Chapter Text
cascade reaction ; a phenomenon which can occur in a star due to an imbalance in fusion reactants in its core, a sequence of reactions where one step produces the catalyst or reactant for the next.
The day Yuki Tsukumo shows up at Jujutsu High, Satoru Gojo wakes up in a cold sweat.
Within the pitch black darkness of his room, there exists something —an atmosphere, an energy— that oppresses his chest and makes him jolt awake in a desperate attempt to catch his breath. An ominousness descends into the space around him, undistinguishable from the dark fog that seems to extend forever. He lies awake in bed, bathed in a thin layer of sweat that seems to decrease as his chest starts rising and falling in a less-erratic pattern.
A nightmare, he thinks. The uneasy feeling that something is fundamentally wrong, the momentum before something out of his control happens. If only he wasn’t already so use to the constant feeling of disquiet dragging down his shoulders, perhaps he would have found it odd. Regardless, he reaches for the can of sleeping pills on his bedside table, illuminated by the faint neon light from the alarm clock that says it’s five thirty in the morning. He doesn’t open the can of pills, and instead sits up in bed, trying to soothe the goosebumps on his skin.
He closes his eyes, relaxes his shoulders, inhales and exhales.
It doesn’t hurt.
A sky full of stars greets him when he opens the blinds, it’s still early in the morning and his throat is horribly dry. The radio show playing on his store-bought clock is talking about the awful political management of the city of Tokyo.
“You can barely get past Chifu, you know. At this point, the capital is unusable. Nagano is already a hazard, one foot in and you get killed by Heaven-knows-what, or disappear without leaving no trace… Tell me about those lousy sorcerers! You won’t even see them come close, why do they get to slack off while we die? What is the point of them being still around…?!”
Satoru repeats the ritual: breath in, breath out. The dark corners of his room greet him, unfamiliar and meaningless, a void that seems to drag on forever even within the walls that still reek of fresh paint. Something vast and uncontainable, easy to lose oneself in as he sits on the windowsill, legs dangling off the edge.
There is something wrong. It’s not something he can find within the oppressive solace of his bedroom, but rather something bigger. Something that goes beyond the quiet loneliness that precedes a new dawn. There is something fundamentally wrong with him.
He spares a glance at the sky, at the stars whose light seems too bright and out of reach. Beneath his feet, the lights of the city have become duller, dimmer.
He closes his eyes, relaxes his shoulders, inhales and exhales. Then, he lets himself fall off the ledge.
Days at Jujutsu High have mutated into a semblance of what once used to be normalcy. He half-expected it to happen, even after Tokyo became a wasteland, sorcerers have always been creatures who need to adapt, they evolve with the current — the newest generations even more so. He never had any doubts his students would carry on with their childhoods despite taking on more, and harder, missions. He never doubted for Shoko and the others to adapt to the new circumstances in the blink of an eye, after holding the fort during the Culling Games.
And so, he woke up from what was certain to be death already falling behind on schedule. He didn’t have the time to acknowledge the stitches on his forehead or the scars around his belly, because that had long since been over, and they needed to move. “Oh, Ieiri-san got you up and running,” others would say. Then, “Let’s think of what our next move is gonna be.” And the issue had already been fixed.
So when Jujutsu High in Tokyo was not a viable option, they settled as far away as possible. They mobilized everything and everyone they could into a new base in Yamaguchi, on the other side of the country so as to hopefully keep a low profile, and to be as close from the salvaged Kyoto school as they were before, or similar. They had shit to do, and he knew that. The main reason only the area around Tokyo is a wasteland is because the civilians moved away, too, and they are rather busy protecting those already. So long as the worst of it all centered around the capital, non-sorcerers could still be saved, and so their work could carry on until they could finally bring themselves together to clean up Tokyo.
They had dealt with enough loss already, anyway. Time was a necessity, as well as something he seems to lack.
He goes to school, he teaches, he kills curses, he goes home to watch a boring movie before downing a handful of sleeping pills and then calls it a day. Rinse and repeat. The world is fast and he is not as fast as he once used to be — he’s not in sync anymore, just a constant step behind, limping in a way he doesn’t know how to fix, knowing he’s doing nothing but falling behind.
