During the summer festival season, Yokohama's Chinatown was absolutely swamped with customers.
Even though Asou Akiya had booked their ryokan* half a month in advance and paid a premium price, the rooms were still modest compared to the four-star hotels nearby.
*{Note: A ryokan (旅館) is a type of traditional Japanese inn that typically features tatami-matted rooms, communal baths, and other public areas where visitors may wear nemaki and talk with the owner.}
Yet the trade-off was worth it: every corner breathed authentic Chinese atmosphere.
He watched Geto Suguru finally unwind, appetite roaring back to life. After returning from the shrine they demolished a full midnight feast: charcoal-grilled skewers dripping with sauce, pan-fried shāomài and gyōza that crackled when bitten, enormous bowls of dandan noodles buried under thick, spicy meat sauce, all washed down with ice-cold, syrupy soda. Even the immortals probably didn't live this well.
After ingesting enough carbohydrates and calories to power a small village, Geto's stomach stayed perfectly flat, the sharp lines of his face softened into something gentler, and his eyes shone with lazy, catlike satisfaction. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, he strolled through the night market like a retired old man out for his evening constitutional.
Asou Akiya recognised the signal for what it was: the honour-student mask had come off. Geto was allowing a few harmless "flaws" to show, wordlessly declaring that, here and now, they were simply two teenagers on holiday together.
Asou matched his pace, content to wander and digest. Even when they passed shopkeepers calling out in Mandarin, he didn't go out of his way to strike up conversations.
Amid the bustle they carved out pockets of calm, savouring every second of youth.
"What do those characters say?"
Red lanterns swayed overhead in joyful clusters, turning the whole street into premature New Year. Geto's eyes crinkled with unconscious delight. He pointed at the sign above one busy stall; his grasp of kanji wasn't nearly as instinctive as Gojo's or Asou's.
"Hong Kong Tea House. Specialises in xiǎolóngbāo," Asou read aloud.
Geto's gaze drifted, wistful. "I wonder when I'll finally get to travel abroad."
Asou answered lightly, "Hong Kong's a food paradise too."
This world placed no legal restrictions on Japanese citizens travelling overseas; the only chains were money and time. Until graduation, Asou had no intention of splurging on international trips. After all, the single loudest, most dramatic stage in the entire world was right here in Tokyo.
Geto glanced sideways at him, half amused, half impressed. "No matter what I ask, you always seem to have an answer ready."
Having a classmate who devoured books like air had quietly changed him. Geto had even been dragged into reading world classics, and he had formed his own quiet impression of the scholarly aura that clung to Asou Akiya.
The more one reads, the more refined the temperament becomes.
Geto loved digging into the hidden truths behind the jujutsu world. Gojo would occasionally let slip fragments about the Three Great Families.
But that guy had zero self-awareness, would abandon a topic halfway through without a second thought, never caring whether Geto actually wanted to hear the rest.
Asou Akiya never once acted superior about his knowledge. "When you're older, you'll naturally come to know far more than I ever could. Then you won't envy a few sentences from my mouth. Only what you see and hear with your own eyes and ears becomes true experience."
Geto tilted his head. "You're frighteningly good at managing your emotions. Relaxed when you should be, tense when you need to be. I've almost never heard you complain about pressure."
Asou burst out laughing. "Haven't you already seen me under pressure?"
Like that night he had called Geto at three in the morning, voice shaking.
Geto accepted a promotional flyer from a passing vendor, folded it once, opened it, folded it again—an absent-minded little stress-relief game.
"So what is your pressure, Akiya?"
"Want to trade answers?"
"If you don't want to say it, that's fine."
Asou grinned. "No way. You sound exactly like Shoko right now. If you didn't want to know, you wouldn't have asked. And once you ask, you have to be ready to dig all the way to the bottom of the pot. Otherwise… the person being asked ends up worrying instead."
Asou Akiya had always wished he could be the kind of person who dared to think and dared to act. When questioned about himself, he rarely hid anything.
"How to keep living. How to live happily." He laughed, bright and unburdened. "Those are my biggest sources of pressure."
Geto stared at him, genuinely baffled. "Isn't that something every normal person thinks about?"
Asou Akiya raised one finger and pressed it to his own lips, eyes gleaming with playful mystery. "The unknown breeds fear. Some people can face it head-on; others can't. My only weapon is to keep adjusting my mindset and remain the unnoticed bystander on the edge of the stage."
