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The day before Gojo Satoru’s execution, Shoto visited his cell. She’s not supposed to, but what could anyone do to her? There was nothing left. Nothing left of her, or of either of her friends.
Jujutsu High’s prison had to be its worst kept secret — resting in the bowels of the school, where no sunlight reached its walls. They are meant to hold dangerous things. Curses. Curse users. Criminals.
The Strongest, even.
It’s not even a surprise to her that Satoru would’ve ended up here one day. She just hadn’t thought it would’ve taken this long, hadn’t thought it would’ve been this serious. Back when they were nothing but a couple of kids, things had been different.
Or maybe it hadn’t, but they just didn’t realize it yet.
“Satoru,” she said aloud to the silence of the cells.
One eye peeked open, without his usual glasses and blinding blue. “Shoko?”
“Yes, idiot.” She stood at his cell and pressed her face against the bars, wondering how it felt to stroke Satoru’s face. Sticky, probably. Unwashed. That wouldn’t matter to her— not now.
Satoru hummed. “Watcha doing here? Gonna tell me ‘I told you so?’” Then he laughed, and it was a hollow thing.
“No,” she whispered. “No. I brought you your glasses.”
This time, both blue eyes blinked curiously up at her. Relief shone in them, bright against his dull skin, and he was uglier than she’d ever seen him be before. She hated him. So much.
Satoru’s eyes are sensitive things, and even in this stifling dark, they must’ve been hurting.
She’s not supposed to be here, giving a criminal his glasses. She’s not supposed to be down here at all.
Fuck that. Satoru was no criminal to her. He was simply her best friend.
“Here,” she said as she slid the fragile glasses through the bars.
“Thanks,” Satoru mumbled, dropping the smile as he picked the glasses up. He didn’t put them on, simply clutching them to his stomach. Idiot. Idiot.
“They’re not looking for Suguru, anymore,” she said after a moment of silence. “So. Yeah.”
Satoru cradled the glasses in his hands, and for a second he looked like how she felt — scared, defeated, and sad. Like a kid. Like a teen. “Good,” he said, then repeated it as if it would convince himself. “Good.”
“Good.” Shoko echoed. “Goodbye, Satoru.”
“Bye,” he whispered, a small thing. Then it was silent again, and Shoko left.
The truth is, Shoko had never been as close to Satoru as she had been to Utahime or even Suguru, before he left. She would say she never minded it, but that would be a lie. It’s just that, before, there were other things to worry about. Trivial things.
Everything was trivial, compared to this.
But in the absence of Suguru, they had grown closer. Maybe it was some form of coping, some desperate ache for relief, but it happened. They only had each other to cling onto, in the aftermath. It wasn’t a good feeling, finding solace in each other, but neither of them knew what else to do. No one ever taught them what to do.
Satoru never quite stopped missing Suguru, she knew. She knew it in the words Satoru pressed to her collarbone, like a quiet mantra: Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.
In those moments, she hated Suguru. Hated him for leaving them like this, when he could’ve just stayed. He was an idiot, always had been, and they paid the price for his selfishness. Satoru would forgive him in a heartbeat, if Suguru ever decided to come crawling back to them.
Shoko wouldn’t. Shoko’s smarter than that, now.
Satoru died his second death with Suguru’s name on his lips.
His knees buckled.
In that moment, Shoko remembered the day she found Satoru with holes in his chest, dark maroon spilling out onto his uniform. Remembered the specks of blood crusted on his lips, in his eyes. Remembered pressing her fingers to his pulse despite already knowing the answer.
But Satoru had never been quite human like the rest of them. He had brought himself back onto his feet, new power curling beneath his fingertips. Shoko wasn’t there for it, but in the darkness hours later, Suguru had whispered into her open palm: how Satoru’s eyes sparked unnaturally, how he held that dead girl in his arms like he was seeing himself in her, dead and defeated. A corpse holding a corpse, that is.
But now here he is again, and Shoko knows deep in her bones that he would not walk away from this.
As he died, he met her eyes. He whispered Suguru’s name, dripping from his lips like an amen.
Suguru. Suguru. Amen.
Shoko hated him. Both of them. She wished for nothing more than for Suguru to be there instead, knees buckled and head bowed. She wondered who’s name he would’ve whispered in Satoru’s place and knew for certain that it wouldn’t be hers.
