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Megumi found that despite having only a handful of students at best, Jujutsu Tech was a place in which he could hardly ever find a quiet moment. Something was always happening, or someone was always trying to speak to him.
He was in the woods– a little past Tengen’s barrier, but if no one found out, it did not really matter. With his legs folded over each other comfortably, he had read four pages of his book before Maki appeared out of thin air and dragged him to the training grounds. He did not object, naturally. It never went well when someone blatantly rejected Maki’s offers to train.
And then, he was in his dorm room. A place that was his, and should have been the one place where he could be alone. But five minutes after he had laid on his bed to rest, short taps of Itadori’s fingers punched the wall that joined their two rooms. He found out a minute later– when Yuuji decided to walk into Megumi’s room uninvited– that he was practicing his morse code.
Although it had died down a bit since they were officially in busy season, Gojo was also an ever-present figure in his life, seeming to be some sort of apparition that spawned into whatever room Megumi was in, no matter how unwanted his presence was.
Every room was eventually entered by someone desiring his company, and though he knew he should be grateful for having so many people surrounding him who cared about him, but it was exhausting.
So he had two options at the end of the day– go to the morgue and hang out with Shoko in a gloomy silence while they ignored each other’s presence, or slip into the decades-old library tucked away in the back of the school that no one ever thought to enter. They were all too busy training to study anyway. Megumi doubted that most of his classmates knew it existed, and Gojo had a weird avoidance of his own.
It was honestly sort of ideal. Megumi had access to extensive novels, mostly about Jujutsu and its history– which was not exactly his first choice, but he made it work. And the library was so far deep into the school’s least explored grounds that nothing made a peep through the surrounding walls except the short sounds of birds chirping through the windows. It was sunny, mostly lit naturally, and covered in anecdotes of the past. Papers tucked in books, journals left on shelves, annotations in margins. He enjoyed it a lot.
The day started like this– Gojo came back from a mission with practically four kilos worth of candy, and handed him a small bag of candied ginger plus a can of sparkling water (cherry) with one of his usual and apparently ‘charming’ smiles. It was kind, and personalized. Megumi had meant it when he thanked the man for the gifts, and then proceeded to redact any softness he had for Gojo in the moment once he opened his mouth to start obnoxiously blabbing and teasing.
It had been easy, really, to escape the scene. Gojo still had most of his gifts with him, and was planning on leaving to make his rounds and hand them all out anyway. All the students were scattered, and Gojo had bought every one of them gifts other than Maki, who had explicitly declined the gesture before the man had even left for Yokohama. In the end, they had both agreed that the conversation was over, and went their separate ways without any extra complaining from Gojo’s part.
And he did think about training instead of sneaking off. Inumaki was sparring with Nobara on the field, and there was always room for a third when it came to combat exercises. But something in his mind felt numb and slack at the idea of putting in tons of effort to do something– it happened sometimes; mind exhaustion ran rampant at Jujutsu Tech, and he was often victim to it. Usually, he ignored it, but it was not one of those days.
So he left the sights of his peers, and avoided the routes along the halls that lead to distant voices in upcoming rooms. It was not difficult, but he did at one point only narrowly escape the wandering gaze of Itadori– maybe the only person that Megumi would not brush off immediately if their eyes had happened to meet.
He slipped through a couple more halls, and shut himself behind a door forgotten by most. It was five minutes until noon, and Saturday. Nothing was needed of him, and nothing was to be done. Megumi let out a deep breath as he walked along rickety floorboards and sat snug in a soft corner chair. Something heavy tugged on the lids of his eyes, and something else made them dart around the room sluggishly in search of something to read.
