Outside of his classmates and teachers at Jujutsu High, almost no one paid close attention to Asou Akiya.
That quiet anonymity allowed him, whenever he was separated from Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru and trailing after Yaga-sensei on missions, to meet all sorts of people. Row after row of new numbers and careful notes bloomed in his contacts list, along with an entire group chat just for assistant supervisors.
Yet the very top of his address book (pinned there forever) belonged to only one person.
—「DK Gojo」
Gojo Satoru's phone, by contrast, held only a handful of names, arranged strictly by the order in which he had met them: 「Little Tangerine」, 「Yaga」, 「Weird Bangs」, 「Shoko」, 「Mei Mei」.
The first-year class group chat, thanks to Gojo's presence, was a constant storm of noise and chaos.
[Gojo Satoru: Little Tangerine, I'm almost back at school! I want milk tea!]
[Gojo Satoru: Dying of thirst here.]
[Geto Suguru: Ignore the spoiled brat. A bottle of mineral water is more than enough for him.]
[Asou Akiya: Roger that.]
[Yaga Masamichi: GOJO! The assistant supervisor just informed me that you flew through today's mission and forgot to drop a Curtain again!]
[Geto Suguru: I distinctly remember someone swearing he would never forget.]
[Asou Akiya: Playing an audio clip for the class right now ~ 「(Gojo Satoru's voice) Who the hell would forget the Curtain?!」]
[Gojo Satoru: …]
[Asou Akiya: Everyone free at the end of the month? There's a summer festival at my old home in Yokohama Port. Tons of food stalls. My treat—best Yokohama ramen in town and everything delicious from Chinatown.]
[Geto Suguru: I'm free.]
[Yaga Masamichi: Schedule properly and go have fun, kids.]
[Ieiri Shoko: No can do, I'm swamped, totally swamped...]
[Asou Akiya: No worries, I'll pack some up for you.]
[Ieiri Shoko: Asou is the best!]
[Asou Akiya: Gojo, you up for Yokohama with me and Suguru at the end of the month?]
[Gojo Satoru: Which day at the end of the month? June 30th is out.]
[Asou Akiya: Ah...]
In the back seat of the sleek black business car ferrying him back to school, Gojo Satoru glowered at his phone screen, lips pursed so tightly they could have supported an oil bottle without spilling a drop.
First came the sting of being scolded, courtesy of that tattletale assistant supervisor; Yaga Masamichi had every right to chew him out this time. Then there was Asou Akiya's invitation to Yokohama with weird-bangs—a perfect chance to escape into festival lights and street food—ruined by his own packed schedule.
The head of the Gojo clan, ever vigilant against his heir's penchant for play, had long since blocked off the entire day.
["Lord Satoru, please make sure to attend the Great Purification* on June 30th."]
*{Note: Ōharae-shiki (大祓式), is a traditional Shinto ritual held twice each year on the last day of June and December. It is believed that this ritual purifies the person from all the bad things one has committed in the past year and removes any bad luck or suffering. In doing so, one can cleanse and refresh their energy and recharge their spirit for the upcoming year. The June 30th observance is specifically called 夏越の祓 (Nagoshi-no-Harae, "Purification to Pass Through Summer") and marks the halfway point of the year. It is believed to cleanse the accumulated sins, impurities, and misfortunes of the first six months so that people can enter the second half of the year renewed.}
Was Little Tangerine doing this on purpose?
He knew full well about the trip back to the Kyoto main house for the Great Purification, and yet he had the gall to dangle the invitation right in front of him.
Gojo tapped furiously into his phone's search bar for the Yokohama Port Summer Festival dates. This year, it ran from June 29th to July 1st.
[Gojo Satoru: I checked the dates. We can go together on July 1st!]
[Geto Suguru: Can't you make it a day early?]
[Gojo Satoru: The Great Purification rules were set down by our ancestors in the Three Great Families, and they're a total pain. I'm not the head yet, so I have to head home early to prep for June 30th.]
[Asou Akiya: Suguru, can we wait for him?]
[Geto Suguru: ...Fine, Akiya. We'll wait for this Three Great Families young master to get back.]
