There have been two times in Gojo Satoru's life when he's found himself at the losing end of a battle.

The first was as a third-year student of Jujutsu Tech, when an assassin specialized in sorcerers had managed to overcome his Limitless and buried a knife through his temple.

The second was as a teacher of Jujutsu Tech, when a curse user inhabiting his best friend's dead body had managed to trap him in the unbreakable Prison Realm.

There have been two times in Gojo Satoru's life when he's found himself at the receiving end of a miracle.

The first was as a third-year student of Jujutsu Tech, when he had figured out how to use reverse cursed techniques to heal the aftermath of having a knife buried in his temple.

The second was as a teacher of Jujutsu Tech, when his students managed to free him from the unbreakable Prison Realm where a curse user inhabiting his best friend's dead body had sea—

Satoru blinks and reassesses that last thought.

There are four figures in front of him, fallen onto their butts at the surprise of his return to the world of the living, and staring up at him in wide-eyed disbelief and awe.

… Or maybe not 'wide-eyed' for one and a half of those figures.

Patchface. Baldy. Weed. And a cursed womb that looks like the kind of cursed corpse Principal Yaga would make if he was in the mood for squid.

And all of them are tiny.

"It's a human!" Baldy shouts, pointing up at Satoru while a puff of smoke escapes out of his volcano-shaped head with a high-pitched whine, like a teapot when the water boils.

"Don't humans have two eyes?" Weed questions, tilting his head even as he hides behind his hands, his own branches-for-eyes somehow roaming over Satoru's blindfold.

The squid gurgles, and Baldy jerks with a startled gak! while Patchface grins blindingly up at Satoru, even as he rubs the back of his head like a mischievous kid.

"Yeah, sorry about that, fellow human-like curse! You coming out of the weird box really startled us," Patchface snickers, not looking sorry at all, while Baldy starts steaming in embarrassment.

"Did we wake you from your nap?" Weed asks innocently, no longer hiding behind his hands but still tilting his head in curiosity.

"My… what?" Satoru mutters, trying to process what is going on, and when the quartet turn to something at his back, Satoru follows their gazes—

He doesn't realize he's taken the chibified curses with him when he teleported away from the inert Prison Realm until he hears them squeak in his arms.

"That was so fast!" Baldy exclaims, grinning up at him with a hint of surprise in his wide eye, and Satoru finally realizes what he's done—

And drops them.

Squid gurgles calmly, waving its tentacles almost in excitement. Baldy grumbles, a puff of dark smoke accompanying his pout. Weed recovers from his startled eep! after a second, giggling and helping Squid to its 'feet'. And Patchface cackles loudly, jumping up to face Satoru with a wide grin.

"Again! Do it again!"

But from his new vantage point—away from the Prison Realm that he's very tempted to blow up with his Reverse Technique Red—Satoru finds something more interesting to focus on.

There's a city, past the trees surrounding them, extending to the base of the hill the forest stands on. A city with large buildings, and trains running on elevated rails, but very few skyscrapers, looking nothing like Tokyo. A city made of wood and rock and metal and amber and bone and dirt and curses.

It's as if someone had picked a picture of, say, Sendai, and asked an artist to reimagine it as if it had been taken from Hell.

The buildings twist and bend in ways no human-made structures would, with platforms and branchings and—and pustules, that's the only word Satoru can find for the globe-like protuberances on them. The trains are strangely fleshy, running on thousands of centipede legs, crawling all over and under the bone-like rails. And there are curses flying about, not to take into account the cursed energy that permeates everything so completely that Satoru hadn't even realized it was there in the first place.

"Where am I? What is this place?" he whispers out loud, stepping past the trees and bushes that separate him from the edge of the cliff, so he can see that the city does extend further than he'd first thought.

"It's the Hill of the Last Standing, duh," Baldy scoffs at his back, his voice accompanied by three sets of small footsteps and one slithering trail. "Isn't that why you came here for your nap? Cause no one comes here?"

"We came, Jogo."

