Chapter 14: Into the Belly of the Beast
The evil that took place inside the New National Theater on July 8, 2014, would go down as possibly the most egregious act of domestic terrorism in modern Tokyo since the subway sarin attacks of 1995, where followers of the Aum Shinrikyo movement dispersed sarin bombs into five Tokyo Metro stations, killing 13 people and injuring thousands. By contrast, the theater's death toll would be 50 times that amount, and when the night was through, a reported 663 people would be dead, 80 missing, and more than 1,000 left severely injured. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the seismic activity of the devastation could be felt from Shibuya all the way to the outer east wards of Edogawa and Tokyo Bay. Nearly ⅔ of the theater would be reduced to a crumbling ash heap, including the left side of Opera City Tower, and 158 neighboring buildings would have their windows completely shattered, destroying 74 vehicles, and causing an estimated ¥83 billion worth of damage. After conducting a full investigation, the NPA (National Police Agency) would accuse the Aum Shinrikyo movement of once again being responsible for the attack, stating the doomsday cult had detonated a bomb containing up to 3,000 tons of TNT, and were now evading police. Tokyo would be placed on lockdown until the suspects were apprehended. The whole city would undergo a state of mourning.
Except that wasn't how it happened.
This would be a lie fabricated by the Japanese government to elude the public from knowing the truth. The truth that the attack was not of human making. That despite the whole of jujutsu society gathered in attendance, and the strongest protective spells safeguarding the perimeter, a special-grade curse managed to bypass security and seal the entire theater within its Domain, thus obliterating most of the building and killing the majority of guests and staff inside, resulting in a bloodsport of devastation and carnage.
Hannah didn't know how much time had elapsed since the ceiling caved. She thought to have heard alarm bells blaring someplace but perhaps that was more in part to the faint ringing in her ears. The acrid smell of smoke and debris still lingered, though not as strong as before. She felt no pain. Had no trouble breathing. Actually, as strange as it seemed, she felt she was lying peacefully underneath a shaded canopy. Could this be Heaven, she thought. Interesting. For having been quashed to death by a collapsed concrete ceiling, Heaven felt surprisingly more…embracing than she imagined. Smelled nice. Warm. Had a heartbeat even.
"You okay?"
Hannah slowly peeled her eyes open to find her nose buried in Satoru's shirt. He had used his Infinity as a buffer, shielding them from the impending rubble. She looked around, trying to collect her bearings, dazed from the noise and confusion. She had taken no serious hurt. Nothing felt broken or injured, no missing limbs. All indications she was very much alive and had not gone to Heaven. Blinking rapidly, she sat up in her husband's arms, expecting to see a war zone: burning fire, ambulance lights, search and rescue parties frantically scouring for dead bodies beneath the wreckage. Instead she saw darkness. And like an open reservoir, the immediate past came flooding back to her in disorienting waves: People are dead. She took a sharp inhale, placing a convulsive hand to her mouth.
"Oh, God," she whispered in a shaky, distracted voice she hardly recognized as her own. "It's my fault."
"What?" Satoru said.
"It's my fault."
"What's your fault?"
"Everything!" she blurted, almost hysterical. "T-The green lights, the demons I didn't know weren't actually demons, the curse, everything. The Sight showed me everything, but I was confused, I failed to make the connection, and now all those people are…those people are…"
She covered her face in her hands. Satoru had heard her cry before - at night from the other side of her bedroom - but this was different. This was how she cried when she was fully awake. She barely made a sound. It was eerily quiet, a long, drawn out pause with every quivering inhale as the sobs racked her body. She had taught herself to cry this way, he thought. Silent, so no one would know. It made his own heart break, and with tenderness he didn't know he was capable of, he pulled her close.
"Shhh, it's alright," he soothed, resting his chin on her crown. "I've got you. Don't cry."
"I should have said something," she blubbered into his shoulder. "They're dead because of me."
Satoru forced her to look at him then, cupping the back of her head and tilting it upwards. Their eyes met, face to face.
