Mio's stomach was rumbling, she had not long woken up and was remembering something Geto-sama had told her about Satoru's classes being mostly in the afternoons. Her sleep cycle was fairly regular, but she couldn't assume that it was morning just because she had just woken up. Mio knew she was underground, so the chances of hearing anything like birdsong as an indicator were next to none, and that fucking Sorcerer still hadn't taken off that damn blindfold. Bastard.

She thought about the mission, and how really.. It was quite unlikely that she would have succeeded. She had been training and working with Geto-sama for nearly 7 years, after leaving her family. Mio hadn't spoken to any of them since the day before she left. They were having a meal, something similar or bland or some form of off-putting that her sad mother always made, hoping that one day Mio would have enough energy to pretend to like it. Mio suspected her mother used those modern pesticides from the new market in town on all her cabbages and tomatoes, that she used them too much, and that she didn't wash her vegetables properly before serving them to her family. Disgusting, Mio thought to herself, she literally poisoned her own family.

Her father had been out all day that day, too, and Mio knew he had been at a meeting with the school's representatives and the Zenin clan to discuss the next missions the Saotomi would need to go on to gather resources. There had been rumours of Unclassified special grade curses popping up out of nowhere, and the Jujutsu Tech seniors were concerned about having enough stock to send our reinforcements should anything happen. He was staring into his plate in much the same manner as Mio, who he barely spoke to on his good days anyway. Mio knew how her father felt about her, she was a burden. She wasn't strong or experienced enough, she would hold them back, or worse get herself killed. She knew her father was trying to keep her safe, but he could have trained her..

But he didn't..

Because I'm a fucking girl..

After sitting in silence for that final hour or so of the day, Mio left for her bedroom and quietly packed a bag. Her blood was boiling, after years of feeling like a useless decoration in the house, and that being her parents choice. That they fucking expected her to be okay with feeling useless... And she knew how going to those meetings made her father feel, he knew what the college and the Zenin thought of the Saotomi. They were the odd-jobbers, the ones beneath them. They just provided the bare minimum in the eyes of the college, even though members of her family had been lost to curses and rogue jujutsu sorcerers alike. Mio felt deeply in her heart that the disrespect her family had received was completely unjustified, and dishonourable. She had tried to let it go, but she couldn't. The more the college shunned her father, the more her father shunned her, for not being able to carry on his legacy. She used to ask to train when she was younger, but Mio soon learned that it was a futile fight against a rigid system, where the odds where stacked against her.

She tiptoed out onto the outdoor veranda, part of her wanted them to know she was leaving, to make a big spectacle. But she knew that it wouldn't be worth it, alongside the reduction in her chances of actually getting away and the scorn of her runt father. Silly really, Mio thought to herself softly, considering the situation she felt the most at peace she had felt in years, that I would end up leaving like this..

As if he knew that she was coming, there he stood, a tall stranger at the end of her pathway. Her feet were looking down at the floor as she was walking, which was usual for Mio, usually she would be much more alert. When she reached the end of the wooden walkway outside her home... What was once her home... And looked up at the figure that was stood in the dim light of the evening floor lanterns that lead the way up the path away from her house. He was looking at her, too. The first thing she noticed was his long hair, flowing down over his shoulders onto a broad and long kimono, in a style that she had only seen in the paintings in her home, her fucking once home. She glanced him quickly up and down, knowing he was there for her, only not knowing why. Mio wasn't afraid of the looming stranger, rather instantly intrigued by his sudden arrival at precisely when she had finally had enough of the Sorcerers who held her family down for decades. Mio noticed a small smile creeping into the edge of the mans lips, inviting her over.

She couldn't deny that there was something effervescent about his presence. Something dangerous, and exciting. Something Mio knew her father would be enraged by, if she so much as imagined any involvement with such a precarious, and suspicious looking individual. Mio decided to walk over, not bothering to quiet her footsteps on the gravel stone path leading away from her house... Normally the dogs would bark, but tonight for some reason they stayed silent... And this unlikely coincidence made her ever more intrigued as she slowly paced up to the man in front of her, once again looking him up and down, her scrutiny on full display. She put on a soft smile, and looked up gingerly at the man in front of her.

"And who might you be?"

Mio wanted him to think that she was weak, something in her memory flared about how her mother had once told her that her power in any kind of conflict situation would be her charm. But really nothing fucking else... Not even my fucking intelligence, only my wiles. This fucking shit again... Mio let her expression darken into one of doubt and cynicism, which appeared to only make the gentleman smile more.

"Does that really matter? You were leaving anyway, and you evidently don't want to be here.."

His voice filled up Mio's ears like the smell of fresh bread, like the burning sun... No, like a fire behind the furnace, raging, but contained. This man was powerful, Mio knew that much, and she wanted to know who he was and why he was there, but at that point she was so fucking done with being where she was that she didn't fucking care if this guy killed her, at least that puts her out of her misery.

"You don't really want to die, do you?"

She had already dishonoured her family in their eyes by even attempting to leave, the stranger had total control over the method of her death in that moment, the choice between total disgrace in the face of her entire family, or to simply end her there and then... Or even better... Kill her whole family too... Mio smiled deeply at the thought, and any concern or misgivings she had for this man simply melted away. She took two more steps forwards, slowly, and looked directly up into the man's dark eyes, they weren't murderous, not in that moment... But Mio could see that they may be, at any...

"If you're not going to help me then please move out of my way."

Within a moment, the stranger laughed a deep, sinister laugh, wrapped one arm around Mio's shoulders and her breath was pulled out of her lungs like water down a sinkhole. She didn't know where he was going, but she knew it was away from her runt of the litter family and her unforgiving father. Her head relaxed into the man's chest as the universe seemed to rush past them in a mass of colour, so many interacting with such ferocity you could hardly tell they were there, that it wasn't just whiteness... She could still feel the stranger chuckling softly in his chest, and it made Mio smile...

I won't get my hopes up, but maybe... Maybe he sees something in me.

The thought brought her comfort, and Mio allowed herself to be transported into whatever the next stage of her life was going to be, without any resistance at all.


こんにちは!I kinda wanted to write some more gojo x OC in this chapter but when it got to the 1.4k mark I decided against it... So yeah sorry for the wait, I just really enjoyed the idea of diving into my OC characters backstories a bit too much :3