Take care of yourself

Suguru Geto stopped politely. He did not bow, merely dipping his head.

The stack of textbooks in his arms reached from his chest to his chin, their spines dull in the twilight, but his back remained straight, his bearing neither servile nor arrogant. "Mei Mei."

Yan Si raised a hand too, giving it a casual wave.

His sleeve slid down his wrist, exposing half his forearm, his skin almost translucent in the sunset. "Hey, nice to meet you."

Satoru Gojo tugged his sunglasses down, revealing one azure eye, and openly looked the only upperclassman at Jujutsu High up and down.

Within the Six Eyes' field of vision, traces of cursed energy wound around Mei Mei in layer upon layer.

She had extensive combat experience and had handled far more missions than the average jujutsu sorcerer. Every residual trace of cursed energy was clean and precise; not one had been left by a wasted movement.

She qualified as strong.

He pushed his sunglasses back up, his tone carrying a newly sparked curiosity. "You're that third-year upperclassman? Miss Mei?"

Mei Mei's gaze settled on him. First, she looked at his white hair.

Appraising someone's appearance in front of the Six Eyes seemed a little redundant, but it was a habit of hers.

Only then did she meet those azure eyes.

She smiled, the same smile she had worn while greeting everyone earlier, but with a faint, hard-to-describe glimmer in her eyes. "The Gojo Clan's Six Eyes?"

"That's me." Satoru Gojo lifted his chin a little.

Born into the Three Great Families, he had heard that opening countless times. What followed was usually polite small talk, flattery, or roundabout attempts to sound him out.

He was already prepared to respond with as little effort as possible.

"Good-looking," Mei Mei assessed.

Her tone was much like someone judging the presentation of a dish, without any unnecessary warmth.

Then she added, "Very valuable."

The smug curve of Satoru Gojo's lips froze on the spot.

It was neither anger nor embarrassment. His brain simply short-circuited for a moment.

None of the opening remarks he had heard had ever included that one. It was as though someone had hit his pause button; he did not even manage his usual "Of course."

Yan Si burst out laughing.

He made no effort to hide it.

He slapped a hand onto the pile of books in Suguru Geto's arms, his shoulders shaking so hard that the books wobbled too. "Hahahahaha... You're all so funny, haha..."

Suguru Geto: ...

Shoko looked up too, her gaze lingering on Mei Mei a beat longer. This upperclassman was interesting.

She said nothing, merely giving Mei Mei a high score in her mind.

Mei Mei passed them with light steps, her shoes tapping out a crisp rhythm on the stone path.

The knot of her sash swayed gently in the evening breeze.

After two steps, she stopped again and turned to look at Yan Si.

She was not looking at his face.

That face was undeniably beautiful. There was no need to confirm it again.

She was looking at the wrist faintly visible beneath his uniform jacket. His sleeve had slipped down when he raised his hand in greeting, and he had yet to pull it back.

Smooth and pale, without a single scar.

"Oh, one more thing."

Yan Si stopped laughing and turned to her. "Hm?"

"Take care of yourself." Mei Mei's voice was still gentle, that elegant smile still on her lips, her tone very soft. Then she added, "Make sure you clean up."

Don't splatter blood everywhere.

That was what her tone conveyed.

Yan Si blinked, his lashes fluttering twice in the sunset. Then he smiled, his voice light and utterly unconcerned. "Got it."

How rude of you, Mei Mei.

Her crow was perched in the treetop opposite the dormitory, its bead-black eyes angled straight toward his window.

When it had happened a few days ago, his window had not been shut properly.

Peeping at night? How embarrassing.

Suguru Geto had already turned to look at him.

He turned so quickly that it hardly seemed like a natural reaction, more as though someone had yanked his hair from behind.

Shoko looked at him too.

Her gaze rested on Yan Si's profile, her dark brown eyes thoughtful rather than accusing. Her fingers lightly rolled a cigarette inside her pocket.

Satoru Gojo's smile changed.

The corners of his mouth were still raised, but his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses.

The Six Eyes examined Yan Si anew through the dark lenses.

His bodily functions were normal, his cursed energy flowed steadily, and he was full of vigor. He had been bouncing around the training ground earlier and had just been laughing his head off.

He was perfectly fine. What did he need to take care of?

"Clean up?" Satoru Gojo asked. His tone was still light, but it no longer rose at the end. "Clean up what?"

Yan Si rubbed his chin, tapping his jawline twice with his fingers before answering lazily, his tone careless. "I know reverse cursed technique, so when I'm cutting down cursed spirits, I don't care whether they attack me..."

He even shrugged midway through. To him, he was discussing something hardly worth mentioning. "It's just a little concern from an upperclassman, anyway~"

Yan Si tilted his head toward Shoko and Satoru Gojo, blinking his exceptionally beautiful eyes. "You two can shower me with some loving concern too~"

A little beauty trap~

Satoru Gojo froze for a moment, then burst out laughing. His laughter exploded across the open space outside the dormitory, startling several sparrows in a nearby tree into fluttering away.

