Chapter Text
rogue star ; a star not gravitationally bound to any galaxy, drifting through the vast, empty cosmic void. once ejected from the galactic core, these stars wander alone for billions of years until they eventually burn through all their fuel.
“What happens when you lose a part of your soul?”
It’s not like he has ever felt the need to ponder about his soul before. Sure, there is something wrong with him, at the most intrinsic and fundamental level, but that has never meant it’s soul-related — and if it were, he’s certain, it must be some kind of incurable injury or terminal disease. Some things just stick with you from conception, he supposes. Perhaps he was just born wrong, the kind of wrong only he can see, the kind of wrong that comes off as simply unique.
He considers losing part of your soul must render you into some kind of hollow husk, in a way. You lose a fundamental part of yourself, give it up like it weighs nothing, and it scars you at the most intimate sphere possible. Or perhaps it’s just like losing a limb, or a finger, or getting a scratch on the knee. You feel the loss, sure, but it’s not detrimental, and you’re still you. It sounds a bit too idyllic to be the case, he knows. Can souls even grow back? Can they be nurtured until the loss starts feeling distant, until you find a new you that makes up for all those things that you’re lacking?
Satoru has started to believe it is useless to wonder about the unknown like this. The more he circles back to it, the more he drives himself up the wall in search for answers about himself that he simply does not have. The regrets consume him, the doubt unsettles him, and what’s left is always just a cruel exhaustion and implacable apathy.
The day he decided he was going to quit teaching, he heard Riko’s voice, too. Not in the way Yuki can hear her, obviously, it’s more so like some kind of fever dream. He hears Suguru’s mostly, usually, in the breeze that precedes the sunset and the sunlight hitting the wooden frames of the school. He hears Nanami, from time to time, in Yuji’s laughter and the restful silence of the corridors. But that day, it was undoubtedly, unmistakably, Riko Amanai.
By that point, he was blissfully half asleep, laying on his stomach. It would have been great to say he was doing something adequate in view of the circumstances. Apparently, quitting the job you fully intended to devote your entire career to in order to fulfill a lifelong dream was a big thing; he should have been reading some kind of book about mindfulness and how to find inner peace. Instead, he had rolled under his bed and played a YouTube video essay on the uprise of conservative comedy.
That was when Riko’s voice, echoing from the hallway of his empty Yokohama apartment, said: “So you really are insane.”
Satoru sighs, looks up at the sky. Many meters below him he can see the hotel balcony, and Yuki pacing around the room, talking on her phone. She’s been getting so many calls, mostly from Todo, but also the people in Tokyo who know what’s going on and wish to send her support. Satoru’s phone hasn’t rung once and he feels bad that he thinks about it in such a way. Maybe that’s why Riko has nice things to say to Yuki and not him, but he also knows his Riko is merely a fragment of his subconscious, and he is not on good terms with himself.
Now, floating in the open night sky, he gets a view of the Northern Star above him, not yet swallowed by the expanse of red doom that surrounds the Tokyo horizon. Riko was always feisty, sure, but she was kind. She and Yuki could have been friends maybe, have some kind of sibling vibe going on. The thought makes him laugh. Maybe his distorted version of Riko Amanai is right, and he is, indeed, going even more insane than he already was.
Ah, he feels like shit.
His phone doesn’t have a reason to ring, he doesn’t want it to or expect it to. He doesn’t know why it makes him feel upset, perhaps even jealous, that Yuki has managed to be talking non stop. The feeling is fleeting, however, and soon replaced by something he’s grown used to: absence. An overwhelming feeling of nothing at all. The dooming sensation of knowing something is wrong with him.
But alas, in the meantime, at least he’s allowed to retreat, to not exist at all. He warps up, farther than before, close enough to the stars that the pressure starts to suffocate him, leaving his mind blissfully blank. Around him, the vastness of the cosmos engulfs him, soothing cold, like drifting underwater and seeing the moon’s reflection grazing his fingertips. He reaches out for the Northern Star, and even though it’s so far away, he almost feels the warmth of its surface burning on his fingertips — strangely intimate, as if it understood.
