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“Listen carefully, because I’m only going to explain this once.”
Yuuta nods eagerly, steeling himself. He’s been waiting for this day for a long time now. After reversed cursed technique, this is what he’d always been most excited to learn. “I’m ready!” he announces, determined.
“So you’re going to close your eyes,” Gojo explains, slow and clear. Yuuta squeezes his eyes shut.
“Okay.”
“Clench your fists.”
“Clenching,” Yuuta confirms, gripping tightly.
“And click your heels three times.”
“Click my heels…” Yuuta repeats, feet twitching. It takes him a beat too long to realize. “Sensei.”
Gojo laughs for about three minutes straight. Yuuta is mortified. He wishes he’d at least had the sense to keep his eyes shut, then he wouldn’t have to watch Gojo make fun of him.
“Did you bring me all the way out here to teach me teleportation?” he asks, genuinely worried. “Or was this just another practical joke?”
“Lighten up, Yuuta!” Gojo cackles. “Can’t it be both?”
Yuuta feels his eyebrows knit together. He’d really prefer if it was just the former, but he should have known that that would be too much to hope for with Gojo involved. “Sensei, I’m behind enough as it is,” he tries, hoping to appeal to the sensible side he knows his teacher must have deep down.
“You’re not behind,” Gojo insists, adjusting his blindfold and frowning. He hates it when Yuuta takes things too seriously. “But I am going to teach you. That’s the whole point of this little field trip.”
Yuuta has been meaning to ask about that. He's still not sure why Gojo couldn’t just teach him all this back on campus instead of making Ijichi drive them out to this clearing. He must have wanted them far away from people, just in case something went awry.
“So you’re going to need to contract your cursed energy,” Gojo explains. He holds out his hands and starts slowly bringing them together, demonstrating. “You’ll be traveling through the cursed energy in the air, so it’ll only work if you condense yours enough to fit through it.”
Yuuta isn’t exactly sure if Gojo is being serious or not, but he starts experimenting with it anyway. Most aspects of sorcery still sound like fantasy to Yuuta, so he’ll just have to trust Gojo knows what he’s talking about. His eyes drift close as he focuses. This is trickier than he thought it’d be- his cursed energy is pushing back on him, desperately trying to snap back to its roaring, untamed state.
“It might be a bit harder for you at first, since your supply is so vast,” Gojo explains, sensing the struggle. “But once you get the hang of it you’ll probably be able to go further than me.”
All the way back and forth from Africa? Yuuta wants to ask.
His mind is all tied up, though. He's already getting dangerously close to achieving what Gojo was asking of him. Yuuta can feel his cursed energy constricting, pouring inwards and collecting at his core. It's laser-focused, smaller than the tip of a needle. Gojo lets out a low whistle, able to sense it working. “What now?” Yuuta asks, anxious to try while he’s managing to maintain this.
“Now’s the easy part,” Gojo tells him. “All you have to do is picture where you want to be. Picture where you want to go most in the world, and you’ll be there.”
“Anywhere?” Yuuta asks, having trouble focusing on a single place while wrestling with his cursed energy simultaneously. He can barely get a single word out like this. How is he supposed to imagine a place?
“Anywhere,” Gojo confirms. “Just think about somewhere you really want to go, and then come right ba-”
Before he can finish the sentence, a whooshing noise rushes through Yuuta’s ears. Air blasts around him, pulling at his skin in every direction. His gut lurches, heart jumping in his chest as he’s hurtled forward through space. But the sensation disappears as quickly as it came- and now Gojo’s voice and cursed energy signature are both long gone. Wherever Yuuta is now, it’s somewhere quieter, more peaceful.
A place Yuuta really wanted to go. More than anywhere else. But Yuuta doesn’t remember actually deciding on a place.
“Konbu!?”
It worked, Yuuta thinks. But did he really do all that work just to wind up right back at school? And why does Toge sound so panicked? Yuuta had told everyone about what he was studying with Gojo today- surely his presence couldn’t be too much of a surprise.
