It was so dreary back home, a cold, hazy winter punctuated by violence, despair, and uncertainty.
But here on the northeastern coast of Australia, the world is warm, and vibrant, a technicolor summer wonderland of glittering seas, beautiful beaches, clear skies, and many wonders to behold.
Their first stop is this private island resort on the Great Barrier Reef, with full amenities. There's great food, a spa, plenty of tiny islands to explore, lovely beaches, and right off the shore, the sea is bursting with life. Snorkeling or taking a paddleboard is all it takes to behold all kinds of oceanic life: corals, aquatic plants, fish and crustaceans.
They are halfway through their scuba lessons, but swimming around in the shallows has been fun so far.
At first, Gojo kept his shirt on at the beach, but his students all had scars on their faces, and he was able to hide most of his. He didn't really think this was fair, and decided to bare it all, wearing just his swim trunks.
At the moment, they're on paddleboards, taking in the peaceful seas. Since they're right on the reef, the waters are incredibly still even though they are in the same Pacific Ocean that sent the murderously violent typhoon to their homeland in September.
Yuji said he saw a dolphin, so they decided they would go and see if they could see it too.
Nobara asks, "Are you sure it was a dolphin?"
"I mean, I think? It was really big."
"What if it was a shark?" Megumi asks.
Gojo teases, "You scared, Megumi?"
"I didn't live through all that crazy stuff so I can be eaten by a shark," he answers.
Nobara interjects with a rather sly, "If we do find a shark, it'll probably try to eat Gojo first."
"Why?" Yuji asks.
"You ever noticed that when you get a bag of snacks, there's always a little line telling you how to open it to get to the treats?" she asks, reaching over to light tap the scar around Gojo's belly with her paddle.
Gojo thinks it's an incredibly funny joke and laughs with Nobara while the boys stand there, horrified that Nobara made a joke about the scar he had from being cut in half.
Nobara's way of dealing with everything has been humor, so she makes a lot of rather dark but reliably funny jokes about the fact that their lives as friends had been marked by unspeakable horror, violence, and suffering.
Yuji was the type who is resilient and optimistic, acknowledging everything was horrible but his gaze is looking toward a better but unknown future.
Megumi is quite private about everything, but Satoru knows he's hurting, suffering from the loss of his sister and the fact that his hands were the ones that killed her.
Satoru is himself trying to process the change; despite being the oldest and the one responsible for this pack of little champions, he has all his own things going on.
He has a camera for taking pictures near or in the water, and he's been taking lots of pictures like an annoying parent, because when time starts to finally soften his memories of everything, he wants to remember this time in the sun with people he cares about more than anything else that happened over the past few months.
A dolphin suddenly pokes its head out of the water and calls to them.
"Holy crap! It is a dolphin!" Nobara exclaims.
The dolphin lightly tips Megumi's paddleboard as if to say 'come play!' and when Megumi leans over, filled with wonder and glee even he couldn't hide, reaches out to pet it, it spins around and splashes him with his tail, then makes a call that sounds a lot like he's laughing.
A little pod circles them, wanting to play and swim and interact with the humans. They came over to meet them in the same way that the humans had paddled out to try and see the dolphins.
Gojo jumps into the water, and the kids follow suit, for a splash fight with the curious creatures.
The dolphins want to play, 'talk,' swim around with the humans, even bring them little shiny rocks as gifts.
One of them seems to maybe understand that Megumi was being kind of a sad sap, so she tried to cheer him up by bumping into him as if to say, 'C'mon, let's have fun!' Then she moves in and bumped his cheek gently with her snout, as if kissing him.
Even Megumi's depression can't hold up against this experience, and he decides, yeah, this is one of the coolest things that has ever happened to him. He wonders if the dolphin learned that from seeing other humans, or if dolphins kiss each other on their own to show they care? Has this strange, distant cousin from the sea noticed that he is grieving, and does she wish to comfort him because dolphins also grieve?
They play with the paddleboards and the paddles, show them some turtles that are nearby, and seemingly say goodbye to them before moving on.
It was all so wonderful! An experience totally different than all the horrible shit they normally did together as sorcerers. It was only joyful and nice, an incredible, rare experience under a warm and kind sun that blessed them with warmth and dolphins.
