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Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away, the distance an insurmountable chasm. His lips move, he speaks, but you understand nothing. The sea roars. The weight of its salt chains tie you to him. Hundreds of people flicker, and none of them matter.
Fourteen feet.
Thirteen.
Twelve.
Walk closer, strain your ears to hear. The world only grows louder. You cannot hear yourself think. That’s fine; you don’t need to.
With every step you take, he takes one backward. Is this who he is? A coward, a fool? You could have sworn he was better than this. Somehow, you had deluded yourself into believing he was more than sand slipping through your fingers at the dead girl’s beach, more than the trickling of time and an immovable hourglass.
He turns on his heel despite your pleas for him to stay. The wind blows: he, nothing but sand, scatters from the head down and crashes onto the asphalt. How many grains is too many to gather?
Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away, the distance an insurmountable chasm. You hear him tell you he’s leaving over the wind’s screaming. You ask him a hundred things: why, maybe, or how, or is it worth it? He laughs. Rather, he cackles, and the sound grates on your ears.
Drums beat. The world turns and flips itself over. He is now standing on the ceiling, but you remain still on the ground. The two of you both have planted feet; his are just elsewhere. He turns to leave.
This betrayal, as crude of a word it may be, is too much to bear. With a gesture of your hand, he compresses into a card—something flat and 2D, a lifetime of memory you could press between your palms—and floats away.
Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away, the distance an insurmountable chasm. Quick! Run forward and grab hold of his arm. You press a kiss to his cold knuckles.
There are a hundred timelines in which you do this, but there is not a single one where he does not wrench his hand away. When he speaks, it is with a cold burn in his voice—nails you also feel scratching at the glands in your throat—but it does not stop him from leaving.
Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away, the distance an insurmountable chasm. He tilts his head when you do not answer and walks forward. Mouth inches from yours, he says something that enters one ear and exits the other.
You don’t think you’ve ever seen him hunch over. Once, you would joke it’s because he needs to make up for his height; once, he would laugh and shove you and say that you’re just absurdly tall. He brings the same discipline to every other aspect of life.
You, on the other hand, have slouched your way through life and love. Indiscreetly—or perhaps not, for he knows you just as well as you might know yourself—you lift your chain and square your shoulders.
Wanting is half the battle. If you cannot make him stay, if he cannot hear the silent screams and the gurgle of the wordless gunk pouring out your mouth, if he has already surrendered to a false idea of identity, then at least let the two of you stand as equals one last time.
Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away, the distance an insurmountable chasm.
Let’s try again.
He stands fourteen feet away
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s try again.
Let’s
BUILD STOPPED. (time elapsed: )
“Maybe you should get a haircut,” you tell Suguru. He hadn’t told you to get out when you sat on his bed. Instead, he moved to sit between your knees, back facing you. While you wonder if he ever will tell you to leave, you brush out the knots in his hair with your fingers. He’s got the sort of hair that, at this length, retangles itself every time it is left untouched or unseen. “A buzz cut. Isn’t it heavy?”
“I carry heavier things,” he says. After a moment, he adds, “Besides, you like it.”
Impulse tells you to move, and you obey. “Let me see you,” you say, hands coming down to cup his jaw. He lets you do as you please, lets you turn his head this way and that and measure the pulse in his throat. You press a kiss to his temple, except it’s not so much a kiss as it is feeling his warmth, his blood, his existence. He lets you do that, too.
You live in a dreamland, and stand on a field of clouds and solid air. The floor is pasty blue, as is everything else. There are large, brown hammers with cartoon moles carved into their heads that slam into the sky-ground every fifteen seconds. It’s a slow heartbeat; yours, probably, if you ever bothered to listen and check.
Everyone who you have ever known has a cardboard cutout of themselves somewhere within eyesight. Boom! goes the hammer, crushing one into finite pieces. Infinity is reserved for you, of course. You call the currents over, and they carry the remains off into a trashcan somewhere in the distance.
