The air in the lounge room had gotten thicker by the time Arisu returned with the insipid brown liquid in a paper cup, barely hot and lacking the earthy smell of coffee the machine was shamelessly named after. Before she walked through the door, she knew. All the people she was either related to, dated, friends, or friendly with were in the same room now that the last chair was filled.
Inside the body of the pearl-haired man flowed an endless amount of cursed energy which caused the fuses in her brain to blow. His presence was so intense that he almost became invisible to the radar her technique had cursed her brain with. Some days being around him was overwhelming. That day, not her brain but her heart found it hard.
Satoru had taken over her seat, legs stretched out and arms dangling from the armrests, as he talked to the blond man. She heard him drop his nickname for her in the middle of a whiny sentence. He had to be explaining how she hung up on him earlier.
Seeing her walk in, he was swift to jump to his feet to show that he was on his best behavior for the requests to come. He grinned, both sweet and devious. "You arrived just in time. I was telling Nanami how my Ari-chan is always there for me when I need her."
The dinner it was.
Satoru never truly needed her. Not since he was ten and almost already mastered the gifts he was blessed with while Arisu was struggling to keep her spider in check and Ryosuke was learning to deal with the backlash of the Dark Matter. Not since he followed his family's footsteps to the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College a year before her and met a boy his match (the other children in their small private school were 'a bunch of airheads', and he needed her to keep him entertained during lunch breaks.)
A side glance from his former underclassman exposed his little lie. Arisu usually enjoyed humoring him by playing along, but her mind was kilometers away at that moment, in a little wooden box buried under the woolen garments in her dressing room in a pathetic attempt to keep what was inside contained — what embarrassment for someone with her experience level. She felt like its scent permeated her hair; she was afraid that he could sense it.
She shot a quick glance at Ryosuke. His violet eyes, two shades bluer and darker than hers, were glued on his phone with no attention to spare to his cousin's antics — just like how he used to bury his face in his books throughout middle school, pretending he wasn't acquainted with the loud boy calling him his cousin and that sharing the same family name was nothing but a tasteless coincidence; their different hair and eye colors helped him get away with it for a while. Despite sharing less DNA, she and Ryosuke looked more related with their violet eyes and black hair. Still, denying his relation to her always came easier to him, even outside the school grounds.
"Honey," Arisu affectionately sighed, and Satoru's smile dropped as he stared at her behind the bandages keeping his treasured eyes hidden. The leather felt warm against her bare legs as she took her seat back from him. "You know I'd follow you to death if you ask me to, and I'd much prefer doing that than attending the old hag's birthday dinner."
Kusakabe reached for the newspaper that Nanami was done reading and prepared to zone out. He never had any interest in the Gojo clan's affairs, or in any other clan, big or small. Yet her family was always a dark cloud over their relationship. 'That's why I never wanted to do anything with a sorcerer,' he had slipped and said one day. She couldn't even get mad at him. He wanted something simple. Her upbringing was anything but simple.
Arisu waited for Ryosuke to comment on her insult. The elder cousin believed their petty family dramas should be kept within the tall stone walls surrounding their childhood estate as if a single look of a stranger wasn't enough to figure out what kind of people they were raised by and why family gatherings weren't events to look forward to, why there was more than 'easier to commute' and 'times are changing' to two men to break the family tradition and move out as soon as they were no longer legally bound — she wasn't expected to stay as long as Satoru didn't.
It was one of the many matters Arisu and Ryosuke didn't see eye to eye. She believed it was good for Satoru. It made him look less close to a god, reminded the others that he was also human; flesh and bone, born to a mother like the rest of them. It was good for her to remind herself that.
For once, Ryosuke didn't say anything. He was too busy typing on his phone.
"Mom's going to chew me out for not bringing you along." To six and five-year-old Satoru and Arisu, no monsters in closets, no ghosts in shadows, no curses were scarier than Gojo Narumi after her husband's siblings commented on her son's lack of discipline. She towered over them like a giant straight out of the pages of a fairytale with her finger waving in their faces while the little girl cowered behind the instigator of all of their crimes. A girl in her position didn't have the same privilege to misbehave, but it was impossible to not get caught in the clan's prince's antics when she was required to be by his side every second. Her guardian never separated the girl from her own blood when that happened. "And she already guilt-tripped me into promising I'd go."
