Archive of Our Own

i. mind

Suguru rises with the sun.

There’s no rhyme or reason, and there’s no remedy. For as long as he can remember, his mind has pulled him into consciousness before the sun has even fully crossed the horizon.

He supposes maybe there is a reason - some lesson to be learned, some punishment for a crime he can’t remember committing, some warning that he can’t interpret. But the only thing it’s taught him so far is that the morning is lonely.

Neither of his parents have any issues sleeping in, leaving Suguru on his own for hours as he watches the sun creep higher in the sky, lighting up the world around him. The first rays peek in through the window and sunrises turn from magnificent to meaningless by the time he’s eight years old.

He tiptoes around the kitchen, making breakfast for himself in silence because he’s been up for hours already and his parents won’t wake until at least eight today. There’s enough light seeping in through the windows now that he doesn’t have to flip a single lightswitch on. And he can be quiet; he’s good at that.

You have to learn to be quiet when the whole world is sleeping except for you.

Suguru’s parents tell him his sleeping problems stem from a restless mind. He has too many thoughts rushing around in there, and there’s no room for the peace and quiet that sleep requires.

Suguru isn’t sure his parents quite understand his issues with sleep. It’s not that he can’t fall asleep. Sure, he has to toss and turn for a little while before he drifts off, but falling asleep isn’t the hard part. Falling asleep is usually pretty easy. You just lay down and let your mind wander until it shuts off and sleep takes you under.

Falling asleep is easy. Staying asleep is the tricky part.

Four in the morning is the magic time, Suguru has learned. If he wakes up in the middle of the night and remains awake until four, he won’t be falling back asleep. If he wakes up and the clock has already ticked past 3:59, he’s also doomed.

So he’ll watch the clock until he gets bored, toss and turn and try every sleeping position he can come up with, count sheep until his brain is full of woolen fluff, pray to whatever deity is up there that they’ll help him fall back asleep. He’s tried it all over and over again, but nothing works.

When he was really little, his parents told him he wasn’t allowed to get up until 7:00, as if instating a rule would rewire how Suguru’s brain works. All it did was make him want to tear his hair out because he was stuck in his room, having to pretend sleep was a plausible option, until the time finally crossed over to seven and he could do something besides wait, miserable and lonely.

Once he started school, that rule fell through. Now, Suguru gets up whenever he gets bored of pretending that lying in bed in the dark will do anything for him. He walks around the house, listening to every creak and groan echo through the silence of the dawn. He watches the sun rise only because sunrise means it’s getting closer to when the day will start for everyone else. On the days he wakes up particularly early, like today, he makes himself breakfast.

Today, he woke up at 4:02, meaning he’s been up for three and a half hours, and there’s no sign of his parents stirring. Which is why he’s eating breakfast alone (again). Everyone else eats breakfast within an hour or two of waking up, so it only makes sense that Suguru’s body would be ready for food by now.

After he’s finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen as quietly as he can, he goes out onto the front porch and lets the morning sun warm his face. The first breaths of spring have begun to sweep through the countryside, but a rebirth won’t help Suguru. He needs something stronger to cure whatever is wrong with his brain.

Restless mind.

Maybe his parents have a point. When he wakes up early, his mind keeps going and going. But he always assumed that was because there’s nothing else for him to do and no hope to fall back asleep. He had to come up with some way to occupy the loneliness each morning brings.

If Suguru has a restless mind, it’s only because he had no other choice. It’s only because he’s spent so much time with no one but his own mind for company.

He skips down from the porch and onto the grass, still wet with morning dew. He can feel it tickle his ankles as he tromps around the yard, letting his imagination run wild, pretending he’s a monster or a soldier fighting against monsters.

It’d be more fun if he had someone else to play with.

But Suguru’s dad already didn’t want him around, so Suguru knows that a little sibling isn’t going to happen. He has a few friends from school, of course. But they aren’t awake this early, and even if they were, they aren’t here at Suguru’s house with him.

Even a pet would be nice. If they could get a dog or a cat, Suguru could play with them in the mornings. If he had a dog, he would take it outside and play fetch. Or if it were too cold, they could sit inside and Suguru would make breakfast and drop extra food on the floor. If he had a cat, he would sit out on the porch and tell his cat about everything he’d done at school, or read to it, or make up stories for it to listen to. He would feed a cat his breakfast scraps too, but he’s never met a cat before, so he doesn’t know how well they like people food.

But Suguru’s dad said that Suguru isn’t responsible enough for a pet. Not even a hamster, and definitely not a dog. And he’s not home enough to properly take care of any pet ‘cause he has school, and Suguru’s dad doesn’t want to deal with a pet and Suguru’s mom just nods along in agreement no matter what Dad says.

It’s fine, though. Suguru can find ways to occupy his time on his own.

Like this new game he invented, called Hunting Monsters. The yard is infiltrated with monsters, and it’s all of the bugs he can find crawling or flying around. The more rare the bug, the more points he gets. And dragonflies are worth the most, just because Suguru really likes them.

So he hunts monsters beneath the spring sunrise. He puts them in his jar until he gets tired of playing, and then he lets them all go so they’ll be there next time he decides to play.

He considers keeping just one in the jar so he can have a pet, but then he realizes that if his dad found it, he’d kill it, so he decides not to. Better to let the bugs be outside where they belong.

(That’s what his mom said the first time he tried to bring a dragonfly into the house. She did not like that at all.)

It’s okay, though. The bugs stay around Suguru’s house so he can play with them outside, and they can get their own food so Suguru doesn’t have to worry about feeding them. He doesn’t really even know what bugs eat, so he wouldn’t be very good at taking care of one.

Maybe when he’s older.

Or maybe when he’s older, he’ll find a friend who wakes up as early as he does. Someone else with a restless mind like his own, who never quite figured out the trick to falling back asleep.

It sounds like an impossibility, if Suguru is being honest with himself. But it’s a nice thing to dream about.

The door slides open, and Suguru straightens up immediately, turning to see his mom’s figure standing in the doorway. She calls him in for breakfast, which Suguru already ate, but he doesn’t say that. Instead he places the ant in his hand back in the grass and darts into the house. He knows the rules: He can eat breakfast before his parents are awake, but he still has to sit with them while they eat so they can pretend they’re having a nice family breakfast. He’ll nibble on some fruit or drink half a cup of tea to give his parents the illusion of having a kid who doesn’t have the sleep issues Suguru was cursed with, and they’ll all make believe that everything is fine.

— —

Restless mind.

Suguru’s mind is restless but his limbs won’t move, like he’s living in a horror film and the monster under his bed is preparing to lunge, tear him apart with its razor-sharp teeth, and leave nothing but a bloody corpse behind for his parents to find in the morning.

Restless mind.

Suguru squeezes his eyes shut, tries to get his mind to stop, but the black of his eyelids is just making everything worse. He tries to scream out for help, but he can’t hear his voice, so it’s hard to tell if it’s actually working. It’s hard to tell if he’s even opening his mouth at all. Like in nightmares, when he screams and screams and nothing ever comes out, he calls out for his parents to come free him from the invisible prison he’s in, but no one comes. His door stays firmly shut and he stays all alone.

Why can’t he move? Why can’t he move?!

If this were just a bad dream, he would be waking up now that he’s realized what’s happening goes against the rules of reality. But he’s not waking up, because he’s already awake. He’s in his bedroom, at home, right where he fell asleep last night, and he isn’t dreaming. He just can’t move.

Why can’t he move why can’t he move why can’t he move why is no one coming to help him?

(Can they not hear him, or do they simply not care?)

Why can’t he move why can’t he—

Red eyes blink at him from the dark corner of his room, and Suguru can’t scream, can’t move as they creep closer. He can’t wake himself up from a nightmare that’s happening while he’s awake, and he doesn’t know how to get his parents to come help him if he can’t move or speak.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This can’t be real, because Suguru knows the difference between reality and fiction. Monsters under the bed and demons in the shadows don’t exist in the real world - they exist in nightmares and movies. This cannot be real.

But the knowledge that this isn’t really happening doesn’t do anything to slow Suguru’s heartbeat or breathing. It doesn’t do anything to ease the panic eating at his mind, forcing him to focus on the red eyes to make sure that when the creature they belong to pounces, he won’t miss it. Because the only thing worse than being torn apart by a shadow monster is being caught off guard by its claws. Or its teeth. Whichever it uses.

Suguru tries to tell the monster to go away and leave him alone, but he still can’t hear any of the words he’s trying to get out of his mouth, and the eyes don’t even blink. They just stare at him, endlessly, threatening, like they were ripped right off the cover of a scary book and plopped in Suguru’s bedroom.

Maybe…

Maybe if he falls back asleep— Maybe if he falls back asleep, the monster will be gone when he wakes up again. Maybe—

(He can’t fall back asleep.)

What time is it? Did he already wake up once? He can’t see his clock from here, can’t turn his head to catch a glimpse, he can’t he can’t he can’t he—

The eyes move closer, and Suguru can only just make out the body they’re attached to shifting in the shadows. This can’t be real, though. It can’t be real. It can’t be real. It can’t be real it can’t be real it can’t be real itcan’tbereal itcan’tbereal itcan’tberealitcan’tberealitcan’tbereal

The shadows slip off the creature’s back as it takes a step, and then another, creeping closer to Suguru, who doesn’t have a single defense beyond the blanket he’s underneath and the fear in his eyes.

Okay, maybe this is real.

But if this is real, why can’t he move? Why can’t he move, WHY CAN’T HE MOVE!!!!

He tries to open his mouth, tries to scream for help one last time, tries to tell the monster to go away, go back to the nightmare land it came from. Go away go away go AWAY! There might be tears in his eyes, but his face is half-numb and his body doesn’t feel like his own anymore and the monster is coming closer and and and and and and

And something snaps in Suguru’s mind. The tension breaks, his soul settles back into its body.

The fog clears, and he can move.

He shoots up into a sitting position, one hand going to his throat as he whispers a soft, “Hello?” into the quiet of his room, making sure his voice is working again too.

His body seems to be entirely intact. Two arms, two legs, chest, stomach, face. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. And he has complete control over all of it again. He lifts one arm, then the other. He wiggles his fingers and his toes. Draws his knees up to his chest. He breathes in deeply, then exhales. He looks over at the clock.

4:48.

Well, he’d rather not try falling back asleep after whatever sort of nightmare thing he just had anyways. Maybe he’ll turn his bedroom lights on too, especially after that shadow monster hallucination…

Slowly, he turns his gaze back to the corner where the shadow monster with glowing red eyes had been. It had to be a hallucination, right? Just a nightmare? Things like that don’t really exist.

Right?

Right?

Suguru yelps, then slams his hand over his mouth. He’s still not sure if the thing is really there or not, and he can’t wake his parents up over nothing.

(“You’re too old to be waking us up after nightmares.” “You’re too old to wake us up just because you’re awake. Find some way to occupy yourself.”)

Suguru feels behind him for a pillow, and as soon as he’s got a good grasp on it, he flings it towards the creature.

It hits the creature right in the face, but the creature doesn’t budge. The pillow thumps to the floor and the creature blinks at Suguru.

“What are you?” Suguru whispers. The creature doesn’t answer. It isn’t as big as he thought it was while he was frozen in place. He could hold it in his arms like a cat if he wanted.

Suguru hops out of bed and tiptoes over to the lightswitch. He turns it on, and light floods the room, but the monster doesn’t wilt underneath it like Suguru had expected. Aren’t shadow monsters supposed to be weak to light?

Or is it only sunlight? Because if that’s the case, Suguru is going to have to wait for a while.

“Sleeeep?” the creature groans out.

“Oh.” Suguru tilts his head. “You can talk?”

“Sleeeeeep,” the creature repeats emphatically.

“I don’t think I’m the best person to ask about sleep,” Suguru tells it. “I’d like to help you, but all the things people tell me to try don’t really work. I’m sorry.”

“Lllll…llllonely.”

Suguru blinks. “You’re lonely?” He sighs and plops back down onto his bed. “Me too.” His face lights up. “Hey, maybe we could help each other not be lonely anymore! I can be your friend. You can call me Suguru—”

The creature lunges at him.

“Wait, no, stop!” Suguru shouts. “Don’t hurt me!” He crosses his arms in front of his face, hoping his pleas will be heard by the creature and it won’t do anything to harm him. “I just—!”

The creature slams into his arms, but instead of Suguru being knocked over by the force of it, the creature shoots backwards and into the wall.

“Huh?” Suguru jumps up off his bed and walks over to the creature. He looks down at it. One of its legs is twitching.

Suguru pinches his arm, but he remains wide awake. Not a dream, then. But the reality he somehow fell into while sleeping has really strange rules. Monsters exist, and they can sort of talk, and pillows don’t hurt them, but somehow running into Suguru did hurt it?

None of this makes sense.

If this were Suguru’s dream, he would have given the monsters better rules that actually made sense. It would be like his monster hunting game with the bugs in the yard. And the monsters would all look like dragonflies instead of disfigured cats.

Actually, if the disfigured cat monster isn’t trying to attack him, Suguru supposes it could maybe be a little cute. Not as cute as a real cat, but Suguru can’t have a real cat because his parents won’t let him, so he could make do.

Wait. What is he even thinking? His parents wouldn’t let him keep a pet monster; they’d make him throw it out onto the streets! And what do monsters eat? How often do they need to go outside for a walk? Do they need a litter box? What sort of toys do they like to play with? And how can Suguru get all that stuff if his parents won’t buy it for him?

What on earth is he supposed to do with this thing?!

Sending it away would probably be best, right?

“I’m sorry,” Suguru whispers down to the creature. “You can’t stay here. My parents will get mad.”

The creature lets out a gurgling noise. Suguru does not know what that means, but he thinks maybe the creature is trying to argue with him.

“If my parents find out you’re here—” he starts, only to stop when he hears his door sliding open. Immediately, He turns to look up at the door. He stomps a foot down on the creature - maybe just a little too hard - to get it to stop making noises and clasps his hands behind his back. He tries to put on the most innocent face he can.

“You’re too loud,” his mother tells him.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, his gaze dropping to the floor. He doesn’t really want to give away the creature, because any reaction he thinks his mom might have to seeing it is not a good one. And he doesn’t really want it to get hurt.

(Well. Maybe it already is. Suguru had meant to just sort of threateningly step on it so it would be quiet, but whatever he did felt like it held more power than he’d intended. So…oops?)

(It should be fine. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.)

“Are you hiding something?” His mother crosses her arms over her chest.

“No,” Suguru answers too quickly.

His mother sighs deeply. “Move aside.”

Suguru doesn’t move. He has about eight seconds before she forces him to move, so what can he do to make sure she doesn’t find out about the creature? Maybe he can kick it under his bed? But she would notice that. Unless he’s really sneaky about it.

