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The Inumaki clan is revered for its silence.
In one of life’s greatest paradoxes, it is their dedication to remaining quiet that gets their voices heard, their tendency to cling to the shadows that gets them a seat at the table. An Inumaki is good if they’re seen and not heard, better if they’re neither seen nor heard, and best if they act only when told to and do only as one of the Big Three families instructs. Fight like hell against curses, roll over and show your belly against fellow sorcerers, and win in the end. The Inumaki way.
This is something Toge has to learn over and over again before he really gets it.
The first time he learns this, he is three and he speaks an entire sentence, because of course he does, he’s a child who can use his voice and doesn’t understand why he’s not supposed to. His young mind cannot yet comprehend consequences, much less something as abstract as cursed techniques and forced compliance and the overwhelming power that dances on the seal of his tongue. That does not stop the muzzle from clamping down over his mouth and staying on more often than not.
The next time, he is ten or eleven and he trains with his father until he feels faint. Even if he does not completely understand his clan’s greatest rule, he understands that his father’s word is law, and that if he wants things to hurt as little as possible he better shut up and do as he’s told. Nevermind the blood splattering on the tatami at his feet, the red that spills down his shirtfront, the pain like sandpaper scraping his throat each time he so much as breathes. An Inumaki does as they’re told no matter how tough the job, and they do not complain. And, above all else, they do not speak until they have to.
The last time, he is fourteen and he—
Well, he doesn’t remember, exactly. He doesn’t even remember how he got here. There are hands everywhere all at once, his muzzle cast aside so nails can dig into the tender skin that bears his sigils, sheets bunching up around his nude form and the naked body above him. A voice, a person he thinks he knows, someone maybe even inside his own clan, telling him things he catches only pieces of. He’s beautiful, they say, he’s a gorgeous thing, he has a perfect mouth. Bend this way, they tell him, grab here, no, don’t cry, don’t scream so loud, don’t you dare fucking try to compel me.
So he doesn’t. Speak, that is – he does all of the other things he’s asked, pure fear turning him passive, obedient. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want the press of another body so close to his, doesn’t want to feel their touch against his skin even days after they let him go, but he cannot get himself to move.
He cannot bring it up with his parents, because they give him no means to communicate. They taught him to speak only in onigiri ingredients, an idea born of boredom and a twisted sense of humor, so he has no way to express all of this guilt and pain and shame that threatens to choke him.
And Toge finally understands.
An Inumaki is not a person, not an individual, not a collection of thoughts and emotions and words that build up on tongues but never, never come spilling out. An Inumaki is a tool, a single brushstroke of a larger painting, a mindless, pliant cog in the great machine of their clan’s legacy. An Inumaki does not fight back, does not object to even the most horrifying of orders, because they are a meaningless speck against the sea of stars that is their ancestors’ accomplishments, and how dare they want anything more than to push their family to new heights, their own body and mind be damned.
He gets the message loud and clear. It is better to sacrifice oneself to protect the clan, better to let one person suffer in silence than to expose another’s wrongdoing and risk the tremulous respect the Big Three have so graciously gifted them. There is nothing more important to Toge’s family than gaining power, and even if there were something more important, it wouldn’t be Toge.
Jujutsu High is the most mundane oasis Toge could have possibly imagined, but it is an oasis all the same.
His dorm is in the same building as the other first years’, but on a different floor from them, tucked away in the most distant corner the faculty could find. “So you can talk in here if you want to,” Gojo says when he shows Toge the room, offering a nonchalant shrug.
No one has ever thought to accommodate him like this. No one has ever thought that perhaps he’d sometimes like to speak, even if only to himself, that he should not live all of his waking hours with his jaw clamped shut like a violent dog. He does not cry when Gojo tells him this, but he feels like he’s supposed to, in the same way he feels he’s supposed to cry at funerals. A social obligation, an expected response to such a generous gift, but he cannot get his eyes to wet.
