[The air in Jujutsu High's infirmary never lost that stubborn cocktail of antiseptic and bitter medicine.]
[You'd proven it to both Yaga and Shoko more than once: the Reverse Cursed Technique had closed the wound through your abdomen completely. Nothing remained but a patch of new skin, still pale and tender. You were fine. They kept you pinned to the bed anyway.]
[Perhaps, in their eyes, what needed mending wasn't flesh alone. It was the heart a close friend had torn apart with his own hands.]
[You didn't fight it. During those dead-quiet days of recovery, you asked Yaga for pen and paper, propped yourself against the headboard, and began writing an exceptionally detailed mission report.]
[Pen scratched across the page. Your mind worked like a precision instrument, coolly excising and reshaping certain details.]
[The situation had already collapsed to its worst possible state. You would not give those rotten mandarins in the higher-ups an excuse to drag in the Assistant Manager who'd evacuated on your orders, or anyone else caught in the blast radius.]
[You were using cold bureaucratic language to stitch the last seams on a world that had already come apart.]
[Partway through, Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami returned from a mission and came straight to your bedside without stopping to change.]
[The moment Haibara pushed open the door, every trace of sunshine drained from his face. The boy who was always loud, always brimming with blind admiration for his upperclassmen, stood at the edge of your bed with red-rimmed eyes full of raw confusion, shock, and grief so plain it hurt to look at.]
[His lips moved. Nothing came out.]
[But it was Nanami, standing quietly behind him, who cut you deepest.]
[He didn't greet you the way he normally would, precise and polite. He stared at the bandages wrapped around your body, and on that face far too young for the expression it wore, emotions tangled into something suffocating.]
[Helplessness. Exhaustion. A numbness that went bone-deep. And beneath it all, a revulsion toward this cesspit called the jujutsu world that seeped from somewhere in his soul.]
[He looked at you the way someone looks at the last drop of value wrung from a meat grinder. You didn't need him to speak. His dead eyes said it all.]
[Even someone like Hayase and someone like Geto end up like this... what are we killing ourselves for?]
[While you lay trapped in that bed, the gears outside had already slipped past the point of no return.]
[You pieced the full picture together later, from fragments told by Shoko, Yaga, and Gojo, each account colored by its teller's own grief.]
[After that night, Geto surfaced once more.]
[It happened on the busy streets of Shinjuku. An overcast afternoon. Shoko stood in a crowded smoking area, cigarette between her lips, irritated to discover she'd forgotten her lighter.]
[While she rummaged through her pockets with a frown, a figure in plain black clothes drifted into her line of sight without a sound.]
[No flaring bloodlust. No madman's mania. Geto stood there the way he always had, dark hair half-tied and shifting in the breeze.]
[He looked at her, and his smile was the same one he'd worn every morning for the past three years. Warm and easy. He gave a small wave.]
["Hey. Long time no see."]
[The fingers holding her cigarette locked up. Nobody runs into a Special Grade Curse User fresh off a village massacre with an execution order on his head and stays calm.]
[But Shoko was Shoko. The hesitation lasted a fraction of a second before she buried it, pulling on that familiar lazy drawl edged with mockery.]
["Well, if it isn't the criminal who put Hayase in a hospital bed. What brings you here? Don't tell me you're going to kill me too."]
[The instant she said your name, the hand reaching for his lighter stopped.]
[A pause he couldn't disguise. Heavy. Blunt with pain.]
[Then he leaned in, and with a soft click, a blue flame hovered before the tip of her cigarette.]
[Under cover of the gesture, his eyes dropped and a bitter half-smile crossed his face.]
["What happened with Hayase... there was no other way. If you could, pass along an apology for me."]
[Shoko inhaled hard. Harsh smoke filled her lungs, churned, and left her lips in a thin stream. She cut through that thread of weakness without mercy.]
["Not a chance. You want to apologize, drag yourself to him and say it to his face."]
[Geto only gave a faint smile, gaze drifting to nothing, murmuring half to himself.]
["I see... well, I suppose that's not an option either."]
[Because he understood. The next time he and you met, it would be a fight to the death. There would be no room left for words like these.]
["So what are you doing here?"]
[Shoko watched him, guarded.]
["Let's say... I was trying my luck."]
[A vague non-answer. She took another drag, and her voice turned cold and sharp as a scalpel.]
["Then let me ask. Were you framed?"]
["Unfortunately, no."]
