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Really, Shoko had just wanted a smoke break. Figures she’d forget her lighter.
She could’ve done it back in her dorm; Yaga had long since given up on trying to stop her from smoking on school grounds. But if she was being honest, she needed a breather as well. One from that godawful school she still couldn’t help but call home.
She felt a quiet twinge in her chest as she walked the streets of Shinjuku, one she had gradually grown accustomed to in her time as a student.
It’s not that she’d been emotionless before, though Gojo would often tease her about being so. But Shoko had preferred to not be an active player in her life. She didn’t think of herself as perceptive, clearly not when it mattered—
She didn’t think of herself as perceptive, but getting a read on new people had never been particularly hard for her. In a way, people were like equations. They were complex, and incomplete, but always solvable if you had the right pieces. Learn how to arrange them, and solving could simply become a pastime.
At least, that’s what she’d thought before.
Growing up, Shoko tended to figure out the equation of a person fairly quickly. Mostly, she saw how people fought to be an active player in their own life, and she saw where that equation tended to lead. Bruised hearts and shattered dreams. Especially in a world of curses only some could see.
Shoko didn’t want that for herself. She wasn’t interested in a life full of so much effort with no payoff.
So she took effort out of her own equation. She let things pass as they were, and she let people come and go, and it didn’t bother her. Maybe it would have been melancholy if she was someone else, but she didn’t really have anything or anyone to feel melancholy about.
Her only real constant was her healing, so when Yaga came to her at age 15 and told her that it was actually because she was the only living human with true innate reversed curse technique, she went along with it. Why not? It seemed like this way she could start to experiment more with her ability on others, and it wasn’t like she had anyone to leave behind.
Then, at Jujutsu Tech, Shoko met Gojo and Geto.
They were the two most ridiculous, obnoxious, and emotionally stunted boys she’d ever met, though Geto had always tried to pretend those were only Gojo’s attributes.
They also brightened Shoko’s life in a way she previously hadn’t thought possible.
She’d never really thought she’d have any one person to truly call her friend, much less two annoying idiots, and yet that's what the quiet warmth she felt when she was with them must be, right?
Love had felt a lot gentler than she’d expected.
Though it seems like she won’t get the chance to feel that warmth again, or even to tell her two friends what they’ve done for her without even realizing– always just a little too wrapped up in each other to look her way quite as much. It was okay though, Shoko knew they’d cared. She didn’t need more than that.
Or at least, they had.
It’s not like she would’ve told them anyway, but… the option lasting would have been nice. Having even just a little longer would have been nice.
Shoko chuckled wryly to herself, unlit cigarette jostling slightly between her teeth before she pulled it out, at her own thoughts. Here she was, wishing she could’ve played an active part in her life just once, and paying the price for it, just as she’d known she would if she ever did all those years ago.
It seems knowing doesn’t change things much more than not knowing. It won’t matter if the end result is the same; always too late.
The truth is, that warmth has been slipping through Shoko’s fingers and dripping out of her chest long before this final nail in the coffin. Gojo and Geto have been drifting from her and from each other for nearly a year now, and she’d done nothing about it. She hadn’t tried to be an active player then, and it really was too late now. She hadn’t known what to do, and now she’d missed a chance she didn’t even realize she’d had until it was gone.
Fuck. She really wishes she’d remembered her damn lighter.
The crossing light turns green. She moves to go, and is almost to the other side when she’s struck by a familiar voice she hadn’t been expecting… well. Ever again, really. At least not so soon.
“Need a light?” Shoko turns, and standing casually in the middle of the crosswalk is none other than Geto Suguru.
“Hey,” he says, lifting one hand in a wave. It’s awful, how much his easy smile still seems to fit on his face. If Shoko wasn’t analyzing his every feature at the moment, she might not have seen how he was missing the slight crinkle under his eyes his real smiles always had. She hadn’t seen one of those on him in awhile now. She isn’t sure exactly when even Gojo stopped being able to coax them out, though it wasn’t like the higher ups even gave him much time to try.
Shoko clenches her still unlit cigarette between her index and middle finger as she walks over, perhaps against her better judgment. Looks like she was getting that smoke after all.
“Ah, it’s the criminal,” she drawls as she approaches. She relaxes the rest of her body, but she can’t quite find it in herself to unclench her two fingers. She briefly hopes Geto doesn’t notice, though he tends to observe the little things like that. At least it’s pretty unlikely that he’ll comment on it.
They find their way back to the side of the street Shoko had originally crossed from, standing side by side but far from touching. Strangely, it reminded her a little of how it felt to stand next to Gojo . The knowledge that even though she wasn’t a particularly touchy person, if she’d reached out she still would’ve most likely met nothing; the faint cold of infinity stretching the inches between them into miles unless he chose to briefly shrink it back and let her in.