The other first years are an interesting lot to spend any time around. One of them is a literal panda bear, which is fine in Toge’s eyes; he’s at a special magic school to learn how to fight monsters with his ability to control things with his words. He’s seen weirder.
What strikes him as especially strange is not the unusual characters surrounding him or their even more unusual personalities, but rather how easily they make room for him. The first day of classes, he introduces himself by writing on the blackboard, and when he gets to the part where he explains his onigiri speaking system, all everyone else does is nod along.
“Don’t look at us like we’re too stupid to figure out your weird language,” Maki says, a hint of boredom in her voice, as if it’s obvious that Toge has to have some way to get his thoughts across in their group. As if it’s unthinkable that Toge is supposed to simply fall in line behind her, a Zen’in, without question.
He thinks of his clan, of how little he means within it, of sixteen years of forced silence and blood-soaked training mats and muffled screams in darkened bedrooms. Of all the words he’s almost said, needs to say, never says, clenched tightly behind gritted teeth.
The others have already started chattering, glancing at Toge like they expect him to just slide right into their little group, which he thinks must be impossible, but in the end that’s indeed what he does.
It’s so easy, just to be around them. Easy in a way he’s never felt before.
He gets out into the world, starts hunting curses on his own, and realizes that the distant relative who laid hands on him years ago is not the only person with a perverse attraction to him.
People like his mouth. People like his power, envy his gift, this curse that he would gladly give up if he could, and somehow their fingers or worse always end up between his lips, their hands brushing across the seals on his cheeks. They want to feel it, the marks, the place from which his technique bursts like fireworks. They do not want to feel him. He is merely a tool, a toy, a hole for them to use as they please.
Sometimes these people are small-time sorcerers who’ve only heard about him through the general Jujutsu High gossip, who request over and over for him specifically to come hunt a curse for them just so they can get their hands on him.
But some are closer, more nefarious, like one of the third years, who cornered him a week into the school year with a hungry smile on their face. Like an assistant whose name Toge never learned, who won’t stop offering to take over Ijichi’s job, claiming they’re just that invested in seeing Toge “develop”. Like Yaga, who watches it all happen and does nothing, whose eyes sometimes linger on Toge in ways they linger on no one else, gaze tracing the seals as if he’s entranced from the sight of them alone.
Because of this, Toge has already accepted that no one will step in for him. He doesn’t expect anyone to at this point, which makes it all the stranger when someone does, for a multitude of reasons, not least of all being who it is that takes a stand.
Gojo Satoru is the oddest among their collection of oddballs, a dizzying mixture of aloof and attentive, playful and dangerous, laid-back and more singly focused on his goals than a human being should be able to be. If anyone were to turn against the status quo, fight back against the old and established, it’s Gojo. At the same time, if anyone were to have their fingers in all the vile, rotten pies sorcerer society has to offer, it’s also him, so surely he knows what’s happening to his student. Toge just figures he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
All of this is to say he is completely blindsided when he shows up for a supposed mission with Gojo, only to have the man lead them into one of the training rooms and start a conversation.
“How long do you think you’ll hold it together,” he asks, sitting cross-legged on the floor, “before it starts to destroy you?”
Toge waits the appropriate amount of time before reacting, to give the illusion that the question caught him off guard. I don’t know what you’re talking about , his expression hopefully says. Once he’s done communicating that thought, he returns his face to perfect neutrality.
“Of course, of course.” The smile that tugs at Gojo’s lips makes Toge’s stomach clench in apprehension, some primal, instinctual part of him bucking against the wildness in the man’s grin. For a moment, he thinks he fucked up, walked into a trap, thinks that Gojo got him here alone to use him like everyone else, but Gojo isn’t fixing him with that kind of expression; he’s just looking out at nothing, staring into the middle distance somewhere past Toge’s head, always thinking, always two steps ahead. “You don’t know. Just like you don’t know why Yaga keeps ogling you.”
