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Getou Suguru dies December twenty-fourth on the quiet cobblestone streets of Tokyo, tucked far away from the disaster that's currently Shinjuku and away from any curious eyes. He dies with a missing arm, mouth turned upwards with one final puff of laughter, and eyes closed as he welcomes the first long rest since he arrived in the city all those years ago.
His body is covered in a black school jacket because that's all Satoru has on him. Later, it's carefully cleaned with the clinical precision unbefitting of someone who's spent their entire life fighting. The school jacket is swapped for a clean white cloth, and Suguru's body is tenderly wrapped before it's handed to two weeping girls.
Others would protest that this is far kinder than what Getou Suguru deserves— that at this point, Suguru had committed too many crimes and wiping his existence from this very Earth wouldn't be enough. Others would be horrified to discover that Suguru's body wasn't cremated. Of all sorcerers, his deserves to burn the most.
Yet Getou Suguru's body does not experience any of this. Instead, it's laid to a quiet rest, dirt piling over the white cloth until the earth opens its mouth to swallow him whole.
Getou Suguru awakens with a shuddering wheeze, gasping for breath like oxygen hasn't passed through his lungs in years. He opens his eyes for the first time and water pools in them immediately. Each nerve goes off in a mini explosion, his synapses firing as Suguru reclaims what was his.
The first thing his burning eyes notice is the rubble. The second is the blood smeared on the ground around him.
The sun is bright and the sky is blue, is the third.
He feels as though he's been doused in a bucket of ice water. It's like someone yanked him from the deepest part of a dream, grip unkind and unforgiving, and decided to drag him around for two blocks just for the hell of it.
He's not sure what happens first: his eyes finally registering the mangled bodies around him or the bile rising in his throat.
Suguru doubles over, retching on the ground like he needs to purge his entire body of all its toxins. This time, there's no one to pull back his hair to make sure vomit doesn't get caught in the dark strands. There's no one to rub soothing circles into the space between his shoulder blades or to offer him a bottle of water and a small sweet afterwards.
"Where am I?" He croaks, wiping off the spit with the back of his hand. The other hand digs deep into the ground until he can feel the filth deep beneath his fingernails.
Suguru glances down at the foreign arm and the stranger's hand. He drops down once more, another round of vomit staining the ground to mix with the blood around him.
Aren't you just precious? A voice laughs, echoes rattling Suguru’s head in more ways than one. Foreign but familiar.
Suguru may have his body back, but there isn’t a single part of him that hasn’t been cut open for examination.
The first place Suguru visits is Jujutsu High.
It's easy to slip through the weak excuse of a barrier without leaving a trace behind. Suguru doesn't even shudder. The miasma surrounding the school no longer tastes ancient and on the verge of decaying— something Suguru had noticed the only other time he had come back to the school after leaving. The forest outside, however, reeks of overflowing power and the dark, bitter taste of the shadows. If Suguru tries hard enough, he can even make out a faint, rancid taste akin to curses.
There isn't a person— or a curse— in sight as Suguru slips through the trees towards the main grounds. Still, he holds his breath as he hops onto the outer wall. One, two. Dropping onto the dirt ground, Suguru shudders because of an invisible breeze in the night. The leaves on the tree stay still.
He walks through corridors of haunting memories. Here was the hallway he and Shoko used to smoke in, a quieter part of the building that had nice ventilation so they could snub out their cigarettes and scram at the telltale creak of the floorboards. There was the window Satoru broke in one of their many squabbles, chunks of stone pelting Suguru in the face. Down the hall and to the left was the classroom Suguru would sneak away to when he wanted to study and Satoru was being especially annoying. Suguru's pretty sure that Satoru knew about that particular hideout anyway.
When Suguru finally reaches the hallway his room used to be in, the lights are off. There's a faint layer of dust to the walls. What's even more noticeable is the distinct lack of residuals.
The door to his room is shut but remains unlocked. It springs open with an aching familiarity. Suguru doesn't turn on the light. He stands in the middle of an empty room, stripped naked and bare and all humanity removed, with nothing but his two eyes and the moonless sky.
The next time Suguru comes to consciousness, he's standing in the doorway to the fourth apartment in the long series of hideouts he's lived in since leaving Jujutsu High. This one, at the very least, they had been able to stay in for more than three years. They would have reached their fourth year if it hadn't been for the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.
If you hadn't died so uselessly, the imposter leers.
