Chapter 56

Love was in the air.

Teenagers were wont to do a lot of things. They were no longer just children, after all, so now the activities of adulthood were far more enticing than before. Combined with the lack of adult wisdom, it led them to hyperfocus on otherwise banal pursuits, like young love or… more irresponsible manifestations of this young love.

I couldn’t say that I truly had the experiences of adulthood, but I had been in love once upon a time. Like most things in my life, that love met an accursed end, but I remembered how nice it was to be wholly accepted for the first time in my young adult life.

I was filled to bursting with words of caution and warnings to look before you leapt, to not rush blindly into new experience—all the things that the old said to the young that fell on deaf ears.

I didn’t bother.

I was old, and yet I was young. It was an alienating feeling, a dissonance that was almost painful.

Strangely, it made me wish to live vicariously through my classmates, which was why Shoko, Takahashi and I were in Ito’s room, preparing her for her big day.

She wore a blue sundress with white floral patterns, and Takahashi had outfitted her with skillfully applied make-up. Her hair was in its usual bob as it looked good enough already—at least, according to the judgment of Takahashi.

“You need to seize him by the horns,” Shoko said to Ito as she walked around her. Ito was seated on a stool while Takahashi was touching up on her make-up. “Just go up to him and say you like him. You can’t hesitate or he’ll try to take the lead. And if he does, you might lose your nerve.”

“But be gentle, too,” Takahashi advised. “Boys don’t like girls that are too bold. You need to make your intentions clear, but you can’t be too blunt or it might turn him away.”

“But you need to be strong, too. I think Suguru would prefer a girl that doesn’t wilt at the first sign of resistance.”

“Just be yourself,” I said to her. Both Takahashi and Shoko looked at me in disdain. I didn’t give in. “If you start off by trying to pretend to be someone you’re not, you’ll feel pressured into remaining in a state of perpetual roleplay. That will get old very quickly.”

“Obviously, she’ll ease back into her old self,” Takahashi said, rolling her eyes. “But she needs to first trick him by putting on a carefully crafted act. That’s what boys like.”

“And everyone knows boys all like the same thing,” I said.

“Exactly!”

“I was being sar—“ I cut myself off and just sighed. Whatever. Kids didn’t listen to old people advice. There was no point in me even trying.   

Takahashi had an overly cliché’d understanding of boys—which, in our culture of conformity, wasn’t a particularly inaccurate understanding. I doubted it applied to the likes of Suguru, however. He always struck me as an outcast—despite how wishy-washy he was compared to the rest of our little group.

It could go either way.

And either way it went, I’d have had my fill of teenage melodrama. Win-win.

000

“It’s like you’re not even trying,” Satoru laughed after his fifth consecutive win.

Suguru, however, felt the embers of irritation growing into a raging bonfire. He wanted to crumple up the Game Boy that Satoru had gotten for him in his hands.

But it would be a petty and awful thing to do. Satoru had seemed so happy to buy the machine for Suguru, as well as some games, the link cable—pretty much everything.

They were in a traditional gazebo next to an over-the-top koi pond that was fed by a multi-stepped creek that poured water into it. Jujutsu High’s commitment to traditional aesthetics had been a captivating sight to Suguru when he had first arrived. Now, he was over the novelty of it all. It was just backdrop to him now.

“I am trying,” Suguru sighed as he put down the Game Boy Advance. “I had a lot of fun capturing my ‘mon, you know. It hurts to see you destroy them like that.”

The story itself had been incredibly fun for Suguru. Exploring the world, filling his pokedex, trying to capture each and every one as he was accompanied by his favorite Pokemon, Gengar—who, in his head, whispered evil advice to him, like a devil on his shoulder. Suguru even had a voice in mind for the creature—nasally and constantly cackling after every sentence.

“Your Gengar sucks,” Satoru said.

Suguru slammed his fist on the table. “Take that back!”

“Oh? He’s your favorite? That’s how you play this game? Pathetic. You don’t even have a Tyranitar. How do you expect to beat me?”

“That’s callous—“

“In the real world, it’s win or die,” Satoru continued, steamrolling over Suguru’s protests. “If this was real? These pokemon would be killers. And it wouldn’t just be a bloodsport, oh no sir—it’d be a fight for survival, because once your ‘mon goes down? There’d be nothing between you and a bloodthirsty Tyranitar ready to rip you apart. And you’d let sentiment get in the way of winning?”

Suguru pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed in utter exasperation. Satoru could never just take a break from it all. Every waking moment of his life was dominated by the concept of his own strength. What an exhausting way to live. “It’s just a game.”

“A game you keep losing!”

Dear lord.

Suguru wondered if Satoru was trying to make a point about Suguru’s approach to Jujutsu, and how he lacked this mythical cut-throat mentality that separated the weak from the strong. Having known Satoru for as long as he had, Suguru was disinclined to believe that this was a deliberate lecture, but rather Satoru simply speaking from his heart.

It wasn’t that Satoru trained really hard to be good at everything he touched. Basketball, football, tennis, table tennis—everything they had tried, Satoru had excelled in. This was especially confounding because Suguru hung out with him most of their days, and he had never once seen Satoru train hard enough to break a sweat.

‘He is just talented’, a less astute observer might have concluded. It wasn’t wrong, but it failed to unearth anything particularly interesting about said talent.

Now, having heard Satoru rant and wave about effective moves and party compositions, it was clear to Suguru what Satoru was truly passionate about: optimization.

He had a brain built for it. The Six Eyes gave him the tools necessary to perfectly control his cursed energy, giving him a conceptual degree of command over it. Still, it was his brain that allowed his eyes to keep up, and it was a brain that was built no differently from an extremely advanced computer.

But rather than simply be able to optimize and excel at everything he tried, Satoru drew satisfaction from this act. He broke every game and sport down into its constituent parts, and constructed optimal playstyles on the fly, drawing satisfaction from this very act of becoming better.

He loved being strong.

“You’re built like a villain,” Suguru muttered. The world was lucky that Satoru also had a conscience to go with his manic obsession with power.