It doesn’t hurt. At least, not entirely. It’s more like a dull throbbing, like a sting that barely touches skin.
What happens when you give up your soul? When it merges with the vestiges of a Tengen that has become one with the world? Is it like being a lonely star floating across the cosmos? Part of a whole and an outsider all the same. Satoru floats across the night sky, admires the constellations, the galaxies above. Perhaps those girls that merged before are part of them now, even Riko, made of stardust carved into their marrow. Satoru looks out for the outlier amongst them all, and when he doesn’t find it, he realizes it must be him by mere process of elimination.
What a useless thought to have, and yet, how truthful in it’s stupidity. Satoru warps back to stand in the small balcony of their shared hotel room, as Yuki ends up the call inside. The stars look brighter the farthest they are, he notices.
“Of course,” she says into her phone. “I’ll call you back, let you know how it goes. I can’t wait to see you.”
“Todo?” he asks, when she steps by his side.
“Yeah. I try to keep in touch with him every so often. He has a soft heart, the kid. He might keep his cool, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry.”
“Well, he treasures you, so. Of course he’d worry.”
Yuki purses her lips in a thin line. With how her eyes sparkle, it looks like she’s smiling, but she is full of doubts.
“I have no clue what I can do after all this,” she says, very softly. “I hope I get to figure it out.”
“Why don’t you come back to the school?”
The words leave his mouth unprompted, but once he hears them, he’s very aware of how much he means them.
“To jujutsu high?” she scoffs.
“Sure. I never really thanked you for helping my students back then, you did well. You’d be a great fit.” He shrugs, “Neither you or me seem to have ever been in line with the policies of the school before, at least, not fully. But things are changing, and you’d be a great help in bringing forth that change.”
For the first time since they’ve started the most emotionally taxing toad trip known to man, Yuki reaches inside for a pack of cigarettes discarded on her bed. She comes back out, red plaid pajama pants that swallow her whole and a thin white top to stave off the suffocating warmth of buzzing cursed energy around them. When she catches the cigarette between her lips as she lights it, she twirls the lighter in her fingers like Shoko once used to do, when they were much younger and in love with such small things. She probably doesn’t even remember it, but he does.
“What would I even do there? Are you suggesting I go for a teaching job? I appreciate it, I guess, but I sincerely think there are enough of you. Don’t suppose you can spare a vacant.”
He doesn’t look at her in the eye, instead shrugging as he follows the small trace of smoke into the open air.
“Who knows? Maybe one will open up soon.”
“I won’t say I’m a bad mentor, because I’m not. Look at Todo! He’s great, isn’t he? But I’ve never been one to stay put at any place for long, that’s just not who I am. My place never stays the same.”
“Oh, fun, you’re not one to settle.”
“Well, I did contribute what I could. And, you know, Todo has always wanted to go into teaching. Maybe not the way you do, but perhaps the way I do. And I think any of those would be great for him.”
Satoru feels his shoulders sag until he’s leaning his entire weight on the railings. “Sounds like he looks up to you a lot.”
“He’s a softie. And, besides, who wouldn’t? I’m a cool girl, aren’t I?”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Yuki laughs, not witty or sardonic, but genuinely entertained. She looks at him when he’s unable to follow her in her laughter, even though she is happy for her, and even though he’s really trying. Something is wrong with him, and the worst part is that she seems to be able to see it, to pinpoint the minuscule mistake that has rendered him defective.
“Todo will do what he can, in whatever way he can. There isn’t much to it. We’re trying our best here, me, everyone. Just like you are.”
“Not like me, no. Because people actually do things, they get through them, they find ways to do better and actually bring something to the table.”
She twirls the cigarette between her middle and index finger, ashes crumbling like stardust.
“Look, Satoru, I was the strongest sorcerer here before you took the spot. That, alongside fate, makes me kind of your knowledgeable older sister. So I’m gonna tell you something,” she takes a hit of her cigarette, exhales with so much force it looks laced with exasperation. He can’t look away. He feels burdened and upset and like he doesn’t want to talk to her right now, but he can’t look away. “I feel bad saying this, you know, because by sheer logic you are like my lost-cause-little-brother and I’ve grown fond of you: but you are not that special.”