Something must show on his face, some flicker of anything but total repression, because Gojo barks a harsh laugh and rocks back a little before collecting himself. “You’ve given up, haven’t you, kid? Just tucked tail and rolled over.”
You have no idea what’s going on with me , Toge wants to say, the sudden anger that pulses through him sending his entire frame quivering. For an Inumaki, giving in is not giving up – in fact, it’s the very opposite, it’s a method of control, of survival. It is the only way that someone like him can live in a place like this, is the only way he gets to enjoy anything more than total ruin.
“You don’t have to sit there and take it,” Gojo says, and it’s so flippant, so easy for one of the most powerful men in the world to spit out, that Toge can’t even stand to look at him anymore.
He sure as hell doesn’t have to sit here and take this. He climbs to his feet, feeling the tatami mats beneath them, and suddenly he can taste blood, can hear his father yelling at him knowing Toge can’t yell back. For just a moment, he hesitates, and in the end he turns back.
“Here.” Gojo tosses something towards him, and he flinches, hiding his face behind his arms before peeking out to find his teacher frowning at him. There’s a small notepad lying in front of Toge, and Gojo sends the pen over much more gently, rolling it across the floor. “Don’t look at it like it’s gonna eat you. It’s for you to communicate.”
Toge reaches for the notepad, then pulls his hand back, ready for the moment that Gojo leans forward and snatches it away from him.
“Come on, kid, you gotta be joking.” He combs his hands through his hair, forcing a few strands to stick up a little higher. “Don’t tell me no one’s ever given you a chance to speak up for yourself. You’ve just said nothing your whole life?”
It’s so strange to think about, really. Most kids his age are practically adults, and they speak like it, able to articulate for at least the basic things they want and need. When Gojo was his age, he spent more time verbally sparring with his own teachers and complaining about the higher-ups than he did hunting curses, and he did a lot of hunting curses.
And Toge… hasn’t spoken. Hasn’t stood up for himself. He knows how to write, of course, and he’s even thought of a few different ways he could use writing to get around his prohibited speech, but no one has bothered to pay attention to him for long enough for any of them to work.
What do you want with me? he writes on the paper, glaring up at Gojo to indicate his tone.
“What I want with all of sorcerer society, really.” He flashes that smile again. “A little change. To do things a little different, a little better. Don’t you want to make things better for yourself?”
He pauses for a long moment, and Gojo waits. I’ve never had the choice , he eventually writes.
“Do you want to have a choice?”
An Inumaki does not complain, does not disobey, does not fight against even the smallest of injustices. An Inumaki takes what they are given, does what they can with it, and never wishes for more.
But Toge is not just an Inumaki, not in Gojo’s eyes, not in this quiet salvation he’s found at the school. He nods, once, slow and still unsure, and this time Gojo’s smile holds nothing but pure delight.
Toge dreams most nights.
Sometimes in these dreams he wears a muzzle, but it’s far too small for him, the one he wore as a child. He claws and claws at it, wraps fingers around the straps and yanks, but nothing ever budges. The metal that once simply held his jaw shut now crushes his mouth in its vice, teeth cracking right down to the root, bones shattering like glass, seals contorted until their pattern is indiscernible. It’s better this way, someone tells him, he tells himself.
Sometimes, he finds himself pinned to a bed, suffocated by the sheets wrapped around him and by a strange tongue that forces itself into his mouth. He gets his hands free, but instead of fighting back, he turns his nails against himself, scraping at the skin of his cheeks until he punches straight through the flesh.
Once, only once, he dreams he is standing before a great curse, a feral, nigh-uncontainable thing, and he is not afraid. His friends stand at his side and Gojo stands at his back, and he is not afraid. He destroys the monster with a single word, does in one action what none of his peers could do in dozens of attempts, and he is not afraid .
