The first thing Gojo notices when he wakes is the light.
It's identical to yesterday's—soft, golden, spilling through the same crack in the curtains. The birds outside sing the same off-key pattern. His phone alarm goes off at the same second he silenced it yesterday.
He lies there a long moment, staring at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster haven't moved. Infinity hums faintly against his skin like static caught between heartbeats.
When he finally rises, the air smells like the same rain, even though the forecast promised clear skies. His coffee machine sputters twice before settling into its rhythm. The digital clock on the counter flashes MON 07:14 AM—just as it had the previous morning.
He mutters, "Monday again," and the clock flickers once in reply, as if in agreement.
The Day That Knows Its Lines
By the time he reaches the training yard, the morning sun is already bright. Yuji is halfway through stretches, Nobara is complaining about breakfast, and Megumi is pretending not to listen. Exactly the same as before.
"Sensei," Yuji calls, grinning, "you're early again!"
Gojo forces a smile. "What can I say? I like déjà vu."
He runs them through the same sparring exercises. Every movement feels rehearsed: Yuji's stumble, Nobara's insult, Megumi's dry remark about teamwork. Their rhythm has the perfection of a script practiced too long.
When the bell for classes rings, Gojo lets them go, watching the trio trot toward the hall, shadows overlapping precisely where they did yesterday. A line of ants crosses the flagstones in the same direction. The same gust of wind turns the same page of his clipboard.
"Alright, universe," he mutters. "I see you."
Shoko's Concern
He finds Shoko in the infirmary, stacking fresh bandage rolls. The smell of antiseptic and coffee hits him like memory.
"Morning, doctor."
She glances up. "You again? You were here this time yesterday too. Don't tell me you got bored of your own office."
"Just checking if the timeline's stable."
She gives him a flat look. "I beg your pardon?"
Gojo leans on the counter. "Humor me. What day is it?"
She narrows her eyes. "Monday."
"Was it Monday yesterday?"
"I'm not playing whatever mind game this is."
He studies her face. She doesn't remember. The loops reset everything except him.
"Fine, fine," he says lightly, backing toward the door. "Just verifying your short-term memory."
"Gojo," she calls after him, "if you're experimenting with time techniques again, I'm not fixing your paradox hangover."
He waves without answering.
Outside, he stops beneath the overhang. The air tastes faintly metallic, like a storm trapped behind blue sky. He can feel the shape of Infinity pressing against the edges of the world, thinner than it should be.
Rin's Notebook
He finds Rin Kiyosawa in the data lab. The room hums with servers; glowing graphs crawl across a dozen screens. She's scribbling notes by hand—one habit that feels refreshingly analog.
"Morning, sensei," she says without looking up. "You're not scheduled for inspection duty until tomorrow."
"Depends which tomorrow we're talking about." He drags a chair beside her desk. "Tell me something strange, Kiyosawa."
She arches a brow. "Define strange. You're already here."
"Stranger than me."
She flips her notebook toward him. "The field sensors around the campus recorded identical data packets at 07:30 AM two days in a row—exact copies down to the noise variance. The odds of that are practically zero."
"Ah," Gojo says, snapping his fingers. "Time hiccup."
"That's…not a scientific term."
"Then invent one."
She chuckles despite herself, then tilts her head. "You've noticed it too, haven't you?"
He hesitates. "Noticed what?"
"The world repeating little things. The cat near the dorms crossing the same path, the same leaf falling twice." She meets his eyes. "I thought I was losing it."
"You're not," he admits. "Or maybe we both are."
Rin closes the notebook slowly. "How bad?"
"Let's call it an experimental Monday that refuses to retire."
Testing the Loop
They decide to test it.
At noon they stand in the courtyard with a row of small paper charms pinned to the fence. Gojo sketches quick symbols across each with cursed energy.
"If the loop resets," he says, "these charms should revert too."
Rin nods, holding a stopwatch. "Start at exactly twelve-oh-five."
He writes 01, 02, 03 on the charms in glowing blue strokes. When he finishes, the clock on her phone flips from 12:04:59 to 12:05:00.
A faint ripple runs through the air—barely perceptible, like heat haze. The numbers on the charms shimmer, then vanish, leaving blank paper.
Rin inhales sharply. "Okay. That's impossible."
"Welcome to my life."
She glances at him. "If this is your doing—"
"I wish it were. At least then I could charge admission."
They recheck the sensors. Every reading has reset to midnight. Rin's stopwatch reads 00:00 even though neither remembers stopping it.
