Work Text:
There’s been a constant, incessant pressure at the back of his head lately. It’s not so much as a headache as it is an itch. An itch reminding him he’s forgetting something.
Hajime can’t pinpoint when it all started, but it’s been occurring more frequently.
It’s the unsettledness that bothers him, how it creeps up on him unsuspectingly. No, that’s not accurate. It’s getting easier to predict. It comes about when the air is too calm and his shoulders are too relaxed when the atmosphere should be so heavy with tension and anticipation he’s choking on it and he has to—
Has to what?
There’s something he’s meant to do.
Like the wisp of a smoky trail, the train of thought escapes him before he can grasp it with his fingertips.
He’s been off kilter for a while now. Confusion ever-present, like something’s wrong, something’s missing. But he’s got all his limbs and all his toes, and everyone at Furin are accounted for.
So what’s this uneasiness that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand?
He clenches and unclenches his fists by his sides, forcing himself to relax.
“Are you alright, Umemiya?” Kotoha asks, the space between her eyebrows wrinkling together. She’s reaching across the counter, hand gently pressing on his arm.
Oh. He’s worried her.
“Nothing, nothing. Just the usual aches and pain, don’t mind me!”
She frowns. “You’ve hardly touched your food. Is it too hot?”
His eyes widen. He immediately digs in, heaving the food into his mouth. “Ish ahyishush!”
Rolling her eyes, she turns back to her kitchen. “Don’t talk with your mouth full! Something’s been up with you. You’ve been waking up late and going to class later and later. People are starting to get worried. Do I need to talk to Hiragi about this?”
“Aww Kotoha-chan, you don’t need to get him involved. The man’s stomach is already sensitive as it is! I just need a good night's rest and I’ll be one hundred percent!” He makes his point by licking his plate clean, smiling widely back at her.
“You’re disgusting, is this the kind of example you’re setting at your school?”
He grabs his book bag by the straps and hoists it over his shoulder. “What was that can’t quite hear you? I’m an old man, you know. Look at this white hair!” He leans across the counter and pulls his foster sister in for a kiss on the side of her head. “Gotta run, be good and stay outta trouble!”
“That should be my line!” The rag she throws narrowly misses him.
__________
The buzzing is back. Like tinnitus piercing loudly, drowning everything else out. His vision is blurring, he can barely focus what’s in front of him. He doesn’t know where he’s at. There’s pressure coming from his stomach, traveling up his throat and he has to puke or-or—
“Oi!”
Hajime startles where he stands, hands thrown up with two fingers twisted together.
Hiragi takes a step back, eyeing intently at his hand, before darting back to his face. His hand reaching somewhere behind him. “What—what are you doing?”
The school rep drops his stance and sighs, hand running through white hair and he musters a weak smile. “Sorry, man. Had a rough time sleeping lately.”
“You good? Should I take over the morning announcements today?”
Ah shit. So that’s where they’re at. Furin’s front office for the daily messages.
He draws back his shoulders and takes a deep breath in. He’s always been good at putting up a front, at masking his true feelings.
“Gooooood morning!” He screeches as obnoxiously as he can into the microphone.
He takes great joy in watching Hiragi groan and slap a palm to his face.
“Fucking asshole,” his classmate curses.
__________
For some reason, he finds solace in Bofurin’s friendly spars.
It’s training day and it’s the Vaisravana Unit’s turn for practice on the roof. He’s watching the second years fight the first years, listening to the yells and the grunts, watching knuckles coloring into bruises.
He can finally breathe easy. As if this is what he’s supposed to be doing—preparing for the biggest fight of his life.
But what fight?
They’ve already fought the hard battle of uniting Furin together. He should be relaxing, encouraging the students to study and enjoy their days doing stupid things like the kids they are.
He steps away, drawing closer to the chain fence surrounding the perimeter. His eyes wander over Makochi and his gaze naturally scopes over where the less frequented spots are. Closer to Shishitoren’s territory lines that meet Bofurin’s where there’s less foot traffic. Abandoned storefronts line those roads. Surely there’s bound to be a low level cur—
“What are you looking at?” Sakura steps in front his view. The younger boy shifts in his feet, head twisting in the direction of Hajime’s gaze
Hajime blinks rapidly, awareness drawing back to reality.