Albeit weakly, he scoffs at her words. His fingers are still itching. “You were the one who called me unique.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” she laughs. “You try your best and achieve what you can, like all of us do. Not knowing what to do, deviating from ourselves, having unclear plans for our future… I personally think all of those things are just what life is.“
Rubbing his temples, he decides he doesn’t want to dwell on that, or else he’ll end up spiraling all night and he’ll arrive to their date with Tengen’s remains with a blotchy face from too much overthinking and stress. No, sometimes it’s just better to cut straight to the point.
“So what do I do about it?”
“You suck it up.”
“Ah, great advice, yes,” he laughs, albeit lacking bite. “Thanks, senpai, for telling me to suck it up.”
The following chuckle from Yuki’s lips is laced with a cloud of toxic smoke. She dangles the cigarette between her nimble fingers with bitten nails, offering it to him like she knows it’s exactly what he needs. Despite having been torturing Shoko for such habits for over a decade, he finds himself taking the cigarette and placing it between his lips. Inhales and exhales like he does when his regrets consume him, and the smoke burns through his throat and lungs with a sickeningly bitter aftertaste.
Gross. He did not remember how disgusting it was to do that. Last time Satoru even smoked was back in High School, and ever since he’s been laying out strategically judgy comments on it to get Shoko to quit, with mild success. No wonder why, she deserves way better than cancer sticks making her tongue tingle with the taste of adulterated chemicals.
Satoru takes another hit nonetheless, dragging it, before offering Yuki her cigarette back. The air, thick with oppressive cursed energy, feels so much cleaner once he releases the smoke.
He’s gotten used to this feeling, to breathing fresh air for only a second after feeling like he’s choking. Somewhere along the way, he found himself a comfortable bed to lay on, and the world tucked him in and covered his body with layers upon layers of guilt. They just kept piling up, weighted blankets that prevented movement, and by the time he thought he’d be able to shrug off some of the weight, he realized the guilt had impregnated his skin, merged with his entire being.
“It’s not about what I try, it’s more like… what I haven’t done. What I missed.”
“Oh, you’re serious?! I already told you, it’s pointless to dwell on that, I thought we were on the same page!” she exclaims, retrieving her cigarette. He doesn’t look at her, but his eyes still pick up her frown. “So what. You blame yourself for Riko-chan, and for Geto while you’re at it. You blame yourself for Kenjaku, and for Sukuna, and for whatever mild nuisance they face at the school in your absence. Is that so? Does that just nullify everything you worked towards?”
“I mean,” he shrugs. “Doesn’t it?”
“You’re just throwing yourself under the bus now.”
“He kinda deserves it.”
“Well, I don’t think we should judge your past self too harshly. At the end of the day, he was just a kid, a guy doing what he could. He trusted you with that.”
Satoru hums half-heartedly. “Did you trust yourself to do better in the future?”
“I trusted her to not betray myself,” she says, very seriously. “Unlike you, I don’t happen to have a distorted image of who I am. I can distinguish my personhood from my troubles just fine, because I am—“
“A genius, right? Whatever.”
“What has you huffing and puffing all of a sudden?” she suddenly asks, and she’s mildly bewildered, definitely upset, but most of all she’s exasperated. “Somehow you’ve gone to unilaterally decide you’ve been the bad guy all this time or something. Please. I couldn’t care less what you did or didn’t do, we aren’t cops. But I do give a shit what you think about it, because this is ridiculous even for you.”
“I don’t know how this is your problem, anyway,” he finds himself spitting back. “I don’t even know why I’m even telling you this in the first place! This world is doomed and this mission is once again set up to fail, who fucking cares?”
“Oh, so who cares? Yeah, this is just an already-failed mission for you because you can’t get over how your merger went. You’re so messed up you think of yourself as the reason Geto turned out the way he did, or the reason Riko died, or who knows what. You’re such a bad person, aren’t you? For you this is all an interminable list of your failures, and you think you’re so awful. To Riko Amanai, this,” she gestures vaguely, “you… You were everything. You were kind to her, protected her, understood her.”
