all he wanted was for that boy not to be thrown to the goddamn wolves. Satoru kind of succeeded in that, if only by throwing him to a different pack himself. He likes to think it was because he had no idea what he was doing.
Not when it came to Megumi, and even less when it came to Tsumiki. He didn’t have a playbook for that; he didn’t even know Megumi had a sister when he first met him. He’d been prepared to walk up to a little boy with too much potential for his own good, make him choose between a rock and a hard place and then spit in Naobito Zenin’s face about it.
What he hadn’t been prepared for was a fierce little girl who didn’t trust a word that came out of his mouth and would not give him the time of day. And Satoru tried. Brought gifts and greasy food and sweets when he came over, took them to the beach and the zoo and the aquarium and Disneyland and for a long time, all he’d get out of her was a polite bow, a chipped Thank you, maybe a Goodnight, Gojo-san, and then the door would close right in his face.
Satoru didn’t let that deter him, though. He’s nothing if not persistent.
He managed the first crack in her distant exterior a few days after their trip to Disneyland, which made the whole thing kind of seem like a waste, but oh well. He figured he’d just take them again. The first time Tusmiki seemed to really warm up to him was when Satoru took them shopping. Apparently, Megumi had been walking around with holes in his shoes all month, so he took them to the mall. Bought multiple pairs of shoes for both of them, new jackets for the colder months, socks and clothes and hair accessories for Tsumiki while he was at it.
When they got back she looked him up and down, slight crease between her brows, hands on her hips and said, “Would you like to stay for dinner, Gojo-san?”
Satoru played it very cool at that, tilted his head, hands in his pocket and very calmly, very normally replied, “Oh, sure. What are you having?” And then he cried a little bit about it in the shower later.
The second crack revealed itself in December of that year, when Tsumiki called him to ask if he could get groceries for them; she was too sick to go. Satoru did, of course, followed her list to a T and at the time, he was proud of himself for it. Again, he likes to think it was because he had no idea what he was doing. That he would do better now.
He brought Shoko with him to take a look at her while he put their groceries away; Megumi watched over Shoko like a hawk while she worked on his sister. It quickly turned into an entire check-up, because neither of them could remember the last time they went to a doctor and the thought hadn’t crossed Satoru’s mind before. Mostly because he himself couldn’t remember the last time he saw a doctor.
Afterwards, when Tsumiki inspected the groceries, she turned to look at him with a strange kind of wonder in her eyes and mumbled, almost to herself, “You’re very reliable, Gojo-san.”
Satoru rode that high for weeks, elbowed Shoko on their way out with a shit-eating grin, “Kid thinks I'm reliable.”
Some time after that – he’s still not sure what actually did it but knowing Tsumiki, it probably wasn’t the elaborate gift he got her for christmas but rather something mundane and slightly stupid – she came up to him, grinning shyly, with her hands behind her back.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked, crouching down to be at eye-level with her and matching her grin.
Tsumiki presented him with a pair of plain black house slippers, hesitant but smiling when she said, “For when you stay over.” It wasn’t a question but she made it sound like one, as if unsure if he wanted to. Satoru answered with a dramatic declaration of thanks before he scooped her up in his arms and spun her around in a hug. Tsumiki squealed at that and clung to him, giggling softly in his ear. Satoru cried about it in the shower later.
Satoru takes out his phone and sends Ijichi a text that reads need flowers later, followed by a string of exclamation marks and vaguely threatening emojis. All of it takes him less than a minute to type. Oh, the wonders of modern communication.
Where was he?
He looks up; six self-important mummies in ugly kimonos stare back expectantly.
Ah, right.
Something about group projects that aren’t really group projects. Something about the Higher Ups being meanies.
“I mean, yeah?” Satoru scratches the back of his head. “That’s probably why. What do you want me to do about that?”
Another journey passes across the six old faces, ancient features crumpling like paper in a clenched fist. They rarely get this far with him, if ever. Satoru can count the number of times he asked for their opinion on one hand or he could, if he cared enough to remember any of them.
The one directly in front of him blinks a few times, as if trying to reboot. “We would–” He clears his throat in a wet-sounding, gross old man way. Satoru makes a face. “We stand completely behind you in everything you do, Satoru-sama,” he says.
“We would simply feel more comfortable with your decisions if you—informed us of them.” Very bravely, he adds, “Ideally beforehand. So we can know what to expect. Satoru-sama.”
