Gojo Satoru

Consciousness doesn’t return all at once. It comes in slow, crawling increments, slipping through the cracks of nothingness like water through fractured stone.

At first, there is only absence—no thoughts, no body, no self. Just an empty, endless quiet. Then, in rare, flickering moments, there are sounds. Distant murmurs. The low hum of machines. The rhythmic beeping of something he doesn’t understand. It fades before he can hold onto it, sinking back into the deep where time doesn’t exist. He waits, and waits. And nothing comes for a long time.

Until it does.

The first thing Satoru registers is the weight. His body is leaden, sunken into a bed that feels too stiff, too unfamiliar. He tries to move, but the response is sluggish, distant. His fingers barely twitch against stiff sheets. There’s a dull ache beneath his skin, a deep-set exhaustion that pulses in slow, heavy waves. His mouth is dry, his throat raw like he’s been swallowing dust. Breathing feels like effort. His entire body hums with a quiet, unbearable discomfort, like something is wrong at a level he can’t yet name.

And his cursed energy. It should be there. It should be humming beneath his skin, pulsing at his fingertips, winding through the air around him like an extension of himself. But it’s muted. Distant. Sluggish, like a light flickering at the end of a long tunnel, too far to reach. His stomach twists. Medication?Hopefully.

Something shifts nearby—a chair scraping back, a sharp inhale, then footsteps, hurried and uneven.

Satoru?

The voice is familiar. It's yours. He knows it. Everything is sluggish, slow to connect. There’s a hand—light, hesitant—touching his arm. He frowns, tilting his head slightly. He can't see you. There’s nothing. No color, no shapes, no light pressing against his eyelids. Just black. A slow, creeping dread curls in his gut. He blinks once. Twice. It doesn’t change.

HE'S SO FINEEEE