And yet, like each morning, he goes to school, buys an overly sweet latte and an americano from the vending machine and goes to nag Shoko in her office. She’s back to experimenting like she used to do back in high school, writing seals in a white cloth when he opens the door to her eyeing him disinterestedly.
“I bought you coffee— oh, you’re researching! That doctor title precedes you,” he chimes, placing her paper cup by her desk. She takes it and looks at him cautiously, almost like she expects for it to be a prank.
Because he’d rather not whine about that already, he turns his attention to the guinea pig sitting in a cage near the (thankfully) empty gurneys. The animal stares at him, wiggles its pink nose like it’s smelling all of the blood on his hands, suspicious and mildly disapproving. He pouts at it, and the little thing kindly gives him a view of its fluffy beige-colored ass.
“Your pet thinks I reek or something, Shoko. I just showered so you must have fucked up something with it.”
“Maybe your cursed energy is disturbing him,” she shrugs, taking an economic sip of her coffee. Her nails are softly thumping against the wood of her desk, a nervous habit she develops every time she tries to quit smoking. “Neither of us are ready for you so early on, I’m afraid.”
“That hurts! You only want me because I give you coffee.”
“It does make wonders for my workload right now, I suppose,” she exhales, softly, without looking at him. She’s busy. He knows she’s busy. He doesn’t know why he comes to her even when he knows that. “Aren’t you on clean up duty today?”
“I am, just… later. I wanted to see how the kids were doing, you know. It’s distracting to try and teach in these circumstances and all, so I have to step up my game!” He comments, offhandedly, punching the air. “They already gained so much experience and all, ah. They’re doing so well, I need to figure out who to remain their teacher at this point. Isn’t that cool?”
Shoko hums, a hand coming up to cradle her auburn her behind her ear. She sighs at the piles of autopsies in her desk, all of them needing reviews, signatures, approval. He purses his lips in a thin line.
“I was going to have my coffee outside, if you wanted to come. It’s almost spring and this new yard looks way better than the one we had in Tokyo.”
“We also had less resources to allocate,” she says. “It makes up for more space.”
Right. No use going back. They all took what was essential: precious mementos, enough clothes for winter and summer, toiletries and all the cursed tools they could fit into the cars before they had sealed up Tokyo and left the curses waiting for them inside, a black hole of cursed energy waiting for them to burst it out of existence. He thinks of his new, very empty apartment. He should have tried to look for something with more light, less dark. The promise of an eleventh floor seemed enticing because it allowed for less city noise.
“Sure, if you want to be bleak about it,” he scoffs. The guinea pig looks at him quite stupidly, blinking it’s tiny eyes at him like it, too, thinks Satoru is being stupid. It comes with being adamant, he can’t help it. “Can I take the guinea pig, then?”
“What do you want it for?”
“To keep him company before some of your experiments eventually kills him, witch.”
Shoko sighs, loud and exasperated, a tacit implication for him to leave. She looks at him with a deadpan expression, and her eyes look like swirling shots of espresso, blunt and packing a punch, when she looks at him.
“Fine, then. I’ll just go on my own then,” he says. “Your loss, by the way. I’m lovely to be around.”
“Are you okay?” Shoko blurts out suddenly, cutting him off halfway through the next sentence. She looks just like him, caught off guard even if it’s by her own words.
Very intelligently, he says: “Huh?”
“You just look like shit and the guinea pig has noticed, too. So, what gives?”
Satoru blinks at her, guinea pig-style, considering her words until they make some semblance of sense. He looks fine, alright, even if he slept like shit and his morning was awful. He still showered, he dressed up in clean clothes, and came to work looking as handsome as ever despite the scars on his face. He looks down at his foot, tapping against the linoleum floor without his consent. There it is, that void, that something that makes his chest sink into itself.
There is something wrong with me, he thinks. He considers asking her for a check up but she’s so busy, and he did not come to her office to give her any more work, so he saves that for later.
