Chapter Text
April 2018 - Tokyo
The first thing Sukuna thought as he set foot outside the prison complex was that he had never seen such a perfect full moon. It seemed to shine as brightly as the sun where it floated effortlessly above Tokyo, its white light an entrancing halo in the dark indigo sky. Sukuna closed his eyes, soaking in the sensations of the rays on his tattooed skin, the hint of a breeze in his short pink hair. The feeling of freedom.
After five years in the strict confines of the penitentiary, he refused to restrain himself anymore. He pulled his white t-shirt over his head and stretched out his arms, taking in the night air with a ferociously wide grin on his face. It didn’t matter who saw. All that mattered was this moment. No one was around, anyway.
A wolf whistle came from across the street.
Sukuna looked for the source, his grin fading, then turning to a smirk as he identified the man walking towards him. Tall, white-haired, unfairly handsome, and bizarrely wearing sunglasses at this hour: it could be none other than Satoru Gojo.
“They said they were letting me out so late to avoid potential crowding in front of the prison,” Sukuna said.
“Is one person a crowd these days?” Gojo replied, returning the slightly off-kilter smile.
Sukuna realized with a twinge of surprise that Gojo might be happy to see him, and that he was certainly happy to see Gojo. “When that person is as annoying as you,” he said.
“And here I thought prison would make you more personable.” Gojo began to saunter down the sidewalk, beckoning for Sukuna to follow. “You’re lucky I’m such a nice guy. Put your shirt on, and I’ll give you a ride.”
Sukuna followed, intrigued. “A ride where?”
Despite his long legs, Gojo’s walking speed was obnoxiously slow. He ambled down the sidewalk, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of luxury-brand sweatpants, as if this was nothing more than a leisurely stroll. “The Gojo estate,” he said with an ironic archness. “Assuming you don’t have anywhere better to go.”
Sukuna’s intrigue became surprise, enough for him to put his shirt back on and walk by the other man’s side rather than trail behind. “I was planning to stay with my manager.”
Gojo’s eyes darted to Sukuna, his sudden mood shift visible under his sunglasses. “Kenjaku? You still work with that guy.”
“He managed my affairs while I was gone.”
“Do you trust him?”
Sukuna now recalled murkily that Gojo had some sort of issue with Kenjaku, but he couldn’t remember why. Gojo had never been Kenjaku’s client, or Sukuna was sure he would recall his longtime “friend” waxing wistfully about the star who got away. “I trust him well enough.”
“Hmm,” Gojo intoned. He offered no explanation for his suspicion, but he didn’t really need to. Kenjaku wasn’t exactly known as a paragon of ethics. In Sukuna’s view, that’s what made him an ideal colleague for navigating the often-treacherous MMA industry. As long as Kenjaku knew better than to betray him and didn’t take more than his agreed-upon cut, they would continue to have an amicable relationship. But for Gojo, who had deigned to have morals even when he was at the top, that probably wasn’t enough.
“Well,” Gojo said in his usual overly casual tone, “I could drop you off at the subway station and you could go hang out at that guy’s house, which I’m assuming is incredibly tacky and has terrible vibes, or you could come hang out with this cool guy,” (Gojo pointed his thumb at his own face) “and experience the epitome of class and sophistication. And leftover pizza I have in the fridge because I found out you were getting released today and didn’t have time to buy groceries and that might be all I have in the house! Your choice.”
Gojo clearly had some hidden agenda that he would only unveil when he felt like it. Kenjaku had Sukuna’s car, the code to get Sukuna’s stuff out of storage, the key to Sukuna’s apartment, and probably his own agenda as well. The most practical decision would be to go to Kenjaku and see what kind of life he could start cobbling together now that he’d been banned or blacklisted from everywhere he’d made his name. But looking at the man whom Sukuna had last seen flat on his back in the middle of an MMA ring, blue eyes going dull, white hair turning crimson as he bled profusely from a skull injury that everyone could see would be life-changing, going along with Gojo’s plan felt like following the path set by fate.
Or maybe he was just impressed that Gojo had shown up.
“I’ll take you up on your hospitality,” Sukuna said, intentionally nonchalant. “Can I sleep on your couch, or are you going to kick me out in the middle of the night?”
“You can stay in one of my many guestrooms, my good sir,” Gojo said.