“Toge?” he calls back, eyes flying open. His stomach flips instantly.
Yuuta isn’t just back at school, he’s back in the dorms- Toge’s dorm, to be specific. He opens his eyes to see a half-clothed Toge, frantically pulling up the zipper on the trousers of his uniform and wrapping his arms around his bare chest. “Toge!”
“Mentaiko! ” Toge swears, voice coming out like a screech. What the fuck?
“I- I don’t know!” Yuuta stammers, stumbling backwards frantically. Unfortunately, he falls right into Toge’s bed, wrestling with the comforter as he tries to pull himself back up. “I didn’t mean to, I swear! Gojo was teaching me his teleportation technique, and he told me to picture somewhere I really wanted to go and-”
Yuuta cuts himself off, but it’s already too late. He pushes himself off the bed as Toge’s jaw drops, eyes wide with understanding. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Yuuta could have picked anywhere in the world, and the place he’d unconsciously chosen to go was his best friend’s bedroom- while he was changing. Oh, god. If Toge didn’t know about Yuuta’s little crush before, he definitely did now.
“Ta- Takana?” Toge inquires, face softening. No longer so concerned about covering himself up, his fingers slide down his chest. Yuuta finds himself briefly distracted, staring directly at Toge’s bare skin. He’s never even seen Toge with his sigils and neck fully exposed like this, let alone shirtless. How can he not look? “Yuuta,” Toge tries again, snapping Yuuta back to reality.
“I have to go!” he cries out, unable to deal with the repercussions of this. “Just… pretend I wasn’t here, okay?”
Before Toge can respond, Yuuta slams his eyes back shut. He’d been slow to collect his cursed energy the first time, but he doesn’t have that problem this time around. He pulls it in instantly, frantically trying to summon the image of the location he started in. Grass. Field. Gojo. Within a second, he’s being yanked mercilessly back through the air.
He lands back in the clearing, knees plummeting into the ground. Sickened, Yuuta immediately empties the contents of his stomach onto the grass. Whether that’s from the teleporting of the residual embarrassment of his interaction with Toge is anyone’s guess.
“Oof, did I not remember to tell you to keep breakfast light before trying this out?” Gojo asks, not one bit apologetic. “My bad.”
Yuuta peels himself off the ground, resisting the urge to groan. Oh god. What has he just done?
“Sensei,” he whines, dropping his face into his hands. “Why did you tell me to do that?"
“Wait,” Gojo continues. “Why is your face all red? That’s not part of it.”
“Please don’t ask,” Yuuta moans. He’s no stranger to the deductive skills that come with the six eyes. If he gives Gojo even one detail about what just happened, he’ll be able to unravel the whole thing in an instant. When Gojo doesn’t say anything right away, Yuuta peeks up to see if he’s given up on this yet. No such luck.
“Yuuta, you dog,” he realizes. His lips curl upwards. “Where were you just now? Somewhere naughty?”
Somewhere amazing, Yuuta’s mind supplies. He’s horrified with himself for even thinking it. He just completely invaded Toge’s privacy. How would he possibly be able to give Toge a proper apology for that?
Then it dawns on Yuuta. When he faces Toge next, he won't just be apologizing- he’ll be explaining. Explaining to his crush why his bedroom ranked number one on the list of places Yuuta wanted to be most in the world. Sure, Yuuta had walked by Toge's door a couple of times and had simply wondered what it would be like to be on the other side. But that had been completely innocent, right?
“I’m gonna teleport myself under a rock,” Yuuta reports hopelessly. “It was nice knowing you, Sensei. Tell Maki she can have my katana.”
“Wait, but weren’t you just in- Oh,” Gojo discovers. He grins maniacally as Yuuta’s face starts to burn. Clearly, he’s just given Gojo the only detail he needs to put the pieces together. “You weren’t just peeping in Maki’s room just now, were you? You were in Tog-”
Before Gojo can finish that thought, Yuuta has already used his newfound ability to catapult himself halfway across Japan.