He’s not sure what he was looking for anymore. Did he have a purpose in mind walking over here?
He steps back from the fence and places a hand over spiky black hair, ruffling it with a heavy hand. “Ah, just lost in thought. Don’t mind me, Megs.”
“Ha-aah?” Black hair twists and shifts into two toned strands under his fingers and heterochromatic eyes stare back at him. “Whadya call me?”
The illusion of a straight-faced boy melts away into Sakura’s glowing, expressive face. Hajime shakes his head and forces his voice to remain even. “Sakura, let’s head back, yeah? Let’s see you kick Hiragi’s ass.”
Sakura’s lip straightens into a line and he casts a side-eye glance. Unconvinced, he agrees anyway, “Yeah, sure. If you say so.”
__________
That night he dreams.
He dreams of an endless staircase, an infinite amount of red torii arching overhead. He’s desperately running up these steps but the light at the end moves further and further away, spiraling around and around and up and up. Frustration boils from the pit of his stomach and travels up his body until the annoyance rings in his ears. If only he can reach out and draw the destination closer, so he can just be where he needs to be in an instant, like two points on a graph collapsing in itself to overlap, like teleportation.
He blinks and he’s on a school campus. Not Furin’s, he’s sure of that at least.
Traditional Japanese roofs peek over towering cedar trees. The air seems crisper here, cleaner. There’s a peaceful silence he’s forgotten existed. He walks across a bridge with a purpose, even though he’s not sure where he’s going. But somehow he does know. He enters a building and saunters down the hallways as if he belonged here.
More hallways and more stairs, until he stops in front of a room with double doors.
He hesitates. He’s not sure why, but he’s wary. Wary of what’s behind these doors.
He almost turns back. His foot lifts wanting to step back, but he forces himself forward, bursting through the doors before he can hesitate again.
The room is cold and empty. Save for a single table in the middle of the room. A white sheet covers the content.
He gulps audibly, but finds his throat dry.
His heart pounds as he inches closer and closer until he stands at the top of the table.
His fingers curl around the sheets, fisting the fabric tightly. His hands shake. Bile threatens to pour over but he forces it back down.
He squints his eyes shut and throws the sheet back.
He wrenches his eyes open.
There, lying peacefully on the table in the middle of the morgue, Hajime finds a body bisected at the waist, almost desecrated from an unknown violent attack. But somehow, miraculously, the head of the body remains intact, untouched.
Staring back at him, with familiar white stranded hair, ethereal blue eyes gaze back.
He remembers.
__________
Umemiya Hajime wakes up with Gojo Satoru’s memories.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
He’s not sure where Satoru ends and Hajime begins, but at least that pressure in his head is gone.
He feels more awake than he’s ever felt.
Reincarnation, he figures. There’s piles and piles of books on this subject he’s read, but never fully believed. Never really thought he’d face this reality so soon. He didn’t even make it to thirty, how fucked up is that. Sure, life of a sorcerer is short, but he was Gojo fucking Satoru. That wasn’t supposed to apply to him.
He sits at the lunch table under the arbor tree of the roof, leaning back with his elbows propped behind him.
This is his new reality. He’s not sure what to make of it, but he figures he’s stuck here. His hair may still be white and his eyes may still be blue, but there’s not a lick of cursed energy anywhere in this world.
Just a bunch of delinquent kids running these streets, and their biggest worries are math, puberty, and who’s turf belongs to who.
Speaking of delinquents, Hajime’s right hand man trudges up and falls heavily into the seat next to him.
Hiragi doesn’t say a word and Satoru doesn’t feel like it either. They bask in the shade, listening to the din of the city around them.
A minute or five pass before Hiragi breaks the silence. “You finally going to tell me what’s been up your ass lately? Even the first years are on edge.”
Satoru rubs the back of his head and sends a sheepish grin. “Was I that noticeably wrecked? My bad, I think I’ve got my head on straight now.”