Shut up, Suguru says back, tired and without any bite.
Dust sticks to the apartment walls, just like they stuck to the corridors of his old hallway at the school, as Suguru makes his way past the foyer. It's not the kind of dust that comes from laziness or lack of cleaning, but the kind that builds up after years of abandonment. Suguru's stomach sinks the further he goes in.
The first place Suguru had lived in with the girls was more of a shack than an actual house. The window panes were nailed shut because they had no glass and every time the wind howled, they would receive a personal delivery of all the debris in the town and the next one over through the small cracks. Suguru had almost considered calling Satoru on more than one occasion back then. If not Satoru, then Shoko.
The second apartment was better than the first because its walls weren't broken and it had hot water a good thirty percent of the time. A pipe broke every other week and Suguru had lost the number of times he had to fix the wires for the lightbulbs so they could have power without constantly summoning one of Suguru's electric curses just so the girls could charge. Suguru had spent an entire year wondering why none of the subjects taught in school were actually useful.
Things had gotten a bit better when Suguru finally had enough money saved from his whole Buddhist act. Mimiko and Nanako could finally live comfortably and Suguru no longer had to worry about where they would stay in the event someone from the school came bursting through their doors one night. (They never did.) The third apartment was a huge step up from the previous two.
For the fourth, Suguru had offered the girls their own place. He still preferred to lie low, living in a nondescript town where he could steal away at a moment's notice. Nanako had her hands balled into fists, big fat tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes as she hung her head and shook with anger. Mimiko had looked at him, eyes full of a sadness that a girl her age shouldn't have known.
The worst part was that she wasn't even crying.
Growing up, Mimiko cried at everything. Even after Nanako had long stopped, Mimiko was prone to bursting into tears, salty streaks staining her face as her shoulders shook silently.
So, the fourth apartment had been a compromise.
They had lived together, like a family for over a decade. And here, in this apartment, Suguru had felt the happiest he had in a long time.
The door to Mimiko and Nanako's room remains ajar. The two of them insisted on sleeping on the same bed even after Suguru had offered to buy them the fancy new bunk bed they couldn't peel their eyes off of each time they went to the department store.
Their blankets are folded neatly and stacked on the end of the bed. One baby pink and the other light green. Suguru's eyes sweep across the messy desk— the polaroids Nanako had printed out and still had to hang and Mimiko's sketches of new plush dolls. He blows the small layer of dust off the nearest photo.
The twins are seated inside some cafe, two glasses of coffee and two small scoops of ice cream. The next photo is a selfie of the twins outside of the shop. Nanako has Mimiko wrapped in a tight hug and Mimiko's fingers are thrown in a small "V." Before Suguru had died, the twins had pestered him non-stop about a trip to Osaka as a celebration for the attack on the schools.
Suguru pockets the polaroids.
He crosses the distance to his room in a few quick strides, hand gripping the doorknob like it's the last thing grounding him to this earth. Suguru doesn't know why his blood turns cold or why he spends so long lingering outside the doorway, inhaling laborious breaths. There's something on the other side of the door stopping him.
With great effort, Suguru forces his hand to turn.
His mouth dries at the sight before him.
There's a new cabinet next to his desk, small and only slightly larger than a textbook. Its doors are open to reveal a simplistic painting attached to the cabinet's back walls. Inside is a small incense holder, wilted flowers, a bell, and a small teacup. There are faint stains from where the tea dried up.
In front of the cabinet is a small bench adorned with a plain white cloth. On it lies Mimiko's favorite doll— the one she took with her from the village.
The air in the apartment tastes stagnant and stale. Perhaps, it would be easier if it were soaked in death and decay. A small kindness, for a once dead man.
Suguru thinks he's going to be sick.
Suguru's arm aches.
Some days it feels like lead, heavy and cold as it brushes against his side. It takes a monumental amount of effort just to bring his right arm up towards his body. Other days it hangs uselessly, unresponsive and limp by his side. Its fingers twitch and muscles spasm as though the original owner were thinking of moving their own fingers and hands.
Suguru remembers Rika lunging towards him, monstrous body swirling with unbridled energy before she tore off his arm.
It's strange; he doesn't remember the pain that followed.
He recalls limping away, stumbling through the nearest alleyway as the world around him spun. He recalls Satoru's shaky silhouette, the damn bandages— and Satoru likes to call him dramatic— finally gone to reveal perfect blue eyes.
