The infirmary at Jujutsu High had always been a place of sterile, quiet order, a sanctuary from the chaos of their world. Tonight, it was a tomb. The air was thick with the ghosts of unspoken words and the heavy silence of shattered bonds. Shoko had patched Geto's physical wounds with practiced efficiency, her movements a desperate attempt to impose normalcy on a situation that was anything but. I sat on the edge of a cot, wrapped in a thick blanket, a cup of warm milk held tight in my hands. The warmth did little to chase away the soul-deep chill left by my brief journey into death.
My body was whole, my new mastery over the basics of Reverse Cursed Technique a humming, living thing beneath my skin. But I felt fragile, like a piece of pottery that had been broken and glued back together. The cracks were still there, invisible but deeply felt.
Geto sat in a chair opposite me, staring at the floor. He hadn't said a word since we'd arrived. He was a statue of grief, his shoulders slumped under an invisible weight. He had witnessed Satoru's death, my own, and then Riko's murder, all while being powerless to stop it. He had failed on every conceivable level, and the self-recrimination was radiating from him in palpable waves.
Then, Satoru returned.
He didn't use the door. One moment, the space at the center of the room was empty; the next, he was simply there. He hadn't bothered to clean himself up. He was still caked in his own dried blood, a gruesome mockery of the pristine, unharmed body beneath. His presence instantly changed the atmosphere in the room, charging it with a high-voltage, manic energy.
Shoko jumped, dropping a roll of bandages. Geto's head snapped up, his hollow eyes fixing on his best friend.
"Toji Fushiguro," Satoru announced, his voice calm and light, as if commenting on the weather. "He's gone. I killed him."
There was no triumph in his voice. No satisfaction. It was a simple, clinical statement of fact, delivered with the emotional detachment of a god reporting a statistical anomaly. The old Satoru would have been crowing, boasting, demanding praise for his victory. This new Satoru simply stated the outcome, as if his victory was a foregone conclusion, a law of nature he had just finished enforcing.
"You…" Geto's voice was a rough, broken whisper. "How?"
Satoru's lips pulled into that new, unsettling smile—the one that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I told you. I figured it out. The core of it all." He glanced down at his own hands, flexing his fingers as if reacquainting himself with them. "He was strong. Probably the second strongest guy I've ever met."
The unspoken implication hung in the air between them: I am, and always will be, the first.
"You should be resting," Shoko said, her voice sharp as she regained her composure. She stepped forward, her medical instincts overriding her shock. "Let me check you over. What you both did… it's unprecedented. We don't know what the long-term effects are."
Satoru waved her off, his attention shifting fully to me. He crossed the room and crouched down in front of my cot, his brilliant blue eyes, now holding a terrifying clarity, scanning me from head to toe. It wasn't a gentle, concerned look. It was the intense, analytical gaze of a scientist studying a fellow specimen. A fellow miracle. He was cataloging my recovery, comparing it to his own, trying to understand the event that had proven his own fallibility.
"How are you feeling, Aki?" he asked.
The question was simple, but the weight behind it was immense. He was asking about my health, my power, my resurrection. He was asking about the failure he had allowed to happen.
"Tired," I answered honestly, my voice small. I shrank back slightly under his gaze. This Satoru scared me. The old Satoru was a chaotic force of nature, an arrogant but ultimately warm presence. This new Satoru felt like the sky itself—vast, powerful, beautiful, and utterly, inhumanly distant.
My shrinking back did not go unnoticed. A flicker of something—guilt, frustration?—crossed his face before being smoothed over by that placid, god-like calm. He had failed to protect me. His solution wasn't to be a better brother, but to become an entity so powerful that protection became a moot point. He would become the wall around us all, and walls are, by their nature, cold and hard.
It was Geto who finally broke the tense silence. His voice was raw with a pain that went far beyond his physical injuries.
