❤︎ 1480 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜, 5.5 𝚖𝚒𝚗 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎
❤︎ 𝚃𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐: 𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚎, 𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎

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In school, Geto and Gojo were opposites of each other. Geto had long black hair while Gojo's was white and short. Gojo was boisterous and loud but Geto was reserved and cryptic. Geto carried himself like a man beyond his years; meanwhile, I'd sometimes forgotten that Gojo, who never seemed to have time to sleep, was older than me. 

Even their Jujutsus were nothing like each other's. Gojo was infamous for using flamboyant Jujutsus complete with explosions, flashes, blinding colours, and the like. On the other hand, while Gojo was a solar flare, Geto was an absorbing black hole. Literally and figuratively. Geto had an innate talent for taking in curses, malleableizing them, and capturing them into fist-sized spheres. He swallowed them whole, digested them, and in turn, metabolized them into powers of his own. He inhaled all the shadows he encountered until some day, he became one himself. His taste buds reeked of unending, pungent echoes of vomit, dirt, and despair. He took all of that darkness in and watched as his shine dimmed.

Is it a surprise that he took me in at the lowest point of my life?

It was August, my birthday month. I was born at a bright summer noon. Perhaps that's why I dislike sunlight so much: it reminds me of having been thrust into existence without knowing what I was. 

That month, I went on one of my first missions. I was paired up with Geto. I had never been on a mission with a second-year before–Yū and Nanami weren't there because they were on another mission with Shoko. I improved significantly on my Curse-Reversing but Yaga wanted me to work on my field experience. 

"You're there to watch Suguru's back, y/n. You're a decent healer now. Help him when he needs it. He doesn't know how to ask for it," Yaga instructed me before we left.

A second-grade curse had enveloped an abandoned hospital which stood derelict at the edge of town for two decades. The whole area was by a river and smelled perpetually wet and mouldy. 

"Be careful, especially in the basement. There seems to be a great amount of cursed energy coming from there. Several kids from this area have gone missing after 'exploring' the hospital," the school's assistant told us as he parked the car in front of the building. 

"Only one child survived. She came back in deep shock and couldn't speak for a month. When she finally awoke, she told us... that... they never reached the basement... They were stuck in an endless loop... trying to find the stairs leading down to it. So be on the lookout, you two. And... good luck." The assistant handed the both of us cursed tools: a bowie knife for Geto and a longsword for me.

"The local kids believe that a ghoul inhabited the hospital and devoured anyone that was sick, weak, or 'naughty'," Geto told me as we stepped towards the building. He always researched before going on missions, down to local lore. 

"Oooohaaaeeeeooo..." I looked up, the building was soot gray and a cacophony of eerie voices was erupting from within. They were abstruse, discordant. 

I stopped in my tracks: I saw Mom, Dad, a fetus... I felt my memories seeping out like unannounced period blood, or as if my skull was a ripe mandarin, being opened by a pair of shapeless hands. 

Geto stood still as well, his jaw clenched. "The sounds... They could be a cursed spirit, or a Jujutsu illusion to disorient us," he placed a hand on my shoulder. "Ready, y/n?" 

I blinked and the ghosts were gone. "Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure." Synchronous with my incantation, a dark, almost liquid matter flowed radially from the sky to form a dome that encased the hospital.

As soon as we stepped inside, my head started throbbing, from the stench of claustrophobia. I listened to the whirring in the air: the squelching wriggling of intestines mixed with barely audible whispers. They said: "I don't want to die...," "I am afraid of dying alone...," "I want my friends to come see me," "I am lonely..." 

"...These are... the whispers of patients that used to live here..?" I turned to look at Geto. Sweat was pouring from his forehead. 

"Look..." he pointed at the walls. It was a nightmarish image stitched to my mind til this day. Instead of alabaster, the walls were... moving. They twitched like the muscles of a lab rat spasming under electric currents. It was a breathing monstrosity, alive with writhing tendrils of cursed energy.

