Chapter 9: Senpai

Cold seeped through Utahime’s clothes, biting into her skin, sinking deep into her bones. The damp ground pressed against her back, its chill spreading through her like ink in water. She drew in a breath—shallow, uneven—her lungs stuttering against the effort, her body fighting to keep her conscious.

Shock was setting in.

She recognized the signs. The slow, creeping numbness in her limbs. The distant ringing in her ears, growing louder, turning everything muffled and far away. It would be so easy to let go, to let the darkness take over.

But she couldn’t.

If she blacked out now, she wouldn’t wake up.

A spike of fear jolted through her, enough to push back against the pull of unconsciousness. She clenched her fingers, forced her hand to move, to respond—to do something—but it was like dragging herself through mud. Everything felt sluggish. Distant. Wrong.

Gojo might be nearby, but there was no guarantee he would reach her in time. The talismans buried in the walls were weak, their residual energy flickering at the edge of her awareness. They wouldn’t stop hinder him from locating her, but they would surely make the process more challenging.

Or she could simply be underestimating the Six Eyes. She hoped that was the case.

Her fingers twitched against the damp ground as she forced herself to think. Panic was useless. Pain, fear—none of it mattered. Time would move forward regardless, too fast, too cruelly for someone like her. She needed a plan, something, anything that might tip the odds in her favor.

The Special Grade lingered nearby, its presence oppressive, its cursed energy curling around her like a tightening noose. There was no urgency in its movements. It was a predator observing its prey, sure that it could take its time because there was no chance of escape.

Utahime forced herself to steady her breathing. Each inhale was shaky, each exhale edged with pain. Her fingers fumbled as she tore a section of her sleeve. The effort sent a fresh wave of agony through her leg. She bit down on a cry, swallowing the sound as she wrapped the fabric tightly above her knee. It would have to hold. She couldn’t afford to bleed out before help arrived.

With that done, all that was left was to figure out what came next. But there was no grand strategy, no clever escape waiting to be found. The only real plan—the one she hated most—was to trust that Gojo would find her in time.

And that she could stay alive long enough for it to matter.

Above the nauseating scent of mold, stagnant water, and blood, something familiar lingered in the air. It was subtle, buried beneath the damp rot of the cavern, but it pulled at something deep in her memory.

She closed her eyes, just for a second. Afternoon light filtering through paper screens. The faint rustle of pages turning. Her mother’s voice, quiet and patient, guiding her through the many tasks of a shrine maiden. Around them lay talismans of all kinds, half in her mother’s expert calligraphy, and the other half in her clumsy scribbling. Utahime could still see her, dressed in her vestments, composed and graceful as she explained her duties as a priestess—a role that would one day fall on Utahime’s shoulders.

And just like that, she understood.

Ink.

This place reeked of old paper and ink.

Her heartbeat pounded so hard it sent sharp jolts through her chest, each thud rattling against her ribs. She scanned the darkness, but the cavern gave nothing away. What she couldn’t see, she listened for instead.

The faint rustling of paper. A slow, deliberate sound, shifting with the breeze that crept through the space. Not just one or two. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.

Her mind worked through the haze of pain, piecing together what little she knew. If the building was only beginning to morph into a partial domain, then this place might still be anchored to the physical world. A basement. Of course, there would be one.

But the talismans—so many of them concentrated in one place—meant something more. Whoever had set this up expected a massive surge of negative energy to gather here. This was designed to be a collection point. A reservoir.

Why?

Utahime squeezed her eyes shut. Remnants of hot tears trailed down her face. It was useless. Crying wouldn’t help her now. She forced the grief, the frustration, the fear into the back of her mind and focused. What mattered was that the talismans weren’t just interference—they were tools. And she could still use them.

Cursed energy-limiting talismans. That was something she could work with.

She took a slow, measured breath, biting back the pain as she whispered a familiar chant. Her hands trembled, but she forced them into the proper formations, reaching out to locate and activate the lingering energy in the paper charms. If she boosted her output now, she still wouldn’t be able to fight, which left her with one option—reversal.

She would hide herself.

If the talismans responded in her favor, they might even weaken the Special Grade curse just enough to make Gojo’s job easier. And if that was the case, he had better haul her broken body to Shoko the second it was over, or else she’d crawl back from the dead as a vengeful spirit just to make his life miserable.

Despite the surge of adrenaline in his veins and the frantic urge to tear through the place screaming Utahime’s name, Gojo forced himself to remain still.

He had landed on his feet somewhere underground, but the moment he took in his surroundings, he knew this wasn’t just a basement. It was a partial domain.

