A few days later, Yuji and Ryokun follow Gojo down an ancient stone path at his clan's estate, through the most beautiful garden he's ever seen in his life. Who knew such a place was even real?
"How long as your family lived here?"
"Fifteen centuries, give or take. One of the reasons Kyoto was actually built is because Japan was because we were here, so it was safe from more dangerous curses. Back in the day before cars and trains and communication, dangerous curses were able to do a lot more damage before they were stopped. Adding to that was the fact that sorcerers as a whole didn't really accept the idea that they were there to protect humanity until later than that. All of the oldest successful Japanese towns were anchored to sorcery clans."
Ryokun lets out a very loud, "Stop! Fishes."
He makes his way to a koi pond off the path, and points.
Some of the koi are quite huge, and Ryokun kneels on a stone at the edge and looks down at them as they swim over to see him even while he has come to see them.
"You want to give them a little snack?" Gojo asks.
"Yea!"
Gojo opens a little wooden bin by the pond and brings Ryokun a little scoop of food.
Interacting with animals is a high form of entertainment for a child this age, and Gojo is patient while Ryokun interacts with and makes his observations about the fish. He puts his hand in the water and feels the odd, tickly sensation of the koi testing to see if his hand was food, which causes him to giggle.
Moments like these reinforce the belief that Ryokun is definitely, authentically, just a little kid. That makes it so much worse that he was in so much danger and had been so thoroughly frightened by the attack. Even though he's doing well, Satoru and Yuji both think a little change of scenery might help a little.
They continue on to the master's wing of the big residence, where they are greeted by Gojo's wife, Chiyo, who Gojo himself has not seen since the day they got their marriage certificate two months prior.
He usually returned home on his days off prior to that, but he's been busy, and he's been avoiding his home, because that is where his wife lives. Perfectly normal stuff, of course.
Chiyo is wearing a yukata with a fake baby belly underneath, because she is supposed to be twenty-one weeks pregnant. She even walks like she's pregnant? Gojo finds it kind of hilarious, but then again, if her mannerisms didn't change, people would catch on.
She serves them a big, delicious home-cooked meal.
With their fish dish, Chiyo served chilled sake to her husband, and then chilled apple cider to the boys and herself. Ryokun was very official about how he consumed what he thought was a grownup drink, and so he drinks his little cup of cider and tells them about The Little Mermaid, which he watched twice on the trip over.
This trip was Chiyo's idea, to let her keep Ryokun for a week or so while because he was obviously a top target for somebody. It was a peaceful environment, and she promised to take good care of him. It was better than keeping him under lock and key at the dorm.
Ryokun wasn't happy about the idea of being separated from Yuji, but they really needed to be able to move freely, and Ryokun both needed some time to recover.
Letting him run around the gardens and play with the little cousins was probably going to be good for him.
Ryokun is particular about people, so Yuji is worried that he'll be disagreeable, but Chiyo is a really good cook, and they haven't gotten to eat a lot of home-cooked meals together. Ryokun is food-motivated, so people who give him food he likes have a certain power over him.
After the meal, Gojo is surprised to see his living room has been arranged around a giant concert piano, although that explains a charge that he saw on one of his credit cards.
"Can you play?" he asks.
Yuji is kind of surprised by this question, both that Gojo didn't know there was a piano in his house, and that he doesn't know whether his wife knows how to play an instrument.
Chiyo gives him a rather tight, 'why are you blowing our cover' kind of smile and says, "It's just for decoration."
Ryokun touches the keys, and they make noise, and this is fascinating and wonderful to him. He experiences a sense of awe at the endless potential of this enormous, glorious noise-making machine.
Yuji says, "Please be careful."
Chiyo answers, "It's okay. There's probably not anything he could actually do to damage it, and even if he did, Satoru will buy me a new one, right?"
"It's an expensive decoration, but sure. Anything for my wife."
Chiyo sits next to Ryokun and reaches out and plays with one hand the first notes of 'Under the Sea' from The Little Mermaid, and Ryokun looks at her as if she has just performed a magical spell before his very eyes.
"Want to see some real sorcery?" she asks.
Ryokun is treated to a rendition of the song by a master pianist on a grand piano that makes the walls and floor vibrate as the music fills the room. She knows the words, she can sing, she is good at singing.
He is at a loss—should he dance, should he sing, should he sit hypnotized by the way her fingers move so quickly and know exactly where to go to make the sounds?
She plays it for him, and he asks again, and she plays it again, and again a third time.
Then he whispers, "Do you know about 'Hakuna Matata?'"
"Let me see…I think," she says, pretending to remember if she knows it, before starting to play the melody, "it means no worries!"
Satoru and Yuji are sitting on the sofa watching, and Gojo leans over and says, "From this moment on, nothing we can ever do will impress him."
Yuji asks, "No kidding. How did you not know your wife plays the piano?"
"I don't know my wife. It's a secret," he whispers in reply.
It's quite an answer.
Listening to live music is always a treat, even if it's just Disney music and kids songs, but she knows all the songs he knows and will perform them like they are monumental pieces of historic music meant to be played in a grand concert hall.
Gojo says, "You even make 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' fancy, huh?"
She plays like she's singing a line in the song, "This arrangement was composed by Mozart, and is quite famous. Everyone knows it."