He slides one foot behind him, feeling around for the creature so he can nudge it underneath his bed, but…

He turns and looks at the ground.

Huh??

All that’s left in the creature’s place is a— a black ball? That doesn’t make any sense; the creature was just here! What happened to it?

A hand wraps around Suguru’s arm and pulls him out of the way. He stumbles, and if not for his bed being right there, he would have fallen over. He watches as his mom searches the ground behind where he was just standing, but instead of picking up the black ball, she just picks up the pillow that Suguru had thrown at the creature.

“If you’re going to continue to wake up this early, you need to behave yourself.” She tosses the pillow back onto Suguru’s bed, just barely missing him. Suguru tries to peek around her to see if the black ball is still there or if that has mysteriously disappeared now too.

“Are you even listening?!” His mother snaps.

Suguru straightens up and nods quickly. “I’ll be good,” he promises, because he can’t promise to stop waking up so early. “I just thought I saw a monster in my room.”

His mother closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. She takes a deep breath before opening her eyes to look at Suguru again. She reaches out and ruffles his hair. “Suguru, you’re eight. You’re too old to still believe in monsters.”

That’s what Suguru thought too, until he saw one. But he keeps his lips pressed together and just nods. That response seems to satisfy his mother, because she nods and turns to leave. “Try to get back to sleep,” she tells him, flicking the light off on her way out.

Suguru waits until the door is shut to look back down at the ground where the creature had been. And he knows it had been there. It was real.

To Suguru’s surprise, the black ball is still lying on the ground. So…why hadn’t his mom said anything about it? That seems more suspicious than a pillow.

Suguru picks the ball up from the ground and rolls it over in his hands. He holds it up to his ear, and he can hear a soft sort of groaning noise. He sniffs it and then recoils immediately. It doesn’t smell like anything he’s ever smelled before, but it’s not a nice scent. Sort of old, sort of like rotten meat, sort of like how Suguru felt when he woke up this morning and couldn’t move.

He flips the light back on, and then holds the ball up at eye level so he can get a better look.

Unfortunately, he must not have waited long enough between his mother leaving and turning the light on, because the door slides back open. On impulse, Suguru sticks the ball in his mouth to hide it.

He sees his mother’s mouth moving, but he’s too overcome by the bitter taste filling his mouth to actually hear any of it. The ball seems to melt away on his tongue, and the taste it leaves behind slinks down the back of his throat and spreads throughout his body. He bites his bottom lip to keep his mouth closed, but he can’t hold back the shudder that shoots through his body. He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his hands into fists at his side.

This, Suguru thinks, is what it would feel like to be possessed by a demon. The overwhelming sense of wrongness from taking someone inhuman into your body, the darkness settling in your veins. Suguru’s body is still his own, but something has changed.

“What is wrong with you?”

I don’t know, is what Suguru wants to say, but his mouth stays shut, filled with the vulgar flavor of whatever he just ate. So he just stands there, opening his eyes to look up at his mother, feeling like he sold half his soul to the devil without even being offered a contract to sign.

Somehow, he knows nothing will ever be the same.

“Go back to sleep, Suguru.” His mother leaves. The lights go dark once more.

Suguru stands in place, staring out into the dark. Slowly, he lifts a hand to his throat. The repulsive aftertaste is filling his lungs like smoke, and there’s something alive under his skin that wasn’t there before.

The Suguru who woke up paralyzed is not the same Suguru now standing in his bedroom.

Suguru needs water. Or something to wash away the bitterness lingering on his tongue. But he won’t risk leaving his room now.

He crawls back into his bed and stares at the ceiling for an hour, trying to will away the sense of wrongness and the taste of evil.

— —

Suguru doesn’t sleep well the following week, but he rarely does, so he tries his best to just ignore the tiredness eating away at him. He falls asleep hours past sunset and wakes up when the sky is still dark. He peers into the dark of his room, waiting for another beady-eyed monster to make an appearance, but nothing else comes.

He’s starting to think that maybe it really was nothing but a bad dream - that his mother was right and it was his own restless mind that concocted a vision of a monster that never really existed. It didn’t feel like any nightmare he’s ever had before, but when he mentioned waking up and being unable to move at school, one of the other kids had dropped the term sleep paralysis, which comes with monsters that aren’t really there.

(Monsters with glowing red eyes who disappear when parents come to the rescue, who leave behind remnants that cannot be seen by anyone except the mind that made it up in the first place.)

(But…Suguru escaped his sleep paralysis, and the monster was still there.)

He tries his best to forget about it, because no one else seems to think the creature could have possibly been real, so it’s easier for Suguru to just pretend he agrees. It’s easier to just shove the memory of the creature where it can’t reach him until he convinces himself that everyone else is right and it couldn’t possibly have been real. It’s easier if Suguru didn’t see something that isn’t visible to anyone else.

Unfortunately, the creature doesn’t stay away forever.

No, that would have been too simple. That would mean Suguru was allowed to live a normal life, but a normal life is something that was never in the cards for him.

He wakes with all his limbs locked up again, his mind somewhere halfway between sleep and wakefulness. The shadows on his walls are dancing around him like the sea anemones he saw at the aquarium in Okinawa three years ago. He can hear whispers to words he can’t make out and something that sounds like the rushing water of a river. He thinks, maybe, vaguely, he remembers already waking up once this morning.

How fitting that once he was finally allowed to drift back to sleep after waking up once, he was thrust into this in-between world where he can’t move and everything around him is a hundred times more threatening than it normally is.

He tries to steady his breathing, but the fear running through his mind doesn’t leave him much space to concentrate on calming down. He doesn’t want to have to deal with another monster like last time. Because if it really was just a sleep paralysis hallucination, then another monster is going to show up soon, right?

And if it was real—

If it was real, that means nothing is really going to show up now. And somehow, that’s almost worse. If Suguru spends the rest of his life waking up paralyzed and he never sees another creature like that first one, that means it was real and he was right and everyone else was wrong and monsters really exist and he’s going to spend forever wondering and and and an

The white noise buzzing all around him increases in volume and Suguru still can’t move. His arms are so heavy and his legs are so heavy and he wants to call out for help, but his mouth won’t even open so all he can do is repeat the call in his head, as if somehow his parents will be able to hear him telepathically calling out for them.

Help, help, help, HELP ME!!

He just needs someone else to move his limbs for him, to snap him out of this. He knows it’s impossible that his arms are really as heavy as his brain is making them feel. He just needs an outsider to intervene. He needs help. He needs someone to help him. He needs—

The air in the room shifts.

(He needs a friend.)

Something that looks vaguely like a cat jumps onto Suguru’s bed. He wants to flinch away from it, but he’s still unable to move. His heartbeat picks up in his chest, and he’s not sure if he’s hyperventilating or unable to breathe at all as the creature slowly steps closer to him.

Suguru braces himself for scratching or biting or death-by-monster-under-the-bed, but it never comes.

Instead, the creature nudges one of Suguru’s legs. Gently. Like he’s…

Like…he’s doing exactly what Suguru wanted someone to do: Move one of his limbs for him so his brain realizes that they aren’t immobile.

Before Suguru’s leg can lock up again, he starts wiggling it around himself, and it’s enough to calm himself. If he has one leg back under his control, then he’s sure he could take back control of the rest of his body if need be.

(But he’s so tired.)

His eyes droop.

(So tired.)

He tries to mumble a thanks to the monster under his bed, but he’s unsure whether his lips even move or not. Either way, the monster seems to understand. It situates itself at the foot of Suguru’s bed like a guard dog keeping watch. If any mean monsters come for Suguru, he’ll have someone to protect him.

He’ll have…

(He’s so so so tired.)

…a friend.

His eyes slip shut, and sleep takes him back under.

— —

When Suguru is finally dragged back into consciousness, his sleep paralysis episode feels far away and unreal, like it happened to some other person. He rubs his eyes and sits up, looking for the time, assuming that the return of the creature he’d seen the first time (because it was the same one, right?) meant that it really was just some sleep paralysis demon. Not a mean one, thankfully, but a creation of Suguru’s own mind all the same.

His eyes sweep over to his clock, and it takes him a split second too long to realize what is wrong with his bedroom.

His gaze jumps back to the foot of his bed, eyes going wide. He bites his lip to stop himself from making any noise that might alert his parents he’s awake and not following the being quiet rule.

Because there, sitting right where it was before Suguru slipped back into sleep, is the creature that Suguru let everyone convince him was a hallucination.

“Hello?” Suguru whispers.

The creature turns and looks at him. It blinks. It doesn’t say anything.

“You came back.”

The creature shifts and then slowly begins making its way across the bed and over to Suguru. Suguru backs away from it, but he’s backed himself up against the wall, and there’s nowhere else to run. He hugs his knees close to his chest and tries to slow his breaths. Maybe it can sense fear. Maybe it’ll leave him alone if he’s not afraid.

It sits down right in front of Suguru and blinks up at him.

“What do you want?” Suguru hisses at it. “Everyone told me you weren’t real!”

“Sleeeeep,” The creature groans.

“Yeah, I want sleep too!” He pokes the creature with his foot. “But neither one of us is getting it.” He crosses his arms and narrows his eyes at the creature.

The creature does not move.

Nothing Suguru does or says seems to deter it. Rude. Why won’t it just—

The creature disappears, leaving behind only a wisp of dark smoke that dissipates within seconds.

(Why won’t it just go away?!)

“What?” Suguru hears himself say, louder than he’d intended to. He covers his mouth with his hand. It shouldn’t have been loud enough to wake his parents, but it’s hard to tell sometimes.

Slowly, he lowers his hand. “Where’d you go?” he whispers. How can something just vanish into thin air? Does that mean it wasn’t ever there to begin with? Is Suguru really just seeing things?

If…if it disappeared right when Suguru was thinking he wanted it to go away…

(Didn’t it appear again only when Suguru was pleading for help?)

Okay…so maybe…

“Come back,” Suguru whispers. “I want you to come back.”

The creature appears, like it’s climbing out of some pocket dimension Suguru can’t see or get to, and sits in front of Suguru once more, like it’s waiting for its next order.

Suguru breaks into a toothy grin. He lunges forward and grabs the creature, wrapping his arms around it, hugging it like it’s a pet or a stuffed animal. Whatever this creature is can’t be completely imaginary because Suguru can touch it and hold it. You can’t do that with hallucinations, right?

Somehow, someway, this creature is real. And it seems to not hold any hostility towards Suguru. And, just like Suguru, the creature must be having trouble with sleep. That’s what it’s asked for both times Suguru has seen it. Which means……

Suguru has a friend!!

— —

Suguru learns the rules about the creature pretty quickly:

It will come and leave when he asks it to.

It seems to understand him, though it doesn’t say many words itself.

Suguru is the only one who can see it.

He supposes, perhaps, the creature is no different from the imaginary friends that the other kids at his school have talked about. Maybe everyone can see and touch their own imaginary friend, and it just took Suguru a while before he got his. Or maybe imaginary friends only show up the first time when you need them the most.

Regardless, he knows it’s best that his parents can’t see his new friend. He knows full well he’s not allowed to have a pet, and his friend would fall into the pet category, even if it isn’t really an animal.

(Well…maybe it is? Suguru still isn’t quite sure about that.)

If his parents can’t see it, they can’t make him get rid of it. And if his parents can’t make him get rid of it, then Suguru finally has someone else who will keep him company when he’s up before the sun. He doesn’t have to be alone anymore.

He doesn’t have to be alone anymore.

And really, that’s all he ever wanted. He doesn’t need to be able to fall back asleep - that was never his issue with waking up so early. His issue was that he was the only one waking up so early.

But now his restless mind has a restless friend, and Suguru thinks that this is what hope tastes like.

ii. body

Suguru rises with the sun.

The first rays of sunlight are only just beginning to filter in through his window, an early June sunrise meeting Suguru as his eyes blink open.

He grins.

He shoots up out of bed, and with hardly a blink, he’s got several creatures curses following him out of his room and into the kitchen. He’s only collected a handful of weak curses over the years - Yaga-sensei had told him all grade 3 or lower, whatever that means - but he’s grown quite fond of them. They’ve kept him company all these years alone.

And now, and now!

And now, he isn’t going to be alone anymore. And now, he knows that these creatures are cursed spirits and he isn’t the only one who can see them and there are other people out there who live in this world Suguru has only ever caught glimpses of.

(He wonders if waking early is a Sorcerer Thing, like being able to see the curses. Yaga hadn’t explained much to him, but that seems a little too hopeful.)

Still, Suguru won’t be alone after the sun has climbed high enough that the rest of the world begins to crawl into consciousness.

He flicks the stove on, sliding around the kitchen in his socks. Today, he doesn’t care about being chastised for causing a commotion making breakfast so early. By noon, he’ll be on a train to Tokyo, and maybe he’ll just never come back.

One of the curses gets out a pan, one gets food from the fridge, and one opens the curtains to let the sunrise in.

It’s beautiful.

The sky is streaked with oranges and pinks, clouds reflecting the sun as they lazily drift through the morning air. Sunrise hasn’t looked like this since Suguru was a kid, still enthralled by the loneliness of early mornings instead of dragged down by it.

Today, Suguru’s life starts anew.

Today, it isn’t his mind that is restless but his body. He hums along to a song playing in his head, tapping his fingers against the counter and probably not paying as much attention to the cooking food as he should.

Generally, when Suguru makes himself breakfast in the morning, he’s careful. He’ll only let two of the curses out at most, he’ll keep an attentive eye on the food, and he’ll do his best to stay as quiet as possible.

But this morning, he’s full of energy, and any punishment his parents could dole out won’t last beyond noon.

Noon.

Suguru glances over at the clock. 4:43.

So that’s…seven hours and seventeen minutes until noon, and probably (hopefully) less than six hours until they leave for the train station! Seven hours and seventeen minutes until everything changes. Seven hours and seventeen minutes until Suguru starts the next chapter of his life. Seven hours and—

Suguru checks the clock again.

Seven hours and sixteen minutes until nothing will ever be the same.

Suguru has never been more ready.

— —

It takes approximately one week for Suguru to discover that none of the students in his year have much luck with sleep. Ieiri can’t fall asleep, Suguru can’t stay asleep, and Gojo’s sleep “schedule” is just him catching a few hours at a time whenever he feels like it.

Suguru’s first morning on campus, he wakes at sunrise and decides to wander the halls of the dorm building. He finds Gojo in the kitchen, eating ice cream directly out of the container. They stare at each other for a moment before Gojo asks, “Want some?”

And some sort of friendship is born out of early morning ice cream.

A few days later, he’s up before the sun and he thinks it’ll probably be one of those nights where he needs to occupy himself for an hour or two until his eyes grow heavy again, and he’ll fall back asleep into a sleep paralysis episode. He decides to get some fresh air, only to find Ieiri outside with a cigarette between her lips. He asks how she managed to get cigarettes, she says she’s not going to share her secrets. She asks if he couldn’t fall asleep either and Suguru tells her that he had no problem falling asleep; he’s just already woken up.

