Bad Timing | Satoru Gojo | Toji Fushiguro | Jujutsu Kaisen

Part One: Chapter 1

Six Years Ago:

The air in our room smelled like burnt carpet and damp fabric, that stupid light on the ceiling kept flickering every two minutes, making me grow more and more irritated. My whole body felt lifeless and had zero energy as my stomach rumbled with hunger. But I had nothing else to do but keep on waiting and staring at the wall clock in front of me. Ticking ticking, ticking...

He said he would be here by eight, and it's half past ten already. I sighed and rubbed at my empty stomach. What else can I do other than keep waiting?

I knew already things would be this rough. He told me so. He told me I wouldn't be able to bear living this way with him. But I had nowhere else to go. No family, no friends, no one but him. He is the only person to ever show me what it was like to be loved and what it felt like to feel safe, for once. After so many cold nights on the streets, Toji's filthy one-room flat, in this shitty neighborhood, was the only place I could call a warm home for me. Because it really was!

My home...

He met me two years ago at a secret gambling club. When I was about twenty years old and was stumbling my way with my powers and how they worked. It was messy. I had zero training, zero knowledge, and did not know that there were others like me. Other sorcerers. I thought I was a freak. That I was a monster who would hurt and bring doom on whoever gets near me. I saw it in me. That darkness. That anger that just kept on growing. I believed it until it became my whole being. Just darkness.

But, I did not realize that that same darkness could bring me serenity of some sort one day. When he saw me. When his darkness matched mine. When I looked into his eyes and saw myself, for once, not alone.

Because, on the inside, he was just like me...

At first, he didn't seem too interested in me. Keeping his mind and focus solely on playing and winning. My old master used to make me work on the nights they'd gamble, pouring drinks and cleaning tables. I was always too interested in their games, looking and watching their moves, face expressions, the masks they like to put on. Making notes about their personalities and assumptions on how they lived. It was fun. It kept me occupied during the shitty shifts.

But sometimes people will catch you staring at them and interpret that stare into something else. And that's how he saw me. When a pervert tried to put his filthy hands on my body, thinking I was giving him signals to make a move on me, and I ended up blasting him away with my technique.

No one really knew what happened, no one saw or sensed the residues of my technique. They only saw him getting pushed and smashed on top another table.

But Toji did. He sensed it. And his eyes, flickered with hunger and such eagerness, locked on me. Like a lion seizing its prey. They lingered on me for more than a beat. And I still remember how my body trembled under his fierce gaze that night. Green eyes scanning me up and down, mind deep in thoughts, before the edge of his mouth lifting into a tight smirk.

He knew, in that second, he knew what he wanted immediately. He knew what he'd give just to get it. And he knew, just like I knew, that he'd got it just as easy.

My master didn't really get it then, when Toji insisted on playing and betting on me, why he wanted to have me that bad. It was never the way things worked in there. But with those sharp green eyes. That unbreakable stone mask and that attitude. Damn that attitude. He eventually agreed to him. And had Toji play him, then ended up losing. I remember how that made me scared shitless about what was going to happen to me. Even now, I still get those small goosebumps over my arms when I recall the memory. But that was how he took me under his wing.