"Are you mad I didn't know you played?"
She sings each line and plays as she replies, "I wanted to be a professional musician and can play seven different instruments and compose music, but my family made me get married instead and now I am married to someone who doesn't know I even like music.
"I am Satoru Gojo, and there's a piano in my house.
"I wonder why.
"Maybe it is a decoration!
"What if my wife likes music?
"How do I know if my wife likes music?"
Yuji can sense the atmosphere is a little tense, so he says, "Hey, little bro, let's go outside and look around the garden."
"I want to hear Mr. Gojo get yelled at," the boy answers.
Yuji is actually kind of impressed that Ryokun was able to read enough cues and understood what was going on with the adults.
"Let's go."
Yuji takes him out, and they explore. There's plenty to look at, and the gardens are bursting with all kinds of plants and animals. Lily pads and koi fish, local and exotic plants, frogs, a rabbit peeking at them, a calico cat with a tag calling her the 'Kazu, Chief Mouser,' bugs, birds, and since it's late summer, lots of fruit trees and flowers everywhere.
In ancient times, really only the richest people got to live in places like this, and in modern times, usually not even them.
There's a giant gingko tree on the property that has warning signs, seal tape, and red rope in an octagonal area around it with a short little wall with slippery sides that a child could not crawl over. According to a sign the tree is a special grade cursed 'hazard.'
Yuji has a lot of questions about this.
Then again, he's never been in such a lavish private garden before, maybe they all have an evil tree. That sounds like something ancient rich people would do, since they couldn't build rockets and go to space yet.
When they're standing in front of the tree, he sees a flash of this place, a vision of a dark future.
It's totally destroyed.
The tree has fallen and burned, the buildings are all collapsed, it's almost unrecognizable outside of the tree. There are also giant tree roots everywhere which seems kind of weird.
Yuji is unaware, but this is a vision of a day in the other timeline when he travelled to the Gojo estate because Sukuna told him that Alghera's strange protective ability might be beatable by someone using Limitless.
Quickly pushing it out of his mind, he catches up to Ryokun. There's an area of the garden that has a little playground, and even a complex of tree houses.
There are a few kids playing, all older, all with white hair.
When they see Ryokun, they stare, and Yuji actually kind of thinks this is weirdly nightmarish, having all these little pale white-haireds with jewel-toned eyes glare at them. Yuji had no idea they all looked like that; it's honestly sort of creepy.
Gojo told him that it's quite rare for strangers to be invited around clan estate except for certain special occasions and for closest allies because protecting baby sorcerers was such a difficult task.
Meanwhile at the house, Gojo knows his wife is annoyed because he's kind of not really been holding up his end of the bargain. Even though he said he was really too busy to be married, the fact that he hadn't come home or had any conversations with her about anything but business and day-to-day stuff was not sufficient. He knew he needed to do better, especially if his wife was getting this frustrated.
There wasn't anything in the world that he could complain about as far as Chiyo was concerned. Way back when he became leader of the clan, his grandmother continued to do the things that would normally be done by the wife of the clan leader because he was so young. It was supposed to be a short-term issue meant to keep things in order until he got a little older and married, which he just…didn't do.
Chiyo has taken on all of that work, she is playing along to cover up his indiscretion, she sends him sweets nearly every single day, she's very nice and patient and will help him with whatever he needs, she planned their annual festival by herself, and she has been answering all his correspondence and sending it to him to sign so he's actually had more time to focus on other things. She's also been through the strife that comes when a group of women is disrupted by a woman being introduced to the top of that order. Not all the ladies in the clan were thrilled about the change.
Telling a fifty-year-old widow who had married into the clan thirty years ago that she has to pay respect to a twenty-three year old due to social hierarchy is rough.
So yes, he's been reaping all the benefits of having a very hardworking and capable spouse without actually putting any effort at all into the relationship.
He can tell that she is agitated about all of it.
Still she humbles herself and apologizes to him for criticizing him in front of his student.
Gojo says, "Don't worry about it. I'm not that kind of guy. My students know I'm an idiot and a pain in the ass. Sorry about everything. I didn't actually know you had something else you wanted to be doing with your life. Because I never asked, but that still sucks."
Sitting backward on the piano bench, she says, "That's sorcery, right? If you grew up wanting to be something else, you'd still have become a sorcerer."
"That's true."
Gojo sits down next to her, and she says, "We could be happy, right? I mean, there's no rule saying we can't. You're a good guy. I know you like to smell all the different flowers you meet, but I'm a flower too."
"After recent events, I have been cured of my need to smell all the flowers. I can be a one-flower guy. Especially since my one flower happens to be the finest blossom in the garden."
She asks, "Are you flirting with me?"
"I'm trying. Let me make it."
Gojo has been in a state of negative libido since finding out he was going to be a father but feels like he probably needs to dust himself off and be normal again.
His wife is cute as hell, and he's a damn sucker for long black hair.
He kind of finds it a turnoff that she's never even been kissed, that level of virginity at age twenty-four is so weird to him. He feels like a vile old tomcat who has been around the neighborhood for fifteen years, prowling about after a cute little she-cat taking her first steps onto the porch to see what's going on outside.