And some sort of friendship is born in the two a.m. cigarette smoke.

So even on the mornings where Suguru finds himself wandering around without finding a friend, he still doesn’t feel so lonely. He’s no longer allowed to bring out any of his curses to keep him company, but he’ll gladly exchange that for the knowledge that he isn’t alone. He’ll give that up for laughing with Gojo and Ieiri, for learning to fight, for learning about this world he’s lucky enough to be a part of, for the fact that he now has not one but two friends, and they’re actual people instead of cursed spirits.

This morning, Suguru finds himself alone in the kitchen. He still stays as quiet as he can, because he doesn’t know when Ieiri and Gojo fell asleep and the last thing he wants to do is sabotage a blossoming friendship by waking them up. But he’s allowed to turn the light on without fearing retribution, and the kitchen is far enough away from all the occupied bedrooms that he doesn’t have to be nearly as careful as he did at home.

He’s no longer restricted to sitting in his bedroom in the dark for hours on end, waiting for the sun to rise so he can respect the Don’t turn the lights on so early rule. Because here, no one cares what time Suguru wakes up. As long as he shows up to training and classes when he’s expected, he can wake up whenever he wants. He can start his day hours before everyone else. He can shower, eat breakfast, and still have time to walk aimlessly around campus before he actually has to do anything school-related.

He decides, with all his extra time and the fact that his curses can no longer keep him company, he should probably find a hobby. Maybe learn something new. But he doesn’t even know where to start.

For the first time in his life, he can do just about anything. But the freedom is overwhelming and there’s comfort in limiting himself to only what he could have done at home.

That is, until Gojo drags him and Ieiri out shopping on one of their free days. He pulls them into a bookstore, which Suguru finds odd, because he has never once seen Gojo read anything beyond the ingredients on bags of candy.

Even Ieiri says, “A bookstore? I didn’t know you could read,” as they step inside.

Gojo flips her off and then prances away, leaving Suguru and Ieiri alone without so much as a hint to why they’re here or which section he wanted to look at.

Ieiri huffs and rolls her eyes. “He’s obnoxious.”

“Yeah,” Suguru agrees, his eyes still lingering on the last place Gojo could be seen before disappeared between bookshelves. Ieiri isn’t wrong, but there’s something enthralling about Gojo all the same. There’s something hidden behind the glasses, something underneath the facade he puts up, and Suguru kind of wants to figure it out.

“I’m gonna go look at the books,” Suguru says.

“Whatever.” Shoko pulls her phone from her pocket and flips it open. Suguru has no idea what she’s intending to do to pass the time (Does she have friends from before transferring to Jujutsu High that she’s still in contact with? She’s never mentioned anyone else.) but he also doesn’t really care.

He weaves through the bookshelves in search of Gojo, but he stops when something catches his eye. One of the endcap displays has a collection of books about outer space, and the one in the center pulls Suguru’s attention away from his original goal. The cover is midnight blue with a silver design engraved into the cover, weaving together the characters in the title and spiraling out towards the edges..

As if in a trance, Suguru reaches out for the book and picks it up. He starts flipping through the pages, eyes flicking past every diagram of the night sky. He always thought it would be fun to learn about the constellations, but his parents didn’t share his interest in the night sky.

(Of course, they didn’t spend their younger years waking up early enough that the faraway stars were their only friends.)

He could ask Gojo or Ieiri what they know about the stars, but Suguru sort of gets the feeling they are also not quite as interested in outer space as he is. So he’s still stuck with no one to teach him the constellations—

He blinks.

He flips back to one of the diagrams.

He doesn’t need someone else to teach him the constellations; he can just buy a book that will give him the same information. He can teach himself the constellations, and then next time he finds Ieiri or Gojo awake at the same time he is, he can tell them about what he’s learned.

There’s no one on campus who will stop Suguru from climbing onto the roof so he can stargaze at four in the morning. There’s no one to talk him out of buying books that will teach him about the stars, no one to say that it’s stupid and he should just focus on trying to fall back asleep instead of giving himself an excuse to stay awake.

(Okay, well, Ieiri might say it’s stupid. But she won’t really care.)

He’s still stuck flipping through pages and staring at the star charts when a hand claps him on the shoulder.

Suguru jumps as Gojo says, “Whatcha lookin’ at?” He plucks the book out of Suguru’s hands. “Oooh, stars!”

“Hey, give that back!” Suguru orders once his brain has finally processed what’s happening. He lunges towards Gojo, but Gojo just laughs and holds the book high enough that Suguru can’t reach it.

(Why does he have to be so damn tall?!)

“What, can’t reach?” Gojo taunts. “Maybe you should stop eating curses; they say that stunts your growth.”

Suguru is about to bite out an insult, but then he realizes something. They’re not on campus, which means there’s no cursed spirit detection alarms to save Gojo here.

With a flick of his wrist, one of Suguru’s curses materializes behind Gojo and grabs the book from his hand. It’s a relatively new one, and Suguru’s favorite part about it so far is how tall it is. Taller than him, and, most importantly, taller than Gojo.

“What—?” Gojo turns around. “You can’t do that here!”

Suguru rolls his eyes as the curse hands him the book back before fading into the shadows. “It’s not like anyone else can see it.”

“Still. You know the rule - no cursed techniques where non-sorcerers could see if it isn’t necessary.”

Suguru shrugs. “Do you see Yaga-sensei here to enforce that rule?”

“No, but—”

“What about the mysterious higher ups? Do they have access to all the security cameras in every store in Tokyo?”

“Well, no. But—”

“So what’s the problem?”

Gojo opens his mouth, but then snaps it shut again before he says anything. He crosses his arms and pouts at Suguru, and Suguru has to bite back a laugh. “It’s just wrong.”

“Maybe for you bigshot sorcerer families.” Suguru turns away. “But I don’t care.”

“Well, you should!”

“Why?”

“...What?”

Suguru glances back at him. “Why should I care? Our job is to save all these people from curses, right? So they should be able to put up with me summoning a cursed spirit to help me out in public every once in a while. It’s only fair.” He turns to the space books again, keeping the one Gojo tried to steal from him tucked firmly under one arm. He has enough money to buy another if he wants, so he might as well skim the rest of the display to see if anything else interests him.

“I don’t like you,” Gojo tells him decisively.

Suguru’s shoulders tense. “I don’t need you to like me,” he says, but he means Sorry, I didn’t mean to argue; I’m just not very good at making friends.

“But—”

“But what?!” (Suguru hates his scathing tone - he’s just making it worse, making everything worse. He’s one wrong word away from sinking back into the loneliness he had before coming to Tokyo.)

“But I’m the strongest,” he practically whines.

Suguru turns on him. “I’m a special grade too, you know. You’re no stronger than I am.”

Gojo pulls his glasses off his face, like that’s supposed to scare Suguru. Like either one of them would be willing to have a battle to prove who’s strongest in the middle of a bookstore.

“You—” Gojo blinks.

“What?” Suguru asks irritably.

“You’re red.”

“Huh?”

He shoves his glasses back onto his face and turns away, muttering something under his breath and leaving Suguru with exactly zero answers.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised, honestly.

Whatever. He doesn’t need Gojo to explain himself. He needs Gojo to quit being so obnoxious, and while he’s busy talking to himself about why Suguru is red, he’s not annoying Suguru anymore and Suguru can finish examining the books on outer space for ones he might want to buy.

He lasts about a minute and a half before he turns back to Gojo and kicks his shin. “Why am I red?”

Gojo twirls back around, his glasses having slid far enough down on his nose that Suguru can see how wide his eyes are. The shocked expression quickly hardens as he crosses his arms. “I’m not telling.”

Suguru purses his lips. Gojo not taking an opportunity to brag about his cursed technique? Yeah, right.

“You don’t know.”

“Of course I know!”

“Then tell me.”

“Probably ‘cause you were mad. You’re not red anymore.”

Suguru rolls his eyes. He figures there’s at least a 50% chance Gojo is lying, but he hasn’t spent enough time around the other boy to figure out all of his tells yet.

He’ll get there, though.

“Are you two done yet?” Ieiri’s voice interrupts. Apparently Suguru and Gojo both were too wrapped up in their own argument to notice her approach them. “I want to go literally anywhere else.”

“I don’t know, ask space boy if he’s done looking at his nerd books.” Gojo elbows him.

“You made us come in here!”

“Yeah, ‘cause I saw you longingly staring at the entrance.”

Suguru blinks. “What?”

Gojo’s eyes widen. “I, um—”

“Oh my God,” Ieiri says. “I’m going to the shop next door. Come find me when you figure yourselves out.” And with that, she disappears just as suddenly as she showed up.

“You just…” Gojo scratches the back of his neck. “You looked like you wanted to come in here, but I figured you weren’t gonna say anything, so I thought maybe if I said I wanted to go look at the books, you would…I don’t know.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m not good at making friends.”

Suguru smiles, and then a laugh spills out.

He slaps a hand over his mouth, not wanting Gojo to think he’s laughing at him.

(Too late, if the way Gojo’s eyes narrow at him is any indication.)

“I’m no good at making friends either,” Suguru tells him. “My only friends before I came here were cursed spirits.”

Gojo cracks a smile. “My only friends were people I was forced to get along with because they were from the other big sorcerer families.”

Suguru breathes out a sigh of relief. “Thanks for asking to come in here.”

Gojo beams at him.

(And some sort of friendship is born for two boys unfamiliar with having friends.)

— —

The next morning, Suguru wakes up shortly after four. He doesn’t even bother trying to fall back asleep. Instead, he grabs his books about the stars and a flashlight, and he heads up to the roof.

Despite the fact that he actually has something to do now - a goal to work towards, stars to discover - he feels oddly alone. Figuring out which stars he can see this morning is nice, and it gives his restless body something to do besides pace, but he thinks it would be nicer if he had someone else to talk to. He’s used to having a curse at his side to talk at, but that isn’t allowed here.

He thinks, maybe, he’d like it if Satoru were with him.

He frowns. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to leave loneliness behind, but now that he’s experienced friendship with both Satoru and Ieiri, he just craves a companion even more.

Actually, he thinks, what he’s wishing for isn’t really a friend to keep him company in the mornings.

For the first time since he was little, he’s yearning for the impossibility of being able to fall back asleep. Any time he actually managed to fall back asleep before coming to Tokyo, he would inevitably wake up sleep paralyzed. And when he could have a curse or two guarding him, the sleep paralysis was worth the extra hour or two of sleep he could manage.

But he got reliant on the curses. They became a sort of safety blanket, and now that he can’t have that protection from the invisible monsters his mind might conjure, he’s too afraid to let himself fall back asleep in the mornings.

So he can’t fall back asleep, meaning he can’t hope to train himself to sleep in. Meaning he always falls asleep at night earlier than Satoru and Ieiri, meaning—

He’s just afraid of being left behind.

He rubs his eyes. It’s not that big of a deal, really. Satoru and Ieiri don’t care what time he falls asleep or what time he wakes up. They’ve got sleep issues of their own, and Suguru knows they must want him to be able to get enough sleep because he wants the same thing for them.

But when they’re awake together hours after Suguru has fallen asleep, Suguru worries that he’ll miss out on the friendship he so desperately wants to be part of.

It’s fine, though.

He might not have his curses or Ieiri and Satoru with him, but he’ll learn the names of the stars and the constellations, and he’ll allow the night sky to keep him company.

— —

“You know,” Satoru says, “you’re not very quiet when you sneak out in the mornings.”

“I don’t sneak out.” Suguru turns to look at him. “Sneaking out implies I don’t want anyone to know. Everyone knows I wake up this early.” He looks back to find Satoru dressed in his pajamas, sunglasses hooked over his shirt collar instead of on his face. “How’d you even know I was here?”

“I followed you.” He stretches his arms out and then plops down next to Suguru. “I already said: You aren’t quiet when you leave. I can hear your door shut.”

“Oh.” Suguru looks down. “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I usually just roll over and fall right back asleep.”

“I’m going to push you off the roof.”

Satoru laughs, and Suguru can’t suppress the smile that makes its way onto his own face. He came up onto the roof like he’s been doing most mornings since he first decided to teach himself about the stars. And he’d expected to be alone - he’s gotten used to the loneliness again now.

But he can’t be mad about Satoru following him. He likes spending time with Satoru.

“Do you ever go back to sleep when you wake up at some ungodly hour of the morning?” Satoru asks. “Or do you just open your eyes and immediately decide it’s time to start the day?”

Suguru huffs.

“Touchy subject. My bad.”

Suguru shoves him. “It’s not that I don’t want to go back to sleep; it’s that I physically can’t,” he explains. He’s sure Satoru will just pretend to listen, because no one really believes Suguru when he tells them that he has tried laying in bed for hours upon hours with only the occasional sleep paralysis episode to show for it. “I’ve tried. Generally, it doesn’t work. Even when I have fallen back asleep, it’s taken at least an hour of being awake, and it’s always resulted in sleep paralysis.”

Satoru winces. “Like…you can’t move? At all? Do you see demons and stuff?”

Suguru shakes his head. “The closest I’ve gotten was seeing a curse the first couple times it happened. Sometimes there’ll be shadows, or just splotches of darkness. The only vivid hallucinations I’ve gotten have been auditory ones. People talking, music, rain, TV static, stuff like that. But it’s…really not fun being unable to move.”

“It doesn’t sound fun.”

“So that’s why I just come up here and look at the stars instead.” Suguru doesn’t mention that he’d probably take his chances with the sleep paralysis if he were back home with his curses standing guard. When he’s not falling into a panic attack over the fact that he can’t move, he’s usually able to shake himself out of the paralysis.

But the trick to getting out of it is not panicking, and Suguru doesn’t trust himself to do that without any sort of protection from the monsters his mind could conjure. Even though he knows that sleep paralysis demons aren’t real and they can’t hurt him, there’s something about not being in control of his own body that leaves every nerve in Suguru’s body seized by fear.

“That makes sense,” Satoru concedes. “So what’s your favorite constellation you’ve been able to see so far?”

Suguru almost misses the Satoru’s constellation question, because—

Well, because he’s not sure anyone’s ever believed that Suguru isn’t overexaggerating his sleep issues. But Satoru didn’t leave any clues that he was writing Suguru off as crazy or a liar.

It’s nice.

“Uh…” Suguru blinks. “Okay…well, right now, the dragon constellation is almost right above us. That’s definitely one of my favorites.” Suguru points, tracing it out with his finger. He looks over to see if Satoru is looking in the right place, but he finds Satoru’s gaze isn’t even pointed upwards - he’s still looking at Suguru.

“Do you want to know about constellations or not?”