Seems like he’s not the only dreamer in the room. How nice.
Satoru hums, feigning thoughtfulness and tilts his head. “Do you trust me?” he asks, eyeing the old man over the rims of his blacked-out glasses. He squirms under his gaze. It reminds him of Ijichi, if Ijichi were multiple centuries old.
“I—” He sits up straight; the movement is so fast and sudden that an audible crack from his back echoes through the room. “Of course I do! I trust you completely, Satoru-sama.” He nods, as if to assure himself. “We all do.”
Satoru claps his hands together loud enough to make two other old men next to him jump in their seats, because he’s an asshole. “Great!” He cheers and stands up. “Then it’s all good, no? I keep doing what I’m doing; you keep doing what you’re doing. We trust each other.”
Someone all the way to his right opens his mouth in a very brave attempt at something bordering on actual protest, but Satoru is faster. “Good talk,” he tells them cheerfully and turns to leave. “Please email me next time.”
…
Two full days after the exchange event, Satoru was in his office, napping with his head on his desk in between assignments, when Megumi knocked on his door. “You’re awful,” he announced upon entry, which had become his standard greeting ever since Satoru revealed the miracle of Yuuji’s survival during the exchange event. It’s not the worst thing Megumi’s ever called him.
“Noted,” said Satoru and blinked the sleep from his eyes, readjusting his blindfold. “Whatcha got there?” He pointed at the slim folder in Megumi’s hands.
Megumi dropped it on the desk. “Mission file,” he explained. “They gave this to us yesterday. When we came back from Berlin, we were told it was already handled.”
Satoru flipped through it without really reading anything; he didn’t have to. “Who gave this to you?”
The rest of the day went like this:
Megumi pointed an assistant out to him. Satoru did the only reasonable thing, which included but wasn’t limited to pulling down his blindfold, leaning over the man until his back was bent like a bowstring and staring at him with all six of his uncovered eyes until he started sobbing hysterically and promised to resign that very day.
Then, Satoru went to Yaga’s office, didn’t bother to knock and very reasonably explained that he would start killing people if anything like this ever happened again. Yaga asked what he was talking about, so Satoru walked him through it very calmly, announced that from this point forward, all missions and assignments for his students have to be approved by him first before they go to them and that he would, of course, kill people if this rule wasn’t followed. Yaga sighed very deeply at this and nodded.
Afterwards, he rounded the first years up in his classroom. “You’re still awful,” said Megumi when he walked in.
“So you’ve said,” Satoru responded cheerfully. He made them all stand in a straight line and then clasped his hands behind his back, walking up and down in front of them.
“New rule!” he announced.
Yuuji straightened his back and saluted, “Hai, Sensei!” Megumi and Nobara crossed their arms in front of their chests, deeply unimpressed.
“You will only be assigned missions from me from now on. Even when I’m not around. Especially when I’m not around.”
“Hai, Sensei!”
Satoru looked at them, still walking up and down. “If anyone else ever approaches you about an assignment,” he stopped and pointed at all three of them one by one. “You tell me immediately. Understood?”
“Hai, Sensei!”
The implementation of this rule meant that Satoru got sent a shitton of possible assignments for his students all at once. He read this as a very pointed attempt to get him to back down, because he couldn’t possibly check them all out, that he very pointedly ignored by doing just that. In the meantime, no one except Ijichi, Nanami or Nitta were allowed to take his students anywhere.
Things calmed down after about two days of this petty back and forth that Satoru absolutely refused to back down from. He told Yaga as much when he asked, very calmly, because he is a reasonable man.
Now, there’s exactly one mission site he plans to inspect tonight and more than enough other things for him to do, but Satoru hasn’t taken a break all day and the bullet train ride back to Tokyo doesn’t count in his books.
So, he’s here now, even though he definitely doesn’t have time to be. It’s that thing they’re always pestering him about, isn’t it? Priorities and whatnot.
Satoru is great at priorities.
The twins must have been here recently; the overgrown weeds surrounding Suguru’s headstone have been cut back, and there’s a small bouquet of roses on the ground in front of it. He wonders if Suguru liked roses or flowers in general. Satoru never got around to ask.
He gently nudges the bouquet with his foot, hands in his pockets. “It’s Tsumiki’s birthday tomorrow,” he says. “I’m getting her a bigger one. Just so you know.”