"But we knew what we were coming at, Hanami!"

"Yeah, we came for the adventure! And look, we found a new friend, someone else who dares brave the Hill! That counts, doesn't it? So, be nice, Jo-go."

"Sh-shut up, Mahito! He asked a question and I answered. I was being nice. Tch."

Satoru gulps, fighting the urge to pull down his blindfold because he can see well enough that this isn't… this isn't…

Squid gurgles questioningly, and the curses—children?—stop their bickering instantly.

"Oh, well spotted, Dagon!" Patchface exclaims in what should have probably been a quiet voice, but it is Weed the one who approaches Satoru, once more hiding behind a hand almost as if he was… worried?

"Are you alright? Your hands are shaking," he asks Satoru, and he has to take a moment to look down and see that, oh, yes, his hands are indeed shaking.

"Maybe we should get help?" Patchface asks calmly, curious rather than worried, and Baldy sputters with a puff of white smoke.

"Are you crazy?! If anyone knows we came here when it's explicitly forbidden—"

"I think we should… get… Eek!"

Everyone turns to Weed at the shriek, even Satoru—because it sounds like a child in distress, even though it's a miniaturized special grade curse—

And Satoru has to blink again.

Weed is by his side, arms reaching up to his hand, now held stiffly at his side in a white-knuckled fist… but he's pressing uselessly against the Infinity enveloping Satoru, unmoving despite how hard he struggles against it.

"Something has caught him!" Weed shouts, and the other curses rush to him too to try and force their way through the Infinity as well—

Oh. Like kids, scared for their friend.

They look worried, even Patchface, with tears pooling on Squid's huge eyes as its tentacles squeeze nothing, and Baldy shouting threats to whoever thinks this is a funny joke, go get your laughs somewhere else—

"What is that ruckus?"

And Satoru tenses as the shock of the situation finally washes off of him, his hidden eyes immediately focusing on the curse making its way out of the trees.

"Ryoumen Sukuna!"

"Gojo Satoru?!"

But his next thought evaporates as the chibi curses practically jump out of their skins and proceed to stammer over each other in their haste to make themselves heard.

"Sukuna-ou! W-We're sorry, we didn't mean to bother you, we just wanted to see the hill because Mahito is stupid and he was going to get in trouble and—"

"Sukuna-sama, please, please, you have to help us! There's something weird around him, we can't touch him!"

"—and then we found the weird box with a lot of eyes and the only one open closed and he popped out and we thought he was human and—"

"The what box? No, wait, stop, stop. Be quiet for a moment," Sukuna cuts the mini-curses, waving all four of his hands to silence them before he rests one pair on his hips and crosses the other against his chest, one hand rubbing the bridge of his nose for a second before he lets out a huff and looks up again. "Do you know him?" he asks, using that same hand to gesture vaguely towards where Satoru is still standing frozen.

The chibi curses seem to relax when they aren't given any kind of talking to, though Squid is still hiding behind Weed, who fiddles nervously with his fingers, and Baldy keeps sending up tiny puffs of smoke.

"Nope, we just met. He came out of a box we found!" Patchface exclaims with a huge grin, the only one of the gang who seems to have no fear – or who is simply too excited about the chance to retell their adventure.

Squid warbles something unintelligible, peeking from behind Weed, but Sukuna nods as if that made sense, at least one of his four eyes never leaving Satoru's frozen form.

"And then we found the box. And he came out of it, and he was startled and came here, and he didn't know where he was and his hands started shaking—" Weed supplies, his words coming out faster as the fiddling turns to actual shaking, though he seems to catch himself before he could do something terrifying like crying—

It's a curse, not an actual child. Satoru shouldn't even have that muted feeling of worry, drowned by the numbness that seems to have engulfed him despite the Limitless that still buzzes at the edge of his senses, far more aware of it than he's been in years.

"But Hanami couldn't touch him! None of us could! It's like there's a barrier!" Baldy finishes in Weed's place, gesturing wildly, and Satoru can't help it.