There was a short stack of books hardly reaching the fabric lined portion of his chair, and he had read all of them. There was one: “Regrets of The World - How Cursed Spirits Manifest” that had been rather boring, and filled with general knowledge. Then a more interesting one: “An Extensive History on Shikigami, and Their Relations With Sorcerers.” He had read it back to back. A couple others sat fitting into the pile, and he did not bother to reminisce or reread them. Instead he followed his scanning eyes over to the nearest bookshelf— half filled with some sort of analytical series on techniques spanning twenty-six volumes, and half holding miscellaneous books and scrolls of all sorts.
He was not in the mood to read– he was but he was not. It seemed like a drag, as though his focus would certainly slip if he tried. But Instead of giving in to his sluggish mind, he opted to just find a novel on the shorter side to tie him over for a quiet hour or two. Then, he would return himself to his peers.
“The Reign of a Millenium: Ryomen Sukuna” Was tossed aside and forgotten; along with a book or two on cursed wombs, and one on Non-Shaman history in relation to Shaman. A lot of these things Gojo had taught him about before he was even old enough to attend Jujutsu Tech. He had seen plenty of things in his almost sixteen years of life– enough to be able to write a book about a good half of these topics himself.
With a flippant hand and bored expression, he reached the end of the dusty shelf, and his fingers landed on two thin, unmarked books. Pulling them out to get a better look, he noticed that they were composition notebooks, both having worn creases surrounding the edges of the covers and wrinkled pages.
It was not unusual for him to come across some old notebook or journal in there. If he was being honest, he usually found them duller than the books. Most of them belonged to students of the distant past that he had never met, and who were probably dead. All of them were filled with class notes and little time stamps– all material that he had in his own notebook that was sitting on his desk back in his dorm room.
But the cover of the first one read “Nanami Kento - 2006-7” And he felt an ounce of interest.
He had never been close with Nanami. On a few occasions during Megumi’s youth, Gojo was sent away to some far away place to act as a savior and the blond man would stop by at the beginning and end of the week to present Megumi and his sister with groceries and other additional help. He was never cold, just rather stoic. Megumi had not really cared that much upon hearing that the man had returned to Jujutsu society– he had never even realized Nanami was not a part of it when he was little. Still, he treated the man with trust and respect all the same. At least he was not as immature as Gojo was.
He flipped the book open to the first page, and then the second and the third. All of them were at least half way full with neat, handwritten notes that looked almost strict within their style.
On the right page of every turn, a handful of important takeaways from lessons and training sat old and forgotten. On the left, a catalog of sorts that was nothing but ordinary and so very Nanami.
03/2006 - Solo mission
Location: Warehouse
Grade: Semi grade two
Time: Twenty five minutes
Injuries or casualties: No
Successful: Yes
It was like that, over and over on every page with nothing distinguishing them from each other, not even the color of the pen used.
Megumi flipped through the pages with his thumb pressed to the side of the book, and the paper halted a little over halfway through, as though the page he had landed on had rested open for a lot longer than any of the others, and had become the notebook’s go-to section for opening.
The page was messy, and half abandoned. Megumi pressed out the cluttered wrinkles, and scanned the page, not failing to notice that the rest of the notebook was left untouched after it.
08/2007 - Haibara, Myself
Location: Local bridge (suicide site)
Grade:
Time:
Injuries or casualties:
Successful:
It was as if the owner of the book had vanished that very day. But Megumi had seen Nanami just a day or so ago. He was breathing and unsatisfied as always.
‘Haibara?’ Megumi did not know the name. He supposed, based on the timeline provided, that ‘Haibara’ was the kid that died when Gojo still went to school at Jujutsu Tech. It was a hushed, and tragic death. One that the higher-ups quickly silenced to avoid a stain on the Tokyo base’s reputation. He had heard the white haired man utter the name once, maybe twice while on a phone call with god knows who in the middle of the Fushigurou residence’s kitchen. Yeah– it had to be that.
He felt almost guilty, as though he was standing on site with Nanami and watching him cry over a dead body as a complete outsider. The book was shut without another thought– maybe it was best if he put them both back, and stopped snooping around in places where he did not belong.
