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i.
One week into their relationship, Yuuta concludes that going out with Toge is amazing.
To be fair, Yuuta has always known that going out with Toge will be amazing. He had known this even before he had finally worked up the courage to confess – heart pounding too fast in his chest, words spilling out in a rush – and Inumaki had, against all of Yuuta's calculated odds, agreed. But knowing it and experiencing it are two completely different things, a bit like knowing that sunrises are spectacular and actually seeing one in all its golden glory. The former simply cannot compare with the latter. Toge is Yuuta's sun, and Yuuta wakes up every day, grateful for the warmth of Toge's smile over breakfast.
Yuuta will concede that he's being sappy about it. But Toge is Yuuta's first boyfriend, his first someone since Rika. Yuuta figures that any sappiness on his part is justified. And if he has to take certain steps to ensure Toge's continued interest and affection, Yuuta figures that he's equally justified on that count too.
He tells Maki all this as they spar, partly because he's hoping to distract her enough that she'll go easy on him, and partly because he needs someone to tell him if he's over-thinking this.
“You're over-thinking this,” Maki tells him, right on cue. Unfortunately, Yuuta's brief foray into bearing his Toge-coloured soul has done nothing to distract her, and the swing of her staff is no less vicious as she aims for his ribs.
“I'm not,” Yuuta counters. He pivots on his heels and drops his stance, bringing his wooden practice sword up just in time. The staff halts mere inches from his face, straining against the blade of the practice sword.
“You so are,” Maki retorts. She shifts, and the staff curves down in a deadly arc towards Yuuta's knees instead.
“I'm really not,” Yuuta protests, before he is obliged to cut his explanation short in favour of tipping back into a back tuck, and rounding off with a handspring, just to stay out of the range of Maki’s staff.
If he had the breath to spare, he would have told Maki that he can't be over-thinking it, not when this month's issue of Seventeen tells him otherwise, in glossy print on pages 34 and 35: “How to keep a boy charmed - 17 cute and innovative ways to say "I love you" to your boyfriend”. As far as Yuuta is concerned, the fact that there's an article on this topic suggests that there is an audience for it, which in turn suggests that not being able to keep one's boyfriend charmed is a genuine problem that some people face. Yuuta just doesn't want Toge and him to become one of those people.
Seventeen is, admittedly, not the sort of magazine that Yuuta usually reads. But he had been at a café, waiting for his order (a chocolate latte that Toge liked, which Yuuta had wanted to surprise Toge with), when he had overhead two girls in high school uniforms discuss their relationship woes. He had not been standing near enough to catch everything, but phrases like “losing interest” and “what if he finds someone else” were attention-catching enough, as was the colourful magazine that had lain open on the table between them. What had followed next was a sudden shiver of unease on Yuuta’s part, and a surreptitious trip to the magazine section of the Lawson next door.
Yuuta is still not entirely sure if he’ll be able to pull off all 17 cute and innovative ways to say “I love you” to Toge, the better to keep Toge charmed and to prevent Yuuta from suffering the same fate as those high school girls, but Toge is a boy. He is also Yuuta’s boyfriend. Ergo, trying out some of them can’t hurt.
“Oh look, there's Toge,” Maki says, and Yuuta is turning to look before he realises, too late, that it might be trick to distract him.
Maki’s staff slams into his stomach, punching the air out of his gut. There’s barely any time for Yuuta to catch his breath before Maki reverses her grip on her staff, and a sharp blow against the backs of his knees sends Yuuta sprawling face-first onto the ground.
“Pay attention,” Maki snaps from somewhere above him. She sounds amused, and her breathing is unfairly even, almost as though she has spent the past half an hour taking a stroll around the campus and not beating Yuuta’s ass.
Yuuta groans as he props up his upper body on his elbows. At least Maki hadn’t been lying. Now that he’s no longer just focused on their sparring match, Yuuta finally spies Toge and Panda on the opposite end of the length of the training field. They must have just returned from their field mission, on their way to the main building to report to Gojo when they had stopped to watch Maki and him spar.
