The Strongest | ɢᴏᴊᴏ ꜱᴀᴛᴏʀᴜ

Chapter 3

A forceful and way-too-loud knock on my door pulls me out of my reverie, and I startle up. Ugh. I open the door to find Gojo, looking annoyingly perfect and put-together. He's not even looking at me and already turned to face the elevator.

"Come on," he says.

Knowing he'll head for the elevator without me, I vanish into my room to get my knives. When I get back to the hallway and find him still standing there, still not looking at me, I raise my eyebrows. He actually waited. How nice of him to do the absolute bare minimum.

"Let's get this over with," I say as I pull the door closed behind myself and pocket the key card.

I want to take a step towards the elevator, but Gojo stops me by grabbing a fistful of my uniform at the back. "We'll be faster if I just take us there right away," he says, and I spin around to him, ripping my uniform from his grasp and glaring at him. He shrugs. "Or I can let you walk on your own again. Your choice."

It's a hard decision to make. Do I want him to leave me yet again so I can somehow find my way to the place on my own in the falling night, or do I give in and let him help me? I decide that walking really isn't the better option here, so I grunt and nod once.

Just the tiniest flicker of a smirk crosses the man's face before he wipes it off and holds onto my shoulder. The feeling of his touch is unnerving and makes me squirm for a moment before time and space seem to stretch and bend, and I feel like throwing up. It all takes about two seconds before my feet find solid ground again, and Gojo lets go of me.

We're standing in front of the psychiatric hospital in Setagaya, and I feel sick for a few more seconds before I can adjust to what just happened. So this is what it feels like to truly travel with Gojo Satoru. I'm not sure I ever want to do it again, but it's definitely faster and requires way less talking. Maybe the more you do it, the more you get used to it, and the less awful it feels. Maybe.

"I'll cast he curtain," Gojo announces unnecessarily before mumbling the words. "Purify that which is impure."

The sky darkens even more, but in an unnatural way, and the atmosphere instantly feels more gloomy than before. The closer we get to the building, the more I can feel the curses that are inside. There's a lot of them. I expected as much, this being a psychiatric hospital and all. But something feels off. Something isn't quite the way it should be.

When we push open the doors to the building, I immediately know why. Gojo and I look at each other. This is an incomplete domain. There is a special-grade curse somewhere here amongst the many lower-grade curses, which means way more work, which means it'll take a while, which means we'll have to stay the night at the hotel. Besides, I wouldn't put it past Yaga to have someone at the hotel tell him if we were to check out early. For whatever reason, this is what we're stuck with now.

But Yaga's mission isn't my biggest concern. It's the swarm of fly heads that's heading right at us. There's hundreds of them, and their buzzing hurts in my ears. But they're weak and small and not a challenge to me, especially not for Gojo. We both aim our energy at the curses, and in a matter of seconds, they're disintegrated, and silence is restored in the domain. Well, silence except for the groaning of cursed spirits in every corner, hidden somewhere I can't see and only sense them.

"Let's split up," I say, making Gojo look down at me. He's about to reply something when I continue, "We'll be faster that way."

"There's a special-grade here, you know that."

I nod. "I know. Are you saying I can't handle it?"

The man purses his lips in disagreement. "I know that you can, but -"

Of course, he's saying that now. He's seen me handle a second-grade and watched me get hurt. We both know a special-grade is way above that, and we both know I can't handle it, but I'm not about to admit that to him. We both know it, so there's no need for us to say it out loud. I don't need him. I can do this on my own. That's the only way I can get better. Or dead. Or better.

"Good," I break him off. "Then let's split up."

I want to walk away from him and leave him standing for once, but Gojo doesn't let me. He puts his hand on my shoulder again, only this time not in the same slightly protective way he did earlier. Now, it's firm and authoritative. He's ordering me to stop.

"Don't be a brat and do as I tell you just this once," he snaps, and his tone is so unexpectedly forceful that I'm taken aback. "You'll get us both killed."

I snort a laugh. He's not serious, is he? "If anything, I'll get myself killed. You, on the other hand, you're the strongest," I mock his tone. "You'll be fine."

I'm about to swipe his hand off my shoulder when he grabs my wrist with his other hand. "Stop, for once, (y/n), and let me help! I won't leave you again, I promise."

Disgust seeps into my face. I can't believe him. I want to let him help, I do, but not like this. Not if he throws that in my face. I shouldn't have said that earlier, I know that, but it's too late for that now. But for him to use that against me, that momentary slip, is just...

I twist my arm, so he has to loosen his grip on my wrist, and he lets go. "You go that way," I snap at him while already walking into the other direction. "I go this way."

To my satisfaction, I don't hear him following me, and he also doesn't argue. In a matter of about fifteen minutes, I'm sweating, panting, and covered in my own blood. As I slam a curse's head into the wall, making the concrete crumble, I wish that I could just go back home and have Shoko fix me up.

There are so many curses here that I'm really starting to ask myself what they're all doing here. A lot of them are floating in the air like balloons, and they're making sounds as if they're laughing at me, but I know they're not because they don't possess intelligence. They're lower-grade curses, and that's why there's so many of them in one spot.

I pull out two knives that I had sheathed in holsters on my ribs. I lost one earlier when a curse was holding me down, my upper body dangling out of the window, and it stepped on my arm so my hand flexed open and the knife fell about five stories deep. I hadn't even known I was at an upper level until then. The domain is messing with space.

Now, my knives buzzing with the imbued cursed energy, I climb onto the pile of curses I've already slain and jump onto the nearest floating balloon-curse. Its mouth tries to snap at me, but I slam my knife into it and almost even expect the sound of a popping balloon, but it doesn't come. The curse only groans and grunts, and I move on to the next one.

Slicing and jumping and breathing hard, I manage to finish almost all of the floating curses, which would mean clearing this room. For just a second, I wonder how Gojo is doing. He's probably done by now with his side of the domain. Will he join me even though I've specifically told him not to? Or will he just, well, leave?

There are two more curses right ahead of me, and the pile behind me has only grown. I slash my knives through the air and flex my neck. Two more, and then this room is done. With all the force my already weakened legs can manage, I jump through the air. My feet are struggling to find ground for a second before my blades are buried in the round curses and they scream and groan as gravity pulls me to the floor and my knives cut them open. They fall with me, and the impact bursts them apart, spraying me with gross substance.

"Ugh," I say to myself and wipe cursed sprit out of my face. I sheathe my knives again and get ready to -

It shouldn't have been able to sneak up on me. It shouldn't have been able to send me flying across the room into the wall.