[Asou Akiya: I suggest we head out on the evening of June 30th, stay overnight in Chinatown, and meet up with Gojo on July 1st.]
[Geto Suguru: Sounds good. Solid plan.]
[Gojo Satoru: You two thieving cats planning to sneak off without me!]
[Geto Suguru: That's called efficient scheduling. We're not wasting time. Also stop throwing random adjectives around.]
[Gojo Satoru: Weird-bangs! Weird-bangs! Squinty-eyed weird-bangs!]
[Geto Suguru: Shut up, you child.]
—
[Jujutsu High Gourmet Duo]
[Gojo Satoru: Little Tangerine, how can you abandon me like this? Come back to the main estate with me!]
[Asou Akiya: Nope. Have a safe trip.]
Asou Akiya rejected the outrageous request with surgical precision.
He wasn't insane. If he set foot inside the Gojo estate, the layered barriers would scream the moment they sensed an unfamiliar cursed-energy signature.
Moments later he quietly filled the gap in his knowledge, asking one of the assistant supervisors about the Grand Purification.
Japan's jujutsu world observed two major Ōharae each year: the summer one, called Nagoshi-no-Harae, and the year-end one, called Misoka-no-Harae. Every shrine and every main house of the Three Great Families in Kyoto held solemn rites of blessing and exorcism on those days.
That same evening, the moment Gojo Satoru returned from his mission he made a beeline for Asou Akiya's dorm room, cancelled Limitless with a lazy flick of his fingers, and launched himself face-first onto the sofa like a heat-seeking missile. He claimed the prime spot directly beneath the air-conditioner vent, then accepted the iced milk tea Asou wordlessly handed him.
Evidently Geto had scolded him at some point.
Once Asou had clearly refused a request, Gojo rarely pressed the matter again (unless it involved food, drink, or fun).
On the afternoon of June 30th the three of them finally converged. Asou Akiya and Geto Suguru boarded the Shinkansen bound for Yokohama, checked into a modest ryokan in Chinatown, and flashed the special identification cards issued by the jujutsu authorities.
Without those documents, two fifteen-year-old boys in school uniforms would never have been allowed to spend the night away from a guardian.
After a quick discussion they decided to keep their stomachs empty and headed straight for Shinohara Hachiman Shrine in Yokohama's Kita Ward.
In front of the only proper shrine in the entire city, Asou Akiya followed local custom. He walked three full circles around the massive ring woven from sacred rice straw (the chi-no-wa), murmuring the traditional Nagoshi-no-Harae prayer for longevity: "Those who perform the Summer Purification in the waterless month shall be granted a thousand extra years."
Geto Suguru watched with open curiosity and copied the ritual exactly.
He had not been born in a big city, and his parents had never taken him to a shrine for every festival. This was new, almost magical, and he wanted to feel it properly.
The air inside Shinohara Hachiman Shrine felt pure and untouched. No cursed spirits lingered here; even the occasional flyhead that flickered into existence was casually exorcised by Geto with a lazy flick of his wrist. Together, Asou Akiya and Geto followed the slow-moving crowd toward the station where paper effigies were offered.
They watched as families cut simple human shapes from crisp white paper, then wrote names, ages, and addresses on the back before handing them over to the shrine attendants to be burned, carrying away every misfortune of the past six months.
Asou Akiya merely observed, hands in his pockets.
Geto Suguru, ever guarded about anything touching his family, did not touch the paper either. He did not write.
That night the two of them ate Nagoshi rice (steamed from thirteen different grains) topped with a glossy, soy-dark sauce. They took a dozen triumphant photos and posted them to the first-year group chat with deliberate malice, expressly to torment those who could not come to Yokohama.
[Jujutsu High Foodie Duo]
[Gojo Satoru: Haha, looks so plain! Feast your eyes on what I'm eating [photo]!]
[Gojo Satoru: Way more luxurious than yours!]
Geto stared at the screen and sighed in defeat. "He's got red fried shrimp on his…"
Asou Akiya pressed a palm to his forehead. These two and their bizarre need to one-up each other.
Yet his gaze snagged on the tiny corner of pristine white sleeve visible in Gojo's photo.