Boom! goes the hammer, and Suguru crumples under the hammer's weight. He could have put up more of a fight. Then you remember he’s nothing but a folly, nothing but sand shaped by the wind and waves. The currents do their duty. How long will it take, you wonder, for you to be left all alone?
Maybe he ate sticky rice recently, because his sand glues itself to the whack-a-mole hammer. Figures it’d be him to throw the world out of order; he’s like cute grime staining the grooves of the hand-carved snake on a jade necklace.
The hammer swings in a low arc, waiting out its mandatory fifteen seconds. How unusual; the hammer normally strikes out of the blue, never letting its prey know of its existence until it’s too late.
It happens in a flash: the hammer morphs into a dull blade and cleaves through Shoko’s torso. Her expression does not change. She does not flinch. She is mist and wind and smoke; she dissipates into the air and lingers.
You know who is next. But if fourteen was insurmountable, fifteen is too much to fathom. A few steps too out of reach to push Nanami out of harm, the hammer comes flying down. Before that—or maybe at the same time, it’s hard to tell—Nanami bows at a perfect forty-five-degree angle and hands in a letter of resignation.
The blue floor on which you stand turns to salt and water. Swim.
In one timeline, you burn everything he owns and cry. Well, the burning comes after the crying. You’re a silent crier, just as you are primarily a silent laugher, so nobody really notices. Surely they assume.
Cocooned in your blankets—first the top sheet, then Shoko’s fluffy blanket you stole from her, then the large quilt Yaga made for the student lounge—you can’t stop thinking about him. It even smells like him: something warm and undoubtedly human.
An hour later, you wrangle together the energy to roll out of bed and into his room. Both your things are intertwined—like the two of you, certainly; you’re one and the same; you’d recognize him anywhere, in any form. It would hurt too much to sort through it all.
So you don’t. Instead, you borrow Shoko’s spare lighter and light the nearest flammable object—his once-favourite hoodie, lying on the floor—aflame. You wait and wait and wait. You have time. You have nothing but time.
In a startling amount of normalcy, setting his room on fire has consequences. When was the last time you’d encountered consequences?
Of course, they’re not all for you. Shoko notices the smell of smoke emanating from somewhere other than her own room and finds you standing still at the entrance of his room, lighter in hand. Before you, light flickers: red and white and yellow. Smoke clogs your throat, which doesn’t do much other than send Shoko into a coughing fit.
She calls the fire department and no one else. Firemen enter and spray the whole building down. It’s a good thing the fire hadn’t spread outside the room, they say.
“Can I see what’s left?” you ask, voice surprisingly hoarse. Shoko exchanges a surreptitious glance with them, who eventually concede and let you inside.
While some of his things have gone and burned and flaked away, most still exist. It’s a pathetic sight. Molten belongings and char.
In another timeline, you pack his whole room into neat boxes that you then shove into one of your many closets, never to touch sunlight again. Of course, not everything can be dissected and taken home, nor does anyone seem willing to help you. You strip the bed down, throw everything you don’t want to keep into the fitted bedsheet, and store everything you may one day need into large cardboard boxes.
He will never come back to this room. You have given up on the idea of finding the timeline where a stubborn man turns around for his teenage love.
Even so, you carry the boxes of clothing and memorabilia home. Corners folding from being awkwardly crammed together, you shut your pristine painted-white closet doors on it all. The Gojo family estate is yours; here, your memory will remain untouched.
Start a new day, Shoko had once told you; the soft warmth of his fingers between yours and the sound of his laughter is from a past you should not revisit. In the end, you suppose the result is the same, whether you burn your memories or hide them away for safekeeping. If the fire doesn’t get to them first, moths will.
The world screams, high and shrill. It’s akin to a baby’s voice, or that of a teenager. Everyone is a teenager once, except for those gone too early. You have been a teenager too many times.
