"Is this Satoru Gojo?"
"Yeah, who wants to know?" he answers, mistaking the voice on the other end for a sorcerer he knew that really didn't call him much.
It was the police.
Mimiko and Nanako have caused trouble, but on the upside, they did not fight or run from the authorities. This seems like progress, although it's a little disappointing that they're in trouble.
They're in Tokyo again, this time because they'd found some distant relative that was living, and they wanted to meet. It was a second cousin, and they were mostly just curious about what she was like.
Akari drives him to the scene of the crime, where a man in a very expensive looking suit is yelling at them. Cursing, calling them vicious little whores, demanding the police arrest them.
Suguru taught them to sort of pretend adult men don't exist, and they navigate the world according to that wisdom. It's not bad advice, especially for orphans; there are very limited reasons a grown man ever needs to talk to a teenage girl. It's not like they have a lot in common.
And certainly, whoever this man is, he doesn't have a right to call these girls 'bitches' or 'whores.' Besides, if they did their worst to him, he wouldn't be saying anything at all. These girls are literally murderers, after all.
"Let's shut that mouth," Satoru says.
"Do you know who I am? Are these bitches your kids?"
He stands there, wondering who is this pudgy, middle-aged salaryman yelling such insulting things at the girls? The girls who had suffered all kinds of abuse in their lives, who lost their family, who suffered the indescribable horror of another abuser taking the body of the person who lovingly raised them, who were brave enough to come to him knowing they were risking death, who had to deal with Suguru's death two times, who had to start their lives over with the family of the man who killed him, who were coming to terms with their father's flawed ideology and their love for him, who were learning art and building new friendships and going to school despite everything, who demanded he save the life of a little boy they fought hard to save from a cursed spirit?
Satoru says, "Say one more word about these girls and you'll be wondering why you kept running your mouth while it's being fitted for dentures."
The flock to him, taking positions on each side of him like they're really glad that he immediately defended them and he's not angry.
The police standing around look like they're trying really hard not to laugh about something, which Satoru finds interesting.
It makes him happy that they trust him this way, and he reaches out and puts a hand on each of their heads. "What did this jerk do to you two?"
Nanako says, "When we got off the bus, he was waiting over there and when we walked by, he said he needed help because he hurt his ankle," she said, pointing to a narrow alley, "And when we went to help him, he dropped his pants and was touching his disgusting little extra toe."
Mimiko added, "He obviously wanted people to see that gross little thing, so we just helped him reach a wider audience."
He exposed himself to them, so they strung him up with rope from a traffic light and left him dangling above a very busy intersection with his pants and underwear around his ankles while they laughed at him.
It is objectively funny as all hell that this man flashed him and they hung him in a very public place so everyone could see it. Satoru finds this fate deserved and fails to understand what the problem is. He's pissed off these girls were harassed, but they have humiliated and dragged their harasser.
The man is apparently the CEO of some tech company; Satoru doesn't really know what they do, but his name is on the side of a high-rise, and he's now been photographed and recorded on video with his junk out.
Oddly enough, the man is most concerned with the fact the girls continue to call his penis small, disgusting, and gross, and roars, "You stop insulting me, you little cunts!"
Nanako answered, "You'll have to find smaller cunts than us if you want a woman that wants that little thing."
Satoru says, "Noooo, Nanako, be a good girl. Shh…that's bad."
"Little? Little?"
There is a rustle of fabric and Satoru reaches around each girl's head to cover their eyes in order to prevent them from having to see it a second time, as they have bullied this grown man into having a full on mental break and he drops his pants again right then and there to prove it's not little.
"Oh, it does look like toe," he says, turning and guiding them to turn the other way too.
He rifles through the inside of his jacket; all fully-fledged sorcerers have a special license that identifies them as a special division of the national police so they can take control of situations the police are investigating if the cause of the situation is sorcery related. This isn't factually accurate, but they can't just tell random police officers about sorcery either.
It's fairly rare for them to need to use their licenses, and when the police scan the license or type in the number to verify it, someone very high up will immediately call them and tell them to basically let the sorcerer do whatever they see fit. This is how the Jujutsu Society takes control of crime scenes and eliminates civilian law enforcement from problems that turn out to be sorcery related.
Mimiko and Nanako are sorcerers, and they don't want sorcerers in the regular system with regular people, so it's not really an abuse of power for him to do this. The correct protocol is to remove them and then deal with their crime within the Jujutsu Society and punish them appropriately.
But he obviously isn't going to punish them because he doesn't think they did anything wrong. If they went to the police and told them some guy exposed himself to them, nothing would happen. Even if they knew his name, then nothing would happen even harder. The guy had probably done it a hundred times, to young girls who were timid or scared.
As they walk away, he asks, "Are you two okay? How disgusting…"
They nod.
He understands why they didn't run; they wanted to say what they did and that they were justified in doing it, to make it so that man with all of his power couldn't pretend he was victim.
Being harassed by some random creep is nothing compared to everything they've been through, and they faced their situation by taking power over it. It's an anthill to girls who are climbing mountains in their quest to find their own path forward in life.
