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The curses that live in the city are born of a million people's tiny fears. A child’s fear of being left alone at the cash register as their parent goes to find bread is multiplied so many times over that it manifests in something ugly and dangerous. Even the smallest fears gain power in their multiplicity.
Multiplicity is what gives many things power. A single head of cattle isn't nearly as terrifying as a stampede, a single yen isn't as powerful as a million, a single heartbeat cannot fuel a person.
Everywhere Nanami finds himself, he thinks of multiplicities. What is the population of a place? How many natural disasters does it have? Schools, hospitals, cemeteries? How much does it cost to live comfortably there? Are there more births than deaths?
When Nanami opened his eyes and found himself in a place he had never been before, he doubted if there are any births here at all, wherever here is. Though there were likely no deaths to subtract from the population, if there was a population to begin with. It was likely that any definitions he attempted to superimpose on wherever and whatever he was would fall short of the reality: he was a soul, and his body had been dispatched. But his soul had remained intact, untainted by the ugliness of the curse that had killed him. Plenty of things had tainted his soul throughout his life, but he felt a strange sense of satisfaction that that thing hadn't been one of them.
The idea of an afterlife had never particularly factored into his mind. It had been a passing hope, but not for his own sake. For his family, the friends of his childhood, the civilians who they were too late to save. For —
Haibara.
Large brown eyes and a brilliant smile appeared above him. He had almost forgotten the way that smile seemed to consume his whole face, wide and full of unrestrained kindness. His eyes were brighter than when he'd last seen them, alight in a sort of sad joy that he had never seen on the boy’s face in life.
“Heya Kento! You weren't supposed to come back to me just yet, y'know?”
Unbidden tears began to blur Nanami’s vision, but he couldn't bring himself to blink them away for fear that the millisecond’s distraction would prove that Haibara was the hallucinated comfort of a dying mind. He had forgotten the boy’s voice. How could he forget something so important?
Gentle thumbs brushed at the corners of his eyes, real and solid and careful as they moved over the delicate skin. Would he have forgotten even the feel of Haibara’s hands if he had went on? Would he have forgotten the stars in his eyes when he said his name? He reached up with hands that should have been reduced to viscera but are smooth and unlined as they were when he still felt young, wrapping his fingers around Haibara’s wrists and finally chancing a blink. The pulse under his fingertips didn't disappear, didn't slow and stop as it once did, and when he opens his eyes again he is still in what must be called heaven by many religions.
The sky is still a blue he only sees in spring, and clouds roll quickly by though there's only the lightest of breezes to ruffle Haibara’s hanging hair. The breeze carries with it the scent of saltwater and sand, and he begins to forget the chill of fall that had been in the air when he had died.
“How could I wait?” He asked the ghost who is not a ghost, who is real and flesh and blood and whose smile had changed into something smaller but no less fond. His hands are as smooth as they were in high school, as small and nearly as timid. He doesn't feel the tightness of phantom scars across his back anymore. He feels young. Unburdened.
“You didn't even know I was waiting for you.” Haibara moved to sit beside him, laughing quietly as Nanami moved to follow him so that he didn't have to release his hand.
“I would've went looking even if you weren't.” He sat beside Haibara then, and saw the curtain of blond that he'd done away with at eighteen obscure his vision once again. He hadn't died with Haibara on that day, but a part of him had gone to the crematoria, a part of him had gone into the ground, so he guessed his soul had chosen to go back to when it was whole and unbroken.
It was only then that Nanami took notice of anything other than Haibara and the sky. They were on a wooden slat porch that sat two feet over soft golden sand, close enough that he could bury his feet in the warmth. A dozen yards away soft waves lapped at the shore, causing the clam-hunting birds to momentarily abandon their hunt before the tide receded and they could return to it. They didn't understand that they wouldn't drown in two inches of water. Neither did Nanami. He felt as if he were already drowning, the disbelief gorgeous in its reality. This was real. He felt each grain of sand against his feet, and he still felt Haibara’s pulse under his hand, calm and languid like the tide.
“It didn't feel like ten years without you,” he started abruptly, staring down at a piece of driftwood that stuck up near his heel. “It felt like twenty, the first four years. But then I went back to the college, which I said I'd never do. The students I met then... so many of them reminded me of you. It felt like living with glimpses of you in faces I didn't totally recognize. It didn't feel like nearly as long then. I felt like I was betraying you, in a way. Living. Knowing people you would have loved but never got to.”
