The sun bears down like a committee of vultures. Cicadas chirp unceasingly, and a light breeze carries the smell of fresh-trimmed grass.
There they are a decade removed from the men and woman they will become. The white-haired boy lives in a future he hopes can include them. The brown-haired girl is content with her lot. The raven-haired boy is drowning in his own shadow.
How were they to know what the years would bring?
***
"Satoru...Shoko"
"Yo," they both responded.
Seals lined the walls, an in lieu of the summer smells, the scent of ink from on the still drying talismans filled the air. The room had housed tens, if not hundreds of curse users and in its decades of use, not once had any of them broken out. Shoko was carrying a lantern that was cursed in such a way that meant it could be extinguished, but its flame wouldn't spread.
Suguru sat—because he could only sit—with his hands handcuffed together, and a heavy chain on his ankles. An entirely unnecessary precaution, given that the seals on his body, and the barrier around the room were already restricting his movement. It wasn't like cuffs or mundane chains could even hold a sorcerer who knew even the basics of reinforcement, let alone a Special Grade. Satoru just knew this was some fossil on the oversight division having a power trip. After all handcuffs were restrictions meant for non-sorcerers.
"My family...are they?"
"Nah," Satoru waved away the question. "Slippery bunch."
"And Miguel?"
"This idiot handed him a job application." Shoko took a puff from her cigarette. Smoking wasn't really allowed in this building—paper seals and all that—but really? Who was going to stop her?
"Thanks, by the way!" Satoru smiled, nodding his head. "The acquisition of talent went smoothly. Now I don't have to worry about finding a teacher for Yuta!"
"Ha..." Suguru laughed, and he sounded like he meant it too. It was bitter-sweet to see that expression on his face again after so many years. "I always knew you'd make a shitty teacher."
"I'm an excellent teacher!" Satoru said, practically hand-grafting the smile onto Shoko's face. "My students love me!"
She was laughing now.
"Oh, does Miss 'fwoo, then hyoi,' have something to add?"
"It's Doctor Fwoo, then Hyoi to you."
"Guys—"
"Shut it. You're a terrorist." The pair chorused before Suguru could get a word in edgewise.
Really, the shenanigans the unemployed friends got up to... The humour in the room died a little.
"Didn't you lie about your qualifications before applying for your license?"
"Still passed the exam."
"I don't know, that sounds like malpractice, Dr. Hou—"
"Guys!"
The pair stopped.
"Have they set the date yet?"
An agonising silence descended on the room. It was like a convict waiting to be led to the electric chair, which was fitting because—
"For some reason they haven't settled on a day for your execution."
Satoru frowned. With how expeditious their order was to end the life of an innocent child...well, this was uncharacteristic sluggishness on the part of the higher-ups. And like almost everything they did, it rubbed him the wrong way, even if he secretly preferred that his former friend was still breathing.
Suguru sighed. "No, really, how'd you beat Miguel so fast," he said, bypassing the topic.
"Eh, I had a little help."
"You? Who could possibly—" they watched as a light went on behind Suguru's eyes. "Her," he chuckled. "It must have been her."
"Who?"
Unlike Shoko, Satoru didn't feel the need to ask. He had a knack for knowing whether Suguru was going to explain himself or not. The strongest sorcerer simply filed that information for later; he'd already resolved to meet 'her' soon anyway.
"I guess I owe her one. Maybe I'll kill that father of hers? As a treat."
And there it was, as rude as a grenade through a bathroom window. Their reminder that this man, this curse, was no longer the boy they shared the sun with.
"Gee. With a hard R, too..." Satoru began. "Is really no way to get you to stop?"
"Go back in time, but don't block Okkotsu's attack."
"And if we could." Dealing with hypotheticals was so unlike Shoko, that's why their attention snapped on her so completely. "If we could go back to 'then.' To that village—"
"I'd do it again," he said. "Every last 'contemptible' act."
"Ugh," Shoko sighed. "How immature. Even this white-haired moron—"
"Hey!"
"Was able to grow up, even if he did become a mediocre instructor. I won't be visiting again, Sugu—Geto," she amended. Her lip pulled to the side, and she might have broken inside a little, if there were anything left to break. "Satoru, get someone to bring me a coffee," she muttered, casting a glance at the curse user from over her shoulder. "I've got some adulting to do."
Shoko handed the lantern to her friend, then left the room to return to her duties. To return to the lot in life, that she had long ago learnt to be content with.
The sliding door clicked shut behind her but opened not even five seconds later. It wasn't Shoko.
"Gojo-sama. Tengen-sama would like to speak with you."
Satoru followed the messenger, as he alone heeded the call of Tengen.
He took the lantern with him, leaving behind the raven-haired man to once again drown in his own shadow.
***
"The world almost ended, Satoru-kun."
At the Tombs of the Star, Gojo Satoru was currently communicating with the main pillar of Jujutsu society through a barrier. While Tengen was out of the range of conventional eyesight, Satoru could practically see the anxiety rolling off in the waves of their cursed energy.
"Naaah—"
"If you finish that sentence, so help me son of Gojo, I will get Masamichi to ban desserts from the Tokyo campus."
"Kill joy."
"Indeed. I would not have called you here were 'joy' an abundant resource."