"We're okay. If we met him last year, we probably would have hung him by the neck," Mimiko says.
"Thank you for not doing a murder today. I appreciate it," he answers.
They're actually quite friendly and talkative with him, and it's such a change from where they started out. He still thinks it's probably best if he doesn't have a powerful presence in their lives as he reminds them of things that aren't pleasant, but they've come so far together.
They go out for dessert together and have a nice little chat, nothing heavy. They've moved on from that man and his extra toe and are more excited about his big super secret wedding that everyone knows about except Utahime.
While they sit at the table, Nanako looks out the window and says, "I wonder if I'll get married someday. Would that be weird?"
"It would probably be pretty great for you. It's nice to have somebody. You don't have to be a rush or anything."
She says, "But I don't want to wait until I'm already old to do it like you. How did it take you twenty-seven years of being alive to find someone that likes you enough? You'd think a rich boy with pretty eyes could do better than that."
"In what universe am I an old person?"
"Do you remember Y2K?"
"Sure."
"We weren't even born yet. We just found out about it. In a history book," Mimiko answered.
This actually does make him feel a little old, and it also makes him laugh. They're a bit like sour candy to him, sweet but with quite a kick. He can tell why Suguru loved them so much and why he protected their right to be feisty instead of trying to force them to become polite and mild-mannered.
Satoru teases, "I heard you've been hanging out with my horrible nephew anyway. Maybe you'll marry a Gojo."
"Why do you call him that?" Nanako asked.
"Because he's horrible."
Mimiko says, "He reminds me of you though."
Katsu Gojo, his nephew, is reckless, careless, arrogant, and exceeding frustrating to him as head of the Gojo clan.
Being around him is a reminder of how awful it must have been for everyone else who had to live with him when he was that age, and he is not looking forward to having him become a proper student in a year.
Nanako puts her nose in the air. "I don't like Katsu like that anyway. We're just friends."
Satoru playfully teases, "Do you guys have some sort of friendly ritual where you synchronize your bad vibes or something?"
The girls are very different; Mimiko is objectively more blessed in many ways. She's more academically talented, she has better control of her emotions, and her technique is much better. He doesn't really think either of the girls have potential to become first grade, but Mimiko could definitely make it to second grade.
Nanako's technique is weaker and peculiar; even Satoru struggles to see how it could be used practically in field work. She's not as intellectually sharp as Mimiko, and emotionally, she's all over the place. Whatever she's feeling, everyone is going to know about it. She's more suited to creative activities and adventure.
Nanako has show-stopping good looks going for her as well, although Satoru wonders sometimes if it's ever actually occurred to her that she's unusually attractive to other people.
Sometimes, they do things separately; Mimiko's idea of a good time is a book and hammock. Nanako's is going exploring in the wilds with other kids.
He's so proud of them, and he knows Suguru would be too.
He idly wonders how dad!Suguru would feel about a boy having a crush on one of his girls. There seemed to be a high likelihood that he would have already threatened to feed Katsu to his curses.
Picturing Suguru as an overprotective dad facing his teenage daughters' first boyfriend situation amuses him until he remembers this warmth only exists in his imagination because Suguru is dead.
It seems like Suguru's ghost has been haunting him less lately because he's been so busy with other things, but now and then, his mind goes back there.
He wonders if, when he is old, he will still be wondering what it would be like if Suguru had gotten old too, and they were old guys who sat on a porch somewhere, talking about grandkids and complaining about aching knees or whatever.
They part ways on good terms and he goes on with his day.
While he was taking the first years on a job later that afternoon, he gets a single text from Miguel asking a question:
'Have you ever seen a cursed spirit that can talk be born speaking the language of another place?'
Satoru answers:
'a cursed spirit born in any chinatown speaking mandarin would not be that irregular but if one turned up in kyoto speaking portuguese i would assume it was born somewhere else'
It's a simple question with a simple answer; he doesn't explain any further and Satoru doesn't think much of it.
As the weekend nears, he's so excited he can't stand it, and it's hard to hide that excitement from Utahime. He suggests they spend the weekend with his clan, and she agrees because she likes the gardens and gets along well with his family.
Due to work schedules, they arrive late, and it's already dark. He suggests they go out someplace fancy, and it is the weekend.
He brings out a dress from his closet with some shoes. "I had my personal shopper pick this up for you."
Utahime had the outrageously expensive champagne-colored Chanel cocktail dress on her main pinboard, and she thinks it's such a wild coincidence.
They dress up; he puts on a suit, and she does her makeup.
It turns out the fancy restaurant they were going to was just a very secluded and ancient part of the Fujishiro gardens that had been lit with thousands of fairy lights. Flowering trees and lavender perfume the air, and it's a perfect summer night, plenty of stars, and a full moon.
They share a romantic candlelit dinner, served by an attendant.
Fireflies buzz all over the garden nearby, and the only music is the sound of the summer breeze lightly rustling the trees, and maybe a few insects.
The atmosphere is so romantic, and they spend their dinner basking in it, flirting like they're teenagers and nothing else exists in the world except for them.