"No. I don't want to hear those words come out of your mouth. Do you understand? Not ever."
"But it's true," she sobbed. "I could've prevented this. I could've stopped it from happening. That's the whole reason I'm here. If I can't predict the future, what good am I?"
"That doesn't make you responsible for their deaths, Hannah." Satoru was the most serious he had ever been with her. "The curse did this, not you. It's not your fault." He emphasized each word with a mild shake of her shoulders. "You are not to blame."
Hannah felt her husband's embrace tighten around her, face flush against his chest so she could hear the steady rhythm of his heart, drowning out any excess noise around them. His unique scent of coffee and vetiver was comforting. And like an infant being gently rocked to sleep, she felt her pulse abade and her breathing even out almost immediately. He kept rumbling soporific words in her hair, "You're alright. Don't cry," as he swayed gently back and forth. Hannah closed her eyes and said nothing. The tears stopped flowing. They remained like that for a few minutes before Satoru stopped swaying and fished out his phone. She heard him repeatedly fiddle with the screen, pressing and tapping, yet no matter how many times he pushed the power button, the device wouldn't turn on. He eventually gave up and placed the phone back in his pocket.
"Welp, should I tell you the good news first, or the bad news?"
Hannah looked up, sniffling. "There's good news?"
"Okay, good news it is," he chuckled, rubbing her arms up and down. "The good news is we're not trapped inside an actual Domain. This Expansion is incomplete."
"Really? How do you know?"
Satoru adjusted his hold on her. "Domain Expansion is a cursed technique. Activating it requires unprecedented amounts of cursed energy. A normal person would die from the exposure, but you're not dead, so yay no real Domain."
"Alright," Hannah said, biting her lip. "And the bad news?"
"The bad news is while this Domain may be incomplete, we can't just find the nearest exit and walk out. In theory we could try using jujutsu to break through. Only problem is it wouldn't eliminate the source and leave us vulnerable to attack. Plus, if there are any survivors down here, recklessly breaking the Domain might unintentionally kill them."
Her stomach dropped. "So, what you're saying is we'll have to go out there and exorcize…the…" Hannah couldn't bring herself to finish. She didn't want to. Here they were, imprisoned like two flies in a bottle, and their only means of ensuring everyone made it out alive was to eradicate the curse before it eradicated them.
"Yup." Satoru dipped his chin. "Sounds about right."
Hannah felt her resolve collapse like the ceiling. She whimpered and began shimming away, but Satoru wouldn't let go.
"Hey, hey, hey." He pulled her in for another hug. "Everything is gonna be fine, Hannah. Exorcizing the curse will be a piece of cake."
"For you, maybe," she said. "In case it slipped your notice, I'm not a sorcerer."
"Exactly," Satoru quibbed. "You have the easiest part. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the show."
"The show?" She shot him an incredulous look. "Satoru, that thing just killed hundreds of innocent people and is now roaming around the place, looking to eat us."
All right. She had a point.
"Fine," he admitted. "But would you rather stay here by yourself while I go handle it on my own?" Hannah made no reply at that and pressed herself closer to him. He cradled her head and snickered. "Mmhm, thought so. Speaking of which, did you bring that knife I gave you?"
With quick, shaky hands Hannah disentangled herself from his embrace and unclasped the notch of her evening bag. She rummaged inside for a minute and took out a short handheld tantō. Irakusa was its name, or "Stinging Nettle," due in large part to the leafy green silk wrapped around its hilt. Satoru had loaned it to her after training one morning. It was nothing special. The slender blade reached no farther than her forefinger, tip slanted like the point of a katana; a Cursed Tool; Japanese surgical steel; wicked sharp. He had told her to carry it with her in public at all times.