"You freaking out 'cause Suguru's so close by?"
"Suguru? Oh, hell. I completely forgot about him."
"Huh," said Satoru, his head tilted to the side, as the playful facade fell away. "What did you mean then?
"My barriers. I intentionally keep certain aspects about them vague. The less that are known about them, the harder they are to exploit by bad actors, or malignant parties—"
"Bruh, just say curse users."
Tengen sighed. "Yes. I was hoping that awful name would not 'catch on.' Anyway, as you know, my barriers serve as a sort of drainage basin for cursed energy. That is one of the reasons most of the world's sorcerers are born here. I saw the writing on the wall. A developing world—with its increasingly complicated fears— would only see to the rise of increasingly complicated and powerful curses. So, I concentrated them here and used my barriers to restrict the ones that did manifest to the highest extent that balance allowed for. But this has also given rise to the birth of increasingly complicated, and powerful cursed techniques, ergo sorcerers."
Satoru nodded. This was common knowledge.
"Satoru. When I say the world almost ended— I cannot stress enough how little of that is hyperbole. Something is happening. Something even I haven't had the chance to live through. Something in Sendai."
"Does this have anything to do with what's his face?" Gojo Satoru was grinning. "I should have taken some pictures, damn. You know? To celebrate the accomplishment."
"Zenin Naoya? The extent of his injuries tells us that this isn't a matter that can be handled by a Grade One alone. I'm sorry, I know you've had a trying time as of late, but this is a matter of the utmost importance. Please investigate that city."
Satoru frowned for a moment, before it collapsed into an easy-going smile.
"Whatever it is, I'm sure we—" he looked at the thumb-shaped signature of cursed energy and course corrected. "I can handle it."
"I really hope that you can, Satoru."
***
December 8th: ▒▕▟▕▒▇█▍▀ Hatsuko
It didn't remember when it became, just that it was. That its purpose was to devour.
The thing that had no body had a mind. The thing that had no form had a soul. And so it floated above the lights, above the ripples in the airspace that it would have interpreted as voices, and car horns and the hustle and bustle of a metropolis, if only it had ears to hear. And with the voices came emotion. And with emotion came the substance. That rich, thick despondence; that unknowable feeling of salary men, and women wondering what the point was, and when in their lives they had started forgetting how to dream.
It was a Michelin-star-worthy concoction of power, and the thing with a mind, but no body glut itself upon that. Details became clearer, but it was still too weak.
Friday, December 15th
Its purpose; its drive, became a name; became a cursed technique. One that she had squandered in life. She? The new identity slipped on like a glove as she tried to remember what such a thing felt like. She, she decided, as what little of her composite structure fuelled the creation of a grain; of a metallic speck, mere nanometres in size. It would be the starting crystal. Her regenesis. Synthesise Grid— proof positive of what she was capable of. Proof positive of who she had been. This identity, too, she wore with the familiarity and comfort of a foetus suspended in amniotic fluid.
Sunday, December 24th
Consider the ship of Theseus, and for the sake of time, disregard time from the argument. If all of you, all the matter that constituted a person in life was suddenly replaced, would you still be you if the new body housed your old thoughts? Would you still be you if those old thoughts carried nothing of the warmth you held when you were flesh and blood? If all that was left was rage; if all that was left was nothing?
A torrent of cursed energy had rolled out in a concentric pattern from somewhere south-west of Sendai. Like a collapsing pillar of matter ejecting from a volcano—a pyroclastic flow—and from the detritus of extinguished curses, she built her body.
Days, now. In mere days, the ship would set sail on its next voyage upon the turbulent waters.
Two weeks later
Her feet touched the ground for the first time in years, and that is when she wondered. When she had been other to what she was now, she had learned a lot about the process for what she was becoming. Even though she had tried to stay uninvolved. To keep them safe— there wasn't supposed to be a latency. There wasn't supposed to be this much of a latency. The consequence of her death should have been immediate, so why now?
It didn't matter either way.
The air chilled as she walked, dropping to temperatures a winter in a subtropical climate could not explain away. Around her, glass was cracking; tyres deflated. Around her, vapour in the air became ice. If she still had the ability to care, she would have been grateful for the early hour; that there weren't many drivers on the road. Instead, she walked, spreading the wanton violence of her indifference.
A jogger bumped into her and shattered to the floor. Colder than death. ▒▕▟▕▒▇█▍▀ Hatsuko carried on.
Instinct led her to the supermarket. Call it habitual servitude. After a long day at work, after she was spent, exhausted, she still had to be the one. Still had to buy aubergines, and mushrooms, and noodles, and toilet paper, loading the shopping trolley, carrying the bags and lugging her beaten body home. Even when she'd been pregnant.
Hatsuko walked on, as the building trembled before collapsing on itself. A miasma of metallic granules followed her as she went. Hatsuko didn't feel satisfaction, not quite like it felt when there was still air in her lungs. But something deep inside of her sang, and it drove her now-metal throat to join its song.
Really let my anger show.
It's just like taking candy from a baby,
And I think, I must be—
Oh. She stopped walking; stopped singing. Because now she knew where to go. A fleeting memory of a girl. A fleeting memory of a man, and the knowledge she needed to find them both...
Under Attack!
Sang the curse that was once Suzushina Hatsuko.