Utahime lay in a pool of her own blood, clutching her side and biting her lower lip to stifle her screams.
Gojo stood beside her with a scowl. He heard Mei shouting in the distance, her heels echoing loudly in the room as she ran towards them, but the urgency of the sound barely registered to him.
The sight of her dying slowed down time. Briefly, he wondered if he had uncovered a new technique. A voice at the back of his mind told him to move. He had to do something. But the experience felt so surreal that he could only watch the color leave her face.
Move.
Utahime met his gaze.
Move.
Gingerly, he slipped his hand beneath Utahime’s head and the other behind her knees to lift her. Utahime winced and clawed at Gojo’s chest. She clutched and twisted the fabric of his jacket, all the while gasping as though she was running out of air, and all Gojo could do was stare at the blood seeping into his own uniform.
“Oh no.” Mei took one look at her wound and shoved Gojo towards the door. “Run!”
The rest of their journey to Jujutsu High passed in a blur. The manager and Mei ripped a section of Utahime’s kosode to see her injury and bandage it. Mei guided Gojo’s hand above the layers of bloodied gauze and ordered him to apply pressure on it until they reached the infirmary. Never in his life had he been in a situation that made his hands tremble so much.
Utahime kept her head pressed against Gojo’s chest and her eyes shut the entire time. She bit her lower lip so hard it was swollen and bleeding. Gojo would’ve told her to stop, but he couldn’t speak.
Shoko rushed to Utahime as soon as they reached campus. She stopped them by the torii and told Gojo to hold her still.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Shoko closed her eyes to concentrate on healing the wound. Once the bleeding stopped, they ran to the infirmary, where they managed to stabilize Utahime.
Shoko sat outside afterwards, staring blankly at the wall ahead. Gojo sat beside her with his head in his hand. The corridor reeked of blood. Nobody had come yet to clean the trail of red on the floor, and neither of them had bothered to change their uniforms or even wash their hands. Something about the experience knocked the wind out of them, and it was impossible to get up and do anything else now.
“What happened?” Shoko asked. Her voice was barely a whisper. Gojo was tempted to pretend to have missed it.
“She jumped in when she didn’t have to,” he said.
“In the middle of a battle?”
“She was just supposed to amplify my technique with hers. If she stayed behind me, there was no way the curse could get to her.”
“Then why…?”
“There were two special-grade curses. The other one appeared just as I was finishing off the first that showed up.” Gojo scraped the dried blood on his hand with his fingernails. “I could have handled them both, but she was reckless.”
“She knows better than to do that.” Shoko stood and paced the corridor. “If you came here a minute too late, she’d have bled to death.”
“That’s why I don’t like going on missions with others.” Gojo reclined on the metal bench and crossed his arms. He couldn’t stop replaying that moment in his mind. Her body skidding across the floor towards him, only stopping once she hit his Infinity. Her back sliding down to the floor while she kept her hand up and her mouth moving to finish her technique. The centipede with human heads along its sectioned body disintegrating into dust.
He knew from the moment the fight started that something felt odd about the curse’s presence. He just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was while he got used to the surplus of cursed energy Utahime’s technique gave him.
Footsteps echoed from the adjacent corridor. Suguru appeared around the corner with a curt wave at them. “I heard what happened. Is Utahime alright?”
“She’s stable for now, but it’s a really bad injury,” Shoko said.
Suguru nodded. “Yaga-sensei wants me to check the residuals in the facility and capture any remaining curses I might find. I thought you should know.”
Gojo straightened up in his seat. “Check the residuals?”
“There were two special-grade curses. The faculty wants to know its nature and how it could’ve been overlooked during inspection. Also, there’s this.” He tipped his head towards the infirmary door.
Gojo could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he stood. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They want to know if Utahime was being careless or if it was the right call.”
Shoko turned to Gojo with a frown. “Didn’t Mei-senpai confirm
Shoko turned to Gojo with a frown. “Didn’t Mei-senpai confirm it?”
“She expressed her doubts and wants the scene examined too.” Suguru turned around and waved Gojo over. “You’re welcome if you want to come.”
The two of them sat in the back of the car with the manager and Ijichi in front. The car ride was silent for the most part, with Gojo killing time by scrubbing Utahime’s blood off the lines of his palm. The pulsating in his ears hadn’t stopped, and a part of him regretted going. Maybe he should have stayed to see if Utahime was awake. Taking out his phone, he messaged Shoko to request an update on Utahime’s condition.
