Chapter 0

Choice

Sometimes, all it took was one thing. The flip of a coin could change your whole existence.

If someone were to lay out a map of the moments in their life, what they named as changing it all would be a dramatic gesture. Proposals. Graduations. The birth of a child. Their first kill. So often, that wasn't the truth of what changed things. A single whisper could start an avalanche. After all, the only thing more fickle than fate were the monkeys who believed in it.

Suguru Geto had no way of knowing he was in that moment right now.

"Did you know Jujutsu Sorcerers don't give birth to curses?"

On the outside, Suguru hadn't looked interested. This woman, Yuki Tsukumo, was admonished by the establishment as a good for nothing bum. The last thing the special grade slacker should have had to say was something Suguru had never heard before.

Yuki's fingers tapped together, excitement drawing her to lean forward as she went on.

"Of course, that's excluding cases where sorcerers become curses after death," she explained. "The amount of cursed energy that leaks from sorcerers, compared to non-sorcerers, is extremely low. There is a difference in how much we consume and use cursed energy because of our profession. But the real reason lies in how it flows through us."

There was also a difference between being the quiet type and speechless. The past year, after watching Rika Amanai die, most people assumed Suguru had become the latter. This wasn't a silence of reservation. It was one of curiosity.

"For sorcerers, cursed energy flows heavily within us. It doesn't escape to form curses." Yuki Tsukumo explained, giving him a friendly wink as if this were the most casual chat in the world. "If we're talking in general terms… if every single human became a Jujutsu Sorcerer… no curse would ever be born again.

Suguru felt the quiet plummet into something else entirely. His hands drifted together, clutching for a stability he couldn't find. Yuki, too, went quiet.

He knew better than to talk about something like this. Hell, anyone should have. This entire idea was absurd. It was proof why Yuki Tsukumo was supposed to be a good-for-nothing.

Then again, if she was so good for nothing, who would she tell if he followed along?

"Then…" The words caught in Suguru's throat. He swallowed the tension. It was easier than swallowing a curse. "…why not just kill every non-jujutsu sorcerer?"

Suguru looked to the ground, his eyes staying there in shame. Surely, she'd argue. It was insane.

"Geto… that is an option," she said. She meant it.

"What?"

A cold sweat rolled across Suguru. The idea swelled to a lump in his throat; the biggest, most tasteless mass of nothing he'd ever felt.

Yuki tucked a hand beneath her chin, casual as ever. "In fact, that might be the easiest route."

The hum of an "um…" Suguru barely managed to utter was eclipsed by the speed of her words.

"We weed out non-jujutsu sorcerers and make them adapt to a jujutsu sorcerer-based society. In other words, forced evolution. Kinda like how birds grew wings. Using fear and danger as a catalyst."

Suguru heard that idea so loudly in his head, he might as well have screamed it. The fact that it came so easily to him made him press his hands together all the more tightly. The whole thing rotted his mouth with the taste of a curse. When had he become this way?

Worse, why did it make so much sense?

"But…" Yuki raised her hands into the air. The whole time, she was still smiling. Her eyes closed in contentment. "…I ain't that crazy. Do you hate non-Jujutsu sorcerers… Geto?"

There was only so much shock someone could feel. That initial panic gave way and, in the end, it all felt hollow.

Suguru leaned into his hands, his shoulders slouching forward into the confession. "I don't know."

In some version of the world, Geto had elaborated on that thought. He'd allowed himself to openly debate the selfishness of non-sorcerers. He resented the fact that their lack of self-control became his burden, one that scarred and sacrificed people who simply wanted to help.

But not here. Here, he ignored the question completely to follow his own train of thought.

"If you were crazy, it would be temporary." Suguru let his hand slide up his face, pushing through the lock of his bangs. Setting his hand somewhere else helped him hide that it was trembling. "The solution, not the insanity."

He let his hand fall to his lap. His eyes stayed on the floor. It was easier to picture what he meant if he didn't look at her.

"The second a non-sorcerer is born to sorcerers it goes back where we started. Bloodline isn't ability. You'd be better off creating events of mass exposure, to forcibly awaken awareness. Then do it again on a smaller scale when kids are born."

Again, there was quiet. Suguru didn't dare look up. Somehow, she'd come here raving about how to make curses stop existing, and yet Suguru had managed to sound like the one who'd gone insane.

Suguru was so busy looking down, he couldn't see Yuki turn to him. What he could tell, even without looking, was that she'd started to laugh.