It feels so magical, so warm, so perfect.
After the dinner, they walk the gardens together, and when Utahime stops on a bridge that stretches over a big pond, she pauses to look up at the moon and take in this moment.
When she turns, Satoru is on one knee with a ring box.
"So what do you say, Utahime?" he says, knowing even in this formal setting she wouldn't like for him to use her clan name, "Will you marry me and stay with me forever and ever, into infinity?"
She tearfully smiles. "I'll marry you."
A big, heart-cut diamond ring slides onto her finger. Satoru kisses her hand, feeling like a gymnast who just stuck the mother of all landings with grace and style.
When he stands and hugs her, she has a surprise for him too and whispers in his ear, "It's probably a good idea, since I'm going to have your baby."
"Are you pregnant?!" his tone and his face are filled with surprise and wonder as he cups her face gently.
Somehow, in his very weird mind, as the shock is setting in and elation spreads through him, he feels like he is floating and has to look down to make sure he's not actually doing it.
There have been so many bad moments in their lives, but this one is great.
He holds her on the bridge for a while, they kiss a few times, and then he excited fires questions at her as they head back to the castle.
The largest and most famous structure on their clan estate is Fujishiro Castle, a one thousand year old castle where his ancestors have lived for ages. The headman's quarters are an L-shaped, two story area off the eastern wing with the living area of the head of the clan. There's a big private courtyard that many of the rooms face, and the rooms that don't face the courtyard just have views of the rest of the gardens.
It's basically a huge five-bedroom house that is connected to the rest of the castle through one of the main living areas as well as a separate side connection for staff.
The whole castle has fairly recently been modernized with features like tons of glass doors and windows, ventilation, plumbing and electrical upgrades, heated floors, and so forth, so it's quite comfortable despite its very advanced age.
Utahime is always amazed at how much history is there; there's a two hundred year old mural of the sun rising over the sea in their private dining room, and everything seems to have a story.
The main bedroom is on the second floor, quite big, and has views of the wisteria garden and the Great Tree on one side and the courtyard on the other.
Satoru fusses over her, opening all the sliding doors and pulling the screens so the summer breeze can blow right through their room. Fujishiro is up in the mountains of central Hokkaido and the air is so fresh that warping there suddenly from Tokyo is like suddenly being able to breathe in high definition.
A household attendant already has a bath ready, so Satoru washes and conditions her hair while they talk about becoming parents, being together, their infinite, glorious future.
Then they soak in the bath and also in their immeasurable joy.
"I just found out Tuesday. I've been feeling a little weird. Maybe tired. It's strange…I just…I just knew."
"You already have mom instincts, that's so fucking cute I could literally die?"
Utahime says, "Please don't do that. I'll have to raise the baby by myself until I find a new dad for them."
"…wait, what?"
"You have to take good care of yourself now that you're going to be a dad. We're having a baby, so we need to make sure we're alive to be parents."
"Are you worried about me, Pretty Girl?"
"Maybe a little."
After they get out of the tub and get ready for bed, they find Kumo has made his way to the bed even though it's his first night in the castle. He's looking out the window at everything; the scenery seems to suit him.
He basks in the breeze and rolls over onto his back, belly up in the air.
"I bet Kumo loves the baby."
Satoru looks down and asks, "Just out of curiosity, what about this creature makes you think he would be nice to a baby?"
He pokes Kumo's belly and the cat aggressively slaps and bites the nothingness around his hands.
She answers, "Because it's my baby."
She looks through her bag and shows him a printout of her sonogram. The doctor's name, S. Ieiri is printed on the corner.
"Shoko found out before me?!"
"She's a doctor."
"And then she kept it from me on top of that? I see how it is, you two women keeping secrets from me. I am activating pout mode now," he says, staring at the grainy little printout. "It looks like an alien, that's pretty cool. Do we know if it's a boy or a girl?"
"Not yet."
"And you're six weeks? Out of nine months?"
"Forty weeks. February 22."
"You're telling me this little rascal needs thirty-four more weeks to bake before it can come out of the oven? I'm so impatient already!"
His blindfold, which he'd put on after his bath, goes flying across the room and he says, "I wonder if I can see it."
Satoru throws the covers back and hikes up her chemise.
Utahime says, "What if you give Baby that weirded out feeling that people get when you look at them to hard with your weird eyes?"
"Baby should get used to it."
He stares very hard at her pelvic region, nose nearly touching her skin.
Utahime knows the baby is the size of a grape, and wonders what it is that he's trying to do, but as is always the case, it's best to just let him do whatever he wants to do.
He puts his index finger on her, just above her pubic bone, and declares, "I found you! You have a soul. That's neat, little buddy. I'm your dad. I can't wait to meet you! Your mom and I are going to take such good care of you."
The boundless euphoria of being two people in love talking to their unborn child settles in as they snuggle up.
Satoru asks, "How about we get married tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah. We'll head into the city and get our license, and then you'll officially be my wife and if men look at you, I can be like, 'Sir, that is my wife.'"
"Please don't be that insufferable. But okay. Since I'm pregnant, it's probably a good idea to take care of that."
