𝔦. Jennifer S. Chang, So We Must Meet Apart ╱ 𝔦𝔦. Unknown ╱ 𝔦𝔦𝔦. Anne Sexton, The Touch ╱ 𝔦𝔳. Louise Bourgeois, Welcoming Hands ╱ 𝔳. Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights ╱ 𝔳𝔦. Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess ╱ 𝔳𝔦𝔦. Marina Tsvetaeva, Poem of the End ╱ 𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦. Tommy Olofsson, Sweden ╱ 𝔦𝔵. Unknown ╱ 𝔵. Joan Didion, South and West ╱ 𝔵𝔦. Unknown ╱ 𝔵𝔦𝔦. Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ╱ 𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦. Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss ╱ 𝔵𝔦𝔳. Scrimshaw Double Mourning Heart ╱ 𝔵𝔳. Unknown ╱ 𝔵𝔳𝔦. Taylor Swift, All Too Well (10 Minute Version) ╱ 𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦. Dorothy Bussy, Olivia ╱ 𝔵𝔳𝔦𝔦𝔦. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ╱ 𝔵𝔦𝔵. Gregory Halili ╱ 𝔵𝔵. Unknown

🪷

They say that the wound is the place where the light enters you.

Yet in spite of all the wounds she carries, Kitamura Satomi has never felt any lighter for bearing those scars.

To live the life of a Jujutsu Sorcerer, one must be prepared to bleed, to burn, to break—all in the service of the thankless masses who will never know the grief of the sacrifices that won them their ignorant peace. Satomi knows this. She has known it since long before she ever walked the halls of the school she would one day call home. It is not the good fortune of her kind to achieve an existence of easy self-contentment. Their divine calling will always separate them from that sort of simple, mundane life. The solemn duty of Jujutsu Sorcerers is to protect the world from evil. It is not a world they are meant to covet for themselves.

Satomi is no stranger to wanting things she cannot have. She is familiar with how longing can cut just as sharply as any blade and has fashioned herself accordingly, with biting words, velvet gloves and a face as cold as steel. Restraint is a knife's edge that she has learned to live on, never allowing herself to be close enough to the rest of the world to touch—until the day she passes through the barrier of Tokyo Jujutsu High and, for the first time since she was a child, finds hands outstretched towards her instead of pulling away.

There is Gojo Satoru, boy-god, with his arrogant charm and his flashing eyes; a comet of brilliant, blazing light, tearing its way across the endless sky. Geto Suguru, with his warm smiles and his tender heart, as comforting as a burning hearth. Ieiri Shoko, with her steady hands and her healing touch; a balm to every tender bump or cut or bruise. All of them, hers—the truest family Satomi has ever been permitted to call her own.

When you are born hungry and are finally given a seat at the table, you learn to take what you can get, with both hands.

Perhaps that is why they were punished—for staking claim on a happiness that was never theirs to keep. For daring to love each other and thinking that love would be more powerful than anything that came up against it. For believing themselves to be invincible in that way that young people always do.

They should have known better. Hubris like that never comes without a cost and there are some debts that can only be repaid in blood.

Ten long years have come and gone since the last warm spring of their youth. Most days, Satomi feels like she is still paying the price for what was lost that year, her hands stained with blood beneath her gloves no matter how many times she tries to wash them clean. The family she once held so dear, now broken beyond repair. Gojo, with a mask over his eyes and an infinity between himself and the rest of the world, refusing to let anyone close enough to wound him again. Geto, with his growing cult and his vengeful curses, lashing out at the world for making him grieve. Shoko, with dark circles beneath her eyes and a hollowness to her face, the smell of cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol clinging to her like thick perfume. They all bear the scars of their childhood's end, but it is Satomi, Suguru, and Satoru who share matching wounds. Given to each other, by each other, not even time could heal and make them whole again.

No, there was no light gained from those old wounds.

But there are some days where the sun feels warm on her skin and Satomi sees her second-year students laughing with their friends and the cherry blossoms start to bloom again. Days where she sheds her gloves and takes the hand of the only person who has ever truly been capable of holding her without letting go.

The wounds are still there, but somehow they feel smaller than they did before. Or, rather, the rest of the world feels bigger.

And even if they never fully heal, that is enough for her.

✶

KITAMURA SATOMI   ╱   SPECIAL GRADE
CURSED ENERGY ABSORPTION

MY WHOLE BEING CALLS FOR
AN ACT OF VIOLENCE,
BUT I STILL USE VELVET GLOVES.

GOJO SATORU   ╱   SPECIAL GRADE
SIX EYES & LIMITLESS

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO
CARRY THE HEAVIEST THING.

GETO SUGURU   ╱   SPECIAL GRADE
CURSED SPIRIT MANIPULATION

LAST YEAR I ABSTAINED   ╱   THIS YEAR I DEVOUR.

