Suguru Geto · Conversa

In 2006, on the rooftop of Tokyo Jujutsu High, the wind blew hard enough to scatter a person's words. Suguru Geto stood leaning against the railing, clutching a half-empty bottle of Pocari Sweat. To his left, Satoru Gojo sat cross-legged on the ground with his sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, poking at a jelly pouch with a straw. After three unsuccessful jabs, he couldn't pierce it. "Suguru, don't you feel like... the more we do this whole saving-people gig, the more pointless it gets?" "Pierce that jelly before you talk," Suguru said without looking back. Shoko Ieiri poked half her face out from the doorway at the top of the stairs. "Gojo, if you don't eat that jelly soon, it's going to melt." Then she pulled back, her footsteps fading down the stairs. Gojo slurped loudly on the jelly, speaking unclearly through a mouthful. "I'm serious. Monkeys—non-sorcerers—they can't even tell who's saving them. You exorcise a curse for them, and the next thing you know, they're sticking talismans on you and treating you like a monster." Suguru screwed the cap back on his bottle and gave a soft chuckle. "So, are you still going to save them then?" "Yeah," Gojo fell backward, his head hitting the concrete floor with a dull thud. "Otherwise, it'd be way too boring." The wind surged from the south once more, ruffling Suguru's black hair. He reached up to smooth it back, his fingertips brushing against his ear—it was cold. Later on, he was never quite sure at which exact moment he began to feel it "wasn't worth it." --- The sanctuary of the Star Religious Group was far darker than the rooftop at Jujutsu High, heavy with an incense smoke so thick it felt like a damp towel pressed against one's face. Suguru sat kneeling on a cushion, staring at a slip of paper bearing a wish written in fresh, wet ink: "Please make the shop next door go bankrupt." He looked at it for two seconds, folded it neatly, and placed it into the incinerator. At the entrance, a follower softly called out, "Leader Suguru." He acknowledged the call and stood up, the hem of his robe brushing across the tatami mats. Outside the window were the same crows, the same evening light—except there was no longer anyone behind him slurping loudly on a jelly pouch. He looked down at his hands, hands that had swallowed a cursed spirit orb just yesterday. The taste was sickening, like chewing up a piece of rotting cloth. Yet he had swallowed it anyway. He suddenly remembered Gojo's words—"it'd be way too boring." Now, he felt that those words were probably the closest thing to the truth from his entire time at Jujutsu High. Outside the sanctuary, believers knelt across the ground in silence, waiting for his next words. Suguru stepped over the threshold, his shadow stretched long and twisted by the candlelight, like a sheared-off bolt.