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Utahime looks exactly how Gojo remembers her.
He doesn’t, at first glance, identify the teacher as anybody he knows. Her back is turned, and he sees only a dark-haired woman in a white blouse and a cheery red pencil skirt, nondescript. But for her unusual choice of skirts, she might be anyone. But she turns, and he sees her – sharp nose, scar across the bridge, warm brown eyes that narrow when they recognize him – and knows exactly why the shape of her from behind had seemed a little familiar, and a grin tugs at his mouth before he can help it.
It's been twelve years since he’s seen Iori Utahime, not since high school, but that pretty scowl is unmistakable.
“No,” she says flatly, instead of a greeting, when he walks through her classroom door with Tsumiki’s hand in his. “I’m seeing things.”
“Hime!” he crows, because if she’s going to make a point of letting him know she remembers him, he ought to give as much. “When’d you leave the sticks?”
Were there not a dozen or so other parents milling around to chat after dropping off their children, Utahime looks like she might slap him. He smiles, raising his free hand in a cheeky wave as if she does not yet know he’s here.
“Nine years ago,” she says coolly.
Nine years – that would’ve been just after finishing university.
Gojo whistles. “And no one ever told me?”
“No,” she says, pretending to tidy the contents of the corkboard behind her so she can turn her back. “Why would they?”
“Aw, c’mon. All that time we spent together-“
“Gojo-sama,” she says, turning her head to look at him with a saccharine smile, “please don’t provoke me in front of my students.”
And their parents, she would probably add if she weren’t worried about being overheard.
“What do you mean?” he asks. “I’m not provoking you. Just shootin’ the breeze.” He rocks back on his heels in anticipation of something that Utahime has already been abundantly clear is not coming. “You know, like old friends do.”
“I see you’re as delusional as ever.”
“And I see you’re my kids’ teacher, huh?”
She looks at him, then down at Tsumiki, and her expression softens. He remembers how much she used to like younger children; her choice of profession makes sense. “She looks nothing like you.”
“Nope,” he says gleefully, popping the p, and looks back over his shoulder at Megumi, who’s sitting by a shelf of board books by himself. “That’s because I stole ‘em.”
“I didn’t know you were-“
“I’m not,” he says. “Like I said. Stole ‘em.”
“I’m sure your mother doesn’t know about that,” she says. “Or else she’d have told mine.”
“No, I...” he shrugs. “Don’t talk much to my folks anymore.”
“No wonder.”
He does not ask or want to know what she means by that. Probably something scathing.
“Welp,” he says, grinning, “guess that means you’re stuck with me again, right?”
She gives him a look that he hasn’t seen since their mothers, who’d been roommates before they were married, had forced them to entertain each other during their interminable dinners. He wants to smile, do something disarming, but he doesn’t.
Turns out she’s the one doing the disarming. She’s a lot more disarming than he remembered, actually, from their last meeting. He was fourteen, she seventeen, and, for some reason now lost to time, she’d run off in a huff after calling him a ‘brainless pleb’; somehow that quick, biting tongue looks better on a fully-grown Utahime than he had expected.
“Don’t worry,” he says after he regains his bearings. “I’m nicer than I was back then.”
“You haven’t changed, have you?”
At that, he really does grin. “And apparently neither have you.”
Except that this, of course, is a lie.
Iori Utahime, huh?
**
Her name is Utahime.
For the first month of the school year, Suguru only knows her as Iori-sensei, until home visits. Then, though she probably isn’t supposed to, and though she especially probably isn’t supposed to when speaking to a single man her age who just so happens to have children in her class, she introduces herself by given name. “Utahime off the clock,” she says, smiling. So he knows: her name is Utahime.
He catalogs what else he knows about her carefully as she reveals things – elegantly, he thinks, and never too much at once. He admires that in a woman. She loves tea, as far as he can tell, and not sweets; when he sets out both, she takes the first but not the second. He learns, also, that she’s from Hokkaido, that it had taken her as long to shed her country accent as it had for him, and if he ought to be suspicious that his daughters’ teacher is treating this visit like a social call and not a business meeting, he isn’t.
Geto Suguru has never been known to deny himself the company of a beautiful woman, a charming woman, or, God forbid, a woman who is both at the same time. He admires elegance too much.
Truth be told, Iori Utahime is more personable than polished past the first five minutes of the home visit, but she is beautiful, she’s certainly charming, and she’s retained a bit of the countryside even after years in Tokyo that he rarely sees in the women he usually thinks of as elegant. She’s altogether more wholesome, too, and while that is not a quality he usually finds appealing, it’s one that looks much more winsome than usual in a kindergarten teacher.
“Your girls have so much energy,” she tells him, sipping a third cup of tea. “I sometimes wish they would apply it to something more constructive than tormenting each other.”
And there is also her refreshing willingness to speak her mind.
“I’m working on that,” he says, sighing. “I think they come by it off my watch.”
Utahime frowns. “Why would you say that?”
“Well, their friends at school...”
He trails off, hoping that this will need no explanation.
“I assume you’re talking about Megumi-kun,” she says, her eyes dancing. “Yes, I’m aware.”
“No, actually, I was referring to that Nobara girl they’re always with when I pick them up.” He looks up at the ceiling in what he thinks is a good imitation of proper remorse. “She seems to be egging them on.”
“Oh.” She looks down into her teacup. “Never mind, then.”
“Though I’m sure Megumin doesn’t help,” he sighs.
“Megumin?”
“I know his father.”
Utahime looks a little strange, but she readjusts her expression so quickly that Suguru almost doesn’t register the change. “Oh, so they’re close.”
“Yes, I…I would say so.”
“That’s good,” she says. “Tsumiki is such a sweet girl.”
“That she is.”
“Anyways,” she says. “I just thought I should raise that concern.”
“Iori-sensei,” he asks, “do you have siblings?”
“Three sisters,” she says, “and I know exactly what you’re going to say, but I don’t think it has to be inevitable that one of your kindergartners call the other a ‘kumquat’ in front of the entire class.”
Suguru can feel the circles under his eyes forming already.
“Of course,” he says, wishing there were a graceful way to explain himself, that she could somehow be made to understand that he’s been reeling for years and feels no closer to knowing how to bring up a civilized set of twins by himself.
"I know it must be difficult,” she says.
