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The first thing Emiko, the girl, noticed upon waking was the fact that she was warm. The early september sun rested gently upon her face, a balm to the cool wind.
The second thing Emiko noticed was that she was sticky, uncomfortably so. At that she opened her eyes, and was confronted with a shock of red-brown across her entire abdomen, arms, and chest.
Haven, the sorcerer, the soldier, awoke after that. She sat up quickly, and regretted it almost immediately. The open wound across her chest screamed in protest, bleeding sluggishly.
She gasped, grabbing at it, a mote of panic tearing through her. She didn’t know where she was, what had happened, or why she was injured.
Shakily, Haven forced her breathing to even. It was impossible to take stock of injuries when panicking like a child.
(The part of her that was still Emiko whispered that she was a child. The part of her that was Haven, the sorcerer, pointedly ignored it.)
She sent gentle waves of reversed cursed energy through her body, and immediately everything snapped into place.
The word concussion shot through her head, as memories of the fight came to the forefront of her mind.
The semi-grade one curse she’d been sent into the countryside to deal with had actually turned out to be a curse user. The curse user had appeared weak, and Haven had gotten cocky.
In the eerie silence of a forest where wildlife had fled, Haven mentally berated herself. Approaching a curse user with an unknown ability because they appeared to be weak had been a moronic decision. She could have died, and nobody would have known, because she was to stupid to see the curse user for what they were, a diversion.
Their shikigami, a stealthy, snake-like creature, had bitten her while she spoke to the curse user, who had been blabbering about a world without cursed spirits.
(Haven ignored how much she had actually been considering what the curse user was saying. A world without cursed spirits had been an interesting thought.)
The venom of the shikigami had made her muscles lock, and the constant application of reversed cursed technique had been the only reason she could move. She had been undoing what the venom was doing the entire fight.
The focus on undoing the venom had meant she couldn’t use her cursed technique at all. The curse user wasn’t a standard shikigami user either, and had gotten right up in her face with a sickle. She had barely had enough time to pull out her dagger and parry the attack that had been going right at her throat.
It had been a hard fight after that, trading blow after blow with the curse user uniquely skilled in close quarters combat.
The curse user had finally gotten desperate at one point, realizing that Haven wasn’t going down as easily as hoped, and summoned their shikigami in her face. The moment of shock had let the curse user hit her hard in the chest, giving her the injury that she’d woken up with.
Haven had, after that, skewered the shikigami in the same motion that sent her dagger into the throat of the curse user.
The curse user, knowing they were dead at that point, had rushed straight at her, and knocked her off of her feet.
She assumed that she’d hit her head on the way down, resulting in the concussion and being knocked out cold.
Haven scoffed at herself. She could have died, on the floor of a forest, simply because she couldn’t avoid the attack from a soon to be dead curse user.
The anger at herself faded rapidly as the cold horror of Mare seeing her body flooded over her. She wouldn’t know if she died bleeding out on a forest floor, unconscious, but Mare would. Mare would see her body.
Rapidly, she thought of who would see her body. Some unfortunate sorcerer would be sent to find her and deal with the “curse” if she didn’t return. Kimura Mio, the assistant manager for this mission, would be there when the unfortunate sorcerer brought her body back. Ieiri would autopsy her to see the cause of death.
Gojo would probably come to see her body. Mare would come to see her body. Mare would pick through her ashes. Mare would set her ashes to the sea. Mare would cry at her grave. Mare would-
Mare would get nothing. The thought stuck her like lightning. If she died today, Mare would get nothing. He wouldn’t get her money, her possessions, or any of the things he should get if she died. All of her things were also his things in life, but that didn’t matter.
The school wouldn’t care, all of her things would go to them. Her money would go to the school. They would get everything, and Mare, her partner, her reason for living most days, would get nothing. The anger burned brighter than her horror for a moment.
(If the world had no cursed spirits, there would be no need for sorcerers, she thought, and children wouldn’t need to contemplate what other children would get in the event of their death.)
Haven shook her head, and began to stand up. The floor of the forest, soaked with her own blood, was the opposite of comfortable.
She looked around, searching for where the curse user had died. She wanted her dagger back.
The grade two cursed tool was simple, but an effective boost in combat. It was built to withstand large amounts of reversed cursed energy without breaking, an ideal tool for her technique.