Toge does not dislike Okkotsu Yuuta for the boy’s sullen demeanor, or his kicked-puppy eyes, or the way he acts like everything is his fault. He does not dislike Okkotsu Yuuta for the strange manner of his arrival, because Toge does not envy an flamboyant entrance to the school that comes alongside an execution date. He does not even dislike Okkotsu Yuuta for the curse that curls at his back, though he does not trust her to control herself or her master to contain her, and he keeps his eyes on the pair of them whenever he can.
No, he dislikes Okkotsu because Okkotsu represents change. For a few precious months, Toge and his classmates have lived as under-the-radar as they ever will, largely divorced from the drama in the wider sorcerer world and all of the pain and worry that comes with it.
But Okkotsu’s mere existence brings every miserable, disgusting aspect of Jujutsu society down on their heads. The elders are watching, the authorities are watching, every sorcerer with any modicum of common sense is watching, all of them salivating for a thousand different reasons over this boy, this descendant of a Vengeful spirit with a monster as his sworn protector. The first years are no longer invisible, no longer forgotten, no longer uninteresting, and Toge can think of no worse fate.
So he stays away, keeps his distance from Okkotsu and hopes against hope that all of the attention falling on them as a group will miss Toge entirely, that in the buzz that surrounds their newest classmate, people will overlook the quietest kid of the bunch. If he just keeps Okkotsu at arm’s length, doesn’t get too close to the harsh glare of his forced spotlight, Toge will be fine.
But Toge cannot keep away from Okkotsu. Okkotsu saves him on a single mission, rushes in dauntless without the slightest idea of what he’s doing, risking his life just to protect this boy he barely knows, this boy who wants nothing to do with him, this boy who is not and never will be worth someone else’s life, and that’s all it takes. Like being sucked into a blackhole, Toge is gone, trapped, circling around and around Okkotsu until finally he’s pulled all the way in.
Okkotsu does not often laugh, but when he does it’s bright and crisp, deeper and more joyful than it has any right to be given all the things he’s been through. He is equal parts incredibly powerful and hopelessly lost, among their group, in class, on missions, against curses and curse users alike. He hangs back when Toge drags his feet, talks enough but not too much, never pries about Toge’s cursed speech or forced silence.
An Inumaki does not wish for things they should not have. They stay in their places, remain to their own kind, do not try to mingle with those whose power they cannot even begin to understand. They do not pursue, do not make names for themselves, do not demand and absolutely do not take.
(Gojo smirks at him sometimes, mostly when the man tells off one of his superiors, like they’re both in on the joke. And maybe they are, because within a few weeks of their conversation, Toge doesn’t get sent off on as many solo missions, and Yaga stays away, and he hasn’t heard a peep from that third year in days.
But he knows better than to hope for too much.)
He kisses Okkotsu five months after the boy first arrived, three weeks after the boy first confessed to him, six days after he told him, “Just call me Yuuta, please. Just Yuuta.”
It’s a chaste, quick thing, the kiss, Yuuta having no idea how such intimate things work and Toge having to pretend the same, but it’s nice. It is nice for as long as they’re together, as long as this warmth spreads through Toge’s chest and Yuuta’s hands brush over the seals on his cheeks. But then they have to break apart, each going to get their own work done, and halfway to his destination Toge doubles over and vomits onto the stones, his stomach turning sour in mere seconds.
He tastes hands forcing themselves in his mouth, feels fingernails digging into his hips, remembers Yuuta’s gentle touch when he cupped Toge’s face in his palms. He doesn’t sleep at all that night.
“Alright, for the probably thirty seconds I’ve got you alone, you gotta tell me.”
Toge quirks an eyebrow at Yuuta’s words, stuffs his hands in his pockets. They’re walking back from training to the dining hall, Maki and Panda having run off ahead of them, locked in some pointless argument. Any second now the two of them are bound to run back within earshot, so Yuuta talks faster.
