If I had a nickel for every good friend of mine who's obsessed with shipping JJK SatoSugu, encouraging me to go out of my way to write them a special story for their birthday, I would have 10 cents.

Which isn't a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice.

Anyway! Happy birthday to my bestie Ninaur. When we finish watching Black Sails together I promise to write you something in that universe. Hopefully this suffices in the meantime!

Suguru Geto's head lulls.

The Jujutsu High student, considered among the greatest sorcerers of this generation, looks not unlike a toddler nodding off in the rearview, face condiment-crusted after a pit-stop coming home from the beach. His loose lock of charcoal hair and stretched lobes follow gravity, like that fast-food wrapper falling from pudgy fingers to bristling carpet.

He stands within the labyrinthine Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Citizen's Gallery 3, ground level. Just off the main esplanade, but entirely closed to the world. The space is clinical. Dim fluorescent ladders embedded into white-paneled ceilings cast a cold sheen across well-trod floors of thick, folded metallic vinyl yarns. Quartz plaster walls segregate the copper sea of the gallery space. Additional lights fan every wall, illuminating exhibit pieces within their own seashells of sterile, unflattering color. Dark shadows wave along the base of each wall, in sharp contrast to those highlights.

Geto fades into the background. His monkish school uniform and ponytail-clasped mop of dark hair cast a distinct silhouette over the strikingly blue painting he scans with weary, dark-ringed eyes.

One's attention is immediately drawn to an off-teal bubbly skull that takes up the whole lower-right quadrant of the 4.5ft [133.9cm] x 9.5ft [294.6cm] display; it's so wide that two seashell fans of light accompany the artwork. Blooming cherry blossom trees stretch across the frame from the skull's right eye and a gash in its frontal lobe, accosting the night with a tangle of pale flower strands naught bigger than the waning moon.

From the left eye claws a writhing mass of tree roots — giant, grotesque arteries that spread over the skull's parietal lobe. More roots ooze from its upper jaw, pooling like bile across flat sand. The tentacle roots easily clear short, serrated teeth and rear up at their furthest extent, as though ready to strike an angelic figure in feather-white gown who stands beneath the branches' shade.

Petals flitter in wisps, almost a rain of ash. One could say the streamers are rising bubbles, as the sandy floor and deep cobalt sky give a pelagic quality that's easier to discern with a pair of mermaid-like finned figures rising in the background.

Unbeknown to the angelic figure, another flowering trunk juts out from the skull's brain stem. It merges into hair of a massive woman buried chest-deep in the sand. She stares in a half-lidded stupor, as beautiful as multi-colored flora and Dryad's saddles dotting the skull.

A minimalist plaque to its right reads:

Chiho Aoshima
A Contented Skull, 2003

Geto pendulums his head, hair swinging into his face.

The sorcerer mimics the angelic figure: his left leg bends forward on its Tabi split toes, parachute pant legs separating to dispel the illusion of a puffy skirt. He tightens the cross of arms behind his back.

For a long while, he's the only occupant of an empty gallery.

Then comes reverberating, squeaking sneakers on hard flooring.

Squeaking intensifies, closer and closer. Satoru Gojo barrels around the corner of art-bearing barricades. Each sound punctuates an unwieldy stride. His arms pump nearly as hard as his lungs.

He passes a half-dozen pieces:

A dark circle of maroons and purple reds is dotted with bright mushrooms, like the outline of an iris and pupil.

Chiho Aoshima
Mushroom Room, 2000

A tree of flowering hibiscus breaches clouds at the peak of a mountain range, where distant spires cut through an alien sky, salmon and violet gradient. A fair, raven-haired girl is tied in a spider's web of shibari rope, met only by a flock of perching birds.

Chiho Aoshima
Apricot 2, 2005

A swirling funnel of pink-and-purple clouds rises into a pristine sky, blotting out the sun to capture its shimmering corona. These clouds waft from the rear of a button-eyed naked giantess doll with wiry strands of hair that seem to pull a thin rainbow across blue atmosphere.

Chiho Aoshima
Divine Gas, 2005

A woman sits in a small circle of flowers, her black dress melting into a slick of oily sludge, and her full head of rouge medusan snakes snapping at butterflies as she smells a fresh-plucked daisy.