Satoru opens his mouth, closes it when he has nothing to say, when the words are stuck within the tightness of his throat. His tongue goes dry every time Riko’s name is mentioned, a name he hadn’t heard in so many years, and Yuki expressing her posthumous feelings rattles his brain so hard it makes him dizzy. It’s scary, to even believe he could be considered something —a friend, even— in Riko’s eyes at the moment of her death. He can’t stomach it, it hurts too much, his body shakes with the intensity of wanting to reject it all even when his heart hurts.
“For fuck’s sake, she was a dying girl! If everyone were so quick to give themselves sympathy for just being considerate, we’d be doomed as a society.”
Yuki rubs her thumb across her blonde eyebrows, her arms crossed against her chest. She’s looking up at the stars —at Riko, he believes, or at the version of her that must remain scattered across the cosmos— when she says:
“You said you wanted to be the kind of guy people can rely on when they need help. I see that, in what you did with her, with everyone. The version of you that agreed to come with me is still there, despite what happened before.”
“Well, I just can’t see him anymore. He’s been gone for a long time. I’m empty,” he sighs. “In every way possible. I’m so fucking alone, you have no idea, and I just feel empty. Doesn’t that make me a bad person? All I do right now is to sit in the dark and think of all the terrible things that have happened because of me.”
“Everyone has regrets.”
“But I have way too many, and I’m tired of always running behind them trying to do something to fix it. I can’t. It’s gotten me to a point where I’m running out of fuel.”
“That’s bullshit,” she quickly adds, nearly cutting him off with the bluntness of a butcher’s knife.
Many years ago, when Satoru was still a child no bigger than a bump on the road, he found out he would always be aware of how people perceive him. There must be some metaphorical meaning to that, surely, but in his case it trascended the literary and became real: his eyes are always able to pick up the pieces of emotions left in his wake, the gazes laid upon him when they think he’s not looking, the undertone to unassuming words that speaks of something better. He never learnt how to do well with that more than he learned to try and ignore it — but right now, with how Yuki’s auburn eyes are digging into his flesh, he finds himself uncomfortable before the elephant in the room.
He wants to say sorry. To apologize because his heart needed to break apart and now he’s made a mess out of himself, he feels stupid, an inconvenience. The poisonous thoughts that had been plaguing his mind are scattered around them, trying to be seen, and he’s doing a shitty work at cleaning it all up. How embarrassing. He doesn’t know why he started talking about this — something just pushed him to.
This time, he blames the voices of Suguru, and Riko, and everyone else inside his head. They are what started his descent into this version of madness where he just keeps embarrassing himself. Satoru covers his face with both hands, groans, breathes out all the frustration he can muster.
“So I am insane.”
“Yes, Satoru. Once we’re done here you’re gonna spend the rest of your days tied to the bed in a straightjacket. Is that what you wanted me to say?”
“Yup. Thanks.” A pause follows, way too extense for him not to feel awkward, uncomfortably exposed. He tries to make her step down to his level by simply adding: “Do you have any regrets?”
Surprisingly, Yuki shrugs. “Sure, in the abstract sense. We’re humans, we will always ponder about the what ifs. I feel grief and loss like anyone else, especially to those I’ve loved. My predecessors, Todo, Choso,” she says, evenly. “But not actual personal regrets, no. To feel guilty must mean I’ve done something wrong, and that’s not the case. I did what I could in the situations I was thrown in, and there is no use feeling guilty about such things.”
When he doesn’t answer, she adds: “You might think you’ve done wrong before. It’s fine if you have — that’s also what makes you, you.” Her strong hand with bitten fingernails is placed gently on his shoulder, squeezes hard enough to bruise, and Satoru watches helplessly as she offers him a tight-lipped smile. The kind of sympathetic smile you’d offer a dog you know is going to die after being abandoned, unsalvageable. “Get some sleep.”
She then puts out her cigarette on her own arm, the ashes trail down the fine layer of Infinity guarding her. Satoru watches her leave and despite being able to see the bed from the balcony, he’s never felt more distant than this. Yuki’s phone is still buzzing incessantly on the nightstand, so he lets go of his silent phone by throwing it onto his bed with no regards for breaking the screen. Maybe it’s for the best.
