POV: Suzushina Yuriko, A Certain Apartment in the Miyagi Prefecture.
"Ready?"
She wasn't, but she nodded, so he knocked. Three innocuous taps on wood landed sharply. Yuriko hadn't even used the door since the last time she was here. She almost forgot what it sounded like. Hard as the tarmac outside her bedroom window. Hollow as the feeling of walking away from everything she had known with only what could fit inside a backpack.
This time she had a suitcase. And she wasn't alone.
"He's in right? I think he's in, I can hear the news." That was Yuji. If she hadn't eavesdropped on the nurse's conversation, she wouldn't have known he had just found out about his grandfather's passing. It felt overly indulgent to have him here, acting as an emotional crutch once again when he had his own thing going on, but then again, Satoru insisted on watching him just in case.
"You had a TV?" Yuriko nodded and that caused Yuji to frown a little. She couldn't fathom why it had. Suddenly, he seemed all the more eager to meet her father.
Nobara shrugged. "Didn't see him at the hospital."
Satoru, who had knocked in her stead, chortled a little.
"Why would he be...?" Yuriko began.
Then the creaking of ungreased hinges stole her words from her. Dark hair, darker eyes that hadn't seen her yet. The man towered, his shoulders filling the door frame, his shadow falling over everyone. Everyone but Satoru who stood level with him. One of Suzushina Mayuri's hands held a bag of frozen peas to a not-so inconspicuous bump on his head.
Yuriko turned to Nobara, who turned away whistling. She recognised the tune...an ABBA song? If she remembered correctly, it was from The Visitors album. In English, the title would be... "You Owe Me One." Oh.
"What the fuck do you want?" Mayuri smouldered. He met Satoru's easy smile, and blindfolded face with an expression that could boil over an ocean. Then he looked down, and her stomach flipped at just how much his demeanour softened. "Yuriko...?"
It happened fast. Not on the scale of one Ryoumen Sukuna, but on a scale that made her brain stall. For all her computational power, Yuriko was unable to process what she was looking at, even as he came closer. Satoru stepped aside, watching as his smile unravelled, his fingers making a gun. Nobara scoffed, halfway between throwing herself in the path of his arms, halfway unclipping the hammer from her belt. Yuji was... Yuji. Didn't know what to do with himself.
Mayuri stepped in, his arms spread wide. It was suffocating. They closed in around her and her mind ran a myriad calculations, processed yottabytes of information. His body language. The twitch of his muscles, his watering eyes. She dismissed the conclusion. Yuriko dismissed the conclusion a thousand times, and before the ̷h̷u̷g̷ attack could reach her, she reasserted her reflection.
Nobara was smiling ear to ear when Mayuri landed bump-first into the door he had opened.
***
"Authorities have begun to investigate the derailment of the 12:30 Shinkansen from Sendai to Tokyo, following—"
The tinny static of the late evening news abruptly cut off with the flourish of the remote.
Once again, the Suzushinas—party of two—lived in a sparsely decorated apartment in the Miyagi prefecture. The kitchen was the dining room; the dining room was the living room. It was like the architects had decided to cram as much 'life' as possible into as little space as the budget demanded.
Or maybe they were just aware that salarymen and women wouldn't have the time, funds, or energy to start a family and would be spending most of their days at work anyway. So naturally, it was an apartment that could scarcely handle the presence of its usual occupants. Yuriko, Mayuri and the lingering phantom of Suzushina Hatsuko's memory. With about two-point-five times as many people in it, 'crowded' felt like an understatement to describe the space.
After the debacle at the door, Mayuri had picked himself up, and with wary eyes invited the group inside. If only so the neighbours wouldn't talk. Within seconds Nobara had taken one of the three available seats, and out of a habit that lagged behind her cousin's audacity, Yuriko took another. Yuji and Satoru elected to remain standing.
Her seat wobbled beneath her negligible mass, so she tried to run a calculation to stabilise it, but then Yuriko was seeing stars.
Not since she had woken up last December had she ever felt so uniquely stiff when it came to her cursed energy. Then again, she had never flexed the muscle that was emotional regulation so thoroughly before—not as a sorcerer at least. She was tired. Dead tired, and it was only hitting her now just how empty she felt, just how vulnerable. Especially here.
From the day her fingers had first brushed against the well spring of her power, until now, this was the weakest she had been. At least against the curse in the park, and later against Mayuri she had had reinforcement. Now she sat again before him. No barrier, no reinforcement, just plain ol' one-push-up Yuriko. Weak.
Yet, there was a dichotomy in that.