"Atta girl," Satoru said, eyeing the tool. He then took her evening bag from her and hurriedly stuffed it in his pocket with his phone, glancing sparingly at the diamond cuffs on her wrist. Accessories would hinder her movement and attract unwanted attention. "Better hand me those too while you're at it too. And the gloves." Hannah did what she was asked, slipping off the jewelry and satin gloves for him to hoard inside his pockets, but she could keep the earrings. Fitting what he could inside, he reached forward and grabbed her ungloved hand. "Come on. Staying put won't do us any — Wait, what are you…?"
She hadn't surrendered the knife. Gojo could do nothing except watch her drag the small tactical blade up the side of her dress, embellishments and crystal beads haphazardly popping off as it sliced through the chiffon like soft butter, revealing a smooth leg underneath.
"I can't run in this," she answered, rotating her newly freed leg. "Now I can."
Satoru released his breath. Seeing her turn the blade on herself had caused him to panic for a second, and he wasn't quite sure how she knew where to cut with such limited lighting, but he had to say. The idea was pretty smart. That is, if you got over the fact she had just carved up a dress worth more than a Ferrari.
He stood guard and waited for her to complete the alterations, careful not to stare too long at her ungartered leg before taking her hand once more.
"Good. Let's go."
"Hold on," Hannah urged, pulling him back. "There's something else I need to tell you." She waited for Satoru to glance back over his shoulder to show he was listening. Hannah squeezed his hand. "The curse. I think it's a finger bearer. One of Sukuna's."
She felt his arm tense up. "Sukuna? You sure?"
She nodded. "It looked almost identical to the one from the Louvre. Had the same markings too."
Husband and wife stared at each other for a long, almost frightened moment. Satoru's lips pressed together as he hummed contemplatively, mental gears turning, spinning, thinking. This was bound to complicate matters. If what Hannah said was correct, they weren't dealing with your average, run-of-the-mill curse. They had to be careful, her more so than him.
"Keep a hold of that knife," he said, and gave her hand a weak tug before taking the first step.
...
The Domain gave the impression they were traversing through the inner bowels of some giant worm cave. It was cold and damp. The walls looked wet and the ground was tumbled and dredged in connective tissue like mucosa. Their shoes made an unnatural squelching noise with each perilous step. Hannah imagined the two of them slowly being digested, wandering deeper and deeper inside the Domain, until every last cell in their bodies were reduced to thin soluble mush.
Her toes were blistering from the heels she wore. She thought of taking them off and going barefoot, but every so often they'd catch the dull shimmer of something sharp and metallic reflecting dully off the flesh covered ground like a rusted pipe or an old metal prong.
They eventually came across what looked to be, by all accounts, a colossal bone, obstructing their path like a fallen tree. There was enough space for them to climb over to the other side. Having a much taller physique, Satoru hoisted himself atop the fossilized trunk and reached down for Hannah to grab. "Up-ze-daizey," he sang in English, pulling her up like a sack of feathers. Hannah found herself wondering more and more how he knew English slang so well and joined him atop the huge bone. He then slid off the other side, landing feet-first on the sodden ground with a loud squash and turned around, holding out his hands for her jump. He caught her by the waist as she fell.
"Watch yer step there, lil' lady," he twanged in an American accent as though tipping a cowboy hat. He was trying to get her to smile again like he did outside the theater, and it was somewhat working, though the feeling soon dissipated once they turned the next corner.
Hannah blanched at the sight of a wall - if one had the audacity to call it a wall - of blinking round eyeballs. Even in the dark she could make out the red veins branching inside the slimy white sclerae, pupils tracking their every movement. It was hard to guess how many there were. Fifty at least. Maybe twice that. They scuttled quietly towards them, the patter of little crab legs, silent, unspeaking, creeping ever closer. Hannah let out a tiny whimper the nearer they got and eventually Satoru, too, had had enough. He pulled Hannah behind him and glared menacingly at the queasy colony of eyeballs.
"What're you looking at?" he sneered.