Yuuta is still winded from his graceless fall, but not too winded to remember item 3 of 17 on Seventeen’s list. He raises a hand in Toge’s direction, crossing his forefinger and thumb in a vague semblance of a stylised heart. He’s too far away from Toge to discern whether Toge has noticed his finger heart, but he keeps both hand and finger heart aloft until Toge turns away to tug on Panda’s arm and both of them resume their trek across the practice field. Yuua watches them go, until a snigger draws his attention back to where he is still sprawled on the grass.
“Was that supposed to be a finger heart? Because from where I'm standing, it looked kind of like you were making a rude sign at Toge.” Maki’s voice is at least sixty percent suppressed hilarity. Yuuta thinks the remaining forty percent might be pity.
Yuuta drops his full body back onto the ground and buries his face in his hands, the better to muffle his whimper.
ii.
Another afternoon brings with it another sparring session with Maki. This time, however, both Toge and Panda are sitting on the steps by the side of the field. Yuuta’s fairly certain that they have a bet ongoing as to the outcome of his and Maki’s latest match.
This time, Yuuta is also more prepared.
He waits until the end of the match, and pretends not to notice as money trades hands. Then, he casually places his practice sword on the ground. He casually raises his arms above his head and stretches. Then, he casually shifts his body such that he just so happens to be facing Toge’s direct line of sight. Finally, and very, very casually, he lowers his arms such that they are now extended in front of him, and brings the tips of his fingers and his thumbs on his two hands together to form a heart.
Toge’s expression does not change.
Nervously, Yuuta lets his arms drop back down to his sides, where he shakes his hands out at the wrist as he counts to ten. Then, he brings his arms up again, mimicking another stretch, the tips of his fingers and thumbs coming back together again just so.
Toge blinks.
Oh god, Yuuta realises. He can't do this.
He promptly drops his arms again, and alternates between shaking out his hands, and flexing and un-flexing his fingers.
A small furrow – a cute furrow, Yuuta’s brain adds unhelpfully – forms between Toge’s brows. He unfolds himself from his cross-legged position, and makes his way slowly towards Yuuta. “Mustard leaf?”
“Hand cramp!” Yuuta yelps, hands still in frantic motion as though they have overcome by a strange tic. "Practised for too long, gripped my sword too hard. You know how it is,” he adds desperately, before he remembers belatedly that Toge doesn’t practice much with bladed weapons and probably doesn’t know how it is.
Times like this, Yuuta wishes that his cursed technique included the ability to command the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
“Yuuta?” Toge asks, by now standing close enough that Yuuta can almost count the individual hairs of Toge’s incredible eyelashes, and that’s the only warning Yuuta receives before he finds both his hands caught between Toge’s.
Immediately, Yuuta holds himself very still. “Toge-kun?” he begins cautiously, his brain still scrambling for the right words. He wonders if Toge has seen through his ruse. Maybe Toge thinks that he is being ridiculous, and is questioning his decision to go out with Yuuta. Yuuta’s pretty certain that, if presented with a choice, he wouldn’t date himself.
Then Toge begins to massage the centre of Yuuta’s palms with his thumbs, and Yuuta stops wondering altogether.
Toge’s palms, where they cup the backs of Yuuta’s hands, are warm. Toge’s grip is firm as his thumbs rub concentric circles in the middle of Yuuta’s palms, their pressure somehow just right, and Yuuta has to bite his lip to keep a whimper from escaping. The circles start small, gradually growing larger, until Toge’s thumbs are tracing and kneading along the lines of Yuuta’s palms, their strokes deep and sure.
“Kelp?” Toge asks.
“Yeah,” Yuuta manages on his third try after clearing his throat. “Thanks. That really helps. My hands feel better already.” And because he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of saying it, he adds, “You’re really the best, Toge-kun.”
“Tuna mayo,” Toge says dismissively, but Yuuta doesn’t miss the way that Toge ducks his head ever so slightly, or the way that the tips of Toge’s ears stain pink, faint enough that Toge would say that’s due to the sun, but Yuuta knows better.
It’s not quite how Yuuta had imagined his attempt at item 5 of 17 on the list playing out, but he thinks he'll still count it as a win.
iii.
Yuuta gives himself a few days before he decides to try again.
Bigger, he decides, might be better.
(Bigger, but not in the way that page 69 of Seventeen suggests. Yuuta still can’t read that page without blushing, though it has made for interesting dreams.)