She was in her current state, pathetic. When last she'd been 'home,' Yuriko was operating on the assumption that nobody could help anyone. In hindsight, it was dumb, but in her own way she'd already been trying to escape her home life by getting 'stronger,' just with textbooks and rote memorisation instead of sorcery. Tests were something you took alone; the future was something you paved alone. In her tiny dream to live somewhere suburban with her own personal library, she hadn't envisioned anyone else sharing that future. Nobody could help anyone else, after all. In her tiny dream, she was safe because she was 'strong,' and she was strong because she was alone.
But as she looked around, right now, with Satoru and his eyes that shifted under his blindfold—surveying a world only he could see—with Nobara eyeing the man who squirmed in his seat every time her fingers brushed her weapon(?) of choice, with Yuji standing by the table like a sentinel. She felt so safe, she could almost nod off in front of him.
"No."
Her lips thinned. Yuriko watched her father lay his fingers on the table. He was kneading the wood the same way he had been kneading his temples when the offer was delivered. No? But he hated her?
Gojo Satoru raised a brow, "Eh? You're not happy we'll be taking her off your hands?"
A tidy sum to be rid of the prodigal daughter, from her point of view, there was no reason he wouldn't take the deal. But upon hearing Satoru's response, an ugly look twisted Mayuri's visage.
"Listen 'ere, you sparkly twink, you 'this-is-the-skin-of-a-murderer' mother fucker." Mayuri growled. "That's my daughter. You can fuck all the way off if you think you can take her to some—to some cult."
"Oh? But you were perfectly fine with her living with a boy you didn't know for like, two seasons, how does that work?"
Yuriko looked at Satoru, then back at Mayuri. Yes, she would very much like to know how he allowed that.
"I knew where she was!" Mayuri glared at the other adult in the room, his expression once again cooling as he turned to her instead. "I knew where you were..." he spoke so softly, but the words landed like a stale wind because, of course he did. Her father was abrasive, often cruel, but he wasn't stupid. "It was that prick, Itadori."
"Hey!"
"Not you, whelp. Your old codger threatened to report me to a guidance centre if I tried to pick her up. We struck a deal." Mayuri snorted as he said the next part, "But I guess today's the end of that shit. Good riddance, I say."
"Hey," said Yuji once again. This time his voice was a low and gravelly warning.
Silence, but it was punctuated by the sound of Yuji's knuckles cracking. She could feel the anger announce itself in waves. More pronounced for his drastically enhanced reserves. That would take some getting used to. On her part, Yuriko just bit her lip; she'd long hinted to her friends what her father was like, but meeting him and hearing him talk was definitely... If she could use her technique, she'd have smacked him. She was seriously considering it, anyway.
Nobara gasped, "You're definitely the worst uncle I know of..."
And the second Nobara's sentence ended, Yuriko felt a weight. It was light, but its gravitas in her mind made her eyes widen. She whipped her head around as the presence split across Yuji's cheek. No!Not now! She was too tired, too weak, she couldn't respond, she couldn't—
"Hey, brat," said Ryoumen Sukun—oh. *Said the mouth that appeared on Yuji's cheek. The same damn smile—all teeth. He cackled. "Your father would have made a fine sarugaku."
Yuji slapped himself, and Sukuna's presence was once again subsumed. Yuji let out a meek chuckle, "Sorry... When I found out about Gramps, Sukuna was laughing the whole time. I don't think he can do more than that, though..."
"Who said that?! Is there another fucking freak—"
Nobara firmly tapped the table with her hammer, as well as Mayuri's concerns about invisible home invaders, because whatever he was about to say died a complete death in his larynx.
Yuriko—wow—didn't know what to say. That unwashed savage... She awkwardly lifted her hand toward Yuji, before setting it back on the table. Satoru was his own brand of insensitivity. Really, who encouraged someone by telling them they'd already done their best? That was a losing mentality; if she'd observed it, Yuriko would have lost her spot as the first ranked student in Sendai years ago. But her other teacher—and she did intend to squeeze the bastard for all he was worth—was entirely repugnant. No one found her father amusing.
"Satoru, you could have warned me that could—wait..." Yuriiko looked at the space with was now one occupant lighter. "Where'd he go?"
"Well, Suzushina-san," said Satoru, his voice cutting through the walls of the apartment. "If you're going to be like that."
Yuriko spun in her seat as Satoru re-entered the room. His fist, tightly clenched along with a dizzying degree of cursed energy concentrated in the palm of his right hand. With his left, he was wheeling in an office chair that he had likely produced from Mayuri's room. The man erupted from his seat, before a casual gesture from Satoru slapped him back down.
"Satoru, what're you...?"
"Don't worry. It isn't for him." Satoru spread his fingers, scattered a fine, probably-not-safe-to-breathe-in mist into the air. "I just crushed something I found in your room."
"Why are you like this...?" she sighed.
He ignored her, as his cursed eyes fell on her father—when, and why had he taken his blindfold off?