The Six Eyes stopped the tiny beasts dead in their tracks. In a mad scurrying rush, they retreated to the innermost corner of the "wall" where a long jagged hole crusted the isinglass surface like a gaping mouth, slurping them up one by one, until hundreds of hideous bloodshot eyes were staring at them inside that one hollow crack. She felt Satoru tug on her wrist. "C'mon, Hannah. They're not gonna get you." She was glad when they moved out of their sight.
Satoru led them through intestinal tunnels that snaked and twisted. They tried using the flashlights on their phones again, but the devices were uncooperative. Hannah's vision had adjusted better to the dark, though she couldn't see much except her husband's gossamer white hair and the occasional flicker of his blue eyes. They hadn't reached a dead end, or tripped over anything. There were no signs of the curse. It had her wondering.
"Um, Satoru?"
"Yeah?"
"How do you know where we're going?"
"Ha, that's easy," he chuckled. "I don't."
"No, I mean how can you see in front of you?"
"Oh."
Hannah collided with him as he abruptly stopped and whipped around, bracing her by the arms so she wouldn't plummet to the mushy ground.
"Oops, sorry," he apologized.
Hannah looked at him, his frame towering more than a foot above her. "What's wrong? Why did we stop?"
"Nothing. I'm just taking a second to answer your question is all."
He must've found Hannah's look amusing because his soft rumbling laughter echoed throughout the chilling darkness.
"Remember when I told you about my curse technique. About Infinity and the Limitless?"
"Yes, I remember," she said. "You have the ability to repel and attract things. You showed me."
"Right, but did I explain how the Six Eyes plays a role in that? What it is they actually do?"
She took a moment to mull it over. No, he hadn't explained the connection. Fr. O'Malley mentioned the Six Eyes in vague terms, placing emphasis on the Limitless and the bloodshed between the Gojo and Zen'in families, but nothing more. Truthfully, Hannah had no idea what they were other than rare, beautiful colored eyes. What role did they play with the use of Infinity and the Limitless?
Satoru took both her hands and guided them upwards in the dark, gingerly prying the fingers open so they could cup his jawline. She saw him perfectly now, the lustrous pools of turquoise blue swirling down at her. The sky. She was holding the sky in her hands.
"The Six Eyes is an ocular jujutsu technique with many uses," he began carefully. "Anyone in the Gojo family can inherit the Limitless, but it's only those born with the Six Eyes who can harness its true power. Long story short, these eyes grant me the cognitive ability to see and process cursed energy in precise detail. I can see how it flows, differentiate between other types and use it to my advantage. That's why I can repel and attract stuff. Because I'm able to distinguish cursed energies so precisely, it allows me to control and manipulate time and space."
"Incredible," Hannah said, brushing her thumbs along his cheek bones. "Your eyes can do all that?"
"Mmm, yeah, well sorta," he said, tapping his forefingers against the sides of his noggin as he kept her hands on his face. "It's mostly mental. My eyes work in tandem with my brain which is how I process everything; Kind of like how a super computer can sort copious amounts of data faster and more efficiently than normal computers. I can also identify things from great distances and see through solid objects."
"Solid objects?"
"Yup; concrete, steel, brick, you name it," he said, candidly listing them off with ease. "Like Superman's x-ray vision."
A dismal laugh escaped Hannah's lips. Leave it to Satoru to make a comic book reference. She lowered her hands from his face and began playing with his wrinkled shirt collar. The bow tie looped around his neck was gone. Her hands glided absentmindedly to a frayed thread unraveling near a button hole and twisted it around her finger. He could see through anything. Solid objects. X-ray vision. Superman…Anything… Anything. Hannah glanced down at the monstrous slit revealing her leg. The epiphany came to her like a bolt from the blue, as if everything she'd come to understand about the universe had suddenly been little more than an ill-conceived hoax and she'd been royally conned. Hannah couldn't keep the words from spilling out, fingers relinquishing the shirt thread as though it were a live wire.
"Uh, hello? Earth to Hannah." Satoru waved a hand in front of her pale stricken face. "You're weirding me out, Princess — Quick, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Can the Six Eyes see through clothing, Satoru?"