Arms don't grow on trees.
He has no idea where the arm came from. Suguru's missing years spent under the imposter's control are fragmented at best. Any other inhabitant's memory is beyond recollection. Or maybe this is just him shirking the consequences of the imposter's actions to chase after nonexistent specters.
Suguru's arm won't stop hurting.
The Gojo clan estate, like the other family estates of the Big Three Sorcerer Families, is a luxurious traditional Japanese household spanning a large area of semi-secluded land. It's tucked away just enough to shroud it in mystery and create local legends in the neighboring towns, but close enough so that they can still head in for basic supplies.
"Our clan has the most land," Satoru had once told Suguru, chest puffing up in that way of his when he was trying not to brag but also very clearly trying to brag.
It was one of the only things Satoru ever mentioned about his family.
According to Satoru, the vast stretches of forest were for the family members to get tossed into. It was either figure out the bare minimum to use the Limitless or lose your life to the hungry curses.
"Not like anyone is as good as me," Satoru had added, sticking out his tongue. Suguru didn't point out how it took them an extra hour to finish their mission earlier that day because Satoru was unable to properly activate Blue and appear in front of the curse to aid Suguru.
Suguru knows that the Gojo clan's estate is located somewhere in Chikuzen, surrounded by thickets of trees.
It takes him three days to find it. Three days of aimless wandering, hat pulled low over his head, looking for clues. He sticks to the side roads and the old notice boards, papers crinkled and uneven from the rain. He reads the flyers at convenience stores as he forces ramen down his throat. The noodles don't taste like anything.
"Can I help you?" The old grandma standing behind the counter asks him.
"I'm fine," Suguru replies, automatically pulling the beanie further down his head. He shoves his hands into his pockets as he scans the yellowed newspaper clippings still taped up on the wall.
The grandma gives Suguru a curious look before turning back down to the register to bring out the wrinkled bills. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Suguru's lips curl upward.
Grand places always seem more desolate when they're a pile of rubble.
"You look like shit," Shoko greets, exhaling smoke into his face.
"Dying and having someone else possessing your body for years will do that to you," Suguru retorts.
Shoko snorts. She snuffs out the cigarette before she resumes her examination.
The morgue is just as Suguru remembers it: depressing, bleak, and rotten. Maybe they've added a few more autopsy tables and the row of body lockers to Suguru's left looks slightly newer than the others. Still, it's clearly a one-woman show inside the walls dripping with death.
"You don't look so great yourself," Suguru notes as Shoko pokes and prods at his arm.
"Yeah, well," Shoko shrugs. Her words linger in the air like the faint wisps of smoke that used to hang around her during their high school days.
It might be Suguru's imagination, but her characteristic dark circles seem to have sunk deeper into her face. She looks even more haggard than the Shoko in Suguru's nightmares.
Oooh, is that guilt?
"Getou." A voice says, muffled. "Getou." It's past the layers of padded cotton and the murky fog beyond. "Getou."
"Sorry." Suguru sucks in a sharp breath, "'M fine. I have it under control." The scars sting like small needles were shoved into his forehead. In and out. In and out. The fingers on the arm that isn’t his wants to dig into the soft flesh, and peel back the scabbed skin to unravel the nonexistent stitches one by one until all that’s left is a bloody mess.
Suguru is sixteen and he wants to throw up again.
"You know the last time I saw you in the morgue, it was when you were dead?" Shoko says.
Blunt and to the point, that’s Shoko for you. Suguru’s eyes flit up to the ceiling and the light fixtures. Those too, are shrouded in death. There isn't an inch of this whole room that doesn't stink of human mortality. It’s a miracle that Shoko hasn’t suffocated here yet.
"Do you ever grieve the bodies you burn?" Suguru asks. The question slips out of his mouth and it's too late to reign it back in. It's okay, despite his constant smile and polite exterior, Suguru has always had a cruel streak inside him.
Shoko pauses, hands dropping to her side from where they were poking and prodding at his arm and head a moment earlier. She sits in front of the only empty autopsy table in the whole room, her gaze indiscernible. Over a decade later, and Suguru is still no closer to understanding Ieiri Shoko than he was before.
"You should have come sooner if your arm was bothering you," Shoko reprimands instead. She turns her back to Suguru as she rearranges her tools. "It seems like you're mostly in control so the pain should work itself out after a while. Let me know if anything major bothers you."