Satoru’s body was cold. Clammy.
Like always, she was the one responsible for death. Once, Satoru had been mean enough to tell her off for it once, something lonely and insecure in his voice. Satoru was always like that. Mean, but with no meaning. Like a spoiled, insecure kid.
In the years after Suguru left, that part of Satoru left too. Sometimes, she found herself missing it like a limb, like a lover. She hated Suguru for it, most days.
She had always expected Suguru to lay breathless and cold on her morgue table, after the higher-ups caught him and killed him.
Not Satoru. Never Satoru.
But here he was.
She wanted to kiss him one last time. She didn’t.
Satoru wouldn’t have liked it. She wasn’t Suguru.
Suguru was not hard to find, all things considered.
Maybe he didn’t bother to conceal himself, cocky and daring in the way that Satoru was before he walked away. In his final days Satoru was nothing like that. He was cold and unreachable, even when he whispered quiet worship to her bare skin.
Somepart of him had left along with Suguru, and he had never found it again. It was more likely that he never tried to get it back. Some part of him would forever belong to Suguru. Shoko wondered if he ever found relief in that falsehood.
When they were younger, Suguru had always been Satoru’s moral compass. That had shifted off balance when Toji fired a bullet into Riko’s skull and both of her friends had been knocked off course by the impact. It was no small thing, but Suguru had changed so much so rapidly that she found it hard to believe that this was the same guy that used to light her cigarette with two hands, eager to please.
But like Yaga-sensei said. Jujutsu sorcerers didn’t grow on a gradual curve. They grew too much too fast all at once once they hit a certain point and Suguru was no different. But he grew wrong. This was all wrong.
There was something evil, the way that Suguru wiped out non-sorcerers with no feeling except a hint of disdain, yet paraded around here as if he was some benevolent god.
Shoko once thought Suguru could ever look anything but beautiful, even at his worst, but looking at him now she let her lips curl in disgust at his deceptive ugliness.
“Shoko,” Suguru’s voice drawled. When she met his eyes, her hands curled into a fist. “What a pleasant surprise. What brings you here?”
She felt no remorse for him. Him, dressed in monk robes, human blood staining the tips of his fingers. Her hands still felt wet and clammy from Satoru’s dead skin. Who did he think he was?
“Satoru is dead,” she spat at him.
An almost imperceptible twitch of Suguru’s fingers. That’s all there was. It was so slight she wouldn’t even have noticed it if she wasn’t looking for it. But she was looking for it, and looking into his eyes she saw just a flash of terror.
“I would’ve noticed if he was,” he said, after a pause. “Do you take me for a fool, Shoko?”
“I do,” she told him. “But Satoru is dead, fool or not.”
There was a pause of silence again, where Suguru stared at her with hard eyes. It didn’t bother her — she was long past seeking his validation. If Suguru didn’t believe her then that was that. He had no right to stand there, like some wannabe god, judging her truths from her falsehoods.
He didn’t speak. She hoped he was too scared to.
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I just wanted to tell you,” Shoko said very quickly, snappishly, then turned on her heel to leave.
“Wait.”
She paused in her step, though she shouldn’t have. He didn’t deserve it, not after this. Suguru was a selfish person. Selfish, but what was even worse is that he pretended to be selfless. Pretended that he was doing this for their own good when Satoru was the one who died for it. Shoko was the one with his blood on her hands.
And Suguru was here, better than he ever was.
“Is he really dead?” Suguru asked, voice more vulnerable than before. As if he had any right to.
“I dissected him on my table,” she said bluntly. She didn’t turn around but she hoped he flinched. “Seemed pretty dead to me.”
A dangerous amount of cursed energy pulsed behind her, curling around her ankles. She regretted the words the moment they came out of her mouth. Not for Suguru, but for the boy whose ashes she had casted to the wind. The dead man who spoke to her in that prison cell. For Satoru.
Some part of her disagreed. Traitorously, maybe she regretted treating Suguru so cruelly, too. It meant nothing. Old habits just died hard, that’s all.
But she wasn’t scared of him – Suguru and all his bravado. Not anymore.
Anger came familiarly to her, building in her gut. She’d never been this way, angry, before Suguru had left them behind. Before Satoru left her too. There were too many things to feel, and anger was the safest. It wrapped around her like armor.
