Satoru Gojo

I am the strongest.

I keep saying it, almost like a joke, almost like a shield. But the words still taste like blood. 

It happened so fast. One second i was pretty sure that i would win without thinking twice. The  next second a man who shouldn’t have even existed cut through all of it. Toji Fushiguro. No cursed energy. Just pure, ugly talent and a weapon that ignored everything i thought made me special. He put a hole in me. He left me dying on the pavement while Riko’s future, our future, ended with a single clean shot.

I should have died there. Part of me wanted to. It would have been simpler. Instead something inside me snapped open. Reverse cursed technique flooded my body like it had always been waiting. I healed. I stood up. I killed him. And when it was over i realized the world had changed shape around me.

Limitless no longer felt like a technique. It felt like the air itself belonged to me. The Six Eyes stopped being a burden and became a throne. Suddenly nothing could touch me unless i allowed it. I had become what everyone always claimed i would be.

And it meant nothing.

Riko was still dead. The girl who finally chose her own life instead of the one the jujutsu world tried to force on her was gone because i wasn’t strong enough when it counted. I had all this power now, more than any sorcerer in generations, and it arrived one moment too late. That knowledge sits in my chest like a second heart that never stops aching.

Suguru looked at me differently after that day. I saw it. The way his eyes lingered on the blood, on the empty space where Riko should have been standing, on the casual way i now moved through the world as if gravity itself had given up. He started asking questions i didn’t want to answer. About the weak. About the higher-ups. About whether any of this was worth protecting. I told myself he just needed time. I told myself we would figure it out together the way we always had.

But something between us had cracked, and i was too busy learning how to be untouchable to notice how wide the crack was getting.

Now every time i activate Infinity i feel the weight of that failure pressing against the barrier from the inside. I can keep the entire world out. I can reduce special grades to dust without breaking a sweat. I can smile and joke and act like the strongest is a title that sits lightly on my shoulders. But at night, when the blindfold comes off and the Six Eyes show me every lonely corner of this broken system, i still see her. Riko’s last smile. The way she trusted us. The way i failed her.

Becoming the strongest didn’t save her.

It only made sure i would never be able to forget.

So i keep the barrier up. I keep smiling. I keep telling myself that if i just get strong enough, fast enough, careful enough, the next one won’t slip through. But some nights the Infinity feels less like protection and more like a coffin i built for myself the moment i stood up from that pavement and realized power had arrived too late to matter.