He snorts, a hand immediately slapping his lower face to try to keep his hysterical laughter at bay.

Sukuna is staring at him openly now, carefully gesturing for the mini-curses to step away from Satoru's side and closer to him. He does it slowly and calmly, to avoid freaking them out, and after some worried glances—Weed, Squid and Baldy—and a curious one—Patchface, duh—they comply, probably thinking it's for Satoru's good, rather than theirs.

Weed is crushed into nothing between Satoru's Limitless and the wall, weakened after Satoru ripped the trees out of his eyes – and Baldy's panicked attempts to get Satoru away from his companion die with the other curse.

Satoru takes as deep a breath as he can, stilling the trembling that he can feel on the hand still covering his mouth, because they might be curses, special grades, but—

The kid looks too much like his father, and he stares up at Satoru with an uncaring blandness that Satoru is pretty sure a kid shouldn't be able to express. But it isn't until the brat interrupts him as he's trying to tell him how he offed his old man—

"So what? I don't care where he is or what he's doing. I haven't seen him in years. I don't even remember what he looks like. But I got the gist of what you're talking about. Tsumiki's mom hasn't returned in a while either. So that means they are done taking care of us and are living happily together."

The first hint of emotion Satoru sees from him… it's for his step-sister. And Satoru thinks…

He thought he could trust a future forged by that kind of sorcerers. Those who worried more about people than clans, than tradition. And now…

Sukuna is slightly taller than Yuuji, more broad-shouldered and overall muscled, with his hair a shade brighter and a tad longer. His jaw is more squared than Yuuji's, and his ears are pierced and elongated. He could almost pass as an older Yuuji… but Satoru has the Six Eyes.

That is not Sukuna in Yuuji's body, older or not. The chibi curses were scared of humans, the way human children are scared of ghosts. And that city now at Satoru's back… That city is…

"It's a city of curses, isn't it?" he asks the air when he manages to wrangle down his crazed laughter, leaving an acidic taste behind, though his sharp and mirthless grin is still on his face when he lowers his hand. "Long established, well lived. A city of curses, for curses and only curses."

"It is," Sukuna answers calmly, straightening and observing Satoru in silence as he tries to put his next question together.

"How long…?"

"One thousand years."

Satoru takes a deep and slow breath.

"Looks like time doesn't pass here," he'd said to himself, reclining on nothing as the blackened skeletons inside the Prison Realm tried to grasp him past the Infinity separating them. "Crap. I messed up. This could be trouble," he'd added, because he knew the stories about the Prison Realm, and once sealed in it, he knew there was no way he could get himself out – and then he'd grinned. "Whatever. It'll be fine. I have faith in everyone."

And then he'd blinked and he was back on his feet, the sun shining overhead and the trees dancing in the breeze as four small shapes fell on their butts with startled cries. But they weren't the shapes he'd expected, those he wanted, not even those he didn't want, they were—

"One thousand years."

"What happened?" Satoru asks, almost surprised when he realizes his mad grin is gone and his voice has gone soft.

Sukuna narrows his eyes, all four of them, and turns to the mini-curses instead.

"Go home, kids. This is no place for some bratty curses."

"But Sukuna-sama!"

"We found the box, he's our friend now!"

"Is he going to be alright, Sukuna-ou?"

"I'll take care of things. You go now, and let me work," Sukuna tells them, his voice and a single hand gesturing at them to shoo not leaving the chibi curses any chance to protest.

… They still do, though. They whine and pout, but in the end, when Sukuna's half-lidded no-nonsense gaze doesn't change at all, they obey and rush back into the trees—

"Bye, Mister Box Nap! We'll visit tomorrow!"

"We can't just 'visit' the Hill of the Last Standing, Mahito, do you want to get us exorcised?!"

"And you shouldn't call him Mister Box Nap, it's rude."

"It isn't like he gave us a – oh, Mister Eyebox does sound better, Dagon! Great idea!"