Afterward, they paddle back to the shore, and Gojo sees all his little ducklings are so happy at the moment, even Megumi. Plus, he has photos! He can't wait to go print them at the visitor's center.
The kids are still chattering about it all throughout dinner, and afterward in the living room of their little rented villa when they're looking through the photos from Gojo's camera. It is an important accomplishment that they've made some sort of different lifetime memory together, one that was just fun and happy.
It's an experience that puts wind in their sails and proves that life has all kinds of wonderful things to offer them now that they've broken free from their fate as the cursed.
Even when it gets late, they're all still pretty hyped up, because why wouldn't they be? They got to swim with dolphins!
They end up heading back outside to a little lighted patio close to the water, with sugary sodas and snacks, and a deck of cards because the students want to learn how to play poker, and Satoru is happy to teach them.
"As former sorcerers, I expect all of you who stared death in the face and told it to fuck off to have an unstoppable game face," Gojo says, putting on sunglasses, although it is night, and he can't see anything, so he takes them off again. "Normal people really can't see. How have you all just been living like this? No sunglasses at night? How am I supposed to be cool?"
Megumi answers, "You not being cool has nothing to do with sunglasses."
Yuji completely misses that Megumi was insulting Gojo and cheerfully adds, "Yeah, you're cool no matter what!"
This is one of the most quintessential Megumi and Yuji interactions ever, just purely an example of one person's natural darkness and another person's natural light interacting peacefully and in a strange sense of harmony.
They don't have any poker chips, so they're playing for M from a giant bag Gojo had picked up earlier at a little shop for the guests at the resort.
The chips keep getting eaten as Gojo patiently teaches them how to look cool shuffling cards and the basics of different types of poker games. They go over different strategies and play some practice hands.
Once they're confident to play for real, there's atmosphere: the glow of the outdoor lamp, the sound of the sea, the stars, the warm summer air, the scent of the ocean, the hum of insects, the sound of the waves, the crisp sound of the cards being shuffled flicked now and then.
After a while, Yuji asks, "Why didn't you go back to your family? You have a big clan and all that?"
Gojo answers, "Sorcery clans aren't really like a family in the way you're thinking. They're more like…I don't know, you ever watched a medieval or fantasy movie about a royal family where everyone is scheming and stabbing each other in the back? It's more like that."
"Are your parents still around?" Nobara asks.
He doesn't really like people nosing around in his business, but these aren't random people. These are his most precious students, and he wants for them to be each other's family from now on. So, he decides if he's willing to show them the parts of him that are uncomfortable, they'll have an easier time doing that too. Real trust requires a certain amount of vulnerability, and as the oldest and the caretaker, he feels like he has to lead by example in showing them that this is a safe space.
"My parents are alive, but they didn't raise me, so I'm not close with them. I don't really have strong personal ties to anyone in my clan because they never treated me like a person. I don't hate them or anything. I don't like them either and they don't really mean anything to me. Besides, I'd rather hang out with you guys. You're a lot more fun," the former teacher explains.
Yuji says, "So it's not…not because you feel like you have to? Because of everything that happened?"
"Yuji, I'm a person, so I need people too. I decided you guys could be my people from now on. And I'll be your person too. If we stick together, than none of us will be alone, right? It wouldn't really be useful for all of us to just slip off by ourselves when we could stick together. At some point, we're all going to need someone who was there, you know? Average kids your age are stressed about exams and school crushes, you guys rumbled with ancient demons and won."
Megumi is quiet for a while as the conversation goes on, and Yuji elbows him.
"What are you thinking about?"
Megumi is staring off into space, distantly, toward the ocean. "Dolphins."
Learning that he hasn't even been paying attention to their deep talk because he's still thinking about animals is pretty on brand for him.
Megumi adds, "I was thinking about how all life came from the sea. Everything that is, that is alive in this world, came from deep in the ocean. Our most ancient ancestors lived and grew in the sea, nurtured every day by the water.
"Yet one day…we left. We simply crawled out of the water, never to return, and forged our path on the land. Dolphins are those among us who took that giant leap and then, for some reason, went back to the sea one day, never to return to us."
Yuji says, "That's uhhhh…really deep. Are you talking about like evolution or whatever?"
Megumi rolls his eyes. "Of course."