"Thanks," Suguru says after a beat too long.
He's halfway to the exit when Shoko finally speaks again.
"If I were to mourn every corpse that passed through these doors, I would've run out of grief a long time ago. At some point, you forget that the ashes were people. It's just a job. Easier that way, y'know?" Her hands shake as she takes out a cigarette.
"Yeah."
"I mourned you though," Shoko says ruefully. She takes one long inhale, eyes closing in respite.
Suguru remains frozen in place. His lips refuse to open and even if they could, what would he say?
Shoko smiles. "Utahime was right, you two are absolutely awful." She curls in on herself, snorting as though it were a joke.
The puff of smoke from the cigarette floats upwards, until it disappears and joins the miasma of death floating above them.
Suguru comes from a village far north, surrounded by rice fields and the trees. It takes at least an hour by car to reach the nearest train station. A rural boy, through and through.
His favorite memory as a kid was the annual trek into the city: his parents would stuff one suitcase full of clothes and the other with food. Suguru would carry his own backpack, filled with his secret stash of snacks and a couple of candles he had bought with his own money. Their neighbor would give them a ride to the train station and the crooning voice on the radio would lull Suguru to sleep. He'd finally wake in the city, waiting patiently as his parents checked into the hotel room before dragging them out to the river. They would wait for him on the side as he carefully shaped his mini kamakura, his own miniature igloo, hands fumbling in haste to light his own candle. He would bask in the small glow, pride and happiness inflating in his chest as he stood back to survey the hundreds of soft, orange lanterns lining the river. Then, they would go back to where the main festivities were.
They would huddle inside one of the large kamakura and warm their hands by the brazier before making their offerings. Suguru liked that part best, even better than the warm rice cakes filling his belly and the sweet rice wine that flowed through his veins, heating up his fingers and toes.
No one else could see the deities they made their offerings to, but Suguru could. Sometimes they sat in the kamakura, hugging their knees as they leaned against the walls and watching with large, unblinking eyes. Other times they would peer inside the entrance, hair wet and dripping.
They felt nicer than the curses Suguru saw in the school bathroom, or the one always lingering near the mayor's office. They certainly felt better than whatever was lurking in the rice fields in the middle of winter. These spirits were older, but they didn't radiate misery and pain. They didn't make the air taste foul or cause Suguru to choke each time he took a breath.
Suguru liked the water spirits and their silent presence, he liked the festival and its lights. It was one of the few times Suguru felt at ease. Even now, he hasn't known a calmness like the one at the festival.
Suguru's parents had moved closer to the city after he had started attending Jujutsu High. Easier to visit home with the bullet train, they had told him over the phone. And so Suguru had returned to a foreign apartment every holiday during high school.
The last time Suguru had come to the village was when he was seventeen and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Now, back at his parent's tombstones, he's burdened by the consequences of his actions and weighed down by regret.
"This was the last place I expected to find you," Suguru says dryly. His fingers trail across the fresh dirt before he pushes himself back up.
He doesn't need to turn around to know that Satoru's mouth is stretched into a wide grin. "Aw, you were looking for me?"
When Suguru finally meets Satoru's eyes, his throat dries up with an alarming speed. His tongue feels heavy and large in his mouth. Satoru's eyes twinkle as he winks salaciously, but it has none of that playfulness they used to carry in high school.
The last time Suguru saw Satoru this close up was just before he died.
You're a bit too nostalgic for a man who caused the downfall of his best friend.
Too tired to even continue down that line of thought, Suguru ignores the voice in his head. He tears his eyes away from Satoru's because another second and Suguru might forget who he is. His eyes trail down Satoru's torso, taking their time to catalogue the new details. The way Satoru's uniform is no longer crisp and pristine— there are loose threads on the cuffs of his jacket and small tears scattered across his chest. Satoru leaks raw power, the waves of cursed energy rolling off him in spikes like a beacon.
"Didn't realize we were playing a game of tag," he finally chokes.
Satoru smiles wryly. It's the same grin that Suguru remembers: crooked and prideful, but it's sharp around the edges. There's an empty hollowness in Satoru's eyes.
"Did you put those tombstones up for your parents or did someone in the village do it for you?"
"I put them up," Suguru grits, "All four of them."
Satoru doesn't speak. The Satoru from before was always in control of his power. Even when he was developing his techniques, he was never in danger of imploding. This Satoru is a ticking time bomb.