When your friends leave—disillusioned by your peers’ deaths, perhaps—you wonder. Had you died, instead, would that have driven them to the same rebellion? You can hand over your life in exchange for another’s; fatality has a different meaning when applied to you. Is that hubris? Probably. You’ve proven yourself right, though. Death glances off your abilities; only one person has come close to finishing it all, and that only worked the first time. Now you speed through those moments without a second thought, just pressing space.
There are moments that you like to revisit, however. This one you have revisited many times—thousands, perhaps, or maybe simply hundreds. Who knows; counting is hard. That’s why infinity exists.
Once more, you kiss for the first time. He is warm, home, and a gaping hole in your heart. You sneak closer, snake your hands around into his hair. When he pulls back, it’s with flushed cheeks. Impulse tells you to press the base of your palm to his red ears, and your hands come away burning.
He offers you a small smile, ridden with nerves and elation. You shake out the fire on your hands and lean back in.
You join Shoko on the balcony she added to her room. It was a whole fiasco, getting that installed. She said she deserves some personalization, after agreeing to bind herself to the school.
Shoko shakes out her cigarette as you approach, grinding the ash into an old mark on the wooden balcony fence. She sets the now-extinguished cigarette down sideways and says, “Don’t tell Utahime.”
“She asked you to quit smoking again?”
Shoko hums. “Never stopped asking. I can heal myself anytime, so I don’t get what the big deal is.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke lungs? Whatever it’s called.” Is Utahime that selfish? Probably not. She’s not strong enough, individually, to be selfish. It’s another reason you can’t stand her pompous ass.
“Never mind that.” Shoko pauses, then asks, “So? What’re you gonna do about the offer?”
“What offer?”
“Don’t play coy,” she says. “It’s not a good look on you.”
You let out a breathless laugh. Second to one, she has always known you. Attachment is dangerous for sorcerers, and even more so for medics; until Suguru left, she has never shown an interest in knowing you. “I think I’ll accept. Become a teacher—who’d’ve thought? But Yaga knows… Yaga made the offer for a reason.”
“Don’t blame him,” she says, drumming her fingers on the wood. You stay silent and she reluctantly continues. “There was nothing he—or any of the other adults, for that matter—could have done. There was nothing I could have done, nor you.”
“You sound smart,” you say. “But you’re wrong.”
She tilts her head, eyes meeting yours. She doesn’t waver in the slightest; no matter what either of you say, nobody will change their opinion.
“You’re something else. Sometimes I wonder if you’re tangible.” You hold out a hand and wriggle your fingers for her to touch. She laughs. “No one can grab hold of you.”
Your hand hangs in the air, and you don’t move to touch her. That’s not what she means. The ground splits between the two of you, opening up a deep chasm. The old building groans. Shoko does not move; she is anchored to the world, along with everyone else you have ever known. She once stood beside you, on the other half, with Suguru.
She continues, “I’m sure Suguru thought the same, too. When I met him that day, I saw the look in his eyes. He knew.”
Helpless, you can only shake your head. How cruel. “I never thought of him like that. Or you. The three of us—we’re all something unique. You’re proof that there are other people out there that have potential to be strong. That’s what we need.”
“‘Thought’,” she repeats, a smile quirking at the corner of her lips. Her implied ‘See?’ hurts. “You should give up your overconfidence, one of these days. It’s annoying. Besides, you’re less than you think you are.”
As she walks away, you finally hear his last words from that one time the wind stole them. It’s a breakup. You were a dream, or a whim. Nothing real. Inhumane to everyone but yourself.
Let’s try again.
The crowd titters at the look on your face—or maybe it’s at his. Are they making fun of you, for having your heart publicly crushed whole, or him, for causing such a scene?
You ask her, two years later, what she meant by “less”. She is startled at first, not remembering the conversation until you relay it back to her verbatim.
“Oh,” she says. “Ha. Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking about it all this time.”