It was better than the alternative. Grief encased Satoru like a shroud. Like a death sentence.
She whirled around, fists clenched. “You want to know why? For you. For you . Like you deserve it.”
Suguru looked shell-shocked, thrown off course. Satisfaction curled in her gut, watching him stumble. He wasn’t all so self-assured now, was he?
“They’re not coming for you, anymore. Those were Satoru’s terms. So you can rest easy now, right? Like you wanted?” Idiot. Idiots, both of them.
It never had to come to any of this.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Suguru murmured, voice hard.
“You know him. Of course he thought he had to.”
“I knew him,” he corrected, and the energy in the room disappeared in an instant.
Shoko didn’t age well. Satoru had made fun of her for it before, but it always lacked heat. They both knew the reason why. But now, standing in front of him, Suguru looked even older than she did. The thought of it made her sad – between the three of them, Satoru had always looked the youngest. The brightest. And now he always would.
“Yeah,” she breathed, and her shoulders slumped, then: “Go away, Suguru. Away from here. Stop what you’re doing and leave. And live.”
They both knew what went unsaid. Like Satoru couldn’t .
“I’ll think about it,” Suguru said, and that was it.
She didn’t feel angry anymore. Just tired. She could see it on Suguru’s face too, defeated and all too quiet.
“Alright,” she replied. “I’ll be waiting.”
Then, she turned around and left.
Leaving. She’d been doing a lot of that, lately.
When Suguru decided, Shoko sought him out again.
“Take me with you.” is all she said. That’s all she needed to say.
The halls of the school haunted her. The look in Satoru’s bright blue eyes in the cell. His blood on her hands. The crushed glasses in the pocket of his dead body.
And so they left.
It didn’t get easier.
She didn’t expect it to be, so she wasn’t quite let down. Optimism hadn’t come easy to her in years. Especially not when Suguru was involved.
All things considered, he was competent enough. He was quiet most days and cleaned up around the house to steady his hands. That was a new development. The constant pulsing of his hands, tired and nervous.
Grieving. That’s what Suguru was. A grieving man.
He was quiet in his grief — Shoko waited for the day that it would all come spewing out of his mouth, after weeks of bubbling in his stomach, but it didn’t come. It shouldn’t surprise her. Suguru was used to swallowing down dreadful and bitter things. That’s what led them to this mess, in the first place.
Just as Shoko was all too familiar with blood on her hands. Cold blood. Satoru’s blood.
No more of that. The two of them had escaped for that very reason.
Shoko didn’t feel like anything was simmering beneath her carefully kept lid. Just empty, and overwhelmingly tired. Suguru felt it too. She could tell — he had been tired for a long time. They all had.
It was hard to get out of bed, most days. It seemed that without the bloody structure of Jujutsu High, she could hardly function.
It didn’t quite bother her. Not yet, at least. Her hands didn’t shake like Suguru’s. They stayed flat and unmoving. Rigor mortis. Frozen.
Life was mundane, away from the halls that ghosts haunted. No one came looking for them. Maybe they thought it was too early, after Satoru’s death. Maybe Satoru’s terms included her, too.
She found the second option hard to believe. Optimism didn’t come easy to her when it came to Satoru, either.
At night she slept on the creaky mattress in the bedroom and Suguru laid on a makeshift futon on the living room floor. It was his choice — he told her that he would give her space.
It surprised her that he was so considerate. Now she knew — Suguru probably just didn’t want her to hear his muffled crying at night. He didn’t sleep, most of the time.
She did. It never helped; everytime she woke up, she just felt the same bone-tiredness that haunted her before she closed her eyes. Just like rigor mortis, again. Being around dead things must’ve taken its toll.
She slept and she barely dreamed. Whenever she did, she would wake up to the vision of blue eyes staring at her in the night, the vision of his body over hers. The press of his lips to her collarbone, words felt before heard.
And always: Suguru. Suguru.
Like an amen. Like a plea.
Seven weeks after they left, Suguru came into her room at three in the morning.
If she was being honest, she thought it would happen earlier. It was the way of things — and she had wanted it, too. Not him. She didn’t want him. Just the feeling.
His eyes asked a question and she pulled the blankets off of her legs as an answer. The bed creaked as he crawled over to her and she spread her legs to accommodate him.
