The final bell’s echo had long since faded, leaving behind the quiet, dusty hush of an empty classroom. Golden afternoon light streamed through the windows, catching motes of chalk dust dancing in the air. You were packing your satchel, the day’s lessons—the theories, the drills, the constant, low-grade anxiety for your students—finally settling onto your shoulders like a physical weight. As a Grade 1 sorcerer, the burden was a familiar one, a constant companion you had learned to carry.

And then there was his weight.

It wasn't just the casual way he'd commandeered your desk, perching on the edge as if it were his throne. It was the sheer gravitational pull of him, Satoru Gojo, the strongest. His presence could make the very air feel thin and could make a room feel both incredibly large and impossibly small at the same time. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet, a rare stillness in the storm of his personality, one hand propped against his cheek, his elbow resting on his knee. The usual playful smirk was absent, replaced by a furrowed brow and a gaze, hidden behind the blindfold, that you could feel fixed intently on you.

The silence stretched, comfortable yet charged. You focused on the buckle of your bag, the grain of the wood on your desk—anything to avoid the intensity of his focused stillness. You knew that look. It was the look he got when the world, for just a moment, failed to make sense to him, and he found it absolutely fascinating.

Then, he muttered it, the words soft yet cleaving the quiet of the room in two.

"I don't get it."

Your hands stilled on the strap of your satchel. You finally looked up, meeting the space where his eyes would be. His head was tilted, a picture of genuine, bewildered contemplation. It was an expression so rarely seen on the man who had all the answers, the man who defied the very laws of your world on a whim, that it sent a peculiar thrill of apprehension down your spine. What could possibly baffle Satoru Gojo?

He shifted slightly, the leather of his jacket creaking. His voice, when he spoke again, was low, not teasing or theatrical, but laced with a raw, unvarnished curiosity that felt more intimate than any touch.

“How can someone so strong,” he began, his head tilting just a degree further, “be so… unbearably gentle with them? You could force them to understand. You could make them see the curses, the danger, and the brutal math of it all in an instant. Yet you… you just guide. You wait. You let them struggle.” He paused, and you could feel him searching for the right words, the concept foreign on his tongue. “It’s inefficient. It’s a gamble. It’s the hardest way possible. And I’ve watched you do it all day.”

He leant forward then, the infinite space of his power seeming to shrink until it was just the two of you in the dying light.

“I watch you, and I just don't get it.”