Narumi was a good person. Better than Shiori and Shohei, better than her late husband, better than the mother who sold her weeks-old baby to her distant relatives to fund her getaway, and as much as Arisu struggled to accept, better than Kousuke-sama.
"I feel bad about sending you alone." She was glad that Satoru couldn't see the mischievous smile on her lips, or so she thought. The woman had an idea of how the Six Eyes saw the world but not what he saw. "I'll come with you if Ryo is also coming."
Satoru heaved out a relieved sigh, a little exaggerated but fitting his character. He was still standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips as if he was in a hurry to wrap it up and drag her outside to show her the new stray he found. He sure loved collecting them.
"Of course he's coming. When did he ever miss—"
"No." The already faint smile on the black-haired man's lips was wiped away the moment his name left hers. He turned the phone face-down and placed it down on his leg.
"Huh? What do you mean no?"
Outright insults weren't Ryosuke's style. His face was saying 'Are you that dense?'. "It means I won't be going."
Satoru countered his attitude with a bratty voice. "I get that. Why not?"
Ryosuke took a moment to decide whether answering or telling his cousin to mind his own business would end up less troublesome. "I have other plans. I thought you already knew. I told Arisu two weeks ago."
"Did you really have to bring that up?" she protested.
Satoru turned to Arisu, then to Ryosuke again, and repeated the motion a couple of times before he decided that he was more disappointed than he was surprised. "Since when you are conspiring with him behind my back?"
"I was going to tell you." She choked on a guilty chuckle while shifting in her seat. His six eyes on her soul almost made her forget which sin she was confessing. "He's trying to shift the attention away from himself! Let's focus on what's important here. Ryo isn't attending Shiori's birthday. Her 60th birthday! Who knows, hopefully it might be her last."
In her eyes, Shiori was a despicable woman, the embodiment of everything ugly and two-faced in the jujutsu society; in Satoru's, she was just another annoying relative. Ryosuke shared a close bond with his aunt, closer than he had with his parents, closer than she had with her siblings. The eldest child and the only daughter of Kousuke-sama had taught her nephew the art of swordplay, honed him into the respected sorcerer he was today. He was her 'perfect boy', and her perfect boy was missing her special day.
Could it be that they had a falling out? No reason sounded good enough. Perhaps it was about his mystery lady. Shiori had invested too much in Ryosuke to allow him to marry a random woman. But how well did she know either of them to play a guessing game? He had shut them out for years under the same roof, and they had never tried to make him come out and play.
"By any chance," Shoko joined them, "skipping your aunt's birthday might have anything to do with her trying to get you to find a wife?"
Ryosuke looked defeated. "Ieiri, please don't enable them."
His tone with the overworked doctor differed greatly from what he most often used with Arisu and Satoru; it was softer, friendlier. Of all the sorcerers in the room, the wielder of the Dark Matter knew the best to appreciate the woman who kept his body intact.
Still, no amount of appreciation and time spent alone together in the medical ward could make Ryosuke open his heart to anyone. He wanted nothing more than for it to remain under the rug he swept to until it rotted away there along with all his personal problems. But he knew what was expected of him, he knew what was his responsibility to the family name that opened every door to him. With the head of the clan's lack of interest in settling down and his unpredictable nature, the future of the clan was left on his shoulders as the only other son of the main family. Despite the clan's superstitions, Ryosuke could still pass down the Limitless to his children. In their eyes, it was worth the risk of having another Dark Matter user.
Arisu felt bad for him.
After her death or the destruction of the shikigami, whichever was to come first, no baby was going to be born with her technique until the beast regenerated her body. Four centuries was too far in the future to guarantee keeping the technique in the clan, it required too much investment for too little. She was the shiny shell you found during a walk at the beach and put into your pocket, not the one you sought in the sand.
She was another average sorcerer, who manifested her technique a few years earlier than other average sorcerers, for longer than she had been special.
"We all knew the day you make a loveless contract marriage would come." The white-haired man was lucky that looks couldn't kill, or else Ryosuke would have been written in the history pages as the man who ended Gojo Satoru. "You actually waited for longer than I expected."