Hearing something like that would usually make Geto bristle, but her voice and her face are so kind that he can’t help but soften.
“It has been,” he says. “Since my wife passed.”
Utahime nods, no doubt sensing it’s best not to say anything.
“Well, I don’t think I’m supposed to say things like this,” she says, “but kids are my job, so if you’re ever in a pinch…”
She doesn’t finish that sentence. Geto is glad she doesn’t.
“That’s kind of you,” he says, trying not to fake a cough like he usually does when he doesn’t want to admit that he’s flustered.
Charming indeed.
**
Nanami does not often encounter a woman who catches more than a second of his attention, but this one crouches in the doorway to catch Yuuji when he comes running at her legs, and that will do it.
He tries to scold Yuuji, because this is a business matter, and besides, no matter how attached a boy with no mother might naturally become to a young, pretty teacher, showing so much affection for someone in authority just isn’t polite. Iori-sensei waves him off, though, don’t be ridiculous, I think it’s sweet, and she doesn’t seem even a little bit vexed when his son interrupts their very serious discussion of his academic progress.
Repeatedly.
“I’m so sorry,” Nanami says, shaking his head after the fourth such interruption. (This time, Yuuji had wanted to show his teacher a Lego airplane.) “He’s…sometimes more energetic than I know how to handle.”
“Well, he is,” she says. “But he’s so sweet I almost can’t complain.”
This is not a compliment intended for Nanami, but he still finds his cheeks reddening. “He is,” he agrees, very grave and very sheepish. “I only hope he’s manageable.”
“Being high-energy isn’t a bad thing,” she says warmly, “at least not in a student who listens when I ask him to rein it in.”
That’s one of the things Nanami likes about Yuuji, too, that willingness to listen. He feels the uncomfortable swell of pride in his chest and wonders how much of it stems from the praise and how much from its giver.
He doesn’t want to think about how much he likes it when this lovely woman praises his family, but he can’t exactly control what he likes and doesn’t.
“He does listen well,” Nanami agrees, pushing his glasses back up to hide his face for a moment. “It’s…made things easier.”
“I understand you took him in when he was a baby?” Utahime asks.
The school probably told her to – that’s the point of these visits, getting insight into a student’s home life – but he’s still a little surprised. Usually, no one will bring that up. “I did,” he says. “His late father and I were good friends.”
“Ah, I see.”
It’s an unusual arrangement, and he knows she must be thinking that. “Legally, his grandfather is his guardian,” he explains. “But he isn’t…in a position to take care of a toddler.”
“That was generous of you,” Utahime says, sipping the tea he’d offered her earlier. “I don’t know many people who would offer to raise a child like that.”
“Well.” Nanami rubs his palms on the knees of his khakis, sighing. “It was an unideal situation.”
She smiles. “My point stands, Nanami-san.”
The school probably told her that she had to say that, but Nanami still feels taken-aback. For all that he knows he catches women’s eyes often enough, he knows few personally, and none well enough that one would praise him for something other than his looks. The closest he ever gets is a friendly greeting from the college girl who’s always working the counter at the bakery when he picks up his lunch, and that doesn’t really mean much. So for Yuuji’s teacher to be so kind – even out of obligation – is unusual enough to set him at unease.
Not unpleasantly, of course, but unease all the same.
“Um,” he says, uncharacteristically unpolished, “you’re kind to say so.”
She ignores him, looking down at a clipboard in her lap. “I was hoping to go over a couple of things while I’m here,” she says.
Good. Procedure – he can do that. “Of course.”
“Starting with whether or not you have any concerns about your son,” she says. “Academically, behaviorally, that sort of thing.”
Nanami wants to shrug, but that feels like it would be juvenile. “I don’t think I was aware that I should be worried about kindergarten academics.”
She smiles as if she’s letting him in on a secret. “Probably not,” she admits. “But I’m required to ask.”
It really would be terribly unprofessional, but Nanami thinks that she laughs after that because his face is noticeably red at the thought of sharing a joke with her. If it is, he can’t blame her, unprofessional or not; he ought to be more composed than that by this age.
He really does need to get out more.
**
Gojo never drinks, but he never admits that – he can afford to let the ice melt in a glass of whiskey for a couple of hours if it means having someone to talk to. And Geto and Nanami, regardless of his preferences, always want to meet at a bar.
It’s not often he meets men who know the struggle of raising children alone, so if the izakaya is what it takes to do that, he’ll deal with it.
Tonight, Geto looks smug, and Nanami looks sulky, both rather typical but just unusual enough to pique Gojo’s interest. He sits between them at the bar, as he always does, and pops a piece of the karaage they’d already gotten when he arrived late into his mouth before he greets them.
“You didn’t pay for that,” Nanami says drily.
“I’ll buy you a round,” he says. “You look like you need it.”
Nanami gives him a profoundly exhausted look.
“And you look weird,” he says, turning to Geto. “What this time?”
“I don’t look weird.”
“You definitely look weird, man.” Gojo takes another piece of karaage and ignores the look Geto gives him. “What gives?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Get your own chicken.”
“What, you can’t share?”
“Mm, rather not.”
“Bitch,” Gojo says fondly.
“Freeloader.”
“You got any idea why Nanamin’s pouting?”
Nanami, who is used to being spoken about as if he isn’t in the room, sighs heavily and reaches for the plate of karaage for consolation.
“Nope,” Geto replies.
“I’m not pouting.”
“Upset, then?” he tries.
“Out of sorts,” Nanami finally admits.
“Work again?” Geto asks.
“Did you two seriously just sit here in silence until I showed up?” Gojo cuts in. “Like…how do you not already know?”
Geto raises an eyebrow loftily and looks down at Satoru, somehow, even though he’s taller. “Some of us don’t ask impertinent questions.”
Geto is always like that with company, and it never fails to make Gojo feel sour. He’s calculating, phrases things a little too well; he wasn’t like this when he’d shared a messy apartment with Satoru in college, and he still isn’t when they’re alone, but even with Nanami, by all descriptions a good friend, he keeps his mask of refinement. Gojo knows perfectly well what it’s supposed to be concealing, but that only makes it more irritating.
“No,” Nanami says curtly. “And if it was, I wouldn’t tell you.”
He would, in truth, but only after a few drinks. Gojo has learned in the years he’s known Nanami Kento that all he has to do if he wants the truth is wait for his third pint to empty, but if he said that, his friend would purposely stop at two, so he never does. He thinks he’s rather strategic that way.