“I haven’t.”
She shrugs. “Just your teaching skills, that’s all. You know, nobody in this world ever spends a minute thinking about others or how to interact with them.”
“Then would you ever teach?” The idea that no one is to blame is far too tempting to let sit. Someone must take responsibility, preferably now before Suguru happens a second time. A part of you still protests every time you picture his face: you had a full year to notice, and yet you did nothing.
“Me? No way. I haven’t got the patience for that.”
You accept the answer for what it is and let her walk away. Only then, once she is out of reach, do you remember that at that point, you had yet to begin teaching.
He confesses to you, at three forty-eight am on a Monday, that he “sometimes wants to die.” It’s more than that, of course; he doesn’t understand why he lives anymore; he can’t find the light at the end of the tunnel; you don’t think through the implications of his words until it’s too late. Your mouth before your brain does, and you ask if anyone is really living anyway. If you think about it, really, isn’t living synonymous with dying?
He stays silent, and you pilfer through the blankets to find his hand in the darkness. You hold it. His hands are dry, with thin cracks from the pads of his fingers down to his palm. What does it mean, you ask yourself. After a moment, he shifts to readjust your grip so that it’s more comfortable. Life goes on—or maybe it changes, because you kiss for the first time a few days later.
The sorcerer elders fake an emergency and seat you in front of two heirs who watch you with no little amount of suspicion. The air is sterile. Society watches on.
Megumi, you know. Looking at him brings about the acute sensation of guilt; by now, you have become an expert in ignoring it. The Kamo heir is a new face. He carries himself with dignity, it appears; a set shoulders and a firm expression.
You lean back in your chair—it’s not comfortable, no cushions—and sneak a peek at the elders. Tens of impassive faces, and none of them give away a hint of what they expect from you. It’s a bit impressive, honestly.
It’s all for the next generation. These two will become the new elders, soon enough, won’t they? Better raise them well; you’re not taking one of those gilded chairs, not now, not ever. Though you have lived far long enough to lay claim to what you deserve, to do so would be a betrayal. It is a self-imposed rule, a Binding Vow to your unshed tears and guilt-laden heart. He who you once wished to bind yourself to has fled.
You spread your arms and welcome the children into the monotony that is politics. You tell them it is necessary. Upholding it is your responsibility, by virtue of being both the strongest and unable to prevent the greatest catastrophe of your life.
These children are not you. They cannot become you, nor as strong as you, despite being heirs to two of the greatest jujutsu clans. Their lives are not a dead end, however. They can step outside of reality and become society’s mechanics. You may not know much about the Kamo child, but, at least, Megumi should.
The first time you see him eat is sometime in your first year. First time living your first year. There was a time you didn't think that distinction needed to be made. Your class—you, Suguru, and Shoko—are out eating at the local family-owned restaurant. It’s got this cute jingle attached to the door, alerting you when you walk in their door, and a radio continuously belting love ballads.
The family-owners’ child steps out to hand place your dishes in the centre of the table. The three of you begin to pile your own bowls, and Suguru is uncharacteristically quiet. You ask him if something is wrong, but he merely shakes his head and eats a mouthful of the chicken cut. Its red sauce leaves a trail: across the heavy, ceramic blue bowl it was served in, to his chopsticks, to the corner of his lips. You have half a mind to throw a napkin at his face—wouldn’t that be funny—while the other half itches to reach over and wipe it off.
The meat lands at the bottom of his empty stomach. The sound strikes a chord: it tears its way through your body, your soul, your heart; it cuts what was once a circle in two distinct pieces; it’s not quite a bisection, but close enough. Each note resounds, sounds stacking up on top of one another. Slice! Slice! How riveting! This is the moment at which you metaphorically point at him and proclaim that he, too, is something else. What other human has a stomach that empty?