Chiho Aoshima
Untitled, 1999

Gojo careens past each without a second thought, pearlescent eyes bleeding through pitch-black shades to reach Geto's back. He stares long at his still companion, and very nearly breaks his spine rubbernecking.

Sneakers skid to an abrupt stop, followed by smaller squeaks as Gojo catches his footing. He takes a deep breath of recycled air and stale ink, and then saunters to Geto's side. His lanky posture shifts to match the other student's; it takes a few wayward glances to mimic the exact placement of the angelic figure's leg. Gojo takes in the painting with pursed lips.

"Hm."

Geto squints.

"Hmm…"

Geto closes his eyes, brandishing a stiff upper lip.

Gojo clicks his tongue. "So." His contemplation lasted all of five seconds. "What're you up to, Suguru?" He pivots to face Geto.

Geto's beady eyes meet Gojo's in the periphery. "Do you know what this piece is called Satoru?"

Gojo responds by pulling back, and then stuffs his hands in his pockets.

"Not going to answer my question then?" He adds under his breath, "Guess it's just that kind of day."

The silver-haired sorcerer props up on both sets of toes so he can scan the top of the print. His back bends and his head skews to look past Geto, tracing every corner but the one with the museum's plaque. A wayward hum buzzes throughout the echoing exhibition hall.

Geto's patience runs thin quick. "It's called 'A Contented Skull.'"

Gojo's pose falters, dipping so deep he could fall flat on his face at any second. He glares behind the shades.

"Tell me Satoru"—Geto continues, cavalier—"does this skull look 'contented' to you?"

Platinum hair flops all about as Gojo cracks his spine back into alignment, shrugging all the way to the ceiling. "Dunno. Who lost their head and made you a fine art critic, Suguru?"

"I'm not." Geto breaths through a scowl. "Just answer the question."

Gojo groans. "I guess so."

"You guess so?"

"Sure. Looks about as content as any dead thing can." Gojo flares the pockets of his pantsuit uniform. "Though… Can't exactly imagine being content in death. Too much to do. Y'know?" He wraps an arm around Geto's shoulder, so fast that his pocket prolapses. "Not something we really have to worry about."

Geto meets his friend's smarmy grin with a flatlined mouth.

"What?" Gojo pounds the other boy's shoulder. "Don't tell me the 'art critic' suddenly thinks there should be an 'objective' right answer."

"The qualifier. 'Contented.' I don't agree." Geto swivels his glare back to the blue sky of shimmering blossoms. "To be contented would be still. Complacent." He thrusts an accusatory finger at printed canvas. "Perhaps the skull is, for whatever is left of its original spirit. But this thing is no longer just a skull. It's inhabited."

"Like… By cursed spirits?"

Geto malds at the interruption and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"There's not a shred of media literacy in your bones, Satoru."

Gojo flails his arms wildly at the accusation.

"No. This monkey wouldn't have an inkling on the existence of cursed spirits. It has been reclaimed; nature is the skull now." Geto lightly smacks his companion upside the head and uses that momentum to mess up his hair. "And this"—he throws his arms wide, gesticulating toward the entire piece—"nature? Is far from content. It feasts on its host; on all it can attract with its facsimile of beauty.

"It's a parasite. Life is there, sure. But from whence does that life stem if not a duplicitous subterfuge of death. There's an artistry to it, perhaps. But there is no honesty. A tiger wouldn't hide its prey behind its back, hoping to draw another antelope in to see its blood-soaked teeth. It would proudly gnaw on bones in the open savannah and let any fool simple-minded enough to linger get its due as a second course."

When Geto tries to meet Gojo's eyes again, he finds the other student wandering aimlessly with both arms propped behind his head. Apparently the monologuing did not hold his attention, much to Geto's chagrin.

Gojo once again contorts so deeply that he may as well be looking back at Geto through his own thigh gap.

"I'm going to bring this back to my original question." The silver-haired sorcerer's mouth meanders like he's fiddling with an invisible toothpick. "What exactly are you doing here, Suguru? Who cares?"

Tabi soles squeal against the copper floor. Both boys rise to meet one another with more serious, solemn stares.

