A/N
Again this is a series of special chapters or side stories that would better explain the Cursed Aide character's roles, relationships, and events while delving into plot devices that the author could have used in the main story. Please go to my main profile for SI/OC fic.
Special Chapter 1: Emi meets Canon (1)
If someone were to ask her the thing she hated the most, it would be dimensional travel. Way worse than any car, bus or train ride she had ever ridden. It definitely took the cake. Conversely, it didn't happen much, so there was no need to worry. The first time was going a millennium to the future, and the second one was going back to her current timeline.
The third time was when Satoru used his ongoing research about magic circles as a joke—that was five minutes ago.
Now, where exactly was she?
Emi's stomach lurched at the thought of going back home via a black hole. If given a chance, there was no way she would step inside that thing again. However, from what she could see, she might stay in this place for a couple of days or so, hopefully not years. Fortunately, this place looked familiar, and it only took a couple of meters to realize where she was. Around her was the Jujutsu High forest that she would regularly visit in her free time, and if her hunch were correct, past these trees would be the school.
"Did I just get teleported to another place?" Emi flicked away the leaves on her shoulder then tightened the tie on her long hair. She was wearing her usual leggings, hoodie, and combat boots since she was exorcising curses before Satoru blasted her away during their mock fight. The girl needed to find that white-haired teen and beat some sense into him.
The girl confirmed her doubts after seeing the Technical College in the middle of the forest. Treading the usual path she used when going to the dorms, Emi saw the familiar head of white hair from afar. However, there was something amiss from this setup, so her footsteps came to a halt. Satoru stood in his place more guarded than before, and each of his movements came with stiffness that only existed when they were young. It was something they corrected after realizing it could be detrimental in a fight so that that problem couldn't return all of a sudden.
No , where was she?
Emi's mind whirred while thinking of possible places, timelines, dimensions, Satoru's technique possibly brought her. Now that she thought about it, when she used her typical path when going back to Jujutsu High, there were no signs of the piles of leaves she used to cover up the ashes of curse users she recently killed outside the barrier.
"And who are you, hmm?" Someone said behind her, and Emi froze from where she was standing. It was a voice she knew all too well, but for the first time, there was killing intent .
Gojo Satoru recently lost his best friend. No, he was not dead; the idiot decided to massacre a whole town for kicks, so they became enemies. He minded his own business earlier when he felt an unfamiliar presence a few meters away from him. The intruder must be asking for a beating to come right when he was in his worst mood. Although he was a little skeptical about how the hell a curse user entered inside the barrier, he immediately disregarded that thought after remembering his fight with Zenin Toji, who waltzed in and killed the Star Plasma Vessel on their second year.
"And who are you, hmm?" Both of Satoru's hands were in his pockets as he scrutinized the enemy. Disappointment overcame him when he realized there was no maliciousness in its movement.
The person turned around, pushing the hood of her jacket down. "Sorry, I lost my way."
The white-haired teen raised his blindfold with his thumb to look at the girl's appearance because, for some reason, she was releasing little to no cursed energy at all. "Are you a hiker? It's pretty common for hikers to lose their way here." Sometimes, Mount Mushiro was invisible to non-sorcerers, so it made him wonder how she got in here.
The girl was ahead, smaller than him, and was wearing a comfy hoodie with black leggings. A white patch of the scalp on her forehead made the strands of hair that grew from it also turn white. Satoru admitted she was pretty, but not prettier than him— okay, maybe at the same level, whatever.
"I am…homeless." The girl appeared to hesitate as she looked at her surroundings. Her tone was more amused rather than confused at the situation she found herself in. "Can I live here for a short time?"
"Homeless?" Satoru looked at the girl from head to toe, and he saw no signs of her struggling to live outside. "I'm sorry, Miss. This place is a school, and only the students can live here."
"Then how can I be a student here?"
Her question dumbfounded Satoru. Usually, homeless people would either be offered accommodation in Tokyo, but they still had to find their jobs, too, since begging on the streets was more or less illegal. Studying in colleges was a larger hurdle for these people since you needed to pay for your tuition and other school fees.
"By any chance, are you a sorcerer? Have you seen curses or ugly monsters anywhere?" Satoru decided to try his luck. She was exuding some cursed energy at the least, and if he referred her to the recently promoted Principal Yaga, then he might hire her as a window.
The girl seemed to hesitate again. "I know what sorcerers are. I learned from one. But I'm not sure if—"
"You can be considered as one?"
