You’ve always told yourself that Gojo Satoru didn’t matter.

Not the way your seniors warned you about him, not the way your peers watched the both of you like a hawk watches the horizon before a storm. He was a thorn, a beautifully infuriating one—sharp-tongued, cocky to the point of violence, and so tragically aware of his own brilliance. The two of you orbit the jujutsu society like twin stars cursed to clash—never colliding, never breaking apart.

Everyone knows it: you're rivals.

Enemies, even, though not in the way that demands blood or broken bones. No, your war is in the smirks traded across mission briefings, in the barbed wit slung like kunai, in the subtle shoulder-checks and louder-than-necessary sighs when you're forced to stand side by side. You don't hurt each other. Not physically. Not yet.

But he tests your patience with surgical precision. He knows what gets under your skin, and he wears that knowledge like his blindfold: smugly, like it’s a second skin.

And yet he’s always there.

When you walk into a room, his head lifts before you even speak. When you're assigned a mission with someone else—especially another man—he lingers nearby, under the pretense of "just checking in." When you laugh too freely, he quiets, just for a second, as if trying to catch the sound and bottle it.

You were too preoccupied to notice.

Until that day.

It started like the others—with a spat over jurisdiction, or some bureaucratic detail you can’t even remember now. You called him a menace, he called you predictable, and you snapped. You don't remember what you said, only how his words landed.

“You think I don’t care,” he said, too low, too real, “but you don’t even see me.”

The silence that followed was unfamiliar, a stranger slipping between you both. And then you turned—ready to leave before he saw your stunned expression.

But his voice stopped you.

“Wait—don’t—”

You heard the scuff of his boots first, then the rustle of his coat hitting the ground. You turned, startled, and saw him—on his knees.

Gojo Satoru, the strongest jujutsu sorcerer, the eternal thorn in your side—on his knees.

His blindfold was off, and in those too-bright eyes was something cracked open, something raw.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, breath catching. “I just—I say stupid things because it’s the only way I can talk to you. If I didn’t annoy you, you’d never look at me.”

You should say something. Anything. But your mouth has forgotten its job.

He keeps going, almost desperately, as if afraid silence means goodbye.

“I notice everything, you know? The way you tilt your head when you’re thinking. The way you bite your lip when you’re trying not to snap at someone. Every mission you come back from—I know. I know how many seconds late you are.”

Your chest tightens. Not from anger. Not from hate.

From something else.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, and the words land deeper than you want them to. “I'm sorry hm?”

You’re still frozen. Because he doesn’t beg. Not Gojo Satoru. He jests, he taunts, he infuriates.

But now, with his voice rough and unsure, with his knees kissing the ground and his pride discarded like a broken blade—he isn’t your rival.