“This whole thing is a joke, right?” Toge has no way to respond, but Yuuta doesn’t seem to be waiting for a response, instead rambling on with barely a breath in between sentences. “The - the whole onigiri thing. Have you all been playing some trick on the new guy? I mean, I get that you can’t really speak because of your technique, I’m not trying to say that you’re faking that part or anything, but there’s no way you’ve just been talking riceball for your whole life.”
Something must show on Toge’s face, some hint of the frustration he feels at a reminder of his limited communication, and Yuuta backpedals so hard he stumbles over his own words. “Not that - it isn’t - it’s fine that you do. I don’t mind it or anything, but isn’t it… annoying?”
He nods, just once, and glances away.
“I’m sure you’ve tried all sorts of stuff, you’re a crazy smart guy, but I was just wondering why you’ve never tried sign language.”
Once or twice, he had. He’d devised rudimentary signs, did all he could to get his parents to at least attempt to follow his gestures, to at least attempt to form something more than the most basic of connections, but in the end it all fell through. After those few failures, he just couldn’t find any reason to pick it up again.
But he can’t tell Yuuta any of those things. He can’t say any of it, can’t get it out into the space between them, somewhere other than in his own head where it just crowds his thoughts and sits heavy on his tongue, always so close to forcing itself out.
“You see that.” Yuuta points at Toge’s face with a sheepish smile. “Those were a whole lot of emotions you just felt, right? Stuff that a few simple ingredient names can’t cover. But if you learned to sign, you could express everything you feel.”
Toge stares at him unblinking. An Inumaki does not hope.
“I could teach you,” Yuuta says. “I have a cousin who’s Deaf, so I know how to use JSL. It’s not as good as learning from someone who knows it as a first language, but maybe we could still figure something out. Even if it was just among the four of us.” He extends his hand; this is something new Toge’s only ever done with Yuuta, something he has yet to understand, this easy, gentle touch, but he takes the other boy’s hand nonetheless. “What do you think? Do you want to learn from me?”
He does, of course he does, so starting that night they spend an hour or more alone with each other every day, Yuuta patient and supportive as always as Toge slowly finds his words. Their daily retreat soon catches their friends’ attention, drawing smirks and more than a few whispered comments about things that turn Yuuta’s cheeks a bright pink, so after a few weeks they open their sessions up and start teaching everyone, if only to dispel the rumors.
All it takes is six weeks. Six weeks for him to learn the basics, for him to put together a few sentences, for him to learn how to ask for things and give his opinion and object to others’ words if he feels he needs to. Six weeks to figure out how to express all of the things he’s bottled up inside him for sixteen years, all the things he held against his tongue until it all but burned off the seal.
The first time Toge tells anyone about his past, he’s sitting in Yuuta’s room after finishing their lesson for the night. It’s just the two of them, and despite the fact that Toge now knows enough sign to say just about whatever he wants, halfway through his story his hands begin to shake and his fingers no longer form the proper shapes and none of that matters, anyway, because he can’t even get his words straight in his head.
But Yuuta doesn’t need words. All Yuuta needs is to see the expression on Toge’s face, because in their few short months together he’s learned how to read those expressions better than anyone else could ever hope to.
He takes Toge’s hands in his, clasping them together as the tremors spread and engulf Toge’s entire body, and when Toge begins to crumble Yuuta catches him, cradles him like he is something precious to hold. And the hold is as soothing as it always is, arms encircling him and gripping him tight as something inside him breaks.
Before he can stop himself, he’s sobbing against Yuuta’s shoulder. He can’t remember the last time he cried at all, the last time he was allowed to cry, the last time he allowed himself to fall apart. Soon enough he can’t even remember why he’s crying in the first place, sixteen years of repression splitting him clean in two, all the pain and loneliness and anger flowing out without words. But that’s fine, because Yuuta does not need words to understand.
The next time Yuuta understands him without hearing a word is because Toge cannot say a word.