Satoru hesitates, then squats down in front of the grave but doesn’t sit. The ground is still wet from earlier rain. “And jewelry.” The box is already sitting in his office. He assumes by the time he comes back the flowers will be, too. “She got her ears pierced this year. You know, before she—” He trails off, sighs deeply.
Tsumiki has a habit of doing things Satoru wasn’t prepared for, being something he didn’t know what to do with. And he thinks what it ultimately comes down to is that he should have been better. And Satoru is so goddamn sorry that he isn’t.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” he tells the second person he should have been better for. “I mean, I, I’ve looked into it, fuck, I tried, but I just—you know how it is.”
You can’t save everyone. Universal truth, even for someone like him, because he’s just not good enough. Satoru just wishes his list of people he failed to save wasn’t exclusively made up of the best people he’s ever known. He’s selfish like that, to a fucking fault.
He rocks himself back and forth on his heels, fidgets with the magnet in his pocket. He meant to come here last week.
“She’s a good kid, you know,” Satoru continues. What he means by that is that he loves her, probably, and that’s another thing he never figured out what to do with. “Real smart. And funny too, once you get to know her. She needs a bit to warm up to people, but God, when she does. She’s great. You would have—”
Well. Suguru – the one he killed, the one who maybe liked roses – wouldn’t have. He would have hated her, did hate her, on sheer principle, and he was ready to go to war for it, kill Yuuta and then Satoru and then Tsumiki and everyone like her.
“If you hadn’t turned into a genocidal freak,” he settles on, “you would have liked her.”
What Satoru means by that is that he likes to imagine a world in which he would have figured out if Suguru liked roses and Suguru would have met Tsumiki and he would have loved and adored her the way Satoru knows he could have, the way Satoru couldn’t. Really, he just likes imagining a world where he isn’t too fucking late for everything.
Big dreamer, he.
“Anyways.” He takes the magnet out of his pocket. It’s an awfully tacky, bear-shaped thing showing a collection of sightseeing spots in Berlin in clashing colors. “I went to Germany recently,” explains Satoru and places the magnet next to the flowers. “Got you a gift.” He shoots the headstone a grin and Suguru doesn’t grin back because he’s dead.
Back when everything was already over but before Satoru knew that it was, he did this all the time. Came back from one of the solo missions on the never ending list of solo missions they needed him to get to yesterday with a shit-eating grin and the ugliest possible souvenir he could find. Handed it to Suguru like it was a great treasure, made a whole thing out of it and Suguru would roll his eyes, slap the magnet to the fridge or place the shot glass with the other ones and give him a small smile and Satoru thought that everything would turn out okay if he could just keep making Suguru smile.
“Shoko still has all those shot glasses, you know,” he says. “I got her one from Pisa a few weeks ago. It’s shaped like the tower. And it, uh, it leans. You know. Like the tower.” It’s funnier if you see it. Hard to describe.
It still sits on her desk in the infirmary, because Shoko and Satoru are birds of the same overworked feather and when she isn’t in the morgue, she’s usually napping in one of the terribly uncomfortable hospital beds. She doesn’t go home all that often, which works out great for Satoru because he doesn’t, either.
“Riko would have liked Italy, I think.” Might as well round off the evening with the very first person he should have been more for, while he’s at it. “She wouldn’t have liked Germany. Too grey. No nice beaches.”
After a beat of silence, Satoru stands up, stretches, then fumbles for his blindfold and pockets his sunglasses. “Gotta get back to work,” he announces and eyes the magnet on the ground for a moment longer.
He doesn’t know what the twins do with the things he leaves for Suguru. Throw them away, probably. Maybe even burn them. If Satoru were a better person, he would stop doing this. It’s really cruel of him, all things considered, but he’s always been more selfish than he has ever been good.
He adjusts his blindfold over his eyes and turns to leave, hands buried deep in his pockets.
If he were to wax poetically about what it feels like to walk away from Suguru’s grave, Satoru would say that it feels a lot like leaving a part of himself behind, to an uncomfortably literary degree.
It’s like this:
When Tsumiki was in fourth grade, their elementary school put on a play– Peter Pan. She was supposed to be Wendy, which from the amount of squealing and jumping up and down she did, Satoru assumed was a big deal, so he reacted with the appropriate amount of excitement. He’s always been passionate about the arts.