"It sounds weird, but I guess…"

"Jogo, don't be silly. Sukuna-ou called him—"

"Gojo," Sukuna calls, startling him out of the fading voices of the chibi curses, and despite never turning away fully from him, Satoru focuses back on Sukuna. "You just came out of the Prison Realm, didn't you?"

"A bit obvious, isn't it?" he manages to retort, sketching a grin that is nowhere close to his usual ones.

Sukuna notices, if his lifted eyebrow is any clue, but he doesn't point it out.

Satoru sobers, and pockets his hands to hide the way they've started to shake again.

"How can it have been a thousand years?"

Sukuna sighs – and moves away, gesturing with one hand to follow before he hides that pair in the sleeves of his yukata, the other pushing away branches.

After a second of uncharacteristic hesitation, Satoru obeys.

They don't speak on their way to a small old style—old human style—house in a clearing by yet another cliff, and Sukuna leaves the door open for Satoru as he walks inside without a second thought.

It… reminds Satoru of the old Gojo estate, with its tatami floors, paper doors, the smell of tea and wood smoke clinging to everything, and the bizarre paintings hanging off the walls, of curses and sorcerers forever entangled in battle. He pushes the thought away, and focuses on the images depicted on them while Sukuna searches the cabinets of the kitchen.

There's a sorcerer using the Ten Shadows Technique. Another wielding a cursed sword. A third firing off bloody arrows. There's another depicted as if roaring, the Snake and Fangs on their mouth, while a bizarre black and white beast guards their back.

There's Sukuna, standing tall and four-eyed and four-armed, atop a pile of human corpses, while a smaller two-armed and two-eyed copy of him lays at the very bottom.

"That one is greatly exaggerated," Sukuna drawls as he walks into the room, glaring disdainfully at the painting depicting his rise and Yuuji's fall, and carrying a couple ceramic teacups in one of his hands, a small golden jar and a couple spoons in a second, a table pad of woven reed in a third, and a steaming teapot in a bare fourth. "Care for some tea?" he asks calmly, as if he wasn't the King of Curses and Satoru wasn't the Strongest Sorcerer.

Though then again, he's not sure if that title is valid anymore in this—

Satoru shoves the thought away before it can take form and takes a seat at the living room table, on the cushion across from Sukuna.

The tea looks alright, good old trustworthy chamomile, according to smell, and Sukuna even brought a jar of honey to go with it.

Satoru accepts the offer, stirring a generous spoonful of honey into his cup, but lets it sit.

Sukuna is the King of Curses and Deadly Poisons, after all. So, Satoru will enjoy the stirring, the familiar gesture, and the warmth of the ceramic in his hands, but that's it.

Sukuna snorts, clearly aware of Satoru's thoughts, but takes a sip of his tea without bothering to comment.

"I guess you've already figured it out. What happened after the Shibuya Incident," he starts after almost a minute of silence, and while there's no outward sign to indicate thus, Satoru looks away from his tea to meet Sukuna's eyes—one pair of them, that is—from behind his blindfold.

"We lost. The fake Geto got what he wanted, and humanity was exterminated."

"Not really, but not entirely wrong either," Sukuna hums with a one-armed shrug, gesturing lazily with one hand towards the walls, while the others stir a dollop of honey into his own tea. "He sealed you and ran away with the Prison Realm, true, but it took a while to get to the next step. Jogo and Mahito made a big mess of the sorcerers' ranks in Shibuya, before the brat and I got them. And it only went downhill from there. They tried to find a way to set you free, but Tengen had messed it up along the way, and you got rid of any tools they could have used to set you free. So, in the end, it was a futile effort. Impressive, but futile," Sukuna explains, as calm as before, his voice a drawl that is almost completely detached from the events he's describing.

Satoru can only stare at the walls, at the paintings, and try to figure out what is 'greatly exaggerated' and what is truth. His hands are shaking again, so he peels them away from the teacup and grabs onto his trousers instead, keeping them out of Sukuna's line of sight.