In later days, you would revisit the memory of your past and present missions, listening carefully to the sound he makes when he swallows a curse whole. His body is an empty vase: you hear the soft plunk of an orb finding its inescapable home. For now, however, you are content to exchange a suspicious glance with Shoko and let the dining continue.
Maybe later, at a strange half-past midnight where all your friends lay still and sleep, you stare at your dotted-white popcorn ceiling and wonder. What would have happened had you leaned over? If you had kissed him? You try to imagine his response. Your heart shatters. What else shall you trust him with? Won’t this be fun?
He is bleeding out on cobblestone, and there is absolutely nothing you can do. Was ripping out your heart meant to hurt this much? You’d have thought that shattering it—that was years ago, wasn’t it, even in this lifetime—but would have reduced the damage, but it appears that it had the opposite effect. Your palms cut on the slivers when trying to flick the remnants of your love out from your chest. He laughs at your plight. It is a cruel sound that makes your knees go weak.
While the strength seeps out of his muscles and he dies by your—and your student’s—hands, you want to shake him until the truth falls out. Did he simply make a mistake, or is this all his plan to fulfill a poorly thought-out wish made at sixteen? You want to shake him and ask, “Really, Suguru? You didn't really want to die, did you?”
Listen to the sound of his empty stomach. He is gone. His silence speaks volumes. How much can you change with time and unlimited lives, or is it all set in stone? Try again, try again, try again. You text Shoko—“there’s a body here, at this address, just let me take care of it”—and collect the pieces of yourself off the floor.
See, Suguru comes back with a new family. It’s not like you had ever been his family, not really, but his attachment and false cheer and callousness is simply too much. It’s a transparent mask; really, does he think you so stupid as to not notice?
You are reminded of a conversation you had, once. Is this an implicit confession to not being strong enough, individually, to achieve his goals? Like Shoko. Like Utahime. The idea leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
Does this action of his not act directly against his last words to you—something something, power and purpose and possibility. Is he giving up on possibility? He said you could have done it. You could have. Maybe somewhere there is a timeline in which you join him in his folly; maybe somewhere there is a timeline in which you traverse the world and wreak havoc. Maybe it’s fun, maybe it’s not. It’s a timeline you haven’t yet lived. Maybe one of these days you will. Or are these steps of his destined to occur? What are you searching for again—a cure?
You see for yourself if the world is worth killing. This is what you tell Nanami when he resigns; you tell him he can do that, too. It’s a way of saying, “Do whatever you like.”
When Nanami calls you not two years later, it is surprise that sets you off. Exhaustion has already settled deep into your bones; you’d just finished the last of sixteen back-to-back overseas missions and want nothing more than to collapse on a bed. There is hardly any time to explore—to study the people living in bubbles outside your own.
“What time will you be available tomorrow?” Nanami asks, clearly irritated.
“What makes you think I’ll be available?”
“Aren’t I offering you an opportunity to shirk one of your other duties?”
You laugh. Quite true. “So what’s this?” you ask. “You’ve redeemed the trade? You’ve found a purpose?”
The line goes quiet. “I suppose,” Nanami says at last. “Then, have you?”
“Have I what?” You know what he’s asking after, of course. You just don’t want to answer. The message clearly doesn’t get across, though.
“Found a purpose. Or, rather, I am assuming you too have determined that the world isn’t worth killing.”
“Oh, wow, are you showing me concern? This must be my lucky day!”
Nanami hangs up.
Run Project (F6)
“Isn’t that cute,” a creature wearing his body crows. “Gojo Satoru, in the flesh. Hasn’t this been a long time coming?”
It uses the same voice as Suguru once did, yet you know the truth. Struggle is futile against the chains of the Prison Realm; still, you push against it and let words flow from your mouth. The creature lifts off his cranium in one swift move as if it were a hat, laughing all the while. See! See! Weren’t you right! A parasite adorned with a cartoon mouth controls the body.