They finally manage to go to sleep, and when morning comes, they get up fairly early and head to Sapporo for breakfast and a marriage certificate, and Utahime doesn't ever let on that this wasn't how she wanted to get married. She's still floating from the night before.
When they return, he warps them directly back to the courtyard so that she doesn't see all the activity on the estate.
Satoru feels such a sense of victory when they return to the bedroom and she sees the dress hanging on a hook on the bedroom wall.
It's gorgeous even to look at, a slightly fluffy a-line gown in blinding white with a ruffled skirt and a beaded bodice, sweetheart neckline, and lace sleeves.
Utahime gasps.
There's a bouquet of pink and yellow flowers tied with a ribbon on the dresser.
She turns. "That's my dress…" she whispers, like she just knew it was supposed to be hers. "I dreamed of it. How did you?"
"You're the lady of the Gojo clan now. From now on, you should have anything and everything you want. Don't be shy about asking. Not to quote that silly old movie, but do you want the moon? I'll pull it out of the sky for you," he says.
Utahime gives him a hug and says, "It would be cute if anyone else was saying it. I think you might actually be able to do it, so it's frightening and apocalyptic and not cute at all. I'm just imagining throwing the moon into the earth out of the abundance of your affections and killing all living things."
"Anything for my queen, and the mother of my unborn baby," he answers.
He puts on the suit she picked out for her groom on Pinterest, and it's quite sharp. Classic, black, very modern.
It takes a lot longer for her to get ready, and he pads around in his socks a bit nervously.
Kumo is taking a nap in the courtyard; he's always been a city cat, so it's never been safe for him outside, but there are no predators or cars, so he's enjoying the sun.
His mother, Himeko Gojo, comes to see him for a few minutes and to tell him how he's the sweetest, bestest, strongest son ever. She was a normal person from the normal world when she became pregnant with him, which caused her to see cursed spirits, leading his father to tell her essentially, all about the world of sorcery, before whisking her away to Fujishiro for protection.
Her genes really didn't try as he only looks like a Gojo, and his mother, who is extremely short with blue-black hair and dark eyes, looks so different from him that it really doesn't seem like he came from her body at all. That's how it is with all his siblings; none of them got her coloring with the Gojo genes being what they are. Her family has various names for them, the most recent one being 'her precious little Whitewalkers,' thanks to a certain show.
She has a super sweet personality; it's always so obvious she didn't grow up in the world of sorcery because she's just so soft. His mom doesn't trifle with negativity or grudges and has a very positive outlook on everything. She just likes to do art and play with the various kids around and enjoy her life and her friends and she will freely ignore the fact that the sorcery world is bleak and filled with bad personalities.
When he was young and struggled with feelings for a boy, she supported and loved him and loved Suguru too even though his grandfather was not thrilled. She loves Utahime too, adores her so much that Utahime is perplexed about how to deal with maternal affection as an adult who never received it as a child.
His mom is the person who is closest to Mimiko and Nanako at this point, having basically been mothering and fussing over them since they came to stay with the Gojos, and he knows a lot of their progress comes from just being cared for. They're like Utahime, there's never been a mother-ish figure around in their lives.
And of course, she loves her precious baby boy.
Nanami once told him that without needing to mention his mother, anyone could guess 'his mommy loves him very much,' which was uttered mockingly, and he then refused to elaborate further. Satoru thinks about this all the time and has for years, and wonders what it is about his personality that Nanami was talking about.
"Guess what else?" he says, smiling ear-to-ear.
"What else?"
"We're going to have a baby too. In February."
He holds out his phone, where a picture he took of the sonogram is now the background.
His mom squeals from delight and hugs him, asks him all kinds of questions, and then she whisks him out to the part of the garden where everything is set up for the wedding so that he doesn't see Utahime in her dress before the ceremony starts.
Utahime is so damn pretty to him when she comes down the aisle and the ceremony itself is perfect.
Everything is just perfect.
She's just taken aback by all of it, the wedding from her imagination, happening in real time with every detail there. The right flowers, the right colors, the right decorations…it's like she imagined it in her head, but even better. Of course, she's figured out the mischievous boy found her Pinterest and decided to do too much, as usual.
There are so many people there, and everything is so beautiful.
After the ceremony and pictures, she changes out of her princess gown into a shorter dress for the reception, which is a more casual barbeque, with lots of great food but more relaxed. After all, it's unreasonable to expect sorcerers to sit still for an extended period of time.
Plenty of food, beer, champagne, flows while they mingle.
It's actually one of the first times that the sorcerers from the Jujutsu Society actually meet the smaller population of sorcerers from the Northern Territory, and they discover the Gojos aren't the only ones that look a little weird.
Most of them have very light hair, maybe white or in some pastel tone. Most are quite tall, with unusually long arms and colored eyes.
Satoru hears someone saying Yuji has pink hair and therefore looks like one of them.
Yuji thinks this is interesting and kind of funny, but Satoru knows it's because he's basically the son of a Sukuna clone. A thousand years ago, the only people that had odd-colored hair were northern sorcerers, and while they denied it, they really hadn't ever beaten the rumors that Ryomen Sukuna might have fallen off the family tree and they just didn't know how he was related to them.