It feels immoral to him in some way, even though they're both mature adults, and they're supposed to be doing it. That's like…the whole marriage thing. Making love, and having babies, and all that.
She communicates that she wants it, and he's sure he'll have a good time once he's in the mood.
When Yuji and Ryokun return from exploring, it's getting dark, and Yuji pokes his head in and finds things seem to be okay. The married couple is laughing and talking in the living room, and so they cautiously enter.
Gojo shows them a room upstairs with a big bed that's been prepared for their guests. He was going to set up another room for Yuji, but Yuji said it was pointless and that Ryokun would find a way to sleep on top of him no matter what room Yuji slept in.
Chiyo has been having baths at the private bath in their wing since she's hiding a flat belly, but Gojo takes the boys on a winding journey through the huge residence for their bath. The estate's main home is actually more like a series of homes joined by breezeways, courtyards, and covered paths.
They follow a certain route until they reach the men's bathhouse. It's quite big, and the water has healing oils and salts added to it, giving the room a rather calming scent.
Yuji has to wash Ryokun, and then himself at the shower station on one side of the room, and Ryokun just wants to get in the bath.
Out of the corner of his eye, Yuji sees Gojo's body for the first time. It's not polite to stare, but Yuji sees that he's got some scary scars.
Gojo asks, "How about you let me wash your back, since you're having to put in the effort on the little demon there?"
Yuji agrees and after he washes up, and Gojo is scrubbing his back with a cloth, he asks, "I know it's rude to ask, but those scars…"
"You know how it is. Sorcery is a dangerous game. Most of these scars came from one single fight."
"Seriously?!"
"Yeah. I was about your age, in high school."
"I'd hate to see the other guy."
"You won't, if you know what I mean."
Ryokun asks, "Did Miss Shoko kiss it and make it better?"
"Does she do that for you?" Gojo asks.
"Mhmm!"
Gojo is kind of surprised by this, like she's secretly cute with Ryokun despite pretending he annoys her, and answers, "Kind of. She blew cigarette smoke in my face and called me a dummy."
When they finally get in the bath, Ryokun sits on one of the steps since he's little, and they sink under the hot water.
"So relaxing," Yuji mumbles.
Ryokun leans forward and Yuji prevents him from falling into the deeper water. "Just as a warning, Ryokun can't swim but he seems hypnotized by water. Like a moth to a flame."
"I can ask my wife if she can give him lessons or have someone else give him lessons."
"Is that really okay?"
"She'll help me with whatever I need her to do. That's the deal. She's the queen of the Gojo clan, and her most important duty is to assist me with whatever I'm trying to accomplish."
Yuji says, "That seems unfair."
Gojo is quiet for a minute and says, "Sorcerers are typically very unequal partners in relationships. There are exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, the spouses of sorcerers have to do a lot more than a normal partner would. We go through all kinds of things, work all sorts of weird hours, travel for this job or to do that, watch our friends die, discover half-eaten kids…like you're never going to be a guy who is doing half the housework, half the cooking, half the childcare. You're going to have a crazy schedule that leaves you emotionally exhausted. When you marry, your wife will probably take care of you and do basically everything at home. She will deal with you having occasional emotional breakdowns, or being difficult because you're stressed and you don't want to talk, or being angry that you couldn't help someone.
"And that's just your household stuff. Sorcerers usually have broad obligations beyond that. I am simultaneously the head of this clan, a teacher, and a special grade sorcerer. The person who became my wife has kinds of extra responsibilities besides normal wife stuff."
Yuji asks, "Why would she do that when she could just leave and go do her music?"
"Ignoring the consequences of leaving a clan, the thing about sorcery is that we all have to do our part. It's typically been, 'the boys have to learn how to fight, and the girls take care of them and have babies.' If you're a guy in the sorcery clan, it's not like you have more options or anything. We all accept our fate. And honestly, being lady of the Gojo clan isn't the worst thing. Clearly, I could do better by my wife, but I'll take good care of her. She's a good girl."
Yuji thinks about Yuko, about her question about how he could take care of everyone and be a sorcerer if no one was taking care of him.
Gojo asks, "Are you thinking about that girl?"
His student nods. "Yeah. I don't want to be unfair to her. I feel this really intense happiness when I'm with her."
"This is just my opinion, but if you care for her and she cares for you, I think you are actually being unfair in thinking anything else should matter."
"Why?"
The teacher answers, "You're over here doing a job where you might get killed tomorrow, but you think she shouldn't also be allowed to make a decision that could be dangerous for her. That's actually very patronizing, if you think about it. How many times in your life have you been truly loved by anyone? How many times do you think it will happen in your life before you die? I'm just saying, it's not noble to throw away the precious feelings of a person you also care for. That would just make you a self-righteous asshole.
"You can deny yourself when it's your turn to feel joy, but you won't be given a choice when it's your turn to suffer. That is one of life's promises to you as a human being."
This very serious conversation is interrupted by Ryokun floating on his back toward the middle of the bath.
Yuji turns and says, "Don't play in the bath."
"This is my happy place," Ryokun answers.
"Can you be happy without having your thing out of the water please?"
"No."
Yuji excuses himself from the conversation and puts Ryokun back on the little step. "Do you want to get out?"
"If I wanted to, I would."