He pressed a button on a set of car keys in one of his pockets, and Sukuna’s eyes followed the chirp. He laughed when he saw the white Ferrari 488 Spider, gleaming almost as brightly as the moon in a lot full of vehicles with peeling paint. The car was new enough that the seats still smelled faintly like leather as Sukuna buckled up for the first time in years. When Gojo turned the key, the engine growled to life, and Sukuna chuckled. “I don’t know if you’re trying to impress me or embarrass me.”
A smile tilted up the edges of Gojo’s lips. “Mind if I put the top down?” he asked as the roof was already moving.
Sukuna grinned and leaned back as they pulled out of the pay lot, his arm slung over the door. They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey, and Sukuna was content with that, fully engrossed in the kiss of the wind on his face, the rumble of the engine, the lights and shadows of the city. It likely hadn’t changed much since he went away, but it felt like he was journeying through a new world.
He didn’t know the way to Gojo’s house, but Sukuna wondered if they were taking a circuitous route to avoid busy streets. If people recognized them – in-person or online, if someone happened to post a picture of the sports car – the oddity of Satoru Gojo and Ryoumen Sukuna as a pair would surely cause a clamor on the internet. But maybe only a mild one. The MMA world moved fast, and 2012’s biggest fight could be 2018’s ancient history, especially now that both combatants were de facto retired. How quickly hard-fought careers faded into trivia.
If one was strong enough, however, old achievements could grow in stature, evolve over time from events into battles. Amidst the mists of history, athletes could transform into legends. Sukuna hoped – no, believed – that if not by now, then during their lifetimes, he and Gojo would become so.
The gate of Gojo’s house, on top of a hill and tucked away amid deciduous trees, looked like something from a historical drama and made Sukuna wonder how long his companion’s family had been rich. One of Gojo’s ancestors, as anyone who read an article about him or watched one of his fights with commentary knew, brought karate to Honshu from the former Ryukyu Kingdom in the late 1800s. That part of the family had married into nobility from Kyoto or something, Sukuna half-remembered. But as the Ferrari traveled slowly up the winding driveway, it was the Gojo family’s more recently earned wealth that came to mind. In the post-war 20th century, the Gojos turned their legacy of karate domination into an international business empire. In the 1960s, Satoru’s grandfather, one of the top karate masters of the day, capitalized on the martial art’s growing popularity overseas (a viral video juxtaposed a demonstration on a black-and-white French TV show with high-def documentary footage of his grandson practicing the same moves), and through a series of smart investments, by the late ‘70s the Gojo surname became a brand name on athletic wear, exercise tapes and books, and a short-lived sports drink. The next generation didn’t achieve much athletically, but by then, the companies didn’t need a patriarchal face to continue their international profit.
“Did you join the family business?” Sukuna asked as they pulled up to the house, his eyes roaming over the impressive structure.
“Kind of,” Gojo said, “I own stock, and I’m technically on the board, but I don’t really do anything, you know?”
Sukuna rolled his eyes. For a moment, he had considered that Gojo might not have needed nepotism money to build this place anyway. As the top star of a “new golden age of MMA,” Gojo’s face and fists had printed money. Sukuna was the sport’s most dominant fighter – the question of that had been officially put to rest – but Gojo was the media’s favorite. That face combined the most impressive winning streak the sport had ever seen (outside of Sukuna’s) and a personality that worked well on variety shows meant that Gojo raked in money endorsing everything from gum to humidifiers. It was obvious why this was what society preferred to Sukuna’s combination of deformity, face tattoos, and a misanthropic streak a mile wide. Sukuna never fought to get his face on Family Mart rice ball packaging or a daytime travel show in which he toured the country trying local sweets. But neither did Gojo, and he got it all anyway.
“Let me give you the tour,” Gojo said breezily once they had removed their shoes in the entranceway.
“You think your house is that interesting?” Sukuna quipped. Admittedly, it had looked interesting from the outside.
“I sure do, buddy!”
The main section of the house was a two-story structure that had a stylish feel, and Gojo explained that it had been designed by an architect commissioned by the previous owner. He had made some renovations and tacked on the house’s two wings after he moved in. Sukuna’s mouth nearly started watering when they entered the east wing’s pièce de résistance: a home gym with all the weights and equipment a martial arts enthusiast could want.
“Right? Right? You’re being a tsundere right now, but I know you think this is cool as hell.”