As far as Suguru was concerned, this core motivator of Satoru wasn’t something he, himself, could emulate. He liked what he liked, and sucking the fun out of everything just to win—and finding satisfaction solely in winning and nothing else—was not something he could bring himself to like.

But he did dislike losing. He disliked that quite intensely.

“Oh, so it’s evil to be good,” Satoru said. “That’s loser-talk.”

Suguru looked down at his new Game Boy, debated on trying his own hand at optimizing his playstyle, and then promptly shot that idea down with a vengeance. He didn’t have enough hours in the day to dedicate himself into becoming a Pokemon master and a Special Grade sorcerer worthy of his designation. Not while the likes of Ito were still steadily kicking his ass in hand-to-hand, not to mention the dog-beatings that Mukai-senpai would give him in Karate club.

But he had lost his love for Gengar, and the others.

In his mind’s eye, he saw himself looming over his manifested Pokemon, arms folded, his body exuding the attitude of a harsh taskmaster.

“You’ve failed me. All of you.”

Gengar looked at the others and chuckled. “Nyeheheh, hear that? The boss is disappointed in you.”

“Especially you, Gengar.”

Gengar jumped, turning towards Suguru, wide-eyed. “W-what?”

Gengar’s usually sinister expression twisted into one of grief and hurt, but Suguru hardened his heart. It was his mistake to view these Pokemon as friends in the first place. They were always just tools to be used.

And they were only as good as the victories they could bring him.

Indeed, since the start of the game until the end of the story, he had never lost a single battle, with Gengar on his side. He had chosen Torchic at the start, and had been pleasantly surprised to see him evolve into Blaziken, but Gengar had been his favorite nonetheless, a Pokemon that he had caught very early on in the game—one of his first, in fact.

Together, they had razed through the region, collecting badge after badge and become champions of their little fishbowl.

But this game was meant for children. Of course the story would be easy. This had been their first true test—a battle against a real human. And they had failed him, miserably.

“I blame myself for having faith in you,” Suguru continued.

“Don’t say that, boss!” Gengar fell on his knees. “I-I tried, boss! I swear, I did!”

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

And neither did I.

“Screw the game,” Suguru said as he got up and stretched his back. “I feel like training. Kurourushi is still giving me some trouble.”

The talking Special Grade’s cursed technique was remarkably similar to Teira’s, but it could control actual cockroaches, and imbue them with enough cursed energy to scour a human’s flesh from their bones in moments.

When Suguru used cursed spirits with the power to control their own minions, whether they be shikigami or actual animals, things always became more complicated. Kurourushi and Tamamo were both loyal to him—his cursed technique had seen to that—but in the process of subsuming them, they had lost a degree of their former intellect.

Kurourushi could string words together, but just barely. Tamamo, who used to be so articulate, had withdrawn and become far more demure and ingratiating. She spoke more than Kurourushi, but her intellect had some gaps.

“You wanna try the Reverse Cursed Technique again?” Satoru asked.

“Maybe another day,” Suguru said. “I’ll just work on regular old Cursed Energy Manipulation.” The problem with training his technique was that it was expensive.

The technique that Satoru called his ‘Supreme Art’ was not something he could repeat at will, which made it somewhat worthless in truth. The Uzumaki—the condensation of all his lesser spirits, churned into raw energy to be released at an opponent—was a destructive technique, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Gojo’s Hollow Purple, which he could fire at will.

He still needed to restock on the hundreds of lesser spirits that he had lost. He was making steady progress on that, but there were only so many hours of the day that weren’t occupied by sleep or school.

His own efforts to learn the Reverse Cursed Technique were also expensive. He wanted to achieve it through his technique in order to skip out on the absurdly difficult prospect of mastering it naturally. Satoru and Teira explained it simply—it was a form of energy that resulted from the merging of cursed energy. Thus, it was twice as expensive to create than normal cursed energy.

Suguru would summon two lesser spirits with equivalent energy, mostly flyheads that he had captured from soaring over the skies of Tokyo, and then squish them together in his inner dimension to break them down for energy. Theoretically, if he forced the two lesser spirits to exist in a space that perfectly fit them, and then halved that space, the resulting reaction would force the energy to combine and turn into positive energy—without the need for finesse.

Suguru was convinced that this was the way. The only problems he faced were in isolating the energies and preventing any of it from escaping. He needed better control over his inner dimension. With the Six Eyes, this would have been trivial.

A lot of things would have been trivial with those eyes.

Suguru also wanted to learn to traverse his inner dimension. If he could hide himself or objects inside of it, he would have the same advantage that Teira did with her cursed spirit.

Too many damn things to learn.

He grabbed his Game Boy and put it in his pocket, while Satoru did the same to his own and the link cable. “You’re not using your Gengar right, by the way. It’s a powerful pick, but you need to focus more on the rest of your team, or you’ll end up wasting his potential. Also, let’s play Smash Bros, too. After training.”

“Actually, let’s eat, first,” Suguru said as they left the gazebo. “I’m kind of hungry.”

“I could go for some Daifuku. And cake.”

“You’ll get fat if you eat too much sugar,” Suguru said with a slight amount of exhaustion from all the times he had said this in the past.

“Bla, bla.”

“Also, I’m not going to town just to eat cake,” Suguru said. “But if you do end up zipping over there, bring back a bucket of fried chicken, the American style one. What was it called again? K…”

“Yeah, I know the one,” Satoru said.

Together, they headed out of the pretty garden, through a forested path towards the heart of campus. Satoru kept filling Suguru’s ears about the best strategies. Somehow—and Suguru really wasn’t certain when—the lecture had magically shifted to an exhaustive thesis on the strengths and weaknesses of Pokemon and Digimon.

Suguru didn’t care at all, but he saw that Satoru did. So he listened carefully, and selected his words for maximum rage-induction.

“Eh, they still sound exactly the same to me,” Suguru said.