Gojo says, "I've got a little cousin that's a handful like him. I can't wait for them to meet. I bet they fight. My money is on Ryokun."
Yuji answers, "I don't know that betting on toddler brawls is appropriate behavior for a teacher or like…anyone?"
"They're little sorcerers, let them."
Yuji sighs.
While they're soaking, the door slides open, and an old man comes in and Gojo gives an informal introduction to his great uncle, Souta Gojo as he gets out of the water and puts a towel around his waist. The old man has two prosthetic legs that have to be removed for bathing, and he fusses and curses at Satoru as he helps and says he doesn't need it, but doesn't stop him.
With skin that's a patchwork of different scars at different ages, Satoru tells the young sorcerers that the old man is one of the absolute greats while they observe the toll that the sorcery lifestyle took on his body.
Yuji feels the incredible anxiety of a parent hoping his child doesn't say something embarrassing to a disabled person, and his hopes are immediately trampled when Ryokun asks very loudly and very clearly why the old man doesn't have legs.
It does not help Yuji's shame, but the old man laughs at the question and Yuji's anxiety and casually answers that a cursed spirit bit them off.
Souta Gojo was a bounty hunter before retirement, someone who took jobs in countries that didn't have proper sorcerers to deal with situations like curse users causing trouble or a powerful cursed spirit. He entertained them with a story of fighting a giant curse at sea after the ship they went on sank and they were forced to jump into the sea where the curse was.
Sinking into the ocean at night with a giant curse swimming around in the water below sounded terrifying for Yuji, but Ryokun was spellbound as Souta told them about swimming under the water with his cursed weapon and fighting the curse until it finally died. After it was gone, he survived by finding some floating ship debris that kept him out of the water where the sharks were.
They are happy and pruned when they all get out together, and Gojo helps the old man again.
When Souta is dressed, he sees Ryokun in his little lion pajamas and pretended to be started.
"Oh, is that you, little boy? I thought you were a lion, and I was gonna have to wrangle you!"
"Rawwrr!" Ryokun growls, holding his hands up like little claws.
The party splits and Souta goes on toward his own home, but while the other group is walking back to Gojo's residence, Yuji says, "Your uncle seems neat."
"He's still tough when he wants to be. Growing up, I did a lot of my training with him, and he was already like that then."
Yuji asks, "By the way, what's with the demon tree?"
"I'll tell you later. It's actually a long and interesting story."
Ryokun has had a full day, and he is coaxed upstairs to bed with the promises of more music, and while drifting peacefully to sleep to gentle guitar music, Gojo sits with Yuji out in the courtyard, taking in the summer night.
"So…the TREE. I have to know," Yuji asks.
"Kotaru is a cursed object, except the cursed object is a tree and not something like a sword. It was made accidentally when the roots of the tree ran under our family graveyard and started leeching the sentiments and cursed energy from deceased members of the family.
"Kotaru is basically a giant tree monster with thousands of giant roots that stretch all over the estate. It constantly monitors every blade of grass within these walls and if it detects intruders or attackers, it will snatch them with its roots, drag them to the trunk, and eat them. It doesn't communicate with us at all or anything, just eats people who come over that wall to start trouble.
"It somehow knows exactly who to get and who to leave alone, so we think it can either sense sentiment or that it might be sentient which is maybe scarier? It's never attacked someone in error, doesn't meddle in clan disagreements, and behaves during parties and when guests are around."
As he listens to his teacher, Yuji wonders if Gojo actually knows how weird all of this is. If Gojo has always lived in the world of sorcery, does he know how bizarre and shocking it is that he grew up under the careful watch of a monster tree that would have eaten anyone who posed a threat to him?
Does he know this is not normal for a little boy growing up in Japan?
The Gojo clan estate is about one square kilometers in size, and Kotaru's massive roots stretch to the wall on every side, meaning that even though the tree is one of the tallest Yuji has ever seen, it's a very small part of the full body.
According to Gojo, Kotaru is probably more fragile than most cursed objects if an attacker could get to the trunk, but it can snatch people out of the air with its roots and branches and it's protected by the Gojo clan, so it's never happened.
"The Jujutsu Society wants Kotaru gone because even if they wanted to, they couldn't take against the Gojo clan if they ever had a reason to. The Zenin clan fuels those flames with all the gasoline they can get their hands on. They don't think we should have it and have gone so far as to accuse us of making it on purpose."
Yuji says, "I saw a flash of this place when I was outside earlier. Of the tree, broken. This place was totally wrecked to the point of being almost unrecognizable."
"You think our girl Smoke came here?"
"I don't know. I don't think I was here when the actual destruction happened, just after."
If this vision came by itself, it would be disheartening, but Gojo and Yuji have come to an understanding that basically everything and everyone is destroyed in the future Yuji came from. It's not surprising to hear that also included the Gojo clan and they had already assumed the end of the world they live in probably also meant the end of the clan system.
It was kind of wild to imagine all those roots coming out of the ground to fight an unstoppable demon.
The apocalypse was probably visually stunning, with everything in the world behind torn down and left in tatters for those who managed to survive.
After Yuji goes to bed, Satoru hypes himself up and heads to the bedroom, where is greeted by his wife in lacy lingerie and no fake tummy.