“Yuuji-kun?” Gojo guesses.
“No, he’s fine.”
“Naaaanamin.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, now I’m curious, too,” Geto says, smiling slyly. “Did you meet someone?”
Tellingly, he looks down into his beer.
“And?” Gojo prompts, trying to ease him into the conversation before the inevitable interrogation.
“I don’t have any illusions about it happening,” he says tightly.
“Oh, so he admits it?” Geto’s eyes dance with mirth or maybe just the thrill of the chase. “Why would that be?”
“It’s not,” he says, digging his hands into the fabric of his pants, “appropriate.”
Gojo and Geto exchange a look. It’s a Nanami thing to say, but it’s not a Nanami thing to do – if the person he’s met is inappropriate by any standards outside his own, that is.
“How?”
“Professionally.”
A coworker, then. Probably someone below him, maybe a new hire. Boring, but the fact that Nanami is interested in anyone at all is shocking.
“The boss?” Geto asks.
“No. Just…someone I can’t appropriately pursue.”
As much as Gojo wants to egg him on, that would only make him close off again, and there would go the only thing about Nanami’s life that seems to have changed in the last five years.
“Tell me about her,” Geto says, leaning conspiratorially against the countertop.
“I shouldn’t,” Nanami says. “I don’t think it’ll help.”
“Maybe it will.”
Nanami slumps.
“She’s kind,” he says. “And…professional, but caring. And perceptive, and…good-looking.”
All as expected. Nanami isn’t the type to go for women who excite him – it’s the ones who strike him as trustworthy that he tends to take an interest in. Not, of course, that Gojo has seen him take interest in many women, but the few times he has, they’ve met the same description. In practical terms, it’s better than Gojo’s preferred tactic of becoming entranced by people he knows he can’t win over.
A brief thought of Utahime crosses his mind, and with it the fact that she and Nanami would probably get along fine. Much better than she ever would with him, at least. He doesn’t know why that thought irritates him so much.
“You sound like you’re hiring flight attendants,” Geto says, laughing. “When are you ever going to want someone?”
Nanami looks at him crossly. “I don’t see what’s wrong with thinking more about a woman’s character than her figure.”
Gojo glances at Nanami’s drink – first pint, three-quarters empty. He raises his eyebrows; usually he wouldn’t be expressing himself so freely this early on.
“I never said anything about her figure,” Geto replies. “That was all you.”
“My point stands.”
“You have to think about what she makes you feel,” he says, leaning against the back of his stool with a heavy sigh and his drink held aloft. “Frankly, no one you’d refuse to pursue on practical grounds seems like she excites you enough to be worth pursuing anyway.”
“This is why your relationships don’t last,” Nanami sighs.
It’s true – they all know it – but they have well-worn parts to play: Nanami the pragmatist, Geto the debonair, Gojo the comic relief. It is a relief, when so much of raising children is bound up in the uncertainty of never knowing whether or not one is getting it right, to have a place in which expectations are clear and easy to meet. It makes it hard for them to say anything they mean, but that seems like a small price to pay for a little sliver of certainty.
“I’m just saying,” Geto says.
Gojo, privately, thinks that sometimes he would like to punch Geto in the teeth, but now doesn’t seem to be the time. The most he can do is deflect before he can be forced to endure any more of his empty pontificating.
“I’ve also,” he says, clearing his throat, “got my eye on someone.”
Geto, who is used to being informed of everything important to Gojo well in advance, turns to look at him with raised eyebrows.
“Well, I mean,” he says, trying and failing not to sound like he’s making this up as he goes, “recently.”
“Oh?” he asks. “Recently enough that you haven’t felt the need to shout it from the rooftops yet?”
“I’m getting to that,” he says brightly. “Man. She hates my guts.”
“As do most of the women you go for,” Nanami says.
Gojo, who can’t deny that, forces a smile, but that’s gotten easy over the years, making a fake smile seem real. “But, y’know, I can work with that,” he says. “Just gotta, you know. Roll up the sleeves. Flex my dad skills.”
In all honesty, he doubts that Utahime – and he can’t talk about this woman and not picture Utahime – would ever be impressed by his childrearing abilities so much as she seems to be horrified that anyone let him have children to rear, but he can hope. He sort of likes that idea, actually, impressing a woman who loves children by providing evidence of his success with his own.
“You might want to get Megumi-kun to stop picking fights at recess before you try that,” Nanami says, not even slightly amused.
He wilts. Even if he did want Utahime – which, to his knowledge, he does not – that might be an obstacle.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says instead. “Megumin is an angel.”
“Right,” Nanami says wearily, as if the child he’s talking about is not his son’s best friend.
“Interesting,” Geto says. “And here I was thinking I was the only one of us who’d had someone catch his eye lately.”
“You don’t have to talk like that,” Gojo grumbles, upset at being upstaged even in a half-truth.
“What, are you surprised?”
“Not even a little bit,” Nanami says.
They’re a mystery, those two. Some days Gojo can’t even wrap his head around a reason they might still willingly speak to each other.
“I find this one particularly charming,” he says.
Nanami flags down the bartender, then, while waiting, says, “you say that about all of them.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“You do, actually.”
“You kinda do,” Gojo agrees.
“I didn’t say it was going to work out,” Geto tells them. “Only that somebody caught my eye.”
Which, in Geto’s vernacular, probably means he’ll have slept with her and lost interest within a week or two. He’s been like that since Manami died – flightly, forever seeking and forever dissatisfied. Gojo supposes it’s that or despondency, but still, sometimes he worries.
He didn’t talk about these things so callously when he was married, and Gojo can’t help but wonder whether or not he’ll ever straighten back out.
“Yeah, and no one can resist you, bla, bla, bla,” he says. “What else is new?”
The look Geto gives him is more offended than he’d expected. “You may think my relationships are disposable-“
“Geto-senpai,” Nanami interrupts him, “they are.”
Geto shakes his head, then rests it in his open palm.
“This one is…sweet,” he says haltingly. “I don’t like thinking of her like the rest of them.”
“So you admit it.”
“No,” he says, “I just admit that this one feels different.”