When they kissed they weren’t thinking of each other. They never were — between them, a ghost lingered. His lips, his words, his eyes. They stared at the two of them from the darkness.
She put her hands on his shoulder to pull him closer but didn’t wrap them around his neck. If she did, she would’ve felt his long, silky hair, and if that had happened then the illusion would’ve shattered. Satoru’s hair had always been rough to the touch. When she pulled on it, before everything, they had hurt her fingers.
So she didn’t. They kissed and she kept her hands firmly on his shoulders. He kept his away from her chest, on her waist.
Suguru tasted bitter, like she imagined curses would. Perhaps in the same way, she smelled of death. His mouth wasn’t right. Hers probably wasn't, either.
It would have to do.
They continued for a few nights, every night, before Suguru’s hands slipped off her waist once and moved to her thighs instead. She didn’t correct him so he didn’t stop.
She knew she didn’t feel right. He didn’t, either. But they could pretend.
They only ever made love in the dark.
“Do you like me?” He asked once, laying on the sweaty pillow, thumbs drawing circles on her stomach.
“No,” she said. “I just want to be loved by someone. No matter who it is.”
“That’s a lie.”
She sighed, and smoke rings floated to the ceiling. “Well, the only person I have in mind is dead, so what gives?”
There was nothing special about the way Suguru fucked. She didn’t know why Satoru chased after it so desperately, why Suguru’s name lingered in his mouth — like a prayer. Like a brand.
Then again. Suguru probably loved differently, when it was Satoru beneath him.
A cult leader to a housewife was a drastic change in profession, but Suguru seemed to adapt to it pretty quickly.
When Shoko emerged from her bedroom late in the morning, there was breakfast on the table. Between the three of them, Satoru and Shoko had never been good at anything like that. Suguru hadn’t, either, from what she remembered. But then again — years had passed between the Suguru she knew and Suguru now.
“Waffles?” she questioned, grabbing a plate.
“Half off at the 7-eleven,” he said, taking a plate of his own. Strange – he must’ve waited for her, and wasn’t that sweet? Maybe if it was Satoru, it would’ve been.
She hummed mindlessly, dousing her waffles in syrup. Thick globs of it dripped onto it and she winced. That was a little too much. If he was still here, Shoko would’ve shoved it to Satoru. The idiot had always inhaled sugar like it was a champion sport.
Shaking the container a little, she offered it to Suguru. He took it, then set it down on the table without even opening the lid. “I don’t like sweets.”
Shoko scoffed a little, disbelieving. “I know that. But really? No syrup on waffles?”
Unbothered, he shrugged and picked up a waffle, stuffing it in his mouth and swallowing. He barely chewed. An abomination, he was. Completely and totally indifferent to civility. How he had maintained the facade of a monk for four years was completely beyond her.
As usual, they ate in silence. It wasn’t quite comfortable, but not uncomfortable either. Just silence.
As usual, they sat with an extra chair between the two of them. They disregarded it.
“You should stop smoking,” Suguru said finally, looking at the cigarette pack on the table beside Shoko. Ire swirled in her gut, heavy. Who was he to talk about things like that? Did he think that just because they fucked a few times that he could judge her for something like this?
“I did,” Shoko drawled, drawing a cigarette from the packet just to annoy him. “But then Satoru died, so I picked it up again. Funny, isn’t it?”
She dug around in her purse, palming for her lighter. She wasn’t thinking about smoking, before Suguru spoke. Now the itch was back again, digging in her chest, and she wanted to see Suguru irritated. Wanted him to quit his nice guy act and show her exactly who he really was – someone cruel enough to leave.
When she found the metal case, she tossed it at Suguru. On reflex, he caught it. “Here. Light it for me, yeah?”
He frowned, but reached forwards anyways, sparking a fire. His hands still shook, trembling around the silver casing. “You shouldn’t smoke indoors.”
Don’t tell me what to do. She didn’t say it aloud but there must’ve been something in her expression, so Suguru’s admonishments fell silent.
Like old days, he lit her cigarette and wrinkled his nose at the smell. He still did it with two hands.
Two hands, like a prayer.