Satoru and Utahime make the rounds, thanking everyone for coming.
His grandmother Lady Midori's usually calm demeanor is exceptionally happy, and when he points this out, she hits him with her cane.
He tells everyone about the baby, which leaves Utahime blushing, but elated. She's normally a bit shy, but he's a social butterfly, so he jovially flutters about with her at his side.
A photographer snaps pictures continually of them posing quickly with their friends and family.
Utahime sits with her grandfather for a while, and he's very happy.
Satoru learns before he leaves them alone that Gakuganji is the first person she told that she thought she might be pregnant, on Monday. The old man had known all week she was going to have a baby and was still teasing Satoru about being omnipotent because he knew she hadn't told him yet.
When he leaves them to have their sweet moment together, he checks up on his students. They're in various little groups here and there. Some have wandered further into the gardens.
His nephew Katsu has wandered further into the earth after picking a fight with Aoi Todo who did not realize he was only fourteen.
"Sorry, I didn't know," he says, putting his hands up, "I might have hit him too hard."
Satoru shrugs. "Katsu? If someone punches my nephew into the ground, I assume it is because he needed to be punched into the ground. Thank you for your service."
Katsu, essentially just a smaller, green-eyed version of his uncle, brushes dust off his suit and says, "You keep laughing. Some day I'll even be stronger than you."
"But you're not stronger than me now, right now you're making trouble at my wedding, and I don't like it. Apologize."
Aoi Todo hears an unspoken 'behave yourself or else' in his tone, like he's a parent speaking to a misbehaving child, and Katsu clearly hears it too.
Satoru puts his hand on the back of his nephew's neck and pushes him into a bowing position, and the boy begrudgingly says, "Sorry."
Todo answers, "No problem, Little Friend. Real men can admit their faults and strive to be better. Tell me something. What kind of girl is your type? If you like boys, that's okay too."
Katsu stares at him in intense confusion.
He has a girl that he likes, she is pretty. He could answer this question in a way that is okay and move on and be friends, but as Satoru stares at him, he knows that's not how it's going to go.
Katsu says, "My kind of girl? I'm only interested in one woman. Your mom! I'm practically your new dad and you don't even know it. She said you needed someone in your life to teach you how to be a real man!"
Todo is blank for a moment, and Satoru says, "Aoi, it's fine for you to hit him again. As you can see, there's not much brain to damage."
The older teenager decides to take the high road because Katsu is still a little young to have his ass kicked as thoroughly as that answer requests.
Satoru spots Yuta and Maki talking by themselves and they're both red in the cheeks, so instead of leaving them alone, he joins them to tease them and elicit denials and embarrassment.
Kirara came to the wedding in a suit without any of her piercings and is moving about with a completely different affect because other members of her clan are there, and they don't believe in her as a woman. He feels bad that her family won't accept her, but as someone who got many stern and humiliating talks with his grandfather for being a little queer, he understood her choice to avoid conflict.
They can't accept that she's a woman or that she's deeply loyal to Kinji Hakari, who is biracial. There's really nothing more taboo in the clans than foreign blood, it's something even less acceptable than being trans.
She seems uncomfortable like this, and Kinji is trying to cheer her up. Kinji doesn't really have family, so it's hard for him to understand why she goes through so much trying to make people happy who will probably never accept her.
He passes by Yaga, who is making sure the teenagers behave themselves, and he asks, "Do you ever think it's weird that teenagers are allowed to be as horny as a normal adult even though their brains are still half baked?"
"I can't decide if I'm dying to know why you're saying that or if I never want to know why you're saying that."
"You don't want to know. You're having a good day."
"I'll trust you this time."
Yaga reaches out to mess up his hair and says, "Married and a baby? My little dumbass is all grown up."
Satoru flashes a big grin. "All thanks to my teacher. I got my dumbassery from him."
He continues making his rounds and finds the first years have wandered off into the orchard and are currently sitting on a patch of soft grass eating peaches from a nearby tree.
Nobara says, "Hey Teacher, we were looking around and saw this tree, and decided to steal your peaches."
"A crime punishable by death. But seriously, you can take some with you. Eating fruit right off the tree is always a treat. I could hook you up with some homemade jams and stuff," he answers.
Yuji asks, "So like…what's the story of this place? Did you ancestors move here from Honshu?"
"No. We were always here. In very ancient times, people that settled on this island mostly lived in southern coastal regions. I'm talking like twenty thousand years ago. Hokkaido is kind of a unique place because there's a big area in the interior of the island that will spawn cursed spirits in the absence of humans. Even we don't know why this happens or when it started.
"There are cave drawings all along the coast suggesting that invisible monsters were eating people and tormenting villagers, and then at some point, this exposure to cursed energy and entities caused some of the villagers to begin being born with cursed energy and sight. The ones who had these powers probably banded together and moved into the interior of the island to hunt the cursed spirits and keep them from wandering into the coastal regions where other people were living."