"Truthfully," Satoru said. "I don't needyour permission." The air grew thicker, and she heard Yuji swallow, unused as he was to now feeling the unsettling presence of cursed energy. Let alone from a source as potent as her teacher's. There was a gravity to his presence. A well of space where everything, and everyone simply fell in line and orbited his intentions.
"It was more or less a formality, to ask; the path of least resistance. I don't need to walk it." Then, as if to illustrate. with more audacity than a landlord would have—audacity that was only second to Kugisaki Nobara's—Satoru sat himself down on the office chair. "I'll make an exception in this case for my student. Yuriko wants to go, so she's coming with us. You'll take some remuneration as compensation for the trouble of signing away your parental rights. End of story."
There was the smell of ammonia; a glossy reflection appeared on her father's forehead, as the sweat began to pool. Mayuri was breathing erratically. His pupils swam in his eyeballs. He pulled his hands from off the table, letting them drop underneath. If Yuriko scaled back on his human characteristics, he would almost look to her like a foal that didn't see or smell the leopard behind, until its breath was already rolling down his neck.
But Mayuri held the gaze. Melanated epitheliums boring into pools of every shade of blue.
"N-no," he stammered. "Ma-maybe she can't stay with me. Bu-but she's n-not going to that school. She can't..."
Silence again. Satoru's presence vanished as easily as Sukuna's had. Easier. He almost looked impressed, but more than that, there was an intrigue that flickered in his eyes.
"Hm... I guess you would have developed a resistance to cursed energy over time. Thank my student for that."
"Your what?"
"Why don't you kids go help Yuriko pack up the rest of her things?"
"No! She'll stay right here!" Mayuri reached across the table to her, stopping short around the distance he had tried to ̷h̷u̷g̷ hit her from. "You'll stay right here, won't you bug?"
But there was nobody in the world who called her by that name anymore. And so, Suzushina Yuriko stood up, and left the room. The other two trailed behind her.
***
POV: Suzushina Mayuri
Red.
He unnerved him. The man sitting on the other end of a table. The man who had walked into his dwelling made Mayuri feel like he was the guest. Every roll of his shoulders set Mayuri on edge. Every breath, every measured breath, taken filled his stomach with a sense of dread so dense the bile couldn't escape.
Red.
It was like. The years. The fucking years of being around that thing. Of watching ̷i̷t̷ her watching him grow stagnant as her capabilities emerged. Of fridge magnets on crayon drawings too eerily perfect for clumsy toddler fingers. Of homework that she stopped needing his help with, and the taxes she started helping him with in return. Years of hearing a voice that soothed his heart to the same measure that it troubled it. Of excellence that couldn't have come from him. Of excellence that could have only come from her. When Mayuri looked into the eyes of Gojo Satoru, he didn't see the blues, he was only seeing—
Red.
The first time he held his daughter was the day she was born. He had arrived late because Hatsuko had suddenly gone into labour. April first, fifteen years and one day away. A prank that came to him swaddled in blankets as white as the hair that could not have come from him, either. It had been a Tuesday, a pat on the back from his co-workers; a firm handshake from his line manager, and he had been off. He could remember the steps that carried him toward her. In the moment, he thought it had just been the nerves. He liked to believe now, that on some subconscious level he knew even then. The midwife told him it had been a blessing. That it was such a rare and precious thing for a baby to open them so early. But as she sat there, cooing in his arms, Mayuri didn't see a blessing staring up at him. All he saw was—
"Y-you're judging me, aren't you?" Mayuri found his voice in a sudden lapse of anger and lucidity. "Think I'm a fucking failure, huh? I hurt my Riko-chan a little. So what? What parent doesn't? You really think that gives you the right to just wheel her away to some..."
"Stop."
Gojo raised two fingers, and a current of something washed over the room. There was a wrongness to the living space now. Like everything had shunted off in one direction, creating an entirely foreign environment. Whatever Gojo saw in Mayuri's expression prompted an explanation from the former.
"A curtain," he said. "Even as she is now, it'd be dumb to underestimate that nosy girl."
"Wh-what? Riko-chan?"
"Don't you 'chan' her. And your nickname sucks. It's cursed." The white hair man released a deep, long-suffering sigh. "I can see why she had to get so good at picking lies apart. You're so damn inconsistent." Gojo was now looking at him with such unguarded disgust. "Hey," he said. Short, and to the point. "Why're you still pretending like you don't know what Jujutsu High is?"
Mayuri blinked.
"Actually, that's not quite accurate. You had an idea of what Jujutsu High was, even before we showed up, didn't you?"
Mayuri stilled one shaking arm by wresting it with the other.
"That explains the rehearsed no, what it doesn't explain is the reaction itself."
