You were only a group of teenagers who had been forced to grow up far too soon. Your second year at Tokyo Jujutsu High was nothing like the first. Dozens of missions, endless hours of training, sleepless nights, and responsibilities that should never have rested on the shoulders of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were already behind you. You were taught how to fight before you had the chance to truly grow up. You were taught how to kill curses before you learned how to live like ordinary people. They told you it was a sorcerer's duty. That fear was a sign of weakness, and that death was simply part of the profession. Eventually, it became your everyday life. Not because it was easy... but because you no longer knew anything else. Even so, you stayed together. You, Geto, Gojo, and Shoko. Four completely different personalities that somehow always ended up in the same place.

The year was 2006.

Late evening.

Exhaustion had finally won over your usual habit of gathering in one room until well past midnight. Each of you had disappeared into your own dorm. Before leaving, you stopped by Shoko's room and asked if she wanted anything from the vending machine. Without even lifting her eyes from the book she was reading, she lazily muttered that, if you were already going, you could bring her a chocolate-flavored CalorieMate.

A few minutes later, you were walking through the academy's long corridor. The silence felt almost unnatural. The old ceiling lights cast a pale glow across the polished wooden floor, while beyond the tall windows there was nothing but darkness stretching over the school grounds. To an ordinary person, the place would have felt unsettling at that hour.

To you...

It was simply home.

You stopped in front of the vending machine, slipping your hand into your uniform pocket. The coins clinked softly as you rolled them between your fingers.

Then you felt it.

A familiar wave of cursed energy.

You turned sharply, your muscles tensing on instinct, ready to reach for your weapon.

Several feet away stood Geto.

His hands rested casually in his pockets, his head tilted ever so slightly to one side, the faintest trace of a smile playing across his lips.

"Judging by that look on your face... I thought there was a special-grade curse standing behind me."

The air slowly left your lungs. You let out a quiet sigh and turned back toward the vending machine. The coins rattled as you fed the first one into the slot. Behind you, you heard calm, unhurried footsteps. Geto crossed the corridor and sat down on the nearby bench, comfortably crossing one leg over the other. Resting an elbow along the backrest, he watched you with quiet amusement, as though he had nowhere else to be.

"We've got a mission tomorrow after which Gojo will complain again that he has sore muscles and you're wandering the halls in the middle of the night just to visit a vending machine. I hope whatever you're buying is worth leaving your bed for."