**
Most of the children are old enough by now to walk themselves to the station, but Gojo has never liked leaving things to chance that way. That, or maybe he’s over-attached; Nanami certainly thinks so, that he’s clingy and needs to give Megumi and Tsumiki space to grow. But considering that that’s coming from Nanami, who is perhaps the most quietly watchful parent Gojo knows, he doesn’t put much stock in it – or in any argument against his picking the children up from school when he can.
This practice, though it predates her by a year, also has the fortunate effect of giving him more chances to chance upon Utahime.
Usually, she ignores him, which is downright insulting. But one day – a Thursday, he thinks he’ll never forget that – she turns to him and nearly smiles when she tells him that she’s going to have to restock her bookshelf if Megumi keeps plowing through her books at the rate he is right now.
It is not lost on Gojo that most of his classmates probably still can’t read. Playground delinquent or not, he finds himself excessively proud of that.
“Didn’t know you liked reading so much,” he comments on the train home.
Megumi shrugs. “I don’t wanna talk to anyone.”
This is a lie, or at least an oversimplification, because he and Yuuji and a little girl who has never heard the words ‘inside voice’ before are joined at the hip, but he gets the gist. If his friends want to go off with the other children, Megumi would rather make a tactical retreat; Gojo’s no misanthrope, but he sometimes thinks he’s smart to do that. Smart to have learned so quickly.
Half the time he thinks they must be picking things up faster than he is, because not for a moment in the three years since he inherited them from a distant cousin with no family has he really felt like he knows what to do with them. He can learn to braid Tsumiki’s hair, pack lunches the teacher won’t scowl at, and nurse the common childhood illnesses they pick up on the playground, sure – but being a father is a matter of constant doubt. No amount of learning will make him feel anything less than ridiculously slow. So knowing that they’re learning, they’re not going to have to live under a constant cloud of self-consciousness…
It's a good feeling.
“Your teacher seemed real impressed,” he says, ruffling Megumi’s hair.
“Really impressed,” he corrects him.
“Whoa, sorry, grammar police.” He chuckles, mussing his hair once more for effect. “Really impressed.”
“She is,” Tsumiki pipes up. “She always says Megumi is the smartest one in the class.”
Are teachers supposed to be that biased? Gojo only wonders for a few seconds before smugness takes over. Of course he is. Everyone knows that Megumi is only antisocial because he’s got a first-rate brain underneath all that pent-up anger.
“Utahime-sensei said that? You lucky dog.”
Megumi looks disgusted, and Gojo will only later realize that a comment like that would tell anyone who heard it that he was lying when he insisted that his interest in Utahime went no further than nostalgia.
**
Utahime, objectively, is not Geto’s type. The women he usually likes are as polished, but invulnerable, maybe a little dishonest – people whose hearts aren’t soft enough to be broken. Oftentimes they’re serial white liars who know when he’s lying, too, and don’t particularly care. They are not vulnerable, open, or earnest, and when he is the one who has to end things, none of them ever seen too upset, nor is he when they’re the ones who walk away. He likes, in short, the kind of women whose merits are mostly aesthetic, who are cool and composed, who neither ask much nor want to be asked for much, and Utahime is none of those things. She may be beautiful, but she’s warm, gentle, all the things he shies away from.
Still, he can’t remember having thought at such length about any one woman since Manami died.
He likes to pretend not to be so sentimental, but he smiles when he reads her handwritten comments on the twins’ progress reports. When they come home full of stories about Utahime-sensei and all the things they love about her, his interest is genuine. He finds himself wondering when his pursuing her would stop being a conflict of interest and feeling more anticipation than he expects when a meeting at the school gives them a chance to meet. It’s funny how quickly a woman who is not at all his type had become such a source of fascination. But if he’s being honest, that has a lot to do with Mimiko, too.
Whatever her reputation in class may be, Mimiko is a shy child, and always has been. Usually, she clings to Geto when she can and is wary of other adults, but lately she’s been a little less scared and a little less timid, and on the rare occasions that he sees her with her teacher, he’s taken aback by her openness. She adores Utahime, and it’s been ages since Geto met an adult his daughter liked. And even Nanako, who usually resists authority at every turn, seems more docile in Utahime’s care than she used to be.
He's never really given it serious consideration before, but he’s beginning to wonder if the girls, more than anything, might want for a mother. And the women he dates in a revolving door of drawn-out entrances and swift exits may have their merits, but they’re not the kind of people who would make his girls feel warm and secure.
That, he thinks, must be why it’s a woman he ordinarily wouldn’t notice that has held his attention for so long.
Geto Suguru knows he’s selfish, but a part of him has always seen that self-interest as a layer of protection for the girls. So long as he chooses people who he would never trust with his daughters, he has no choice but to end things quickly; in keeping spheres separate that way, he keeps his heart cloistered, protects himself, too. So the thought of wanting a woman who he would have no conceivable reason to leave within weeks is more than he knows what to do with.
He hasn’t been interested in feeling like that since Manami. It is hard, after all, for a man who runs from everything to know he wants to stay, and for a prideful man to be tongue-tied.
**
Nanami’s teachers were never this nice. He doesn’t think he’s ever had one who would give their entire class tiny boxes of chocolate for Valentine’s Day, let alone with a note for every child attached to each. Let alone for children who mostly can’t read.
“Megumin helped me read mine,” Yuuji tells him, so excited he talks almost too fast to understand. There is a smear of chocolate on Yuuji’s cheek that Nanami wipes off with his thumb. “She says I’m really nice.”
Nanami smiles, reaching down to ruffle his hair. “That you are.”
“Except there was this one part Megumin couldn’t read,” he says, fishing the crumpled-up note out of his pocket. “What’s it say?”
He unfolds the note, trying to smooth it out enough to read the neat hiragana that Utahime had probably used for the benefit of the few children in her class who can read. “You have a big heart and a positive attitude,” he reads. “I love being your teacher. From, Utahime-sensei.”
His chest feels curiously warm, reading that. He almost wishes it wouldn’t.
“That was nice of her,” he says.
“Everyone got chocolates,” Yuuji tells him, happily swinging his legs over the edge of the seat. “Except Nanako doesn’t like chocolate, so she gave hers to Nocchan, and then everyone got mad ‘cause Nocchan had two.”
Knowing Nobara, she probably extorted Nanako for her candy, but Nanami doesn’t think it’s a good look for a man in his thirties to be inciting rumors about six-year-olds. “You’re lucky to have such a kind teacher,” he says instead.