But the other book, upon him looking at it, did not have “Nanami Kento” on the cover. Instead, in elegant, yet sloppy in its own way handwriting another name was printed:
‘Geto Suguru - 06/07’
Megumi had not seen the outcome of The Night Parade, but it was a well known event. He had asked Gojo about it when talk first started to arise from the issue– maybe in early January, but the man had stayed silent, with tight lips. It was so unlike his usual demeanor that Megumi instantly got the silent hint: Don’t talk about that.
Megumi came to a vague understanding within himself. This guy was at Jujutsu Tech with Gojo, they must have known each other. That was–obviously– the reason for Gojo’s unknown silence. He felt a twinge of guilt.
He tried to recount his words to himself about respecting the boundaries of the past, but one of the most prominent curse users of the modern Jujutsu age had a high school notebook, and it was sitting in Megumi’s hand, dusty and forgotten by the rest of the world.
It would not hurt anything for him to look inside and then immediately put it back; maybe he would just feel a little more shame afterwards.
He stuttered back and forth in his brain a little bit before the inevitable fuck it entered his system, and he flipped it open.
The first page was not written on, so he flipped to the second, and looked at the single line of characters:
‘I’m taking notes.’ It said, ‘writing down what Yaga is saying.’
Then there was a sideways doodle of a cat, sloppy and shaky in the left corner as if someone else had reached over to draw it on Geto’s paper. A couple of squiggles that were thrown about to look like neat words took up the next half of the page, no doubt a ploy to look busy.
The next page was similar– just doodles and squiggles, but this time holding small text on the left hand side that was sideways just as the cat had been.
‘You’d be a cat if you were an animal, I think.”
The neat-ish handwriting that had been on the front cover and second page followed, slanted a little to slightly match the other– much messier– handwriting. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah, one of the black ones with one or two tufts of white. And you’d sleep in the courtyard, on the stairs.’
‘Why the courtyard?’
‘It’s sunny.’
The conversation ended, and Megumi over the course of it had come to find the sideways and sloppy handwriting familiar, and easy to read despite its crookedness. As though he had seen it a hundred times, but he could not put his finger on it. After a moment, he scanned the next page.
It was different. There were a few genuine notes on the page, stopping halfway down before more scribbles of a sideways conversation appeared on the paper.
Debrief from mission The top read.
No casualties, minor injuries to a handful of civilians. Was located south of Setagaya in an area that is often the scene of illegal exchanges (drugs, weapons, ect.) We were dispatched at 21:07 and the issue was resolved by 22:00. While reports claimed the enemy was a grade two at best, I’d argue that it was bordering grade one. The curse was able to communicate without flaw, and could commit our battle strategies to memory, and deal with them accordingly if used again. We rendered it immobile with precise attacks, and I absorbed it at 21:54. There was no use of a curtain, or any other barrier. The–
‘Do you want taiyaki?’ Sloppy handwriting again.
‘We got it last night, remember?’
‘We can get it twice.’
‘What did you have for breakfast?’
‘Daifuku’
‘How are you still alive?’
‘I had an apple too’
‘Like that’s any better.’
‘It’s fruit!’
‘Fruit is just natural sugar.’
‘Whatever, I’ll just infinity my teeth so I don't get cavities.’
‘Good luck with that.’
Megumi’s eyes widened at the last bit of the conversation– and oh, something clicked in his head. His mind flashed to barely legible signatures on his field trip slips and shopping lists so sloppy that Megumi took over writing them when he was nine. This was Gojo’s handwriting. He was reading conversations between Gojo and Geto, and they were so familiar.
He remembered Gojo’s cold gaze on the day he brought up the Night Parade again, and it made so much more sense. A curse user had not died, a classmate hadn’t either. His friend had.
His stomach twisted ever so slightly, and he turned the page.
This time, Geto started the conversation.
‘I want to go to Kyoto.’