The five steps between them expand to infinity in the middle of the night before it shrinks in on itself, until there's that infinitesimal space separating them. It's been so many years— does Suguru even know Satoru anymore? Did he ever know Satoru in the first place?
"It's cold. We should head inside," Satoru says and it sounds like I'm tired and sorry rolled together in a single breath.
Here's a secret for the curious: Suguru can't taste anything except for curses.
It wasn't always like this. Back when he was a kid, Suguru devoured almost everything in sight. He needed a bit of coaxing from his parents to finish the occasional bitter melon dish but otherwise, he was the least picky eater yet. His parents had sighed in relief as Suguru happily munched on his food, having heard horror stories from their friends that had kids a few years before they did.
"Blergh, how are you eating that?" Shoko spits out a mouthful of his ice cream one summer afternoon on their way back from the convenience store.
Suguru pauses mid-bite. The ice cream slowly drips down the hard chocolate shell, making its way towards his fingers in a slow, lazy circle. Suguru flicks out his tongue to catch the drops before his fingers turn into a sticky mess.
"Oh, this is the one Satoru usually gets," Suguru notes. The ice cream is cool against his tongue.
He must have fished it out of the bag by mistake. The last time he had taken a bite out of Satoru's ice cream (it was in retaliation to him stealing the last piece of his sushi earlier that night), he had immediately spat it out. Satoru's ice cream, Satoru's candy, was so sweet it threatened to make him gag. Suguru skipped out on desserts for the next week because that was how sweet Satoru liked his food.
Now, the ice cream tastes just sweet enough, borderline bland against Suguru's tongue.
"It tastes fine to me?" Suguru says.
Shoko makes a face. "I feel like my teeth are going to rot. You two are so weird."
Suguru had dismissed Shoko's comments back then because he had more important things to worry about, like whether or not he wanted to deal with Satoru's complaints of not having the ice cream when they reached the dormitory or if he should just buy a new ice cream bar for Satoru.
The next time he notices it is when they're out for hotpot, a rare treat from Yaga for crushing Kyoto in the Goodwill event. His bowl is filled with bright red chilies, bits of orange and red swirling around the food in his pot. Suguru can't taste the spice. He can’t feel the heat. The only thing he does remember is the foul taste of the Grade 1 curse slipping down his throat two days prior.
After Riko dies, Suguru doesn’t have the appetite for what little he can taste.
So he smiles and lies through his teeth, telling Haibara that sweets are better because if he shares something with Satoru he can chase the lingering remnants of sugar off his lips and pretend that something sweet is in his mouth. He’ll also have an excuse to see Satoru, the bastard, since he’s always running around these days.
It’s like the more curses he eats, the less human he becomes. Everything that touches his mouth turns to ash and the only thing that he can swallow are people’s wretched thoughts and their twisted desires. It was a struggle whenever Mimiko and Nanako cooked or insisted he tried one of those trendy-looking sweets— at least Suguru isn’t a stranger to faking smiles.
When Suguru reawakens, his tongue feels heavy on his tongue. The first time he eats he almost gags, not because it’s bad but because his mouth yearns for the foul taste of regurgitated vomit. He feels sick to his stomach, forcing down tasteless dirt bite by bite. His head spins as the dizziness consumes him. Chew, chew, chew, then swallow. Just how many curses did the imposter consume when he was gone?
At this point, Suguru is more curse than man. Still, he recognizes the faint cut of hunger creeping into the back of his head as he follows Satoru into one of the houses in the village. The knife slowly slips through the cracks, carving deeper and deeper into his body. So he accepts the offer of food and quietly waits for Satoru to finish heating up the dishes in the microwave.
“Did you make this?” Suguru eyes the porcelain bowl. Peering into it, he can see his own sunken eyes, dark and purple and bruised, staring straight back at him. His hair is as unkempt as it was his last year of high school. Suguru tears his eyes away from the bowl. The dim ceiling chandelier flickers above the table, swaying uneasily from side to side.
“Yeah,” Satoru says wryly, bringing a spoonful up to his own mouth.
Suguru clasps the bowl between his hands. The heat pulses faintly. “Didn’t realize you learned how to cook,” Suguru says. No bite, it falls flat.
“Yeah, well,” Satoru shrugs. He says, nonchalantly, “The meatball recipe is Itadori’s. It’s pretty simple. I could teach you. How to make it.”