“Sorry! Yeah, show me the dragon constellation.” He looks up. “You said directly above us?”

“Not quite.” Suguru points again. “Right there. There’s a trapezoid sort of shape, and then the tail curves around the little dipper.”

“I see it, I see it!” Satoru points too. “Yeah, yeah! There’s the little dipper, and there’s the trail of stars that goes around it!”

Now it’s Suguru’s turn to look at the boy next to him instead of the stars. He lets his eyes roam over Satoru’s gleeful grin and the way the darkness turns his usually bright eyes to pools of dark blue.

He doesn’t realize it yet, but this is the tipping point that pushes him off the precipice and into the infinity that is Satoru Gojo.

“Show me more!” Satoru exclaims, his eyes meeting Suguru’s.

Suguru nods. “Okay.” He cracks open one of his books so he can show Satoru the charts that connect the constellations as well as the actual stars in the sky. He flips his flashlight on and turns the book so Satoru can see it. “Which do you want me to show you first?”

— —

Suguru doesn’t mean to fall back asleep.

The weather is changing, and it’s cold enough that he doesn’t really feel like going outside this morning, so he just walks a couple laps around the dorm building to tire out his ever-restless body before collapsing into his bed again. His plan is not to fall back asleep.

But he woke up before three this morning, and his morning walk hardly passed more than thirty minutes. He almost summons one of his curses to talk to, until he remembers he can’t unless he leaves campus. And leaving campus means going outside into the cold.

So he lays in bed and thinks about the mission Yaga has set up for him and Satoru, and that leads to thinking about Satoru, which leads to thinking about the stars, which leads to…

Suguru’s eyes slip shut.

He doesn’t mean to fall back asleep. He specifically did not want to fall back asleep. But it’s almost four o’clock and Suguru is so bored and his body and mind have both finally finally finally settled and closing his eyes for just a moment can’t be all that bad.

Sleep tugs at his body, his limbs half-freezing up until Suguru jostles them around just enough to prevent paralysis.

But with each wiggle of his arm, each shake of his leg, each time he curls his hand into a fist and then relaxes it again, his body gets heavier. Sleep tugs harder, until it locks him in the liminal in-between.

And then Suguru’s restless body is frozen, weighed down by iron bones, no longer under his control. Suguru is reduced to mind and soul, unable to reclaim the body he lives in, and left entirely vulnerable to attack.

Fear grabs hold of him, wrapping itself around his throat and cutting off his breath. It reaches into his chest and squeezes his heart. It flows through his veins, setting him alight with terror, and still, he remains unable to move.

Still, his own body will not listen to him.

He tries to focus on his breathing, on slowing down each breath, but it seems even control of his lungs has been ripped away from him. If he can’t prevent hyperventilation, he can’t ease himself out of the panic, and if he can’t do that, he’s never going to be able to free himself.

He’s stuck, he’s stuck, he’s trapped and vulnerable, he’s on the edge of something something something some tipping point, tipping into a world of monsters that only he can see and demons who will come for him when he can’t defend himself.

Why won’t his body just move? Why can’t he focus long enough to snap himself out of it? Why won’t they let any of his curses protect him, why why why why wh

Darkness closes in on him.

In the back of his mind, he can hear the muffled TV static and the whisper of something sinister.

He tries yanking his arm back under his control, but his mind is buzzing too loudly to allow him enough concentration. It takes everything Suguru has in order to regain control, but he can’t put all of his willpower towards that when he has to keep an eye out for monsters, has to regulate his breathing, has to deal with the pounding in his chest, has to deal with the noises in his mind, has to—

He can’t get out of it, he can’t get out of it.

There’s too much too much too much and he’s so, so, afraid. If anyone asked him, he’d deny it, but he’s afraid and he wishes he were at home and he wishes he were still young enough that his mother would allow him to crawl into bed with her and tell him that it was just a nightmare and everything is going to be okay and

and

and

and what do you do when home is a time you’ve aged past and what do you do when the only person who would help you is just a wall away, sleeping peacefully and unknowing and what do you do when you can’t escape and what do you do when your mind and body are at war, leaving you caught in the middle and unable to move?

What do you do, what can Suguru do?

The only thing that has brought him enough peace to snap out of sleep paralysis isn’t allowed here.

He’s alone.

He’s alone.

He’s alone and trapped and he’s going to die here in his dorm room in Tokyo and he’s never going to see his parents again and he’s never going to see Satoru or Shoko again and he’s never going to have a full night of sleep and he’s never going to get better and

and

and there is a solution that will make everyone mad at him.

Suguru cannot move, but he doesn’t need to move in order to summon one of his curses. He doesn’t need his body; all he needs is his mind. He can summon a curse for protection, and then he can relax enough to shake himself out of sleep paralysis.

He can summon a curse, and the alarms will start sounding and wake up everyone on campus.

Or he can lay here on the edge of insanity for as long as it takes to ride out this everlasting panic attack, waiting for his mind to snap and conjure some monster just to make everything worse.

(Suguru has never been on the best terms with his own mind.)

(Clearly.)

He’s going to regret this when he wrestles his body out of paralysis.

He feels the cursed spirit appear, the first one he ever took in, though he doesn’t actually see it because he can’t turn his head. Just knowing it’s there is enough, though. It means that Suguru doesn’t have to monitor his room and keep an eye out for sleep paralysis illusions, and it means that he isn’t completely defenseless. He has protection, he has a lookout, and now he can pour all of his energy into pulling his body back into his control.

He takes a deep breath and focuses on his arm. This will work best if he can just move his entire arm at once instead of focusing on one finger at a time.

He counts to three, and then yanks, successfully moving his arm from its position. Once it’s free, he keeps moving it back and forth just enough that it won’t freeze up again, and then his soul settles itself back into his body. His eyes slip shut as the fear seeps away, and he thinks that maybe he’ll be able to get a bit more sleep—

A blaring noise jolts him out of the content he’d begun to sink into.

Oh. Right.

He summoned a cursed spirit without prior permission.

So sleep won’t happen, but at least he isn’t paralyzed anymore.

Now he has to go admit that the alarm is going off because his mind and body hate each other, and the only way Suguru could fix it was by summoning one of his curses to calm himself.

Great.

— —

“I hate you,” Shoko tells him. “I am never going to forgive you for this. We aren’t friends anymore.”

Suguru purses his lips. That’s fair, he supposes.

“I think it’s funny,” Satoru pipes up from the other side of Shoko.

Yaga sighs deeply and Suguru winces. Yaga already sent the older students back to their rooms, but Satoru refused to leave because he “wanted to be Suguru’s moral support while he got yelled at”. And Shoko shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever he said.”

(So he knows however angry she is, it isn’t really enough to ruin their friendship.)

“Setting off the alarms in the middle of the night is not funny, Satoru.”

“I didn’t even do it!”

“Suguru isn’t the one claiming it’s funny.”

Satoru pouts and crosses his arms. Maybe he’s less here for moral support and more here to see if he can split Suguru’s punishment with him. Which doesn’t make any sense to Suguru, but whatever. He doesn’t control Satoru and he isn’t going to try.

Yaga turns to Suguru. “Tell me again why you thought it was necessary to summon a curse at four in the morning.”

Suguru twists his hands together and looks at the ground. “Sleep paralysis?” It comes out sounding more like a question than he intends.

“Sleep paralysis,” Yaga repeats.

“It’s freaky!” Satoru injects. “He can’t move his body at all! You would want a cursed spirit to protect you if that happened to you too.”

Shoko nods and hums in agreement.

Yaga just glares at them.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru tells Yaga. “I didn’t mean to fall back asleep. Usually I don’t have any problem staying awake. I think I was just bored this morning.”

Yaga raises an eyebrow. “What time did you wake up this morning?”

“Three?”

“And you were going to just stay awake?”

“Well, yeah. I always wake up early and I can almost never fall back asleep. The times I do, I get sleep paralysis, which I didn’t want to happen because…” Suguru gestures vaguely.

Yaga stares at Suguru for several very long moments, and Suguru shifts nervously. Yaga can’t get him in trouble for waking up so early, right? Suguru really hopes he can’t enforce a Stay in your dorm until 7 rule. Suguru’s parents can trap him in his dark bedroom, but he didn’t think Yaga would be able to do that. He came to Tokyo to escape the iron fist his parents had over his mornings.

(Well, he came to Tokyo to be a sorcerer. But the freedom from his parents was a pretty big influence when he made his decision.)

“I am going to talk with some people,” he says, “and then you and I will talk later. Alone.” He shoots a pointed look at Satoru and Shoko.

Shoko shrugs.

Satoru crosses his arms. “But that’s not fair! You can’t get him in trouble for one slip up. We don’t even know if he really meant to summon the curse or not. Maybe it happened accidentally because he was sleep paralyzed. Maybe—”

“Satoru.”

Satoru snaps his mouth shut.

“I never said anything about him being punished.”

Suguru breathes out a sigh of relief. Maybe Yaga just wants to hear him explain things again without Satoru interrupting. That’s probably it. And he probably wants to go back to sleep right now. Because Suguru knows that probably (hopefully) everyone besides him will be able to fall back asleep.

The one hurt most by the alarm going off is going to be Suguru. He is, as always, his own worst enemy.

“You two,” Yaga points at Satoru and Shoko, “try to get some more sleep. And you,” he turns to Suguru, “just…don’t summon any more cursed spirits for now.”

Suguru nods.

Apparently satisfied with the lack of argument, Yaga turns and leaves.

“You owe me a pack of cigarettes,” Shoko tells Suguru as soon as Yaga is out of earshot.

“I’m fifteen; I can’t buy cigarettes.”

“Just give me the money. I have one of the fourth years buy them for me.”

Suguru sighs. “Fine.” He’s sure Shoko would let him off the hook if he argued longer, but he does feel worst about waking her up since he knows she has trouble falling asleep. Giving her money for a pack of cigarettes is the least he can do. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow. Or— later today, I guess.”

“Good.” She flicks the back of his head. “G’night, losers.” And with that, she disappears away to her room.

Suguru lets his gaze drift over to Satoru, who is staring at him intently.

“What?” Suguru demands.

Satoru shakes his head. “Nothing. What d’you wanna do?”

Suguru blinks. “Huh?”

“Well, obviously you can’t go back to sleep, so I figured I could help keep you awake. We could play a game or bake a cake or something. Whatever you want.”

“I want you to go back to sleep.”

Satoru’s expression drops.

“I already woke you up,” Suguru tells him. “I don’t want to keep you awake any longer than I already have.”

“But I want to stay up with you,” he insists. “I know I can’t fix your brain so it lets you sleep in, but I can help you by keeping you company this morning.”

(Infinity pulls Suguru in, and like a black hole, he finds himself unable to escape. But this prison is one he would gladly spend the rest of his life in.)

“Okay,” he whispers. “Let’s go back to my room.”

Satoru grins.

— —

Yaga allows Suguru one curse that he can summon on campus at will, without getting prior permission. They can register that one specific spirit’s cursed energy, meaning it won’t sound alarms when summoned, and Suguru can summon it if (when) he has sleep paralysis issues again.

It’s a hassle to register every new curse Suguru collects, because his collection is ever-changing. He collects more cursed spirits than he loses, but he tends to burn through the low grade ones pretty quickly while out on missions. And whoever’s in charge doesn’t want to register new cursed spirits every time Suguru returns from a mission.

But it can be done.

Which explains Yaga sending them all away - he had to talk to the higher ups about registering one of Suguru’s curses.

He picks the manta ray spirit he collected on one of his first missions - one that he, Satoru, and Shoko were all sent on. It’s a higher grade, so it’s less likely to be destroyed if he needs it while on a mission, but he doesn’t generally use it for combat.

The manta ray spirit is registered, and Suguru is told very firmly that if he abuses this privilege, it will be taken away. Instead of arguing that no one else has monitored use of their cursed techniques, Suguru simply nods and says thank you and is sent on his way.

Sleep paralysis comes again, as Suguru knew it would, but now he has protection. Lonely early mornings come again, and Suguru teaches the manta ray about the stars or tells it about his day. Time treks onward, Suguru trains and goes on missions and grows closer to Shoko and Satoru, and he and Satoru proudly claim the joint title of The Strongest.

— —

It happens at the beginning of their second year.

It’s Satoru’s idea, of course, to have a movie night to celebrate the fact that they aren’t the youngest students anymore. Suguru goes along with it because he wants to spend time with Satoru, and Shoko goes along with it because she says she has nothing better to do.

Suguru doesn’t even know the first years, really. There’s two of them, both boys, and he’s seen them around campus a couple times since they first arrived. But Suguru quite honestly doesn’t even remember their names.

He doubts Satoru or Shoko remember either, but their names aren’t what’s important. What’s important is they are now the youngest on campus instead of Suguru, Satoru, and Shoko.

So: Movie night.

Shoko picks the movie because she says that’s the only way she’ll join, and the three of them settle on the couch. Shoko curls up in one corner, Suguru sits on the opposite end, and Satoru plants himself in the middle, swinging his legs up onto Suguru’s lap.

Shoko eyes the two of them warily but doesn’t say anything as she hits play.

The movie is decent. It’s not one Suguru would have picked to watch, but there are some funny parts. Satoru falls asleep halfway through, and when Shoko notices, she shoves him off the couch.

(Suguru just watches it happen and laughs when Satoru wakes up spluttering.)

Shoko disappears as soon as the movie is over, and Satoru drags Suguru back to his room. It’s nearly midnight and Suguru knows he’ll regret staying up so late when he inevitably wakes up before seven, but he also doesn’t think he cares much right now.

“Shoko has terrible taste in movies,” Satoru says.

Suguru shrugs. “I didn’t think it was all that bad.”

“It was so boring!” Satoru strides over to his desk while Suguru plops onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Suguru hears him open a drawer, and a moment later, something lands on the bed next to Suguru, very nearly hitting him in the face.

“You really hated the movie that much?” He grumbles, sitting up. “What even is this?”

“Cards.” Satoru jumps onto the bed. “I’m gonna show you a card trick. I’ve been practicing close up magic.” He wiggles his fingers in Suguru’s face.

Suguru pushes his hand away. “You don’t need to learn magic tricks; you’ve got actual magic.”

“Just watch!”

“Fine. Whatever.”

So Satoru does card tricks and Suguru watches, and then they talk and lose track of time. The hour grows later and Suguru’s eyelids grow heavy. He lays down on Satoru’s bed, and then at some point Satoru lays down too, sleepily mumbling about how he wants to interrogate the first years just because he thinks it would be funny to watch them squirm. Suguru hums in agreement, eyes shut. Satoru’s limbs brush against his and everything feels nice and warm and cozy.

When Suguru opens his eyes next, there’s sunlight streaming in through the window.