IEIRI SHOKO   ╱   GRADE ONE
REVERSE CURSED TECHNIQUE

NANAMI KENTO   ╱   GRADE ONE
7:3 RATIO TECHNIQUE

ANDO MIZU   ╱   SPECIAL GRADE
WEATHER MANIPULATION

MIKA NDAO   ╱   GRADE ONE
PATHOKINESIS

ZENIN ICHIRO   ╱   GRADE ONE
PRECOGNITION

ZENIN NOBU   ╱   GRADE TWO
PAIN MANIPULATION

IZUMI KIMIKO   ╱   GRADE FOUR
UNKNOWN

FEATURING . . .

Kitamura Sora EX-SORCERER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kitamura Daiji SHRINE KEEPER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Yaga Masamichi GRADE ONE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Iori Utahime SEMI-GRADE ONE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Haibara Yu SECOND YEAR
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Amanai Riko STAR PLASMA VESSEL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fushiguro Toji SORCERER KILLER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Tsukumo Yuki SPECIAL GRADE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✶

✶

TRIGGER WARNINGS.

This book will contain themes that may be upsetting for some readers, including but not limited to:

graphic violence, adult language, abuse of substances, character death(s), mature content, self-destructive behavior, complex mental health issues, past-child abuse, references to assault, toxic family dynamics, unhealthy romantic relationships, and other potentially triggering topics.

Please research Jujutsu Kaisen trigger warnings for a full list of potential triggers. Feel free to message me if you require more details at any point. Make sure to always prioritize your mental health while reading.

DISCLAIMERS.

This is a work of fanfiction created purely for entertainment purposes. All rights belong to the original creators. I own nothing aside from my original characters/ideas. Plagiarism of any original ideas or concepts in this story is not permitted.

TAGS. 🏷️

sweetjawregui justsav jasperhaIe stxrmborn luckyvirgo dowagers   jeanskirstein parasiteves queerbeeer

AUTHOR'S NOTES.

sitting down to write this author's note and just being like "Well...!" because honestly even i am not sure how to explain how i got here. it feels like i blacked out for approximately a month and when i woke up this summary was here fully-written. no but in all seriousness it really has kind of been a blur... when the new hyperfixation hits you so fast that you end up with mental whiplash... 🫨 unfortunately this story has consumed me completely. i have been unable to think about literally anything else for the past month now. my other WIPs are crying for my attention and i ignore them. all of my previous future fic plans have been put on hold. the only thing that exists to me right now is this story... welcome to OLD WOUNDS!

it's sort of daunting to write for a series that is both incomplete AND as unpredictable as jjk. as usual i will be treating canon like my personal sandbox where i can play around in it. gege has made some... Very Questionable... writing choices at certain points in this series that i really don't vibe with, so i may be diverting from some of those things. i will also be fudging around with the timeline a little bit and shaking up some established roles in canon (i.e. kitamura will be teaching the second-years in this fic, so kusakabe will be teaching the third-years instead, etc etc.) 🫡 the fic itself takes place chronologically, starting from satomi's time at jujutsu high as a student and progressing all the way to present.

this story is going to be a real™️ love triangle. not a fake love triangle. as in all sides of the triangle WILL be touching. the quote included at the start of this author's note is especially relevant to the relationship between geto/kitamura/gojo. they're on that childhood friends-to-lovers-to-enemies type beat... something something "the best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives and they break our hearts in worse ways" if you are picking up what i'm trying to throw down. no geto apologism here btw! i know that man is evil for what he's done. just exploring the complex feelings that come with loving someone who's done terrible things and mourning the person they used to be and knowing them as an enemy. ❤️‍🩹

developing unique cursed techniques for all my ocs was kind of hell so if you see me borrowing powers from the x-men and/or the vampires from twilight and/or the villains duology or really any other series as inspiration for cursed techniques just look the other way... i tried my best to keep things interesting, okay? 🫣

last but not least... KITAMURA SATOMI!!! it's been a while since i have gotten so attached to an oc so quickly but she is my babygirl... from a cursed technique standpoint, she is heavily rogue (x-men) inspired. her technique is that she can absorb cursed energy through touch. there are some psychometric aspects to her powers too since she can read cursed energy through her technique. her cursed energy itself is siphoner-esque (inspired by the siphoner witches of tvd), meaning that she has no actual cursed energy of her own—it all comes from what she can absorb from others/tools/objects. there's also some amon (tlok) aspects to her technique since she can completely strip a person/object of their cursed energy by absorbing it if she wishes to. it feels like a mess trying to explain it all but it makes sense #ToMe in my head. satomi herself is my darling girl. if i had to list my character inspo for her, it would probably include dinah madani from the punisher, theo crain from thohh, inej ghafa from soc, thalias from the thrawn: ascendancy novels, tessa gray from tid, and xie lian from tcgf. she is somehow all of these and none of these. i love her dearly. i hope u guys will too.

the summary is sort of purposefully vague. there are many layers to this story but it's too much to unpack right at the start—things that pertain to satomi and her family and her technique and the supporting characters. think of this story as an onion, if you will. all layers will be revealed (peeled?) in due time... 🧅

i feel like i have said enough here (too much, perhaps) but also as if i am forgetting something. alas! i can always plague you guys with more excessively long author's notes in the future. for now—as always—thank you for reading! any and all support is very much appreciated. see you in chapter one! 🫵

PUBLISHED: 09 / 20 / 2023
FINISHED: — / — / —