She slumps against the railing. "You realize this means we're inside a closed temporal bubble?"
He grins. "You make it sound cozy."
"Gojo, I'm serious. If the loop keeps collapsing—"
"Then we'll just break it before it breaks us."
The Evening That Repeats
By evening the students finish their training, cheerful and unaware. Rin stays beside Gojo as they watch the sun dip behind the main hall.
"You haven't told them," she says quietly.
"No point yet. They'd just panic."
"You're panicking," she counters.
"Me? I'm enjoying our eternal Monday getaway."
Rin turns to him. The fading light paints her profile in gold and shadow. "You joke when you're scared. It's transparent."
Gojo opens his mouth to deflect but stops. She's right. The weight in his chest isn't excitement—it's dread shaped like responsibility.
"Do you think it's connected to your technique?" she asks.
He nods slowly. "Infinity's acting strange. Like it's…breathing on its own."
"Could it be feeding back into itself? A resonance loop?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it finally got tired of me."
Rin looks at him for a long moment. "Then we fix it before it decides to erase you too."
Her certainty is startling. Gojo laughs softly. "You always this confident in impossible plans?"
"I teach physics to teenagers who can summon curses. I've earned my optimism."
He watches the horizon flicker once—just a brief pulse of light—and then everything rewinds to a minute earlier. The same gull flies across the same strip of sky. The same breeze lifts Rin's hair.
She notices this time. Her hand tightens on the railing. "It just happened, didn't it?"
"Yeah."
"How many times?"
He looks down at her hand, fingers white against the metal. "I've stopped counting."
The Midnight Experiment
They set up the second test at the stroke of midnight. Shoko's instruments hum quietly in the borrowed lab. Rin rigs a camera to capture continuous footage; Gojo maintains a small domain field to mark the boundary.
"Ready?" she asks.
He nods.
She starts the recording. The screen shows the ticking clock, their reflections faint in the glass. One minute passes. Another. Then, at 00:12, the image distorts—a shimmer of blue like water bending light—and resets to 00:00. The same minute plays again.
Rin stops the recording, rewinds it. The memory card itself has rewritten; the footage ends mid-frame, restarting from the same moment. She exhales shakily.
"This isn't just local," she says. "The data itself is looping."
Gojo leans back against the table, arms crossed. "So even proof refuses to exist. Great."
"Do you feel anything when it happens?"
"Like a pressure drop. And noise—like someone whispering behind glass."
Rin closes her notebook. "We need more samples. And rest."
"Sleep," he says, almost amused. "I don't think time will let us."
"Try anyway. Humor me."
He hesitates, then nods. "Only if you promise to wake me if reality explodes."
"That's a tall order, sensei."
Before the Reset
He ends up outside again, lying on the damp grass near the training field, staring at the stars. They're too bright—each pulse perfectly symmetrical. A false sky painted over real memory.
He thinks of Geto, of Shoko, of every student who looked at him with trust. All those lives depending on his control, his endless energy. And now the thing that made him invincible is tearing the seams of time.
Rin's footsteps crunch on the path. She drops down beside him without asking. "You weren't sleeping."
"Didn't promise I'd succeed."
They watch the stars together. The night air smells faintly of smoke from distant Tokyo. She says, "You act like you're the only one who has to fix everything."
"Old habit."
"Break it."
He laughs under his breath. "You make it sound easy."
"It's not. But you don't have to be alone in it."
For a moment he forgets Infinity, the loop, the dread. He feels the warmth of her shoulder near his. The space between them hums softly, his barrier thinning. He lets it. The first drop of rain lands on his hand, exactly as it did the previous night.
Rin tilts her face to the sky. "Rain again."
He nods. "That's how it starts."
Lightning flashes—once, twice—the same pattern. Gojo's heart sinks. The reset is coming. He turns to her, impulsively.
"If this day ends," he says quickly, "and you don't remember, find me tomorrow. Tell me about the charms on the fence."
Her brows knit. "Gojo—"
The thunder cracks. The world folds inward like paper. Light consumes everything.
Monday, Again
He wakes to the same ceiling, the same light spilling through the same crack in the curtains. The birds outside sing their same uneven song.
His phone blinks MON 07:14 AM.
He exhales slowly. "Good morning, Monday."
Somewhere on the other side of the campus, Rin Kiyosawa opens her notebook to a fresh page. At the bottom corner, a faint smear of blue energy glows—the residue of a charm she doesn't remember drawing.