She's inexperienced, so a little uneasy and not sure what to do.
Gets nervous, asks, "Is it in," while all of his clothes are still on.
To which he replies, "Yes," and they laugh, and then it's fine after that. Sweet, kind of funny, the kind of situation where they're able to laugh and have fun.
It's actually quite nice, even though it's not wild or sexually explosive, it's sort of wholesome to him in a way. Afterward, they spend a lot of time talking.
In their community, top-choice girls usually get married at around age twenty-one, a year after their coming of age ceremony, and she was twenty-four, which is sort of rare for someone at her level. She's competent, nice, one of the most beautiful people he's ever known personally, but she was mostly delayed because his grandmother was trying to make them happen and he wouldn't even meet with her. After a while, they started talking with the Zenin clan.
Satoru wishes he'd married her when his grandmother asked the first time and that this kid that was coming really was her baby because he could tell she was going to be a really good mother. It was kind of awful that he thumbed his nose at her then and then made such a sloppy mess of things.
He apologizes to her for this, and she reaches over and drags the guitar into the bed, and then starts singing a song about how she doesn't mind because she's going to wait two weeks after the baby is born and post her post-baby pics of her perfect little flat tummy on social media to her friends, who have all married and poked fun at her for still being on the shelf at her age despite her looks.
Gojo teases, "How deceitful and scandalous!"
Strumming the guitar, she sings in reply, "Deceitful and scandalous, like getting a serial killer pregnant and keeping her imprisoned in your grandfather's whore cottage."
He laughs. "My bad, my bad. I hope all the girls who made fun of you see how hot you are and feel like shit."
She strums the guitar again. "Look at my husband, he's so supportive, of my dreams to humiliate my friends who I love very much. Truly a perfect man!"
Gojo has been through partners, but Chiyo's weird little way of being a very proper and polite girl when she is speaking and then singing all her complaints, scandals, and grumblings is objectively funny.
She's quite lovable, actually.
When his grandmother realizes how much he genuinely likes her, she's going to 'I told you so' him until she dies.
They talk about Ingrid too.
"I don't think you should hate her," Chiyo says.
"Why? She's awful."
Chiyo answers, "Women aren't like men. We don't kill for the same reasons. Men kill for all kinds of foolishness, but women by nature aren't really killers. How many murdering curse users are actually women?"
"Three percent."
"I assume you understand that women are just generally less likely to kill, and that when you catch one that is a killer, they're usually not killing for pride or greed or envy?"
Gojo shrugs. "You're not wrong."
She asks, "I talk to Ingrid every day. It's actually quite sad. She comes from a very traditional clan, one that still sterilizes women if they leave so they don't proliferate techniques without permission. If she'd been born with cursed energy, she would have been like me, a pretty girl from a clan with a decent future.
"But she was born without cursed energy, which means no one trying to make more sorcerers would have her since her children will have such a high chance of having no cursed energy too. From when she was born, she was treated like she was worthless, a burden, like her life had no value.
"Growing up as a woman in a sorcery clan, it's impressed onto us from birth that the most important thing we can ever do is use our wombs to create power for someone else.
"Since Ingrid had no chance of marrying a sorcerer, her options were to remain with the clan who treated her as a burden, or choose sterilization and leave the clan, which if you've been told that the only value you have as a person is to have babies, is unacceptable.
"Ingrid used her body to create power for someone else, just in a different way than most. As for how she could do something so inhuman, please keep in mind she was raised believing her life was worthless. I'm not blaming her choices on her circumstances, but she did something inhuman after being dehumanized."
Chiyo isn't exactly asking him to have compassion for Ingrid, but he feels like she's forcing him to acknowledge that Ingrid didn't just wake up one day and decide to do something incomprehensibly evil for stupid reasons.
The real villains in Ingrid's story are her family and especially her brother.
Gojo asks, "You don't want to keep her around, do you?"
With a shake over her head, she answers, "No, I think she'd be a danger to the baby. Sometimes she has sort of a 'if I can't have her, no one should' kind of sentiment. Sometimes she seems like she wishes she could be a mom to her, too. I don't know—it's sad when you meet someone and know their life would be different if the world was just a little kinder to them. Oh she's a monster, but how much had to go wrong inside of her for that to happen?"
Because he doesn't like admitting his own faults in the matter since he was a manipulated but otherwise willing participant in the activities that created the baby, he crinkles up his nose stubbornly. He knows she's right and that there are probably layers upon layers of crazy shit piled up inside that Ingrid's mind because he saw Suguru Geto change into a monster who didn't believe that people's lives had any value.
It's the age old, inescapable fact that humans are terrible and curse each other constantly.
Gojo just gave Yuji the whole speech about men and women both facing limited choices in sorcery, but his wife was just reminding him that things are still much worse for women and that sometimes abusing people until they become completely broken had consequences.
She says, "It seems like the most powerful sorcerer could help change things if he just opened his mouth and talked about it a little."
"You want me to use my influence to try and force progress on the clans?"
"Is that impossible for you?"
Gojo answers, "Ingrid obviously came from outside of my jurisdiction, but I might be able to move the needle here in Japan. For now, I have to choose my battles wisely, but I have a long-term plan."
"Is it too much for me to ask?"