She sucked in a breath of smoke and almost choked on it. Suguru’s hands were still extended, watching her blow rings up to the ceiling. It was eleven in the morning. She shouldn’t be smoking, right now. Suguru shouldn’t be looking at her like that. Not when it was light. That look was reserved for late nights, when he could barely make out her features. But here he was, looking.
Two hands. Ten fingers, wrapped around a lighter.
Suguru. Suguru. Amen.
Lines blurred, eventually. It’s hard to tell exactly when it happens, but that’s entirely the point of it, wasn’t it?
His hands were gentle with her. His eyes were loving, and when his lips traced the expanse of her torso she didn't know where to put her hands. They fucked like they’re lovers, as if the world around them didn’t exist, not when he put his fingertips to her skin. Not when she clawed into his back, hair fanning around her head, in her mouth.
He was beautiful. She’s not sure if she’s referring to Satoru or Suguru, these days.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. The truth is this: Shoko didn’t know what she wanted, anymore.
But she knew who she was supposed to want, and knew that it wasn’t him.
Things changed. It’s hard to be angry, when Suguru ditched 7-eleven meals and took to cooking instead. In the mornings, they both lingered in each other’s small touches until Suguru complained that Shoko was hogging all the blankets and she kicked him off the bed.
Daylight must’ve done something to her. That could be the only explanation why she was feeling so sentimental. Negligence peeled back her layers of anger, stripping her down until she was vulnerable again. Lately, she stung an open wound.
Suguru was like a scab, clinging onto her. Day by day, she picked at it. There was only one thing she wanted from him, after all. Love was not the word to describe what she feels for him. It’s something more immaterial, something less permanent. He was only here so Shoko could look at him instead of the skeleton in her closet. Saying that stuck in her throat like a lie.
It’s not. It’s not a lie, but her conscience protested.
Her head hurt, these days. She blamed it on Suguru.
She chewed on a piece of meat, cringing at the way the fat of it lingers insistently in her mouth. It’s good, better than what she’s had in a while, when she was at Jujutsu High. The meat was packaged neatly on a white foam plate. When she watched Suguru drain it, blood diluted by ice had dripped down into the sink.
It’s been a while since she touched a dead body. A while since she’s even seen one. Naturally, she yearned for it. Years of conditioning and training towards it had stuck to her, drawn her to dead things. Her hands itched, wanting. But that was no good, was it? Whenever she thought of her morgue at the highschool, remembered the smell of disinfectant and sterile walls, her hands felt sticky. Bright blue eyes, ones that still saw right through her defenses even in death. Judging her, like the god he always thought he was.
That was her dilemma. She wanted it back. But after everything, she couldn’t. There was nothing she could do about it, so most days, she simply filed those thoughts away.
“Don’t like it?” Suguru asked, looking at her. Only then did she realize she had stopped chewing, frowning down at her bowl.
She picked up her chopsticks again, picking up a leaf of bok choy. “Why did you learn how to cook?” Why, not where, because she already knew where he had learned: after he left, in buildings with the sickening haze of incense permeating through its walls. Somedays she could still smell it on his skin.
A variety of emotions flicked across Suguru’s face until he settled on something complicated. “I had two girls. Nanako and Mimiko. I learned to cook for them.”
Suguru’s girls. She recalled Satoru saying something vague about them, once. Their names hadn’t been mentioned – perhaps he didn’t know them.
Shoko hummed, fingers stilling. “Had?”
“I told them to leave, after thinking about what you said,” Suguru confessed quietly, strangely vulnerable again. “They saw me as more god than man. I didn’t want that for them.” Deep in thought, he stared down at his bowl of rice and beef. Unsure, Shoko reached forward and grasped his hand, unfurling it gently. “Like you said. I wanted them to live.”
Shoko was a hypocrite. Stop what you’re doing and leave. And live. Those words were something desperate, something out of the mouth of a person who didn’t know what else to do. Live. Was what they were doing right now even good enough to be called living?
It didn’t feel like living. Shoko felt a lot more like she was rotting.
“That’s good,” she offered lamely, lacing her fingers in his to make up for it. This was never her thing. Words didn’t come easy to her – she delivered them with bluntness, tactless. Satoru had never been good at it either, him and his spoiled insults. That would have to make Suguru the level-headed one, then, except he wasn’t. Kinder, maybe. Could a kind man kill so many people?