‘But Utahime is there.’
‘Not campus, just Kyoto.’
‘Why?’
‘Mei said it’s nice in the fall.’
‘Do you think Yaga would notice if we left?’
‘Definitely. Every sorcerer in Japan would notice Satoru Gojo vanishing.’
‘They can get over it. We’d only go for a little while.’
‘I was thinking the weekend.’
‘This one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m down.’
Megumi watched as the Gojo of the past invited himself along as though it was a given that he was welcome on the trip. As if there was no other option– like he and Geto just maneuvered together, existed together.
He could not imagine it. Not at all. Gojo was never one to treat people like that. Even if he did like to hang around with Megumi and the other students every chance he got, he was never clingy, never treated any of them as though they were solidified figures in his life. Everyone was placed in a fragile and overcrowded bubble ready to pop at any moment and shrivel into nothingness.
Maybe Geto is the reason– Megumi thought– that Gojo is always so ready for everything to go to shit. Maybe he was seeing it all play out and become understandable in a way no one else had outside of the two high schoolers who wrote all the little notes.
‘Do you think killing curses counts as animal cruelty?’ Gojo had scribbled on the next page for Megumi to read through burrowing guilt.
‘I wouldn’t say they’re animals. Why?’ Was the reply.
‘Yaga says that I can’t pirate Digimon anymore because it’s illegal, but we kill things, and beat people up. Don’t you think slugging some guy in the face is a bigger problem than my personal activities?’
‘Well usually the people we fight hit first, so it can be argued as self defense. It’s not an issue.’
‘I could flatten Japan, maybe.’
‘Might be an overreaction.’
‘You wouldn’t get it.’
‘Mass murder because your Digimon-ing outlet got taken away? I Think everyone would side with me on this one.’
‘I wouldn’t, Shoko wouldn’t either.’
‘Shoko just likes to add fuel to the fire.’
‘Still.’
There was an angry face drawn sideways at the bottom of the page by Gojo, and with the deep pen of black ink that Geto had been using, little sunglasses and messy hair was added to the doodle.
There was a series of pages after that carrying little to no conversation. Only without fail on every one of them, Gojo had made his presence known with a single repeated question.
‘Mochi after the mission?’
‘Sure.’
‘Mochi after the mission?’
‘I’m fine with that.’
‘Mochi after?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Mochi?’
‘Of course.’
It went on and on. Sometimes not replied to, and sometimes followed by a crooked heart after Geto’s approval.
Megumi watched a little longer as the conversations continued short and somehow intimate. He felt like he was spying– he was spying. Despite the fact that his physical expression remained unbothered as usual, he still felt so unlike himself. He of all people– unable to tear away from rummaging around in other people’s business. It was foreign and unwanted, but he folded another page to the side.
‘Suguru, let’s go to the movie theater.’
‘Why?’
‘To see a movie? Duh.’
‘What movie?’
‘We can decide once we get there.’
‘I don’t want to see some shitty horror movie.’
‘Well then we’ll just pick a good one.’
‘You’ll pick a good one. You never let me pick.’
‘You only like the movie-book adaptations.’
‘So?’
‘So you end up hating those too because they’re “too different from the book” or whatever.’
‘I liked the last one we saw.’
‘That’s a first.’
Megumi thought of Human Earthworm Five, and the crappy love story that was unevenly strewn into the plot. He sympathized with Geto, just a little.
Megumi only watched movies that stemmed from books. And he only really watched those to compare and contrast. It was how he had always done things, even as a child. But Gojo had never mentioned it. He had never spoken of Suguru Geto, who seemed so incredibly like Megumi in the way that he went about his entertainment. Gojo would sit next to Megumi on the couch every once in a while when he visited, and listen to the boy’s muttering throughout the film, pointing out all the missing components that had been present in the novel. He would look at Megumi’s dissatisfaction as the credits rolled, and never once mentioned that he had seen it all before.