This, he is convinced, is one of the truer things he’s ever said. So true, in fact, that he sends Yuuji to school with flowers Tuesday morning.
On Thursday, when Yuuji comes home, he hands him a card in an envelope patterned like Ming porcelain. It is perfumed, and in it, Utahime thanks him for his thoughtfulness, and for being such an attentive father to Yuuji, and Nanami rereads it one too many times.
Sometimes, he wishes that his son had been placed in a different class, because he hates thinking about the fact that he found the only woman he’s really wanted to get to know in years in the one place that makes it impossible for him to do that.
**
“You ready to kick some Class B-“
“No,” Utahime says curtly.
Sports day has never been her favorite school event, and at the sound of Gojo Satoru’s voice, she can already tell that it’s not going to be any better this year. Funny how they haven’t seen each other in twelve years and he’s still as annoying as he was at fifteen. Unfortunate that it makes her just as hot under the collar now as it did when she was a third-year in high school.
“Oh, come on, you love winning stuff,” he says. He rips open a bag of ice – she finds herself looking without wanting to at his forearms where his sleeves are rolled up to do it – and dumps it noisily into the ice chest, then gets to work arranging water bottles. “Remember how butthurt you used to get when you lost at Mario Kart?”
He remembers that? “I was only butthurt because you cheated.”
“How did I cheat?” he protests. “How is that even possible?”
“It just is.”
“Grow up,” he says cheerfully.
“You grow up,” she grumbles, then, “I’m working, you know.”
“And so am I,” he says. “On my own time. Aren’t I generous?”
“You know,” she says drily, “it’s becoming clearer and clearer why I never called you after graduation.”
“Hime!” Gojo squawks. “So mean!”
“I wouldn’t need to be mean if you weren’t a brat,” she says.
It briefly occurs to Utahime that she should be trying to be professional. Much as she wants to think it doesn’t matter, that Gojo Satoru has known her too long to be anything but an exception, he is a parent volunteer, and she’s supposed to be showing him the polished side of her that administration likes, not this one. A teacher is supposed to inspire total confidence in the parents of the students she’s educating, not poke at them because they need to be knocked down a peg.
But she knew Gojo Satoru when he was a child stuffing his face with cake under the table at their mothers’ dinners, and she’s too uncomfortable with the way he’s grown up to be anything but prickly.
The facts, however irksome, are that he is irritating, obnoxious, handsome, and raising two children who are barely the terrors they might be under the circumstances, and Utahime is not even a little bit okay with seeing the snot-nosed brat she used to know grown up like that. And with any other parent, she’d be the consummate professional, but things can never work that way with Gojo.
He knew her before she learned to look docile and welcoming and conduct herself unassailably, before she realized that a woman’s best protection in this world was total conformity. He is not, now that he’s grown, going to get those things from her. Maybe he doesn’t deserve them or maybe he’s just not dangerous enough to warrant toeing the line for, but either way she won’t.
“You still like sports and stuff?” Gojo asks after an awkward stretch of silence.
She thinks that question is answered by the Seibu Lions hat she’d allowed herself to wear for this one occasion only, and there’s no way he didn’t notice it. Still, that makes it oddly charming that he’d asked. No, she tells herself, bad, she isn’t supposed to be charmed at all – but still. “Mmhm.”
“Funny that you don’t like Sports Day, then.”
She looks up from the rosters she’s finalizing, surprised. “How’d you guess?”
“You’re not very good at hiding stuff.”
She doesn’t like Sports Day. Too much hubbub and administrative interference, too many people to paste on a bland smile for. Sometimes it feels like it’s being held not for the students but for the adults surrounding them who want to believe they’re giving them the generous gift of childhood memories. But the thought that anyone walking by could see that frightens her.
“I’m plenty good at hiding stuff,” she says.
“Maybe from them, but” – he smiles – “I knew you before you knew how to hide anything.”
Utahime’s cheeks flush.
She hates that they do, but her cheeks flush, and she looks down, muttering something scathing, not least because he’s right.
**
“Guys,” Geto says, gesturing with a beer bottle still full enough to slosh when he waves it. “I think I have commitment issues.”
Gojo and Nanami, neither of whom have been keeping track of how many drinks Geto has had, exchange a look. Getting him to open up, they’ve found, takes more alcohol than anyone thinks Geto should ingest at once.
“Duh,” Gojo says anyway. “What else is new?”
“It sucks, man,” he sighs, sinking back into the couch. “It sucks.”
Dressed in his oldest sweatpants and holding his head in his hands, Geto looks so much like he used to after an all-nighter in university that Gojo doesn’t quite know whether to be relieved or worried. Much as he almost always wants him to drop the act, it takes a lot to make it happen.
“What, uh,” Nanami stutters, visibly uncomfortable, “brought this on?”
He sets his beer down with a heavy thud. “Y’know that teacher at the kindergarten?”
It is only because Gojo’s face blanches that he doesn’t notice when Nanami’s does, too. They don’t look at each other and neither even begins to think that there might be a reason for that.
That’s who Geto was going on about? Gojo wants to spit into his untouched beer. He wants Uta, of all people?
He can think of few things that make him want to crawl under the Persian rug on Nanami’s living room floor and stay there until he decomposes than the thought of use-them-and-lose-them Geto dating Utahime, best friend or not.
“Yes,” Nanami says stiffly. “What about her?”
“I’d ask ‘er out,” he says, “but then I couldn’t get rid of her.”
Geto, Gojo concludes, is some special kind of sick for even thinking about that. Maybe – he almost takes a sip of his beer, thinking that – his own feelings for her run deeper than he thought, or maybe he’s just protective of one of the few figures from his past that he can still stand. Still. If it were Nanami who liked Utahime, maybe he’d admit defeat. But Geto, best friend or not, isn’t the kind of man who the tired, disappointed Utahime he’s seen lately deserves trying to sweep her off her feet.
And not just because he thinks Geto might actually be able to do it.
“Why are you even dating people if all you wanna do is get rid of them?” he asks in the most neutral tone he can manage.
“I don’t wanna get rid of ‘em,” he protests. “I just…can’t…”
“You’re afraid,” Nanami deadpans. He’s not drunk enough to be sloppy, but he’s buzzed enough not to be as buttoned-up as he usually is. “Of letting anyone get within a foot of your actual feelings.”