Right now, Geto was not letting Shoko in.
Beside her, Geto clicked open his lighter and offered Shoko the open flame. Instead of sticking her cigarette in right away, she lifted it to her lips and took the lighter into her own hand. Steadying it with her fingers, she lit it before pocketing the lighter for herself. Out of the corner of her eye, Geto shrugged and slid his hands into his own pockets.
For a few liminal moments, it was just them, the Shinjuku crowd, the sooth of nicotine, and the achingly familiar companionable silence between them.
Shoko exhaled smoke, and knew she had to be the one to break it.
“So. I’ll just go ahead and ask, any chance the charges are false?”
It was a possibility that had crossed her mind earlier. Not because she thought it was very likely, but more as a brief musing, a ‘what if’ of sorts. Shoko didn’t normally indulge much in those, but her friends also didn’t normally get accused of mass murder. A day for unusual occurrences.
And either way, it broke their mutual silence.
Geto stared ahead as he calmly answered exactly what she’d expected. “No. Unfortunately not.”
There was not a single ounce of remorse in his voice.
A day for unusual occurrences indeed.
It really did feel like Geto had his own self-inflicted emotional Infinity up right now. There was no chance she was going to get the full truth out of him, especially if he wasn’t even capable of being fully honest with himself like Shoko suspected, a typical aspect of his equation.
But fuck it, it’s been a long day, a long year . Might as well indulge what little she still could, before it slipped away completely. She took another drag of her cigarette, puffing out smoke in a sigh.
“I’ll ask further then. Why?”
He side eyed her then, like he was gauging the pros and cons of answering her at all, before turning his head to her only the slightest bit. “I’m going to create a world of only jujutsu sorcerers.”
And it’s such an absurd response, made even more so by the fact that he sounds completely matter of fact and serious, that she can’t help the genuine chuckle that falls from her lips. The cigarette slips from her teeth where she’d been about to take another drag, bouncing once on the ground before going still, and it’s almost nice. Shoko hadn’t expected to laugh at all today, hollow or otherwise.
“I don’t get it,” she says, light and honest. There’s no point in trying to say anything but the truth, right now. Shoko’s never had anything to gain by any sort of deception, and now she doesn’t have much to lose either.
“I’m not a child,” Geto replies immediately. And it’s funny, his voice is carefully smooth, but Shoko knows him better than that. Which is why she doesn’t miss the petulance in what he says next, despite the blank calm he’s coated himself with. “I’m not holding out the hope that everyone will understand.”
She’s getting a little tired of this. She’d wanted to drag this moment out a bit, keep her friend at her fingertips for just a little longer, one final smoke with the boy she’d once felt might understand her, at least between the moments he’d spent learning and memorizing every detail about their other friend.
But that Geto was now buried under suffocatingly thick layers of hypocrisy, grief, and guilt for all the wrong things. Shoko could see him, but she had to squint, and the more she did the more distant and blurry he got. The boy in front of her was a deliberate shell, and Shoko…
She just wanted to go home.
There was still one more person Geto owed it to to see though, and Shoko owed it to the both of them to make sure Geto’s stubbornness didn’t get in the way of at least some form of closure. She fished her phone out of her pocket, bumping briefly against Geto’s lighter before pulling away.
“Sulking over the idea that no one will understand you? Seems pretty childish to me though,” she tells him, with more pettiness of her own slipping out than she would have liked. Geto doesn’t deign her with a response, instead turning to eye her as she enters in familiar digits of a number and lifts the phone to her ear. Gojo was usually pretty awful at answering phone calls unless it was from a certain someone, but Shoko had a feeling he’d pick up this time.
“Who are you calling?”
She doesn’t bother answering Geto directly, or even glancing his way. It’s not like he doesn’t already know exactly who it is, and Shoko sees no reason to humor his tendency to avoid certain hard truths surrounding the topic of their best friend when she’s never been one to before. Instead, she simply says, “He’ll want to see you.”
Geto’s shoulders stiffen then, the mask of calm briefly chipped. Gojo’s always been able to do that in a way Shoko never could quite manage. “Maybe I don't want to see him .”
She snorts lightly. “Sure you don’t.”
Gojo picks up on the fourth ring. “Shoko? What–Is he–?”
“Hey, yeah I found him. He’s sulking.” Geto gives her a dirty look at that, and it’s the first thing he’s openly shown on his face other than false impassivity this whole conversation. She ignores him, glancing around for a landmark. “We’re in Shinjuku, by that one KFC you like.”