He does not know where he is or how he got here. The room is bathed in shadows and his head is spinning and his entire body aches like every part of him has been crushed to dust, like a thousand papercuts have sliced across his skin. His left arm screams in agony, the pain reaching all the way down to the bone and eclipsing all of his other senses, and when he tries to look at his arm the confusion only worsens, because it isn’t there, he can feel it, can feel pain sparking all the way down to his fingertips, but the arm isn’t there .
If he could scream, he would, but he can’t for the muzzle forcing his mouth shut. His surroundings and his feelings and even the state of his own body are so hazy in his mind he can’t make sense of them, but the muzzle clamped across his face is clearer than anything else has ever been. It’s too tight against his jaw, tight in the way that was always used as punishment as a child, but he doesn’t know what he’s done now to deserve it.
A door opens somewhere near him, but he can’t tell who walks through it or how close they are or what they want. He tries to get away, to shrink into himself so maybe he won’t be noticed, but any movement he makes feels like wading through mud, and all he can do is turn his head against the pillow he’s lying on, the muzzle pinching him where the straps connect.
“…wouldn’t stop using his cursed speech,” comes a voice, drifting to Toge as if disembodied, the sound of it echoing through his pounding head.
“So you thought this would calm him down?” says another voice, quiet and tired but somehow sharper than the needles driving themselves into Toge’s arm, the one that isn’t there anymore. “You thought this would help?”
“I’m sorry, Okkotsu-kun, it’s just that Ieiri-san isn’t here and I didn’t know what to—”
“Give me a minute with him. Alone.”
The first voice disappears and a shadow falls over Toge. He twists away with all his strength but gets nowhere, and all he can do is let out a pitiful whimper when a hand lands against his forehead. All of a sudden he’s trapped again, pinned under a pile of rubble in Shibuya, caught between sex-soaked sheets, frozen as his father rains down blow after blow while he bites his tongue to keep from crying out.
“You’re okay,” says the second voice. It’s comforting, almost familiar, somehow, when paired with the hand on his face, which does not crush or twist or wander, but just stays, solid and cool against his feverish skin. “You’re okay. I’m going to get this off of you, alright?”
The straps loosen, and the muzzle is pulled up and over his head. His first instinct is to use his cursed speech, but he can’t get his tongue to move, and his thoughts are too jumbled for him to even find the right words to say. The hand moves to his cheek, wiping away tears he didn’t even know were there, then cups his chin like he is something precious to hold.
He doesn’t fight anymore, letting all of his muscles go slack and focusing on the person leaning over him. “I’m so sorry they put that on you,” the person says. “It won’t happen again, Toge, I promise.”
Finally all the pieces click into place, and he’s able to make out Yuuta’s form even in the darkness of the room. He tries to sign to him, tries to find some way to lessen the grief on Yuuta’s face, but he’s too weak to lift his arm, and even if he weren’t, he doesn’t know how to sign one-handed.
But he doesn’t need to sign. He doesn’t need to say anything at all, because Yuuta has always been able to read all of his thoughts from his expression alone.
“I know nothing makes sense right now,” Yuuta says, “but we’ll talk about it later, okay? You can ask me whatever you want, and we’ll figure out how you can still talk to everyone else. Right now, though, you have to rest.” He leans over and plants a kiss on Toge’s forehead. “Try to relax and sleep for a while. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
Toge has no resistance left in him, can’t even keep his eyes open, but he doesn’t feel any panic at the thought of slipping into unconsciousness. He knows he won’t be forgotten or used like he’s just a tool, that he won’t have to endure any more torment on his own, that he’ll never again have to face the world alone, because he has Yuuta by his side.
The Inumaki clan is revered for their silence. They do not speak unless they have to, do not show weakness, do not bother others with their problems. And even if they did, Toge has always been told, no one would react, because no one has any reason to.
But Toge will not stay silent, and Yuuta always listens.