"Non-sorcerers don't start sensing cursed energy when it's a sorcerer's curse technique they see, you know," she said. He had, in fact, not known that either, but he didn't bother to say. "They only get awareness if it's a curse. Most sorcerers can't control curses."

Suguru's expression leveled off, the panic turning cold, and the discomfort to certainty. "I do."

"I know you do. That's why I said most, curse eater."

"Don't call me that."

"Don't call you what? What you are?" With a satisfied sigh, Yuki stood up from the bench. She raised her arms in a stretch. "You should hurry up and graduate, Geto. No one higher-up gets this stuff. It sounds to me like you've got a future as a no-good special grade."

Suguru hadn't known what to say to that. So, he'd said nothing. He walked Yuki to the front gates in silence.

Unbeknownst to Suguru, there was a list of things they could have discussed but didn't. He was so sure he'd already said too much, it hadn't seemed worth it to consider.

Yuki stepped onto her motorcycle. She wrapped herself around it while Suguru stayed at a distance. As physically apart as they were, he could still see a glint in the brown of her eyes.

"You know, I came here to meet Gojo," Yuki admitted. "Tell him I said hi and all, but, I'm sorta glad it worked out like this. Thanks to you, I've got a new theory to study."

"You're welcome."

"Just one last thing." Yuki leaned against the handlebars of the motorcycle, swaying back towards him again "And I'm not leaving until you answer. What kind of woman is your type?"

Suguru's eyes shut with annoyance. "I told you before. You answer first."

"I did answer" Yuki shrugged. "I told you my name. That was your question. This one's mine."

Suguru stood there, his hands still in his pockets, staring her down as blankly as possible.

"Wait…" Yuki squinted at him, her eyebrows narrowing with suspicion. "I'm asking you the wrong question, aren't I?"

"You're asking everyone the wrong question," he muttered.

"No, it's usually the right question. Just not for you."

Suguru answered with silence.

"So, Geto," Yuki stretched across the bike to try and catch his eye all over. "What's your type in men?"

Just like that, the curtain of Suguru's composure came crashing down. He stepped forward before he knew he'd even moved. "What—"

Despite all that alarm, Yuki hadn't shifted an inch. "Your type. Sorry I assumed you were straight before. I should've known from the hair. It's too stylish."

"I haven't brushed it in a week."

No amount of joke seemed to shake her from staring at him. Being put on the spot like this was enough to make Suguru lower his head again. He pressed a hand against his forehead to shield his eyes. "If I tell you, will you go away?

"Sure. I've got a plane to catch, anyway." She raised an eyebrow. "It's that kinky, huh?"

Suguru's other hand pressed over his face, too. He let out a groan.

"Oh," she raised on the motorcycle, swinging a leg back around so she was resting on the edge instead of straddling it. The result let her face him. "I'm leaving, remember? I'm not gonna tell him."

"A caterpillar curse will eat you alive if you tell anyone."

"Bold to think you can beat me. We might have to test that later." Yuki inched forward on the bike. Her voice firmed. "I'm not going to tell. Promise. 'What's your type' is way too important for that."

The fact that sentence had very little sense in it would be a question for another time. It wasn't worth arguing now.

Suguru took a long breath, one deep enough to feel his chest deflate. If the no-good special grade could hear him talk about exposing billions of people to curses on purpose, she could hear this, too.

"He's loud. Obnoxious. Annoying," he admitted. "Tall, with pale hair. Won't take anything seriously if it can't kill him, and nothing can kill him. He has strength he doesn't know he has. Something I never will. He's... outgrown me."

"You know, whoever mister annoyingly obnoxious is?" Yuki stopped wagging her finger to point it in Suguru's face. "You should tell him you love him. Take it from an older woman."

"Ugh. He'd never shut up."

"Does he ever? He's obnoxious."

"No. He doesn't."

Maybe it was that Suguru had already gone past shame with her, or the fact he knew he wouldn't see her for a long time. Whatever the case, Suguru let his hands fall enough to stare back one last time.

"You think he outgrew you? You're a special grade, kid. How much more than that can he be? Don't cockblock your own chance to be happy."

"I—" For the second time today, Suguru felt his words freeze. "What."

Yuki grabbed the strap of her helmet, adjusting it one last time. "Like I said. Go tell Gojo I said hi."

There was a version of the world where this conversation was the one Geto was left to consider how he felt about non-sorcerers. That world wasn't here. In this one, he was just a teenage boy, faced with the weight of an entirely different kind of choice.