“Yeah, no. I’m good, I’m great. How do I even look bad? I own mirrors, you know.”
Shoko hums, back to her usual disinterest. She swirls the cup of coffee in her hands before taking a sip.
“Okay, then. I have work to get back to and so do you, so let’s continue this conversation another time,” she says.
And because he can’t say no to her and he really feels a bit self-conscious now, he takes her up on her word and leaves, downing his coffee in one swift chug after exiting the medical ward. He’ll just check on the students for a while, he tells himself, make sure they’re ready for their mission before they leave.
He spots them in the classroom, already up and ready, packing light bags meant for a small trip to the countryside, about to exorcise a few grade one curses. A nice way to pass the day, all things considered, and it makes him happy to see them already so pumped early in the morning. Yuji is listening to Nobara speak with a big grin on his face, and she sits on the table, feet dangling as she retells how her new eyepatch almost got her on the cover of a fancy magazine, because “sorcerer girls are cool and battle scars make her unique”. Megumi, who has heard the same story as many times as all of them have, simply nods silently, uninterested, but listening to her anyway.
“What’s up? Got scouted for a photoshoot again or something?” He says in lieu of a greeting.
“Don’t you know it’s creepy when adults just get in our conversations all of a sudden?” She huffs, glaring at him. “Now I’m pissed off.”
“Ouch.”
“I mean, that scared me too… a little…” Yuji sighs.
“Fine, you guys do not appreciate my grand entrance. At least humor me, you guys ready for today?”
“Clean up duty again,” Nobara shrugs. “So long as we find a good place to eat I’m good.”
“You could always stay for class, you know.”
“Is that supposed to be making us feel better?”
Megumi sighs. “It’s definitely not working.”
Satoru sighs. Perhaps it’s not good as an incentive, either. He really does have to relearn how to approach them after so many things have happened. Perhaps the moment Sukuna beat him he also erased his creativity on his to do things like these, how to not take it personal when it’s clear he needs to do better. They say near-death is supposed to bring forth a new version of yourself, but in his case it’s worse than the one it came before. It’s a blank canvas, and he has no clue what to paint on it.
“Will you at least bring your old sensei a souvenir?”
“No.”
“We’ll try! But, um—“
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I was just messing with you guys. Don’t make poor Ijichi wait up for too long, okay?”
After the first years leave for the countryside, a storm brews over what was previously a clear sky, ominous dark clouds raging with thunder. The transition between winter and spring is always rainy down south, and he doesn’t have it in him to be surprised as he sits in his office, tracing the scars on his forehead with his thumb out of sheer force of habit. He texts Megumi to grab an umbrella, and he leaves him on read.
There is something wrong with everything today, the world is all backwards, or perhaps it’s just him. But that there is something fundamentally wrong, that he knows. He can feel it. Something vast, bigger than himself.
He looks down at his hands, follows the lines traced on his palm with his eyes, flexes his fingers into a fist. He can’t sit idle. There is something oppressive all around him, something that brings forth a feeling that can only be described as uneasiness, something that pushes him to stand up and pace restlessly around the room in search for something he doesn’t know, something not even his eyes can see.
Deciding it might just be about existing in an enclosed space, Satoru looks at his reflection on the window, marred by the raindrops that begin to crash on the glass with reckless abandon, a man throwing himself off an eleventh floor in Yamaguchi. He stares at the way the merciless wind befalls upon the flowers and commands them to hold on if they want to live, but they can’t, they are too weak —or maybe too willing— and their petals are blown away one by one.
Petals that he follows with his gaze before they get tangled in long, silky blond hair that flows with the awful wind. A woman in a leather jacket enters through the main gate of the school, a sorcerer, if the barriers let her through. The raindrops on the glass blur her face, but they don’t prevent her long, confident strides to allow her to march towards the school.
Satoru knows who she is. Satoru also heard she died. The thought makes his head spin — he feels like Shoko’s confused guinea pig.
