Mirror Eyes & Bright Blue Skies | Jujutsu Kaisen

Ⅺ. Intruder

Eyes peered out from the second-floor window, out and down, a green gaze watching intently as a black car pulled up to the sidewalk. A woman with light brown hair stepped out. A smile cracked the face with the green eyes, a face which belonged to a man. Head tilted, the man brought pale fingertips to the fogged and rain specked glass and traced its surface with meaningless lines.

"So soon?" the man whispered, eyes glinting with something like hunger, "I'm getting chills, Miss Ikuko."

But the smile slipped from the man's face, and fear-filled shivers wracked his body, even as his face twisted with something resembling hatred, even as his teeth ground together in rage.

A man, a white-haired man, had stepped out of the car. This man gestured at the woman briefly, before his blindfolded gaze snapped to the window, looking, peering, as if he knew.

He can't know.

The man at the window hissed, stepping further into his shadows despite himself, "Blue-eyed Bastard."

Muttering to himself, senseless, reckless, and furious words, he tracked the white-haired man's every move, watching as he stopped the woman with an outstretched arm as she rounded the hood of the car and stepped toward the apartment.

Again, the white-haired man's gazed pierced him through the window, as if he could see...

But he can't. There's no way... the man at the window told himself, again.

"No..." he stumbled backward on shaky legs, mumbling "no, no, no, no" as he went. He'd simply blinked, and that man had disappeared.

He's coming for you, his thoughts teased.

He sneered in response, but his frantically darting eyes betrayed him.

It eventually settled on the closet door, which pulsed with the same darkness that littered the floor with his footprints.

"Not good, not good. Should have been more careful," he mumbled, darkly, as he advanced towards the door, pulling a lighter from the depths of his black overcoat.

---

"Gojo-san, do you mind if we stop by my apartment on the way back? Since I'm going to be staying at Jujutsu Tech long term, I'd like to at least get my clothes so that I can stop leeching off of Maki-san and Shoko-san."

"You heard her, Ijichi-san!" Gojo said after giving her a thumbs up, "A little detour won't hurt anybody."

It was, unfortunately, still raining by the time they arrived at Ikuko's apartment, though only at a drizzling rate, and since none of them had figured to bring an umbrella, she resigned herself to getting wet.

She sighed, "I won't be long. There's no need for all of us to get wet, so you can both just stay here."

Gojo, of course, didn't listen. Ikuko had barely stepped out of the car when the white-haired man stepped out after her.

"You really don't need to come," she said, mind frantically trying to remember what state she'd left her apartment in.

A pout pulled at Gojo's lips as he protested, "But I want to help! Besides, you've probably got at least twenty suitcases worth of clothes to get, and it would be really boring to just sit here waiting for you to get them."

"I don't have that many clothes," she laughed.

"I still want to come!"

The look on his face was so puppy-like: pure, hopeful, sincere, that Ikuko broke down into a fit of giggles and relented, telling Gojo that he could come. All he had to do was keep his hands to himself and not judge her too much for whatever mess she'd left. A warm feeling fluttered in her chest.