He ropes Panda in to assist him. Amongst the four of them, Panda has the best eye for aesthetic detail after Toge, which suits Yuuta’s purposes perfectly. That, and he’s also fairly certain that between Panda and Maki, Panda is a little less likely to judge him for what he’s about to do next.
They head towards the wooded area on the western edge of campus, to the tree under which Yuuta had first blurted out to Toge just how much Yuuta likes him. The tree stands on the top of a small hill, and they discover that when Panda stands midway up the slope of the hill with the camera on Yuuta’s mobile phone aimed just so, while Yuuta poses beside the tree with his arms curved above his head like a heart, the result is a photograph of Yuuta looking almost as tall as the tree. There’s even a hint of the sunset in the background of the photograph, tinting the scene with a warm, golden glow.
Panda obliges Yuuta with a more shots along the same vein, and doesn’t smirk too much when Yuuta asks for his thoughts on which photograph he should select. He even offers Yuuta advice on the most flattering filters. Yuuta mentally names Panda his favourite classmate of the week (after Toge, of course).
Finally, Yuuta hits ‘send’ on Line, and tries not be too obvious about checking his phone every few seconds as he and Panda make their way back to the dining hall for dinner. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to wait for long.
From: Toge-pi 🍙❤
Yuuta :(
To: Toge-pi 🍙❤
:)
From: Toge-pi 🍙❤
Yuuta are you saying that I’m short :(
To: Toge-pi 🍙❤
Don’t worry, you’re still cute! <3
From: Toge-pi 🍙❤
I see that was not a denial
Yuuta are you MOCKING me
To: Toge-pi 🍙❤
No?
I mean
I would never?
From: Toge-pi 🍙❤
YUUTA >:(
“So, how did you confess to Toge?” says Panda suddenly. It’s not a question that Yuuta is expecting, and its abruptness succeeds in distracting him from his growing confusion at Toge’s messages.
“Hasn’t Toge told you?” Yuuta asks. It’s the first thing he can think of, to buy himself time for one final message to Toge before he meets his boyfriend over dinner, but now that the words have left his lips, he discovers that he’s genuinely wants to know. His boyfriend status with Toge is still too new for them to have had any deep or meaningful conversations about how they feel about each other, beyond the obvious, or about the future of their relationship, and Yuuta will take any glimpse he can get into the psyche of his favourite person. Besides, page 42 of Seventeen had said that girls were more likely to share their thoughts about their relationship with their close female friends than with their boyfriends. Toge may be a boy, and Panda is more a panda than a female, but Yuuta figures that it’s just a matter of semantics.
He hurriedly sends Toge a final <3, before shoving his phone into his pocket.
“Not in so many words,” Panda says when Yuuta turns to look at him. He taps a claw on his chin, lapsing into a sombre silence.
“And?” Yuuta prompts, when impatience and nerves finally get the better of him.
The look Panda shoots him makes it clear that the heavy pause had been deliberate. An amused grin stretches over Panda’s face, and Yuuta sighs in relief.
“You’re really too easy to tease,” Panda laughs.
“I know,” Yuuta groans, covering his face with his hands. Then, because he can’t leave the thought alone, now that he’s started thinking about it, he drops his hands reluctantly and nudges Panda with his elbow. “So, did he?”
“He really didn’t say much to Maki and me: just that you had asked him to lunch with you somewhere here, and that you had suddenly kissed him and told him that you liked it. He said you were very nervous,” Panda laughs, before quietening again. This time, his silence is soft, pensive. “Toge tends to be pretty private about the things that matter the most to him. But,” Panda adds, bumping against Yuuta’s shoulder gently, “it was pretty clear to us that he was happy.”
There’s a weight to Panda’s words that makes Yuuta wonder if he’s being given the most indirect and roundabout of shovel talks, and he’s babbling nervously before he can catch himself. “Really? That’s great. I mean, that’s great to hear. I’m happy that he’s happy. I’ll continue to make him happy. I mean. You know. Yeah…”
Panda sniggers, and Yuuta forcibly cuts his ramble short. He casts around desperately for a new subject. Unfortunately for him, Toge is currently his favourite subject, and his brain has always been a little slow at catching up where such things are concerned. He blurts out the first thing on his mind, which, it turns out, is, “Toge was laughing when I confessed.”