"I care." Geto hisses. "Ask the average human what they think a 'living wall' is, and they'll talk up woven ferns and grass climbing up the side of their high-class mart. Pedestrian. Laughable. Imaginations stretched so thin within their walnut-sized brains that they couldn't begin to fathom what you and I see every day. Real living walls of scar tissue and rotting tendons and bloodshot, oozing eyes."

He stomps, waking the still ink fumes with a ricocheting gong.

"But this artist, by some miracle of nature and nurture, almost gets it. You said it yourself, Satoru. This thing could be a cursed spirit. Their vision transcends the average." He folds his arms, tugging hard at his uniform sleeves. "Then… She trips at the finish line. 'Contented,' as though that's something any creatures of this disposition could feel. Such an innocent term for a skull whose agency is overtaken. For a nature whose hunger to perpetuate its life is so great that it will bastardize everything it touches in the name of this 'greater good,' as determined by nobody but itself."

Geto spits a wry laugh and strokes his own cheek. "Contented. What a joke."

Gojo taps his foot absentmindedly. Just so, his head sways. His beautiful, perfect eyes catch glints in the gallery highlights even through a protective layer of shades.

"Are you okay?" Geto can imagine him saying. "Do you need to talk about something going on?" He figures a friend might add.

Unfortunately, Gojo often isn't so forthcoming.

"I think you're giving these brushstrokes too much thought, Suguru. And they aren't even real brushstrokes!" His footsteps plod along in the silent space, filling each crevasse with gentle squeaks. He motions to clasp Geto's shoulder a second time. "Besides, in case you forgot, we have a—"

A crack dins, like a great oak split in a thunderstorm.

Then, another.

The slight frame of a girl flies through the dividing wall and painting to their immediate right. Just a moment earlier and she would have tumbled straight into Gojo. Instead, she hits the back wall of the gallery with a harsh "thwack!"

Rather than going through yet another wall, the girl leaves a deep indent that exposes yet more of the dull plywood underpinning an auspicious venue. Dust and the nose-itching scent of crackling wood dust emanate from both sides of the hall.

She slowly sinks onto her twisted foot, and then slides further onto her rear. She groans with a gurgle of blood.

Gojo and Geto finally follow her trajectory a moment after the shock wears off. They recognize her Jujutsu High jacket and pencil skirt (despite the navy threads being shredded), but her face is drenched in a river of blood that cascades down from her short, matted brown hair. Her wheeze wraps around them as her head dips, side partitions of hair covering the space where they know her distinctive mole should be.

"Shoko!"

The silver-haired sorcerer sprints into action, leaping past a plaster-dusted loafer and scattered pack of cigarettes that Shoko Ieiri lost on impact.

She hardly moves upon investigation. That is, until her chest heaves to prime her weak-willed speech.

"You two enjoying the art?" She mutters through a wet choke. "Having a nice date?" She coughs rich, red phlegm up and onto her shirt and torn leggings. Gojo gently pats her back. "Well… If you get a sec… Maybe you can lend me a hand here."

Geto struts toward Shoko's impact crater where the titular Contented Skull once stood and stares all the way through to Citizen's Gallery 2, past a spattering of dust and debris, shattered frames a painting and flickering light bars that hang on one strand of wire off the ceiling. The very darkness of that distant exhibition hall writhes with cursed energy.

Some segmented purple beast slinks past the hole between galleries. It rises until every bead of chiton, connected by sulfuric-red muscle fibers and dotted with iron spikes, disappears. Twice more it flies to-and-fro, low enough that the moving arcs of its body hang like clattering dungeon chains. Then the centipede-like divisions slow as what can only be surmised for its head sinks into the hole left by Shoko. It's "face" of shuttered, corrugated sheet metal in that lavender shade unfurls. Behind the guard is a jaundiced eye that stretches the entire diameter of its tube body, with a twitchy emerald iris that hardly constrains a slitted pupil of bloodshot veins.

Two massive spikes-turned-pincers click before its eye, both sickles thorny and cracked. It screams, though from where is unclear.

Geto smirks. He cracks his neck with a sharp twist to the right.

"If you ask me"—Geto raises both hands, and a pool of shadow bubbles around his feet. Eyes of all different dispositions, shapes, and colors cut through the shade—"as far as the art is concerned... This is a vast improvement."