Megumi asks, "So sorcery was discovered…here?"
He explains that sorcery was actually discovered many times, in many different places, by many different people. In Hokkaido, it was a little different than other places because small fishing-hunting-gathering villages encountered curses, but in every civilization, once proper agriculture started, and people lived in larger numbers in the same place for long periods of time, cursed spirits and cursed energy appeared.
At that point, every culture either had to figure out some rudimentary form of sorcery or perish. Many simply disappeared. It was a litmus test of ancient civilization; develop sorcery or die.
Many of the world's sorcery-practicing ancient cities learned from Egypt, whose sorcery knowledge eventually spread all over Africa, Europe, and much of western Asia. These areas more or less became one giant pool of sorcery knowledge.
India and China and many other isolated places in Asia discovered sorcery independently, and developed alone for a while, but eventually connected with each other. Peru, with their vast knowledge that spread across Central and South America, remained isolated much longer due to the fact that that the two sides of the world didn't interact for a very long time.
Some places where sorcery sprang up, it remained very basic, while in others, it was sophisticated. Certain races produced techniques more than others, while some had higher cursed energy. Places with few techniques often led to vast development of weapons. There were a few that had incredible spirit summoning techniques; others built sophisticated traps. Cursed weapons were popular everywhere. Cursed arrows existed basically anywhere that sorcery did, but there were dozens of ways they were cursed and used.
Everyone started out making weapons from parts of cursed spirits and soaking arrowheads in the blood of cursed spirits in order to obtain cursed energy and use it in battle.
Up to a point, it was generally believed that Egypt was first to use sorcery at about five thousand years ago, but there are cursed arrowheads all over the mountains around Fujishiro that are sixteen thousand years old, indicating his ancestors were practicing sorcery for over ten thousand years before anyone else discovered it.
At some point during this long period, they started looking different than the people in the coastal villages. For a very extended period of time, their sorcery and techniques just developed quietly and in complete isolation from everyone. They didn't know really anything about the world at all—if there were cursed spirits in other places, what other places existed, if other sorcerers were out there.
Years ticked by and they continued hunting the spirits that haunted the island, generation after generation, carefully managing bloodlines and techniques.
Fifteen centuries ago, sorcerers on the continent heard about the 'white haired witches' that lived on an 'island of barbarians.' Hearing they had superhuman abilities, the Chinese sorcerers knew this meant techniques, which were quite rare. And, it being fifteen centuries ago, they decided to wipe out the clans and steal their techniques using the tried and true method of 'kill the men, steal the women.'
They put together an invasion force to accomplish this, consisting of sorcerers, soldiers, and cursed weapons, and attacked. The island sorcerers had already built a base up on the decapitated mountain where Fujishiro was located—and were likely responsible for the fact the top half of the mountain was inexplicably missing in the first place.
A woman with Limitless Six Eyes was alive at the time, and they had not only never seen a technique that powerful but had not considered the possibility that one might exist. The first historical entry about them was essentially Chinese sorcerers writing in archives they got journeyed to a distant place and got crushed by a weird pale woman with godlike powers.
Sorcerers on Honshu found out about them as a result of this due to their connections with the continent, and there was a period of very unfriendly interactions.
Things stabilized and there were some intermarriages and cultural exchange that led to the clans transitioning from being illiterate, monster-hunting barbarians to monster-hunting barbarians who could read.
Intermarriage with sorcerers from Honshu eventually led to the core clan becoming the Sugawara clan, and the smaller clans that had broken off from them over the years to manage techniques evolved similarly over time.
The north continued to have a tumultuous relationship with the Jujutsu Society in all of its iterations, other powerful clans, and sorcerers from the continent. A lot of these conflicts were about protecting their techniques and hoarding sorcery knowledge.
The last fight between the Northern Territory and Everyone Else was during Japan's forced annexation of Hokkaido during the 1800s. The Gojo clan agreed not to interfere and become minimally allegiant to the emperor if Japan agreed to leave the sorcery world independent of the Jujutsu Society and if they agreed not to steal from or abuse the residents of the island.
Colonization of the island was harsh, broke the rules of the agreement, and in no time at all, all the land, wealth, and resources had been taken from the people whose ancestors had always lived there. Despite the fact that Hokkaido was covered in farmland, people were left hungry because that food was needed to expand a growing empire of other places that were also being colonized.
The emperor used his other sorcerers extensively during expansion, killing many of them in fights with sorcerers in Korea and Manchuria. Having recently been colonized themselves and suffering the fate of a colony, the Northern Territory did not participate.
When things became spicy with the Americans, the Imperial government was desperate to engage them in the fighting, but they only agreed to help if the imperial government agreed to give Hokkaido back to its rightful owners. Their offer was declined, and they sat on their hands while their imperial overlords stumbled along their path.
He pulls a peach off the tree and says, "But that was then. I'm as Japanese as the next guy. All the different forms of that disconnection are disappearing as more and more time goes by. All the blood is mixed—our 'look weird' genes are just really strong. The separation between the north and the Jujutsu Society is going away this year too, so I guess the world is moving on from all that."