His friend thinks about everything and says, "It will surprise no one, but I'm not really good at science."
Nobara answers, "Blame the schools."
Megumi says, "At some point, you have to want to learn stuff for yourself. Don't you ever just wonder like…what the world is? Why does it exist? Why do we exist? What's the purpose for everything? If you think about how huge the universe is, nothing we do matters in the grand scheme of things, and yet, it matters to us. It matters to the dolphins, who went back to the sea, and to us, who stayed on the land."
So their former teacher says, "The ancestors of dolphins migrated back to the sea after an event known as The Great Dying, which doesn't sound like a lot of fun. The ones who migrated back to the ocean probably had a higher chance of survival than the species that stayed on land. Some went back, some stayed on the land even as the reign of dinosaurs began. But I guess we won out in the end? They had their fate, and we had ours."
Nobara says, "I didn't realize you knew about science?"
"I was your science teacher? We literally talked about this in class. I don't know how you can't remember."
She answers, "Part of my brain is literally missing."
Yuji says, "Wasn't your science grade already bad before that?"
She narrows her eyes. "Yuji, you are literally a sentient potato, who do you think you're criticizing here?"
"I aced my last science test back in October."
"You probably cheated!"
"How?"
"I don't know. Maybe Sukuna told you the answers?"
Yuji asks, "You think Sukuna knew about human anatomy?"
"I know he did because I've seen how you eat chicken wings. You pink haireds know your meat," she answers.
Megumi frowns and asks, "How can you make jokes about stuff like that?"
The teenage girl explains, "I will tell you. I will laugh at Sukuna, and Mahito, and Kenjaku, and all those stupid people who were eager to come to this era and kill each other. You know why? Because none of them have graves for me to piss on, and even if they did, I'm not making time in my schedule for that. Because in the end, the only thing that matters is that I'm alive, and all those jokers are dead."
She takes off her eye patch and they all see what's under it for the first time. The scar on her face is grotesque, not only the skin, but the padded eye patch hides the fact that part of her skull is missing around her eye and her face sinks in around it. There is, surprisingly, a glass eye in her misshapen eye socket, and instead of looking like her other eye, it actually just has a smiley face on it.
"Maybe they got me, and maybe I have to go live as a woman in the normal world where women have to be pretty to be valuable, but you know what? I swam with dolphins today, and all of them are still dead."
None of the rest of them can genuinely tell if she's just very resilient or if she's gone a bit mad, and for some reason, they're also not sure if it really matters. If they're doing well, or poorly, or struggle, or find it easy, while all of that happens, time still keeps moving forward for them and they put more distance between themselves and a strange world that vanished in an instant.
Megumi's spirit is down, Nobara is perhaps a bit crazy, and Yuji seems level yet he is also still reeling since he entered and exited the world of curses in a spectacular manner. In six months' time, it started and ended for him.
Gojo wonders what things are really going to be like for all of them, long-term, having walked the darkest paths. Six weeks ago, they were fighting for their lives in a gory battle to determine the fate of the world, and now they are here high on sugar at two in the morning on an Australian beach under the same stars that watched them all scream and bleed only a few weeks ago.
Megumi asks, "Kugisaki, are you okay? I mean, are you actually okay?"
"I am happy that I'm alive, and that I've outlived my enemies."
Gojo adds, "There's always that. Not sure if it's true for me, since I didn't really outlive my enemy and had to have my deadass saved. We can talk a lot of shit about Sukuna, but it took so much to slow that monster down. Now that there's no sorcery, I guess his title as the strongest will remain undisputed forever."
"He didn't really fight you on his own," Megumi answers.
"He used the tools he could gain access to, the same as me. I'm not going to be a sore loser about it. I think if I was still a sorcerer, maybe it would bother me, but I'm not. He won. I lost. But I'm here with you guys, and if there is a hell, Ryomen Sukuna is in it."
Yuji asks, "Can I ask you kind of a weird question? It's fine if you don't answer."
"Sure."
"Did it hurt? When it happened?"
Gojo shook his head. "My spinal cord was cut too, so there was no pain. All the blood drained out of my top half really fast, so I felt super lightheaded and lost consciousness after just a few seconds. It wasn't bad. I didn't really realize what had happened. If there was something in between, I don't remember. For me, the next thing that happened was hearing Yuji yelling at me to wake up."