Really. Some days, Yuuta wishes he could use Toge’s cursed speech technique to order people to forget.
At least Panda looks interested. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Yuuta says, against his better judgment, because he doesn’t think he will tire of talking about Toge any time soon. Or at all. “I wasn’t actually planning to confess that day,” he admits, his voice unconsciously softening. “It was just supposed to be lunch. But I was holding on to the last onigiri in his bento, and he was trying to reach it, and he looks so cute that I just kissed him. After that, I couldn’t not confess.”
And Toge had been really cute, Yuuta thinks.
What Yuuta had planned to be a sedate picnic lunch had somehow morphed into a civilised food fight. Yuuta had held the last onigiri high above his head, and Toge had stood on tiptoe, and then jumped, in a bid to snatch the onigiri out Yuuta’s grasp. Toge’s face had been scrunched up adorably in concentration, his lips in the sulkiest pout that Yuuta had seen on him yet. It did not make much for Yuuta to lean in and kiss those incredibly pink and plush lips before his brain could caution him otherwise.
It had been nothing more than a chaste peck, but Toge’s eyes were impossibly wide when Yuuta drew back, and Yuuta had said in a panic, before his brain-to-mouth filter could kick in, “You’re going to have to grow as tall as this tree if you want to reach this.”
Too late, Yuuta realises how sending that photograph to Toge, and his subsequent messages, might have come across.
Crap.
iv.
After that third try, Yuuta decides to put all further attempts at following the magazine’s advice on hold. It’s not that he’s giving up, he tells himself comfortingly. He had already promised himself, way back on his first day at Jujutsu High, that he’ll no longer walk away from challenges. Rather, he’s taking a step back to take stock of the situation, the better to strategise and to apply the magazine’s suggestions more effectively. He’s applying what Gojo and Maki have told him repeatedly whenever they spar.
In any case, he has been assigned a mission today. It’s his first mission after regaining his Special Grade status, and Yuuta would be lying if he claimed that he wasn’t nervous. Logically, he knows that he’s no longer that same timid, nervous boy who had just transferred to Jujutsu High, or even that desperate boy who had been willing to give up his life to protect his friends from the likes of Geto Suguru. He’s much taller, for one. He’s developed muscles where he didn’t even know muscles could develop. His stance, when he holds his katana, is balanced and confident.
But pre-mission nerves will always be pre-mission nervous, and it’s his first solo mission in a while. Yuuta may be a lovesick fool – he’s self-aware enough that he can admit it to himself – but even he knows enough that he cannot allow himself to be distracted by thoughts about his relationship with Toge until his mission is over. Not when a small lapse in his preparation, or a tiny slip in his concentration, could mean the difference between life or death when fighting against a cursed spirit.
Yuuta is still flipping through the brief for his latest mission, waiting for Ijichi to emerge from the administration building with the keys to the car, when he there’s light bump against his arm. Startled, Yuuta glances to his side. Right into Toge’s very large, and very pretty, eyes.
“Mustard leaf?” Toge asks, and Yuuta thinks his heart might melt on the spot. He shouldn’t be surprised that his boyfriend – his amazing, ever-attentive boyfriend – has noticed his anxiety.
“Thanks, Toge-kun. I’m fine. There’s no need to see me off.”
The sideways look which Toge slides him is eloquent in its disbelief.
“I’m fine! Really!” Yuuta protests weakly.
“Bonito flakes. Salmon roe, pollock roe, tuna mayo.”
“What? Surely there’s no need…” Yuuta begins, only to be distracted by the sight of Gojo striding casually towards them, Ijichi hurrying at his heels. “Gojo-sensei! Ijichi-san!”
“I see Toge has already told you,” Gojo says, by way of greeting.
“But – !”
“I have reviewed the parameters of the mission,” Gojo continues implacably, as though hadn’t interrupted, “and I agree with him that it will be beneficial for him to support you on this mission.”
“But…” Yuuta tries again. The mission can’t be a simple one, if it has been assigned to him. While he does not doubt Toge’s strength or the power of Toge’s cursed technique, he’d much rather keep Toge out of harm’s way if he can help it.