“Well that's pretty stupid, Kento. That's what I always wanted for you. You were so antisocial when you were a teenager, and I didn't want you to live your life alone when I was gone.” He had freed his hand from Nanami’s grasp, only to link their fingers in the space between their legs. His toes brushed the sand as he swung his feet back and forth. “Besides, if you love them then I'll love them too. You're a good judge of character.”
Though he wouldn't have claimed that in life, always managing to find himself at Gojō's side of all places, Nanami had to admit that he had cared for the best of people in his life. Haibara, Ino, Ijichi, Itadori. Even Gojō had been good, in his irritating way. And none of them — save the man in front of him — were here. Yet. “I hope you don't get to meet them for a long time.”
“Me too. They'll all come to visit when their times come, but for now I think we get to make up for all those dreams we never got to have when we were alive.” Haibara kicked his toes through the sand, sending up a spray of gold. It didn't seem like Malaysia, but Nanami doubted that rent or property taxes were much of a consideration wherever souls went when their bodies released them.
It was impossible to believe. It felt real in every sense of the word; the hard edge of the the wood under his thighs, the way the salty air stung his eyes, the mildly uncomfortable sweatiness of where he and Haibara held hands. It was real, and yet he couldn't believe it. He had never been this lucky, not once.
Even when he was young and his back hadn't ached and he had been surrounded by people he begrudgingly accepted as his friends, he hadn't ever felt this lucky. The hand in his tightened its grip, as if afraid he might run away. Maybe Haibara was just as afraid as him, afaid that he might disappear in the blink of an eye, leaving behind the same emptiness that he had left Nanami with.
“Kento, I'm not lying to you. I'm not some curse or domain expansion to hurt you. We get to stay here. You don't have to fight anymore.”
The waves lap at the shore. Nanami is acutely aware of each bead of sweat rolling down his back. It’s too hot for a suit; Haibara wears shorts and a t-shirt. He has no scars, and Nanami begins to forget what his skin looked like bisected. That, at least, was a memory he thought he'd never be rid of. The sand burns his toes, and he wonders why he isn't wearing shoes. Maybe shoes don't exist in the afterlife.
“You said they'll come visit us when they die?” he asks, because it's the only question that remains, because he would very much like to see Itadori again, whole and unbroken. Shōko. Ijichi. Ino. Even Gojō.
“They'll probably come visit, but hopefully they won't overstay their welcome. Could you imagine having Gojō as a houseguest? I can't imagine he's gotten any better since we were kids.” Haibara laughs, and Nanami feels a smile breaking across his face like the dawn. Maybe he'll smile so much that salt crystals will form on his incisors. Maybe he'll never stop smiling.
“You don't know the half of it. Somehow, he got worse.”
He catalogued all the aspects of Haibara’s face he had nearly forgotten as he watched him laugh: the dimples in his cheeks, the way his eyes closed when he was laughing honestly, the freckle at the curve of his ear, the slight tilt of his nose from where he'd broken it as a kid. All the ugly scars were gone, but Nanami had always loved the slight bend in his nose.
Eventually, he stops waiting for Haibara to disappear. He reads. He learns that there are three bakeries right off the beach, and one sells the second best sandwiches he's ever had, while the other sells cupcakes that Haibara takes a liking to. He learns that the greatest curse he has to face is cleaning up the sand that somehow gets everywhere when Haibara manages to drag him out into the surf. He learns he doesn't mind being dragged into the surf, because Haibara has learned how to catch clams and starfish and crabs and knows everything about each of them — “I was waiting for you for a while, Kento, I had to find something to do.” He learns that the sun sets in heaven, but that the sky is covered in stars he'd never seen through the light pollution of the city. He names all the constellations anew with Haibara against his arm, and they agree that their names are better than whatever they might have originally been called.
When the first of his friends arrives to visit he isn't nearly as sad as he thought he would be, because he knows better than anyone now how kind a world without curses is, and he knows how much they all deserve to rest. He and Haibara teach them the new names for each constellation, and they are, then and every day after, whole and unbroken.