Geto gives him a look that is half teenage angst and half genuine rage, but clearly he’s too far gone to act on either, because he flops back into the couch cushions with a string of curses muffled by the pillow he pulls over his face.
“The girls love ‘er,” he says, finally pulling the pillow off his face after a few minutes. “And that’s the bad part.”
Gojo knows Geto well enough to see how this all maps out. The girls provide an excuse for him to swiftly dispatch the people he sees before he’s had a chance to get attached, but with a woman that he’d trust with the girls, and with whom attachment predates everything else, there’s nothing he can do except admit that he’s stuck if she’ll have him. Why that’s a problem, Gojo can’t possibly imagine, but then, he’s never lost a wife, either. He doesn’t know what kind of heartbreak it would take to make somebody so afraid of keeping a good thing, but he can imagine.
Knowing that that heartbreak has always been there, lying dormant in a corner that Geto won’t touch, is the only thing that’s kept Gojo from slapping him some days.
That’s the core of it, really –that he’s looking for the cheapest replacement he can find without having to shine a flashlight into that dusty corner and face the fact that what he really wants is the love he can’t get back. And the thought that he discard her carelessly because he found a woman he wanted to stay with but no longer knew how to stay makes him feel lightheaded.
“Dude,” Gojo says, maybe selfishly or maybe not, “do you think maybe you need a break from all of this?”
He cracks an eye open and looks at Gojo like he can’t quite make him out. “Eh?”
“This dating stuff,” he says. “Would it maybe be better to just…not see anyone for a while?”
“Nah,” he says, pulling the pillow back over his face.
Seeing him like this, as childish as Gojo himself, almost hurts after so many years of the polished façade he presents even to his closest friends. It’s only in these moments that he realizes what losing Manami so young did to him, how much he’s missed the version of his best friend who hadn’t yet.
How much he wants him to get better, but not with a woman he’s just as desperate to pursue.
“Maybe,” he says again after a few moments to think about it. “But…what then?”
“What do you mean, ‘what then’?” Nanami asks.
“I mean, what am I gonna do, sit around and think?”
This time, Nanami and Gojo do look at each other.
Gojo, who has wanted for at least two years to tell Geto to stop using people to avoid coping with his buried grief, wants very much to say something that won’t help. Nanami, who has a short leash when it comes to patience with Geto’s issues to begin with, looks like he’s finding himself in a similar predicament.
Instead, Gojo chooses to say neither thing.
“I…actually know Utahime, y’know.”
Geto squints. “Yeah, ‘course you do.”
“No, like…from when we were kids.” He coughs into his closed fist. “Our moms were friends.”
Nanami clears his throat.
“I thought you didn’t talk to your parents,” he says after a moment.
“I don’t.”
“Oh.”
“I, uh…hadn’t seen her in a really long time.”
Nanami looks miserably down at his shoes, but Gojo, still facing Geto, doesn’t notice. “I see.”
“But I kinda know her,” he says. “And I, uh…don’t like thinking about you getting her to date you and then ditching her because you got freaked out.”
“Might that have anything to do with the fact that you want her?” Nanami asks.
“What? Me? No. Definitely not.” Gojo’s face is so red that he can only hope Nanami is too lost in thought to notice it. “I just, uh. Childhood friend.”
“Right,” he says, unhappy. “That makes sense.”
“Bro,” Geto drawls. “I hate it when I have feelings.”
“Trust me,” Nanami says, “we know.”
**
Work is kind of the worst.
In her nine years of teaching, Utahime has learned the truth of that statement in almost every way she could. She’s been underpaid, overextended, kicked in the shins, shrieked at by both parents and students, thrown up on, chastised by her bosses for noninfractions, spent entire nights crying after home visits to parents who cared exponentially less for their children than she did. She’s been ogled by students’ fathers more times than she can count, forced to toe the line when she wants to speak up, and altogether stripped of most of the fun parts of her personality, and more than once, her friends have told her that a position that offers so little prestige can’t possibly be worth all that.
But it is, because every day she walks into a classroom full of children who mostly love her, and for some of them, she gets to be the one person in their lives who comforts them, pushes them, believes in them. She gets to set them on their path in life and know that at least one person in the world has given them their all. And sometimes someone else sees that, too.
Itadori Yuuji’s father is always one of the people who does.
It's blazing-hot by the middle of June, and Utahime hates the heat almost enough to forget that it’s Ochuugen already the afternoon that Nanami comes to pick up Yuuji with a paper-wrapped box in his hands and lingers well past the rest of the children.
Utahime is not clueless enough not to have noticed that he’s taken a liking to her, but he’s so sweet about it that she can’t bring herself to be concerned. He’s always been too much a gentleman to do anything more than blush upon realizing that she kept the flowers he had Yuuji give her after Valentine’s Day, and when Utahime is willing to stoop to admitting it, she’s touched by the attention. She can count on one hand the number of people over the age of six who ever give her much for any good reason. But sometimes…
“I…don’t think you can know how indebted I am to you,” he says, sheepish, holding out a gift that she can now see is embossed with the logo of a fruit parlor that she would never dream of being able to patronize. “I…it does me good to know that someone is taking better care of Yuuji-kun than I am.”
Utahime takes a moment to remember that she’s supposed to say something and stammers, “you shouldn’t have, Nanami-san.”
“No, please,” he insists, raising the box towards her. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, a little dumbstruck. It really is only half out of politeness that she keeps on refusing.
“Iori-sensei, please.”
She takes the box and bows in recognition, thanking him profusely, which only makes his face flush. It’s a little sad, she thinks, that she has such an effect on somebody she barely knows, and someone who seems to be so earnest. A little sad all she can do is reassure him that he’s a wonderful father with a wonderful son, because she knows beyond a doubt that he is.
Sometimes she wishes she were the kind of woman who could return the earnest feelings of somebody she would like to know better, to make a start before she knew where it would end. Maybe her mother is right when she tells her that she’s too cautious – things would be easier, she thinks, if she could act on someone else’s interest without needing time to cultivate her own. Yuuji is moving on to elementary school next year - things would be easier if she could take Nanami’s inevitable offer to go for drinks after the school year ends, not needing proof that things would last, or anything except potential.
It would be easier if she could recognize that what was perfect on paper seemed perfect for a reason, and yet all she feels when she looks at Nanami, so earnest that he’s nearly sweating, is sadness that she can’t bring herself to want to.