“Tuna,” Toge interjects, frowning slightly. And it’s only then that Yuuta notices the plastic bag dangling from Toge’s wrist, printed with the familiar logo of the drugstore closest to the school campus.
“You planned this,” Yuuta realises. “From the moment I told you about his mission.” If he had thought his heart would melt only a minute ago, he’s pretty sure his heart would be a puddle of goo by now. Toge is honestly the best thing to have happened to him. Yuuta knows that he is lucky to be so loved.
“Bonito flakes, caviar, pollock roe.” There’s still a faint crease between Toge’s brows, and Yuuta can’t help but reach out to smoothen out the furrow with his thumb.
“I’m not looking down on you. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yuuta, pickled radish.”
“I know, I know. I’m an idiot, I’m sorry,” Yuuta apologises. He drapes his arm over Toge’s shoulder, and draws the smaller boy flush against his side, before he can think the better of it. He’s almost tempted to drop a kiss on the top of Toge’s head, but Gojo claps his hands together, and the sharp sound reminds Yuuta that they have company.
“That’s settled, then,” says Gojo cheerfully. He appears singularly unfazed about the fact that two of his students are in all likelihood dating each other, and Yuuta wonders how long Gojo might already have known about it. “Try not to die, though I have the confidence in you that you will not.”
Ijichi clears his throat. “Okkotsu-kun, Inumaki-kun, let us go.” His voice is no less gentle than Yuuta recalls from the previous times that Ijichi had ferried him to previous missions, and a small warmth settles in Yuuta’s chest.
Tucked against Yuuta’s side as they sit in the backseat of the car, Toge is a steady, anchoring presence throughout the journey. Yuuta has never felt so calm, and at the same time, so capable of great feats.
He wonders if it might be too early to propose marriage.
Yuuta makes a mental note to consult the copy of Seventeen in his bag when they return to the school after the mission.
*
Their destination is a former shopping district in suburban Tokyo, its former shops and tenants cleared out to make way for a newer development. The hollow buildings that have been left behind are drab and dingy in the unforgiving light of the day, and radiate enough cursed energy that Yuuta thinks he wouldn’t be surprised if the people living in the apartments nearby reported a higher rate of accidents and family squabbles in their homes.
Ijichi draws a veil over the shopping district, but it turns out to be unnecessary. One step under the arched entrance to the main thoroughfare, and the ground shifts beneath their feet, cracked stone tiles morphing into damp, uneven earth. A faint stench, reminiscent of rotting flesh, surrounds them.
They’re in a domain.
“Bonito flakes,” Toge says, terse, and he’s right. This wasn’t in the mission brief that Yuuta had been given. Yuuta wonders if Gojo had foreseen this. It would explain why Gojo had agreed with Toge’s request.
Yuuta takes a deep breath, and with it, he swallows all the hesitation and nervousness that had been plaguing him since he was informed of this mission the night before. He has Toge by his side, and Toge has him.
Cursed energy fills his lungs, sparks beneath his skin, wraps around his body like an invisible armour. He can feel Rika – not his childhood friend but the bone-white construct that his cursed energy still takes the shape of, even after he had released Rika-chan’s bond with him – coiled at the back of his mind like a predator lying in wait.
They’ll be alright.
Yuuta exhales. “Let’s go.”
As they venture deeper into the domain, silvery, thread-like structures begin to catch Yuuta’s eye, growing larger in number and in size until they’re impossible to ignore.
Beside him, Toge’s footsteps slow to a halt, and Yuuta knows that Toge must have realised the same thing.
“Spider web,” Yuuta confirms. “Wasn’t that what the brief said? A curse born from humanity’s fear and hatred of spiders.”
Toge nods, but it’s obvious that he’s only paying Yuuta half of his attention. Toge’s eyes are darting around, as though he is trying to pinpoint or locate something in the web-laced gloom. Yuuta hears it a moment later: soft, pattering clicks, like many spindly legs scuttling about.
“I have a torch,” Yuuta says, fumbling with where the mini torchlight he had clipped to his belt for this mission, just in case. He almost regrets flicking it on, however, when its beam catches on something round and luminous.