It was one of the Three Great Families' most solemn observances, after all. Gojo Satoru would be the absolute center of attention. The white-haired boy in formal Shinto robes—elegant, austere, impossibly noble—must have looked exactly like an immaculate divine child descended to purge impurity and leave behind a new chapter of Six-Eyes legend in Kyoto.
[Asou Akiya: I see the sleeve of your ritual robes. How about sending us a selfie?]
Barely three seconds after the message flew, a high-resolution photo from Gojo appeared.
The entire first-year class chat fell silent.
The boy kneeling seiza-style on tatami was no longer clad in his usual slim modern uniform. He wore full Shinto vestments, ancient and resonant with tradition.
The ever-present joke sunglasses were gone. In their place, a strip of never-before-seen white gossamer silk covered his eyes, hand-painted with vivid crimson incantations. The red was the sacred colour that repelled evil, yet somehow it looked almost like a curse itself.
Beneath that delicate blindfold, the white-haired boy's features were breathtaking: high, refined nose, cold porcelain skin, cheekbones carved as if by a master sculptor, and lips lightly touched with gloss that bloomed the tender pink of cherry blossoms.
Even that subtle colour, meant to soften the boundary between mortal and divine, could not quite close the distance.
Gojo Satoru remained, unmistakably, the Six Eyes whose birth had shaken the entire jujutsu world, the heir the Gojo clan had shielded and cultivated with every resource beyond measure.
No one who saw only this photograph could reconcile it with the Gojo they knew.
The contrast was too violent.
One was the high-school boy who would explode in righteous fury if his classmates ganged up on him.
The other was this year's presiding figure of the Summer Great Purification, the white-haired, blindfolded exalted one who led the Three Great Families in ritual.
"He's beautiful," Asou Akiya said aloud, sincere and unhurried, already saving the image with practiced fingers. Another priceless addition to the future Jujutsu High monthly feature: Today, Gojo Satoru Is Still Working Overtime Again.
He glanced at Geto, whose worldview had clearly been rattled, and smiled. "This is our usually speechless classmate Gojo: textbook-level face domination. Just looking at him is therapeutic."
Geto gave Asou a strange look as the photo disappeared into a private album.
Is he a face-con?
No, that wasn't quite right. This guy took pictures of them constantly at school, and Gojo had by far the largest collection.
Geto mused aloud, "If someone used his photo for online dating, they'd clean up."
Asou laughed. "I think yours would work even better."
Geto blinked. "Huh?
Asou, in a rare moment of open praise for Geto's appearance, explained. "People see Gojo's picture and immediately assume it's a cosplayer who's a Photoshop god. They won't believe it's real. You're different: close enough to reality to be convincing, yet somehow outside this era. Put you in a kimono, hand you an oil-paper umbrella, and you could step straight out of a photograph from a hundred years ago."
Geto turned the words over in his mind, then asked with exaggerated alarm, "Are you saying I look old?"
Asou shook his head. "It's the opposite. In a way, you lack the tangled complexity that comes from too many years of drifting through the world's ups and downs. You don't weigh every gain and loss on a merchant's scale. You have your own unyielding spine. Your character, your dreams—they belong to a type that the modern age has nearly forgotten how to cultivate."
Geto Suguru's lips curved in a faint, intrigued smile. "Is that good or bad?"
Asou considered him for a moment and answered honestly. "Neither good nor bad. It is simply who you are. Suguru, you are you."
History rarely records a tragedy of world-shaking scale caused by one man's personality alone.
Yet when such a person does appear, his charisma is always staggering.
A single smile or flash of anger can drag countless hearts behind it. The righteous will grieve to the marrow of their bones; the wicked will swarm like moths to flame—either to tear him apart or to crown him king.
It is as though the multitudes can glimpse, in that one solitary figure, a perfect microcosm of every cry humanity has ever uttered.
Asou Akiya studied the soul before him—kind and arrogant in equal measure—and allowed himself a quiet smile.
"Sometimes I want to change you. Sometimes I never want to see you change at all."
Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru: two types of human beings that the real world almost never produces only once in a lifetime.
For an ordinary classmate to alter Geto Suguru's course was a task of heavenly difficulty—the kind that shattered fate itself.
It had been difficult enough that, before enrollment, Asou had decided not to befriend him at all; even after they became classmates he had repeatedly tried to keep his distance.