In a cruel twist of fate, Tsumiki got sick the night before the premier, throwing up all over her bed and carpet, which was another thing Satoru had not been prepared for. She loved handing him those. Then, when he called the mother of the other, definitely inferior Wendy, Tsumiki cried so much she threw up again, in the living room this time.
Then, when she saw the mess she made, she began crying again, completely ignoring all of Satoru’s attempts to assure her that it was fine, really, he’s seen much worse, at least she didn’t hit the carpet this time.
Motivated by what was probably a mix of a lot of love for his sister and the tiniest amount of pity for Satoru so far out of his element, Megumi descended upon the living room like the heaven’s grumpiest angel, shoved a book in his sister’s hands, got situated on the couch next to her and asked her to tell him the story again. Peter Pan. That one. Tsumiki very pitifully sniffled that she knew what Megumi was doing, to which Megumi shoved her and told her to get on with it.
Satoru didn’t pay enough attention to grasp most of what she said – re: cleaning up the living room floor and being so far out of his element it caused him visible distress – but the part that always stuck with him was this: Peter Pan was this magical boy from this magical land and he doesn’t grow up as long as he doesn’t leave said magical land.
He’s uncomfortably familiar with magical lands and not at all familiar with most children’s stories, so Satoru doubts what he took away from it was even the point, but sometimes he thinks of Peter Pan when he walks away from Suguru’s grave.
It’s like leaving Neverland to visit and then returning a little bit older, parts of his youth buried next to a man he doesn’t even know all that well anymore, a man who hated the best girl Satoru knows and maybe liked roses.
He doesn’t know enough about the source material to make the comparison land the way he means to, but it gets the point across.
Walking away from Suguru’s grave feels like going at the soft tissue of his brain with an ice cream scoop and pouring spoonfuls of himself onto the headstone every time he visits. The only question is how many more times Satoru can do this before there won’t be enough left of him to make the trip.
Which is to say that it always leaves him feeling at least a little bit like shit, but it’s especially bad today and he blames it on the fact that his entire day had just been kind of awful and isn’t getting any better.
He’s hungry, for starters. Starving, even, in a way that makes him feel exhausted and a little bit dizzy, and he’s also developing a nasty headache that starts in his neck and climbs up the back of his head.
Well, fresh air and whatever. The old men Satoru had to spend an unfortunate amount of time with today never let any in, because that would require opening a window, which would reveal that the sun is still up and there’s really no need at all for spooky lanterns.
One day. Dimmable overhead lights. Bluetooth speakers. It’ll be great.
The hunger really starts getting to him a few blocks down when he blinks and his vision starts blurring at the edges. He stops and takes off his blindfold, blinks again against the streetlight he stopped under. The fabric is slightly damp with sweat and he notices a bit belated that his breathing is kind of shallow.
Satoru fumbles a piece of candy from his jeans pocket, pops it in his mouth and chews almost aggressively.
It’s not even that late. Maybe he’ll go bother Nanami afterwards and steal leftovers from his fridge before he goes back to his mission load for the night. He lives nearby anyway. He briefly considered texting him to check the curse out instead, but the thought occurred after six o'clock and Nanami is very stuck-up about a lot of things, like paid lunch breaks and regulated work hours.
Satoru tries to remember the last time he went home after work and draws a blank. It’s fine; his office has enough places to sleep in. He rubs his eyes with a slight tremor to his fingers and a tightness in his chest. His head hurts, but also it doesn’t, because he’s running RCT on his brain all hours of the day, it’s an automated process, really, his head can’t hurt.
Maybe he should try to get more sleep tonight. Yeah, maybe he can squeeze in a quick nap after this. Close his eyes for a bit.
Satoru keeps walking until the apartment building he’s looking for comes into view.
The complex is half-finished, scaffoldings still in place, untouched construction equipment left behind as if it just got dropped in the middle of a regular work day. It probably did; the story had something to do with construction workers insisting that the house was haunted by a thing with too many teeth and a suspicious number of them falling to their deaths from heights that shouldn’t have killed them with claw marks all over their bodies.
Satoru doesn’t remember all the details, probably because he didn’t pay a lot of attention, except that he’s pretty sure he did. That’s, that’s the whole deal, right? That’s why he’s doing this.
New rule and everything, pay attention so his students don’t get killed and he did, he swears he did it’s just—it’s hard to remember right now, is all, but it must have been something like that. Claws and construction workers and he should probably just go inside and get this over with.