The loneliness hurts so bad it’s all-encompassing, threatens to consume him whole. If things had been different, he wouldn’t feel like he does. He thinks of Riko, then, if he hadn’t failed her, if she had been here right now. Would she have called him crazy or would she have understood? Would she empathize with his loneliness?
She was such a naive child, relying on someone like him. Most people tend to be. Yuki, in that sense, is the same. They give him too much credit, for a guy who hasn’t been able to do anything that matters, for a guy who is not able to keep going, to see a point in this anymore. There is something wrong with him, there has always been.
In the end, Satoru will always be the Six Eyes user who set his merger up for failure. And Riko will always be dead.
Yuki sets up an alarm at exactly 6:54 AM, approximately 3 minutes before sunrise according to her phone’s predictions. She has no idea why she picked seeing the sunrise as a preventive last goodbye to the world — she’s never been an early bird and by the time she manages to unstick her eyelashes from her eyelids, she just wants to lay back down and keep drooling onto this pillow that she hopes was cleaned up after the last guest slept here.
But she was adamant on doing something rewarding, so she gets up, peeling off the blankets from her body, and stretching her limbs above her head. There’s crusted drool on the side of her mouth and she feels dizzy enough she might topple over from rising too fast, but she really does want to see something meaningful before they stride their merry way into Tokyo, just in case shit happens.
The first vestiges of pink are peeking out from the horizon, tainting a previously blue sky into a hopeful hue the color of cotton candy. To the east, a disturbing shade of crimson threatens to break the one pattern Yuki wish to never see disturbed: the sun rising every morning, the start of the day anew. Specks of dust fly across the room.
Behind her, Satoru is curled up into a comically large ball on the bed, with clothes so big they seem to swallow his enormous body whole. His breaths are even, and she assumes he might have taken her advice and actually gotten some sleep, but she knows better than to assume he has been asleep for more than fifteen minutes at most. Irregular sleep patterns are a documented reoccurrence amongst Six Eyes users, after all.
She feels… a bit bad, after last night. Just a bit. Enough to send her to bed with a sour aftertaste. Perhaps she got carried away in her resolve, and she ended up being the passive-aggressive person she didn’t wish to be — she’s aware he’s hurting, she’s aware he feels lonely. When she offered to give him advice the night before she had accounted for trying to make him feel less lonely in his sorrows, but she didn’t manage to make him feel accompanied. Those are two entirely different things.
Of course she has regrets? What kind of person would she be if she didn’t? In a better world Choso would be alive like she had hoped, living on as a human like he had wanted to, alongside Itadori. In a better world Todo wouldn’t have lost his hand while fighting. Realistically, these things are not her fault, and so she refuses to feel guilty for things not attributed to her responsibility.
In some twisted way, she’s mad at him, at his troubles, at the way he takes them for granted, at the way he doesn’t see a point to keep living. She knows, and maybe that’s the issue, way more than he does. She’s always burdened with the knowledge of what others are not aware of, always one step ahead.
When she offered for him to go with her, she knew the risks, she knows he didn’t, at least not fully. It’s scary to know the possibilities, the impending doom. It’s scary to know what you’d fight so hard to keep would be so easily thrown away by someone else solely because they no longer feel fulfilled by it.
But Yuki has slept on it, and she refuses to blame him. He is hurting and she meant what she said — unfortunately, she’s actually fond of him. He means a painful lot to Riko-chan, too. His students worked hard to get him back, when she met them. Even when he pissed her off, she tries to understand, she doesn’t want him to think he’s lonely.
She wishes she didn’t care so much, sometimes. Alas, what good is it to know all of these things and not try to do something about it?
Her phone is plugged in, sitting neatly on the bedside table. She never plugged it in, that she remembers, so it must have been his doing. Even after they fought he likely strode towards her with that childish pout of his, plugged in her phone to charge, drew the blinds and retreated to his own corner of the room. His phone is not plugged in, she notices, discarded swiftly on the floor. The edge of the screen protector is chipped from throwing the device around carelessly. He has a picture of his students as wallpaper and an ominous 72% of batteries still going.
