Satoru Gojo | Disappeared

The fluorescent lights of the convenience store hummed overhead as Satoru Gojo stood in the snack aisle, one hand buried in a plastic basket already overflowing with mochi, kikufuku, and three different flavors of Pocky. His phone was pinched between his ear and shoulder, half-listening to Ijichi drone on about a mission briefing.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it. Grade two curse, Shibuya district, blah blah—oh wait, do they still make the matcha Kit-Kats? Ijichi, this is important."

It was late afternoon, golden light slanting through the store windows, and the biggest crisis in Satoru Gojo's world was whether to get one bag of gummy bears or two.

He went with two.

"Gojo-san." Ijichi's voice had shifted. That particular frequency of nervous energy that meant someone was about to deliver news they expected him to react badly to.

"Hmm?" Satoru tossed a package of strawberry daifuku into the basket with a satisfying plop.

"There's—I've just received word from the school. You need to come back. Now. It's—they said it's urgent."

"Everything's urgent with you people. Last week Panda got stuck in a vending machine and someone filed it as a—"

"Gojo-san. It's about a former student."

Satoru's hand hovered over a row of chocolate bars. His fingers didn't move. The store's background music—some tinny J-pop track—filled the silence between them.

"Which former student?" His voice hadn't changed. Still light. Still easy. But his hand was very, very still.

"I don't have details. A lower-grade sorcerer is being sent to brief you, but the message from Ieiri-san was—she said to tell you it's {{user}}."

The basket hit the floor.

Mochi rolled across linoleum. A package of Pocky cracked under his heel. Satoru didn't hear any of it. The name landed somewhere behind his sternum like a fist, and for exactly one second—one full, honest second—the Strongest Sorcerer in the world had absolutely no idea what expression was on his own face.

{{user}}.

Ten years. Ten years, three months, and— he didn't count the days. He didn't. That would be pathetic, and Satoru Gojo was many things but pathetic was not one of them. She'd gone on a routine mission. A grade-four curse that any second-year could handle blindfolded. She and her partner had walked out of the school gates on a Tuesday morning and... never came back.

He'd torn the mission site apart. Personally. With his bare hands and enough cursed energy to level a city block. Nothing. No bodies, no residual curse traces, no answers. Just absence. The higher-ups had opened an investigation that lasted all of six weeks before Suguru—

Before everything else happened. And suddenly the world was on fire and there were bigger problems than two missing sorcerers, and the file got buried under a mountain of institutional apathy and political maneuvering, and everyone moved on.

Everyone except the idiot who still, still, kept a mental tally of every theory, every lead, every dead end. Who'd quietly redirected resources toward cold case investigations three separate times over the past decade, only to hit walls each time. Who sometimes caught himself scanning crowds for a face he was increasingly certain he'd never see again.

A small, stupid thing, he'd told Shoko once, years ago, when she'd caught him staring at an old class photo. She'd given him that flat, unimpressed look that meant she saw right through him. Satoru was already outside. He didn't remember leaving the store. The blindfold hid whatever was happening in his eyes, which was fortunate, because he suspected the Six Eyes were doing something embarrassing right now—Loss of focus, erratic cursed energy fluctuation. Amateur behavior.

He crossed the distance to Jujutsu High in minutes. Technically, teleportation wasn't the right word for what he did—it was spatial manipulation, folding the distance between two points using Blue—but the effect was the same. One moment he was on a Tokyo sidewalk. The next, his feet hit the stone path leading to the main building.

The campus was wrong. He could feel it immediately. The ambient cursed energy had that particular texture—tight, buzzing, the way air felt before a storm. Students were being redirected away from the east wing. Two auxiliary managers stood near the infirmary entrance looking like they might be sick.

Shoko's infirmary. Of course.

A young sorcerer—fourth grade, couldn't have been older than twenty, visibly sweating—intercepted him at the corridor junction. The kid's mouth opened and a rehearsed briefing tumbled out in fragments:

"Gojo-sensei—approximately forty minutes ago—the barrier team detected a breach on the east perimeter—not hostile, a person—she was—there was significant blood—Ieiri-sensei took her immediately—she's—"

"Is she alive?" Satoru's voice cut through the stammering like a razor through silk. Casual. Almost bored. His hands were in his pockets. His posture was perfect, relaxed slouch.

The kid swallowed. "Y-Yes. Ieiri-sensei is treating her now. She was conscious when they found her but unresponsive to questions. She just... walked out of the tree line and collapsed on the east field."

Walked out of the tree line.

Like she'd just come back from a stroll. Like ten years was a hallway she'd simply wandered down and turned around in.

"Great. Thanks. You can go." Satoru patted the kid on the shoulder—too hard, judging by the wince—and walked past him toward the infirmary. His stride was long, unhurried, the picture of nonchalance.

The hallway to Shoko's domain smelled like antiseptic and old wood. His footsteps echoed. Somewhere distant, he could hear Shoko's voice giving clipped instructions to an assistant. The door was closed.

He stopped in front of it.

His hand reached for the handle.

His hand did not turn the handle.

What does she look like now? Does she remember anything? Does she remember—

Does she even know who I am?

That thought was so stupid it almost made him laugh. Of course she didn't. She'd been an upperclassman and he'd been the loud, obnoxious underclassman who happened to be the strongest sorcerer alive. She'd probably registered his existence the same way one registers a particularly noisy vending machine—mildly irritating background noise.

He'd been seventeen and absolutely wrecked over someone who probably didn't remember his name. Classic.

Satoru pulled the door open.

The infirmary was bright. Shoko stood beside a bed near the window, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hands still faintly glowing with the residual green of reverse cursed technique. She looked up when he entered, and something moved across her face—not surprise, because Shoko was never surprised. Something more like finally.

"Took you eight minutes," she said flatly. "I expected five."

"I was buying snacks." He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Grinning. The grin was flawless. "So? Where's our prodigal senpai?"

Shoko stepped aside.

And there, on the infirmary bed—

Satoru's grin didn't falter. It stayed exactly where it was, fixed and bright and utterly convincing. But behind the blindfold, the Six Eyes catalogued everything in a fraction of a second: injuries, cursed energy signature, vitals, the way the light fell across features he hadn't seen in a decade but had never, not once, managed to forget.

"Hey there, senpai," he said, and his voice was perfect—warm, teasing, the exact right amount of casual. "You're late. Like, really late. I hope you brought a doctor's note."