He buries his face in his pillow, not wanting to face such bright light when he’s only just woken up. It should be illegal for the sun to rise so early—

His eyes shoot back open, and he realizes two things very quickly:

He slept in past sunrise.

His head is not on a pillow; it is on Satoru.

Slowly, carefully, Suguru detangles himself from Satoru and sits up on the bed. He runs a hand through his hair, only to be stopped by a hair tie tangled in the end of it. He winces as he yanks it out. He’ll probably need a shower to deal with that mess.

He looks down at Satoru, who is still sleeping soundly. Unsurprising, really. Suguru doesn’t know exactly how late they were up last night, but it was late enough that any normal person would sleep through breakfast.

Speaking of. Suguru knows the sun is up - Satoru didn’t close his curtains - but he doesn’t know what time it is exactly.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes as he stands up and stretches his limbs out. Sharing the small dorm bed with Satoru left him stiff, but Suguru isn’t sure he’s angry about it.

His eyes scan the room until they land on Satoru’s clock.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting - maybe sometime shortly past seven? It’s summer, so the sun rises pretty early - but he’s most certainly not expecting to see 9:12.

“What,” he whispers.

He looks back at Satoru. Maybe the real magic trick was the fact that sharing a bed with him got Suguru to sleep past nine for what might be the first time ever.

Then again, maybe it was just because they were up so late. Or maybe it would have happened if Suguru slept in the same bed as anyone. Or maybe he’s going to die at thirty-two and his midlife crisis is manifesting in the form of allowing him to sleep in.

Yeah. Those sound better than the other thing that Suguru does not want to say.

He sighs, and it turns into a yawn. He supposes he’ll have to skip breakfast today too, because he really needs to shower.

He picks Satoru’s glasses up from where they slid off of his face in the night and places them on his desk. He rummages through the desk drawers until he finds a pen and paper, scribbles a note, and leaves it on the pillow next to Satoru.

He stops by his room to grab fresh clothes and shower supplies, then makes his way to the bathroom. Tiredness is still eating away at him - he’s used to having hours of free time before he actually has to do anything in the mornings - and he nearly crashes into one of the first years.

“Sorry!” The kid says. His hair is blond and the way it’s brushed over one eye makes it look like he’s trying to be emo. His voice does not match the vibe. Neither does the blond.

“Whatever.” Suguru goes to walk past him, but he’s interrupted by—

“Aren’t those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?”

Suguru looks down at his clothes like he’s awake enough to even register what he’s wearing, and then he glares at the kid. “Why do you care?”

The kid clicks his tongue and blinks hard, and— Oh, right. Satoru said that Yaga said that one of the first years has a tic disorder. “I don’t. I just noticed.”

“Notice someone else. I don’t have time for this.” Suguru pushes past him, and if he maybe knocks into the kid a little harder than necessary, he’ll blame it on vision still blurry from sleep.

“I’m not gonna tell - t-t-tell - anyone!” The kid calls after him.

Suguru summons his manta ray to scare the kid away, and hopefully prevent the kid from talking to him in the mornings. Because apparently when he’s not getting his hours of alone time, Suguru is not a morning person.

— —

Satoru,

Your glasses are on your desk. Sorry for crashing in your room. Also do you always leave your curtains open while you sleep? How do you fall back asleep after sunrise if it’s that bright?

Anyway, see you in class!

Suguru <3

— —

Satoru walks into the classroom beaming, which makes exactly one of them. Shoko might actually be asleep, and Suguru is Struggling. He didn’t bother with drying his hair, so it’s still hanging loose and wet. He has a cup of coffee that’s almost gone and is doing exactly nothing to combat the haze his brain has been in since he woke up.

Yaga hasn’t shown up yet, which is probably for the best, because Satoru is definitely late.

“Why are you so smiley?” Shoko groans. Not asleep, then.

Satoru sits down and scoots his chair as close to Suguru as he can get. “When’d you wake up this morning?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Oof,” Shoko mumbles before promptly dropping her head back into her arms. She’ll be asleep by the time Yaga shows up.

“You complained about my curtains being open.” Satoru slams the note down onto Suguru’s desk.

“Did I?” Suguru doesn’t even remember what he wrote. He just knows he told Satoru he’d moved his glasses to the desk so he wouldn’t accidentally crush them in his sleep.

“Yep! So,” he wiggles his eyebrows, “you slept past sunrise?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What?! That’s good!”

“Mmm. Would be if I didn’t have to be here. I don’t think I can function without my extra time in the morning doing nothing.”

“But you got a decent amount of sleep,” Satoru points out. “How late did you sleep? C’mon tell me, tell me, tell me!”

Suguru sighs. “Nine. Ish.”

“Ha!” Satoru jumps up. “Now we just have to figure out the secret to making that happen. Hopefully it wasn’t the staying up late part, because that doesn’t really help. So probably I’m the magic remedy. Maybe it has to do with my cursed technique—”

“Wait,” Shoko interrupts. She looks between the two of them. “You…” She furrows her eyebrows. “Actually, never mind. I don’t wanna deal with your idiocy today.”

Before either of them can respond, the door opens.

“We’ll talk later,” Satoru says. “Oh, and thanks for the heart on the note.”

That jolts Suguru fully into the land of the living. “The what—?” He looks down at the note just in time to see that he did, in fact, draw a heart after his name before Satoru swipes it away to slip it back into his pocket.

Oh no.

Suguru was dangerously tired this morning.

“Satoru, sit at your own desk please,” Yaga instructs. Satoru does as he’s told, sliding his chair away from Suguru’s. “As you three know, the first years arrived a few days ago. Now that they’ve settled in, we’re going to do introductions so you can get to know them.”

(Why do the gods hate Suguru?)

Suguru’s gaze snaps over to the two kids he had not noticed walked into the room with Yaga - Emo Blondie and a kid with dark hair and a wide smile.

So today is going great.

(Despite everything, though, Suguru is grateful for whatever force allowed him to sleep in. He knows he would be far worse off if he were running on only four hours of sleep.)

(He won’t say it was because of Satoru, but he…won’t completely write off that possibility either.)

— —

Restless body.

Suguru rolls onto his stomach.

Restless body.

He rolls onto his side.

Restless body.

He lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling.

Restless body.

He reaches up, curls his fingers into a fist, and then spreads them out as if he’s reaching for the sky. His parents told him that it was a restless mind keeping him awake in the mornings, but Suguru thinks there’s more to it than that. Maybe that was the case when he was younger, but now, his body itches to move. To walk, to pace, to stand on its feet and make the world its own.

His restless body is just as big of a problem as his restless mind, constantly tugging him up out of bed.

Satoru had suggested they try sharing a bed again while going to bed at a decent time to see if it would help Suguru sleep in. But Suguru dodged the request, saying he wasn’t sure that would be a good idea because of how restless they both are.

(Truthfully, he’s afraid of figuring out if the one night he slept in was a fluke or not. If Satoru truly does help him sleep in, then the only cure for Suguru’s sleep issues is someone who could slip out of his hands at any moment. And if Satoru doesn’t help - if it was just some odd combination of staying up late and someone else in the room and just enough weariness in Suguru’s bones - that means it was a fluke and there’s no real hope.)

So instead of getting answers, he’s left himself with questions he’s afraid of and a body that cannot rest.

He sighs and sits up. He needs to go for a walk.

He grabs his phone and shoves it in his pocket before leaving his room, with no real destination in mind. All he knows is he can’t stay still any longer.

He doesn’t even think to check the time until he’s walking past the kitchen and hears someone. Only then does he actually look at his phone and realize that it isn’t even four yet.

Fantastic.

He hasn’t had a chance to figure out the first years’ sleep schedules yet, so it could be one of them in the kitchen, but he sort of doubts it. Emo Blondie - Nanami - seems a little too much like a stickler for rules to be raiding the kitchen at this hour, though. As for Haibara, Suguru gets the feeling that he’s a kid who actually manages to get a decent amount of sleep at normal times.

After that deduction, Suguru isn’t at all surprised to find Shoko is the one in the kitchen, unwrapping a popsicle.

Wait—

“Don’t those belong to the third years?” Suguru asks.

Shoko shrugs. Which means the answer is yes and she doesn’t care. That’s fair - if the third years notice one of their popsicles is missing, they’ll assume Satoru or Suguru is the one at fault. Or they’ll blame it on one of the first years because they’re easy targets.

Suguru sits down next to Shoko. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Shoko shrugs again. “Might’ve gotten an hour. I don’t really remember.”

Suguru nods. He understands how finicky and fleeting sleep can be, and he understands that big question mark of whether you actually managed to fall asleep or if you were just lulled into a half-sleep stupor for a little while.

“So what’s up with you and Satoru?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“You slept in the same bed and left him a note with a heart on it.” Shoko takes a bite of her popsicle (because, yeah, she’s one of those people) and raises an eyebrow at Suguru.

“We accidentally fell asleep in the same bed,” Suguru corrects, because there’s a very big difference between accidentally sharing a bed with someone and choosing to share a bed with someone.

“And the heart?”

“...I was still half asleep?”

Shoko narrows her eyes.

“There’s nothing ‘up with us’,” Suguru insists. “It was just a stupid note telling him I moved his glasses so he wouldn’t accidentally break them. Again.”

“So you haven’t done any more experimental sharing a bed to see if it helps you sleep?” She bites the popsicle again and Suguru has to look away because it’s making his teeth hurt. He doesn’t understand how she can stand the cold.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why would we?”

Shoko rolls her eyes. “Because Satoru seemed pretty open to the idea, and it gives you an excuse to be close to him.”

“Why would I want to be close to him?”

Shoko just glares at him.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Suguru lies. He knows exactly what Shoko is trying to get at and he doesn’t think he wants to hear it. He knows, he knows, but that doesn’t mean anything can come of it. It doesn’t mean it would do either of them any good if Suguru were to admit it.

“You,” she says, pointing the popsicle at Suguru, “are not a very good liar. Just tell him you like him.”

“Sleep deprivation is making you delirious.”

“Says the king of not getting enough sleep himself.” She huffs out a sigh. “He wants to help you, so at least let him try.”

Suguru looks down at his hands. “Why does he care how much sleep I get? It’s not like it’s affecting our missions or anything.”

“Because he cares about you.”

Suguru scoffs. “It’s not even that big of a deal. It’s unfortunate that I’m always up so early and physically can’t sleep in, but it’s just a thing that happens. He shouldn’t worry. No one else has.”

“That isn’t true. I worry about you getting enough sleep. Yaga was worried about you - that’s why you got your stupid manta ray registered. Satoru’s been worried about you and your sleep schedule since he met you.”

Suguru opens his mouth, and then snaps it back shut.

Maybe by No one else has, he really meant My parents never cared, so I always assume no one else does. Maybe he means he spent the first fifteen years of his life being told his sleep issues were just something he had to learn to deal with, and he dealt with them by minimizing them. By following his parents’ lead and writing them off as nothing.

Maybe his parents should have cared.

Maybe he should care.

(Maybe he should stop numbing himself to avoid the risks of feeling.)

“What?” Shoko asks.

“I…I think you might be right.”

“When am I not?”

Suguru stands up in a haze. “Thanks,” he mumbles. He doesn’t know where, exactly, he’s going, but he knows he needs to move. He needs to walk. He needs to think.

(He needs to talk to Satoru, but he won’t wake the other boy right now. They have time.)

— —

Suguru lies on Satoru’s bed, stiff, and very much regretting this. Because it’s fine for now, but when Satoru gets back to the room and gets in bed with Suguru, then it becomes a problem. Then, it becomes them choosing to share a bed. Then, it becomes Something Else.

He repeats Shoko’s words from this morning to himself: He wants to help you, so at least let him try.

The door swings open. “I’m baaaack!!”

“Oh really?” Suguru props himself up on his elbows. “I never would have guessed. I thought Nanami was the one throwing your bedroom door open.”

“You’re the worst,” Satoru declares, chucking his dirty clothes in the direction of the hamper. They do not land inside of it.

Satoru throws himself onto his bed, and Suguru just barely manages to move out of the way in time to avoid getting crushed. “What are you—?” Satoru wraps his arms around him and buries his face in Suguru’s shoulder. “Get off of me!”

“No.”

“I’m going back to my own room.”

“Okay.”

Suguru does not go back to his own room. Instead, he shrugs Satoru off of him and asks, “Seriously, what are you doing?”

“You’re so tense. Stop being tense.”

“I can’t help it.” Suguru puts a hand over Satoru’s face, turning him away. “Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?” Satoru asks, voice muffled by Suguru’s hand.

“Like— You know!”

Satoru laughs, and then he’s licking Suguru’s palm. Suguru yelps and yanks his hand back. “I’m going back to my room for real this time.” He makes to get up off the bed, but Satoru practically launches himself onto Suguru.

“No, no, I’ll stop!” He promises. “I’ll be nice to you, I swear!”

Suguru huffs. He runs a hand through Satoru’s hair, still wet from his shower. “I suppose I could stay. But you have to get up and turn the lights off, ‘cause if I have to move, I’m leaving.”

Satoru groans. “Now you’re being mean,” he grumbles, though he does turn the lights out. He tosses his glasses onto his desk and then crawls back into the bed. Suguru moves over so there’s enough room for both of them.

“You know,” Satoru says as he adjusts the blankets, “Just one more time might not be enough to see if this will actually help you sleep better or not.”

“Are you just trying to get me in your bed?” Suguru asks, because it’s dark and he thinks at this point, he doesn’t have much left to lose.

Satoru splutters and Suguru laughs at him.

“You’re the worst.” Satoru elbows him, then rests his head against Suguru’s shoulder.

It’s nice.

It puts Suguru’s body and mind both at ease.

“Satoru,” he whispers, bringing a hand up to play with his hair again.

“Suguru,” Satoru responds. It sounds like infinity, and Suguru thinks he could listen to Satoru say his name forever.

He opens his mouth, but his words get stuck in his throat. He’s afraid if he starts talking, everything he’s ever wanted to tell Satoru will spill out, and he won’t be able to stop.

So instead, he presses his lips to the top of Satoru’s head.

“Yeah,” Satoru’s voice is low. He reaches for Suguru’s hand and entwines their fingers. He brings their conjoined hands to his mouth and presses a soft kiss to Suguru’s knuckles. “Yeah. Me too.”

— —

Suguru wakes up feeling well-rested.

That doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the time. There have been mornings he’s woken up at four and felt well-rested, and there have been mornings he’s woken up at seven, groggy and hating everything in his life.

He prefers well-rested regardless of the time he wakes up, and he thinks he likes the idea that Satoru helped that happen this morning.

(He thinks he could get used to waking up next to Satoru every morning.)

Satoru, of course, is still fast asleep, one arm haphazardly thrown over Suguru’s torso and one leg hooked around Suguru’s.

This morning, though, Suguru’s body is content to stay still. He’s okay to just lie here for a little while, feeling Satoru breathe against him, enjoying the close contact while it lasts.