For a moment, she considers if that’s his way of trying to keep going amidst this black holes that threatens to consume him whole. She does feel bad for some of the words she uttered, way too harshly for the point she was trying to make, the night prior. It matters to her that he’s trying, for some reason. It matters to her than even someone like him, who has given up on the idea of pertinence, is still trying to hold onto something like she is.
Yuki takes his phone and shoves it in her bag. When she turns around to face him again, his face is still pressed against the pillow and he doesn’t even stir. She figures the best she can do for now is to simply allow him some grace, and marches towards the balcony without bothering him awake.
Outside, the sun has started to shyly peek from under the horizon. Yuki has seen the sunrise countless times, some of them burdened by jet lag, some of them by the shore as saltwater bathes her toes, some of them from the cozy warmth of her bed. She takes pictures of it sometimes but she never goes back to see them again, but she doesn’t do it with this one. This one is more personal and intimate, and she’s not sure once all of this is over she will want to have any kind of memento of such a feeling in her camera roll.
Yuki thinks she’s done well. She has brought a fine research into the world, she has done what she wanted to do, taught Todo to the best of her abilities and loved who she could even after that. She has been spinning the wheel of fate so hard she has tilted it on its axis and now that it has fallen she is still running against its inertia.
All of this time she has cared deeply, loved fast, spoken openly and has never been afraid to express herself in every way that mattered. But to look at the sunrise like this, she feels small in comparison. The sun is, much like her, a star in essence. So can it know what she’s thinking? Can it know she still looks at it for answers to questions she doesn’t have?
She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to fit in across the vast extension of the cosmos, where a rogue star like her might find a place to coexist with all the galactic bodies that preceded her. She hopes she doesn’t want to find out. Yuki has never belonged to a galaxy and she doesn’t find the need to, she thinks it’s stupid, she’s happy as she is now.
Does it change anything to look up at the sun? To make wishes to shooting stars passing by?
All of her frustrations always end up in the same place because somewhere across the way she has formed neurological pathways of stardust and lemon pie crumbs that take her by the hand towards a fate that is inherently unjust. At least she did get to say that to Tengen’s face. It didn’t change shit, but damn it felt good. Yuki was counting on changing the game once again, anyway. She knew her destiny, and that she’d have to run from it for as long as she lives, literally, but she does enjoy a challenge.
Purple, pink, golden, orange cascade across the balcony, her hands glistening in the sunlight. She goes back to her frustration, soaks in the stardust she had left behind and eats up all of the lemon pie crumbs. The day is shaping up to be beautiful somewhere she cannot follow, but she feels content being able to witness stars melting into sunlight before her eyes on a day like today, promising to do it again, to take another picture that will get lost on her phone.
She wonders if this is what the Merger is like, a star disappearing in the periphery of another star that burns a lot brighter. Yuki shivers and she is not sure if it’s her own reaction or something that comes from a deeper state of her being, from Riko-chan’s voice inside her skull feeling more unsettled than ever.
There’s a jostle inside the room. Yuki goes back inside, picking up a discarded pillow from her bed —uncomfortable thing it is— and throwing it square towards Satoru’s head, who is only sitting up after his impromptu nap, eyes still closed and hair ruffled in every direction. It hits him on the nose with enough blunt force to break the wall, but he takes the blow as if it were nothing much, like she expected he would.
He only groans a little when she says: “Morning, sleepyhead. You missed the sunrise.”
Satoru shrugs, “Did you get to see it?”
“Sure. It was very worth it.”
“Okay,” he sighs, holding onto her pillow as he stretches, looking more awake than ever. Yuki follows him with her eyes as he gets up from the bed with languid movements, looking back at her directly, but not challenging. A pause follows. “I know I’m a compatible vessel.”
The words don’t process straight up within Yuki’s brain. She has to force the wheels to turn when the familiar buzzing feeling makes her fingertips feel numb. Riko is saying something, but her words get drown out under the static of her brain as Yuki scrambles for it to function.
At last she says, very intelligently: “Huh?”
Satoru smiles knowingly. “I know I’m a compatible vessel to merge with Tengen,” he repeats.
And Yuki, astonished beyond eloquence, can only say—
“You do?”