She soon found a blood trail leading to the body of the curse user. They had died grabbing at their throat with the dagger still in it, and she couldn’t find it in herself to feel bad for them.
Haven pulled the dagger out of their throat, wiping it off as best she could on her own shirt, before placing it back in its sheath on her hip.
Haven grabbed at her pocket, reaching for her phone. All she wanted to do was call Kimura and get out of this forest.
The call went through, and Kimura’s horrified squeak when Haven said that there was a body was almost worth the trouble.
———
The first thing that Emiko realized upon waking up was that she was warm. The weight of a body wrapped around her was heavy and grounding.
The second thing Emiko realized upon waking up was that she wanted to marry Kaito Yamada.
The thought was all consuming, fueled with the knowledge that 24 hours ago she could have died, and that Kaito would have been left with nothing.
“Kaito,” she whispered, “are you awake yet?”
She felt the arm that was thrown over her waist pull her closer, and felt him nuzzle his face into her hair.
She chuckled gently, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
He groaned, and hid his face between the pillow and her head.
“Kaito, do you wanna get married?”
The sleepy, heavy weight of his arm immediately stiffened and he shifted, gently rolling her over so that they were facing each other. The signs of sleepiness in his face were quickly fading.
“Eventually, Emiko, yes. Why’re you asking?” His eyes were wide open, searching her expression like a dying man would search for water.
Emiko closed her eyes, not wanting to see the expression on his face as she said, “I almost died yesterday.”
She felt the hand on her waist grab a hold of her tighter, almost as if he was scared of her vanishing under his fingertips.
The silence stretched uncomfortably, an unspoken tension growing.
Emiko opened her eyes, and saw Kaito staring at her with nothing but pure concern, and a small ounce of preemptive heartbreak.
Haven breathed in deeply, and the tension snapped.
“Kaito, if I died, everything that is mine would go to the school. Legally, I have no family. Everything in this world that is both yours and mine, but legally mine, would rot in a storeroom or get auctioned off. My money would be gone. You would get nothing that you deserve. Everything that I have is already yours, but they wouldn’t care. If I die, I want to have assurance that you get everything you deserve, everything that is mine, everything that is already yours. If we get married, if I die, they can’t do anything, it will all be yours.
“We do such a fucked up job with such a high mortality rate, it’s only a matter of time, whether two days, months, years, decades, that we die to a curse or curse user, because we’re sorcerers, and that’s just how we’re going to die. Why wait, why wait and risk it since there's no assurance that we’ll see tomorrow? What's the point of any of this if there isn’t assurance that you’ll be ok if I die, what’s the point? If, if I die, I want you to be ok and you won’t be ok but it will be a little better if you don’t have to fight the school for things that are really ours but they don’t care, they don’t care at all. Kaito I can’t stand the thought of that, I can’t, please-”
Kaito dragged her into a bone crushing hug, grounding as she finally registered that she was crying.
Ugly sobs wracked her body as she laid there and cried in his arms. She moved her arms to curl around his back, grabbing on for dear life.
Some part of her brain, the part that served her well in battle, registered that Kaito was crying as well.
Another part of her brain, the part that was helplessly in love with Kaito Yamada, cried harder at the realization that he was crying with her, for her. That he was so wrecked by the thought of her dying, by the reality that he had almost lost her, that he was crying too.
It took the better part of 15 minutes for them both to completely calm down. They laid there in each other's arms, not yet ready to break the comfortable enough silence.
A while later, Kaito shifted to look Emiko in the eyes once again. “I’ll marry you. All the heavy shit aside, I do want to marry you Emiko, a lot.”
A watery laugh escaped her lips. “As far as proposals go, I think I did pretty bad there. You deserve a better one.”
Kaito laughed at that, free and slightly hysterical, “ Emiko, I would have said yes if you had curse gore all over you, and had a plastic cupcake ring.”
Emiko snuggled into him, “We should get rings and not mention it, I wanna see who notices first.”
Kaito considered it for a moment, humming in thought. “I think Kimura. She’s nosy about relationship stuff and has an eye for things. She was the first person to pick up on us in general, so probably her.”
Giggling softly, Emiko said, “My bet is on Gojo, I don’t know why, but I think he notices little things enough to notice a ring.”
“Maybe.” Kaito murmured, “The sun isn’t up yet, do you want to go back to sleep?”
She hummed gently, already dozing off.
The last thing that Emiko noticed as she fell asleep was that she was warm.