It seemed like the entirety of Tokyo was asleep — but Suguru Geto remained. crouched in a dim corner. His hand tightened around the curse he’d just exorcised.
With a slow breath, he opened his mouth and swallowed. The curse slid down his throat like cold ash.
He carries them. A stomach full of strangers’ malice.
This ritual of part psychological torture and part cleansing was the first string — like he was already drifting.
The bullet had ended Riko Amanai’s laughter mid-breath. Suguru stood in the silence that followed, numb in the marrow of his bones. It brought a thought:
"What are non-sorcerers even worth?"
Why do sorcerers like him have to risk their lives to protect them?
Satoru had become the strongest. Shoko didn't go out on dangerous missions. So naturally he ended up spending most time alone — well, mostly. There you were. A faint pull, like the tightening of a thread around his chest. Not pain… but presence. A tether.
Suguru knew what it was.
Cursed String Entanglement — 呪縛糸の縁 — Juba-kui no En.
To feel you near him, to carry your pulse as if it’s his… it’s too much. Too intimate. Too binding. And yet — if he lets go of this thread, he will fall. He knows he will.
The invisible thread hummed faintly, unseen by anyone else. A superstition in the archives, a secret only his soul could confirm.
He made himself busy that summer.
Perhaps due to the frequent disasters that year, curses arose like maggots. And so the process kept repeating.
Exorcising. Absorbing.
Nobody knows the taste of curses. It's like swallowing a cloth that wiped vomit.
"Who am I doing this for?"
No. He has to understand. That's why he chose to become a jujutsu sorcerer, right? To help people.
He has no choice but to fulfill his duties. He cannot waver.
Other than Shoko you're the only girl at jujutsu tech. Despite the cursed string entanglement he's been resisting hanging around you. He didn't want to infect somebody God chose for him with the realities he was waking up to — you're too... Special.
Not by power. In a way it transcends that and creates a class of your own.
In a way where you're above even what sorcerers are pointlessly fighting for — is this what it's like to be enlightened and depressed all at once?
The conversation with Yuki Tsukumo made it clear. Either teach all to control cursed energy — which was impossible. Or eliminate all non-sorcerers. No people means no curses.
"The world is wrong. Sorcerers bleed and die while the powerless abuse and discard them. If sorcerers alone remain, curses will cease. That is the truest kindness. That is justice. It’s not hatred — it’s liberation."
But then, as his hands trembled, he felt the tug of your string again — faint, invisible, undeniable. You. The resonance of your soul brushing against his like a reminder.
"And yet… if I destroy their world, what will happen to ours?"
The dorms were quiet at night. You were laying across your bed flipping lazily through a half-read magazine. Suguru just let himself into your dorm. He's been doing that lately. Just to you. Everyone else is wondering what happened to him. Shoko, Satoru, Yaga. To be honest, he doesn't plan on telling them anything.
For minutes he stayed laying at the foot of your bed on his stomach. His arm curled around your ankle, hand warm against your skin. He sighed against your skin, and then — because Suguru had always been strange about where intimacy began and ended — he pressed his lips against the top of your foot. Not a kiss, not really. Just the barest brush of warmth, followed by a low chuckle that wasn’t joy so much as desperation.
"You're too patient with me..." he muttered. Then, almost like he wanted to test if you’d flinch, his teeth grazed your toe. A half-bite, playful and pathetic all at once. If the world is rotting, if humanity is nothing but a curse engine. Maybe the only answer is to burn it all away — but then what happens to this thread that’s kept him standing when he should have collapsed?