“Are you stupid?! Didn’t you just hear—“

“They both have ‘mon’ in their names—”

“Yes, there’s a clear link of inspiration between the two, but that doesn’t mean that—“ And he continued in that vein, much to Suguru’s private amusement.

If he couldn’t win a Pokemon battle, he could at least take solace in his ability to rile Satoru up.

“The Digimon are just plain uglier,” Suguru said. He didn’t even have to lie to say this. They really were quite ugly.

His senses screamed at him then, and in the nick of time, he caught a glimpse of the fist that was barreling towards his face. He enforced himself with no time to spare, eating the punch.

He didn’t waste any time hitting back. Satoru, at least, had enough shame to lower his Infinity and allow the ensuing scuffle.

At one point, Satoru managed to jump on his back and wrap his arm around Suguru’s neck.

The next moment, he woke up on the floor, looking at Satoru’s outstretched hand. “Don’t piss me off, Suguru,” the white-haired otaku scowled down at him. “You can insult my mother and father before you insult Digimon’s character design.”

“No matter what you say,” Suguru said as he batted the hand away, getting up on his own. “They just don’t look nice. At all.”

Satoru crossed his arms and looked away with a huff. “You have trash taste. We can’t be friends anymore.”

Suguru scoffed. “That might be for the best.” He was tired of this idiot anyway.

“Yo!”

Up the forested path, Ito and Shoko were walking towards them. An odd duo to be sure, but Suguru honestly couldn’t begin to guess at the social lives of the girls of Jujutsu High. At times, it felt like they were in one big club together, or something. They were an oddly secretive bunch.

Shoko grinned brightly. “Fancy meeting you two here, Suguru, Gojo.”

Satoru rubbed the back of his head as he raised an eyebrow at Shoko. “I never wrapped my head around why we aren’t on a first-name basis, but you and Suguru are.”

Shoko batted her eyelids innocently. “I was just innocently following along the trend of bullying you.”

“That is a weirdly popular trend,” Satoru said. “On that note, I’m long overdue a thorough revenge on some kids who keep singing these grating songs about me. A couple of black eyes and bumps in their heads might knock some sense into them.”

Shoko snorted. “You do that, and Teira will eat you for breakfast inside her Domain.”

“Hey!” Satoru pointed at her indignantly. “I made a deal with her that we’d have a rematch, but she would have to curb that slander! She caught me by surprise, and she double-teamed me with her portal-making cursed spirit!”

“You didn’t make that deal with me,” Shoko finally reached them, and then reached for Satoru’s arm. “Come along now. I wanna tell you something in private.”

In private?

“Uh, creepy,” Satoru visibly shuddered. “No thanks. If you’ve got something to say to me, you can just say it here.”

“Alright,” Shoko nodded.

Then, she…

She danced a quick jiggy that ended in her circling the mole under her eye with her fingers. “Hypno-beam!”

Satoru staggered. “Hypnosis! My only weakness!”

“Alright, now do as I say, slave!” Shoko commanded, dragging him the opposite way from where they were going, back towards the lush gardens.

Leaving Suguru alone with Ito.

“Uh, hi—“ Suguru was about to awkwardly break the tension before Ito ruthlessly cut him off.

“I like you! Let’s go out!”

Huh?

Suguru’s mind did flops at the suddenness of her approach. Her words brought forth a wave of memories, other girls approaching him in relative solitude to ask him out, and him having to reject their entreaties because they meant nothing to him.

And they meant nothing to him because the lack of true honesty was an overpowering factor. A lack of honesty that lead to utter solitude. No one could know of what he did. Even before he learned of Jujutsu Headquarters and their strict regulations, he had known that no one could know, deep in his bones. He had fought to make this be the case. In fact, he didn’t want anyone not in the know to be illuminated.

To be cursed with the knowledge of curses.

Things were different here.

Here, everyone knew. Here, everyone was like him.

Ito was like him.

And… she was cute. Small, yes, but she was nonetheless cute. Most guys would probably agree on that. And she had made great progress in leaving her shell and strengthening her personality. The scar she bore on her face was glaring, but it didn’t bother his aesthetic sensibilities at all. Rather, he felt much more guilty about that than ‘revolted’ or any such thing. In fact, he found her look kind of cool.

He was curious to understand her as well, to get to know her.

The black haired young girl looked up at him with determined, bright eyes, her eyebrows pinched together in focus.

She was waiting for his answer.

Seconds had passed, and she was still waiting.

He broke off from their eye-contact, blinking, and looked up in thought. He thought of few reasons to say no, and many reasons to say yes.

The right answer was yes. Most guys would agree on that.

Still, he had expected more. Flowers blooming in the background, a flutter in his stomach, a palpitation in his chest.

Alas, life was not a manga. This was how normal people got into romantic relationships. It was probably how his father had connected with his mother. An eager confession, and a lack of reasons to say no.

“Okay,” Suguru said.

“Okay?” she tilted her head.

“Let’s go out,” he added. “When do you—“

“Today! Now!”

The forcefulness of her demand overrode his own protests at this upheaval of his day. “We can do it today if you want. I don’t have any missions, so we can just head to town. If anything comes up, I’m sure that Teira or Satoru might cover for me.” It would set him back to not have seized every opportunity to consume more curses and add them to his army, but this was… an important experience. His first date with someone that might end up as his girlfriend.

An important experience…

“T-thank you!” Ito gushed.

Or was it ‘Aoi’ now? He supposed he’d have to make that leap, too.

000

“Alright, what do you want to show me, all alone in this garden with no one watching?” Satoru asked, all the while dreading something he had no way to put into words.

Seriously, what did she want? And why did it bother Satoru?

“Oh?” Shoko was walking ahead of him. “Ah. I just wanted to give Aoi and Suguru some alone time.”

“Oh.” Phew.

Wait.

“Why?” Satoru asked.

“She wanted to ask him out.”

Satoru gaped. “Ask him out?! Suguru?!”

“Yeah. She likes him.”

Satoru let out a long groan that came from the depths of his spirit.

So damn stupid.