“Try this.” Suguru handed him a small pouch of alcohol-wet wipes.
“Why the hell do you carry around wet wipes?”
“Because I’m assuming the scene will be bloody.”
Gojo took four sheets and rubbed at the lines of his palm. The sheets turned pink, and he had to swallow hard to keep from gagging. Most disconcerting was the fact that he’d been doused head-to-toe in blood before, yet this bothered him so much more.
The manager parked the car at the foot of the mountain. From there, Ijichi, Suguru, and Gojo trekked all the way up to the abandoned facility as the veil descended like black fluid around the perimeter.
The facility was an uncredited manufacturing building that had been the site of numerous illegal activities, including human trafficking. The exterior had deteriorated over time, so much so that the walls were pockmarked, and the grills on the upper floor windows were falling off.
Suguru motioned for them to stand back. “I’ll go in first to make sure that there are no more curses that can interfere with our work. Satoru, just stay back for now and guard Ijichi, please.”
Ijichi bowed. “Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Suguru patted his shoulder and went on ahead.
A gust of wind descended from the mountain and shook the trees around the clearing. Overhead, grey feathery clouds hovered near their fuller counterparts.
Gojo remembered the sky had been flat and blue hours ago when he entered the facility with Utahime. It had been a standard mission, although it would officially be considered his first solo one on the record. The reason Utahime was even brought along was because the place had some cursed energy-limiting seals hidden within the walls, and Yaga thought Utahime should be there to amplify Gojo’s technique just in case. As for Mei, she was always useful as a backup, more for Utahime than for Gojo.
Suguru poked his head out of the double doors with a smile. “Coast is clear. You may come in now.”
The place was even bloodier than Gojo remembered. On the wall at the far end of the room was a huge splatter of green and blue from the special grade curse he exorcised, and on the far right was a long streak of purple on the wall. It must be from the one Utahime exorcised.
Gojo stopped in front of the puddle of red in the middle of the hall.
Suguru stood beside him. “So, this is where Utahime was hit. Her residuals are quite strong.”
“She didn’t have to jump in.”
“She must know about your Infinity, right?”
“Of course.”
Behind them, Ijichi hovered his hand above the green-blue blood that had pooled on the floor. Suguru did the same on the streak on the wall. As a curse spirit manipulator, tracing residuals and identifying curses came more easily to him.
“I doubt it’s as strong as the one you exorcised, but a special grade is a special grade,” Suguru said.
“I bet that was the first special grade she ever exorcised, and with my help, too.”
“Still an accomplishment.” Suguru stepped forward. A crunching sound disrupted the tense air in the room and made both Gojo and Ijichi jump a little.
Suguru’s eyes widened, knowing the sound came from under his left foot. Slowly, he raised his leg to see what it could be.
Gojo tilted his head to catch sight of the silver item on the sole of his shoe. “Is that a blade?”
Suguru pried it out with his thumb and forefinger and then whisked his hand away as though he had been electrocuted. “Damn, that cursed energy stings.”
Ijichi walked over to them to see what was happening. “Oh. Let me take that out for you.”
He pulled out the blade with a tweezer-like item that had strings of curse seals attached to it. After inspecting the blade closely, Ijichi looked around and pointed at the other end of the room. “There. That’s the rest of the cursed tool.”
Gojo raced the two of them to it. He picked up the dagger by the hilt and noticed how the cursed energy from it trickled along his barrier. The longer he held it, the thinner his Infinity became.
“Suguru, can you try stabbing me with this?”
“Have you lost your mind?” Still, Suguru took the dagger from him and slashed at him. The tip of the blade didn’t reach Gojo, but he felt the ripple of his Infinity along its course.
Gojo raised his forearm. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his mouth felt dry, but he had to know. “Stab me here. See if it will pierce.”
Suguru scowled at him, then at the blade. “Are you suggesting that-”
“Just do it!”
With one deft move, Suguru had pierced through Infinity and stabbed him in the forearm. The three men went stock still as they watched blood ooze from the wound and create dark patches on Gojo’s sleeve.
“Shit!” Suguru removed the dagger and used his own uniform to cover Gojo’s stab wound. “How the hell was that able to pierce you? Ijichi, tell the manager to prepare the first-aid kit. Satoru, hey, Satoru! We’re going back.”
Gojo blinked at him several times. “That actually hurts.”
“Of course it does! It’s imbued with heavy cursed energy. That’s probably what worsened Utahime’s injury.”