The pressure was back, and now something was boiling. Something had to be boiling. Because why else did Mayuri hear the incessant whistle of a kettle? Why else did he feel the sweat cling to his clothes despite the rainy spell that had cooled the city not long ago?
"I-I—" he stuttered.
"And I," said Gojo Satoru. "Am not in the mood for any more bullshit, today. Was it your wife?"
Mayuri froze.
"I see." Gojo beamed. "Just so we're on the same page, how did she tell you?"
"Wh-what does that even mean?"
Gojo let out another sigh. This time it was a little more casual. "So, she hasn't manifested again." What? "Not yet anyway. Great...that's great! Though considering what happened last time, if she had—well, let's just say we wouldn't need to be having this tedious conversation. So how did Ko-senior tell you about our world?"
He considered holding his tongue, but then the man sitting across the table gave him a look that apprised Mayuri of his unwise decision. "A letter."
The silence bade for his elaboration.
"She left behind a letter—t-two, actually. I couldn't open the second shitty thing no matter what I tried. Scissors, shredding; even burned the fucker. Nothing took. The envelope just didn't give a damn. B-but, before she passed, Hatsuko told me something strange..."
Gojo's jaw tightened. "Go on."
"She said there were conditions. Not that I shouldn't open the letters if they weren't fulfilled, but that I couldn't."
"Sukuna was right. You would have made a decent sarugaku. Do you think you're performing a play or something? Just spit it out."
"I-I said she gave me two, right? Well, the thing is, I was able to open the first letter only a few months after Hatsuko died. She said the condition for that one was for Yuriko to encounter the brain. Whatever the fuck that meant."
"Do you still have the letter?"
Mayuri nodded.
"And the envelope?"
He shook his head, "The fuck? It's an envelope, I threw that shit away."
Gojo slapped his palm onto his own face. "Moron."
He couldn't retort.
"The other condition?"
"I-I think it was fulfilled—"
"Four months ago." It wasn't a question.
Mayuri nodded, "She said something weird for this one too. The condition was—"
"For Yuriko to regain control of her cursed energy. Or maybe she phrased it differently. To a non-sorcerer, she might have said 'if Yuriko displayed supernatural abilities,' am I correct?"
His breath hitched. This time Mayuri had to ask: "Okay. Fuck off, how did you know?!"
A glacial once over from Gojo, and Mayuri's anger cooled right back into fear.
There was a frosty comprehension that lingered in Gojo's expression as he laid out his last verdict: "You will give me both letters. You will not breathe a word of what we talked about to your daughter. You will give her your permission to attend Jujutsu High."
"But Hatsuko's last wish! In the letter. She didn't want—"
"Your wife's final wish is putting your very alive daughter in danger right now. So, I'm asking you—Suzushina Mayuri." The man stood. Mayuri already knew he was tall at the door. Very few people had ever met him at eye level, but now the blue-eyed man towered over him like the sky itself. "Are you going to prioritise the living, or the dead?"
***
POV: Suzushina Yuriko; Yuriko's bedroom.
"Ugh, he put up a barrier." Yuriko pushed herself off the wall and rubbed the circulation back into her ear.
"What did aunty tell you about eavesdropping?"
She rolled her eyes. "Let's not rewrite history, Kugisaki. You were the one who got chewed out for eavesdropping."
Nobara let the barb roll off her back, as she grabbed another fistful of Yuriko's unmentionables and shoved them into the suitcase. It wasn't as easy a task as it sounded. Nobara had to use a little cursed energy and some leverage to make it all fit inside. "Did you have to pack so many textbooks?"
"Jujutsu High still teaches the standard curriculum on top of everything else. I don't want to fall behind."
Nobara and Yuji traded a look.
"Nerd," they chorused.
Yuriko shrugged.
"Well at least you're giving the number two in Sendai a chance to shine. Is it someone you know?"
"Not really. Just some guy, I think," Yuriko replied after half a second. "Academics are a single player sport, for the most part. You can study together, but ultimately, when you're in the exam hall, whether you fail or pass, that's something you do alone. I never bothered to focus on whomever I was competing with."
"..."
Yuji was the first to break the silence, "Hey, are you takin' this?"
She was about to say no. He was holding her globe model. Yuriko had already moved everything she really cared about on her first excursion. Anything else she could take or leave; she was only really here for the convenience of not having to restock her wardrobe. But then she thought about it.
No.
That thought she had cast into the ether when her alarm clock exploded. That was the first time she had used her technique. Her first foray into sorcery. She didn't consider herself a sentimental person, but—maybe she had missed some alarm clock shrapnel when she'd tidied up?
The very first thing she'd ever 'Accelerated.'
Yuriko's eyes trailed to the drywall on the far side of the room just to find...
"Is that a fucking hole?"
I just crushed something I found in your room.
That prick.