‘You remind me of someone.’ He could have said. Or he could have been even more vague with a ‘you bookworms love to watch movies you know you’ll hate.’ A simple declaration based on observed statistics without any personality attached– but he did neither.
Instead without fail, he cut every mention of this prominent figure in his past out completely, leaving no room for accidental slip ups or any sort of reveal. He stayed tight lipped and unphased, not even an ounce of sadness crossing his face with distant memories.
Megumi wondered how often Geto was on his mind even after so many years had passed. He wondered how many times a day, or week, or month Gojo was silently reminded of his old classmate.
In the two months Yuuji had been pronounced dead, Megumi had thought about him at least once every ten minutes. Nothing much had changed by the time he was revealed to still be alive– the number had maybe changed just ever so slightly, maybe from ten to fifteen by that point. He thought about living like that for any longer, and his stomach twisted. It was a hell with no end– a weighing reality that no one could wean themselves off of grief, no matter how far time went on.
Gojo had been living in that hell for a decade, and it had only relapsed in intensity with the events of last year. The differences between the boy in the notes and his own Gojo stuck out like a sore thumb.
Megumi was looking at the fragments of someone who no longer existed in more ways than one. And the more he thought about it, the sicker he felt.
‘The plant needs a bigger pot.’ Geto’s handwriting graced the next page.
‘The plant?’
‘The one you got me for my birthday.’
‘Already?’
‘It's a fast grower.’
‘I’m surprised it’s still alive.’
‘Keeping a plant alive is easy.’
‘You’ve got some weird flower whisperer genes I guess.’
‘You only say that because you can hardly keep weeds alive.’
‘Nuh uh! Your mom gardens a lot right? It’s in your blood.’
‘Sure. What color pot should I get?’
‘I’ll get you one. It’ll be a surprise.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, but I don’t like red.’
‘I know that.’
And then there were the similarities– gift giving was Gojo’s love language, and from the looks of it, always had been.
Megumi felt the weight of the candied ginger bag in his pocket and knew it was given to him out of care. Despite Gojo’s developed weariness of getting close to anyone, he still showed consideration. None of them were disposable, and he knew things about everyone– small, almost hidden things, like how Megumi preferred mild sweetness and hard candy, and Inumaki loved nothing more than honey flavored snacks.
Silent and simple affections ended with deaths that brought no tears. Gojo had somehow manufactured his mind to move on from yet another bloody body without even processing what the rotting corpse entailed. He would stare off with a serious expression while a comrade sat lifeless in front of him, and come back the next day as though nothing had happened.
The next time he went out, he would buy one less gift, and come home with a pile of personalized items that was a little smaller than it used to be. Still he continued to care about those alive and near him, even if he knew they were going to all end up rotting bodies lying on Shoko’s table eventually.
Megumi had always assumed that Gojo had always been like that. Always been so used to death that he had learned to deal with it almost second naturedly. But he saw this high schooler on paper who bought his classmate plants, and flower pots in his favorite colors, who begged the boy to go to the movies and to bakeries, who treated this kid as a companion rather than a cog in the wheel, and he could not fathom that the cold Christmas Eve of last year had followed suit, and ended without tears.
‘When we do this whole Star Vessel thing in Okinawa, we should go to the beach.’
‘Satoru, this is a mission not a vacation.’
‘As if there’s any difference for us.’
‘I told you, it’s better if you’d stop being so full of yourself.’
‘That’s how you respond to me inviting you on a beach date?’
‘Yes.’
Megumi read the last conversation before the dates on the pages became sporadic and messy. “Star Vessel,” it sounded familiar. He had glazed through piles upon piles of texts related to Jujutsu history in the past near decade. Perhaps it was a note glossed over, or a subject he had deemed unimportant.
But it signaled a change– or it came soon before one. After that small conversation lacking no familiarity and comfort, the next page was dated nearly a month later.