[Geto paused. Unbidden, the memory surged back: the moment his attack tore through your abdomen, the scalding heat of your blood splattering across the back of his hand. His eyes closed briefly.]
["To wound Hayase badly enough when he has the Reverse Cursed Technique... it takes nothing less than a Special Grade."]
["One more question, then."]
[Shoko's gaze bored into his.]
["Why?"]
[He didn't deflect. He looked out at the Shinjuku crowds, those oblivious, teeming masses of ordinary people, and spoke as though stating a law of nature.]
["I'm going to create a world of sorcerers. Only sorcerers."]
[Shoko hadn't been part of that conversation with Yuki Tsukumo. To her, Geto sounded like a man possessed.]
[One hand slipped into her pocket, thumb blindly scrolling for Gojo's number, while her lip curled into a sneer.]
["What kind of nonsense is that? Hayase's a sorcerer too, and you nearly killed him."]
[Geto wasn't looking at her. The words seemed directed at Shoko, at the absent you, at himself, all at once.]
["I'm not a child anymore. And I never expected... everyone to understand."]
[Behind that sentence, the image surfacing in his mind was yours. Drenched in rain and blood on that final night, clinging to him with the last breath in your body, screaming at him to hold on a little longer.]
[If anyone in this world could see straight through to the core of his pain, Geto believed it was you. And that was precisely why your refusal to stand with him cut the deepest.]
[He believed in the future you described. He believed that with your ability, you could change this rotting jujutsu world someday.]
[But "someday" was too far away. The taste he swallowed each time he consumed a Cursed Spirit, that flavor of a rag dragged through vomit, had eaten his soul hollow. He couldn't wait for the tomorrow you'd promised.]
[The faint buzz of a connecting call vibrated in Shoko's pocket. She watched him, ice in her eyes.]
["Though if you ask me, wallowing in self-destruction because nobody understands you... that's pretty childish too. Hey, Gojo? I'm looking at Geto right now. Yeah, Shinjuku."]
[She said it right to his face, then hung up.]
["I'm not about to stop him myself. I'd rather not die today."]
[Geto looked at her. Made no move to interfere. He turned and dissolved into the sea of strangers.]
[He didn't get far. In the dense, ant-colony press of Shinjuku foot traffic, his steps halted.]
[Because standing directly ahead, still in his Jujutsu High uniform, towering above the crowd and radiating a pressure that made the air tremble, was the white-haired boy.]
[Behind those dark lenses, the pale eyes of the heavens locked onto Geto with a fury that froze the blood. When Gojo spoke, his voice carried the weight of restrained thunder.]
["Explain yourself, Suguru."]
[Same mild expression. Not a ripple.]
["Shoko must have filled you in already. It's like she said."]
[A vein pulsed at Gojo's temple. The casual dismissal was something he could not, would not accept.]
["So you're going to kill everyone who isn't a sorcerer?! Your own parents weren't off-limits?! And what about Hayase! He's a sorcerer, isn't he?! Were you going to kill him too?!"]
["If Hayase didn't go down first, I could never have taken this step. He was the biggest obstacle."]
[Not a degree of warmth in that voice.]
["As for my parents... I can't give them special treatment over everyone else, can I? Besides, my family isn't those two people anymore."]
[Gojo stood frozen. He had never imagined words this cold, this stripped of humanity, coming from the mouth of the boy who had once been the gentlest among them, the one who spoke loudest about justice.]
["That's not what I'm talking about!! You used to be the one who hated pointless killing more than anyone!"]
["This isn't pointless."]
[Something flickered in Geto's eyes. A zealot's light, almost divine.]
["This is justice."]
["Like hell it is!!!"]
[Gojo lost all composure, shouting in the middle of a bustling intersection.]
["Wipe out every non-sorcerer and build a world for sorcerers alone?! How could that ever work! Chasing something you know is impossible, clinging to it out of sheer spite... that's what 'pointless' means!! You're running away!!"]
["..."]
[Against that outburst, Geto showed no anger. Only a detached, lofty pity, looking down from somewhere far above.]
[He watched Gojo struggle, and spoke the words like a curse laid gently on a grave.]
["You're awfully arrogant, Satoru."]
["If it were you, you could do it, couldn't you? Calling something impossible when you could pull it off yourself?"]
[His head tilted slightly. The look in his eyes pierced straight through Gojo's soul.]
["Are you the strongest because you're Satoru Gojo? Or... are you Satoru Gojo because you're the strongest?"]