"Are you sick...? Are you in pain...? What's the matter, honey...? Let me take care of you..." A reverberating lisp conducted through the walls. "Let me kiss your wounds and make it better..."

"The voice...it's coming from the walls..." I gulped. Impatient, Geto cut open one of the walls. Thick, putrid blood came spurting out. 

"Ahh!!! Why... You little bastard!" With a shriek, the walls started moving, closing in.

"Fuck!" Geto yelled as we ran for our lives; I'd never seen him more nervous. "This is bad... This is bad... This is the fucking worst..."

"Where is the cursed spirit?" I screamed, half of my body was drenched in blood from the wall.

"If I deduced correctly..." said Geto

"Why are you running my little ones? Don't you want a lollipop? The doctor has some stickers for you! If you just be good... be good...!" The shriek was back.

Geto summoned a coil of centipedes to chew through the walls of the narrowing corridor. 

"Ahhh!!!" Gushing blood and screamsagain while the walls paused. "You... you think you can run? Where are you running to? Where?! You are right in my stomach!!!"

In its stomach...? When we entered the hospital... "Shit! Senpai! The hospital is the spirit!" I yelled at Geto, wiping blood out of my eyes. 

"Thought so... Fuck! We need... we need to find its weak spot..." Geto untied his hair and squeezed the blood out of it.

A child survived and came back but told us they couldn't even reach the basement. They were stuck in an endless loop trying to find the stairs leading down to it. The basement... "The basement!" I said. "Its weak spot must be in the basement!"

"What?" Geto pushed back his hair and tied it into a low ponytail. "How do you know?"

"Remember what the manager told us? The kids tried to go to the basement but were stuck in an endless loop... What's the curse trying to hide in the basement? Why did it try so hard to stop them from going down?" I replied. 

"Not bad. Not bad at all, you," Geto said. He was surprisingly sincere.

I smiled, too. It wasn't often that Geto complimented anyone or anything. "Thing is, Senpai... How do we find a way down?"

Ever since we got in, all we saw was an endless corridor; no exits, no doors, no stairs.

"Hold on tight!" Geto instructed.

"Wha-" I yelled as Geto summoned his rainbow dragon. It was a ginormous dragon with white scales that glowed iridescent under the lights, although, presently, it was muddy and gray from the hallway's dimness. 

Geto mounted the dragon and grabbed onto its mane while pulling me up with his other arm. The dragon dived down and burst through the dank, mouldy floors. Fleshy debris splattered everywhere, accompanied by a high-pitched howl emitting from all around, "Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt...!! That HURT!!" 

I tried to ignore the engulfing, rotting stench that confronted us.

From the basement's walls, small, thin blood vessels sprouted and entangled like the ends of an unravelling sweater. The vessels knitted themselves into jugular veins the size of tree branches pulsing with muck and oozing with fluid. The branches lumped into a bushy sphere in the centre of the basement. It appeared to be a singular head, planted into the concrete foundation, like a cabbage, or an enormous pimple, ripe and inflamed. "You little bastards...! You two...are bad little kids! BAD, I SAY!," the head trembled as it shrilled, its hair dark-cherry and matted, dribbling with blood.

"Shut up, you freak!" Geto summoned a myriad of critters and with astonishing speed, they crawled all over the space, chewing at the curse's tissues.

"Nurse... nurse... Help! I'm in pain! MAKE IT STOP! STOP!!" The spirit writhed in excruciation as pus leaked everywhere.

"Y/n, together!" Geto unsheathed his knife and sprinted towards the head. Upon his lead, I did the same: I raised my sword and closed in from the opposite diagonal.

"I will take the boy first...!!" The veins webbing the surfaces on Geto's side suddenly untangled themselves and bound around him.

"Geto Senpai...!!!!" I screamed.

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Author's note!

my very first time writing combat scenes, talking about a step outside of my comfort bubble! i had so much fun :)

take care & b safe
ikari
2024, aug 1