Satoru couldn’t imagine a bigger waste of time than dating. It seemed to have all the downsides of being friends with someone—trying not to hurt them, trying to cater to them, twisting oneself into knots to keep their interest—with none of the upsides: true honesty.

Relationships were an enormous scam.

Shoko grinned at him. “Ooooh. Is somebody jealous?”

“I’m just confused,” Satoru said. “It just makes no sense to be this excited about something so… mundane.”

“You don’t like anyone?” Shoko asked. “Uh—but first, if it’s me, please don’t.”

Satoru laughed. Perhaps his apprehension had been on account of his unfounded fear that she might confess to him? That would have been an almost unbearable situation.

But, “No. And more importantly: who likes me?” Satoru asked, pinching his chin and looking up at the sky. “I haven’t once been confessed to yet, and I’m Gojo Satoru. Everyone knows me. I’ve barely done anything, and I’m practically the living legend of the Jujutsu world.”

“Teira has you beat at this point,” Shoko pointed out. “In popularity at least.”

Satoru gasped. “Does Teira have suitors?”

“No. No one has the guts,” Shoko said.

“There’s also the fact that she acts like everybody’s grandma with the airs she keeps putting on,” Satoru said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d honestly think her older than me by several years.”

“Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, you know… try. If you—“

Satoru stuck his tongue out. “Eugh. No.”

Shoko rolled her eyes. “Why are you acting so disgusted? Don’t be such a child, Satoru.”

A child.

Something about that comment… bothered him.

It managed to pierce straight through a crack in his mental armor, causing a bleed. And the more he tumbled that word over in his mind, the more it bothered him. The implication that he was dim, or that he was being left behind by his age-mates.

 A child.

There was a measure of truth to the assessment. In the Gojo clan, all his points of contact had been with older clansmen who saw him as a child. All the ones the same age as him or younger kept their distance from him. They isolated him in a world where he was the only child in existence.

In doing so, they refused him examples to follow during his growth, taking it upon themselves to mould him into something acceptable instead. The ideal heir of the clan.

But this is what people my age do. They date.

I suppose…

…it’s time to grow up, then.

“Still, I’m surprised no one’s approached me,” Satoru brushed her comment off. “I’m pretty much the ideal boy. I’m handsome, super smart, super talented, super strong, absurdly rich. Am I maybe so perfect that no one would dare?”

“Ugh,” Shoko said. “You’re insufferable.”

Satoru wondered who he should go after. Certainly not any of the upperclassmen. It wasn’t proper for a boy to be younger than a girl in a relationship… or something. And he didn’t want to date any middle-schoolers either, so that left him with only his class to choose from. Three candidates, after eliminating Teira, Shoko, and Ito.

Aomori, Suzuki, and… Takahashi.

Rather than argue the pros and cons, Satoru instantly locked in on the latter candidate. Takahashi was very pretty. Most guys would agree on that. In fact, she was pretty enough to match him in looks, too. She dressed well and she smelled pretty good, too. She also wasn’t a complete slouch in terms of Jujutsu, so that was good.

She was rather dim and unimpressive in terms of this first year’s standards, but compared to the rest of Jujutsu High, her skills were respectable and her potential was obvious. She could reach Grade Two or even Semi-Grade One with enough practice, though it was hard for him to imagine her as a full-blown Grade One.

And her technique was quite intriguing as well. Useless to him, of course, but one that he wouldn’t mind helping her sharpen, if he had to. He probably would. When you dated girls, a whole mess of expectations would likely follow.

Satoru took a deep breath. He’d take this burden on, bothersome as it was. And who knew? Perhaps over time, he’d end up seeing what all the fuss was about.

“I’m gonna go ask Takahashi out.”

“Eh?! That’s way too sudden!”

He didn’t spare Shoko another word as he initiated the complicated art of spatial transportation. Normally, he would have said something, maybe a quip, but Shoko had… ticked him off, somewhat. She could handle the sudden departure.

He disappeared from the garden, and appeared inside a club room, right next to a table where Teira was playing a card game with Takahashi.

“Eh?!” Takahashi jumped.

“Gojo, please don’t,” Teira began, but Satoru ignored her. His irritation with Shoko had spilled over to Teira for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down.

“Hey, Takahashi. Do you want to go out on a date with me?”

The girl blinked dumbly. Her hair was long and wavy, and there was a pretty flower hairpin on it. She wore her uniform modified to look like a cheongsam, revealing long, pale arms. She was sitting, but he could make out a bit of her thighs from the slit on the cheongsam. They were quite shapely, in that they were shaped like a shape.

But she was undoubtedly the prettiest girl in the entire year. It wasn’t even a contest, she was definitely a stunner. The fact that Shoko had expected him to like Teira of all people was actually quite laughable, especially when Takahashi was right there.

“A date?! Me? You?”

Huh? What was so awful about Satoru that she would react like that? Or perhaps Teira’s bullying had had an adverse effect on his romantic prospects?

A part of him quite hoped that it had. It would save him the hassle of having to try.

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine,” Satoru said. “I just thought I’d ask you out because you’re very pretty.”

“Ah—“ she made a stunned noise of a sort.

“So? What’ll it be? Should I go away or are we doing this?”

She covered her face, but he could see bits of flushed red skin peaking from the gaps between her fingers. A blush. A good sign, both medically, and socially. His words had stirred her heart, then.

…what else would stir a girl’s heart?

Should he get down on his knees, too?

No, too… much.

“S-sure, Gojo-kun.”

“Just call me Satoru,” he said. “We’re dating now. No point in being distant any longer.”

“O-okay, then.”

“Great. Hana-chan. Let’s go now.”

Go where?

Somewhere, Satoru supposed. To where dating people went.

He offered her his hand.

She took it gently, and stood up.

All the while, Satoru ignored his detailed peripheral vision, where Teira was busy scowling at him for whatever reason. Probably for interrupting their stupid game.

Whatever, Teira. This is grown-up stuff.