Regardless, he still rushes through the door and down the hallway, meeting her at the lobby. She’s huffing and sulking, trying to pat her hair dry with hands clad in fingerless leather gloves. She straightens up when she pinpoints him, standing awkwardly amongst the old wooden walls, not even caring for the way the rain seems to slide through the material.
Satoru frowns, disoriented at the presence of what he had believed to be nothing more than a ghost, a woman he knew of but had never personally met before her untimely passing. Yuki Tsukumo stands before him, lips curling up in a smug smile before she asks:
“So, what kind of woman is your type?”
The day she meets Satoru Gojo, Yuki Tsukumo arrives to Jujutsu High after an odyssey and ready to take on another, if only to get something out of the way.
It has been a tough few months, she will admit. At some point, she had woken up in the Tombs of the Star Corridor —or rather, what remained of them after her black hole against Kenjaku was done destroying the place— and knew something was deeply and fundamentally wrong. She knew, perhaps out of instinct rather than knowledge, that Tengen no longer existed, at least not in the way that decrepit thing used to exist. It was more like an energy, an entity that seemed to surround the walls of the place like they, too, had been granted immortality.
Yuki, however, was not such a case. She figured, at first, when she opened her eyes to her torso somehow in one piece, she knew that nothing at all had gone according to plan, for surviving such things were not something she, despite her strength and healing abilities, should be able to do.
So, she does what she has always done. She leaves Tokyo before she encounters too many curses with her still weak body after coming back from what she had assumed to be death, and researched her way from Niigata until she reaches Kyoto, where she stays for a grand total of two days (one more than she had originally planned) just to visit the boy she one day had pushed into the school herself.
He’s grown up a lot, she thinks upon arriving after months of travels and recording evidence. Todo still looks as rugged as he did when he was a child, and when he sees her, standing by the old wooden door of the school, he cries.
Which is unfortunate, because the only thing that comes out of her mouth then is: “Woah, you have an instrument for a hand.”
“I adapted.”
“I see that, that’s so cool. Your creativity has always drawn the difference between victory and defeat.” A pause, she examines the thing, frowning in just a little bit of apprehension.”So, how do you manage with that?”
“It has elevated my technique a lot,” he says, proudly. “Though ordinary matters have become…”
“Uncomfortable?”
“That’s right.”
Still, she opens her arms to him and Todo, who she did not remember ever being taller than her, falls easily within her and says: “My brother, Itadori, told me you had died.”
“For all it’s worth, I thought the same thing!” Yuki sighs, unsure. “Something has— something will happen. But it’s not something sorcerers, in the generic sense of the word, have any control over.”
At that, he releases her and takes a cautious step back in what seems to be a state of being distraught. She frowns, although she understands it’s a lot to take in out of the blue. She knows that he knows, for she had told him once, what he higher calling had been supposed to be.
“So you…”
“I came back to see you, I wanted to make sure you were healing okay. Of course, I expected you to thrive despite it all, and you did not disappoint.” Then, “God, look at how big you are! Last time I saw you,” she places her hand at her shoulder length, “you were like this! And now you are a fine sorcerer, oh, how time flies.”
Todo brings up his… vibraslap to his chin, lost in thought. It takes him a second to figure it out, smart cookie he has always been. She’s happy his talents have brought him far, that her teachings might have had a say in it all. He seems fulfilled, the energy around him is far from dim, even when now the corners of his mouth are pulled down in a frown.
“So, you are heading towards Yamaguchi,” he says, very slowly.
“You know the deal, unfortunately some requirements have to be met,” she says, slumping onto a nearby chair dramatically. She’s worn. Japan is not a land you can easily travel around— it used to be, before Shibuja happened and Kenjaku started his master plan. Now it’s just a land full of mines, almost impossible to walk through, especially near Tokyo. People are scared and mistrusting, and there are… problems, precisely where she least needs them.
Todo says, solemnly, “I see.” A pause. “So, you came to bid your goodbyes?”