On many somethings that are round and luminous.
Baby spiders with their multiple eyes. Lots and lots of baby spiders. That is, if a baby spider were the size of a small, furry, bulbous-bodied dog.
Crap.
Yuuta switches the torch off, but the spiders’ eyes still retain their glow. There are more of them now, their numbers growing by the second, and Yuuta can’t help the shudder of revulsion that shivers through his body. Instinctively, he curls his fingers around the hilt of his katana, even though there are too many of them for him to take them down with ease with a blade. Using a cursed speech technique would be more effective, but he still needs to see his targets in order to direct his cursed energy towards them, and he’s not sure if he can see them well enough in the relative darkness of this domain.
Yuuta is still mulling over his options when Toge grips his arm firmly. “Mustard leaf,” he says, and Yuuta relaxes, his choice made, because of course.
Toge releases Yuuta’s arm with a pat before he steps forward. “Explode!” he orders, and immediately, all the baby spiders explode, splashing their surroundings with a gunk that smells acrid and bitter.
Toge wrinkles his nose in disgust, and Yuuta finds himself seized with the sudden urge kiss his boyfriend. He restrains himself, however, and waits for Toge to grab a few gulps of his throat medicine before he says, “Let’s go.”
They continue deeper into the domain like this, Toge exploding the baby spiders that mob towards them, while Yuuta keeps an eye out for the Grade 1 cursed spirit that had birthed these spiders, until finally –
“Don’t move!” Toge commands the hulking shadow ahead of them. Yuuta vaults over him, sliding into a roll beneath the frozen spider-shaped curse, his katana drawn to slash through the base of its abdomen. It doesn’t work as well as he planned, however – the body of the curse is easily as a big as a bus, and its bristle-furred exoskeleton just as tough. Yuuta’s blade leaves but a light scratch, and the pain seems to enrage the cursed spirit. It gives a screech that has Yuuta fearing for his ear drums, and then it’s a scramble to dive out of the way as the cursed spirit attempts to crush him by lowering its body on him.
“Blast away!” Toge yells, and the cursed spirit goes flying into the ceiling of the domain. Toge begins to cough, and a dark liquid trickles out from a corner of his mouth.
“Toge-kun!” Yuuta cries out. He makes to hurry over, but Toge shakes his head, pointing above them.
“Tuna, tuna,” he croaks, and Yuuta glances up to see the cursed spirit crouch on its eight legs, ready to spring.
“Rika,” Yuuta breathes as the cursed energy coursing through his arteries and veins spikes and sings.
“Yuuta,” Rika croons at the back of his mind, a familiar and now-comforting response.
“Lend me your strength,” Yuuta whispers as he swings his katana up to meet the cursed spirit mid-leap. His blade slams into its head, between its two largest eyes, and cursed energy flashes out like black fire, momentarily blinding him. He feels, rather than sees, his sword carve the cursed spirit into two, slicing through it as cleanly and as easily as a hot knife through soft butter. Then, he falls to his knees, trying to catch his breath. White halos dance across his vision, the afterimage of the black flash still stamped across his retinas.
“Yuuta? Yuuta!” Someone is shaking him. Toge is shaking him.
Yuuta blinks hard, forcing his eyes to focus. Toge’s face is tight with worry, and the sight makes Yuuta’s heart clench.
“Hey,” he whispers, his hands coming up to cup Toge’s cheeks. “Look at me. I’m fine. See? Not a scratch.”
Toge’s gaze is searching as his eyes dart all over Yuuta’s face and body. What he sees must have reassured him, because his shoulders relax. “Yuuta, mustard leaf?” he rasps, and Yuuta feels a lump form in his throat at how shredded Toge’s voice sounds. That last command Toge had thrown at the cursed spirit must have really hurt. All to buy Yuuta enough time to counter-attack.
“I’m really fine,” Yuuta assures him, and the words come out caught between a laugh and a sob. “All thanks to you. But your throat, the medicine – ” he pauses, suddenly remembering that they had run out, two spider mobs ago. “I’ll buy you more the moment we get out of here.”
“Salmon,” Toge agrees as he leans forward to rest his forehead against Yuuta’s.