000

“Hum hum hum,” I said as I took a sip of tea. Shoko and I were in a gazebo, the same one that Gojo and Suguru had been playing games in, being served drinks and cakes by Michiko, who was in her manifested form. “I didn’t expect this.”

Shoko took a slow sip and tried to act nonchalant. “And how do… you feel about that.”

She was clearly still quite convinced that there was a thread of romance between Gojo and I. Annoying, because I couldn’t just tell her there was nothing, or she would dig her heels down. “Your words seemed to have a powerful effect on Gojo.”

“Isn’t he just jealous cuz Ito stole his friend?” Shoko asked.

“That’s the naïve interpretation,” I said. I parted some cake with my spoon and took a bite. I spoke after swallowing. “True, on a base level, but it’s missing other factors. A feeling of shame and inadequacy, perhaps.” I could glean many insights into people’s thoughts based on their physical reactions, and I could tell when someone was being honest. Of course, it wasn’t an exact science by any means, but when it came to Gojo, I believed that I had a sufficient understanding.

“What did I even say?” Shoko grumbled. “What, that he was being childish for cringing away from the subject of love in such an over-the-top way?”

I looked down at my cup of tea, feeling a swelling of tenderness and kinship for the boy. It must have been hard for him, if this was how he truly felt about these things.

“He can’t help his feelings,” I said. “And school exists for children to explore themselves, and discover their likes and dislikes. There are no wrong answers or discoveries. Only misconceptions, like how being normal is the highest virtue to strive towards. To disbelieve one’s heart and follow societal standards instead.”

“He found you gross,” she said. “What was I supposed to say?”

I chuckled. “He only found the idea of our romance gross, not me. That’s how he felt, and he’s free to feel that.”

“He could have been gentler.”

“He’s a child,” I said. Then I winced at the choice of words, grateful that Gojo hadn’t heard. “In the way that we all are. And his feelings on the subject were… a lot bigger than you would expect. I don’t think he was being careless. He was just being honest.”

“And you also don’t think he asked Takahashi out in front of you to make you jealous?”

I laughed. “To what end, though? No. He asked Takahashi out because he regards her as the prettiest girl in our year. And he was urged to do this because he felt badly about the rate of his development, how it compared to the rest of our class.”

He really shouldn’t have bothered. I’d have liked it if he could have been more honest about his feelings. I could have talked to him about it.

Although, it made perfect sense that he wouldn’t trust me with such a sensitive conversation, as I had done very little to earn his trust in that regard. And Suguru, his closest friend, was equally out of his depth when it came to such topics.

“I might be a pretty bad friend,” I mused.

“To Gojo?”

“He shouldn’t be made to feel othered,” I said. “In some ways, he’s exactly the sort of boy that the Women’s Union would fight for.”

“Ugh. Now I feel bad.”

I spent another moment worrying for Gojo—as well as Takahashi—and hoping that however the date ended, the experience would be illuminating for the both of them. There were so many ways that this could go catastrophically. Teenage feelings were volatile things, after all.

Eh. They’ll figure it out.

000

Suguru remembered days when his mother would drag him with her to the mall to go shopping for clothes, and Suguru would swear that if no human had ever died of boredom before, he would be the first.

He remembered his legs getting tired, and him hunting for whatever seat he could find. He also remembered begging his mother to go to an ice cream shop to get him a sweet treat to tide over his own feelings of frustration.

This day reminded him strongly of those days, and yet despite going straight to go and get their sweet treats, Suguru still felt like he was on the verge of dying of boredom.

As they stood in front of a display window with a bunch of mochi, Aoi was rambling about the intricacies of the rice-based treat while Suguru nodded along, trying to figure out the optimal combination of words that would suggest that he was engaged and attentive.

This was usually the case when it came to anything at all that didn’t capture his attention. He didn’t view this act as one borne from a lack of respect for Ito—or anyone else he did this to for that matter. This was just how he had to act so that people wouldn’t get angry at him.

It was extra bad today, because he hadn’t expected to do this at all. He hadn’t mentally prepared for this. He hadn’t done his mental stretches, and now he felt that his social muscles were cramping up.

“I can’t decide which ones I want,” Ito said excitedly. “I could have one of each, even.” There were over a dozen different flavors. She had a sweet tooth, too. Just like Satoru.

“You’ll get fat if you eat too much sugar,” Suguru said.

“Ah-“

Suguru’s mind immediately caught up to the fact that he had said this to Ito, and not Satoru. More importantly, he had said this to a girl. “Ah, I was just—I spoke carelessly. I’m very sorry, Ito,” he bowed to her. “You can have as many as you want.”

Shit.

How the hell do I come back from this?

“It’s alright,” Ito said, smiling sheepishly as she did.

Her rambling was more muted by the time they got settled on a table to order their desserts.

Ito slid her menu over to Suguru, grinning slightly as she did. “Do you mind reading the menu out for me?”

What an odd request.

…it was odd until he remembered why she would ask such a thing—and also, why she had relied so heavily on Suguru navigating the metro station despite her being the Tokyo native and not him. She couldn’t read any longer.

He did, narrating each and every item several times over and over without tiring. It was the least he could do for her. And it stirred him.

The more he read for her, the more she stirred him.

Ito Aoi had lost her ability to read and write. She had almost lost her life as well. This had, for some reason, dragged her out of her shell and made her seemingly take more pleasure in her own existence than before. It was… stirring. It was the only word he felt was appropriate for the feeling in his chest.

In the end, they ordered crepes stuffed with whipped cream and sliced strawberries, and half a dozen mochi balls all of a different flavor for Ito. He had encouraged her to get more in the hopes that it would erase the massive faux pas he had made earlier, but she seemed satisfied with just six.

…still kind of a staggering number for a girl of her size, but he would never share that opinion with her.

“So,” Suguru said after finishing his crepe. She was halfway done herself. “Where’d you learn how to fight, anyway?”

“My dad runs a dojo,” she said. “According to the family legend, the style was taught to us by a wandering exorcist. Isn’t that something?” She then chuckled. “Though, you couldn’t tell just from looking at the particular style. It’s all very sports-based.”