He watches Suguru like a hawk, eyes piercing and so dizzyingly blue
Suguru blows on the soup, scattering the steam away. He brings the spoon to his mouth.
“It tastes great.”
Satoru smiles.
The house isn't Satoru's. It's more of a small, half-abandoned cottage on the outskirts of towns. It's clear that even before the culling games, the cottage had already been forgotten. Suguru can't remember who used to live there. He can't explain why this bothers him, sticking in his thoughts like a thorn in his side or a scab he keeps coming back to pick.
"It was empty when I came," is Satoru's only explanation. The old Suguru, from high school, would have argued with him, playfully bickering as they bustled around. This Suguru feels a weariness in his bones no person should ever know.
He remains tight-lipped around Satoru in the following days, barring their exchange in the woods and their first dinner together. It’s not because Suguru intends to give Satoru the cold shoulder— although maybe he does deserve that— it’s just the lack of words that causes him to fall mute. Anything Suguru might have wanted to say rests in the pit of his stomach, occasionally making its way back up and causing him to choke. But, the words never make it out of his mouth. How does one even start? Hi, sorry I committed mass murder and left the school without explaining myself but it’s not like you would’ve understood anyway. Or maybe he should try I am still so terribly in love with you but if I had stayed at the school, even if it were by your side, I would’ve hated myself.
The years of unspoken words, former wishes, suppressed regrets lodge themself in the base of Suguru’s throat. He and Satoru don’t talk beyond the small pleasantries. Good morning, good morning. We’re out of eggs. Oh really now? I’m going for a walk, wanna join? Sure.
For the way they’ve been acting these past few days, they could pass off as an old married couple. The thought is so absurd that Suguru snorts to himself as a large, caterpillar-like curse walks by their window. He ends up accidentally nicking himself with the knife. Small drops of blood stain the white insides of the apple. Satoru doesn’t make a comment about it.
That’s another thing they don’t talk about: the way more curses roam the streets like they’re taking a leisurely stroll, perusing the humans like goods on a shelf to pick up, or the way that the town looks like it's in shambles. They don’t speak about the wild goose chase both of them have been engaging in the moment Suguru finally recovered his senses and reclaimed his body.
Did you mourn me? Suguru wants to ask. After I died, did you grieve? These are the questions that weigh on the tip of Suguru's tongue, causing him to trip and stumble as he and Satoru dance around each other in the small house that's sometimes too large. Did you ever bring flowers? Make offerings? Maybe he wants to scream at Satoru, hurling the words at him like barbed spears, or maybe he wants to ask them with a cruel leer and twisted smile as he falls deeper into the beckoning darkness of human pain and agony.
The two of them have been dancing around each other across the entire country— now they’re here, in this tiny house, waiting for the climax.
Nothing happens until the third day because nothing ever happens until the third day. While they can play house and pretend to live in blissful ignorance, the fact of the matter is that with people like them— supernovas with gravitational pulls too strong— things are bound to implode.
Suguru wakes up the third morning and knows that something is wrong.
At first, he thinks it's because, unlike the previous mornings, Satoru isn't asleep in the other futon they've pulled out the first night, nor can Suguru sense him moving about in the kitchen. He makes it one step down the stairs before pure, unbridled energy surges past him.
"Satoru?" He edges.
The silence of the house is his answer.
Suguru ends up finding Satoru sitting by the edge of the creek he and the village children used to swim in every summer. It was the biggest body of water in the village and close to the school, so they could easily escape after the droning lessons during the summer heat. Walk up along the creek for ten minutes, past the gnarled, bent willow and that's where Suguru saw his first curse.
It was a pitiful but vicious thing, long and snake-like with dead willow petals sticking out of the area Suguru assumed to be its head. They never swam in that area as kids. The adults avoided it. All the parents warned against it; sometimes they said it was a jealous stepmother that drowned her step-daughter there, other times it was a deadbeat father who had one too many drinks and his helpless child trying to help. The stories the parents told were wrong. Suguru knows this because he spent an hour vomiting a lifetime of accumulated resentment and rage on the side of the river.
"Yo," Suguru greets.
Satoru turns his back to Suguru, hands clutching his face visibly tensing. They dig into his skin, sinking into the pale flesh as though Satoru were trying to dig something out.