"I will always have an ear for my queen. But…I heard you call the baby a 'her,' is it a girl?"
"Yes. A girl."
Gojo is reminded of Yuji's vision of a girl with Six Eyes.
In the morning, he feels quite lovey-dovey because he's discovered he actually likes his wife, but they have houseguests and by the time he's awake, she's already downstairs making breakfast while chatting with Yuji, who is giving her a list of the things she needs to know about Ryokun.
The men are heading out after breakfast to return to Tokyo, and Yuji is clearly worried that Ryokun will be a handful, or will be difficult, or will have trouble sleeping alone.
As she plates the breakfast and serves them, Gojo sees the plate set in front of Ryokun's booster seat has a lion pancake on it, and he's a little bit jealous.
When she says she's going upstairs to wake him up, they are startled at the table when they hear shouting in a strange tongue and guitar playing 'Circle of Life' from Lion King.
Serenading Ryokun in his lion pajamas, the boy wakes up and pulls the maned hood up and revels in pure excitement.
When the song is almost over, she puts the guitar down and carries him downstairs, belting out the song loudly with no music, and holds Ryokun over the kitchen table like the monkey holding the lion cub off the edge of the cliff at the beginning of the movie.
Ryokun is so happy with starting his day like this he sits at the table and kicks his feet as they hang from the chair, and Yuji realizes that Gojo married a person who is goofy and dramatic and liked doing silly stuff for fun just like him. They are the same, except she does it with music.
It makes Gojo's ridiculousness seem untalented and basic by comparison. He's absurd; she's absurd with music.
The toddler is so hyped that he doesn't really fuss when it's time for Yuji to go, which is a relief.
When Ryokun is outside that morning, playing harmonica for a cat who does not wish to hear him play harmonica, he is being watched.
High in the branches of Kotaru, the cursed the gingko tree, Uraume never takes her eyes off him. Because she shares blood with these people, the tree has allowed her to be there.
A thousand years, and some of the trees she played under as a child are still here, now towering giants. A few of the buildings have survived too—the old shrine, and the old armory where her grandfather made some of the most legendary cursed weapons.
When her father Michizane Sugawara died, he left behind a host of concubines and children, who began a war for the right to control the fate of the Sugawara clan. A girl born into this clan, she was the youngest, and in her older brother's zeal to protect his place, she faced the fate of a woman expelled from her clan in favor of another bloodline: sterilization.
It was a bloody and dangerous procedure, a sharp metal poker heated until glowing hot…no one really knew what exactly they were doing. They just knew if they did enough damage, there would never be a baby. Many who went through this died.
She didn't.
But she never really grew up either, never developed as a female, and wandered the earth as a woman in her thirties with people trying to find out if she was a boy child or a girl child.
Her father said he loved her the most, but he didn't mention her in his will, didn't ask for her to be shown mercy.
Uraume can't exactly remember what she did when she left this place, but whatever it was, it caused most of her surviving siblings to mortally fear her. She thinks they were afraid of the name she can't remember, which is strange, because she can't remember the name of her father's killer either.
It really seems like maybe her father betrayed her in death, and so she allied with his killer. Her brothers feared her because they did not want to end up like their father—yes, that's what makes sense. That's right, it was definitely her fault that most of them died. There is so much that she can't remember, but there are things she can remember.
Kenjaku was right about being able to determine some details about the missing information in her mind by laying out the details, but unlike Kenjaku, she was very close to that source of missing information.
There was a difference between knowing about someone, a difference between having a collection of facts that are missing and having a piece of one's self missing.
It's been a thousand years, so of course, everything changed.
The missing part of her is in that little boy, and she doesn't know how to feel about that. She's certain that this little boy isn't the same person as the person she can no longer remember, but he is someone she could make new memories of.
Uraume wonders if she agreed to participate in Kenjaku's stupid plan because he promised to reunite her with that person, when all along, that person had died and already been reborn? Did he string her along with lies?
Even worse, she is sure that Kenjaku is going to do something terrible to this little boy, to her precious young master, who is so tender in age and spirit that he is joyful over a simple song or meeting a friendly animal.
Uraume doesn't know what happened or didn't happen, but in no circumstance does her master deserve to be afflicted by Kenjaku's madness. His one and only wish is to live his life happily with the person who cared for him.
Still, splitting with Kenjaku is dangerous.
Kenjaku is dangerous.
He's protected by a binding vow that prevents her from actually telling anyone anything meaningful about him.
Tit for tat, she could never win against him while he's in Suguru Geto's body.
She has already betrayed him, so she assumes he will send Jogo after her. For obvious reasons, he's the worst possible match for her.
Even though Uraume knows she is strong, she doesn't know how long she will last while she is on the outs with Kenjaku. The fact she had the nerve to ruin his little mission has probably made him blind with rage, especially after he was so pleased with himself after his first slop op to get Tore Reksten.
He tried his luck again and not only failed, but he put a card on the table that should have stayed hidden.
Those boys who fought Suguru Geto's curses during the Night Parade saw Kenjaku's work using Geto's technique. Even Kenjaku has to know there's a chance they found trace amounts of residue, or realized it was the same.