“Let me rephrase that. I’ve had to talk half the school down from starting a riot. Even Kotoha came to me worried. I’m not asking. You better fuckin’ tell me before I knock your teeth in.”
“You won’t believe me.”
The general knocks his shoulder against his. His voice softens, “Try me.”
“Fine. FINE!” Satoru jolts up and paces in front of the bench. “I’ve been feeling off lately, yeah? It was, like, I'm untethered. My skin didn’t feel right with this body, or like I kept waking up forgetting something, something extremely important. It was constantly bugging me like I needed to do something but I couldn’t remember what.”
He pauses, standing in front of Hiragi, and draws in a deep breath.
“And last night…last night I had this dream where I came face to face with…well, me. Me in my previous life.”
Hiragi looks back at him skeptically. “So you’re saying you…”
“Reincarnation,” Satoru spits out. “I think. I don’t know, could be a different terminology or philosophy, but this is what I’m working with right now. I’ve been reincarnated and I’m just remembering now.”
There’s no emotions running across his classmates face. Just blank staring. Yelling or laughing he expects. But not nothing. Until—
“About fucking time.”
“Huuuh?”
Hiragi straightens his leg out, hand digging into his pocket until he pulls out a familiar carton. He fiddles with it as he grumbles, “You know I never believed in the afterlife, right? Is this my curse? Am I supposed to be paying off some karmic debt? No, this has to be hell. This is my personal hell.”
Satoru can’t make sense of the words. It’s like he’s speaking gibberish. He’s glued to the blond’s motions, watching him pull the contents out. But instead of Gas-Kun 10, Hiragi pulls out a cigarette and lights it in one easy motion. Nicotine fills the air and Satoru feels like he’s transported back in time with Shoko and—
“NANAMI?!”
“My own personal hell,” he repeats. “Not only am I stuck re-living high school, I’m stuck here with you. High school with fucking Gojo. Again.” Nanami-now-Hiragi stares at him dead in the eyes and points with the cig emphatically. “Reincarnation? Is complete bullshit.”
Satoru bursts out laughing. His head tips back and tears form in the corner of his eyes. He can just make out Nanami’s lips twitching into a curl, and he knows his former and now-current-again schoolmate is happy to see him. In his own way.
“Is this real? Are we real? What the fuck, Nanami?” Satoru folds over himself, hands bracing on his knees as he draws in heavy breaths.
“This is real, unfortunately.”
“But how!” He collapses back on the bench and twists his body to sit sideways, knees spread wide. “Wait, how long have you known? Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“I’ve been aware of my own past life about a few months now. I wasn’t sure it was you until several weeks ago myself.”
“How could you tell! I only realized it when I woke up this morning.”
“I wasn’t sure at first. It took me a while to accept my own mortality. But once I did, I started seeing signs of our previous life in brief moments. And I mean single second moments. But with you…it seemed like you were wavering in between personas. You were noticeably different, at least to me since I know you from both worlds. To others you looked overtired and worn out.”
“Ok, but what clued you in?”
Nanami glared at him between intakes of his cigarette. “I suffered through more than my share of years with you. In this life and the previous. You may look similar, but the way you hold yourselves are different. It’s all in the eyes. Ume is kinder, Satoru is sharper. But you were also unraveling. Kept zoning out, walked in a daze. Remember you tried to throw a domain expansion at me during announcements? Dumbass.”
“Well, shit, why didn’t you help me out? You shoulda said something!”
“What was I supposed to say? Hey, you. Were you reincarnated? Does the name Gojo Satoru mean anything to you?” Nanami scoffs. He looks away, his shoulders shifting noticeably. “And to be honest, at first, I didn’t want to know.”
Satoru blinks back in surprise and tilts his head. “Why not?”
“Because,” He begins, his voice cracking at the end. He clears his throat before starting again and it’s the unwavering deep voice he’s used to hearing. “Because if you were here, that meant—that meant you weren’t there.”
Oh. That’s right.
He’d been so busy spiraling in this new identity crisis that he forgot what this meant, the ramifications of his presence being here in this world and not—
“—in the jujutsu world.” Satoru finishes.
