REARRANGED | Gojo Satoru (Jujutsu Kaisen) X Female Reader

Lucid Dream Arc - (3) Scrapped Ideas

The hallway branching off the opposite direction to the laundry is a hallway that leads to the bathroom. And to the mysterious, inaccessible 'Back Room' of legend. The bathroom is a spacious double vanity with vessel sinks that just scream 'I have too much money'. There's a clawfoot tub and a standing shower, for whatever reason. And the toilet has its own little room, which is fancier than a toilet deserves, honestly. Again, all dark tile and wood.

The whole place is, in a word, beautiful. It's an industrial-style dream, straight out of a housing catalogue. But it feels out of place in Japan; this is something that more belongs in New York and Tokyo. And it's cold, impersonal. There are no decorations, no personal affects, no pictures. It feels barely lived in. And I feel more like a ghost haunting the walls than a person when I roam.

It almost feels stifling.

I can't exactly leave through the front door—as much as I'd love to. For one, it's definitely locked; I'd heard the tumblers shift into place when Ieiri had left. And two, there's a post-it note stuck to the door with Gojo's handwriting that explicitly tells 'Spy-chan' to 'stay'. So I'm staying. He'd find me wherever I tried to go, and there's no point in running anyway. This isn't even my world, so... where would I go?

I open the curtains in the living room. The windows are covered in an opaque white film. Weird, I think, reaching out to touch the glass. Instead of coming in contact with something firm, though, the surface seems to almost ripple. It's a slow, almost oozing motion, like the windows have been coated in a thick syrup. But when I remove my fingers, they aren't sticky. I poke and prod at the weird substance before closing the curtains and backing away.

"It must be a Veil," I state out loud. "No wonder they aren't worried about me escaping."

The I sigh and curl back up on the couch.

And I watch the ceiling fan overhead spin in a lazy circle. Round and Round.

I never thought I'd be bored in a hostage situation. My phone had been confiscated to prevent me from contacting anybody, and it's not like I could've done anything on it without cellular data or Gojo's wifi password anyway. There'd been a moment where I'd considered reading some of the books on Gojo's shelving, but I'm not exactly sure what counts as 'naughty' in his mind. I'd hate to get in trouble because I touch something I'm not supposed to.

Instead, I'd ran my fingertip down the spines of the books, reading their titles. The larger bookcase is mostly dedicated to entertainment: novels, manga, magazines, and even a few boxes filled with cards and board games. I was surprised to find that there's a pretty wide variety to Gojo's collection—sci-fi, fantasy, drama, horror, comedy, and even a romance or two. And I was even more surprised to find that I recognized some of the titles, and that we apparently share a profound love of Noragami. He has volumes one through fourteen. I wonder why he doesn't have more, until I realize that this is 2015—eight years ago, for me. They probably aren't out yet.

When I took my fingers away, they were coated in a thick layer of dust; Gojo is a man with very little free time to relax and enjoy himself, it seems.

The smaller set of bookcases are mostly related to Jujutsu Sorcery. Judging from the titles, some are academic studies done over the centuries by various Sorcerers while others are comprehensive primers on known clan Techniques. And scientific papers as well. Some of this stuff is frighteningly advanced, and I can barely make heads or tails of the titles: 'The Thermodynamics of Cursed Energy Transfers Between Users of Imminent Domains' and 'Reactive Chemistry: Practical Understanding of Elemental Manipulation Techniques' stand out, but there are others as well. There are thick leather-bound genealogies, what appear to be personal journals, field guides for recognizing hauntings, theoretical texts about the origin of Cursed Energy, historical accounts of famous hauntings in Japan, and some sort of religious texts that appear to be European in nature. Some of the items on the shelves aren't even books, rather, are scrolls whose paper looks near to disintegrating. How old is some of this stuff?! Gojo has the most fragile-looking objects hidden behind tinted glass to protect them from moisture and light.