At that, Yuki laughs. It’s slightly awkward, even when she doesn’t mean for it to be. Her next laugh is barked out of spite, more confidently, more tenaciously. She takes the implication between her teeth and chews it up like she has always managed to do—
“What? No! I came to bid my hellos, actually. I’ll be back before you know I’m even gone again. Now that you mention it, though, I might even spend the night— oh, I’m beat! This whole mess is just so awful and tiring! I also brought you a souvenir from Niigata. They have a new, amazing, sky resort. It’s a shame tourists no longer come here, for obvious reasons…”
Of course, she intends on coming back to Kyoto even when she finally reaches Yamaguchi, for when all it’s said and done, if she manages to do things according to plan, she would like to make sure Todo is, as usual, doing okay at school.
But for now, that thought has to be put on pause. In her condition, many things must be put on pause. Way before she was a sorcerer, she had been destined to die for a greater good, and that meant setting everything she had ever wanted aside. She had not let it happen then, and she would not let it happen now, either. It is, stubbornly, not on her plans for her to abide by such archaic set of views.
Regardless, just in case her theory is not correct, she needs to kill two birds with one stone. Check in with Todo, and get what she needs in Yamaguchi before they head to Tokyo. And, well, find a way to get there, but that’s a secondary plan.
When she arrives, the wooden walls of the base the Tokyo sorcerers settled on almost mimics the old structure of the school she knew so well. She has thought about it, about the school, about the Tombs of the Star Corridor, about Choso.
She has thought of him everyday, actually, of how kind he was to her, of how he cried watching Itadori leave, of how he stood up to Kenjaku’s level with all he had. His humanity shone in the strangest of ways, despite his cursed origin, in ways she fears only she is able to remember from the ephemeral time they both shared.
She learned she died through a screen recording of what had been, apparently, a live stream of the raid to dissipate the curse that had been Ryomen Sukuna in Shinjuku, back in December. It had proved as fundamental to her research as also painful to witness. After all, she could not bring herself to feel nothing but anger at the way the wheel of fate seems to spin when it comes to Tengen, yet seeing a friend, someone important to her, be reduced to ashes before her very eyes is something that will burn inside her eyelids for longer than they even spent together.
As she stays the night in Kyoto, Todo’s teacher, Utahime, shows her to a room she can use. Because sorcerers have always been rare, the schools always had too many spare rooms for combatants to use, and even then, most ended up empty anyway. Things have not changed, not one bit. The linen sheets smell of dust and disuse, the hinges of the door to the adjacent bathroom creak when she opens it.
She thinks of Choso, of his death. Sometimes it’s just like that: someone precious to you passes, and you are stuck simply thinking of how much you wanted them to live.
At least, until the very end, he lived on as human. He made sure Itadori was not lonely. That showed his heart more than whatever he did as a curse — he, at the very least, died a human.
And so, if only to honor his sacrifice, she also has a duty to save people that were important to him. She has something to do that is in her power to be changed, and the only thing she needs is a willing participant that must share the burden with her.
Still, as the voices of previous eras convey in her head, Yuki can’t help but feel uneasy. She, too, wishes to die a human. She, too, wishes to live more than anything else. Sometimes it’s like that, too, being stuck thinking of how much you want something for yourself.
Night comes, and she sits in the bath, letting the hot water cascade over her in waves, feeling the pattern of water coursing down her back. She curls up into herself, feeling the contact with her own bare skin, something so painfully human she has always been in disbelief that they had the guts to tell her she was made into a star.
She breathes in the fog and humidity in the old bathroom, the smell of musk and some cleaning supplies. It burns through her nose.
If it all goes wrong, she thinks, grimly, I’m definitely going to miss this.
“So, what kind of woman is your type?”
Before her, Satoru Gojo stands, almost bewildered, in the middle of the lobby to the school. It’s starting to pour outside and he is not moving an inch, which makes her feel only slightly self-aware. Not that she had ever met the guy, but she didn’t expect him to be as confused by this as anyone else would be. After all, a man like him should have guts to handle the blow she’s about to deliver.
“Let me ask you again—“
“Wait,” he says, shaking his head. “I heard you the first time.”
“I was worried you didn’t. You’re just standing there like you’ve seen a ghost,” she huffs.