“It’s very cool,” Sukuna admitted, reaching out to touch – just touch! – a heavy bag with hands that were practically itching to punch something after all these years.
“Not gonna lie, I kind of expected you to look like a tank when you got out. They didn’t let you work on your bench press?”
“You might be thinking of foreign prison movies,” Sukuna said, his eyes wandering to the weight area. “I did my best with body weight exercises and a decimated protein intake.”
Gojo followed him, and they both lingered on opposite sides of the bench press. He was still wearing those round sunglasses, even though they were inside. Sukuna had thought they were a poorly conceived disguise, or maybe a joke. They could still be a joke. Gojo had a strange sense of humor.
“So what the hell did you do all day for five years?” Gojo asked, that hint of a smile back on his lips. “Job training? I saw an NHK segment about convicts working in an auto shop and thought, ‘I could see Sukuna doing that.’”
Sukuna realized that he never wanted to talk or think about prison again. Five years of nights spent in a five square meter cell, a bed and meals designed around the country’s average height of 172 centimeters: both were forms of mild, persistent torture to a man who stood 193, whose most comfortable fighting weight for a decade had been 117 kilos. A year spent assembling electronics before his “good behavior” (lethargy, boredom, people being too scared to start anything with him) got him moved to kitchen and garden duties for the rest of his sentence. The occasional visit from Kenjaku. That time in the first year when he accepted a visit from his uncle, who tried to chew him out like he was still a delinquent middle schooler. The upsides: there was an interesting class occasionally. Some good books in the scant library. Cooking could be enjoyable. “I got some kind of real estate certification at one point,” Sukuna recalled, “To get out of some assembly work. It’s probably expired by now.”
“Hmm, interesting choice. Your realtor slogan could be, like, ‘Buy this house or I’ll murder you.’”
“Manslaughter. I wouldn’t be standing here if it were murder.”
“Okay, ‘buy this house or I’ll fucking manslaughter you!’ You’re laughing. When you’re scowling like that, it counts as laughing.”
Sukuna sighed and finally gave in to his suppressed desires. He started loading the barbell with plates. “Spot me for a second. I want to see something.”
Holding the cool metal of a bar after so long had an almost sensual feeling. Sukuna took a few deep breaths. He’d only put on his old warm-up weight, nothing that would have been challenging in his prime. Unracking the bar was still easy, and Sukuna grinned at the sensation of his muscles moving in a way he’d been forced to neglect for so long. Moving the bar down to his chest was simple too, though his muscle memory didn’t quite match up with reality now that his pecs had practically atrophied. Pressing the bar up wasn’t difficult either, but it was when he began to feel the deterioration of his strength and fitness. One rep wasn’t too discouraging, but after the eighth, he racked the bar and sat up from the bench, breathing harder than when he had sat down. He needed to push himself, to really test how many reps he could do at this pathetic weight, so he could get a sense of how he should train to get back to his old self. But he wasn’t about to let Gojo see just how weak he’d become.
“Not bad,” Gojo said. He’d watched with his hands in his pockets the whole time and had never actually agreed to spot.
“Not good either,” said Sukuna, standing.
“Well, you’re a freak of nature, but also you’re an old man now, so it all balances out.”
Sukuna could have protested about his age, but he didn’t disagree. Somehow, turning 35 hadn’t made a big impact. But 36 was like being hit by a car. He squinted at Gojo. “You’re not even 30 yet, are you?”
“Nope. Turned 28 in December. Might stay 28 forever, who knows.”
Sukuna scoffed. “Why do I feel like you brought me here just to mock me?”
“Because you’re hopeless at reading the room. I have a whole separate agenda besides that.”
They ate leftover pizza in the west wing of the house, in a large room that was part eating space, part lounge, and featured a sort of modern engawa separated from the elements with a wall of windows and a sliding glass door. It looked out on a garden, the contents of which Sukuna found he could mostly identify. But even without any sort of botanical education, no one could have misidentified the cherry tree. In mid-April, it was past the time of year for full bloom in Tokyo, but the fading blossoms had their own charm.
“You match,” Gojo said, his words less distinct than they’d been twenty minutes prior. He gestured from the blossoms to Sukuna’s hair, which was really not that similar in color. Meanwhile, Gojo’s face was bright red.