"Yeah," she answered sluggishly as if being interrogated was the last thing on her list. The girl seemed unconcerned that she was in a foreign place with her overly relaxed posture and actions like this was not her first time meeting him. "Sorry, but I haven't slept in a few days. Can I rest here?"
Satoru felt she was too nonchalant for all of this after hearing her words. "I guess so," he replied while contemplating for a few minutes. "By the way, I'm Gojo Satoru. What's yours?"
"Tokunaga Emi."
Somehow they managed to convince Principal Yaga the homeless girl would stay here. In the meantime, he handed her to Shoko, who knew girls more than him. "How is she?"
"She's sleeping." Shoko exhaled a cloud of smoke while they were outside the Jujutsu Premises. Although no one disallowed smoking inside, she preferred a breath of fresh air instead of being cooped inside. "You know, she's pretty nice. She told me where she came from and all that."
"Don't you like her 'cause she's also a smoker?" His teammate was one of the few, if not the only smoker inside the school premises, so there was no doubt she would like her if they were the same.
Shoko coughed mid-puff after being taken aback by his words. "You should really fix how you talk to people. That's why your kouhais are intimidated by you," she advised him after recovering from the shock. "And no, she's no smoker. I know one when I see one."
Tokunaga Emi was a suspicious individual, so he asked Shoko for anything unusual. However, this distrust came from the recent events in his life, so there was a high chance he was overthinking. It might be because he finally accepted that even being the strongest jujutsu sorcerer, he could do nothing about people who did not want to be saved. To think that his friend, who had been the voice of reason between the two, was the one strayed on the wrong path frustrated him.
"I'll check to see if she's still sleeping." Satoru went back inside their dorms and left Shoko, who decided to stay outside. Waving his hand, he sighed while walking through the hallways of the building.
Emi stayed inside one of the free rooms in Jujutsu High. Because there were not many students, the dorms had so many signs of people. It would take a while before another batch of first years would enter their ranks, but their population would stay low even then. At most, there would be three to four new bloods. No one wanted to be a jujutsu sorcerer because of how risky it was, and it was hard to scout unaffiliated ones because of how large Japan was.
The white-haired teen knocked on the door with one hand while he hid the other in his pocket. Every time she needed to talk to Emi, he needed to remove his blindfold so he could see where she was, and this time was not an exception. When no one answered, Satoru opened the door to her assigned dorm room and welcomed himself. He could not hear any signs of breathing and became alarmed. In the end, he needed to scour the place for any signs of the girl, but there was none.
"Where the hell did she go?" Satoru grumbled under his breath, lifting his blindfold once again to check one more time.
Emi, thankfully, figured out how to travel back. Satoru had given her a device earlier that day, and she only needed to insert some cursed energy. If she had only remembered it right when she landed on another alternate universe, then she had been back home earlier.
"Next time you're doing that shit, then I'm not talking to you." The girl gave Satoru, lying on the ground with a glance while she decided to go back to her room because of dizziness.
The white-haired teen who was beaten up one-sidedly sent her an apologetic look. "I didn't know!"
"You did know. You gave me that device earlier to make sure, right?" When he didn't answer right away, Emi kicked him using the heel of her feet once more. "Continue doing that, and you're damn sure I'm not going to come back." Well, maybe after withdrawing some of the money here because there was no damn way she could use the excuse of being homeless again.
The Gojo Satoru in that place was determined to kill her, and there was no way her half-heartedness would win against him if he got serious. But in one way or another, she appreciated how Shoko had given her clothes and a place to sleep, albeit it would be better if she could fix her smoking habits. Emi noticed her lips were darker as compared to her version of Shoko.
A head appeared by the doorway, and both of them had to stop fighting with each other. "Suguru baked some cookies. If you want some, then you can go to the kitchen," Shoko told them then disappeared.
"Ah, it's Saturday night." Satoru suddenly remembered. For some reason, they had the tradition of eating whatever Suguru cooked at the end of the week. Then they would watch a movie or play card games after.
"Tell them I can't go today because I'm too dizzy." Emi let her body fall in his bed; her carefully pinned hair got untied because of its heaviness.
Satoru straightened her legs and covered her with a quilt. "Then it's sleepover night. I'll call Suguru and Shoko so we can watch a movie here."
Emi hummed in agreement while closing her eyes. At the end of the day, she preferred her Satoru to whoever existed in that place. On the other hand, she had not seen or heard anyone mention Suguru, so it made her a little curious. Dismissing it as he was on a mission alone, the girl had fallen asleep without realizing it.