The walls were in decay, their surfaces cracked and warped, but that wasn’t the real problem. The structure itself was wrong. Disjointed. The layout twisted in on itself, as if someone had tried to reconstruct the space from broken memories and failed. Walls cut through each other at unnatural angles, some meeting where they shouldn’t, others barely holding together.

Hollow rectangles of varying sizes punctured the surfaces at random heights—entryways that led nowhere, or maybe everywhere, depending on how the domain shifted.

And the smell—thick, damp, and sour—clung to the air, the same stench from the hall upstairs, only stronger.

His Six Eyes sensed cursed energy, but the way it pulsed in the air was unlike anything Gojo had ever seen before. It drifted in the air like embers, but instead of a steady flow, it fractured into too many streams, splitting and weaving unpredictably. It made isolating Utahime’s presence nearly impossible. And that Special Grade bastard wasn’t helping—its energy flared and flickered erratically, like candlelight in a storm, making it difficult to tell where its presence ended and the domain’s influence began.

He exhaled sharply, glancing up at the darkness overhead where the ceiling should have been. It didn’t look far, but the way the drop had played with his perception was unnatural. If he hadn’t activated Infinity on instinct, he would’ve been in for a nasty landing.

Worse comes to worst, Utahime might’ve sprained an ankle or caught herself wrong trying to break her fall. Even minor injuries could be fatal for her down here. She wasn’t a brawler.

She needed time, needed ritual. If she was hurt—if her hands were shaking too much to form seals or if her body was too battered to hold out—then she was already on borrowed time.

Gojo ran his fingers over the moss-covered wall. The dampness clung to his skin, the texture rough beneath the growth. First, he needed to deal with whatever was messing with the cursed energy flow. The interference wasn’t natural. If he was right—and he usually was—Utahime’s clan’s talismans were buried in the concrete.

He pulled his fist back and drove it straight into the wall. The concrete cracked and crumbled under the force, a jagged opening breaking through the surface. Dust billowed around him, and in the shifting air, torn pieces of talismans fluttered against the edges of the crack. Their paper was yellowed with age, but the ink was still dark, the characters holding strong despite the decay.

His punch should’ve done more. A hit like that should’ve taken out half the damn wall, not just left a gap big enough to step through. Gojo narrowed his eyes and plucked one of the talismans free from the rubble. The second his fingers brushed against it, he felt it—his output had been restrained, its force dampened before it could fully release.

Clever little things. Annoying, but clever.

Gojo wanted to pause long enough to think things over, to map out the situation and predict Utahime’s movements but he didn’t have the luxury of time. Something burned inside him, twisting tight in his chest, an unrelenting worry that kept his mind racing and his legs moving.

That idiot. Why did she have to be so weak?

He was too used to missions with Suguru. With him, there was never any doubt, not even a hint of this gnawing panic clawing at his throat. This feeling—this helpless, sickening anxiety hitting him in waves—made him want to throw up.

His fingers twitched at his sides, raw with frustration, so he shoved them into his pockets and took it out on the walls instead. Kicking through them, one after another, letting the force of it echo through the shifting space. The basement couldn’t stretch on forever, and even a partial domain like this had limits. The talismans could only manipulate the structure so much before running out of energy.

Eventually, the air got heavier. The cursed energy around him thickened with every step, surging against his senses, saturating the space. He still couldn’t pinpoint Utahime, but he was closing in on the Special Grade.

Fine. He’d deal with it first. Then he’d find her. And when he did, he was going to twist her damn ear for putting him through this.

Gojo’s foot was mid-swing, ready to smash through another wall, when something shifted.

The cursed energy was still dense in this direction, but its weight had lessened significantly. It wasn’t pressing down on him the same way. It had become lighter. Diffused.

Two possibilities. Either Utahime had somehow managed to take down the Special Grade herself—which, let’s be honest, wasn’t likely—or she was capable of optimizing a cursed technique reversal to this degree. If it was the latter, Utahime would be in the least saturated space of the domain, which meant he had been running in the wrong direction the entire time.

He clicked his tongue in irritation and kicked down the final wall anyway. “Utahime!” His voice echoed through the empty space, swallowed by the cavernous dark. He didn’t need to wait for the dust to settle to know she wasn’t there.

Without hesitation, he spun on his heel and bolted in the opposite direction, retracing his steps. He let cursed energy gather at his fingertips, just enough to blast through anything in his way. If she’d actually pulled off something impressive, great. But if she was hurt—if he found her barely clinging on—he was going to drag her out of here and give her hell for making him feel like this.

The further he went, the more the cursed energy thinned, fading like mist burned away by the sun. But even as it lessened, he could feel the special grade now—a dense, writhing mass of energy, coiling and straining against the invisible chains of the talismans, desperate to break free.