His phone is still in his room, so he reaches for Satoru’s and flips it open to check the time.

7:03 AM

He feels himself smile as he closes it and sets it back on Satoru’s bedside table. He looks at the sleeping boy draped across him, and the only word he can think to describe what he feels right now is a word that scares him.

But he thinks, for Satoru, he’s willing to take the risk.

For Satoru, he’s willing to do it all.

For Satoru, he lays in bed an extra hour, running his fingers through Satoru’s hair, allowing his body to rest even if he cannot fall back asleep. And when he does finally slip out of bed, careful to jostle Satoru as little as possible, he leaves behind another note.

This time, the heart after his name is purposeful.

— —

Satoru,

I woke up at seven this morning, so I suppose I should thank you for that. I’d wait for you to wake up, but I would like to eat breakfast before class.

See you later!

Suguru <3

— —

When Suguru gets to the kitchen, Shoko is staring into her coffee while Haibara talks at her and Nanami. Shoko makes eye contact with him and rolls her eyes. Nanami is eating a plain piece of bread, looking like he could fall asleep at any minute.

Suguru thinks maybe he should have just stayed with Satoru for a little while longer.

“Good morning, Geto-san!” Haibara interrupts himself to greet him with an overly cheerful smile.

Suguru is having a good day today, though, so he smiles back. “Good morning, Haibara-kun. How are you today?”

“I’m good! How are you?”

“I’m doing pretty good, thanks.” Suguru pulls Shoko’s hair as he walks by her, which earns him a smack on the arm.

“You’re eating breakfast pretty late today,” she notes.

“Mm, yeah, I took your advice.” Suguru doesn’t think he feels like actually cooking breakfast today. He peers into the coffee pot. Empty. Either Shoko’s on her second cup or one of the first years took the rest. Regardless, Suguru will just make more.

“My advice?” Shoko questions.

“Sleep advice?” Nanami asks. He clicks his tongue. “Thought you said that didn’t work on him.”

Shoko’s eyes widen as Suguru shoots a smile back at her. “If you say anything else in front of the children, I’m going to have to—”

“Woah, wait,” Suguru interrupts her. “First of all, they’re only a year younger than us. Second of all, what are you talking about?”

“You said you took my advice.”

“Yes.”

Suguru stares at Shoko. Shoko stares at Suguru. Nanami and Haibara look back and forth between them.

“So you slept in Satoru’s room again last night…” Shoko says slowly. Suguru nods - so far, he’s following along. “...And you came in here later than usual, in a good mood…”

Oh.

Oh.

Suguru wrinkles his nose. “Absolutely not. No. Wrong idea. Erase that from your mind.”

Shoko breathes out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“What?” Haibara asks, still looking frantically between the two.

Nanami puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

“I can’t believe you would think that lowly of me, Shoko.” He sighs melodramatically, grabbing the coffee grounds from the cupboard.

She scoffs. “Well, can you blame me? You’ve been head over heels for him for a year now.”

Suguru freezes.

“What?” Haibara pipes up.

“We’re leaving,” Nanami announces. Suguru turns to see him stand up, drag Haibara up by the collar of his jacket, and then tug him out of the kitchen. Haibara looks back at Suguru with wide eyes, and then he and Nanami disappear around the corner.

Shoko sips her coffee.

“I’m going to kill you,” Suguru tells her.

“Okay.” She sets the cup back down. “But was I wrong?”

Suguru glares at her.

“Come on. Who are those two going to tell? They don’t talk to the third and fourth years - they’re scared of ‘em. Not to mention anyone with eyes can see how bad you and Satoru have it for each other. I’m tired of suffering alone.”

“We didn’t even—” Suguru runs a hand through his hair. “Look, we didn’t really talk about it, okay? So don’t—”

“SUGURUUUUUU!!” Satoru bolts into the kitchen, heading straight for Suguru. Suguru barely has time to prepare himself before Satoru is wrapping his arms around him. “You slept in until seven!”

“I’ve done that without you, you know.”

“I don’t care.” Satoru breaks the hug and grins at him, and Suguru can’t help but smile back. Satoru tucks a strand of Suguru’s hair behind his ear. “You look nice with your hair down.”

“You’d see it like this more if you woke up earlier.”

Satoru pouts, and Suguru laughs at him.

Shoko clears her throat, startling Suguru out of the infinity Satoru had created around them simply by existing in close proximity to him. They both look over at her.

“I’m going to leave, and you two are going to talk. And if you don’t have things figured out between you by the next time I see you, I’m killing you both and taking the title of the Strongest for myself.” With that, she downs the rest of her coffee in one gulp and strides out of the kitchen.

Satoru laughs nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “Guess we’d better talk then, huh?”

Suguru hums in agreement.

Neither of them say anything for several long moments. Suguru isn’t really sure what to say. He’s not sure there are any words that really encapsulate how he feels, how his soul has always been drawn towards Satoru, how Satoru is the only one who can calm his restless body and mind, how Suguru would be happy if he could spend the rest of his life in Satoru’s infinity with him.

“I think,” Satoru says slowly, reaching for Suguru’s hands. “I think you are the one and only person who understands my soul.”

A laugh bubbles up in Suguru and slips through his lips. Before Satoru can take back his words, Suguru leans forward, resting his forehead against Satoru’s. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

“Okay,” Satoru breathes out. Suguru hardly lets him finish speaking before he’s sealing their lips together. It’s messy and clumsy and tastes like Satoru’s stupid bubblegum toothpaste and it’s easily the greatest moment of Suguru’s life.

Satoru laughs, and it doesn’t bode very well for kissing, but there’s something magical about Suguru feeling the laugh against his own mouth. There’s something magical in the way neither of them can stop smiling long enough to get a proper kiss in.

There’s something magical about Satoru Gojo, and Suguru wants to spend the rest of his life wrapped up in it.

— —

Satoru isn’t an instant cure-all.

Suguru still wakes up early, still has to slip out of the room to walk around campus and look at the stars. They don’t sleep in the same room every night, but more often than not, one of them crashes in the other’s room, and Suguru doesn’t mind at all.

Some days, Satoru will wake up when Suguru leaves, and Suguru will kiss his forehead and tell him to go back to sleep. Usually, Satoru listens. But occasionally, he’ll drag himself out of bed to spend the morning with Suguru. They’ll whisper as they walk and they’ll look at the stars together and Suguru will wish he could let his past self know that everything is going to be okay.

Time moves onward, and overall, Suguru starts sleeping better. He isn’t cured, but he feels well-rested more regularly these days. And it helps Satoru too - he starts falling asleep earlier so he doesn’t wake Suguru when he crashes into bed at odd hours of the night, which results in less sleeping in past noon for him.

Summer fades into fall, and Suguru, of course, finds himself up on the roof looking at the stars. He’s picked up half a habit of smoking from Shoko, though he puts it out as soon as he senses Satoru coming to join him with a sudden influx of cursed energy. He knows Satoru doesn’t like the fact that both of them smoke now.

Suguru turns to greet him, but the words die in his throat when he sees Satoru has the two first years with him.

“Are we allowed to be up here?” Haibara stage whispers to Satoru, his eyes wide.

Nanami looks like he wants to still be asleep.

“Please, we come up here all the time,” Satoru assures him. He turns to face Suguru. “I brought friends!”

“...Did they consent to being brought along?” Suguru questions.

Satoru shrugs. “More or less.” He strides over and sits down next to Suguru, throwing his legs over Suguru’s lap and planting a kiss on his cheek. “They were already awake because they’re leaving for a mission in a little while.”

Suguru sighs. He looks back at the two first years and mouths, Sorry.

Nanami actually cracks a smile, though it’s so fast Suguru thinks maybe he actually imagined it.

“We don’t mind,” Haibara assures him. He elbows Nanami. “Right?”

Nanami rolls his shoulder, which is followed by a neck twitch. “Sure.”

“Come onnnn!” Satoru gestures for them to come over. “We can all watch the sunrise together before you two have to leave. I’m never up early enough to see it.”

“That’s a lie,” Suguru mumbles as Haibara drags Nanami over before they sit down as well, though Nanami appears reluctant. Suguru hasn’t understood the allure of sunrises for years now, but he likes that Satoru is always left speechless when he’s up early enough to see them.

“It’s like cursed energy without the curse part,” he’d told Suguru. So Suguru isn’t really sure why Satoru thinks they’re so impressive if he thinks they just look like cursed energy, but he likes seeing Satoru happy, so he doesn’t argue with him about it.

Satoru can watch the sunrise, and Suguru can watch Satoru.

“I hope it’s a good one this morning,” Satoru says. “What do you two think? Is it gonna be pretty?”

“No,” Nanami deadpans. “I th - th-th - think it’s going to be disappointing.” He glances over at them. “It’s definitely going to be anticlimactic.”

Satoru pouts. “Don’t be such a downer.”

“Well I think it’s going to be pretty,” Haibara says. “Sunrises are always pretty. I’m glad I’m up early enough to see it this morning; I usually sleep through them.”

“Lucky,” Suguru hears himself mutter.

“I’ll trade you sleep schedules,” Haibara offers earnestly.

“Please. I would love to. You can have mine so long as you promise to never give it back.” Suguru knows he isn’t exactly telling the truth, though. He wouldn’t want to saddle Haibara with his horrendous sleep schedule and a brain that cannot comprehend how much sleep is enough. Haibara doesn’t deserve that.

Besides, if Suguru could sleep soundly, he isn’t sure he’d really be Suguru anymore.

Haibara sighs. “I wish I could give you my sleep.” His face lights up suddenly. “Hey, wait! What if I brought you back a souvenir from our mission instead? I’ll bring you back a snack that you can eat next time you’re awake early in the morning by yourself.”

Suguru laughs. “That sounds like a fair compromise.”

“Do you want something salty or something sweet?”

Suguru opens his mouth to respond, but Staoru beats him to it. “Sweet!”

“Hey!” Suguru whacks his arm. “This is my gift. It’s for when I’m lonely!”

Satoru pouts at him.

Suguru huffs. “Fine. Something sweet so he can steal some.”

“Okay!”

“We don’t have time to shop,” Nanami grumbles. “We’re going on a mission.”

“I’ll be quick,” Haibara promises. “I’ll buy you something too if you want? Like what about some of those spicy chips you like?”

Nanami chews on his lip. He stares out over campus for several moments before he finally says. “Okay. Deal.”

Haibara whoops, which is almost immediately cut off by the sound of someone else coming to the roof. Suguru turns, preparing an apology to Yaga for making the first years late, but Yaga isn’t the one who found them.

Shoko crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. “Having a party without me?”

“Shoko!” Satoru exclaims. He makes grabby hands towards her. “Join us! I would have brought you up too, but I figured you were sleeping.”

Shoko sighs. She shakes her head, but a smile spreads across her face as she walks over to join the party. She places herself in between Satoru and Haibara, resting her head on Satoru’s shoulder. “So what are we doing up here?”

“Watching the sunrise.”

“Ah.” She yawns. “This early?”

“Well, that’s when the sun rises,” Suguru points out.

Shoko leans over and flicks him, and Haibara giggles.

The first rays of the September sunrise reach out towards them, and slowly, the sky fades from deep blue into a swirl of pinks and oranges. The early morning chill is penetrated by the warmth of the sun, though Suguru is still grateful he grabbed a jacket before coming up here.

Satoru’s hands find his, and he presses a kiss to Suguru’s knuckles. He leans in close enough to whisper, “I think you’re prettier than any sunrise.”

Suguru would love to tell him off for being cheesy, but something about the golden orange rays of the early sun reflecting off Satoru’s face stops him short. So instead, he says, “You are too.”

Satoru grins at him, and Suguru would gladly swear off seeing the sun for the rest of his life so long as he was promised the bright affection radiating from Satoru’s smile every day.

“You two disgust me,” Shoko says fondly.

“I agree,” Nanami says, not fondly.

“Well I think it’s cute,” Haibara counters.

“This is why Haibara is my favorite,” Suguru declares, and then he leans over and kisses Satoru on the lips just because he can.

(Although, as soon as Satoru realizes what’s happening, his laughter makes it a little hard to actually kiss him.)

The sun continues to rise, painting the morning golden, and the five of them watch together until Nanami and Haibara have to leave.

— —

Fall dives headfirst into winter, which then clears away for spring, and Suguru and Satoru remain inseparable.

Spring brings a mission from Master Tengen, and Suguru ends up in Okinawa with Satoru, Riko, and the first years.

Their flight leaves at six, which is a non-issue for Suguru. He wakes up an hour before his alarm, dread settling in his stomach. He’s only able to manage a couple minutes lying in bed before he has to stand up and walk around. His plan is to go to the kitchen, but he stops short outside Satoru’s door when he can hear him moving around his room.

Suguru knocks. “Satoru?”

The door swings open. “Oh! You’re awake already? What time is it?”

Suguru tilts his head, leaning in to get a better look at his boyfriend. “Have you slept?”

“Doesn’t matter. Is it breakfast time? I’ll eat with you. Are the others awake yet? I—”

“Satoru.” Suguru interrupts with a hand on his shoulder. Satoru’s mouth snaps shut as he looks at him intently. Suguru removes his glasses from his face and moves his hand to his cheek. “It’s not even four yet. Please try to get some sleep, okay? You need rest.”

“I just…I’m just trying to make sure I can keep my technique up long enough, while still being able to focus on other things.”

“And getting an hour of sleep will help with that more than another hour of practice will,” Suguru tells him, because the alternative is scolding Satoru for something that can’t be undone. And Suguru knows he has no place to talk about sleeping poorly before missions. Suguru places Satoru’s glasses in his hands. “You’ll be more help to everyone if you don’t pull an all-nighter.”

Satoru sighs and hangs his head.

“We’ll be fine,” Suguru assures him. “We’re the strongest, remember?” He kisses Satoru’s forehead. “You don’t have to carry the world on your own; you’ve got me.”

Satoru offers him a tired smile.

“Sleep,” Suguru instructs. “If you aren’t in the kitchen by the time the others are eating, I’ll come get you, okay?”

Satoru nods. He leans forward and bumps his nose against Suguru’s before placing a kiss at the corner of his mouth. “Suguru, I…”

The unspoken words hang in the air between them, but Satoru does not need to voice them for Suguru to understand what he means.

“I know,” Suguru assures him. “Me too.”

— —

Haibara is the first one in the kitchen apart from Suguru, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he walks in.

“Coffee?” Suguru asks him.

“Do we have any coffee creamer?”

“Check the fridge.”

Haibara does, and he grabs the container of coffee creamer out. Suguru watches him fill a cup maybe halfway with coffee before he dumps creamer in to fill the cup the rest of the way.

Suguru shakes his head. Kids.