He’s panting a little bit, he realizes and it feels like he ran here but that—Satoru didn’t run here. Why the hell would he do that? He didn’t run, he’s just a little bit out of breath and fucking hell, he really needs to eat something; honestly, he could just leave right now.
He doesn’t need to go in, it’s all more of a bit to prove a point than anything, he could—he could just leave, no? Just for a little bit, get away from the streetlights and the noises and good God he needs to sleep.
He just—
Satoru rubs his eyes so hard it hurts and pushes the door open.
New rule. Pay attention, really pay attention this time, so you can save people for once, do your goddamn job.
His palm is sweaty against the knob and it should have been another indicator on the long list of fucking indicators that something is deeply, horribly wrong, but his ears are ringing and everything feels a little bit far away and his heart beat is drumming all the way up in his temples and Satoru recognizes all of it too late as him being scared.
It’s stupid, so, so stupid, it’s ridiculous.
He’s walking up a flight of stairs, two steps at a time, panting, not from the movement but because he’s scared, because something’s wrong; scared in the way he was when Toji Fushiguro’s inverted spear from fucking hell slit right through the barrier that was supposed to keep him safe and Satoru used to think that was the most terrifying feeling in the world.
It isn’t.
The most terrifying feeling in the world, he learns, is registering too late that the barrier that’s supposed to keep you safe isn’t there anymore and you didn’t even notice when it disappeared.
Why did he even go in here? He’s not here to fight, he just needs to check if the curse is what it said on the box, if it’s something his students can handle, he didn’t have to let it touch him, why is it touching him?
There’s blood gushing out of his side.
Satoru hasn’t bled in a long time.
…
The story goes like this:
Peter Pan comes back to Neverland and gets mauled by a wolf. This shouldn’t be possible, but it happens anyway.
It’s not a very good story.
…
It shouldn’t be possible, because nothing can touch him, but something was wrong and Satoru didn’t notice because his head kept spinning and his vision kept blurring and now he’s bleeding and he almost forgot that he could.
He needs to—
fuck, he needs to get away.
…
He needs help.
…
Yuuji likes Nanami’s apartment. It’s warm and it’s comfortable and it’s really, really neat. Like, nothing’s-ever-out-of-place, not-a-speck-of-dust-anywhere kind of neat. He checks, every time he’s here. He’s checking right now, leaning in as close as he can without touching anything, hands dutifully behind his back.
He inspects the dark wooden shelves in the living room, the expensive looking whiskey and crystal tumbler next to it, the books (sorted alphabetically, by genres) and the framed photograph he’s not allowed to tell Gojo Sensei about.
Yuuji thinks that’s a little silly considering Gojo Sensei has the same one in his office but he knows better than to bring it up. It’s a nice picture, if not for Nanami’s slightly odd haircut. He also knows better than to comment on it—he tried that once. The photo shows Nanamin, Gojo Sensei, Dr. Ieiri and two boys Yuuji doesn’t know but recognizes from the other pictures in Sensei’s office, all in school uniforms in a classroom.
The one with the bun has his arm around the one with the bowlcut and the other around Gojo Sensei; Nanami and Dr. Ieiri are peeking in through the door.
Yuuji brings his face closer to the frame and squints—no dust. Of course not. He’ll catch him one day. Or he won’t, probably, because Nanamin is the most put together person he has ever met.
“How often do you dust in here?” Yuuji calls over his shoulder toward the open kitchen. Nanami doesn’t look up from the plate he’s drying. “As often as I have to,” he says simply.
Yuuji would like it on record that he always offers to help clean up after they eat together, because gramps raised him to be a polite and respectful guest, and that Nanami always declines with the kind of tone that leaves no room for arguments.
He thought he had him today when he offered to do the dishes as an apology for making them late, but Nanamin had taken his empty plate from him and said, “That was your ridiculous teacher’s fault. Go sit in the living room. I’ll make you tea,” and that had been that.
It really was Sensei’s fault, to be fair.
Yuuji was about to leave when Gojo stopped him and very pointedly asked where he was going. “Mission with Nanamin,” he chirped in response. He didn’t think the new rule applied to Nanami and he’s still not convinced that it does, but Sensei is kind of dramatic sometimes, so he followed him.
Nanami was already waiting for Yuuji in the faculty lounge, perfectly calm as always, reading the newspaper when Gojo Sensei did the thing.