He had almost skipped reading it because it had at first glance, seemed like just another standard written mission debrief with handwriting that was a little more rushed than it had been on previous pages, but then he looked at the side– right in the middle while the notes usually started at the top. A short and simple message without any follow ups other than an equally simple reply.
‘I love you.’ It was written by Gojo.
‘I love you too.’ Geto’s penmanship printed below.
And it was wrong. Because Jujutsu Sorcerers hardly ever loved. Most of them were shipped off in some fucked up clan marriage for the sake of combining techniques and popping out kids. The rest of them usually died by thirty. There was rarely an inbetween.
Megumi had always known that, because Gojo had always said it. Whenever the Zen’in clan made some stupid remark about how Megumi would have done better if he ended up with them, the man would scoff and mutter out his grievances to the boy.
“They act so high and mighty– as if they rule the world. Big talk for people who can’t stand to spend two seconds in the same room with the people they are supposed to be married to.”
They lived in a world where the hierarchy got more and more loveless as it went up, and Gojo was at the top of it– Megumi assumed that meant that he did not love. Not past the small affections he presented to his coworkers and students in the form of gifts and hair-ruffles, not past providing necessities and a little more to two children under ten out of his own free will.
And most certainly not romantically.
Gojo had not been shoved into an arranged marriage– no doubt because his clan was filled with cowards who held more terror towards his potential anger and wrath than they did desire to spread his power. All he would have had to do was refuse once, and they would have dropped it without another word. That must have been what happened, Megumi had always thought. He figured that Gojo had chosen the path of fighting and fighting until eventual death, blocking out any ideas of love because they were simply nonexistent.
But there he was– as clear as day, on paper with the simple phrase of ‘I love you’ directed at another human being.
It was so ordinary. Something that the strongest should not have access to. Gojo had built up a character of being untouchable– even to Megumi who had known him for so long. Something about love gave him a new level of humanity that Megumi did not think the man was capable of having.
It was repeated again and again on random pages throughout messy dates that no longer held the routine they once did.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
‘I love you.
‘I love you too.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
And then it stopped entirely. The last date read September fourth of two-thousand and seven, and there was no note attached to the page anywhere in the margin. The actual contents read almost entirely blank, with just a simple ‘to do’ list at the top and some squiggled dates of upcoming missions and events underneath the title.
Something about it felt so lonely that Megumi’s stomach churned and twisted sickeningly.
That was the end. He felt as though he had just read an unsatisfying novel that left the reader chanting ‘it’s not fair, it’s not fair’ in their head. There was no written outcome– but he knew it anyway.
He knew that ten years after the notebook in his hand was shoved into a corner where it could be hopefully forgotten, Gojo would walk into the Fushigurou’s apartment at four in the morning Christmas Day with hands scrubbed until they were raw and pink from trying again and again to clean blood that had long since washed away. He knew that the name ‘Geto’ would never leave Gojo’s mouth again after that day, and he knew that nothing good would come from the future these notes never saw.
A voice– two voices, familiar ones, echoed through the hall outside the library, a little ways away from him, and he suddenly became aware of the lump in his throat.
He was headed down the same road Gojo was– with a person he cared about, and a looming execution that felt as though it was going to end everything good.
Megumi snapped the journal shut, and placed it back on the shelf with Nanami’s, and followed the sound of Itadori’s laughter, allowing the crinkled pages to continue living in the past.
None of them could do the same– Itadori would die, and Megumi probably would too. Kugisaki, Inumaki, and everyone else would fall to ash and be replaced by new and unknowing people prodding at the same novels and textbooks that they themselves had once used.
Someday all of the tokens that Megumi left behind in the past during his happy moments would become forgotten memories lacking all of their once lively joy just as Gojo’s had. They would become sad and desolate reminders to anyone who knew him of just how much he had lost. And he could do nothing about it but watch it all waste away.
Just like Gojo had.