“Was it your dad who taught you jujutsu?” Suguru asked.

“No. My entire family are non-sorcerers. The genes for it skipped several generations, probably. Somewhere in my ancestry, there must be a sorcerer of course, but we lost that history for some reason.” A common story among most of the new sorcerers from the mundane population. Unless you were a die-hard traditionalist or rich enough, it was difficult to keep track of ancestries beyond a hundred years, especially after the war.

Suguru likely had a big-shot sorcerer as an ancestor, but his family had no idea. Given the power of his innate technique, it might even be one of the three great vengeful spirits. Such a thing was far from unprecedented—the Gojo clan were famed to be descended from Sugawara no Michizane.

All this, he had learned in the last few months going to Jujutsu High.

“You taught yourself?” Suguru asked.

Ito nodded.

That was… concerning.

She didn’t fight like someone that had been taught combat sports by non-sorcerers only to venture into self-study later on.

“I practiced on cursed spirits,” she said. “I… sought them out. As often as I could. I gained a nose for ghost stories, and became proficient at tracking down curses wherever they congregated.” Her eyes and her tone darkened as she spoke. “I fought for years, thinking I was alone in this war. Or crazy. Maybe both.”

Wow. “You seem… relatively unharmed from all that.”

She grinned. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“Absolutely.” Then he wondered, “but why fight so hard?”

“A cursed spirit killed someone precious to me,” Ito said. “I was… ten years old when it happened. It was a dark time in my life.”

To have the grit to wage war against cursed spirits with no innate technique to your name was… qualitatively different from what Suguru had decided to do, after merely discovering his Cursed Spirit Manipulation when he was young.

Once again, that mythical mentality of the strong reared its head, and made Suguru feel smaller in comparison.

He wondered what she could have accomplished with his technique. More, probably.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Suguru said.

000

Girls went crazy for hot guys wearing designer clothes. Satoru knew that well enough from watching TV. He wasn’t the biggest fan of romantic dramas, but he did like how some of the boys had girls falling head-over-heels for them. It was a nice change of pace from the more prevalent theme in anime, where the girl was the object of unchecked lust and the boy was the stumbling oaf who bent over backwards to impress them.

Either way, it was a circus of clownery. He just preferred to have the edge as a man.

He wore a white Gucci button-up, Armani dress pants, black Allen Edmond patent leather shoes, and a black belt with a brass Gucci belt buckle.

And a few spritzes of a fifty-thousand-yen bottle of Dior, of course. Hana-chan seemed to like perfumes, so he had gone all out on using the most expensive one in his arsenal.

He took one last look at himself in the mirror on the inside of his closet door, found himself to be the picture of human perfection, and decided to make his way out to the rendezvous point he had agreed on with Hana-chan.

His prospective girlfriend! What a hoot that was. He never thought he’d take the plunge this early on into his high school career.

At least this was his choice. None of those oldies in his clan had decided on this meeting. No one had tried to twist his arm into it. This was all… his choice.

He initiated his teleportation, and appeared outside, on the edge of campus.

Hana-chan was standing under the Torii gate leading to the staircase down the mountain.

She was wearing a blue dress that cut off at her knees, a pair of black high heels, a purse, and a necklace.

All put together, it made her look older than just fourteen or fifteen.

Satoru… didn’t like that. He wasn’t sure why, but he just didn’t. However, recognizing the effort that she had made, he decided to not share that assessment of his.

“You look good,” he said. That, of course, was not a lie. That fact did exist alongside his earlier assessment. How she looked, and how he felt were two entirely different things.

“You too!” she said. She then reached her hand towards him, blushing slightly. He lagged slightly before walking up to her to take the hand. Small, warm, and… slightly clammy. But they were on a date, so needs must.

Hmmm… actually.

He activated Infinity, and immediately was shielded from the clammy warmth of her hand. Meanwhile, she wouldn’t be able to tell that anything was amiss. Win-win.

“So…” she said. “Where are we going?”

She smelled like a tropical fruit of some kind. Combined, the two of them would probably end up pissing off everyone they entered a public space with. Not that anyone would say anything. When you were this pretty, society tended to bend over backwards to fulfill your whims.

And where were they going?

Satoru had an idea. “It’s a surprise.”

It was better to let her believe that he had a plan. That way, when they were in the city, and he caught sight of a nice enough café for their dating purposes, he could claim that he had always intended on going there.

He did have a couple of places in mind, places he had already visited, but that felt like a step too far for a first date. Those were his secret spots. He didn’t trust Hana like that.

In the end, they ended up in a yakiniku spot that served Kobe beef.

As expected, everywhere they went before arriving there, people had turned their heads and stared at them in surprise and awe. Both him and Hana received equal amounts of stares, and the server in the Yakiniku spot had almost tripped over her feet to seat them somewhere nice.

“Get whatever you want,” Satoru said. “Don’t hesitate.”

Satoru didn’t care about cost when it came to this date. There were a million overpriced restaurants in Tokyo. His secret spots were another thing entirely, and had nothing to do with costs.

“Uh, okay.”

Hana was remarkably untalkative, which was odd and kind of annoying. Now, he’d be forced to try and guide her out of her shell with smooth talk and flashes of a heart of gold nestled within an exterior of coolness.

“You like Digimon?”

Was that smooth?

“My little brother does,” she said. “I don’t really watch anime. I’m more into dramas.”

“Which ones?”

He let her go on for a little while, patiently waiting his turn to talk about the stuff that he wanted to talk about. Conversations were give and take after all.

As she went on, he found that they had remarkably little in common when it came to their likes and dislikes. He had more in common with Teira when it came to this, than she had in common with Hana. And Teira made it her life’s mission to ruin everything that he liked, learning about it just to screw with him.

He was alone in his likes and dislikes. And the animanga club weirdos were not people that Satoru really wanted to associate with for any length of time. Their discussions tended to devolve into trash-talk and spirited rants. And entreaties to Ishikawa to draw and make different characters fight to the death, which the guy hated doing. He truly loved all the subjects that he drew.