Suguru, the one best with words. What then, happened when he needed counsel, or comfort? Maybe that was the problem. Satoru, Suguru, Shoko. Victims of their own doing.
“Good,” Suguru echoed.
Goodbye. Bye. Shoko remembered Satoru’s smile, his glasses clutched to his stomach, in his pocket. Suguru. Suguru. Loving any of them was a death sentence. They were doomed, or something like that. She wanted to be doomed, too. Being the one left behind, the one who remembered, had to be the worst punishment of it all.
A death sentence. She was familiar with those.
She didn’t want to remember it anymore. If she could pick and choose, she would. Satoru’s smile, Satoru’s smile, Satoru’s fingers. Not his blood, not his cold skin.
“Could you love me?” she asked, fingers still in between Suguru’s.
“Haven’t I been?” he said softly, and kissed her. He tasted like beef. Not like blood.
Could you love me?
I could kill you.
Suguru. Suguru. Amen.
Six months after they left, Shoko tangled her hands in Suguru’s long hair, stroking through the inky length. Satoru’s hair had been rough to the touch. For the first time, she didn’t think about that.
“You want a haircut?” she asked, sitting on the couch with Suguru – between her legs – leaning against it, on the floor. It had been getting long now, leaving strands anywhere he went, strands that they had to vacuum up.
“Dunno,” he murmured, relaxing and resting his head on her thigh. “Are you any good at it?”
“Good enough. Cut up dead bodies before. Can’t be any different.”
He let out a terrified little sound, but didn’t move. “Shoko, that’s very different. Spare my hair, please.”
“Hmm, maybe if you beg me.” She smiled, then ran her fingers through his hair again just to scare him a little more. It was soft, incredibly so. His shampoo smelled nice – she used it once then never stopped. It was a good feeling, to smell like him.
Dead things and floral shampoo. That’s what Getou Suguru smelled like. Tasted like.
“You can give me a haircut when you let me do your skincare,” he challenged, shifting and pressing his face against the fabric of her pants.
Continuing to brush through his hair, Shoko snorted. “Unlike your hair, my face has nothing to lose.”
He hummed, looking up at her. “I think your eyebags are cute.”
“You don’t have to lie,” Shoko said, then wacked him when he laughed, sitting up straight again. For some reason, she missed his weight on her thigh. Suguru was sweet when he wanted to be, like he used to be. Kind. He was always the kindest between the two of them. Three of them.
They still ate with a third seat between the two of them. On instinct, Shoko still sometimes looked to her left for blue eyes and a wide smile. It did get easier, despite her misforgivings. She hadn’t felt this way since highschool — before Suguru left, and before Satoru did too.
For all of his supposed selfishness, Satoru left for the two of them. Before Shoko had stormed into Suguru’s temple, all anger and fists in the shape of insults, he was there. Silent, because he had never been good at words, but affectionate in his actions, affectionate in his death.
Open mouth, empty words. Spoiled brat, loving touches. Shoko would never understand Satoru. He was never around enough to explain it to her. In their nights together, Satoru did not see her. She thought she saw him, but no one ever did really see him, not in the way that Suguru did.
Suguru. Somedays Shoko still hated him, a childlike rage, cultivated by years of misgivings, running through her that these months had not taken away from her. He irritated her in a way no one else really could, with his mouth. Against her skin, against her mouth, against her words.
But then, she thought she understood Satoru a little better, now. Suguru saw her, somehow. The feeling was hard to describe. It wasn’t unnerving, in the way that Satoru’s eyes often were, but they made her feel seen. A warm way. A vulnerable way.
The truth was that Satoru never understood her, in the same way she never understood him.
No one ever did understood Satoru, the way that Suguru did.
Suguru and her knew each other through their shared quiet and through their shared grief, their anger. Suguru wasn’t the one who stripped her until she was raw. She was. Only through rot did she find herself, only through rebirth.
Shoko Ieiri. Suguru saw her. Through his eyes, she saw herself.
In the morning, Shoko tangles her hands in Suguru’s hair, tugging him closer to her. Suguru laughs, gently, and helps her put on her top.
The closet is open. There are no skeletons. Sundust glitters in the light, and it looks like white ashes.
“Suguru,” she whispers into the base of his neck, quiet.
“Shoko,” he murmurs, snaking his arms around her.
Amen.