He's getting greedy with the unplanned details—Tore Reksten and Ryokun, things that were not part of his great masterful genius scheme to…whatever it is he's trying to do. Kenjaku showed off the special grades at Hamamatsu and used Geto's technique at Shibuya, and she believes a decent tactician would know not to mess around at a place where he planned to fight again in the future.
A likely consequence of him making such a huge mess in the middle of Shibuya is that the Jujutsu Society is going to sit around and start gaming out what they'll do if there are other attacks in more densely populated areas. The operation to kidnap Ryokun started at Yoyogi Park, but surely someone has already had the thought that it was fortunate it was there and not at the crossing.
What if something bad happened there?
That's something a reasonable person would think.
Uraume has no idea that later that afternoon and into the night, Gojo goes with Yuji and they walk all over the Shibuya area, and then they come back late at night after the trains stop running and do it again.
When they return to the campus with coffee, Yuji carefully documents everything he scribbled down in a notebook while he was on the proverbial terror trail.
They put the clues on the board, and since Shinjuku and Shibuya aren't geographically that far apart, they ponder whether they occurred at the same time.
Yuji thinks for a moment and says, "No. It didn't happen at the same time."
"Are you sure?"
"In Earlier Shinjuku, it was snowing. When Nanami and Kugisaki died, Nanami was wearing a thin shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Kugisaki had the kind of tights or whatever on where you can see the skin underneath. Their shoes were wrong. It wasn't cold or snowing."
They shift all their little notes around to make space for a third event, and Yuji says, "There's something else. In earlier Shinjuku, I saw a poster. It was huge on the side of a building; half the poster was missing because the building had been damaged. Then at later Shinjuku, the same poster in the same place, but it's sun-bleached and peeling."
This is already a clue that is on their board and one of the reasons they were sure that there was no cleanup effort between Earlier and Later Shinjuku events.
Yuji says, "I saw a poster in a flash from Shibuya, but I saw the whole thing. It was a poster for the new Dragonball movie."
Gojo is pretty into Dragonball, so his first response is, "The one that comes out in December?"
This is followed by a moment of realization.
Yuji searches for an image of the poster and finds it online. "This one."
"What day does the movie come out?" Gojo asks.
The teenager taps a link and says, "December 18."
Gojo has added a dry erase board to their little secret cave, and he walks over and uncaps a blue marker as he speaks.
"Let's say the advertising for this film starts a couple of months before it opens. October 18, and ends a month after, January 18. I think that's generous, the window is actually probably a lot narrower. We know the world is mostly normal up until October 18, because the posters are put up. We know the world ceases to be normal by January 18, because the poster at Shinjuku is never removed.
"That means that between October 18 and January 18 of this year, both Shibuya and Earlier Shinjuku occur, and the world falls apart. Based on the fact that weather moves from warmer to colder during this period, we know Shibuya happens first, and Earlier Shinjuku second, which tracks with our theory that Earlier Shinjuku is the event that ruins everything."
There's something considerably more significant about this discovery.
"Yuji, it is September 4th. You didn't come from a future that goes bad eventually. You came from a future that is absolutely cooked by mid-January at the latest. This isn't going to happen at some point in the future. October is next month."
Yuji says, "I was yelling your name. At Shibuya. Screaming at a man to give you back."
"Uh-oh. So I do kick the bucket," Gojo says, both of them misinterpreting the idea that Gojo was 'taken' from them. Since people might say a killed person was taken by the person who killed them, this is the assumed context, because how would they ever guess what was actually meant was that he was placed in a small container and kidnapped?
Gojo puts his name down on a note. "So I die at Shibuya, the same as Nanami and Kugisaki. That sucks. Do you remember who you were yelling this at?"
"He was tall, maybe late twenties, early thirties. He had really long black hair, and was wearing robes like a Buddhist monk. He had…what are those earrings called that are kind of big and stretch out your ears?"
Yuji sees Gojo's entire countenance change.
For a little while, he just stands there, with this weird pout on his mouth. It's so out of place on him, and then when he moves again, he takes out his phone and flips through his photo album.
When he holds out his phone with a picture of Suguru Geto on it, Yuji says, "Yeah, that's the guy. Do you know him?"
Gojo puts his phone back in his pocket. "Yeah. Let's pick this up tomorrow. I'm tired."
It seems abrupt, and Yuji can tell that Gojo is upset about the involvement of this person, whoever it is.
As soon as his student leaves, Gojo sinks to the floor and tries to piece it all together.
He knows he trusts that Yuji's visions are correct.
He knows Yuji doesn't have a reason to lie.
Aoi Todo and Noritoshi Kamo said it plainly, that the attack on Ryokun looked and felt like Suguru Geto's sorcery. Gojo was so confident that Suguru was dead that he never gave it any thought.
His relationship with Geto was a nasty emotional entanglement for him, and it was messy at the end, but he felt like he had resolved it. At the very least, if Suguru was dead, things were over.
Logistically, it doesn't make sense that he's not dead.
He just can't make that part work.
But ignoring that because he just can't understand how Suguru could actually be alive, he's left with the saddest, most depressing question of all.
Would Suguru kill me?
Gojo knows there's a mountain of evidence in Yuji's visions to suggest he just fucking dies and isn't around for anything bad that happens, and even Tengen has been perplexed because who could even do something like that?