Maybe I should just talk to Ishikawa more. He seems like the only sane guy in this world with good taste.

He never had a negative thing to say about anything. No matter how trashy something was, he would always be sure to point out its merits. He had a sixth sense for such things. Satoru had yet to decide whether that was cool or just annoying—

“—What do you think about that?” Hana asked.

Satoru blinked. About what? “It’s… okay, I guess.”

Satoru’s heart beat a little faster as he analyzed her expression in order to gauge whether he had made a mistake or not. She just grinned and resumed talking.

This time, Satoru made a concerted effort to pay attention, by staring at her eyes.

And repeating her every word in his head.

Celebrity gossip.

He couldn’t handle this subject. It was way too boring.

Satoru came up with a plan, then.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

Step one: cut the conversation short without offending her.

He went to the bathroom, and finished his business there.

Step two: make time pass in order to halt the train of conversation entirely.

After washing his hands, he returned to the table.

Step three: begin a new topic.

“Your technique’s pretty cool,” Satoru said. Hana stiffened a little nervously. Odd. “It lets you influence people who have inhaled your scent particles, whether they be natural or enhanced via perfumes. You know, I think if you used ammonia, you’d be a lot more effective. Of course, you’d also stink to high heavens so I get why you wouldn’t,” he laughed.

“Uh?” Hana blinked. “Uh… how did you… know?”

Oh, that was why she was nervous. “My Six Eyes allow me to read people’s innate techniques,” he explained. “Yours is pretty straightforward. Ah, don’t worry: I won’t tell anyone, of course. Your technique is your business. But since it’s all out in the open between the two of us, I figured I might as well just talk about it. Was that rude?”

“No, not at all!” she said hurriedly. “I was just surprised. Your read was perfectly accurate which is weird because I haven’t told a soul about it.”

“You shouldn’t,” Satoru said. “Disregarding the fact that people don’t like their minds being controlled and all that, yours is the sort of technique that is stronger the less someone knows about it. Of course, because it doesn’t have any direct physical applications, and I’ve got no clue how it reacts to cursed spirits, you might want to consider improving your hand-to-hand skills a little more. You’re a little wimpy as it stands.”

“Wimpy?”

“A little,” Satoru said. Their meats arrived just then, and Satoru was finally becoming engaged with the topic at hand.

000

“I still haven’t seen my parents,” Ito said. “It’s… I should see them as soon as possible.”

Her and Suguru were walking through the city as dusk had arrived, their date all but complete. Suguru wrestled with the concept of a second date: whether he even wanted one, and what he would have to do if he did.

And, of course, the concept of physical affection.

The prospect of kissing Ito was surreal. The act itself was fascinating to him, the same way a grown woman’s body was fascinating to him. If he spoke truly to himself, then he would genuinely like to kiss a girl.

Just… maybe not Ito.

Was she even his type? A lot of guys would agree that she was cute, but did he? Sure. She was cute. But was cute enough?

He didn’t lower himself to imagining his ‘ideal’ woman while on a date with another girl. That was a rather wretched thing to do, and he had already been a bad partner in this date. 

“Suguru?”

His name being called wrested him away from his thoughts, and he remembered what she had said. “You should,” he encouraged. “But… truth be told, I still haven’t told my parents, either.”

Jujutsu High and its treatment of non-sorcerer next of kin was… truly mindboggling in its contempt. They really couldn’t care less what non-sorcerers believed. Suguru doubted that they even saw his parents as people deserving of truth.

And he had exploited that contempt by keeping them in the dark. Same as Ito.

Ito had her reasons to come clean to her family, but Suguru didn’t share those reasons. He didn’t feel compelled to reach out to them honestly for the first time in his life. Neither did he believe himself to be in such risk that coming out to them was necessary, lest they lose him. Death, to him, was not really a reality. He knew his power.

To Ito, death was more than just a reality. She had lived it. Accepted it. She had fought to a conclusion that she had fully believed was her own death without flinching.

“You should do what you feel is necessary,” Suguru said to her. “If you want, I can—“

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Ito giggled, a little awkwardly. “But… I think I would like to go there now.”

Thus, ending their date, finally.

Alright, Suguru. Now go.

“Ito-chan,” Suguru began. “I appreciated today, and your confession, but truth be told, I wasn’t really mentally prepared for this. I’d like to have another chance, in case I haven’t given you my best showing today.”

“Ah,” she smiled, and then looked down. “Uh… hmmm.”

And so it went, for several long seconds, until… “No thank you.”

What?

“I had fun today as well,” she said. “The reason why I approached you was because I wanted to go on a date with a boy that I liked. I thought it would be a shame if I went my entire life without doing that. In fact, I still do. I’d like to go out with a boy that I like. But… he’s not you, Geto-kun.”

Ah.

“Was it something I said?” Suguru asked.

“Not really,” she shook her head. “I suppose I just didn’t like you to the extent that I thought I did. I made a mistake is all.”

He must have revolted her with his personality. This wasn’t how he had wanted this date to end.

But what could he do at this point?

Leave, he supposed.

He nodded. “Alright. Good luck with your parents. I’ll go away now.”

000

“Let’s… not go on a second date.”

Hana had said this to him at the end of a karaoke session, inside the karaoke room.

Satoru was caught entirely flat-footed by the suddenness of her proclamation.

“Wait, why? What did I do?”

“Besides ramble about Digimon for an hour and a half, try to convince me into underage drinking, give me several long lectures about how lacking I am as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, invite me to a nightclub in Roppongi, trying to overfeed me with grilled meat… what am I missing? Oh—the time you hit on the waiter—an adult, mind you—right in front of me? I also just… don’t believe you like me, like at all. I don’t know why I’m here, and I can’t lie to you, this is starting to become rather unbearable.”

Satoru pouted in shame. “I don’t love underage drinking, you know. I just thought it was a cool grown-up thing to do.”

“That’s not my thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Satoru said, clenching his fists next to his laps as he did. “I’m really sorry.”