Something was off.

Gojo could feel it in his Infinity—a strange, subtle disturbance. It wasn’t the curse, nor the talismans. It was something else, something faint but intrusive, like fingertips ghosting over the edges of his barrier, teasing at its surface, disrupting its natural flow. Utahime.

He pushed forward.

At the point where the cursed energy was at its weakest, he shouldered past the last crumbling wall, nearly stumbling as the space opened up into a cavernous room.

And then—There.

The two figures registered first as outlines of energy, blurred by the haze of dust and debris. Gojo adjusted his aim, his vision sharpening as the air cleared just enough for details to take shape—color, form, and the severity of the situation.

Utahime was on the ground, a contrast of white and red in the darkness, but she wasn’t moving. Her skin was too pallid, her breaths too shallow—was she even breathing?

Then—a flicker of movement. The faintest parting of her lips, her breath barely visible in the dust-heavy air. As he focused, he caught the soft murmur of a chant, steady despite the tremor in her body.

She was alive.

Gojo exhaled quietly, relieved, and turned his attention to the special grade curse.

The creature loomed in the dim light, its grotesque form shifting with a sickening squelch as it dragged itself forward. It resembled a bloated caterpillar, but instead of stubby legs, dozens of malformed human arms jutted from its segmented body. The limbs spasmed and clawed at the ground, raw and bleeding, leaving dark smears in their wake. Some hands curled uselessly, broken fingers twitching, while others gripped at the floor with stupendous strength, pulling its massive body forward inch by inch.

Its bulbous head was swollen and stretched tight, skin mottled with sickly hues of green and yellow. Thick pores lined its face, oozing a viscous green liquid that sizzled where it dripped, eating away at the damp stone. Its mouth—a jagged, vertical gash—twitched open slightly, revealing rows of needle-like teeth.

Gojo tilted his head, utterly unimpressed, and pointed his index finger at its bloated face.

Utahime actually did it, he thought. She managed to restrain a Special Grade this big and powerful. The only reason it hadn’t bitten her head off yet was because she had focused her technique on the space around her body, which meant the cursed energy disintegrated the closer it got to her.

“Hey, ugly,” he drawled, lips curling into a smirk as the curse turned to look at him. “You’re messing with the wrong duo.”

Utahime registered blinding light, and then—nothing.

For a moment, there was only the absence of sensation, the disquieting quiet of a body that no longer belonged to her. The severance was near-total: her limbs were foreign, drifting weightless as if unmoored from the rest of her. Even her heartbeat was distant, a slow, stubborn rhythm that seemed to echo in some other place. The numbness was suffocating, her body a hollowed-out thing.

Around her, voices flitted in and out, slipping through the cracks of her consciousness like faulty radio signals—stuttering, fading, returning. Some were urgent, some distant, but all of them were unintelligible, reduced to mere sound.

Then, without warning, everything returned. Sensation flooded back in a violent rush, too much, too fast. A sharp gasp tore from her throat, followed by a raw, involuntary cry as nerves reignited, dragging her back into herself. She shot upright.

There was no easing into wakefulness, no fog of disorientation to wade through—only the stark clarity of the present moment, as if she had never lost consciousness at all. Her heart slammed against the inside of her ribs, her breath jagged, her fingers curling instinctively against unfamiliar fabric.

And that was the most unsettling thing of all.

This place—it wasn’t where she had been. The air smelled different, the light struck at the wrong angles, and the sounds that reached her were wrong, too.

It was a traditional Japanese room, still and spare, the air thick with the scent of old wood and incense long burned away. The tatami beneath her palms was dry and cool, its woven fibers rough against her skin. The walls bore ancient scrolls, their delicate paper browned with age, inked prayers and sutras preserved beneath protective glass. A single shelf held religious artifacts—small wooden deities, a tarnished bell, a bowl of dried offerings. Everything looked untouched, a relic of a place where time had stretched and thinned.

And sitting cross-legged across from her was Suguru Getou.

But not quite.

His hair was longer, spilling over his shoulders in dark waves, and his frame had thickened, the soft lines of youth carved into something sharper, more deliberate. The weight of him, his presence, was different—denser, more absolute. He was clad in monk’s robes, their fabric ink-dark and pooling loosely around his legs, a visual contradiction between austerity and quiet arrogance.

He smiled.

And something about it told her that she did not know this man. Not yet.

The moment collapsed in on itself. Darkness surged forward, swallowing the vision whole, and then—

She was elsewhere.

