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There is this certain type of cigarette smell that transforms Shoko back in time whenever she smells it. It does not matter where exactly she is, Tokyo’s main station, the narrow ways between the high rise buildings of Roppongi or the long way up the road to the school- if she just catches a whiff of that smell it is like she timewarped back to being a teenager.
Maybe that is why she stopped smoking those brands of cigarettes completely.
All across Japan, once adulthood took over and your existence just turned into nothing but a boring job one needed to attend to every day, many started looking back to their rather carefree childhoods. Summers were especially remembered in this weird cloud of nostalgia, aided by the help of modern pop culture, anime, movies, music, games and tv shows, that often discussed these summers that were just more perfect than what followed them. There was this sense of longing for something that had ended, something that would never in such a way happen again.
Shoko always hated this sort of thinking. Summers were hot, summers were sweaty and overtly sunny and full of bugs and cicada noise. As a kid she would hide in the basement, and now, as an adult, she was doing much the same.
Her disdain for the overt nostalgia adults had for their teenage years and the complete lack of objectivity towards how hard it could be to be young didn’t save her from experiencing her own blue summer when she was fifteen. But to her, it lasted shorter than an average high school run and it smelled of chewing gum, wooden rooms and menthol cigarettes.
Being a person who can see cursed spirits didn’t make you a popular student with the other kids in school. So for her first eight or so years in school, Shoko tried to stay out of everybody’s way. That didn’t mean they didn’t whisper about her behind her back, thinking her interest in medicine and especially forensic sciences were odd. Still, she didn’t have it as bad as other kids like her, she was not bullied, she was mostly just left alone.
It was good to be alone. She knew how to cope alone.
It was an unusually warm April day, the cherry blossoms just falling down the trees, when Shoko entered Jujutsu High for the first time. She was almost sweating in the black new uniform with the long sleeves. She was greeted by the headmaster, introduced to her teacher and told that she’d share the year with two boys. She wasn’t very interested in them.
Shoko heard Gojo Satoru before she saw him. The corridor with the student rooms was full of the noise of his laughter. When he introduced himself to her, with that sly smile of his, and told her who he was, what significance he had, how he was going to be unbeatable, Shoko guessed and guessed right instantly, that he was overplaying.
It was obvious how lonely he must have been until now, even if you couldn’t see his eyes clearly.
Geto Suguru was a very different kind of boy. As a rather quiet personality, he had been an outsider before and was well aware now that he entered the school as an outsider too. Not used to cursed spirits and the world that surrounded them, especially in comparison to how Satoru and Shoko were raised, often left him confused and mute. He was friendly, always overly courteous. When he finally found his voice he started inquiring about her medical books and anatomy posters and overall showed genuine interest in what she liked.
Shoko guessed that both Suguru and Satoru had mostly spent their time alone up until now, forced into solitude by family and surroundings. Just that one of them had retaliated by increasing his voice and the other had quieted down more.
The solitude they had spent so far seemed to be the only thing that all three of them had in common and so Shoko exchanged pleasantries and smalltalk but supposed she’d never like either of them very much.
And so classes began.
But it turned out getting to know both of them was a slow but rewarding process. Shoko had been right about Satoru, he had been isolated from other people most of his life so far and craved human connections. He hated the quiet that the dorm rooms brought when there was nothing to do and so he would come to her wing of the building and hang around in her room while she was studying, throwing a ball to the ceiling and catching it. He didn’t need her to speak to him necessarily, he just wanted the physical company of her there.
The biggest surprise was that Suguru not only could be very snappy if he wanted, he was also a massive nerd, super interested in classic and modern Anime and Manga, though he hid his addiction well. In his room he kept most of his Manga volumes under his bed and in the corner, all neatly packed and dust free, as if they were porn magazines. But if he was honestly asked about what he liked about them, he could talk for hours about it. Shoko sometimes spent evenings with him just sitting side by side reading in comfortable silence.
She knew the boys were doing things together without her too. That they spent time with just the two of them. One time when she looked for Satoru in his room she found them laying shoulder to shoulder on his bed.
At the time she had no way to explain the sting she felt at being excluded from that specifically intimate moment.
They were a trio. Most first years came into the school in trio’s or groups of four, but none were as close as the three of them. It was impossible to mention Suguru without mentioning Satoru and Shoko too. Triple S , the first years called them once they graduated to year two, and they meant it in annoyance and admiration.
That second spring, Shoko brought the menthol cigarettes for the first time. She ignored the “ That’s bad for your health ” and “ those stink ” comments from Satoru whenever she put on one, and his dramatically waving hands if it was around him. Smoking was nice and a stress relief and made her feel good.
Smoking wasn’t allowed in the dorms or through the open windows as the smell could seep into the furniture and curtains, so Shoko often had to go outside to have a cigarette. Either of the boys, sometimes both of them, often accompanied her then, even if Satoru often pulled a face.
The smell of the cigarettes seeped into all of them anyway, their hair, their clothes, their minds that summer, with so many things happening. Shoko was watching the boys grow from the sidelines. She wasn’t meant to be a frontline exorcist, not like them, and so they were often separated for tasks. But before and after missions they’d still all sit together, outside, on porches or in gardens and on benches, talking, laughing and the smell of Shoko’s cigarettes was always there with them too.
Shoko loved both of them. Each in their own way, but at best together. In those times she used to think that if she’d be able to live with them side by side forever, she would never need to marry. They would be family enough.