It’s still kind of new – the first time he saw it was about a week ago, probably. Panda Senpai dubbed it Gojo Sensei’s “Eldritch-Horror-Fear-of-God”-thing and told them in a conspiratorial whisper that people go insane from it if they don’t look away quickly enough and it also puts the fear of God in them. Hence the name. Yuuji feels like it’s a little clunky, but he hasn’t gotten around to telling him that yet.
The thing goes a little differently each time. It depends on who he’s doing it to and how mad he is, and whether the person he’s doing it to is sitting or standing up. Since Nanamin was sitting when Sensei approached him, it went like this:
Sensei walked up to him, plopped one foot down on the armrest of his chair, pulled down his blindfold, leaned over Nanamin’s newspaper and stared at him with unnaturally wide, unblinking eyes like they were magnifying glasses and Nanami was an ant he was trying to burn. Yuuji has seen people cry and quit on the spot from this kind of stare.
Nanamin wasn’t impressed by it, because he’s never really impressed by anything Sensei does. It doesn’t deter Sensei from trying. Yuuji knows this. Gojo then squinted his eyes at him, which also didn’t impress Nanamin. “We talked about this two days ago and we agreed to it,” he said calmly. “Stop being ridiculous.”
What happened next was what Yuuji imagined a clash of domains to be like, if the opponents were completely equal. Final boss music started playing. Two titans stepped into the ring. Sensei leaned in closer; Nanamin didn’t move. They looked at each other, Nanami with a completely blank expression, utterly unbothered, Sensei with that slightly unhinged look he sometimes gets and Yuuji held his breath.
A small eternity passed between them.
Then, Sensei broke the eye contact, looked Nanamin up and down one final time, cheerfully clapped his hands and backed off at once.
“Alright!” He grinned. “Have fun you two!” Nanamin told him that he was going to punch him, to which Sensei blew him a kiss before he warped out of the room. This left Nanami with a slight tremor in the vein on his temple, the one that always pops out when he talks to Sensei for too long.
It didn’t help that their mission went on for longer than anticipated and they had to eat a little late tonight; later than Nanamin likes, anyway. He’s very punctual. The first and only time Yuuji was ever late to meeting him, the man pulled back his sleeve, pointed at his wrist and calmly said, “This is a watch.” Then he ignored any and all of Yuuji’s desperate attempts to explain that it wasn’t his fault – which it wasn’t – because, in his words, they’d already wasted enough time and should get on with it.
Yuuji plops down on the couch and goes back to nursing his tea he left on the coffee table. “Ijichi is already off the clock,” says Nanamin when he enters the living room and sits down in the armchair across from him. He puts his phone down on the table. “I’ll drive you back to campus later.”
He can only hope Kugisaki is already asleep by then. She's already giving him enough shit as it is. Yuuji has allegations to beat. Nanamin is not making that any easier for him.
“It’s no problem,” he tries even though he knows it’s fruitless, shaking his head between gulps. “I can just take the bus.”
Nanamin looks at him like Yuuji just suggested he walk back to campus without shoes during a blizzard. It’s not even a long bus ride. It takes fifteen minutes.
“Right,” he mumbles, hiding a small smile behind his cup. He’s not beating any allegations anytime soon. “Sorry.”
Nanami’s phone starts buzzing on the table. After glancing at it, he puts it face down on the glass surface, letting it buzz away. “Aren’t you going to take that?” asks Yuuji.
“It’s Gojo,” Nanamin offers as an explanation.
“What if it’s important?”
This earns Yuuji the look of a man who’s been to war and barely made it out on the other side. Nanami’s expression is equal parts haunted and deeply annoyed. The Sensei vein makes an appearance. “If it were important—” He stops himself, considers his words.
“If Gojo deemed it important, he would already be here. And probably steal my food.” Yuuji has half a mind to ask if Sensei does that a lot, then thinks better of it. The look on Nanami’s face speaks for itself. He wonders if Nanamin turns down the photo when Gojo comes to visit.
It makes sense, now that he thinks about it. Sensei is kind of like a whirlwind, in a lot of ways. Bursts into a room, leaves everything a little disheveled, and then he’s gone again before you can blink. Sometimes literally.
Sometimes, that whirlwind grows into a hurricane, the kind that rips trees from the root, flattens entire pieces of land in one go, the kind that you can only watch and let happen, because there’s no way to brace yourself for it. Yuuji means this in a good way.