A thin hum filled the air, fluorescent light buzzing weakly above her, casting its pale, artificial glow over a popcorn ceiling. The walls were colorless, washed in a shade that had no name. The smell struck her first—pungent, layered, and all too familiar. Blood, antiseptic, and something heavier, something unclean that clung to the air and refused to dissipate.

Wherever this was, she had woken up in the aftermath of something. Utahime tucked her chin, forcing her gaze downward.

Beneath the thin hospital blanket, both of her legs were there, the fabric settling over them in soft folds. She exhaled slowly. Tension eased from her shoulders as sensation crept back into her limbs, confirming what her eyes saw. Her leg was still hers. The dull hum of returning feeling was neither sharp nor searing, just the quiet ache of a body that had endured something brutal and come out the other side.

This was Jujutsu High’s infirmary, and despite the direness of the mission, she had survived. She had survived because of Gojo.

The thought steadied her, even as something uneasy coiled at the edges of her mind.

Utahime held her breath as she shifted, testing her strength. The stiffness in her muscles protested, but the pain she expected never came. When she moved her left leg, there was only a dull discomfort near the knee, like the remnants of an old injury rather than the fresh agony she had braced for. Carefully, she pulled herself upright, her fingers gripping the sheets for balance as she adjusted to the new weight of her body. She tossed the blanket aside.

The bruising was mild, no worse than the mottled yellows and greens of fading contusions, except for the deeper purples that bloomed around her knee, evidence of something more severe. It was Shoko’s work, no doubt.

But if Utahime understood Shoko’s technique correctly, then the discoloration meant time had passed since the mission. Healing through reversed cursed energy wasn’t absolute. It restored, but it didn’t erase.

Her fingers brushed absently against the IV line in her arm, registering the sting of the needle before she reached for the partition beside her bed.

She swung it aside.

Gojo lay on the neighboring bed, an open textbook spread haphazardly across his chest, its pages warped from being left open too long. His breathing was deep, even, but something about it felt forced—like exhaustion had taken him down rather than sleep. Even in rest, he looked worn out, his features shadowed with something uncharacteristic, something foreign to the image of effortless power he usually exuded.

The evidence of his stay was everywhere. Empty food containers stacked precariously on the bedside table, school things spilling from his bag in disarray, a pair of sunglasses abandoned near his pillow. The chaos of it all suggested he had been here for a while. That he hadn’t left.

"You’re finally awake," Shoko’s voice cut in from across the room. Utahime startled. She hadn’t noticed her there at all.

Shoko padded over, clipboard in hand, a stethoscope looped around her neck. "You were out for two days," she informed her, flipping through pages. "You should take it easy and stay in bed for now. Let me finish checking you over first."

Utahime barely heard her. Two days.

Her thoughts were knotted, tangled between what little she remembered and the aching gaps in her memory. She had so many questions, but they crowded at the front of her mind with no clear order, no starting point.

Her eyes drifted back to Gojo.

"Why is he here?" she asked. "Is he alright?"

Shoko pulled up a stool next to Utahime’s bed, the legs scraping softly against the floor. She sat down with the kind of practiced ease that suggested she had done this a thousand times before—watched over the injured, taken stock of the aftermath.

She glanced over her shoulder at Gojo. “He’s fine. He just needs more rest and a little bit of monitoring. After he brought you to me, he kept babbling about what you both went through, and then he collapsed. Then it was out turn to freak out since this guy never collapses unless he was suffering from sinusitis and being a drama queen.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, a little too quickly.

Shoko arched a brow but didn’t comment on it. “Something about the talismans and your technique,” she said, flipping through her notes. “He didn’t really pass out. Maybe thirty seconds, tops? Came right back like it never happened. But he’s been camped here ever since, waiting to nag you the second you woke up.”

She pressed the cold diaphragm of the stethoscope against Utahime’s chest, listening to her heart. Utahime sat still, letting the routine unfold—deep breaths, soft murmurs of acknowledgment, the steady rhythm of Shoko’s practiced movements. A quick check of her pupils, the reflexes in her limbs, notes scratched down in a medical shorthand Utahime couldn’t decipher.

And then, as if it were an afterthought—but it wasn’t—Shoko added, “Oh, and you might be interested to know that Gojo went back to the building you were in and destroyed it.”

“What?”

“Yaga’s furious with him,” she said. “There’s something about your family needing to investigate the client who owns that building, and Gojo wants to intervene because he’s pissed about the whole thing. Seems like clan stuff. Yaga wants to be notified as soon as you’re well. I figured I’d give you a heads-up so you won’t be caught off guard.”

Utahime hung her head and massaged her temples. Clan stuff. She already knew what that meant.

“Was Getou-senpai there?” she asked.