"I didn't know sorcerers even fought in wars," Nobara said.
"It's forbidden everywhere now, but it used to be a big deal. Outside of the obvious fact that it's clearly kind of icky, using sorcerers in a modern war caused tons of them to die. A grade two in ancient Greece could carry in a battle, but a grade two on a battlefield with machine guns and grenades is just a slightly more interesting flesh bag. The war caused curse blooms during and after all over the world – where there's so much misery and death that curses can spawn in unique and terrifying ways. There weren't enough sorcerers to fight them.
"Japan had it worst because we had such intense civilian casualties and we're already so predisposed to cursed activity. Wiping out three generations of sorcerers isn't something you just recover from in a short time. We in the north ended up doing almost all the heavy lifting for a really long time, and that's how we ended up with our hands in the Jujutsu Society even though they've never been allowed to work on our turf before.
"And that's a history of the Gojo clan, aka 'The Story of Why No One Likes the Gojo Clan.'"
Megumi asked, "And the reason curses are born on this island for no reason?"
"Still a mystery! There are a lot of sophisticated theories about what causes it. A lot of people believe it's related to Japan being such a hotspot for cursed energy activity. I have no idea, personally. There are probably things that we'll never get to know, but it's interesting that this is probably the first place a human ever saw or exorcised a curse."
He spins the peach on his finger and gives it to Nobara.
Yuji says, "Your family is kind of cool."
Satoru complains, "Being from a clan is a pain in the ass, you can't do anything without someone who kind of looks like you having an unwanted opinion about it."
"I don't think that has anything to do with sorcery clans. That's just what it's like to have family in general?" he answers.
Arata and Nobara nod.
Arata asks, "But we made you teach on such an important day off?"
"I always like to talk with you all. It never feels like work."
Megumi stretches his neck out and takes a big bite of Nobara's peach, and she responds by trying to stuff the entire thing into his mouth at once.
Juice is dripping down his chin as she stuffs with force, and somehow manages to get the whole thing in.
Yuji says, "Oh, the whole thing went in?"
Nobara laughs. "Fushiguro, what the hell? How big is your mouth? Have you ever considered just eating cursed spirits?"
Megumi's cheeks and jaws move, and Yuji cheers him on. "Man! I can't believe you can take that whole thing without gagging. C'mon you can do it. Eat that thing!"
Satoru sees a look on Megumi's face like he's about to execute some secret art that involves a shadow appearing from the ground so it can swallow Satoru and he will never be seen again.
"Don't give me that look. I didn't say anything, you're annoyed by the voice in your own head," Gojo says.
When he finishes, he spits the pit at Nobara's head and wipes his chin on a handkerchief he had folded in his suit pocket.
Nobara knocks the pit out of the air with her hammer, and since she is wearing a very pretty sundress, Arata seems puzzled.
"Where was your hammer all this time?"
"You don't need to know. I never leave home without my weapons. Me leaving home without my tools would be like you, leaving home with your hands, since that's what you use with your technique," she answers.
Arata says, "I don't think I would ever leave home without my hands."
"Then don't expect me to be without my hammer. I will set aside my hammer when you set aside your hands."
Obviously, the only answer is that she hid it under her dress, and Satoru wasn't sure if there was ever a woman more about her business than one who keeps a hammer and nails strapped to her thigh under a silk sundress just in case anyone at a wedding needs nails hammered into them.
He loves this class, and wishes he had no other job responsibilities besides hanging out with them. They act like they have one brain cell between them, they have to take turns with it due to a custody agreement, no one knows whose turn it is, and someone is wondering if maybe it accidentally got left on the bus.
But if he sends them on a mission to train, they will absolutely dominate and crush anything that steps into their path. Their teamwork is top notch and has been since just a few missions in when they all figured out how to flow together.
Arata says, "Congratulations, by the way. On your marriage and baby."
Nobara answers, "Did you babytrap Miss Iori? She is kind of out of your league. You're like…if dadbod was a personality trait?"
"That kind of actually feels like a compliment? And Utahime Gojo now. I liked it so I put a ring on it," he answers, holding his hand out, his voice striking a cadence and tone that Nobara recognized right away.
Nobara stares at him with an expression that says, 'this is one of the gayest things I've ever seen another human being do,' which is saying a lot because they just watched Yuji innocently praise Megumi's ability to not gag when his mouth is full.
Arata asks, "Are you excited about being a dad?"
"I am super excited!"
Megumi says, "Now that you're going to have a kid, are you going to stop stealing them from other people?"
"Nope. Less is not more. More is more!"
He loves seeing them all dressed up and happy, so they snap a bunch of pictures together before he returns to the party.
The rest of the day is a dream where he and Utahime hang out with their friends, eat, and just bask in the afterglow of all of it. Their relationship, their wedding, their baby, one super happy, perfect day.
When they get to bed, they're a bit tired for anything but going straight to bed after a bath, and so that's what they do, although Satoru's phone starts ringing at four in the morning.
He doesn't know the number, but it has the same country code as Miguel's number, so he assumes it's a call from Kenya.
"Hello?" he answers in English.