Suguru could endlessly talk about manga he had bought, new Shonen Jump issues and anime adaptations, but it was Satoru who brought in the story that finally helped her figure her mind out. It was a Shoujo manga, something Suguru would never touch if he could help it. Satoru was raving about it, the story of a protagonist who couldn’t choose between two suitors. “She loves them both,” Satoru exclaimed. “So she can’t choose! It's incredibly exciting to read.”
“You can’t love two people,” Shoko said in reflex, but took the books anyway. To humour him.
Amongst all the relatively standard romance and reverse-harem tropes Shoko actually did find the narrative pretty interesting. The lead character did love both boys very clearly and struggled to decide who to pursue. Didn’t help that both guys had different personality traits that fit neatly into hers, but none of them were perfect.
When she gave the books back to Satoru she told him she liked it, but not without gritting her teeth a little. Still, he smirked, because of course he did.
Not long after that, at the height of sweaty summer, Shoko felt like hanging out with Suguru, so she made her way over to his dorm room, her arms full of books to study with. It was not locked, the door just leaning, so she pushed it lightly with her foot to have it swing open. Suguru was there with Satoru.
They were kissing.
This time the sting felt much more real. She silently closed the door and first walked and then finally ran away, not stopping until her lungs burned hot.
The moon was already up and Shoko had not found sleep yet. It was good that the boys were a couple, they were good, they worked together, they liked each other, right? That was good. She was just upset that this meant they’d do more things without her. That she’d be excluded more, because couples want to be alone. Right?
“You can’t love two people.”
So it was.
She tried to stay away from them a little more afterwards. They deserved to explore this thing on their own, without her around. Plus, in middle school she had always been alone, so she must be used to it.
But losing both her best friends at the same time was a hard pill to swallow.
Not that they were actively excluding her. No, Satoru still came around to annoy her when he felt like she needed cheering up, Suguru still invited her over if he had a new manga issue bought somewhere, or a novel to share, but Shoko blocked them off most times. They should spend time together, not waste it on her.
Shoko smoked more cigarettes than any other time before. The pain ate at her insides. Never had she thought that losing a friendship could hurt like that.
She thought of that manga a lot, how the main character had clearly loved both male leads equally as much for their positives and negatives. How it seemed almost unfair that she had to choose and couldn’t just keep them both forever. About the fact that Shoko had dismissed Satoru immediately when he had said “She is in love with both of them.”
It just seemed so very impossible to love two people. That just didn’t exist, right? You fell in love with only one and ideally they fell for you too.
But maybe that was it anyway, she thought, a midnight in winter when she couldn’t sleep. Maybe she loved them both exactly the same. Maybe the fact that she loved them was the reason why them loving each other and not her, felt so much like a heartbreak.
The next week Shoko started observing herself around both of the others. How she felt when she was with each of them alone, how she felt when they were all three together. At the end of it, there was no doubt about it really. You could in fact love two people.
She didn’t know how to confess what she felt, too scared that she would ruin what little they had left. Satoru and Suguru loved each other clearly and they liked her well enough, but was that a good basis for an actual, real, relationship as three?
At least she stopped blocking their advances and started hanging out with them more again. More cigarette smoke and book talk and laughter. She was relieved to be by their side again.
One night, way later than Shoko was allowed to stay in the male dorm rooms, they were laying together on Satoru’s bed. Satoru was telling a story about the clan house his family owned, about one of the old guy’s that always came around to stare at him as if he was a rare jewellery item. Satoru was good at telling stories, always making them very imaginative and easy to follow.
Suguru smiled and laughed along too, even though in recent times he had grown so quiet and often looked tired. In hindsight, Shoko felt like she should have known something was not quite right with him.
Still, that night, she felt so at peace with both of them by her side. She slung her hand around Satoru’s - at least the one he wasn’t waving around– and then the other around Suguru’s. They let her, entwined her fingers with hers. And so they fell asleep eventually, just holding on to each other.
That next morning, when she woke up with her fingers still entangled in both of the hands of the boys she loved, she wondered if confessing was even necessary. There was no way in the world something could tear the three of them apart, they were the trio after all.
They’d be together like this until the day they died and though that might mean she could never kiss any of them, it was enough for her.
The day Suguru left she found a note on her notepad in her dorm room. He had hastily scribbled it down right there, just three words, no other goodbye.
He did not go to Satoru. He did not say goodbye to anyone else. Instead he scribbled something for Shoko, maybe in hopes she would understand.
It was something she recognised from Bleach, a popular manga at the time. A character, ready to leave her old life behind for ever, as a goodbye to friends, had left a note behind.
Goodbye, Halcyon days.
And though at first she did not understand what that meant, she instinctively knew the feeling those words wanted to convey.
These days of summer, the carefree days of youth that people loved to look back at so much, had ended quite suddenly.
Suguru wasn’t saying goodbye to her specifically with these short words, but he was burying the version of himself that he had been ever since he had entered Jujutsu High in Tokyo. He was trying to tell her not to come look for him, because who he was now was someone else.
Satoru of course went looking for him anyway, but Suguru surely had anticipated as much. He didn’t leave any parting words for him after all.
That day she smoked right out of the window of her dorm room even if she knew she’d get in trouble later. It was the same cigarettes she had been smoking for the last two years, the menthol ones that smelled so much of happiness.
She could not explain why, but the taste suddenly made her feel sick.
“In the end,” she thought. “ I never did get to tell them .”