“Shit–okay– just stay there okay? I’m coming over.” There’s a pause, like he wants to say something more, but Shoko’s met with a dial tone before she can ask.
Ah, that something wouldn’t have been for her then.
There’s a beat of silence, save for the shuffling and background chatter of blended voices from the other people on the street. Geto’s stare is zeroed in on her phone, expression stoney and vaguely pinched, like he’s trying to keep it smooth and failing.
Shoko sighs again, moving to pick up her dropped cigarette from the ground, before thinking better of it. She stamps it out with the heel of her shoe instead.
“You owe him an explanation, Geto. And a better one than the bullshit you just gave me.” Though even as she said it, with one look at Geto’s face she knew a satisfying explanation is far from what Gojo would be getting. Strangely, she feels suddenly sick at the thought.
Geto bristles at that. It’s only for a second before he catches and then composes himself again, but that one second was all Shoko needed to know she’d gotten to him. “It’s not – like I said. I don’t expect to be understood.”
“By him, you mean,” she shot back, because if he was really going to leave them then he didn’t get to skirt around this.
Geto’s expression only soured, mouth set in a thin line. “Especially not by him.”
If there was ever a time in her life before this where she'd felt the need to scream, Shoko didn’t remember it. As far as she knew, this moment was the first.
Shoko wanted to grab Geto by the shoulders and shake him until every layer of his emotional armor cluttered to the ground. She wanted shout at him, tell him that if he wasn’t going to talk to her, really talk to her, then he should at least talk to Gojo because as obtuse and callous as he could be they both knew out of the two of them, and out of anything really, Geto was his favorite.
Or at least, Shoko had thought they both knew that. But how the hell was Gojo supposed to understand if Geto was clearly going to refuse to let him? Let either of them? And yet he was upset that they weren’t.
Shoko wanted to scream.
But she knew better than to try any of that. Instead, she stayed where she was, inches stretching a full chasm away from her friend, and she let the wave of feeling pass, breathing deeply as she did. Allowed a light chuckle to cover the sinking feeling in her gut. “You really are being childish, you know.”
Geto said nothing.
So this was it, then.
Shoko was startled to find that her chest was burning a little; a far cry from the usual gentleness or even quiet twinge of an ache. It was like the warmth of her friends that she kept gently tucked away was turning to acid, and slowly starting to chip away at her lungs.
Huh . So this was actually going to really fucking hurt. Who would’ve thought?
Geto’s cursed energy suddenly pulsed, enough for even her to feel it from her periphery. And glancing up, Shoko saw why.
Gojo’s eyes truly were startling uncovered. Shoko rarely saw them like that; he always had his glasses, or very occasionally, Geto’s hand.
Taller than most of the crowd and topped off with messy white hair, he stuck out like a sore thumb as he looked around frantically, more so than Shoko had ever seen him before. It was off putting, how uncharacteristic it was. He seemed… desperate. It hurt to look at.
Shoko turned her gaze away.
“He must’ve teleported,” she observed without an ounce of feeling in her voice. She didn’t know how else to fill Geto’s silence, anymore.
Shoko felt more than saw the moment Gojo noticed them from across the street. In part due to the weight of his stare, but mostly from the second flare of cursed energy next to her.
Gojo saw them both, but in this moment, Shoko could tell that his eyes were only for Suguru.
It left a slightly bitter taste in the back of her mouth. She swallowed it.
Outwardly, Geto kept himself composed, even though Shoko knew Gojo could definitely see when his energy fluctuated much better than she could. She didn’t know who exactly Geto was trying to fool, they were still his friends after all. Even if he didn’t want them anymore.
Geto squared his shoulders and smoothed out his posture one last time before stepping into the street. Only Shoko knows that he clenched his hands in his pockets; Gojo was probably too far away to notice. The crowd parted around Gojo as he carelessly moved against the flow of traffic to try and meet Geto halfway, but he was just a little too slow, and Geto kept his distance.
With startling clarity, Shoko realized how much she did not want to watch this.
She didn’t want to watch Suguru break Satoru’s heart, and his own in the process. She didn’t want to watch as her two best friends snapped the strenuous red string between them, leaving her dangling aimlessly in the slack.
Geto just walked out of her own life without so much as a goodbye, and Shoko didn’t want to watch him do the same to Gojo. She already knew she was losing Gojo too; she may not know him as well as Geto, but she knew enough to know he wasn’t going to let anyone in again after this. Not that she could even blame him too much.
But she didn’t want to watch it all fall apart. So she turned.
Geto left, and Shoko walked away.
The whole way back, Geto’s lighter rested heavy in her pocket, untouched but not tossed away.
Shoko kept it for the next decade. It never burned again.