This was actually a lie.
It hurt so bad that he couldn't even think about it without physically shaking, but in the moment, he didn't even care about that because as he stared up at the rest of his body, he was so scared because he knew that because he failed, his students would have to fight that monster.
Then there was this horrifying feeling of having his body messed up while he was still in it. Shoko stuffing everything back inside and sewing him up without anesthesia because she had no idea he could feel any of it.
And finally, the weird horror of having his skull opened and having Yuta drive his body. He wasn't mad at Yuta for doing it, and he did give him permission, but there was a deep sense of violation and horror when it was actually happening.
Then again, he's not the only person sitting at this table who knows how deeply traumatic it is to have a stranger control one's body.
The students thought Gojo might have regrets about having lost the battle just because he thought he was stronger going in. What he really had regrets about wasn't his pride, but the fact that despite living his entire life as a weapon, he could not save the people who mattered most from a demon that came to devour them.
Because he failed, Sukuna continued to hurt them.
But anyway, he didn't want the students to worry about him, because even though they were in a weird time in their lives, they were all safe and alive, and he was glad they were still together after everything. Worrying about the past was pointless, after all.
Once they settle down a little and focus back on their game, Megumi asks, "Anyway, Gojo, do you know what happened? To cursed energy. I feel like you know."
"I have a theory, sure. I have no idea if I'm right, and it would be impossible to prove. But I have a theory," he answers.
They all expectantly look to him, waiting for him to explain himself, and he smirks a little. "Oh, you want to hear my opinion on the matter?"
Gojo eats one of the poker chips and says, "Yuki Tsukumo used to talk about how it should be possible to eliminate cursed energy from the world, and we all just sort of thought something was wrong with her. She was thoroughly laughed out of every room where she tried to talk about it by everyone, including me. I think she actually figured it out, but when she did, she discovered that it would require some sort of massive catalyst, something not creatable by normal means. So my theory is that she went to Tengen, who was already suspicious of what Kenjaku was doing, and those two hatched some sort of plan to hack the Culling Game. Star plasma vessels were very special and had powers that ordinary sorcerers don't have, but they'd never exactly explain what those powers are to anyone.
"I think that when Kenjaku destroyed Tsukumo's body, she secretly merged her soul with the cursed energy being accumulated by the Culling Game and gained control of it. Then when Tengen was forced to merge, she was merging all her power and all the power of the star plasma vessels within her with Tsukumo, giving Tsukumo the power to alter the fundamental laws of cursed energy."
Gojo was believed he was probably wrong about some of the details, but behind closed doors, everyone quietly suspected Tsukumo hadn't actually been full of shit and maybe they should have listened to her.
However it happened, they'd probably never know with complete certainty.
Anyway, he felt a little bitter that in the end, he was wrong about one of the most important issues of his life.
Suguru Geto wanted to create a future where young sorcerers wouldn't have to die, but he thought the only way to do that was to eliminate non-sorcerers.
Satoru wanted to create a world where young sorcerers were allowed to be young and to be treated as humans even as they were growing and working to help others.
Both of them rejected Yuki Tsukumo's belief in a better world without cursed energy, where they would all be free, because it seemed ridiculous—the kind of thing children born into sorcery clans dream about when they realize how dark their fate truly is.
If Suguru had waited one more year, he would have been able to live in a world without that violence.
It would have been fun to laugh at Suguru for turning into a monkey, but he didn't make it to this part of the story. In a more perfect world, Suguru somehow would have been at this table, maybe with those two girls he raised, planning out their monkey lives.
But that's not how anything went.
The teenagers watch their teacher suddenly zone out, drifting away in thought. Now that they just see his eyes all the time, they've slowly realized that Gojo daydreams often and sometimes right in the middle of conversations. Before, his eyes and eyebrows were always covered, so it was hard to figure out what he was doing or feeling.
A candy bounces off his forehead, and Gojo realizes he's been holding the cards he was supposed to shuffle for a long time.
Yuji says, "Megumi is thinking about science, Nobara is thinking about pissing on people's graves, I'm thinking about how good dinner was. What are you thinking about?"
"An old friend. Anyway, let's play."