“Am I not seeing one?” he says.
She doesn’t take offence. She did die, Itadori and the others should have known, they probably mentioned her death at some point. If she’s lucky, and she thinks she might be for once, her research on the soul will be stored here, in Yamaguchi, and that will be a step in the right direction.
“I could say the same thing, you know. Pretty sure I have a video of your guts on the floor.”
His shoulders deflate. “Touché,” he says, and she pretends not to hear when he mumbles; “That’s so embarrassing…”
Yuki hums, taking him in. When the previous merger happened, he was practically a child still. That infuriates her a little. The previous Six Eyes users, including the one designated for her merger that never occurred, were adults already. Old men from the Gojo clan, rich and entitled before the little girl they guided towards the Tomb, an executioner who would just accompany the girl and watch their hands after.
But this guy before her, though an adult now, had been a child just like the Star Plasma Vessel had been at the time. She had tried to contact him after that, she even dropped by the school only to always miss him. The only encounter they had shared had been through her telling the late Suguru Geto to send him her regards. She wonders if he actually did, or was way too up in his own head to ever do so.
“You’re taller than I remember you being. I feel old. You were supposed to be my small kouhai.”
“Technically, that’s still true,” he shrugs, looking at her up and down, wondering so many things about her she almost is able to hear them.
“But it’s not the same. You’re bigger than me, what happened to respecting your elders?”
“Sure, if you want me to say sorry for having a growing spurt in my teens…”
In the end, the particularity of both Star Plasma Vessels and Six Eyes is that, at their very core, both of them end up being just a bunch of confused children even after growing up. Fate is awful for such a thing, she believes.
Yuki follows his gaze. She has never seen the Six Eyes uncovered before, and she expected them to be way more unsettling, even when she’s aware the Six Eyes are more of an spiritual trait she’s bot able to see beyond his azure gaze. His eyes are not unkind when he looks at her, despite it all.
He was kind to me, another one says.
“So, I suppose you came here for your book,” he comments, leaning on the wall behind him, slightly more relaxed. She takes up the tacit offer to come closer. “The soul research, right? Yuji gave it to me.”
“Oh, phew! I figured you would have it, you know, that’s my magnum opus!” she exclaims, unable to contain the smile on her face. “I really need it, yes. I was afraid it had been lost somewhere in Tokyo. It’d be a pain in the ass to retrieve it.”
“Nah,” he waves at her, offhandedly. “It’s too valuable to lose. We obviously brought it here.”
“You say that as if you’ve read it,” she hums.
“It’s quite the bestseller on my shelf, just so you know,” he tells her, and he matches her smile. This is a good step in the right direction, she almost feels bad for delivering the blow. Alas, none of them make the choices here, so she supposes it doesn’t matter.
“Although, I did not come just for that.”
“If you want to meet with the students, they’re—“
“I came to talk to you, actually. There is something important that needs your attention.”
Satoru blinks. He looks behind him at the empty corridor, and then back at her, almost was if wanting to ask her if she’s talking to him at all. He reminds himself that Yuki Tsukumo is a special grade, has been one for longer than him. It makes him purse his lips in a straight line.
“Why do I feel like you are not the bearer of good news?”
“Because you’re right. I’m not, unfortunately. We have a very big problem, you and I.”
“Oh, please,” he exhales, dramatially. “What now? Let’s get this over with.”
Yuki sighs, meets his stare halfway. She straightens up her back despite the heaviness her words carry. Thunder roars outside, beyond the rain, and she makes it a point to be clear when she speaks:
“Sure. I would have liked to explain this to you fully with my research in hand, you see. But since you asked for it so nicely, dearest kouhai, I will be brief.” A pause. He stares at her expectantly. “You are a Six Eyes user.”
“Yes,” he hums. “Obviously.”
“Good, then. I’m a Star Plasma Vessel, and the merger is happening in a week.”
Satoru pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes tight, and groans like one would after getting up from the couch after a long nap. The motion makes Yuki laugh.
“I told you we had a problem. Shall we discuss?”