The question punctured him like a sword bayonet through the chest. Damn, this was it, he thought. This was karma; For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction; eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; that brutal second arrow hurling towards him at breakneck speed. A third. A fourth. Improbable to stop. All there was left to do now was accept defeat and collect his losses. Would it be right to tell her how he had memorized every mole on her skin; internally traced the ample curvature of her bosom, the tantalizing dip between her thighs he so badly wanted to explore with his steepled fingers? He had to swallow it down.
"Maybe."
She pressed further.
"How often is 'maybe?'"
Shit. Lie, Satoru. Tell her it was an accident. Tell her it happened once and you'll never do it again. Go on, say it. Tell her.
"A couple times," he confessed, feeling a dampness underneath his shirt. "When you're alone." Shut up, Satoru. Shut up. "In the bath."
There was an awkward pause. Hannah looked down at her shoes with a vacant, inscrutable expression that terrified him for reasons he didn't want to combat.
"In the bath," she said. "I see."
His chest panged with guilty remorse. Dammit, why did he have to open his big fat fucking mouth? He had planned on telling her, explain that nudity wasn't anything to be self-conscious about, but now that plan had gone to shit. This was the worst possible moment to be having this discussion. He had to think of something, fast.
"Hannah," he started, gingerly grabbing her by the shoulders. "Believe me, I wanted to tell you sooner, but —"
"You've seen me naked, Satoru." Her voice dropped a notch. "Without my knowing."
"I know, I know, and I'm — "
"There's a certain word for that."
"I know, yes, you're right," he continued. "You're totally right, and I'm sorry, but I can't help it. Most times the act is involuntary."
Her eyes seemed to shift. A rare sort of fury he hadn't seen her wear before, like he was confronted with a whole other person and not the sweet, patient Hannah he'd come to know and admire.
"Oh, so it's involuntary to look at someone when they're bathing? Men have no control over their actions? Is that what you're saying?"
"What!? No, of course not. I — "
"Your eyes have a mind of their own then?!"
"Hannah, that's not — "
"You don't have the right, Satoru." He could register the notes of betrayal and repressed anguish vying for supremacy in her voice. Her lip trembled, the strained, painful look of someone on the verge of crying again. "None of you have the..."
Fresh tears began cascading down her cheeks and Satoru felt like an important piece of him had crawled into a ditch and died. He had hurt her. She was crying because of something he did, on top of the fact they were tracking a curse that could attack at any moment, but Satoru knew she wasn't crying because of him being a peeping Tom, no, it was so much more than that.
We're kindred spirits, you and I.
All his life Satoru was forced to grapple with the unfair reality that he wasn't like normal kids. He could remember himself at five, accompanying Makoto (then his nanny) on the train ride home from preschool. He had to stay behind afterwards for sending a kid to the nurse's office with a bloody nose - that's what happened to dweebs who picked on him and called him names - and as last minute passengers were boarding the train, a hulking boulder of a man plodded his way up the boarding ramp and seated himself inside the jam packed coach. The baggy clothes hid the extent of his maladies, but Satoru saw every one.
The dude had a big ole wart sprouting between the sill of his nose. He stank of cheap liquor and urine, was at least a hundred pounds overweight, and his lungs were tarred black from years of heavy chain smoking. But the more pressing issue was the yellow, foamy puss festering out the tip of his limp phallus, indicating he had contracted some sort of STI. That was Satoru's first real encounter with involuntary nudity. It came without warning. One second he was an innocent, happy-go-lucky kid with perfectly normal vision on his way home from school, and then suddenly, bam, everybody was huddled around him on the train, butt-naked and oblivious. He could see into their bodies: heart defibrillators, bone implants, tampons. That metaphor public speakers use whenever they get nervous, the one where they're told to imagine the audience sitting in their underwear? Yeah, the Six Eyes took that analogy to new soaring heights, except nudity wasn't even the tip of the iceberg. No, not by a long shot.