“How are you drunk from one beer? Aren’t you a grown man?” Sukuna crushed his empty third can. He watched Gojo take another drink out of his first. Sukuna amended his first statement: “From maybe half a beer.”
Gojo downed the rest of the can and smashed it down flat on the tabletop with his palm. “That’s one! And that’s it for the night.”
Sukuna cracked open a fourth beer. He had no problem finishing off the six-pack himself. He had what could be called an “annoyingly high” and “expensive” tolerance for alcohol, but after half a decade as a teetotaler, he was loosened up after such mild drinking. Maybe the euphoria of being a free man had something to do with it.
“Gojo,” he said, as his host plopped his crimson face into pale hands. “I think it’s time for you to tell me your secret plan.”
Gojo looked at him silently for a moment, his sunglasses having slid just far enough down his nose to grant Sukuna a peek at his bright blue eyes. Despite – or maybe because of – his drunkenness, his expression was unreadable. “Huh? Actually, yeah, it is.” Gojo laid his hands flat on the table and sat up straight. “Sukuna,” he said, “Come work at my school!”
Sukuna blinked. “Your school?” Not dojo, not gym, but school.
Gojo whipped out his wallet, then whipped out a business card from “Tokyo Metropolitan Martial Arts High School.” Sukuna turned the phrase over in his mind, initially unsure he had read it correctly. But those were the words on the business card, and in the correct order. Below the name of the alleged organization, Satoru Gojo was identified as “Founder/Teacher.”
“What is this?” Sukuna asked flatly. “Is this a scam?”
Gojo slumped over again, one hand propping up his head while his other long arm stretched out on the table. He gave Sukuna a bleary, unamused look. “Why would a guy as rich as me want or need to run an elaborate scam?”
“Insatiable greed.”
“Touché. But you forgot one thing. I don’t have that. I’m basically a good person.”
That might be true, but he was also basically falling asleep.
“Why don’t you explain this to me in the morning,” Sukuna said.
Gojo nodded hazily. “I’ll explain this to you in the morning…”
He stood up, and Sukuna found himself in the awkward position of helping a man up the stairs to his own bedroom in a house he was visiting for the first time. “Goddamn, I really shouldn’t drink,” Gojo muttered to himself as they finally arrived at the second floor of the main wing.
“You didn’t, by anyone else’s standards.” Sukuna vaguely remembered a joke he’d heard back in the day about Gojo putting the “lightweight” in “light heavyweight.” He nearly brought it up, but Gojo looked like he was out on his feet as he stumbled toward what looked like the master bedroom.
“Take a guest room. G’night.”
Sukuna watched Gojo’s closed door for a few moments. When he didn’t reemerge for more antics, Sukuna padded back down the stairs and out to the west wing to grab the last beer. Sliding open the glass door, he stepped off the porch and out into the garden, the grass cool and slightly prickly under his bare feet. When he arrived under the fading cherry blossoms, he toasted to no one and drank half the beer in one gulp. Sakura-viewing for one, performed by a middle-aged man, late in the season. It was poetically pathetic. Sukuna scowled to himself and returned to the house.
Upstairs, he didn’t find a guest room immediately. What he saw after opening his first random door gave him pause; the room looked like it belonged to a teenage girl. Did Gojo have a younger sister who often visited? The room looked very lived-in, but Sukuna was smart enough to leave it be rather than start playing detective. The room next door also seemed like a teenager’s, though he couldn’t guess the kid’s gender at first glance. Seeing a bookshelf, he took a few steps inside. The shelves were well-stocked but not packed full. In the light from the hallway, he scanned the spines. There was a surprising amount of nonfiction titles, along with scattered novels that illuminated the mindset of an intelligent but angsty teen, with authors like Dazai, Kafka, and Dostoyevsky making appearances. Sukuna pulled out the Murakami book about running that he’d never gotten around to and decamped to find a guest room, one of which was, thankfully, across the hall.
Sitting in bed reading was something he’d done plenty of in prison, but it was a different experience entirely in a much larger bed with an undoubtedly newer mattress, a beer in hand and a distinct lack of guards patrolling the halls. After years in purgatory, it felt like a return to life.