“I’ve never been to Okinawa before,” Haibara tells him. “I’m excited!”

“I’ve been once. When I was little.”

Haibara’s eyes widen. “What was it like?!”

Suguru shrugs. He was only five at the time, so he doesn’t remember all that much of the trip. “I mostly remember being stuck in the hotel room for hours, waiting for my parents to wake up. And we went to the aquarium.”

Haibara gasps. “Aquarium?! That sounds so fun! I hope I can go back someday to sightsee.” He sighs dreamily, like he’s imagining a future vacation to Okinawa where there’s no mission and no worries; just swimming and tourism. “You and Gojo-san should take lots of pictures so we can see!”

“Sure,” Suguru agrees. He makes a mental note to tell Satoru to take some pictures for Haibara since his phone has a better camera than Suguru’s and neither of them have an actual camera.

“I wish we weren’t gonna be stuck at the airport the whole time.” Haibara sighs. “But, I know, it’s a really really important job, and Nanami and I are gonna do our absolute best!”

“I don’t doubt it.” Suguru takes a sip of his own coffee. “But…don’t go dying on us, okay? Satoru and I can handle harder fights. I don’t want you or Nanami getting hurt if it isn’t necessary.”

Haibara smiles and nods. “Gotcha! You and Gojo-san are so cool.”

Suguru hums. “Thanks.” He won’t relay that part of the message to Satoru; his ego is big enough as it is.

It isn’t much longer before Nanami drags himself into the kitchen and pours his own cup of coffee before collapsing into the seat next to Haibara. Suguru is about to go wake Satoru, as promised, but Satoru shows up in the kitchen himself before he can.

“Sleeping was a mistake,” he mumbles, dropping his head into Suguru’s shoulder. “I regret everything.”

Suguru smiles fondly, a hand coming up to play with Satoru’s hair on instinct. He runs his fingers through it until Satoru lifts his head to look at him.

He lowers his glasses, eyes peering directly into Suguru’s. “You look nice today. Purple.”

That’s all Suguru gets before Satoru slinks off to make himself breakfast. He just chuckles to himself and sits down with the first years, his gaze following Satoru until he joins them as well.

By some miracle, Shoko manages to pull herself out of bed early enough to say goodbye as they’re shoving their bags into the car they’ll be taking to the airport. She pulls Suguru and Satoru both into a hug and tells them, “Don’t be stupid, okay?”

“When are we ever stupid?” Satoru teases.

Shoko huffs. “Fine. Get yourselves killed, then. See if I care.”

“We’ll do our best to come back in one piece,” Suguru assures her. “We’re the strongest, you know.”

“Wow,” Shoko deadpans. “Really? I never would’ve guessed.” She breaks the hug and Suguru pretends to not notice the way she sniffs like playing nonchalant is taking a bigger toll on her than she’d ever let on. “As always, if you die, I’ll kill you.”

“Noted.” Satoru nods. He reaches forward and messes up Shoko’s hair, which earns him a kick on the shin.

“Geto-san! Gojo-san!” Haibara calls from the car. “Are you ready to go?”

Shoko purses her lips. She offers them a final, “Good luck,” and then pushes them towards the car. She waves them off as they drive away.

Satoru rests his head on Suguru’s shoulder and Suguru’s hand finds his, entwining their fingers and holding on tightly. They don’t say anything.

(They don’t need to.)

— —

“You know,” Satoru whispers, looking down at Suguru. “This isn’t all that bad.”

They’re in the hotel, Suguru lying under the covers and Satoru sitting cross-legged next to him. Riko’s already asleep in the other bed and Kuroi is in the shower.

“You think?”

Satoru hums in affirmation. “I got to spend time with you.” He brushes a strand of hair out of Suguru’s face. Suguru reaches for Satoru’s wrist to stop him from moving it away, and he isn’t met with the resistance of infinity.

He moves Satoru’s hand so he can press a kiss to his palm. “You’re a sap.”

“Only for you.” He leans down and kisses Suguru’s forehead, smiling with that soft, sweet, smile reserved for Suguru.

Suguru pulls Satoru’s hand away from his face, but doesn’t disentangle their fingers. He’s afraid if he lets go, he won’t be able to get the contact back considering Satoru’s insistence on keeping his cursed technique on.

(Suguru gets it - he does. He’s had curses monitoring everyone since yesterday too, and he’s been checking in on them far more often than necessary.)

(But every time he and Satoru have slept in the same bed, there’s been no invisible barrier between them, and Suguru thinks he will always crave Satoru’s touch.)

“You sure you’ll be okay awake by yourself?”

“You’ve dealt with being awake alone every day since you were a kid,” Satoru points out. “I think I can handle one night.”

“Wake me up if you need to sleep, alright?”

“I will,” Satoru promises. Suguru isn’t sure he believes him.

“My curses will report back here if they see anything. You know which ones are mine, right?”

Satoru lowers his glasses. “Yeah. I think I can figure it out.”

Suguru scoffs.

“Stop worrying so much. Get some sleep.”

“Hypocrite,” Suguru mumbles, but he turns on his side and closes his eyes. He does not let go of Satoru’s hand.

He focuses his energy on checking in with his curses, making sure they’re all still where they’re supposed to be and none have been destroyed. Once he’s satisfied that everything is still okay for the moment, he relaxes, and he allows sleep to take him under.

— —

Wakefulness tugs at Suguru, slowly dragging him back into reality. Still half-asleep, he reaches over for Satoru, only for his hand to get stuck before it reaches its destination.

Oh. Right.

Infinity.

“Sorry,” Satoru whispers. He takes Suguru’s hand in his, and pries his other arm underneath Suguru, maneuvering them so Suguru is lying on top of Satoru, head on his chest, while Satoru sits back against the headboard. He tangles his fingers in Suguru’s hair and Suguru shifts until he can feel Satoru’s heartbeat against his cheek.

“What time is it?” Suguru mumbles.

“Five-ish.”

“Mm-kay.” Suguru turns his focus to his curses, doing a quick check-in. They all seem to be fine, though it takes him longer to check than usual because he’s still not quite fully awake.

“Suguru?” Satoru asks quietly a little while later. “Are you asleep again?”

Suguru hums.

“You can try to fall back asleep if you want. Don’t keep yourself awake if you don’t have to.”

“No,” Suguru says. He rolls off Satoru and sits up. “I’m not going to be able to fall back asleep.”

(It’s a lie - had he laid on Satoru for any longer, he probably would have drifted off again, though the quality of the sleep he could have gotten may not have been very high.)

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” He suggests. “You’ve hardly slept at all lately. I have curses monitoring everything, and I’ll be up to keep watch. You know I can’t go back to sleep anyway.”

“You’ll be okay awake by yourself?” Satoru smiles cheekily.

“I’m not by myself,” Suguru tells him. “I’ve been awake alone in the mornings, and it’s not the same.” Awake Alone was when Suguru was little, and he didn’t have any curses, and his parents didn’t care, and the world could have folded in on itself, leaving Suguru the last one standing, and he would not have noticed.

Now, he isn’t alone, even when he is the only one awake. Now, he has people who care.

“Stop worrying so much,” Suguru tells him. “Get some sleep.”

Satoru sighs. “If you insist.” He slides down, rests his head on the pillow, closes his eyes, and exhales slowly. Suguru can practically see the tension leaving his shoulders as he releases his technique. Suguru wants to reach out and touch him just because now he knows he can, but he keeps his hands to himself. He keeps his distance, as if infinity were still there. He taps his fingers against his legs and watches Satoru sleep until the sun begins to rise.

Everyone wakes slowly. Riko first, shortly after sunrise. She mumbles something Suguru doesn’t catch and then trudges into the bathroom. Kuroi is the next to wake, before Riko returns from the bathroom, and Suguru sees her brief moment of panic before he speaks up.

“She’s in the bathroom.”

Kuroi breathes out a sigh of relief and relaxes. “Thank you.”

Suguru merely hums in acknowledgment.

Satoru, unsurprisingly, is the last to wake up. Still, he must only manage an hour and a half before he, too, finds his way back to consciousness. And once he’s awake, infinity returns.

(No one else would be able to tell the difference, but Suguru can see the tension eating away at him as soon as his technique goes back up.)

(He’s been using it too much, and Suguru knows all of his tells.)

They pack their things, meet back up with Nanami and Haibara at the airport, and they go home.

— —

Bleeding out on the ground, Suguru wishes Toji had just finished him off.

If Satoru truly is dead, Suguru doesn’t want to walk away from this. He doesn’t want to pick himself up off the ground, doesn’t want to stumble back to Shoko. He wants to let himself bleed to death, let everyone else find out what happens to all the curses he’s collected once he’s gone.

See if they run rampant, destroying everything left of the world that was so cruel to a group of kids.

(Kids, kids - they’re just children, aren’t they? Suguru thought sixteen sounded so old, but it’s not.)

(They’re not.)

They’re children, but—

But they’re the Strongest.

If Satoru fell, that leaves Suguru alone to claim their title. That leaves Suguru alone to protect the others - to protect Shoko and Nanami and Haibara and everyone else.

They’re counting on him.

He thinks, if he let himself bleed out here, he might get the most sound sleep he’s ever gotten. And if he gets up, he might never sleep soundly again.

But when has he ever been concerned about how well he sleeps? That was always Satoru’s job, and he isn’t around to worry anymore.

(Be sure to thank your parents, Toji had said.)

(Yeah, Suguru thinks as he pushes himself back to his feet. He summons his manta ray and climbs on so it can take him back to Shoko. Thanks for not caring. It allowed me to not care about myself.)

— —

Suguru sleeps in his own bed, alone, for weeks. He falls asleep later and wakes up earlier. He paces and paces and paces, unable to get himself to rest. The mornings he does manage to fall back asleep, it’s interrupted by sleep paralysis - auditory hallucinations of voices and applause for the murder of a child, shadows that creep across his wall, locked limbs and heavy breathing, watery eyes and a mouth that will not open.

A body he cannot call his own.

He doesn’t summon his manta ray.

He lets the shadows creep closer as his chest burns.

— —

Two months later, Satoru knocks on his door hours past sunset. When Suguru opens it, Satoru tells him, “I didn’t think you would be awake.”

“I shouldn’t be,” Suguru responds. The words don’t sound like his own.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Suguru shakes his head. “Do you need something?”

“Can I—” Satoru stares at the floor. “Can I sleep here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Suguru responds, his voice coming out as a whisper. He steps out of the doorway so Satoru can enter the room.

They don’t say anything. They climb into Suguru’s bed that is too small to hold both of them, and they sleep through sunrise.

iii. soul

Suguru rises with the sun.

He found a half-remedy, once. And he’s figured out a handful of reasons. But two decades of self-reflection and dealing with the issue from every angle he could find have not proven to do any good.

He found a half-remedy, once.

And he left it behind.

He knows the reasons now, too. His parents told him it was a restless mind. When he was a teenager, he blamed it on his restless body. And those may have been true at the time, but the issue is a deeper rooted one now.

What’s restless now is his soul, unable to move on, unable to forgive itself for the people he left behind.

He tells himself he’s happy with his new family, and he is.

But there is no world in which he can find true happiness - true peace in his soul - if Satoru is not standing by his side. He knows this.

He has accepted it.

— —

Suguru sets a plate down in front of Mimiko, and then one in front of Nanako before making his way back over to the stove to fill a plate for himself.

“Geto-sama?” Mimiko asks.

“Hm?”

“Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Yeah,” Nanako chimes in. “You make really good food.”

“Thank you.” Suguru returns to the table and sits down across from the girls. “I taught myself, for the most part.”

“You did?” Mimiko’s eyes grow wide.

Suguru nods. “I always wake up early, so I learned to make breakfast for myself. That way I didn’t have to wait for everyone else to wake up before I could eat.”

(He doesn’t tell them about being forced back to the table when his parents ate despite the fact that he’d finished breakfast hours before. He doesn’t tell them about electing to sit through a second breakfast with Satoru and Shoko because he actually wanted to spend more time with them. He doesn’t tell them about how he started making breakfast for Haibara or Nanami on days when their breakfast schedules happened to align. He doesn’t tell them about how he learned to cook more than just breakfast foods because Shoko complimented his cooking before their friendship was a sealed deal and he wanted to find a way to impress her enough that she would want to be his friend.)

(He doesn’t tell them a lot of things. It’s easier that way.)

There is no protecting children from the horrors of this world. Suguru knows that. Nanako and Mimiko have already faced those horrors head on, long before they should have.

But it doesn’t mean they have to shoulder the burdens he carries. It doesn’t mean they need to worry about a past that cannot be changed, friends who must remain lost, and a love that Suguru let slip through his fingers.

It doesn’t mean they need to worry that Suguru is not getting enough sleep, and that loneliness once again seeps into his bones each morning.

(He thinks it likely wouldn’t hurt so much if he hadn’t ever known peace. If he didn’t know what it was like to fall asleep in Satoru’s arms and wake up with sunlight leaking in through the window.)

(If all he ever knew were lonely mornings, it would simply be normality. But now, they’re a curse he has saddled himself with.)

“Why do you wake up early?” Nanako questions.

Suguru smiles sadly. “It’s just the way my mind works, I suppose.”

“And there’s no way to fix it?”

“No,” Suguru tells her. “There’s no rhyme or reason for it, and there’s no remedy.”

(He won’t burden them with the truth.)

(Not now. Not when they’re still so young, not when Suguru has the chance to keep them away from all of the things he wishes someone had been able to protect him from.)

“If I could help you sleep in, I would,” Mimiko assures him. Nanako nods in agreement.

“Thank you both,” Suguru says, his voice soft. “I appreciate it. Now, finish eating before your food gets cold, okay?”

“Okay!” The girls chorus.

Suguru loves his new family. He loves Nanako and Mimiko and he would do anything for them, no questions asked. He doesn’t regret his choice, doesn’t regret the blood on his hands, doesn’t regret running from Jujutsu High to pursue a goal much bigger than anything any of the higher ups could fathom.

But he regrets the people he had to leave behind.

He regrets not hugging Shoko before he left for his final mission. He regrets that his final request to Haibara was for a meaningless souvenir. He regrets that he couldn’t think of anything comforting to say to Nanami after he lost his only classmate.

He regrets that he left behind the peace he knew lying in a dorm bed with Satoru, and that he will never be able to find relief from his restless mind and body and soul like he did on those nights.

He regrets that they couldn’t come with him.

(But…they wouldn’t come with him. Suguru knows this. It is the only thing that makes him doubt.)

(He won’t linger on it for too long; his new life does not have room for any doubt.)

He won’t make the same mistakes with Nanako and Mimiko, he decides. He won’t deny a request for a hug before he goes, because any moment could be the last. He won’t stand idly by and wait for someone else to protect them, because no one else is coming.