Toge’s lips quirk into a small smirk, and really, Yuuta can’t help himself as he thumbs away the blood at the corner of Toge’s mouth, smearing it across the seal on his cheek. Then, he shifts, first pressing a kiss on that seal, and then another kiss on the seal on the Toge’s other cheek, before finally drawing back just enough to bump the tip of his nose against Toge’s.
(Item 10 of 17, a small voice at the back of his mind helpfully adds.)
“I’m glad you’re alright too,” Yuuta starts to say, but Toge’s expression suddenly twists. Toge jerks away, and it occurs to Yuuta, a step too late, that the domain is still very much around them. Which means –
“Plummet!” Toge yells, before collapsing on his hands and knees as a coughing fit wracks his body, and dark splotches drip onto the ground beneath him. He sways for a second, then collapses onto his side.
“Toge!” Yuuta cries out, but a loud, crunching noise behind him demands his attention. Yuuta spins around just in time to see another cursed spirit, a spider this time as big as a house, clamber out from the pit that Toge’s cursed speech had dropped it into.
Instinct and panic make Yuuta summon, “Rika!”
This time, there’s no enquiring croon from Rika, no familiar surge of cursed energy through his limbs. Instead, it’s like the floodgates of a dam slam open, and with it, Yuuta’s will as it shapes and drives the cursed energy that explodes all around him. Rika uncurls above him with an eldritch scream, and static fills Yuuta’s vision as his mind whites out with the angry desire to kill, to destroy, to protect.
The last thing that Yuuta sees, as reason returns to him gradually like the incoming tide, is a glimpse of sunlight as both the cursed spirit’s and Ijichi’s veil fall away.
And then, darkness.
v.
Yuuta wakes to the sterile white ceiling and glaring fluorescent lights that he recognises Ieiri Shouko’s sick bay. There’s a rustle beside him, and when he cranes his neck to look, he meets the cool and very unimpressed gaze of the woman herself.
“Ieiri-san, please excuse me,” he blurts on reflex, because he’s always found her to be somewhat intimidating, and every visit he’s paid thus far to the sick bay has always left him feeling compelled to apologise for being a bother. Maybe it’s the bags under her eyes. Or the stories that Yuuta has heard, about Ieiri being able to outdrink all of the staff on the Tokyo campus and still slice open a corpse from throat to pelvis in a single stroke with a scalpel.
She surveys him silently for a moment, her face tired but otherwise expressionless as always, before she snorts. “It’s not me you should be apologising to,” she says, nodding towards the foot of the bed that Yuuta’s lying in, and it’s only then that Yuuta realises that he and Ieiri are not the only ones in the room. “Try not to use too much cursed energy at once in the future. You collapsed. Gave us all quite a scare,” she says. She scribbles something on a clipboard, then checks the remaining fluid in the IV bag that Yuuta’s hooked up to. Finally, she turns on her heel and exits the room, leaving Yuuta alone with Toge.
There’s a moment of awkward silence as Toge puts down the magazine that he had been reading, and regards Yuuta quietly. Yuuta returns his gaze steadily as he does his own cataloguing of his boyfriend. Toge looks terrible. His complexion is pale, and the shadows under his eyes are halfway to rivalling Ieiri’s. His high collar is zipped up, obscuring his mouth, but there’s no hiding the bloodstains on the front of his uniform, a memento from their recent mission.
Guilt claws on Yuuta’s insides. He should have done more to protect Toge. “Hey,” he says hoarsely, as he holds his free arm out in a universal invitation for a hug. There’s a beat, and another, as the second-hand of the clock on the wall of the sick bay ticks impossibly loud. The moment stretches, long enough that Yuuta begins to think that he might have misread the situation between Toge and him after all. He wavers, and starts to lower his arm uncertainly.
Then, Toge clears his throat. “Yuuta, pickled radish.” His voice is muffled, almost as though he is about to cry, but his returning hug, when he throws himself into Yuuta’s embrace, is stubbornly tight, and his eyes, when he meets Yuuta’s gaze, are clear. This close, Yuuta is able to catch a glimpse of Toge’s face behind the rim of his collar. Toge’s lips are pressed together, and turned up in a tremulous smile.