In the morning, over coffee and toast and yogurt, Gojo explained Tokyo Metropolitan Martial Arts High School. It was, in fact, a legitimate school that existed, and of which Gojo could show Sukuna pictures on his phone. It had just started its third year. After accepting that his MMA career was over, Gojo had looked around at the state of the industry and the young people trying to make their way through it and decided to create a supportive environment in which they could train with knowledgeable mentors rather than trying to blunder through their rookie years, trying their best to find the right coaches, managers, and sponsors, faced with signing their first contracts before they could afford a lawyer to help them parse the fine print. It was, Gojo said with pride, Japan’s first educational institution that offered a mixed martial arts program. “Though we also have an independent study track,” he added. “This year, there’s nine MMA kids, five not-MMA. Maybe eight-six. We’ll see how things go.”
“You have fourteen students at this school,” Sukuna said. He was incredulous, but he wasn’t sure about what, exactly: that fourteen kids would sign up for this pipe dream of an institution, or that a school in the Tokyo metro area had such a small student body. “Why?”
“Come on, do you really have to ask? We both know that people who get beat up and beat people up for a living tend to have a few screws loose. Good fighters get swallowed up by the business side of the business every day. These kids need someone in their corner, whether they’re in the ring or not. The wrong contract or the wrong mentor can ruin someone’s career when it’s hardly begun,” Gojo said. His tone was still lighthearted, almost flippant, but Sukuna sensed a more serious undertone that he’d rarely heard from the man.
The school didn’t sound like a scam anymore, but more like a money pit a rich guy had acquired for himself, like a boat or a secret family. Sukuna could inquire further into its logistics, but he didn’t care enough. A young fighter who couldn’t figure out how to become skilled enough on his own didn’t belong in a professional MMA ring, and fighters who were stupid enough to make bad deals could live with the consequences of their actions. Success was for those who reached out and took it, and though Gojo had certainly carved out his own path, his exalted family background seemed to have shielded him from seeing the true nature of the world.
Speaking of which.
Sukuna changed the subject. “That’s all very interesting, but why should I listen to a man who’s wearing sunglasses in his own home at eight in the morning?”
“Ah, I wondered if you hadn’t heard,” Gojo said, and lowered the glasses to the edge of his nose. “Notice anything different?”
Sukuna looked into Gojo’s distinctive blue orbs for a moment before he noticed it. “A glass eye.”
“An ocular prosthesis. They’re made of plastic these days, old man. This one is anyway.” As casually as if he were taking another sip of coffee, Gojo popped the prosthetic lens out and held it towards Sukuna.
But Sukuna’s gaze was drawn to the now-exposed area of Gojo’s face. One of those irises that always seemed impossibly bright looked slightly faded now without the black of a pupil to contrast with the vibrant color. “It was a detached retina, wasn’t it? I’ve never seen one get this bad.”
“Well, it got that bad.” Gojo shoved the lens closer to Sukuna’s face like a kid trying to show off his favorite toy. “I used a less invasive kind of lens first, but it would drift all over the place when I wore it for too long. I had to get this one fitted, but it looks way better.”
“Why the sunglasses, then?”
“Shit, I need a mirror to put this back in.” Gojo left the table and walked off into the hallway. “I used them for light sensitivity during the initial recovery period, and they came in handy during my roving eye era!” he called from some unseen bathroom.
Sukuna took an apple from a bowl of fruit on the counter and ate a quarter of it in one bite.
“Now it’s kind of my aesthetic,” Gojo said, reentering the kitchen, “Gives me a certain eccentricity. I’ve been leaning into that these days.”
“I doubt the prop necessary,” Sukuna replied. Watching Gojo’s little display had made his own bad eye start to itch, and he wasn’t sure if it was a sign of dryness, an infection, or some misguided manifestation of sympathy.
“Looking cool is always necessary,” Gojo said. “Anyway, the point is, we’re fucked up eye buddies now. My left and your right. It’s like a mirror.”
Sukuna stood from the table. “How interesting. I should be going.”
“But you’ll be at school bright and early tomorrow, right?”
“No.”
Sukuna nearly made it out of the house, but Gojo threw himself in front of the door before he could turn the handle.
“Come on,” Gojo whined. “Come onnnnn. We could use you over there.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Just try it out for a couple weeks. It’s not going to be that easy to find full-time work as a felon with face tattoos, you know.”
At Sukuna’s glower, Gojo sighed and unblocked the door. “You have my card!” he called after Sukuna, who wasted no time striding down the driveway. “Call me if you change your mind!”