Even so! It does not matter, for you have been ensnared and Suguru is dead. You call out his name, over and over again. There is a faint pulse—no, don’t fool yourself; there’s no pulse; you see the residues of his cursed energy lingering about. You know how to detect such faint lines, having practiced over and over again.
The brain does not stop laughing. It has such precise control that even Suguru’s mouth begins laughing. You cannot take it any longer—you cannot stand for his voice to be slandered like so. The brain snaps Suguru’s fingers and commands the Prison Realm to close.
It is almost too much, inside; hundreds of bodies and thousands of skeletons litter the infinite area inside. Their excess cursed energy fills the air with a horrid stench.
Let’s try again.
Light peeks out at the top—what you have arbitrarily decided was the top—of the Prison Realm. Come! it calls. You use your deceased predecessors to build a pyramid up towards the light. Once close enough to touch the break in the fabric, you shove your fingers through the small hole and pry the fabric of reality apart. Step out like a king returning to its kingdom, or a god descending upon its believers. Gojo Satoru has returned.
Your students stand before you, beaten, bloody, and battered. Nobara wears an eyepatch over one eye. A long scar crosses Yuji’s forehead. Megumi is missing. Amidst their hasty explanations—Yuji is on trial; the students are delaying the trial date; there have been many, many casualties—the only thing you can focus on is the blind fury that overtakes you. This world was not built by your hands! It should not have fallen apart at your disappearance! Does no one think of the children!
“How did you—do all this?” you ask, throat dry. How long has it been? You should ask that, too.
“We had help,” Nobara says, quickly. “Some long-haired guy the others recognized. He died on the way, letting us through. Are you listening? You’ve gotta come back to the school, stat.”
Let’s try again.
“Suguru,” you say, stumbling forward. He is in there, you know it. You have seen it; both in this timeline, and in the others. “Suguru, this is your body. This is your body. Suguru, come back to me.”
The brain makes Suguru smile. Both of you know your cursed energy is running low, but you will not let him go. The brain claps his hands together and summons a series of grade-one curses.
It’s easy to bat them aside; grade-one means nothing to you anymore. That is not hubris, that is the truth. You close the distance and dig your thumbs into the suture holding Suguru’s skull together. Suguru’s body jerks, then stills—that was the sign you had been looking for, but it is too late to stop your momentum.
There was a lesson once, in high school, where Suguru was asked to show the other students how the eyes and ears are a prime target. “Dig your fingers into whatever you can get a hold on,” he had said. You were his demonstration, his thumbs rested on your closed eyes, palms bracketing your cheeks. “Don’t be squeamish.”
Now, you do the same: you ignore the crusted blood around his forehead and the leaking cranial fluids. You rip off the top of his head and, careful not to touch the brain without Infinity, rip it out. You fling the brain away from Suguru and watch in satisfaction as it ricochets off the surrounding walls. In Shibuya it started; in Shibuya it will end.
You snap your fingers. The brain explodes.
“—atoru?” you hear, a horrified sound. Turn. “Fuck—what is this?”
“Suguru,” you say, and drop to your knees to meet him on the ground. “You’re—”
He shakes his head. “I’m not anything,” he says. His eyes are wide as he takes in the situation at hand. The lack of situation, rather. The brain is dead.
“We can get you to Shoko. Don’t—hold still.”
“Fuck,” he says, again. “Don’t. I can’t not hold still, who do you think I am? Don’t, Satoru. I don’t want to—I saw everything. Didn’t I tell you once? I don’t want to live in a world like this.”
“Shoko can—Shoko can fix you. Come back to the school. Suguru, don’t—”
“You can make me,” he says, “but does it mean anything if I don’t want to be there?”
You can only say his name helplessly. You have asked him to stay countless times; what makes you think this time will be any different? “Suguru, I—you—don’t leave me.”
He laughs. “I left you over a decade ago,” he says. “Get with the program.” And then, “I love you.”
Well. Let’s try again.