He draped one hand over Yan Si's shoulder, still carrying the bundle of textbooks tied with string in the other. He looked like a mischievous kid lugging a satchel charge while throwing an arm around his buddy. "You're seriously fun."

In all fifteen years of his life, Satoru Gojo had never met anyone like this before. Of course, he excluded himself from that category.

Suguru Geto shifted the textbooks higher in his arms and drew a breath.

He did not laugh.

His gaze swept over Yan Si's wrist, then moved away.

When he spoke, his tone was gentle, but beneath that gentleness lay a thin, barely perceptible layer of weariness. "Let's put our books away in the dorms first. Classes officially start tomorrow. Get some rest early tonight."

Yan Si drawled, clasping both hands behind his head as he turned toward the dormitory. "Mama Geto's starting to boss us around."

Satoru Gojo immediately followed with light steps, seamlessly shifting from carrying his books properly to slinging them casually over his shoulder. He walked beside Yan Si, tilted his head, and jerked his chin toward Suguru Geto. "Mama Geto?"

Suguru Geto stood where he was, watching the two figures walking side by side ahead of him.

One white-haired, one black-haired, both using the same nickname.

His lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing.

A guy had his pride...

Shoko walked up beside him.

Her footsteps were soft, her sneakers making almost no sound on the stone path.

She paused at Suguru Geto's side for half a beat, looking toward the same two figures growing more distant. Then she spoke softly, every word just loud enough for him to hear. "A single mother with two kids. Thanks for all your hard work."

It was faint, but Shoko did smile.

The candy stick at the corner of her mouth tipped upward, and the beauty mark beside her eye shifted slightly with it.

She did not wait for Suguru Geto's response. Tucking her hands into her pockets, she walked on with the same stride she had approached with.

Suguru Geto remained where he was, the silent dormitory behind him in the sunset.

Wind swept down the mountain path, gently stirring the lock of hair over his forehead. He felt as though this one day had lasted an entire quarter of a year.

Yet in reality, the first day of school was not even over. The sun had not fully set, the evening glow still hung on the horizon, and the dormitory corridor lights had yet to come on.

Worse still, he had a vague premonition.

Starting today, days like this would become the norm.

That evening, the dormitory finally quieted down. The overhead corridor lights switched on automatically, casting warm yellow light across a row of closed doors. Night fell faster in the mountains than in the city. Outside the windows, everything was already a deep, heavy blue-black, with only a few distant courtyard lights leaking cold white glimmers through the shadows of the trees.

Satoru Gojo's room was on the other side of the corridor.

Less than half an hour after he moved in, all sorts of noises began coming from inside without pause.

The tearing of cardboard boxes, the dull scrape of heavy objects being dragged across the floor, and a loud bang that sounded suspiciously like a bed being hauled from the left side to the right, then dragged back toward the window.

The assistant supervisor assumed Satoru Gojo disliked the decor and was dismantling the room.

They made a special trip over and knocked twice, asking whether he needed professional help.

The second time, Satoru Gojo poked his white-haired head out and said with a grin, "Sorry, I'm adjusting the room's feng shui."

Then he shut the door again.

The sounds of furniture being moved continued inside, only a tiny bit more restrained than before.

Shoko's room was a little farther from theirs, the third from the end of the corridor.

Once she went inside, there was no sound at all. It was eerily quiet, as though no one had moved in. But if you pressed your ear against her door...

Of course, no one would do that. It was far too creepy, and Shoko would beat them to death on the spot.

You would faintly hear a radio broadcast.

A very calm female voice was reading the evening news, probably a report about cherry blossoms blooming in some district of Tokyo.

Then came the soft, soft sound of pages turning, once every few dozen seconds, in a steady rhythm.

She leaned against the headboard with the Human Meridian Chart in her hands. A cup of tea still steaming sat on her bedside table, beside six neatly arranged lollipops for tomorrow, all of them not particularly sweet.

Suguru Geto finished organizing his textbooks, placing each one in timetable order, their spines aligned in a perfectly straight row on his desk.

After washing up, he changed into clean pajamas, black and unpatterned, with neat creases.

Then he sat at his desk and opened the Introduction to Jujutsu Fundamentals, which he would need for tomorrow's first class.

It was the one Satoru Gojo had called "as heavy as a brick."

The smell of ink on the pages was still fresh, and the spine creaked faintly in his hands.

He looked at it for ten minutes without absorbing a single word.

The printed words lay quietly on the page. He recognized every one, but strung together, they simply would not enter his brain. He was still on the very first page; even the bookmark had not moved a millimeter farther in.

Mei Mei's words replayed over and over in his mind. When she said, "Make sure you clean up," her tone had been far too casual.

It had been neither a reminder nor a warning.

What exactly was Yan Si doing?

Suguru Geto lowered his eyes, unconsciously rubbing the corner of the page with his fingertips. Beneath the pads of his fingers, the edge of the paper lifted and fell, over and over.