Suguru knows loneliness like the back of his hand, knows it like an old friend, knows it like the curses he has held onto since childhood. He and loneliness have been locked in an everlasting dance from the day he was born.

He will not allow Nanako and Mimiko to face the same fate.

He will not regret the decision that saved them, but he cannot stop himself from mourning the other family he had - the family from three years of his youth.

— —

“Geto-sama? ……Geto-sama?” Vaguely, Suguru registers someone poking his arm. “Geto-sama?” The voice is louder, though still only a whisper. Suguru should probably follow it into consciousness.

He wrenches his eyes open to find Nanako staring down at him, her finger an inch away from his cheek. As soon as they make eye contact, Nanako yanks her hand away like she’s been burned.

Suguru sighs, sitting up and rubbing the lingering sleep from his eyes. “What do you need?” He glances at the clock. 4:15. So he won’t be falling back asleep.

It’s fine, though. The girls are more important.

“Mimiko had a nightmare,” Nanako tells him, pointing to the doorway where Mimiko is still standing, her doll clutched in her hands. She steps halfway behind the door. “She can’t fall back asleep.”

If Suguru were his parents, he would tell Mimiko she’s too old to be bothering him after a nightmare - that she knows it wasn’t real and she should just go back to bed. But Suguru is not his parents and he will not make the same mistakes.

He gestures for Mimiko to come to him, which she does, albeit a bit reluctantly.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks.

She hesitates, then nods.

“Alright.” He pats the bed next to him. “Sit. Tell me about your nightmare.”

Mimiko crawls up onto the bed, and Nanako scampers up behind her, because of course she does. Mimiko looks down at her doll. “There was a monster,” she starts, “and it was… it was coming for Nanako ’n me, and we were trying to run, but we… we could only move in slow motion.” She takes a shaky breath. “And the monster was running fast, and it wanted to eat us. But then right before it got Nanako, you showed up, and it ate you instead. And…and then it was gonna still eat us too, but I woke up before that happened.”

You’re too old to be waking us up after nightmares, Suguru’s mother’s voice echoes in the back of his mind. You’re too old to still believe in monsters.

“That sounds scary,” he tells Mimiko. “I promise that if any monsters come, I’ll keep all of us safe, okay?”

Mimiko sniffles and nods, then lunges forward and hugs Suguru.

“Are you ready to go back to sleep?” he asks, running his fingers through her hair.

She shakes her head, burying her face deeper in his shoulder.

“That’s okay.” He glances over at Nanako. “You can go back to bed if you’d like.”

Nanako also shakes her head.

No leaving your room until seven, Suguru’s father’s voice echoes in the back of his mind. Find some way to occupy yourself.

“Tell you what,” Suguru says. “Why don’t we all go outside and look at the stars? I’ll teach you some of the constellations. Will that help get your mind off the nightmare?”

There are several breaths of silence, and then finally, Mimiko draws herself away from Suguru and nods.

So Suguru tells them to put on a jacket while he retrieves the same book he used to teach himself about the stars - a book he’d taken with him on instinct, because Satoru mentioned that the stars would probably be brighter where Suguru was going than they were on campus.

They go outside, and Suguru has his manta ray take them up to the roof. He shines his phone light down over the book as Nanako and Mimiko huddle around him, one on each side. He shows them the charts in the book and then points out the stars in the sky. He shows them the dragon and the north star. He shows them the big dipper and the little dipper. They find constellations and match names to stars until Nanako and Mimiko are shivering and Suguru ushers them back inside.

It’s only just past five, but it’s clear Nanako and Mimiko aren’t interested in going back to sleep. So even though he isn’t particularly hungry, Suguru makes them breakfast.

“You know a lot about the stars,” Nanako tells him. “Did you learn about them at school?”

“No. I taught them to myself. I used that book,” he gestures to where he’d set the book down on the table. “It’s an old book, but it’s my favorite.”

“It’s a pretty book,” Mimiko notes.

“It is.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I found it at a bookstore when I was fifteen.” He glances back at the girls to see Nanako flipping through the pages while Mimiko looks over her shoulder.

“What’s this?” Nanako asks suddenly. She holds the book up. Suguru has to step closer to see what, exactly, she’s talking about.

There’s a note scribbled at the bottom of one of the pages. As soon as he’s close enough to make out the handwriting, he knows who left it there.

Satoru was here 31.08.05 >w< ^.^ :P <3 ~

“Oh.”

The girls stare at him, waiting for an answer.

“It’s a note from an old friend.” He turns away, back to the stove, and lets his words carelessly fall out of his mouth. “My best friend.”

“Did you teach him about the stars too?” Mimiko asks.

“Yeah. I did.”

“What happened to him?”

Suguru purses his lips. Nothing, he wants to say, the better question is what happened to me. He does not say that to the girls, though. “He’s still out there somewhere. But we don’t talk anymore. We don’t see eye-to-eye these days.”

He won’t burden them with the whole story - won’t tell them about kissing Satoru in the campus kitchen or watching him sleep in Okinawa or how there was a time when, if he wanted to find peace, he needed to look no further than Satoru Gojo.

He won’t tell them that when he contemplates his regrets, the only image his mind conjures is Satoru’s smile.

They’re children. They don’t need that.

— —

Restless soul.

There is no beating around the bush now.

Restless soul.

Suguru won’t pretend it is anything less than the unrest eating away at his soul that has his body and mind clashing, frozen, paralyzed in the dark.

He doesn’t bother with cursed spirits these days. He’s grown numb to the fear that used to overtake him when he woke up unable to move. Instead, he stares at the shadows slipping and sliding across his walls, watches them shift from empty and black to bloody and red. He listens as the TV static white noise makes way for the bubbly laughter of Satoru Gojo. He stares at the ceiling, his mind making him believe he can see his bedroom splattered with cursed energy that does not belong to him or the girls. He listens to his own voice remind him that the only cure he ever found for all this is the same person he turned his back on.

HE’S GONE FOREVER.

The world Suguru’s mind creates in these moments is loud, though he is aware the noise is all coming from inside his own head. It’s messy, though he is aware everything he sees is merely an illusion. It is something happening to him rather than something he is an active participant in, though he is aware that he could pull himself out of his sleep paralysis if he tried.

Laughter in his mind. Blood dripping from the ceiling onto his body.

A soul that will never again be able to find peace.

A mind that cannot stop, a body that acts like it is not his own, a soul that cries out for everything he left behind - cries out for infinity.

Suguru stares at the hell his mind has created for him, surrounded by the voices of old friends and the blood of one hundred fourteen people. Heat lightning flickers behind his eyelids, tree branch shadows reach out for him, and he stares and he stares and he stares.

He lets it happen.

He does not fight back.

He stares at the ceiling, surrounded by the things all come and gone.

Restless soul.

Peace, Suguru thinks, is not something he deserves. Restful sleep was not meant for him. That is how it always has been, and that is how it always will be. There is no rhyme or reason, and there is no remedy. Peace was always an illusion, a false hope promise. A fluke.

Suguru and sleep have never gotten along very well.

Suguru, I…

I know.

Laughter tickles Suguru’s ear.

This is your fault, this is your fault, this is your fault, this is—

Suguru’s only comfort comes in knowing that when he fully wakes in the morning, this will feel faraway, like it happened to someone else. He will think back to the shadows and the lightning and the blood and the voices and he will not be able to accurately recall the severity of it. He will tell himself it could not possibly be as bad as his reaction to it would imply. He will tell himself that eventually, it will stop getting worse.

I think you are the one and only person who understands my soul.

Satoru’s laugh rings through the morning, and it is the laugh that would come right before he’d lean in and try to kiss Suguru through his smile.

The laughter quiets as rain starts, a summer storm rolling in.

(Satoru and Suguru wouldn’t run for cover. Satoru would turn on his infinity and hold Suguru close enough that it would protect them both, and they would watch the dark clouds come alive with lightning.)

Suguru does not know if the liquid on his face is blood or rain, but he supposes it doesn’t matter much. It will be gone by the time he wakes.

He’s gone forever.

Suguru closes his eyes and focuses in on the sound of laughter.

Shoko’s laugh joins the mix, then Haibara and Nanami. They talk, and Suguru can’t make out what they’re saying, but they sound happy, and that’s enough. As long as they’re happy, Suguru will be okay. As long as they’re still laughing.

The storm ceases, giving way to a warm summer breeze and the scent of cigarette smoke.

There is still blood soaking through his blankets, there are still shadows dancing on the walls, there is still the voice reminding Suguru that he left behind his one and only, but he will ignore that to lose himself in cigarette smoke and laughter.

And he will drift back to sleep with the ghost of Satoru’s kiss on his forehead.

— —

Handfuls of snowflakes dance through the air, swirling in the wind after they’re spit out by the few clouds hanging heavy overhead. Suguru holds his mug close to his mouth, breathing in the steam from the hot tea. He’s seated on the balcony, taking in the winter morning. At his feet sits a cursed spirit that looks vaguely like a cat, sitting like it’s still standing guard after all these years.

The closer they get to twenty-fourth, the earlier he wakes, and in the bitter cold of this winter, he’s taken to watching the sunrise again. Now, he is able to appreciate it for what it is. Instead of an alert that his parents will be waking soon or a reminder that he is unable to sleep in as late as his peers, he can relax and enjoy the bright oranges and pinks smeared across the morning sky. The rising sunlight reflects off the clouds and the sky appears far warmer than the air around him.

There is something beautiful in the sunrise, something Suguru had to grow in order to see, something ultraviolet. There is beauty in that which happens every day, without fail. When the end comes, the sun will still rise over what remains. It will still paint the sky and it will still warm the ground.

This is Awake Alone. Despite the girls being nearby and the twenty-year-old curse at his feet, Suguru knows that he is once again stuck in Awake Alone, because he has lost the only people who he allowed close enough to truly understand. But he is content with it now.

He has his regrets, as everyone does. But he has made enough peace with himself to appreciate the sunrise once more. His regrets can drag his restless soul down in the dark of the night, but every morning, the sun rises and Suguru comes into his own again.

The sun rises, and his mind, body, and soul settle neatly together, and he smiles towards the sky.

He hopes, somewhere, Satoru is able to do the same.

— —

The end comes in the only way it ever could: bloodsoaked, face-to-face with Satoru Gojo.

Suguru would not have it any other way.

Anything said now will be too little, too late. Suguru chose his path and he fell. Satoru chose his path and he rose to the top. Still, Suguru wishes he had a little more time. Still, when Satoru asks for any final words, Suguru needs him to know that he never hated any of their friends. Suguru never hated him. Satoru was the best thing Suguru ever had, but infinity with him was not enough to soothe the pain forever.

(He wishes they had one more night.)

But his final night with Satoru will end in bloodshed, and he supposes they should have seen it coming. Satoru was meant for greatness from the moment he was born. And Suguru—

Suguru was just a lonely little boy, unwanted even by sleep.

He laughs, and it’s bloody and bitter and it’s the only way he can keep himself breathing for the few minutes he has left.

Satoru raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

(He’s never needed to.)

“Do you think,” Suguru asks, “I’ll finally be able to sleep through the night?” he laughs again, through watery eyes, and watches Satoru kneel across from him.

Satoru’s hand reaches out, and Suguru braces himself for the blow, but it doesn’t come.

(Not yet.)

Satoru cups his cheek. Brings their foreheads together. “Suguru,” he whispers. It’s warm and thick with everything Suguru remembers from their youth. It holds the weight of infinity.

“Sleep in for me, okay?” Suguru tells him, because it’s easier than everything else he wants to say. “Wake up in the morning, and then roll over and go back to sleep just because you can.”

Satoru laughs too, though it’s halfway to a sob.

“You know,” Suguru lets go of his wounded side and moves his hand up to Satoru’s face. There’s blood everywhere, but he needs one final touch. One last moment that he is allowed into infinity. “I couldn’t be fully happy staying, but the moments I was on the precipice of true happiness were the ones I shared with you. You brought rest.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“Because the story always ended the same way.” Suguru pulls back to look Satoru in the eye. “The sorcerers die, unthanked and alone, and the monkeys shrug and move on. I wanted a world where you and Shoko and Nanami and the others and all of us wouldn’t be one wrong mission away from death. I wanted a world where sorcerers could be happy.”

I wanted to be happy with you, but that was impossible, so I wanted to offer the happiness we didn’t get to those who came after.

“We were happy,” Satoru responds. “...I was happy. Happiness isn’t about the ending; it’s about cherishing the time you’re given with the people you care about.”

Suguru shakes his head. “True happiness does not have the constant threat of death looming over it.”

“Happiness can’t be fully appreciated unless it can be lost.” Satoru grimaces. He swears under his breath. “I don’t know why we’re fighting. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Suguru smiles.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru says, voice hoarse.

“Don’t be.”

“Suguru—” He breathes out. He leans in, whispers words they’d always been too afraid to say in their youth. His breath is warm against Suguru’s ear.

It sounds like a dream, and Suguru is ready to sleep.

— —

— —

A corrupted mind.

A stolen body.

A restless soul.

As it turns out, having your body overtaken by a curse does not feel all that different from sleep paralysis.

— —

The difference is: Instead of being frozen in place, Suguru’s body is moving without his consent. Instead of being unable to speak at all, his voice says things he does not mean when he does not want it to.

He focuses his energy on preserving his restless soul. The only part of him that has not been ripped from his control.

— —

Time is blurry. Suguru does not know if he sleeps.

— —

Yo, Satoru, his voice says.

RUN, he tries to shout.

But he is sleep paralyzed, unable to get his mouth to move, unable to get his body to do his bidding.

— —

Goodnight, Satoru Gojo.

As it turns out, having your body overtaken by a curse does not feel all that different from sleep paralysis.

Let us meet again in the new world.

As it turns out,

— —

“Yeah, maybe it’s goodnight for me,” Satoru says. He is looking at Suguru’s body, but he is speaking to Suguru’s soul. “But it’s about time for you to wake up.”

As it turns out—

When sleep paralyzed, Suguru had to focus all his energy on regaining control of his body. He could not snap himself out of it while panicking. This is why they allowed him a cursed spirit for protection - not because the hallucinations could hurt him, but because protection eased his mind enough that he could rouse himself and settle his soul back where it belonged.

This is not quite the same. Suguru is not scared. He has not been scared by paralysis for years. But his energy has been focused on securing his soul - on keeping himself intact.

All he needs is one limb.

All he needs is to let Satoru know that he hears him, that he has not given up, that he will fight this just the same as he fought sleep paralysis in the lonely mornings.

“How are you gonna let yourself get used like that, Suguru?”

As it turns out, having your body overtaken by a curse does not feel all that different from sleep paralysis.

— —

He wrenches his arm back into his control.

He goes for the throat.

— —

Do you think I’ll finally be able to sleep through the night?

— —

It’s about time for you to wake up.

— —

Suguru rises with the sun.