"Is this Satoru Gojo?"
"Yes, what's going on?"
"This is Marcus Oduol."
He sits up and slides his legs off the side of the bed. There's basically only one reason a sorcerer gets a call from another sorcerer's family in the middle of the night.
"I assume you're from Miguel's clan? What can I do for you?"
"Can you gently let that sweet kid Yuta know that Miguel has died?"
Letting out a deep breath, he nods as he holds the phone and then remembers the person on the other side can't see that. "Yes, sure. What happened?"
"A powerful cursed spirit got him."
"You're sure?"
"We have the remains."
Satoru goes out into the hallway, so he doesn't wake Utahime and leans on the wall. "Did he get the spirit too?"
"No, it's still out there, killing."
"I can't imagine Miguel went down to anything that wasn't special grade. I would advise you to make sure no other locals try to fight it. You need to report it to the World Sorcery Organization so they can send a team out to get it."
Marcus says, "They already refused. That's why Miguel tried to fight it."
"What do you mean, 'they refused?'"
The World Sorcery Organization was the governing body for the entire sorcery world outside of Japan. Most countries didn't have enough curses or sorcerers to have an independent outfit, so they were under the leadership of one massive organization that managed everything.
Japan refused to become a part of the WSO because they had ninety percent of all the world's cursed energy activity and letting a committee where they had one seat out of twenty control everything in their country was silly.
In their repeated refusals, the WSO essentially said, 'we won't help you if you're in trouble' and Japan answers with whatever the equivalent of 'kick rocks, losers' is at that particular moment in history.
For a long time, he sits in the hallway and he listens, asking questions.
It's not really a secret that the WSO is a corrupt and deeply twisted world power, one that values some interests over others, the benefactors of two thousand years of questionable and outright immoral activities as it evolved over time into its current form.
By the time that Marcus finishes explaining why the WSO is ignoring a special grade curse rampaging through the countryside of a poor nation, Satoru understands why Miguel joined a genocide cult in the first place.
He can't really meddle in the matters outside of Japan; it's outside of his jurisdiction and could cause consequence for Japan. Marcus is asking for help without directly asking for it, because they both know it would be against the rules. If he'd directly had this conversation with Yuta, Satoru assumed Yuta might immediately go and fight without paying the politics any attention. He's grateful that the Oduol clan didn't do that.
As he sits in the hallway, he remembers the text odd text exchange, and reflects on the possibility that the curse that killed Miguel probably wasn't even from the place where it was found ravaging the countryside. Someone who could relocate a special grade curse would almost have to be special grade themselves; it seems incredibly likely a very powerful sorcerer or curse user has something to do with what's going on.
There were high risks associated with letting a special grade curse just live, like the fact that some of them would continually evolve. The appearance of one, especially outside of Japan, was an emergency of the highest magnitude, and it happened so rarely that the WSO should have been pulling out all the stops to exorcise it as soon as possible.
There are probably a very small number of people who can exorcise a curse powerful enough to kill Miguel; some are controlled by the WSO which won't do it, the rest should stay out of it because it is not in Japan.
Satoru thinks for a while and says, "I'll come pay my respects. If I happen to run into a dangerous curse while I'm there, I'm sure no one will mind if I get rid of it. Keep anyone else from fighting it. There's a sky-high chance there's a curse user in the area that has the power to control special grade curses."
They all stumble into a divergent future; in a different timeline where Yuta is still in Africa, the monster simply isn't brought to the continent because the person who brings it knows he will kill it. His mere presence in a certain place at a certain time is enough to prevent the unfolding events from happening at all.
When he hangs up, he already knows he's about to cause a lot of trouble, and while he knows he can't be an avenger to a strange place on the other side of the world, on some very primal level, as a sorcerer it bothers his instincts to think he should just close his eyes and ignore what's going on.
Yuta stayed overnight at the castle, so Satoru checks a list of guests and goes up to a room where he's sleeping on a futon with some of the other male students. Satoru quietly wakes him by tapping his foot and then leading him out into the hallway and to a tearoom, where he delivers the news.
His student is devastated, and cries, because Yuta is twenty percent apocalypse and eighty percent sweet baby.
Satoru is still perplexed by the situation, but by the time the sun comes up, he believes he has pieced some of it together and has a reasonable guess about who might be responsible. Unlike most Japanese sorcerers, he's had a few contacts with international sorcerers and curse users and knows about the techniques of many of the heavy hitters that live outside of Japan.
Satoru wasn't interesting in avenging Miguel or anything; he was kind of a bad guy and tried to do a little genocide in Japan. Vengeance was a waste of time against someone who was worth it anyway.
A powerful person purposefully massacring people who couldn't help themselves using a cursed spirit was a separate issue; it really had nothing to do with Miguel.
When he regroups with Yuta late that afternoon, he's still at the Gojo clan estate, and meets his teacher in a tearoom where Gojo is sitting alone with a pile of cupcakes and the Prison Realm.
"Yuta, let's go on a little trip. We're going to do something kind of bad and if we get caught or anyone finds out about what we've done, it'll cause so much trouble. You down?"