Geto leaned back in the chair, dinner finished, fox-eyes glinting with sly challenge. "I don't think you can change me."
It sounded almost like an invitation: Go ahead. Try.
Asou let out a soft, helpless laugh.
Geto tilted his head toward the phone buzzing insistently on the table. "Your phone's vibrating. Not going to check what Gojo is saying?"
Across two lifetimes, Asou Akiya had always been partial to breathtakingly beautiful white-haired people.
But he could not abide cheeky, mischievous high-school boys who knew exactly how gorgeous they were.
"He mustn't be allowed to get too full of himself," Asou said, half to Geto and half to the absent culprit. "He's always known how good-looking he is. The women of the Three Great Families spoiled him rotten."
Geto Suguru leaned in with a wicked, conspiratorial grin and whispered a truly terrible idea. To his delighted surprise, Asou Akiya accepted it without hesitation. Not only that, Asou gleefully threw oil on the flames, opening his phone and quietly messaging the two assistant supervisors he had once counseled through their own crises.
[Geto Suguru: Gojo, I'm better-looking than you.]
[Asou Akiya: Gojo, I'm better-looking than you.]
[Ieiri Shoko: Wow, for the sake of formation… Gojo, I'm better-looking than you.]
You absolute bastards!
Gojo Satoru's face went perfectly blank, and he toppled backward in exaggerated rage.
Then, to his utter disbelief, even the assistant supervisors who normally lurked like ghosts in the group chat surfaced.
[Assistant Supervisor (Ishii): I'm terribly sorry, truly sorry! Gojo, I'm better-looking than you.]
[Assistant Supervisor (Usami): Sorry +1. Gojo, I'm better-looking than you.]
Critical hit! Another critical hit!
Gojo's phone slipped from his fingers and clattered to the tatami. Beneath the white gauze blindfold, the Six Eyes stared wide in existential crisis. Fury flashed across that exquisite, ice-cold face, creating a breathtaking moment where a mere mortal had actually managed to crack the untouchable god's composure.
"Lord Satoru… has someone upset you?"
A hesitant, almost fearful voice drifted over from the opposite side of the hall.
This was the Summer Great Purification jointly hosted by the Three Great Families. The young heirs of both the Gojo and Zen'in clans were present; the Kamo's heir was still too young to appear. The only person bold or foolish enough to address Gojo Satoru by his first name was, of course, the Zen'in heir—Zen'in Naoya.
Gojo turned slowly, irritation radiating off him in waves. "Who the hell are you again?" He sneered. "Zen'in family's little… rotten tangerine."
Zen'in Naoya: "…"
He was one year younger than Gojo Satoru, the legitimate son of the Zen'in family, their statuses equal in theory, yet Gojo could never remember his name.
The Zen'in heir, with his black hair and green eyes that tilted upward in sharp fox-like cunning, felt a deep-seated frustration. He admired Satoru's overwhelming power, yet secretly resented how domineering and dismissive the other boy was, treating him like a mere second-grade sorcerer unworthy of notice.
He offered a stiff, formal greeting, then turned on his heel and swept away toward the Zen'in family's designated area, followed a few steps behind by several bowed-headed maids. Every movement echoed the rigid, feudal traditions of his clan, performed with flawless, theatrical precision.
Gojo Satoru spat a disgusted "Peh," his voice thick with revulsion. "The air just got foul."
By comparison, Asou Akiya—the other black-haired, slender boy—outshone Zen'in Naoya by a thousandfold.
Gojo had never detected on Asou even a hint of the rotting stench that clung to the feudal families.
Quite the opposite.
Asou radiated vibrant life, a blazing heat that shattered the rigid hierarchies of the Three Great Families.
Gojo stewed in his irritation yet felt his spirits rise at the same time. "I'll settle the score with you two tomorrow."
Time crawled too slowly, and his impatience boiled over. This pack of Three Great Families tangerines still refused to disperse. "No, I can't wait that long. I'll ambush them at midnight."
Gojo could already picture their startled faces and grinned with pure mischief.
The Nagoshi rice tasted ordinary like it usually does.
But maybe, he can taste it just had a little extra flavour this year.