Nanami nods his head numbly. “So what now?”
“Why you’re asking me? You’re the one who’s been here longer. Why do I have to take the lead!”
“I already know what I’m doing. I’m going to live this life. I’ve accepted my death back then. I’ve done my part. Now, I’m going to rest. I’m asking what do you want to do.”
“Can I even do anything? There’s not even cursed energy here is there?” Nanami shakes his head. “Man, is this how you plebians normally see? Without Six Eyes, I feel like I need glasses or some—hey!” Satoru rubs his arms where a bruise is definitely going to form. Man, not even infinity works. What a bummer.
He takes in Nanami’s new persona, dyed blond hair, still taller than the rest of the class. The after life looks good on him. He still looks way older than a teenager should (and surprise, surprise, who’s fault is that again?), but there’s a weight off his shoulders. The burdens of his previous life wasn’t forgotten but easier to manage.
Satoru snorts and slaps Nanami in the chest with the back of his knuckles. “I should’ve known it was you. You’re still wearing cringey band shirts under your uniform. Was a wardrobe change the first thing on your agenda when you remembered? You’re just missing the emo side bangs and it’ll be complete.”
The blond swipes his hand away, a faint red blushing over his high cheek bones. “The shirts were already in the closet, alright?”
Satoru throws an arm around his companion’s shoulder “Sure, sure, Nanami, I believe you.”
They settle in their seats, leaning against each in a way they never got to in their previous life, but had become second nature in this one. It’s easy, and definitely easier to breathe knowing he has someone experiencing the chaos of this new world with him.
Nanami begins to fidget, eyes harder to meet his. “Have you…noticed anything with Sakura?”
“Sakura?” Satoru asks, taken aback. He thinks for a second. Remembers black spiky hair under his hand and an expressionless face overlapped with blushing cheeks. His voice goes hoarse. “No! Megumi?!”
“I don’t know,” Nanami confesses. “He comes and goes. It’s faint—the signs. It’s hard to say.”
“Nanami,” he all but begs. He can’t be here. Not here, not yet. “Tell me.”
“I don’t think he’s even aware of it. I don’t know if it’s even him. It wasn’t like how it was with you, where Umemiya had lingering traces of Gojo Satoru beneath the surface. With Sakura, it literally comes and goes, as if he hasn’t anchored to this world. I just know that Sakura is a cat person. Not that he prefers cats over dogs; they just follow him whether he likes it or not. But there’s moments where they can’t stand him. Hissing at him, but the stray dogs like him just fine.”
“Nanami, you’re going senile. A few cats decide they don’t wanna be around him? So what! They’re cats! They’re shitheads, that’s what they do.”
“And the shadows, Gojo, they move around him. It’s minuscule but it’s there. There’s no cursed energy here, I’m sure of it, but for whatever reason, for him, shadows ripple. I’m sorry.”
Satoru doesn’t know what to think. He runs a hand over his face before banging it on the table. “Fuck!”
“I haven’t seen it happen in a while,” Nanami offers. “There’s a chance…”
“There’s a chance,” Satoru agrees. There’s a chance Megumi is still on the other side. He’ll take it. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it comes down to it and Megumi really does cross to this side. He doesn’t wanna think about it. He needs to change the subject.
“What’re the odds, huh, that we both end up here. You truly must have the best luck to spend another life time with the greatest. I’m revered here, too, no surprise there.”
Nanami stands abruptly, marching across the rooftop toward the exit. Satoru scrambles to catch up. “It was a joke! Come on, where are you going?”
The blond wretches the door open and waits for Satoru to meet him. He gestures at the stairs. “There’s someone else we need to talk to, that’s been here longer than I have.”
“Who? You’re being weird, Nanami, weirder than normal.”
“Evidently that brain of yours didn’t transmigrate over with you if you have to ask me that.”
“Are you insulting me? Maybe if you gave me a second to process everything I could—”
Satoru freezes halfway down the staircase. Who else could be here? That’s been here longer than Nanami. Someone like—
“SUGURU?!”