"Kenjaku's plans didn't come to be, though not for lack of trying. He pissed me off, so he died. Permanently, this time. I even incinerated your buddy's corpse, so you're welcome," Sukuna continues after finishing his tea and refilling his cup, stirring some more honey in it with a lazy yet sharp grin curling on his face when Satoru focuses back on him. "But lo and behold, we still got a world of curses. And that wasn't even Kenjaku's plan. No, for that, you have no one to blame but the humans."

"How? Why?" Satoru asks, frowning softly – and confusingly enough, Sukuna's grin vanishes.

"Fear. Hatred. Japan started going crazy after the Shibuya Incident, and not only in the jujutsu world. The war against Kenjaku was too big to hide, and the rest of the world saw it all. And they feared. They cut off from Japan and started warring amongst each other. Who had been involved in the war zone that was Japan? Who had stuck their greedy little fingers in it? Who was going to be hit next? Tengen put a barrier over mainland Japan and closed it, flooded it with cursed energy, to keep the curses and the death in the country. But really, it was too late. And in the end, all it did was keep the humans out," Sukuna continues, and the finality of that last word and the seriousness in his four eyes makes Satoru stiffen. "What was meant to protect the world from us ended up protecting us from the world. There was something big, something messy – Hell if I know what, between my lack of knowledge of that world and the mess the brat was dealing with. But when I got a chance to peek out of the barrier after Tengen ascended, about four hundred years later… Well. There was no use calling them 'humans' anymore, really. I doubt it has got any better."

"A thousand years later," Satoru finishes for Sukuna, not a question yet not truly a statement – not yet, not until his brain is done processing the shock of everything.

"One thousand years later," Sukuna confirms, nodding again, and finishes his second cup of tea.

Satoru's has long since gone cold, though he doesn't know when that happened. Really, losing time seems to have become a theme in his life, hasn't it? Maybe those few minutes lost here and there, sometimes on purpose, others without meaning to, were more valuable than he ever gave them credit for.

A few minutes to see his students grow stronger. A few minutes to annoy Nanami and Utahime one more time. A few minutes to sit through another of Principal Yaga's lectures.

A few minutes to laugh with Shoko and Suguru for the last time.

King of Deadly Poisons or not, Satoru grabs the cold chamomile tea and downs it in three large gulps. Sukuna lifts an eyebrow, impressed, and mutely offers the still steaming teapot.

Satoru takes a deep breath and extends his cup. Another of Sukuna's hands pushes the honey close again, and if Satoru's hands shake when he picks the jar up, neither bothers to point it out.

There's no way he could get drunk on chamomile tea, if that's all it is, but Satoru still finds his tongue loosening up after a couple more sips.

"So, no more humans. No more human world. Only curses and their world. How does that even work? Curses are born of human emotions. How can there be curses without humans?" he asks, tilting his head up the slightest bit to see Sukuna shrug.

"Beats me. Maybe it's the lingering fear and resentment in the ground. Or maybe Tengen's barrier is bouncing it back like some kind of feedback loop where curses are born when other curses die. I don't know, and I haven't thought about it too much, honestly. It is what it is, and it works. That's all I care about."

"Maybe there's something beyond the barrier," Satoru suggests, and Sukuna's eyes are sharp but not dismissing when he looks up.

"Maybe humans were only ever a measly conduit for something bigger."

Satoru bows his head, accepting the point, and sees Sukuna turn away in his own show of acceptance.

The cup is empty once more, the setting sun casting dancing shadows on the dregs at its bottom. Satoru opens his mouth again.

"What happens now?"

"Depends. The tea wasn't poisoned, so if that's what you wanted, find someplace I won't have to deal with the stench of decomposing human flesh," Sukuna answers, charming as usual, but his scowl is replaced by seriousness when he turns to Satoru once more. "Or you can go into the colony. Do some sightseeing. Try our food. Maybe it'll kill you, maybe it won't. But at least you'll die trying something."

Satoru snorts.

"You almost sound like Yuuji."

"I will kill you."

"And just like Yuuji, you have a point. But first, there's something I have to do."