**
“You like Utahime-sensei, don’t you.”
Gojo, whose thousand-yard stare is fixed on Yuuji as he pushes Tsumiki on the swings, shakes himself to clear his vision. “Sorry?”
“You do, don’t you?” Nanami asks. “Like Utahime-sensei.”
“Oh.” Gojo smiles a little, figuring he might as well just come out with it. “Yeah, I do.”
“I…see.”
“Why do you ask?” Gojo tilts his head in Nanami’s direction. “Don’t tell me you like ‘er too.”
Nanami looks miserably down at his shoes.
“Oh,” he says, feeling an uncharacteristic pang of guilt. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry, man.”
“Why?”
“Why sorry?”
“No, why are you interested in her?”
“Oh.” Gojo leans both elbows against the backrest of the bench, tilting his head upwards. “Well, uh, we were friends when we were kids.”
“That isn’t much of a reason.”
“Well, no, but I, uh…I’m not really in touch with many people from back then.”
Nanami knows this – he was there from the beginnings of Gojo’s estrangement from his parents in his early twenties – but he still raises his eyebrows. “That still isn’t much of a reason.”
“I don’t know, it’s just…I dunno. She’s someone I already had a connection with, I guess.” He shrugs. “And, like, she’s just…fun. Always has been. Makes me laugh and stuff.”
“I…see,” Nanami says, unimpressed.
“And, like, have you seen her?” Gojo tries not to smile. “She’s a knockout and she’ll tell me off.”
“Ah, right,” he sighs. “I forgot you have a thing for women who hate you.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
He can’t really deny that, so he chooses to ignore the accusation instead. “She won’t admit it, but we, uh, we had good times together. Back then.” He picks at his cuticles. “Both of our families are kinda hardcore, you know? And, uh…she just got it. Most people didn’t. And I always thought she was so cool, y’know? Like, my smarter, older friend who knew how to do everything.”
“That hardly justifies an adult relationship.”
“Yeah, I know, but she’s still like that.” He shakes his head fondly. “I remember how mad her mom was when she went to school for teaching ‘cause she could’ve done anything with the grades she had, but…isn’t she doing the exact thing she should be?”
Nanami, who doesn’t like to praise, blushes stiffly. “She really is.”
It’s a little embarrassing to admit how much he admires that choice, doing the suitable thing instead of the impressive one. It’s so clear in everything he sees that Utahime loves the children she teaches, wants nothing more than to give them a chance to start off well that many people wouldn’t. Maybe she could have done anything, but she’d chosen the thing she felt most pulled to.
There’s a contradiction in the fact that she had done that when choosing her career but not while she was in it. Saddens him, really. But he doesn’t know how he would explain that to Nanami, so he doesn’t.
“I didn’t realize I missed her, you know?” he asks. “And I think that’s when I realized that was because you don’t meet someone like her too often.”
Nanami is quiet after that.
“So, uh, what about you?” Gojo asks. “Why’re you interested?”
“She’s someone I could see a future with,” he says quietly, almost ashamed.
Gojo knows what Nanami is thinking, and because he knows, he doesn’t point out that that might be a hasty statement to make when he doesn’t really know her very well. But he knows, too, that Nanami has never known how to be sentimental, and there is the unspoken truth behind his pragmatism, always, that she had melted his heart.
It’s the way he talks about Yuuji, too – as if he’s his father out of necessity, as if the fondness in his eyes when he looks at his son doesn’t come from anywhere – and Gojo has learned to recognize the signs that Nanami feels affection he won’t admit to.
“I get that,” he says.
“Gojo?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think she’s interested in me.”
Gojo remembers how Utahime used to talk in high school, how many boys she turned down because she didn’t know them well enough to want to start something that might last, and he doesn’t think Nanami is wrong. But saying that would feel unimaginably cruel, so he doesn’t.
“But,” Nanami goes on, “she might like you.”
“Nah.”
“Why else would she make such a spectacle about being around you?”
“Because I’m an idiot and I provoke her?”
“Well, that, but have you ever realized that she could just ignore you?”
She could. This logic, previously unconsidered, is frighteningly unimpeachable.
“You are an idiot,” Nanami concedes, “and frankly, the last thing I want is for you to be with her and be unbearable about it, but you know her.”
You see her, Nanami means. You would know how to care for her. And Gojo feels a curious warmth spread outwards from the center of his ribcage, because he’s never really thought of it, but he does.
“This is just the consequence of my own actions, I suppose,” he says after another silent moment. “Putting her on a pedestal she never asked to be on.”
“I…don’t think you did that.”
“Well, I do,” Nanami says, sighing. “And it’s probably for the best that she would turn me down if all of my reasons are based on conclusions I came to without really knowing her at all.”
Sometimes, Gojo thinks Nanami is too good for his own good. This time he simply thumps his shoulder in solidarity.
“You’re a good guy, Nanamin,” he says. “And you’ll find someone-“
“I don’t really want to,” he interrupts.
“…oh.”
“People don’t interest me very often,” he says.
“Mm.”
“Remember those chocolates she gave everyone for Valentine’s Day?”
“’Course I do,” he replies. “I ate them all.”
“Of course you did.”
“What? You knew this about me.”
Nanami shakes his head. “She wrote Yuuji a little note with his. And I just remember thinking, ‘that’s the kind of woman I want to be with.’”
He looks like he might cry. For someone as stoic as Nanami is, that’s more alarming than nearly anything he could do.
“I’m sorry, man,” he says, as if it’s enough.
“It’s my fault.”
“No, it’s not.”
“And if it isn’t, I’ll get over it.”
Won’t they all – Geto giving up on keeping out his grief, Nanami letting go what isn’t going to be. Gojo reminding himself that a chance meeting might not mean much.
“Me, too.”
**
“My daughter misses you.”
Utahime can hear the tap running in the background of Gojo’s call, figures the children must be washing up for the night. She smiles, even though the sight of his name beside the incoming call on her screen had almost sent her into cardiac arrest, thinking of that.
“It’s so weird hearing you call someone your daughter.”
“Is it?”
