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Binary Stars (First Stage) A star system consisting of two stars, orbiting around a common gravitational center of mass. Binary stars are believed to compose the majority of star systems in the visible universe.
When Megumi is all but fifteen years old, he meets the love of his life. There was no world stopping moment or dramatic slow motion where Megumi falls right into the person’s waiting arms upon their first meeting. Instead, they meet something like this:
“Fushiguro Megumi, right?” Yuuji’s older brother says, lips curling dangerously at the edge once his gaze finally lands on the big purpling bruise right under Megumi’s left eye.
“How’d you know my name?” Megumi asked. It’s hard to mask the apprehension in his voice, not when he’s talking to someone like Sukuna Ryoumen.
The thing is, Megumi hasn’t met the older boy before despite the number of times he’s visited his best friend's house over the summer. This would actually be the first time he’s ever seen the Sukuna in person and he’d be lying if he said Sukuna’s presence didn’t make him feel a little bit anxious.
See, Sukuna Ryoumen is something of a legend. And not in a good way. Not that Megumi particularly believed any of them, but it’s hard not to end up listening to a few rumors here and there when Sukuna’s name is usually heard in between conversations throughout their campus.
And if there’s one thing every story had in common when it came to the guy, it was the fact that whoever managed to catch Sukuna’s attention was as good as dead.
“So you're the new stray my brother picked up,” the older boy says instead of answering Megumi’s question. The glare Megumi gave him only made Sukuna’s eyes glint with something close to amusement.
Sukuna steps closer, a lot closer, until his face is only a few inches away from Megumi’s own. His right hand reaches up to swipe a trail of blood coming down from Megumi’s busted lips with his thumb and Megumi bites the urge to push him away.
"Fushiguro Megumi," Sukuna says his name again, testing each syllable on his tongue and enjoying the way it makes Megumi’s glare sharpen. "I wasn’t expecting to see you last that long in a fight, I’m impressed.”
Megumi doesn’t say anything even after Sukuna steps back to grab his school bag and finally starts to walk away, leaving Megumi alone with the unconscious body of five upperclassmen who were about to beat the shit out of him if Sukuna hadn’t intervened moments ago.
He doesn’t fall in love with Sukuna then, and he sure as hell doesn’t thank him for what he did that day when they meet for the second time.
Main sequence (Second Stage) Once a star has reached its main-sequence stage, it evolves relatively slowly, fusing hydrogen nuclei in its core to form helium nuclei.
Unsurprisingly, Sukuna becomes a regular presence in his life after that disastrous first meeting.
Megumi wants to blame it all on the fact that Yuuji’s stupidly kind nature always ends up inviting his older half brother to their weekly movie night whenever he sees Sukuna about to head out after dinner, but there’s also the fact that Sukuna’s an asshole who never wastes an opportunity to rile him up.
So here they are, with Yuuji happily out to grab some popcorn from the nearest 7/11 while Megumi does his best to ignore Sukuna’s very existence.
“So, the brat told me about some physics homework you were struggling with,” Sukuna drawls once Yuuji was out of earshot, grabbing Megumi’s attention.
“What about it?” Megumi eyes him carefully, trying his best to figure out the older boy’s intention.
“Want me to help you?” Sukuna offers nonchalantly.
“That depends,” Megumi starts to say, still trying to process the fact that Sukuna is offering to help him in the first place. “How good are you with the subject?”
He hears Sukuna laugh and it does something to him. The sound is light and laced with a hum of amusement that reverberates inside Megumi’s chest and Sukuna’s eyes crinkle at the corners. It softens his features and makes him look a lot more attractive.
Megumi realizes he’s been staring too long and looks away, embarrassed.
“Want me to show you my report card?” Sukuna smirks, one pierced eyebrow raised in challenge.
“Asshole,” Megumi mutters, but he begins to get up from the couch to retrieve his school bag lying on the floor. He rummages through his things until he pulls up his worksheet and passes it to Sukuna who examines his answers with a soft hum.
“These answers are atrocious.” Megumi heard him say.
“Look, are you going to keep insulting me or are you actually going to help?” Megumi grumbles, glaring at Sukuna when he hears the older boy snort at his question.
Insulted, Megumi tries to grab his homework back but Sukuna quickly pulls his hand away from him, eyes brimming with poorly concealed amusement.
“No need to get all defensive over your answers, Megumi.” Sukuna’s smiling at him again, the same infuriating smile he always wears whenever he wants to get on his nerves. “I told you I’d help, didn’t I?”
Wine red eyes are looking at him expectantly, gauging him for his answer and Megumi wants to get up and leave. He can deal with his homework on his own without Sukuna’s help, but what he can’t deal with is the intensity of Sukuna’s gaze and the way he's been leaning far too close without Megumi noticing right away.
“What do you even get out of helping me?” he asks, surprised by the honesty in Sukuna’s voice.
Sukuna’s smile turns sharper after hearing his question. “I made a bet with the brat the other day,” he answers with a shrug. “If you manage to get a higher score than him by the end of this semester, he has to do the laundry for an entire month.”