Geto copied the gesture, covering his mouth and dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as though lowering a baited hook into dark water. "Want to know my secret?"
Asou's smile widened, bright and unrepentant. "I'd rather guess it myself."
Geto: "…"
Asou leaned in a fraction. "Care to wager how many of your little secrets I've already caught, Suguru?"
Geto's expression shuttered instantly; the smile vanished. He drew his presence inward, breath quieting, as though sheer stillness could tuck every secret safely out of sight.
Asou noticed they were almost back at the ryokan and decided to stop teasing. "Let's head in."
Beneath the swaying red lanterns of the night market, the black-haired boy turned. Strands of hair had escaped his topknot and now brushed his forehead and temples, lending him an unexpectedly docile air. His frame (not yet powerfully built) moved with the supple grace of young bamboo.
The crimson glow of the lanterns bled softly into his eyes. "People are creatures who love living in the middle of noise and light," he said gently. "Every once in a while I'll drag you out to walk and look around a little more. But you have to rest properly too, okay?"
To carve out these two free days, Geto had pushed himself hard. Fatigue hovered at the edges of his smile.
"Got it," Geto answered, lips curving again. He strode into the ryokan with long, easy steps, already a corporate drone at fifteen.
Night fell. The distant clamour of commerce leaked through the windows, but Geto slept deeply and without fear. Several cursed spirits stood sentinel around his bed and at the ryokan door, silent alarm bells ready to shriek at any intruder.
Which led to one small consequence: the Six Eyes detected the spirits, changed course, and slipped through a different window instead.
Asou Akiya was jolted awake in the dark by the sudden, sprawling weight of long limbs and warm breath.
Gojo Satoru had executed a flawless sneak attack.
Unlike the cursed-spirit manipulator sleeping next door, Asou had a summer habit of always deploying a Curtain around wherever he stayed.
A Curtain was the most basic type of barrier technique: it could repelled mosquitoes, block the view of ordinary humans, and make casual break-ins impossible.
But it could not stop a sorcerer, especially not the bearer of the Six Eyes, who could read the flow of cursed energy the way others read words on a page and manipulate it with godlike precision.
"Ugh, heavy!" Asou wheezed, chest compressed, lungs struggling. A sweet, unmistakable fragrance flooded his nose, it was red beans, the scent was gentle and faintly nostalgic.
June's seasonal wagashi from Kyoto: Minazuki.
Gojo Satoru dangled the oil-paper parcel teasingly in front of his classmate's face. "Get up already. I brought you sweets."
In Gojo's personal rulebook, failing to eat Minazuki meant summer had not officially begun.
He had unilaterally decided Little Tangerine must partake.
The bedside lamp clicked on, bathing the room in soft gold. Asou accepted the parcel, unwrapping the cooled triangular cakes. A generous layer of adzuki beans crowned the pale, steamed surface. One bite, and the gentle sweetness of white sugar melted seamlessly into the delicate rice-flour base, soft and fragrant.
Warmth spread through Asou's chest, unexpected and honey-slow. The guy had actually learned to share food.
No wishful thinking allowed. Not after the last time his heart had tripped over itself.
"You brought these specially," Asou observed, voice steady again. "Didn't bring any for Suguru?"
"He's paranoid. Posted cursed spirits all around his room like guard dogs." Gojo kicked off his shoes and flopped onto the mattress in casual street clothes, clearly exhausted from the long trip. His usual boundless energy had dimmed to a sleepy flicker.
The bedding was Asou's own four-piece set, crisp and spotless. A neatly packed suitcase sat in the corner; every small detail of temporary living had been handled with quiet perfection.
Asou knew perfectly well that Gojo's original target had been Geto—he'd wanted to scare the living daylights out of him—but the plan had failed spectacularly.
Gojo stretched luxuriously, exploiting his long limbs like a lazy cat claiming territory. Inch by inch he annexed the futon until Asou found himself steadily pushed toward the edge. "Besides, weird-bangs isn't from Kyoto. Doesn't matter if he eats them or not."
Asou blinked, brain still half-asleep and sluggish in the middle of the night. "If you shove me off the bed, where exactly am I supposed to sleep?"
Only then did he really look, and notice that Gojo had gotten a haircut. The white strands lay tamer now, the hair at the nape of his neck trimmed shorter. Around his wrist was a new thin red cord—cheap-looking, the sort of charm mothers tied on small children for protection.
Utterly childish. Utterly spoiled. The very picture of an immature, rebellious high-school delinquent.