Shoko frowned slightly. “Getou?”

“I saw him,” Utahime said. The memory was fragmented, but it was there, the image of him piecing itself back together in her mind—longer hair, broader frame, a presence that felt more like a silhouette wearing his shape than the person she remembered. “He was dressed in…a costume?”

Shoko tilted her head, considering her, then tapped at her phone. “Ah,” she said, half to herself. A second later, she turned the screen toward Utahime. “Maybe this? I might’ve shown you this before.”

Utahime’s brow twitched.

The photo on Shoko’s phone showed Getou and Gojo, wrestling in turtle costumes.

Their faces were flushed a ridiculous shade of pink, their grins loose and unguarded in a way that made them look younger, smaller somehow. The bulky, round shells they wore were disproportionately large, making their limbs stick out at odd angles, awkward and absurd.

The sight was both curious and obscene, like something out of a fever dream.

“When did that happen?” she asked, trying to reconcile this image with the man she had seen in her vision.

Shoko chuckled, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “The first and only time Gojo got drunk. Freshman year.” Her smirk widened slightly. “If he starts bothering you, just tell him you saw the photo and that I’m willing to let you use it as blackmail material.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.” Utahime was sure she saw Getou in monk’s robes, not in a turtle costume.

“Are you feeling any pain or discomfort?” Shoko asked. “Nothing out of the normal,” Utahime murmured.

Before she could say anything else, Shoko hugged her.

Utahime stiffened, caught off guard—not because she disliked the hug, but because she hadn’t expected this kind of affection from her. Moreover, Shoko was warm and motherly in the way her arms tightened just enough to be comforting, not suffocating. Utahime hadn’t realized how tense she was until, all at once, her body relaxed.

“I was so worried about you,” Shoko muttered against her shoulder.

Utahime hesitated before raising her arms to return the hug. She let out a small, breathy laugh. “I’m sure you’ve seen worse, senpai.”

Shoko pulled away just enough to flick her forehead. “It’s always harder when it’s your friends.”

Utahime pressed her lips together, gaze dropping to her lap. “Sorry.”

“Hungry?”

Utahime nodded.

“I’ll get food for you and this idiot,” Shoko said, nudging Gojo’s shoulder with the back of her hand as she turned to leave. “I know you’re awake, stupid. Pork or chicken?”

“Pork,” Gojo muttered immediately, though he didn’t open his eyes. “Chicken!” Utahime called out over him, already annoyed.

Nose wrinkled and eyes narrowing, she slid further down the edge of the bed to study Gojo’s face. How did Shoko know he was awake this whole time?

Gojo sighed. “Stop staring.”

“It’s the Six Eyes, isn’t it?”

Gojo opened his eyes. After a beat, he turned his head to look at her. “You know you could’ve died, right?”

The anger in his voice startled her. It didn’t sound like before—not his usual exaggerated irritation, not a scolding meant to be brushed off.

This was genuine.

Utahime opened and closed her mouth in a couple of false starts. “I did my best given the circumstances.”

“When I pulled you out of there,” Gojo said, voice low, controlled in a way that made it more dangerous, “I could barely detect your heartbeat.”

“I was ambushed.”

“You lowered your cursed energy so much, you might as well have slashed your own throat.”

She stared at him, trying to make sense of it. Of all the things he could be mad about—

“That’s what you’re mad about?”

Gojo’s jaw tensed. “If you hadn’t used technique reversal, I could’ve found you faster.” “The special grade would’ve found me first!”

“I thought you were dead!” He rubbed his hand down his face aggressively, like he could scrape away the frustration building beneath his skin, then turned his back on her. “You’re a stupid little brat.”

Utahime would’ve normally been furious, but instead, she found herself frowning at the floor.

It was an overwhelming thing to realize that Gojo was this angry because he...cared? He must, or else he wouldn't be acting this way. His frustration wasn’t just about the mission, or the strategy, or even his own pride. It was about her.

She glanced up at his back, then down at her feet again. “Hey.”

No answer.

“Gojo.”

“Shut up.”

She exhaled, rubbing the back of her neck. It wasn’t an easy thing to say—not to him, not in a moment like this—but she knew she had to say it.

“Gojo-senpai, I’m really sorry.”

Gojo stilled.

Slowly, he turned his head just enough to glare at her over his shoulder. “What did you say?”

“…I’m sorry?”

“No, the first part.”

She hesitated. “Gojo-senpai?”

For a split second, she thought she saw it—the ghost of a smile flickering at the corner of his lips. It was gone before she could be sure. He turned his head away again, settling more comfortably against the pillows.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Your senpai forgives you. But you’re still a little brat, and you owe me.”