“So you only offered to teach me in order to avoid doing the laundry for a month?” Megumi reiterates, unimpressed with Sukuna’s answer.
“Have you seen all the fucking clothes the brat sweats through during P.E. and basketball practice? I’m doing myself a favor here,” Sukuna says dramatically. “And besides, you’d get the satisfaction of rubbing your score in his face once this is all over,” he adds as an afterthought.
“You’re horrible,” Megumi tells him.
Sukuna just smiles, unbothered. “Aren’t I?”
Sighing, Megumi starts to weigh his options. It isn’t like he’s intentionally helping Sukuna win the stupid bet, Megumi thought. And it wasn’t like anyone else was offering to help him.
“Fine.” Megumi caves in, sealing his fate and offering to meet up with the older boy every weekend for tutoring.
“I knew you’d change your mind,” Sukuna teases, finally leaning back to give him some much needed space. His gaze shifts back to Megumi’s worksheet and his expression darkens as soon as he starts to skim through its content once again. “How did you even manage to get every answer wrong?”
Before Megumi can even try to defend himself, Sukuna’s expression turns to that of understanding. He hands the paper back to Megumi with a sigh of his own and mumbles something close to “un-fucking-believable” under his breath.
“I think you wrote most of the same numbers wrong,” Sukuna tells him, a confused frown marring his face. “That’s why all your computations were wrong.”
Megumi raises a brow at Sukuna’s implication. He’s pretty sure he has perfect vision, at least that’s what his last physical stated. Why on earth would he get any number wrong when they were neatly printed over the pages? Sukuna’s suggestion made no sense.
Having sensed Megumi’s growing confusion, Sukuna shrugs his shoulders dismissively and starts to get up from the couch. “Hey, there’s no need to worry your pretty little head over it,” he says, stuffing both of his hands in his pocket and rocking back on his heels with an easy grin.
“I meant what I said about helping you,” he says with a wink right before leaving the room as soon as Yuuji steps in with a bag full of popcorn. “I’ll see you around, Megumi.”
“You’re not gonna watch the movie with us?”
Yuuji looks surprised when Sukuna replies with a short, “I changed my mind.”
The door clicks shut and Yuuji looks at Megumi with a frown.
“He was so insistent on joining us a while ago, did you two argue again?” Yuuji asks, scratching his cheek in confusion. “Hey are you okay, Fushiguro?”
“I’m good.” Megumi answers too quickly, avoiding Yuuji’s concerned expression in order to calm himself down. His heart is beating fast, too fast, and it’s all because Sukuna actually sounded sincere about his promise to help.
Megumi didn’t know what was going on, it felt like his ribcage was constricting and something was stirring inside his stomach. Was he sick? Megumi shouldn’t stay around Yuuji if he’d caught something.
Deciding that heading home was for the best, Megumi gets up with an apology and makes his way out with a promise to watch the movie some other day once he’s feeling better.
Later that night, he stays up searching for the cause of his earlier chest pain and finds far too many similar symptoms with more than a handful of terminal illnesses. In the end, he falls asleep with too many tabs open.
The following day, he wakes up to a dim room despite the sun already up in the sky and the numbers on his digital clock looking way too blurry for him to even tell the time properly.
He brushes it all off to morning grogginess and gets up like normal to start his day.
He gets his eyes checked after a short trip to the school clinic before classes start. Ieri-sensei tells him there’s nothing wrong with his vision, so Megumi relatively calms down and gets himself ready for homeroom.
It’s only when the numbers and letters stay distorted and blurry for the rest of the day, and when everything looks less vivid, that Megumi does start to worry a little.
Red Supergiant (Third Stage) When a star runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core, it begins collapsing, and then the outer shells of hydrogen around the core gets hot enough to begin fusion to prepare for the next stage.
Something is wrong with him, Megumi can feel it.
He can feel it in the way Sukuna’s presence seems to grow and expand within his peripheral vision whenever he spots him in his general vicinity, drawing Megumi’s attention no matter where Sukuna is. His gaze would always follow Sukuna like he was a beacon of light, and for some reason, the older boy seemed to appear brighter each passing day.
Today is no different.
Megumi is about to head home after class when he hears the telltale sound of rainfall from where he stands by the lockers. He searches his bag for an umbrella and lets out a quiet curse when he realizes he had left it at home. There ‘s no way he’ll be able to make it home without getting drenched.
Letting out a defeated sigh, Megumi braces himself for the inevitable. He changes back to his outdoor shoes and slowly makes his way towards the exit.
“Forgot yours?” Sukuna asks, suddenly right in front of him and holding out an extra umbrella for Megumi to take. Bright light immediately encapsulates Megumi’s field of vision as soon as he looks at Sukuna, and the intensity is enough to make him see stars.
Megumi turns his face away and starts to rub his eyes harshly, completely missing the look of worry that flashes across Sukuna’s face.
“You alright?” He hears Sukuna ask and he blindly reaches for the spare umbrella. He fails a couple of times and Sukuna has to grab his hand to pass the umbrella over. Megumi starts to blink a couple of times until the strange light emitting from Sukuna dims down and his surroundings start to look clearer.