Shohei was only nineteen, straight out of school, when Kousuke-sama decided marriage was the last resort for his youngest child to settle down and mature, and a month away from twenty when he held his younger daughter for the first time. At fifty-three, he was still the same rowdy, joke of a man. Ryosuke had his father's looks but none of his traits; he was more rational than he was ambitious. Condemning yourself and a stranger to a miserable life for power was something only a fool driven by emotion, by greed and fear would do. Ryosuke was no fool.
"Worry about yourselves," the eldest cousin said.
"Myself?" Arisu laughed. She never had an issue with charming men. The real challenge was making them stay. "I'm just a third cousin, remember? No one cares about what I do."
Ryosuke unlocked his phone and returned to texting as he spoke without looking at Satoru. "Does that mean you didn't tell her about the background check?"
Arisu sat up straight. "What?"
"Mom was curious about who you were with. You were in a rebellious phase," Satoru said. He looked like a kid who got caught getting into the cookie jar. "She didn't find anything interesting."
"That's good to know," Kusakabe grunted behind the newspaper pages. 'That's why I never wanted to do anything with a sorcerer.' How could she blame him?
Ryosuke had a gift for getting out of situations he didn't want to be in. He was back at texting his mystery lady after putting her into the spotlight of embarrassment — it had to be her; she had never seen her cousin pay so much attention to his phone.
Arisu could run her mouth to get back at him, tell Satoru that his cousin was seeing someone, but she decided to keep his little secret. It wasn't out of consideration. She rarely had anything on Ryosuke before he always effortlessly twisted the knife and put it against her throat.
"That's enough personal life talk," she changed the topic. "Did you only drop by to pressure me about the dinner?"
"Not entirely," Satoru replied like he just remembered why he was there. "I'm here to take you to see my student."
"You said you were going to introduce us after he settled in. It's only been a few hours."
"Did I say anything about introductions?" With a gentle hold on her wrist, he lifted Arisu from the comfort of the leather armchair with ease as if she were a cotton-filled ragdoll. "I'm going to show him to you."
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"Incredible," Arisu muttered, squinting over the custom-made glasses she pushed down on the slope of her nose, as they stood at the top of the stone steps overlooking the track.
"Right?"
"Never would I imagine that one day I'd meet someone I'd hate as much as I hate you."
"Ouch."
The first-years were running their morning laps. Except for Panda. The life-sized cursed doll was sitting on the synthetic grass, shouting how many more his human classmates had left — the scene exuded a heavy nostalgia of the better days; when Yaga-sensei used to leave a much smaller but no less fluffy Panda to keep an eye on them because he couldn't trust the first-year Arisu to not convince her friends to slack off in his absence. He wasn't as good at counting back then, but he sure was good at telling on the girl until Arisu and Haibara figured out they could buy his silence with a pack of calpas.
The Zenin girl was at the lead with the cursed-speech user following not too far behind. Then there was the poor transfer student, left in the dust of the kids with years of training.
Arisu had met a lot of sorcerers, exorcised countless cursed spirits, seen over a hundred cursed tools in twenty-seven years. She had been to gatherings that overwhelmed her senses almost as much as the six-eyed man could on his own, encountered curses that made her skin crawl, but nothing could impress her as much as it should after growing up with Satoru.
Okkotsu Yuta (and Rika) was certainly a special case, albeit looking like an ordinary teenager; tall, dark-haired, perhaps a little skinny for his age. Satoru's eagerness to introduce them made more sense to her. The reason was beyond the similar traits of Jorogumo and Rika.
Maybe she really was overestimating Ryosuke.
No. He would've found a way.
"Did they register him as special grade?"
"Uh-huh," Satoru hummed. The woman couldn't read into techniques like a certain six-eyed sorcerer, but she never misclassified any being with a touch of cursed energy — not after leaving her friend at that church.
"They'll want to get rid of him as soon as they can."
"You're being extra pessimistic today, Ari-chan." Satoru was confident, and rightfully so. He had the world in his palm, and if he wanted to crush it, who could stop him? Arisu, on the other hand, was a mere mortal; she was never going to be able to look down on the world as he did. Could be that was why she never found relief in his confidence. "No one's getting their hands on my students."