"Satoru," he began, his gaze on the floor. "I have a question for you." He looked up, and for the first time, I saw the true depth of the chasm that had opened within him. "Riko Amanai… when they were applauding her, the followers of the Star Religious Association… for a moment, I didn't know who was right and who was wrong. And I saw her body, and I felt… nothing. No anger. No sadness. I just thought, 'Ah, so that's that.'" He took a shaky breath. "Tell me. These non-sorcerers… the ones who leak the Cursed Energy that creates the very monsters we fight… the ones we just protected at the cost of her life, and almost our own… Are they worth it?"
It was the question that would define the rest of his life. He was looking at Satoru, his best friend, his other half, desperate for an answer that would make the horror of the last day make sense.
Satoru was quiet for a long moment. He stood up, turning away from me to look out the infirmary window at the moon.
"Does it matter?" Satoru asked, his voice soft. He looked at Geto, a genuine, philosophical curiosity in his eyes. "Are you 'the strongest' because you're Geto Suguru? Or are you Geto Suguru because you're 'the strongest'? If I, Gojo Satoru, hadn't been the strongest, would I have been me? Or would I have been one of the corpses at our feet?"
He was wrestling with his own identity, his own near-death experience. He had been proven mortal, and his response was to shed the parts of him that were.
"I don't know the answer, Suguru," he admitted. "But I've decided it doesn't matter anymore. Trying to save every last person… it's a pain. It's impossible. From now on, I'm going to be strong enough that the people I want to protect… are simply never in danger in the first place."
It was a declaration of supreme, selfish power. A promise to protect not the world, but his world. And in that moment, Geto knew he wasn't included inside that wall. Satoru had found his own answer, and it was one Geto could not accept.
Geto's expression hardened. A quiet, resolute despair settled over him. "I see," he said, his voice flat. "I've made my choice, too. About what I find disgusting in this world."
The line was drawn. The words were a quiet goodbye, the sound of a friendship breaking under a weight it was never meant to bear.
I couldn't stand it. This was the moment. The beginning of the end. On pure instinct, I slid off the cot, my legs still shaky. I walked over and stood between them, a tiny, six-year-old child caught between two diverging gods. I reached out my small hands and took one of each of theirs.
Satoru's hand was warm, thrumming with the boundless positive energy he now commanded. He looked down at me, startled, his god-like composure momentarily broken by the simple, human contact.
Geto's hand was cold. He squeezed mine back, a desperate, anchoring grip. He looked down at me, and his hollow eyes held a flicker of something pained and protective. In his fractured worldview, I was perhaps the one exception—a sorcerer with immense potential, an innocent worth saving.
For a moment, the three of us stood there, connected. A broken trinity. But the bridge I had tried to form was made of glass, destined to shatter.
The door to the infirmary slid open and Yaga-sensei stood there. He took in the scene at a glance—Satoru, bloody but whole and radiating a terrifying new power; Geto, physically healing but spiritually broken; and me, standing between them, a living, breathing miracle. His weary face seemed to age another ten years. He knew, without a single word being spoken, that he had lost his problem children forever.
Later, Shoko tucked me into my bed. Satoru had gone, disappearing to who-knows-where, needing to be alone with his newfound divinity. Geto had retreated into a shell of silence.
I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, the events of the day replaying in my mind. Riko's smile. Toji's dead eyes. The cold of the spear. The spark of warmth. The broken look on Geto's face.
My System, for the first time since the ordeal began, pinged with a final, somber notification.
[Canon Event Completed: The Star Plasma Vessel Escort]
[Primary Objective: Survive the next 72 hours. - SUCCESS]
[Secondary Objective: Ensure the survival of Riko Amanai. - CATASTROPHIC FAILURE]
[Tertiary Objective: ??? - UNKNOWN]
[CONSEQUENCE OF FAILURE: A new world state has been established. Calculating divergence from original timeline... Divergence minimal... for now.]
[The path of 'Geto Suguru' has been irrevocably altered.]
[The path of 'Gojo Satoru' has been irrevocably altered.]
[Your path is now your own.]
I closed my eyes. I had survived. I had even gained a power beyond my wildest dreams. But I had failed. And in doing so, I had not prevented the tragedy; I had merely become a part of it. The future I had known was no longer a story I was watching. It was a nightmare I was living, and the worst was yet to come.