Two days after the end of the school year, and he calls her – typical Gojo. She had had a feeling she hadn’t seen the last of him when he’d shown up for the graduation ceremony in a tie printed with jelly beans and made eyes at her for half the thing. She wants to be annoyed, because he is insufferable, but she can see in his children’s secure confidence that he must not be the cheeky brat she left behind, and she thinks she can manage a little generosity if he’s that determined to keep in touch.
“You’re still not used to that?”
“I last saw you when you were fifteen, Gojo,” she says flatly. “Forgive me for having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of you having kids.”
She pauses, because she can’t risk sounding sentimental, and says, “especially not ones who actually seem sane.”
“You’re so mean to me.”
“No ‘m not.”
“You are too,” he huffs. “I call you to be nice and you insult me!”
“Yeah, yeah,” she laughs. “Why’d you actually call?”
“Dunno. Just wanted to.”
Her face warms. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I mean, school’s out, so I can, right?”
“I mean, you can if I pick up.”
“Which you will,” he says, “because you like me.”
“Eh…”
“You liked me fine when we were kids,” he whines. “When did you get so mean?”
“Dunno, high school?”
“Probably,” then, “Utahime?”
“What? You mean you can say my full name?”
“Ha-ha, very funny.”
“Anyways, what?”
“I’m glad I bumped into you.”
She is, too, if only to know that the Gojo Satoru she left behind thirteen years ago grew up better than she thought he would when she was eighteen and had wanted nothing more than for him to shut up, but she can’t say that.
“Why?”
“You’re kinda neat,” he says. “That’s all.”
**
“You’re sure they’d be okay with that?”
“No, yeah, I asked ‘em and they said that was fine,” Gojo insists. “I mean, it’s not like you’re a stranger, right?”
“People don’t usually invite their kids’ former kindergarten teacher over.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, we all want to get to know you better-“
“You realize how that sounds, right?”
“It’s not like that-“
“You sure?”
“No, seriously. We just…dunno. Thought we should widen our circle.”
“That was definitely not your phrasing.”
“Geto’s, actually.”
“Geto with the terror twins?”
“You called them that?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Well, yeah. That Geto.”
“Hmph.” Utahime pauses for a moment, probably to consider, then replies, “sure, why not?”
**
It is immediately apparent why Gojo is different.
She tries to bandy it off with exaggerated irritation, but there is a subtle comfort to the way she interacts with Gojo that’s missing when she talks to Geto or Nanami. She’s talkative, but certainly not familiar; with Gojo, though, she slips into a back-and-forth that could not more obviously be practiced. And Geto, though he’d expected not to, is amused.
She might have intrigued him, but it is so clear now that only Gojo of their group has the kind of irreverence she needs to bring out her liveliness. It’s almost unbelievable how easily they slip back into that after over a decade apart, but they play off of each other well. Well-matched, he thinks, even though he had nursed more than a little hope that that would be true of himself.
He may have been able to romance her, but he doubts he could’ve made her laugh, and he’s starting to see that she needs that.
It’s nice, making peace with something like this. Nice being able to chat with the plus-one Utahime had brought upon Gojo’s request, a chainsmoking doctor who couldn’t be less like Utahime if she tried, and not think about whether or not it hurt his chances with the friend he had his eye on. To see that Gojo, too, looks a little less lost than usual when he’s with her.
“Ten thousand yen says she’s the last one to leave his house tonight,” Utahime’s friend says, taking an elegant drag from her cigarette.
Geto, smiling, raises his eyebrows. “Only ten thousand?”
“Ten even,” she says. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”
“I would never,” he says, feigning innocence. “I wish them the best.”
Shoko rolls her eyes, but he means it. That surprises him, that he means it.
**
Nanami would have to lie to claim that it hasn’t been a little bit hard, having Utahime around at things. No one will call it a relationship yet, but no one is denying it, either, and as good as it is to see her happy with Gojo, it stings just a little.
“You doin’ okay?”
He turns at the sound of Shoko’s newly-familiar voice and her tap on his shoulder and automatically nods. “I’m fine.”
“Uta told me about you,” she says, leaning against the deck’s wooden railing beside him. “She always said you were really sweet.”
This woman who almost certainly knows just about everything is only making things worse, but he doesn’t have the heart to send her away.
“That’s not really helpful,” he mutters.
“Well, tough luck, I guess, ‘cause I’m out of ideas.” She tips her head back and blows out a puff of pungent smoke, watching it dissipate into the muggy night air. “Sometimes this stuff sucks.”
“It does.”
He looks over at her in profile, notes the way she holds her cigarette between two fingers and her thoughtful expression, and asks, “how did you meet her?”
“Uni.”
“I see.”
“And you?”
“She taught my son.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
“Adopted,” he says, flushing.
“Aw.”
“I…I’m glad he came to me.”
Shoko smiles. “What’s his name?”
“Yuuji.”
“Oh, Yuuji! Uta told me about him.”
“She did?”
“Said he was a total sweetheart,” she says. “And so was his dad.”
“Shoko-san-“
“She wasn’t wrong, y’know.”
**
“Hey, Gojo?”
He looks up so abruptly that an empty can he’d been trying to sweep off the table and into the trash misses, clattering to the floor. “Yeah?”
“Why do you only hang out with me when there are two other guys who have a thing for me around?”
Gojo, who is not one for blushing in the slightest, feels the blood rushing to his face. “Well, you’ve never asked,” he stammers.
“Yeah, well, I’m asking now.” She nudges him with her foot from a few feet away. “Where are you taking me next Thursday?”
Gojo sputters, can’t get out a single word, and gapes at Utahime like a dying fish.
“I don’t like amusement parks,” she tells him. “The zoo is acceptable if you bring the kids, but otherwise, stick to places they don’t sell food out of carts. I can’t stand Harajuku, so don’t bother, and I’d rather not run into anyone I know from work, so nowhere around Meguro, mmhm?
Gojo catches up about half a minute later.
“So what I’m hearing,” he says, smirking, “is ‘weekend in Okinawa’?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of pacing?”
“You’re so mean, Hime. So mean.”
It’s an act and he knows it and he loves it, and he knows from her smile that she knows, too.
“No Okinawa,” she says. “But I’d be up for a nice dinner if you buy the wine.”
“Would you, now.”
She smiles to herself and returns to scrubbing at a stubborn ring of purple on the counter that someone’s wineglass left behind. “You pick the place,” she says.
“Okay,” he says, then brightens, “okay.”
“So it’s a date?”
“It’s a date.”