Sukuna took one last bite of the apple and threw it in the bushes.
“I’m way more fun than Kenjaku!”
Kenjaku certainly looked like he had been having fun when he opened the door to his Hiroo apartment, his long black hair askew in mystifying ways, clad only in a leopard print robe that probably came from the women’s section, or from some woman visitor.
“You’re late,” Kenjaku said, with his usual little smile. His face had undergone a myriad of cosmetic changes in the fifteen years Sukuna had known him, but that smile remained the same. “Didn’t they let you out yesterday?”
“They did,” Sukuna said, “I was kidnapped by Satoru Gojo.”
Kenjaku opened the door wider, ushering Sukuna in. “You poor thing. Tell me all about it.”
Of all the Kenjaku dwellings that Sukuna had set foot in, this was the most normal. The furnishings were all somewhere between white and brown; most, like the L-shaped couch Sukuna plopped down on, were an unassuming shade of beige. Even what he could see of the view was unremarkable, just a few trees and a quiet street from the second floor of the low-rise building.
“I’m out of the country too much these days. I couldn’t be bothered to decorate,” Kenjaku explained, handing Sukuna a mug and sitting on the perpendicular couch section. Their hands brushed for a moment, and Kenjaku’s skin was disconcertingly soft. Along with expensive lotion, Sukuna could smell the remnants of weed and booze on him.
“Outside of the bedroom, that is,” Kenjaku conceded, taking a sip.
“As always, I don’t need to hear about it,” Sukuna replied, but his lips quirked up as he raised his mug. Gojo’s strange behavior was unfamiliar; they had the unique connection of being the greatest opponents of each other’s lives, but they had rarely socialized. Their fight had been inevitable since they first became aware of each other, even before their weight classes were compatible. Last night and this morning had been the first times they had talked without the specter of violence between them. Kenjaku’s quirks, in contrast, were familiar, and their occasional friction was part of a dynamic they had settled into over a decade ago. Some of the tension Sukuna had carried from the prison to Gojo’s house slipped away as Kenjaku described the anti-aging benefits this coffee was alleged to have.
“Or you could quit drinking,” Sukuna suggested.
“I’ve really cut down,” Kenjaku said with a dramatic sigh. “But what’s the point in living if you’re not ‘living,’ you know? I just hope someone figures out how to upload our consciousnesses to new bodies before I die. That’s really all I want. I’ve been making biotech investments, but it’s not looking good.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing with my money while I was away?”
“Please, I have enough of my own. Along with my other endeavors,” (Kenjaku waved a hand in lieu of describing what they were) “some of the newer athletes on my roster are doing well. Yorozu’s quite successful in America, and Jogo recently brought me a promising kid he’s been training. That one could make a big impact. And Reggie’s still kicking, still high in the middleweight ranks, though he’s pushing forty. None of them compares to you, of course. I’ll be amazed if I find a fighter like you again.”
“Maybe after you put your brain in the cloud.”
“Maybe.” Kenjaku looked like he was really thinking about the coffee as he drank it. Another way he was easier to be around than Gojo: he didn’t flood his coffee with so much milk and sugar that it was as beige as this couch.
Kenjaku raised his half-empty mug. “This is pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“Better than the prison brew.”
“That’s not exactly a high bar.” Kenjaku drained his mug anyway. “Want to go for yakiniku later? I can’t imagine how much meat you’re going to be packing away now that you’re free.”
Sukuna grinned, suddenly ravenous. “If there were yakiniku places open before 10 A.M., I’d drag you out of the house right now.”
“Oh, speaking of houses…” Kenjaku pulled a key ring out of his robe pocket and tossed it to Sukuna. “Car, storage, mailbox, apartment. I managed to get your third choice; just sign a few papers, and it’s yours for the next six months.”
“Thanks,” Sukuna said, and he was grateful, to an extent. Helping him benefited Kenjaku – financially and reputationally, displaying his loyalty as a business partner even when things got tough – but at the same time, this level of effort was beyond what was necessary for a client whose most profitable days were behind him.
“There may be some fights you can get abroad once you get back in shape,” Kenjaku said, as if reading his mind, “Some fairly lucrative. Not from any reputable promotions, though. The type of places you’d want to get your payment up front in a briefcase, then cross your fingers about any post-fight bonus. It could be fun. Like old times.”