He means it in the way you talk about a man who tells you that you’re sentenced for a secret execution but also you’re not, because he doesn’t want you to be. The way you talk about a man who can just do that.
There’s something intense about Sensei, even when he doesn’t mean there to be. Has to do with his cursed energy, probably. The ground pulsates a little bit when he walks, and he always does it with the distinct swagger of a man who can look at a mountain and tell it to move and knows that the only thing the mountain can do in response is ask to where, exactly.
Yuuji thinks Sensei is incredibly cool; he also knows he’s incredibly alone with that opinion. And like, he gets it. Gojo is loud and dramatic and deeply unserious, most of the time. It catches Yuuji off guard whenever he isn’t. He’s never prepared for it.
Sometimes a switch flips behind his eyes and then Yuuji is a little bit thankful for the blindfold, because his gaze is already too much even with it on when Sensei looks at him and says things like “Enjoy your youth,” in a way that sounds weirdly like a promise.
And Yuuji doesn’t really understand the Fear of God thing, because he can’t imagine ever feeling scared of Sensei, but in those moments he thinks he understands why the people who are never look him in the eyes if they can help it.
It’s a lot, sometimes. Except for Nanamin, of course, because Nanamin might be the coolest person Yuuji knows. He won’t tell him that. He won’t tell Sensei, either. It’ll just make him cry again, like that time he was fishing for compliments and asked them to guess how old he was. Kugisaki looked him dead in the face and said thirty-nine. It took him days to recover from that.
Really, Yuuji gets why people don’t find him cool but to him personally, the dramatics get cancelled out by the fact that he can open up a galaxy by crossing his fingers and that he’s quite literally untouchable. That is insanely cool.
After another sip of his tea, he hums, then tells Nanami, “He took us to Germany last week.” The phone buzzes again. Nanami ignores it again.
“Really?” he asks and leans back. It’s nice talking to Nanami, because Nanami’s patience is something Yuuji learned you had to earn and having him listen to what he has to say feels like proof that he did. Earn it, that is.
Yuuji nods eagerly. “Mhm. It was really cool. We were in Berlin. Fushiguro and I went to this—film museum thing. He had to translate a lot for me ‘cause my English isn’t very good.” He grins, rubbing the back of his head, “German is even more difficult. I tried listening in on a tour guide while we were there—”
The phone buzzes again, shorter this time, three times in a row. His brows twitch with irritation when he grabs it. “No, no, keep talking,” he says. “You were—” He looks at his phone for a beat, then taps the screen.
“I apologize,” says Nanami. “I have to make a quick call. I’ll be right back.” And then he leaves the room, phone already pressed to his ear, the same vein lightly pulsing at his temple.
Nanamin is always calm, even when he’s irritated, to the point where he sometimes seems uninterested if you don’t know him well. Like a very stoic onion. You just have to peel back a few layers. To Yuuji, Nanamin is calm in a way that calms him down, too. He likes to think of him as something like a lighthouse, something guiding, grounding, steady as a rock. The kind of presence that makes you think that everything is going to turn out okay.
It’s like this:
Where Sensei has a special place in his heart because Yuuji would be dead without him, Nanamin has a special place in his heart because Yuuji wouldn’t know what to do without him sometimes. Nanamin was there when Junpei died. He picked up the phone when Yuuji called in the middle of the night afterwards, woken up by a nightmare, scared and alone and unsure what to do.
Yuuji was a little embarrassed about it after he calmed down but Nanamin made him feel better about that, too. He’d like to hug him sometimes, but that would definitely be pushing it, and if Kugisaki ever found out about this, she’d never let him live it down. She’s suspicious enough as it is. At first, she was just giving him general shit for being alive and keeping it a secret, which, fair. Then, when she moved on from the fact that Yuuji came back from the dead, she narrowed in on him coming back from the dead with a new dad, seriously Itadori, what’s the matter with you and refused to hear him out when he tried to explain that it wasn’t like that and that Nanamin had just lended him his umbrella because Yuuji forgot his own. It was also only one time.
Point is, Nanamin is always calm, collected and rational. There’s absolutely nothing in this world that could ever truly shake him.
So really, Yuuji just has to wonder what the hell Sensei could have said on the phone that made Nanami dash out of his apartment without even putting on his shoes.