Despite the waves of unrestrained energy threatening to knock Suguru off his feet with each step he takes towards the water, Satoru still allows Suguru to sit down beside him. The grass is still damp from the morning dew.
When Satoru's infinity shuts off, the forest around them lets out a quiet sigh. Suguru's hands come up to rest on top of Satoru's. Warm, moving, alive. It's the first time he's felt another human's quiet pulse since he died.
Suguru's fingers slip beneath the rough skin of Satoru's palms— the only way they could be torn up is if Satoru himself kept on picking and scratching at them. Slowly, as though handling a wounded animal, he peels Satoru's hands back. Inch by inch they rise. Satoru's body stiffens but his hands remain pliant underneath Suguru's. His infinity has always allowed Suguru in.
Suguru places Satoru's hands into his lap, letting them finally rest. He can't tell if it's Satoru's thighs that quiver beneath their hands or his own shaking body that causes the tremors to run through his body. Suguru gives Satoru's hands a firm squeeze before he looks up.
Six blue eyes stare straight at him.
"You weren't the only one that got fucked up this past year," Satoru barks out a laugh. It doesn't quite make it past his throat.
Below Satoru's regular pair of eyes are two additional pairs of eyes. None of the irises are quite the same shade of blue. The bottom pair is a deep cobalt, the middle pair so stormy that they're practically gray. The top is still the bright blue on a cloudless day, the same blue as the skies of their youth.
"Can I?"
Satoru nods and six pairs of eyes blink, eyelashes fluttering.
"They leak sometimes," Satoru says as Suguru wipes the glowing blue liquid that's dripping out of the bottom pair of eyes with his thumb.
Those are tears, Suguru realizes.
Satoru smiles at him, caustic and sharp. The tears won't stop falling.
Suguru cups Satoru's face, pressing their foreheads together. Like this, they can exchange quiet breaths. As Suguru exhales, breath lightly fanning across Satoru's bottom pair of eyes, he can feel the other man shudder in his grasp.
The middle pair of eyes remain open, unblinking as Suguru stares back into them.
He could easily lose himself in those eyes. It would be so easy to drown himself in that blue— sinking under that serenity to cast away any remaining semblance of self. And who would be left to blame him? Who does Getou Suguru, a dead man, have left in this world anyways?
Satoru's hands finally come up, pulling Suguru's towards him with a strength that sends his thoughts flying out. Shocked, Suguru drops his arms to his side.
"It won't be long before my kids find us," Satoru murmurs, his embrace tightening around Suguru's torso. His hands begin to roam, rubbing nonsensical patterns up Suguru's flank and across his back.
"You sound kinda upset about that. Shouldn't you be more excited?"
"Well, I'm not exactly excited to see if they've finally surpassed me. A couple of them are quite powerful, you know? Maybe they've finally learned to handle themselves since I've been gone." There's no teasing lilt to his voice, no gaudy cockiness dripping from each syllable. The words plummet onto the ground.
Suguru slumps forward, burying his face into the crook of Satoru's neck. He allows his body to sag.
"I don't want to do this anymore," he admits. "I'm tired."
Satoru's hands still for a brief moment. "No more," he agrees.
Leaning back, Suguru's hands once again come up to cup Satoru's face. All six pairs of eyes carry an unspeakable sorrow. The bottom pair closes, bright blue droplets escaping as they shut. Suguru’s thumbs circle Satoru's top pair of eyes. The middle pair flutter shut, one last glimpse of stone blue. Starting from the top, Suguru presses a kiss to each eye. When his lips leave the last eye, Satoru sucks in a breath, waiting.
Suguru leans forward one more time to meet Satoru on the same exhale.
Beside them, the water in the creek continues to flow.
Fifteen kilometers outside of Tokyo lies an unmarked tombstone.
Tombstone is a generous word. Thirty minutes from one of the small roads that breaks off from the main highway, lies a singular, flat piece of stone stuck into the earth. If one were to pass it under the guise of night, it would easily be mistaken for a part of the forest itself. In broad daylight, the positioning is a bit too purposeful, alignment a bit too perfect for it to end up in the middle of the wild forest.
It used to be that every week, a man would appear with a bouquet of freshly plucked blues and whites. He would stand in front of the stone, feet digging into the earth as the flowers hung by his side. Then, he would gingerly place the bouquet in front of the stone before vanishing.
The brilliant blues and pure whites have long succumbed to the decay of the forest.