Suguru could.
If he planned, put all his ducks in a row, paid attention to the details, did this and that a certain way…Suguru could kill him.
For a long time, he just sits there on the floor, and everything inside of him feels so bad.
There's this horrible, horrible, horrible, awful, inexplicably bad feeling in his heart, not necessarily about himself specifically, but about that baby.
Gojo conceived that baby under horrible circumstances, being selfish. He's been unhappy about the fact the baby even exists, and if he'd found out about her very early in the pregnancy, he probably would have been relieved to terminate and move on.
He hasn't celebrated her life in any way. He's not excited. His wife manages that whole situation and never tells him anything about it because he doesn't want to know. He's not reading books about being a parent or getting things for his daughter.
But he is going to die and leave that baby with Limitless Six Eyes, because that's how Yuji sees her. She will grow up in hell world, probably being treated like a weapon and not a human being because that's how his childhood was. He has no idea if Chiyo will take care of her after he dies or if Chiyo will even survive the Gojo estate getting trashed, but he knows the baby can't go with her birth mother.
There might not even be any family for her, so he has no idea what her life will be like, only that it's going to be bad. Then she'll live for sixteen or seventeen years and die by having her eyes stabbed through with huge spikes and having her head ripped off her body.
And that's it.
In Yuji's timeline, that was her life.
It's a life he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy—that he would create this life and then give her nothing but his greatest curse so she could live a little while and die before she even grows up all the way.
Is this really going to happen, because of Suguru?
Suguru dreamed about a world without 'monkeys,' and Yuji's visions seem to suggest that monkeys do not fare well in the future.
Is it possible that Geto made Smoke, the omnipotent purple-haired villain who wipes the entire Jujutsu Society? Maybe Smoke isn't a single curse, but a collection of curses he somehow combined using his technique? Could he do that?
He is so confused, and his heart is so broken.
Wasn't Suguru his friend? His one and only friend? The first person he could acknowledge as being great like him? The first person he ever kissed? His first everything? Didn't he know that Satoru wanted to lay down in the alley and die with him?
Maybe it was fair; Gojo killed Suguru to protect the world he believed in.
Maybe Suguru was willing to kill him for the world that he believed in.
As his mind reels back through the conversation he'd just had with his wife about how being dehumanized makes people stop behaving like humans and treating others like humans, he considers how this happened in Suguru's life.
Gojo returns to his clan's estate, by warp this time, and doesn't tell anyone that he's there.
Uraume is half asleep up in the cursed tree when she sees him, and she does her best to conceal her presence. The tree's branches do a good job of that, but he's far, heading to the clan's graveyard.
He goes into a shed, retrieves a shovel, comes out, goes to a certain grave, and starts digging.
Her mouth twists into a bit of a grin because she doesn't even need to guess about whose grave he is digging up. While she has no idea how he found out, and she doubts he knows everything, he's figured out something.
The metal urn containing what should be Geto's bones and ashes is still perfectly sealed, and he breaks the seal and reaches into it with a shaking hand for a human skull.
When powerful sorcerers die, their bones have a property similar to cursed radioactivity. Powerful sentiments can possess or taint anyone who handles them, and they emit small amounts of residue for long periods. Sealing them and protecting them during this time period is critically important.
The giant cursed tree is a reminder of how dangerous it can be when even the bones of a powerful sorcerer interact with the world in any sort of way.
Therefore, Gojo would expect Geto's bones to still contain amounts of cursed energy still easily detectable with Six Eyes.
There's nothing.
Gojo has no idea who this is, but it's not Suguru Geto.
His mind reels at this revelation, and he quietly reburies the remains in the grave.
Gojo is very tired, and he is also very sad.
He wonders if Chiyo would mind sharing a bed with a very mopey boy. He's already there, right? Warping back to Tokyo would just make him more tired. She is very wholesome and good, and he kind of wants to be close to her.
Satoru visits the bathhouse first since he's dirty and was just handling grave soil, and then heads to bed.
His sleeping blindfold—thicker than one he would wear outside of bed—is on, and he's exhausted when he slides between the sheets.
As he reaches across to put his arm around his wife and pull her close, he feels very little, sharp teeth bite down on his arm.
Satoru pulls the covers down and his blindfold up, and glowing blue and red eyes appraise each other with irritation.
"What are you doing here?" Gojo whispers.
"What are you doing here?"
"This is my bed. That's my wife."
"She loves me now."
Did he want to fight with this unruly child? He knows if he makes Ryokun get out of bed, he'll scream and make a fuss, and Gojo is tired. He thinks about going to a different room, but that's effort.
The bed is huge and so he just rolls over onto his side, where he finds a very hard toy jabbing into his side. And…crumbs?
Is this how Yuji lives?
Gojo moves brushes the crumbs away, and puts the toy on the nightstand, and moves the orange cat stuffy.
He tries to sleep, but can't, despite his exhaustion.
Part of it is probably the little feet that are evidently trying to gradually push him off the bed, although the pressure feels kind of good on his back, and part of it is the fact that he's just really sad.
Gojo takes out his phone and looks through old photos again, pausing to stare at a picture of Suguru.
Ryokun suddenly looks over his shoulder and whispers.
"Kenjaku. Yuck."