Gojo held his head in his injured hand and watched the blood drip to the floor. That dagger must have been launched in his direction at the same time that his Blue destroyed the first special-grade curse. Had he noticed it flying in his direction? Yes. His Six Eyes would never miss something so trivial. And yet, in his arrogance, he did not assume that a cursed tool like this truly existed. His family warned him about these things a couple of years ago, but he had gone and fought so many curses and curse users by then and never encountered one.
Gojo snatched the dagger from the floor and walked to the middle of the room. “Utahime didn’t save my life,” he said as he focused his cursed energy on the dagger. “But she probably spared me from a terribly inconvenient injury.”
The dagger shook violently and exploded. Shaking the dust off his hand, he put pressure on his wound and marched out of the facility.
He asked to be dropped off at the nearest convenience store. Ijichi had patched him up in the car, and even though his injury still stung, he wanted nothing more than to eat something sweet.
Suguru got out off the ca,r to,o and stalked him around Lawsons as he inspected all the pastries and ice cream flavors in stock. After half an hour of roaming, Gojo settled for a cone of cookies and cream, a bag of gummy worms, and a blueberry muffin.
“Don’t you ever get toothache from all the sweets you eat?” Suguru asked as he dropped on the chair next to Gojo’s. It squeaked under his weight, forcing him to sit only on the edge and carry most of his weight.
Gojo would’ve made fun of him, but he found he didn’t have an appetite for jokes. He stared at the fogged display glass in front of him, through which he could see blurred figures of office workers, families, and students passing by the convenience store.
They had no idea he just saved their lives.
“It’s not my fault, you know?” Gojo said.
Suguru took a sip of his iced tea. “Your sweet tooth or Utahime?”
“What kind of idiot does that, anyway? We’ve had close calls before, but you’ve never jumped between me and an enemy.”
“I’ve done that numerous times.”
“Your curses have done that numerous times.”
Suguru raised his hands, conceding. “Technically, that’s correct. But also, nobody’s blaming you for Utahime’s injuries.”
Gojo flipped his phone open once more to see if there were new text messages from Shoko. None. So he reread her last text. Utahime’s wound had reopened a third time. Shoko had to keep healing it to prevent further blood loss. Utahime was now getting blood transfused to her.
“It’s not that anybody would blame me,” Gojo said as he ripped open the ice cream cone’s paper packaging. “Haven’t you noticed? Just like how weak curses group together, so do weak curse users. She exhibited behavior that only weak curse users do for one another.”
Suguru sighed and hunched over the table. “Satoru, it’s okay to admit that your ego is hurt and that you’re worried about Utahime.”
“My ego’s not hurt. I wouldn’t be fighting for my life even if I’d been hit by that dagger.”
“And it’s not that Utahime is weak, per se,” Suguru went on as though Gojo hadn’t said anything. “It’s just the nature of her technique. We behave in accordance with it in battle, and hers was practically designed to serve others more than herself. If you really want to think about it in tactical terms, she did the smart thing by shielding you. If you had been incapacitated even for a bit by that dagger, she might have been killed before Mei-senpai could come to the rescue.”
Gojo stared at his ice cream. He should have gotten the vanilla flavor instead. “You might be right. Also, she amplified my technique at the last moment to extend it towards the other curse. That’s how she managed to exorcise it.”
“Okay.”
Gojo licked the melting ice cream. “Okay.”
Suguru reached out and placed his hand on Gojo’s shoulder. “But you know, the alternative is alright too. Utahime is the kind of person who puts others before herself. Maybe it didn’t matter to her that you’re stronger. She just didn’t want you to get hurt. Is that idiotic? Quite. But there’s nothing wrong with kindness, even in our world. If a cute older woman like her did that for me, I’d be quite flattered.”
A group of high school students entered the convenience store. Two of the guys yelled at the three girls to get them chips and soda, and the girls flipped them off. Outside, a woman carrying a small dog struggled to open her umbrella.
Lightning flashed. Gojo looked up at the same time that thunder boomed from the skies. He could see the fine lines of the next lightning as it formed.
“Thunderstorm on a clear day.” Suguru whistled. “Doesn’t sound good to me.”
Gojo gathered his purchase and stood. “Let’s go back to Jujutsu High.”
Author’s Note: This was just Erika’s side project/ birthday gift to me. Whether or not she’ll illustrate other chapters of First Cut is up to her. The only definite FC illustrated project we’re working on so far is Three Years. If you like her illustrations and want to see more, consider buying her a coffee and/or leaving a comment! Love lots – LapizSagana