She slapped his arm. "I worry about you, idiot. You can't keep pissing them off and get away with it forever. You need to look out for yourself too."
"I have you for that," he said while rubbing his arm. "I don't need to suck up to the higher-ups."
The higher-ups liked Ryosuke. He knew how to play their political games, to not portray himself as a threat to them, and they didn't find a reason to fear him like they feared Satoru. In their eyes, Gojo Satoru was a bomb on the countdown, a challenge to their authority. He never hesitated to remind them that he wasn't on their side, and if he were to decide to bulldoze their corrupt system, there was no one they could send on a suicide mission to stop an untouchable man.
But everyone had a kryptonite, Arisu believed. How truly limitless could the Limitless be?
"I know I said I'd follow you to death, and you know I would, but please try a little to not put me in a such situation," she half-joked. "I actually enjoy being alive."
"First, keeping secrets from me, and now talking like you don't have any faith in me. What happened to my Ari-chan?" He didn't wait for an answer before looking away. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Maki, Yuta, go get changed! Toge, Panda, you two can continue!"
Okkotsu lifted his head, and Arisu finally got a clear view of his sunken face. "Is it wise to send him out on a mission on his first day?"
"It's an elementary school, and Maki will be with him." Satoru's teaching approach mirrored his grandfather's. He dropped them in the water and watched them figure out how to swim but never let them drown. All three of them — Chisato, Ryosuke, and Satoru — had learned to exorcise curses the same way their fathers and aunt did; by being thrown in the face of a cursed spirit. Arisu had received a special kind of training. "I haven't even introduced you two, yet you're already worried for him."
He sounded a little too amused. "I'm not. He's your student."
"You are worried."
"What are you plotting, Satoru?"
"Nothing." The same innocent tone in his voice as their phone call in the morning. Arisu crossed her arms. "Well, I was actually going to wait until you talked with Yuta. I was hoping you wouldn't have the heart to say no to that face, but it looks like you figured it out. I was thinking maybe you can do more than a pep talk."
"He's your student," she repeated.
"Think of it like tutoring. There are things I can't teach him myself."
"If I wanted to work with kids, I would've applied for that teaching position."
"I still think you should," he said. "If you think third years would be too much for you, I'm sure Kusakabe wouldn't mind switching. You'll also be pretty familiar with Yuta by next year, and you already know Panda for years. That way you can also still put in a recommendation for Kirara."
"He absolutely would mind, and even if I had any interest in becoming a teacher, I'd never screw him over like that." She owed him at least that after how nicely he treated her despite her destroying their relationship. "Ask Nanami. He's better with kids."
The last time Arisu worked in the presence of another sorcerer was her last mission to get her grade 1 promotion. She couldn't see herself in a mentorship position. The idea of being responsible for someone's life terrified her. Her reason for refusing to submit a recommendation for Hoshi Kirara was the same.
Arisu knew what Satoru was trying to do for her, and she hated him for it.
"Nanami wouldn't be a good match for Yuta," he insisted. "He doesn't know what it's like to live with a Rika either. We can only help so much with something we don't understand."
Arguing with him about Jorogumo being different from a vengeful spirit was pointless. He was asking for something even harder than technicalities. "So there are things even Gojo Satoru can't do."
"It seems so." He dug his hand into his pocket. What he pulled out from the weirdly bulged pocket was a twisted piece of metal with a plastic end. She quickly realized what it was supposed to be and wished she hadn't. "He consented to the execution."
Arisu looked away from the knife. There had been times she had wished she was the one who died in that church. Not once she had tried to silence that voice telling her that. Did Satoru really think they were that similar? "It's not fair. You can't do this to me."
"I'm not trying to pressure you." He put the knife back. "I just want to show you the entire picture before you give an answer."
"Please," she huffed out, still looking away. He knew exactly what he was doing. "You know I can't say no after you show me that."
AUTHOR'S NOTE,,
I'm taking a break from bullying Ryo after this one. I swear he's my second favorite OC after his pretty mystery lady... Arisu who?