The sky is dark and starry, unbothered by the soft lights of the city extending at his feet, when Satoru reaches the highest point of the hill—more like a small mountain, really. Sukuna lifts an eyebrow, curious, but keeps his arms folded in front of him, hands hidden in the sleeves of his yukata.

Satoru turns the Prison Realm in his hand a couple times, before he grasps it tighter – and throws it straight up with as much strength as he can.

The Prison Realm goes higher and higher, and Satoru amasses his cursed energy.

The Prison Realm reaches its highest point.

The world turns red.

And the sky lights up with unnatural lightning, an aurora erupting when Satoru's technique reaches high enough and Tengen's barrier collapses.

Sukuna whistles, impressed.

"If that was the only thing keeping the curses alive, you've just committed genocide," Sukuna muses out loud as the aurora spreads farther, but no less bright.

Satoru grins.

"Well, no one knows for sure, do they? Besides, if it wasn't, I've just opened up a whole new world of possibility."

"Is it really a worthy exchange?"

"Why don't we go out there and find out?"


JUJU STROLL!

"Mister Eyebox! We brought food!"

And with that announcement, Satoru finds himself sitting on a picnic blanket, surrounded by four excited chibi special grade curses – and with a lot of weird things that don't look anything like food in front of him.

"Eeh… Are you sure that's edible?" he wants to ask, but curses or not, the starry-eyed stares and wide grins of the quartet in front of him are too child-like to ignore.

"Aaaaalright… I like sweets. What would you recommend?" he asks instead, trying for a cheerful grin that, judging by the heartfelt discussion that follows his words, turns out alright.

Sukuna, until then leaning relaxed against a tree with a sharply amused grin on his face, approaches with curiosity, studying the 'food' the mini-curses laid out on the blanket.

"This one!" Patchface—Mahito announces at last, cheerfully holding up an eyeball, nerve still attached, up to Satoru.

… Satoru could swear the pupil actually dilates as it bounces away from the sun.

But the chibis look so excited… and this is a world of curses, after all. So, Satoru takes a deep breath and reaches for the most-definitely-not-an-eyeball-regardless-of-its-appearance treat—

And Sukuna plucks it right out of Mahito's chopsticks and plops it into his mouth.

The mini-curses stare, lower jaws on the metaphorical floor at the surprise. Satoru blinks behind his blindfold, startled, and pushes down the feeling of gratefulness that tries to bubble out of his chest.

"No, definitely not that one. It has some cyanide in it," Sukuna announces after some thoughtful chewing and swallowing Satoru's stolen treat, and gestures for more with one of his hands. "Give me another. We wouldn't want to poison Mister Eyebox, now, would we?"

… Bastard.

But he does still sample every single foodstuff the chibis brought, discarding some and plating others as he does, sitting on the blanket by Satoru's side now. Before long, he pushes away the latest treat—a bowl of worm-like things that are wriggling—and gives Satoru a nod towards the small plate now in front of him.

Stomach gurgling impatiently, Satoru grabs his chopsticks with a sincere excited grin, claps his hands together—ittadakimasu!—and digs in, ignoring the apparent bark-like look of his treat—

And freezes as its flavor explodes in his mouth, a strong shudder racking his body as his eyes close tightly behind his blindfold.

"I made that! Do you like it?" Weed—Hanami asks excitedly, and Satoru can almost see the way he bounces, hands clasped in front of his face in glee, despite the fact his eyes are still closed.

"It's… very sour."

Sukuna snorts, his glee nowhere as innocent as Hanami's, and Satoru deflates with a whine.

"It doesn't matter what era it is… You guys are always a pain!"


AN: Remember that comment Kenjaku made? The "see you in, oh, one thousand years"?

Yeah. That.

Also, this is the first installment of a series (Curse Adventure, will be abbreviated as 'CA' in the summary) because this one-shot inspired a lot of other 'short stories' in the same universe. It's trying to grow a plot. It hasn't succeeded so far, but there are more 'slice of life' ficlets, so series it is.