For two years after that day, Satoru struggled with life debilitating headaches. His senses were off the charts. He could perceive infrared radiation and ultraviolet light, the full color spectrum thought only visible to arachnids and reptiles. He saw various cursed energies; blobs of red, pinks, and purples splattered every which way, the rarest being a black flash that glowed whenever someone executed the perfect punch, and as he previously mentioned, he could see through solid objects and zoom things in and out of focus: a stag beetle lumbering up the side of a oak tree from three kilometers above, or the microscopic chloroplasts stuffed inside a mulberry leaf like tiny green caviar. However, Satoru did try extra hard not to see through people's clothing, mostly because it was weird and not always sexy (especially when it was someone he knew), although the structure of fabric was "permeable" in relation to steel and concrete. He often used the analogy of a soap bubble. Trying not to peek through fabric was like trying not to pop a soap bubble. Any loss of focus or slip of concentration, and the bubble would burst. Pop. Bye, bye, clothing.
He gained better control of it as time went on, learning to alternate the varying eyesights like you would a phoropter at a vision exam: infrared, ultraviolet, zoom in, zoom out. Can you see better through lense 1, Mr. Gojo? How bout 2? With added practice the switching became effortless, like breathing oxygen or memorizing the shortcuts on a calculator. It was more tolerable at night, which was why he stupidly left his glasses folded on his dresser, thinking he wouldn't need them. Idiot. He could already feel the headache clambering up the base of his skull like a brain-sucking leech, and on top of that, he left the Bufferin tablets in the lining pocket of his tails, draped seamlessly along the folded theater seat. Due to his insanely high metabolism, he usually needed twice the recommended dose, but there was a time when no amount of ibuprofen was enough to kill the migraines, and he was taken out of school because of it.
His home education was relatively undemanding, if you set aside the hand lashings he so generously received for having recited the Classic of Filial Piety incorrectly (albeit, on purpose), but by and large he was given the best tutors, trainers, and physicians money could buy, yet for all the privilege and wealth, his spoiled upbringing was a painfully isolated one with almost no freedom. He tended to be rough with the visiting children and prone to bouts of anger, blindly punching his frustrations out on anyone who made fun of his hair, or called him a "freak." And the people who governed his life seldom helped in that department, touting him around like an expensive artifact, making it difficult for five year old Satoru to interpret whether he was genuinely loved, or propped up as some kind of rare collectors item; a bargaining chip used to tilt the power dynamic in the Gojo family's favor after a stagnant 400 years. It was always "Six Eyes that" and "Six Eyes this" and "Here, sweetie, have another cookie."
Satoru had been told all his life he was special, that the blood of Sugawara no Michizane flowed through his veins and he was destined for greatness. But all it did was make him resentful of the way it had taken over his life. Deep down he wanted people to stop treating him like a hamster on an exercise wheel, and more like a human being. Ask him how he felt for a change. Tell him he was doing a good fucking job and that the higher-ups could go hang themselves cause if he wasn't the Six Eyes wielder then who was he really?
Hannah knew. Heck, she was one of the few people willing to try. Enough to where he could drop the cocky, jokester routine and be himself. Just him. Just Satoru. He couldn't necessarily do the same with Shoko, or even his devoted housekeeper who he viewed more as a mother than his actualmother. He was a serious person in Hannah's eyes, and he felt inclined to believe their friendship wasn't based solely on the condition they were married. She didn't treat him like a weapon or an incarnated deity, because she knew. She knew what it was like to have your life dictated by forces beyond your control, and better still, she hadn't shown signs of being afraid of him since their handshake in the Starbucks. Things had been going so well.
Until the very moment he opened his big fucking mouth.
Nice going, Satoru. Let's see you try and talk your way out of this one.
He rubbed his face with his hands, like he was washing without water, and blew a vexing sigh. "Look, you can yell at me all you want once we're back home, but for now we need to stay…Hannah?"
Satoru looked to his side.
Hannah was nowhere to be found.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
For this chapter's notes, please visit AO3 (Same name).
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