“We haven’t become such nostalgic old geezers, have we?”
Kenjaku chuckled, but there was no humor in his eyes. “God, I hope not. But you never did bare-knuckle boxing at a high level, did you? If that sounds interesting enough, I can make the arrangements.”
It wasn’t until they had signed over Sukuna’s new apartment and were in the midst of a titanic yakiniku lunch that Sukuna thought to bring up Gojo’s school.
“I’ve heard about that,” Kenjaku said. “I doubt he’s doing much of the day-to-day operations. He’s not the principal either. But he seems to have found the right people to run things for him, and he’s recruited some interesting talent. There’s a kid named Yuta Okkotsu who’s a prodigy, maybe even on Gojo’s level. And there are multiple Zenins there, oddly enough.”
“As in the ZJJ Zenins?”
“Yep. He really acquired some martial arts royalty,” Kenjaku chewed and swallowed a piece of galbi straight from the sizzling grill between them. “Or more like nobility.”
“MMA hasn’t gotten so boring already, has it?” Sukuna placed a piece of beef tongue and one of pork belly next to each other on his plate, then picked them up and ate them together.
“There hasn’t been a new golden age, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Kenjaku said. “But there’s been something in the air lately… I think the business might be entering a new season.”
“Gojo offered me a job.”
“He did? Teaching children?”
It was an absurd idea, but Kenjaku laughed so hard at the proposition that Sukuna found himself slightly offended.
“That’s hilarious,” Kenjaku declared redundantly, wiping tears from his eyes. “Funniest thing I’ve heard in ages. You should do it.”
“For your entertainment?”
“It’s not that funny. To scout the kids. If there’s anyone good, point them in my direction. Say some nice things about me to counter whatever poison Gojo’s undoubtedly spewing. If it works out, I’ll give you a finder’s fee.”
Sukuna punched another order of pork belly into the tablet ordering system. “We’ll have to put several things in writing for me to agree to that.”
Kenjaku, with a wry smile, turned the tablet towards himself and started adding on sides. “Good man. You haven’t gone soft yet.”
Sleeping in his own apartment rather than behind bars that night did make Sukuna feel a little soft, though. The place was nice, nothing flashy: a one-bedroom, 50 square meters, with a decent kitchen area set off enough from the living room space that one didn’t feel at risk of getting oil stains on the couch. There was a little balcony that looked out on an unbusy street and a laundromat on the ground floor, but the building wasn’t ritzy enough for its own parking area, and he had to pay for a monthly pass at a lot nearby. The apartment came pre-furnished, including a television and a table meant for two that was positioned so it looked out picturesquely on the balcony. Sukuna hadn’t bothered to unpack anything aside from clothes yet, so as he lay in bed, finding it surprisingly difficult to fall asleep, he had the uncanny sense of living in a dollhouse.
Around one in the morning, he got up and walked out to the balcony. The spring air was cool, and he once again savored the feeling against his bare chest. The street was empty save for a few stragglers outside the nearest bar, and the moon was nearly full. When the sun came up, Sukuna would unpack, do laundry, and buy more groceries than the bagful he’d picked up from the convenience store at the end of the block. After that, he had no plans, no prospects, no fights. No one to study to work out how to best take them apart in the ring. Plenty of training he could do, and would do, but with no goal more concrete than self-improvement.
He sighed and walked back to the kitchen, to the bag he’d left on the counter with two items in it: a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. On the balcony, he lit up and took a drag. Delicious. It was the brand he’d smoked in high school, before he’d gotten serious enough about training to force himself to quit. He’d started up again in prison, where the supply was inferior and irregular, but still some of the most satisfying stimulation available. He went cold turkey two weeks before his release date. He’d do it again… soon. If he limited himself to one a day, it wouldn’t be difficult.
He would have to get a job. Even if he took up fight offers from dubious promotions, the only kind that would take him now, he would need a job at some point in his life. He might have 50 more years left of this.
He hadn’t decided anything by the time he ground the cigarette butt beneath his bare foot. But he knew what he was going to do when he woke up (automatically, at 6:45, his mandatory wakeup time for the past five years.) He went back to sleep for another hour. Ate breakfast. Put in a load of laundry. Unpacked. More laundry. More unpacking.
Seated amongst empty boxes, he finally took out Gojo’s card and called.