This whole day had been an unenjoyable mess for the both of them in the end.

What had it all been for?

To prove… what, exactly?

“It’s okay,” Hana—rather, Takahashi now—said tenderly. “Really. It happens.”

“I’m an awful guy,” Satoru grinned slightly, shamefully. “You must hate me.”

“No, not really. Today was… not boring, at the very least.”

What a lackluster reaction. Satoru would almost have preferred it if she hated him. This… barrage of pure disappointment was really quite difficult to stomach.

“The food was good,” she said, after a few long seconds of awkward silence. “I think I’ll… go now.”

Satoru stood up. “Let me walk you home.”

“Ah, that won’t be necessary,” she grinned awkwardly. “I am a sorcerer, after all.” Right. What hoodlum or random guy could threaten her?

Still, the gesture was a symbolic one, and it had been shot down.

“Satoru-kun,” Takahashi said. “I was happy when you asked me out. I had been thinking of doing it for some time. But… we just aren’t compatible, and that happens.”

“That happens,” Satoru echoed hollowly.

“Yes. Have a good evening,” she bowed her head at him before leaving.

Once she was fully gone, Satoru roared to get all the awkward energy out of his body.

He sang a cheesy rock song about heartbreak by himself. One-man karaoke. The most pathetic concept in the world.

Seriously—why had I offered to buy drinks? Teira, you putrid worm. I wish I’d never been corrupted by you.

He didn’t even like drinking. It was a ridiculous pastime. Suguru was ten times the man that he was, for having the sense to turn drinks down. He should have followed that example, and done his own thing instead.

Today had definitely proved that much.

He received a text on his phone after the cheesy rock song finally ended. Suguru’s date had ended, apparently.

‘Are you in Jujutsu High?’

‘In town. Not on a mission, though.’

‘Wanna meet?’

000

“I’m an asshole,” Suguru smiled wistfully at the rising moon off the coast of Chiba. No landmass laid directly east of this part of the world except for the west coast of America.

He and Satoru were seated on the edge of a pier, legs dangling over the quiet sea. Satoru stank of perfume and looked like he had come from a night club based on how he had dressed.

At least he had made an effort. Suguru was still in his damn uniform. Probably the reason why Ito didn’t want a second date.

“Where the hell were you anyways?” Suguru asked.

“On a date with Takahashi.”

Suguru’s eyes widened in shock. “What?! No way!”

“I’m also an asshole,” Satoru snorted. “She hated it.”

“You like Takahashi?”

“I don’t. I didn’t. I don’t think I… give a damn. About girls. At all.”

Suguru blinked. “…At all?”

“Not even a little.” Satoru then chuckled and shot Suguru a look. “And before you ask, no. I don’t like guys, either. I might care less about guys than I care about girls. It’s all the same nonsense to me.”

“Ah,” Suguru nodded. He seemed entirely honest about that, which was surprising and confusing. He had no idea that anyone could be like that. “Well… Ito just wasn’t my type. I think I was just forcing myself to meet her demands, quite poorly. I turned her away from me quite thoroughly.” If she had hated him, Suguru might have felt better. Instead, she had just completely lost interest in him.

“Whatever,” Satoru said. “Talk about a waste of a whole Saturday, am I right?”

Suguru chuckled tonelessly. Today was a massive waste. He’d been treated as nothing but an item to be checked off on a girl’s list of things to do before she died. And she still hadn’t checked that item off because he just hadn’t made the cut. So damn embarrassing.

Was this really what dating was all about? Being a fruit in a grocery store, touched and picked on by prospective buyers only to be returned to the pile of you weren’t to their liking? It felt like somewhat of a humiliation, in all honesty.

Then Suguru turned to Satoru, eyebrow raised. “Wait, if you didn’t even like her, then why did you ask her out?”

“Thought I was supposed to.”

Suguru couldn’t fault that answer. People did a lot of things because they thought they were ‘supposed to’.

It was the bedrock of living in a society; doing what you were supposed to. Listening to your parents, obeying the law, dating girls. All mere obligations. As a Jujutsu Sorcerer, he was also supposed to do his job. What he got out of that was status. Power. That was a good trade.

Dating, however…

He supposed that as he grew older and more experienced, he wouldn’t find the prospect so daunting any more. Until then, he didn’t have to do anything that he didn’t strictly want to do, and that included dating.

“Let’s just do what we want, Satoru,” Suguru said as he stared out into the ocean. Silver streaks reflected the full moon above.

Satoru patted Suguru’s back. He drew comfort from the contact. Things were a lot less complicated when he was around Satoru. He didn’t have to watch his words, or even try very hard at all to have fun.

Satoru then pushed him into the drink.

Suguru used cursed energy to enforce his body as the cold water swallowed him whole. It protected him from hypothermia, but it did little to actually keep him comfortable. The water lost its sting, but he shivered nonetheless. As he resurfaced, he growled. “That’s it. Tamamo!”

A portal appeared behind Satoru’s laughing form, Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate charging a blast to hit Satoru on his back.

Satoru dodged the blast easily and just tossed himself into the water, wrapping an arm around Suguru to dunk him.

Suguru fought back, dragging him down as well and using his body to push himself up to the surface for air, and then their battle was on.

Suguru’s life was fairly terrible, because Satoru, despite doing his best to kill Suguru, was still largely his best friend in the world.

And he simply had to deal with that.

--

A/N: You’ve heard of enemy to lovers. I’m an enemy of lovers. I cry tears of blood watching seasonal romance anime (and I’m currently watching The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten), but I cannot stop no matter how much it pains me.

What I can do is channel the most cringe-inducing blunder-years teenage romance and put it to paper. This is me essentially ticking off a box of experiences that I believe these characters ought to have growing up, and also because I find the subject of horribly awkward dates quite funny.

The next chapter will be the penultimate chapter before the Exchange Event begins in earnest. Then an interlude, and then we’re in the action.

I apologize for the late updates, however. This one was really kicking my ass. The next one will come out sooner than you expect.