“Bonito flakes, pollock roe, salmon roe, caviar. Mustard leaf,” Toge continues, and while Toge may have just called Yuuta an idiot, even Yuuta can understand when it’s Toge-speak for, Stop blaming yourself. I’m fine.
“But – ” Yuuta begins to protest. You got hurt, he thinks. I made you worry.
“Pickled radish,” Toge repeats firmly as he presses a finger firmly against Yuuta’s lips, and Yuuta resigns himself to being called an idiot by his boyfriend for the rest of his stay in the sick bay. Possibly even for the next few days thereafter.
The sick bay is not the best place to cuddle. The beds are too narrow for two teenage boys to lie down comfortably side by side, and even less so when one boy is hooked up to an IV drip and both boys have bodies that are littered with an assortment of fresh bruises. Nevertheless, they make do.
Eventually, however, Yuuta has to acknowledge that his free arm has fallen asleep beneath Toge, and he is forced to shift them both, hissing at the prickling sensation that envelopes his arm as blood finally rushes back in. His eyes cast about the room, anything to distract himself from the uncomfortable tingling, before finally falling on the magazine that Toge had been reading. “Hey, what were you rea…” Oh. Oh no.
Beside him, Toge begins to snigger.
“Where did you find it?” Yuuta groans. He briefly contemplates smothering himself with his pillow.
Toge points at Yuuta’s bag, then adds, “Kelp, tuna, tuna, salmon roe.”
“Wait. You already knew?”
“Salmon.”
Perhaps not the pillow, Yuuta decides. But the temptation to dive under his blanket and hide, until the heat fades from his face, is almost crippling. “And you just let me do it,” he croaks.
Inumaki pats him comfortingly on the shoulder. "Tuna mayo." It was funny.
“I can’t believe you sometimes,” Yuuta grumbles. He can still feel his cheeks burning, but Toge is adorably unrepentant, his cheeks rounded in a way that hints at a mischievous smirk hidden behind his high collar. Yuuta can’t help how his own mouth stretches into an answering grin. He tugs down the zip on Toge’s collar, cups the back of Toge’s head with his hand, and leans in.
Toge’s lips are soft beneath his, if slightly chapped, and the startled, breathy sound that Toge makes when Yuuta licks in is one that Yuuta knows will feature in many of his dreams in the weeks and months to come. Yuuta doubts he’ll ever be able to kiss all the mischief out of his boyfriend, but he’s not going to let that stop him from trying, and he kisses Toge with enough try that they’re both breathing hard by the time Yuuta draws back.
Item 17 of 17 on the list, Yuuta thinks with satisfaction. Perhaps the most direct way is still the best way, after all.
“Bonito flakes!” Toge glares. His cheeks are a delightful pink. They make Yuuta want to kiss Toge again.
“I love you,” Yuuta says dazedly, just before he receives a pillow to his face.
vi.
Going out with Toge is amazing. Going out with Toge means having Toge stay over in his room on a Saturday night. It means getting to try out everything suggested on page 69 of Seventeen, and the experience leaves Yuuta half-convinced that if paradise did exist, it would exist between Toge’s thighs. Most of all, it means waking up on Sunday morning with a warm, snuggly armful of Toge.
Yuuta wishes he could preserve this moment for posterity.
As it is, he settles instead on letting his eyes roam as he drinks in his fill. Golden bars of sunlight peek through the slats of Yuuta’s window to march up the creamy curve of Toge’s shoulder, and it takes all of Yuuta’s self-control not to run his hands, and then his lips, over Toge’s bare skin in a repeat of last night. He’s not sure how long he watches Toge sleep for, but eventually, Toge frowns and stirs, finally starting to wake, and it’s now Yuuta’s turn to hold himself perfectly still in feigned slumber, just to see what Toge will do.
The bedding beside Yuuta shifts and dips. There’s a warm brush of lips against Yuuta’s forehead. A soft sigh.
Yuuta is so very madly in love.
“Kelp,” Toge whispers, his voice still husky from sleep, when Yuuta finally opens his eyes.
“Mornin’,” Yuuta murmurs as he tightens his embrace around Toge, drawing them even closer.
Going out with Toge is amazing because Toge is amazing, and Yuuta is pretty certain that he’s never ever going to let Toge go, no matter what any magazine says.