“Yeah.” Megumi answers dismissively, which earns him a glare from the older boy.
“I don’t like liars,” Sukuna tells him seriously before opening his own umbrella and walking out into the rain. “I expect an honest answer from you next time, Fushiguro Megumi.”
Sukuna doesn’t wait for an answer and Megumi watches him go until his figure disappears from view. The weight of the umbrella on his hand and the memory of Sukuna’s hands on his own has Megumi’s cheeks heating up. Suddenly, there’s a tightness in his chest and the blurriness returns until everything looks far too distorted.
It takes exactly fifteen seconds for the darkness to disappear and for his eyes to refocus until he’s able to see properly again.
It’s on a cold July afternoon with the sound of raindrops in his ears and the familiar weight of Sukuna’s umbrella in his hands that Megumi starts falling in love with him.
Supernova (Fourth Stage) A powerful and luminous stellar explosion. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star. It is a cataclysmic event for a star, one that essentially ends its active lifetime.
His vision continues to get worse.
Megumi decides to finally look it up one night after returning home from the library. Sukuna had stayed up with him until he got all the equations right. The older boy had been surprisingly patient with him the entire time, even going as far as to pat Megumi’s head whenever he did a computation right.
They end their tutoring lesson when Megumi’s vision starts to blur and for a split second, everything is surrounded in darkness. He stops himself from panicking, refusing to let Sukuna see him like this.
As soon as his vision returns, Megumi stands up abruptly, announcing that he needs to go home.
Sukuna doesn't ask for an explanation, but he offers to walk him home despite Megumi’s insistence that he could walk home by himself, even when his vision keeps blurring in between.
As soon as he gets home, Megumi makes his way to his room and immediately searches for what’s causing his sickness. He scans through a number of sketchy sites when none of the frequently searched diseases match what is happening to him until he finds one that matches all of his symptoms.
Star Blindness. The process of losing one’s vision due to one-sided love. There are five stages up until the person goes permanently blind unless their feelings are reciprocated. The disease’s severity is often compared to that of a star’s life cycle due to the intense explosion of light upon seeing the object of their affection.
There is no known cure for such a rare disease.
Megumi rereads the last line over and over and he decides he doesn’t really like the idea of falling in love anymore—it has cursed him.
He is scared out of his mind. Scared of the growing darkness, of its absoluteness, of not being able to see anything anymore—of opening his eyes one day and only seeing a black void.
That night, Megumi sleeps with the lights off and dreams of a life where he is unable to see.
He wakes up screaming to a room surrounded in darkness.
Black Hole (Last Stage) When a star has reached the end of its life, its core becomes unstable and gravitationally collapses inward upon itself, and the star’s outer layers are blown away, turning into a cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
Megumi skips school for the rest of the week and doesn’t answer any of Yuuji or Sukuna’s calls.
He’s about to fall asleep watching old reruns of a show when he hears a knock on the door. Thinking it’s the nice old lady who often gives him freshly baked bread, he opens the door and is immediately met with Sukuna’s scowl.
Megumi is about to close the door on him, but Sukuna’s faster and he pulls Megumi’s arm to stop him and their eyes meet for what feels like the first time.
It’s like looking at a solar flare, Sukuna radiates like a morning star in Megumi’s vision and he immediately turns his face from the sight, afraid that he’ll go permanently blind.
“What’s wrong, Megumi?” Sukuna asks him, worry softens his voice and makes his frown deepen.
“I—” Megumi begins to say, but stops as soon as he feels the familiar warmth of Sukuna’s hand on his own.
“Tell me the truth,” Sukuna insists, almost pleading.
The urge to confess and tell Sukuna everything is unbearable, it’s nothing short of horrific.
“I’m in love with you.”
Megumi sees Sukuan's eyes widen.
“I’m sorry-” He starts to say, already regretting his decision when the darkness begins to swirl in his vision, threatening to consume his entire world.
“Megumi,” Sukuna whispers his name lovingly, his hands gripping Megumi's waist like he’s afraid to let him go. “Don’t apologize,” Sukuna breathes the words out like he can’t quite believe what he just heard. "Never apologize for this."
Slowly. Gently. Sukuna tilts Megumi’s chin until their eyes meet and before Megumi can ask him what he's doing, Sukuna is already leaning forward to kiss him.
Exploding suns erupt in Megumi’s vision and he’s suddenly enveloped in bright, warm light. It feels familiar, warm, something entirely Sukuna.
Their lips meet with a fury and it’s like tasting himself in the mouth of the sun. Megumi’s hands are in Sukuna’s hair, pressed against the sides of his face, fingers trailing over old scars. He can feel Sukuna’s hands resting over his hips, but not making any move to trail anywhere lower—just kissing.
And when they finally break away, Sukuna rests his forehead against Megumi’s and breathes a short, “I love you, too.” Love making his eyes burn like Bellatrix and Rigel.
Four words. And Megumi can see everything again.