Did the Gojo estate even know their young lord had snuck out in the middle of the night?
"Figure it out yourself," Gojo declared, sprawling across the entire mattress like a territorial cat. He buried his face in the pillow, rubbing his cheek against it with shameless satisfaction, blatantly bullying Asou and refusing to share the bed. Reason had clearly gone on holiday.
Asou sighed. "Did you bring your sorcerer ID?"
Gojo's voice came out muffled and sleepy, pouring cold water on any hope. "Who brings that kind of thing when they go out?"
Japanese ryokan had strict rules about the number of registered guests and were especially strict with minors. No extra bodies allowed.
From any angle, Gojo Satoru did not look like an adult. The runaway aura clung to him like cheap cologne; there was no way he could check in on his own.
Asou understood the journey from Kyoto to Yokohama took hours, and the idea of Gojo sleeping on the street was worse than the idea of Gojo sleeping in the same room as Geto.
"I'll come get you first thing in the morning. Be careful not to wake Suguru next door."
Resigned, Asou surrendered the bedroom, locked the door behind him, and slipped out of the ryokan under the watchful gaze of the cursed spirits that could not, after all, report "something happened" to their master unless they were exorcised first.
Asou was a local. He simply walked back to the children's home he had grown up in and spent the night there.
The next morning he had slept poorly, but he hurried back to Chinatown at dawn to keep Geto from noticing anything amiss.
He let himself into the room where Gojo was staying. It was small, decorated in understated Chinese style. The white-haired boy was still fast asleep, wearing the same casual clothes he had arrived in the night before. In the corner sat Asou's suitcase, the combination lock popped open—clear evidence Gojo had rummaged through it looking for pyjamas, found nothing that fit, and grudgingly gone to bed in his day clothes instead.
Asou confirmed that Gojo was deeply asleep and that Limitless was active in defensive mode around him.
He gave a polite little nod of acknowledgement to the invisible barrier, lifted the corner of the quilt, slipped in comfortably, claimed less than a quarter of the narrow mattress along the very edge, and then lay there quietly playing on his phone. He sent Geto a quick message saying he was awake and that Gojo was currently in his room.
A few minutes later, Geto replied from next door.
[Jujutsu High Mutual Aid Trio]
[Geto Suguru: He didn't wake you up or anything, did he?]
[Asou Akiya: Mmm… don't worry. He's still asleep. No time to bother me.]
[Geto Suguru: ??]
[Geto Suguru: On my way!]
Gojo shifted in the futon, rolling over to face Asou. His eyes stayed firmly shut, breath slow and even. The warm puffs of air brushed Asou's cheek, so Asou inched back a little farther and raised one palm as a gentle, wordless shield between their faces, minimising any accidental intimacy.
All of a sudden Gojo mumbled, words slurred with sleep, "Little Tangerine… why didn't you just use my card and book another room? You went all the way back there just to sleep… wasn't it a pain?"
Asou answered without a trace of complaint. "The children's home is my home. I was only going back for one night."
Gojo made a soft, accepting "Oh…" and then, still half-dreaming, nudged Asou with sleepy petulance. "Wanna sleep more… bed's too small… give it back."
Asou reached over and lightly pinched Gojo's nose shut. After a few seconds Gojo's lips parted automatically to breathe through his mouth, the tip of his tongue just visible, impossibly cute, enough to make anyone forgive the earlier rudeness. "No can do. Suguru's coming over. You want him to find you half-dressed and sprawled across my bed?"
Gojo's answer was immediate, muffled, and utterly shameless. "Don't care about him. I'm the most important."
Asou Akiya leaned close and whispered with the sweetest devilish smile, "You rushed all the way to Yokohama yesterday and didn't even shower. You stink. You smell like a whole tangerine grove."
Gojo shot upright as if lightning had struck the mattress.
At that exact second, Geto's knock sounded at the door. In a white blur, Gojo vanished into the bathroom.
Asou padded over and opened the door. "Suguru, can I borrow a change of clothes?"
Geto's brow furrowed in suspicion. "For you?"
He scanned the room. No sign of Gojo. The window was shut tight.
Asou tilted his head toward the bathroom.
"For him."
Gojo looked slim, but he was deceptively heavy, and only Geto's clothes would actually fit.
Geto's face cycled through every possible shade of confusion. His language centre temporarily went offline.
W-wait—just—how the hell is that guy sleeping and showering in your room?!