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1
The first time had been a miscommunication. Shoko had forgotten her umbrella in her office, too proud to detour to grab it, gambling instead on the weatherman’s prediction that ‘chance of rain’ would remain exactly that. It did not. Now she was hurrying through the corridors, gambling on getting to her car while the drizzle had not yet turned into a deluge. She would not.
Her quest came stumbling to a defeated halt at the end of the covered walkway, watching the rain overtake her, sweeping over the parking lot, down the driveway and beyond the gates. While she pursed her lips, steeling herself for the twenty minute drive home while soaked, Gojo appeared at her side.
“Phew! So close!” He said with a laugh. He followed her gaze to the gates, shaking his head. “Thought you had an umbrella.”
“It’s in my office.”
“I’ll walk ya,” Gojo said.
“Alright,” Shoko said. She hooked her elbow in his. Gojo paused, processing their interlinked arms before he shrugged.
“Cool. I wanted to ask you about— wah whoa what’s happening?” He went as Shoko tugged him, not back through the corridor towards her office, but out into the parking lot. Just as she had hoped, his Infinity activated before a drop of rain could touch them, sliding against an invisible dome all around them and soaking into the gravel.
Shoko smiled pleasantly up at him while they walked and patted his arm. “You’re walking me,” she said. “You offered. Remember?”
“Yeah, but I meant…” Gojo glanced over her head to the corridor, still processing but still allowing himself to be led away.
By the time he’d glanced back, Shoko’s hatchback was already reversing out of the parking lot.
In her rearview mirror she saw Gojo pointing accusingly at her, looking nothing short of incredulous. The rain was falling harder now, the apex of the dome a lot more substantive to the naked eye. Shoko switched on her wipers.
“O-Oi!” She heard him yell over the rain. “Did you just—”
Shoko wisely did not stick around long enough to hear the end of that rant.
2
Shoko had not forgotten her umbrella, but still found herself umbrella-less at the end of her shift because she lent it to Yuta. She had forgotten that Yuta, for all his reliability in the Infirmary, unfortunately still shared the chronic lateness gene with Gojo. Though she’d managed to snag the parking space closest to the corridor, there was no escaping the fact that even if she hoofed it—which she absolutely would not, at risk of one of her heels flying off—she’d still be a drowned rat in seconds.
“Oh what a girl wouldn’t give for a…” Shoko trailed off, hearing a loud sigh further down the corridor at the intersection where Gojo was thudding his head against one of the vending machines and grumbling, but stopping short of cursing the machine in his annoyance. Most likely he’d considered a scenario where he’d fought one head to head and probably won, but at the cost of losing the snack he wanted.
Swiftly, but carefully, as the concrete was slippery, Shoko made her way over until she stood behind him.
“Out of Hi-Chews again?” She asked conversationally, holding an arm behind her back.
“Underestimated how much people would enjoy durian,” Gojo muttered, still thudding his head against the vending machine.
“I think I have a packet in my car.” Shoko let the promise dangle.
Gojo bit. He perked up instantly, glancing over his shoulder to her, a boyishness to his smile that he’d never quite managed to grow out of even if he towered over everyone else on campus.
The walk to her car took less than a minute, but was no less miraculous, the world outside, the noise, reduced to a blur by the Infinity. All Shoko could hear was her—their breathing. It was so strange to hear a man like Gojo breathe, Shoko thought. He moved through the world and the world had no choice but to shift to make room, he did it so easily that it was all too easy to forget that he was still a part of it. Gods did not breathe.
Gods certainly did not pout at you in pure betrayal when you buckled your seatbelt and innocently said, “Oh. My mistake. Maybe I left it at home. I’ll check.”
“Liar,” said Gojo, too smart to be bamboozled twice. Even so, he closed the driver side door for her. There was a wry smile on his face, almost as though he found the whole thing amusing, which was good. Better an amused Gojo than a pissed-off one, Shoko thought. Not that she was not able to handle the latter. “That’s twice you’ve used me for my body, Shoko. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I say that I did say ‘think,’” Shoko replied, repressing a smile.
Gojo tilted his head down so that she could see the deadpan stare leveled at her over his sunglasses. “I’ll be collecting on this debt.”
“You’re already rich though,” Shoko pointed out.
“It’s the principal. Speaking of, I’ll also be charging—”
Shoko pressed the button, winding up her window to cut him off. She managed a straight face until she was halfway down the mountain when she was one hundred per cent certain it was safe to laugh.
3
Shoko had a dinner date with a friend of a friend of Utahime’s, and the plan was to meet them in the city for drinks after she had finished for the day. The novelty of having something to look forward to that did not involve falling asleep in front of her TV to the cooking channel made the slog through her shift bearable. It even kept the rain from dampening her spirts. She met Yuta at the Infirmary entrance right she was leaving, Yuta’s normally passive expression morphing into surprise as he held the door open for her. Yuta’s reaction had to be a microcosm of the Infirmary being so understaffed. One could easily gain the impression that all Infirmary staff practically lived in their uniforms.
“Wow. You look nice Ieiri-san,” Yuta offered with a shy smile.
Shoko beamed. “Thank you.”
Shoko’s optimism lasted right up until she reached the end of the corridor. There had been a slight breeze as she made her way down to the parking lot, which was not as big a concern to her as the rain was, but the moment she had opened her umbrella, the breeze morphed into an unnaturally strong gust of wind, blowing it inside out. She stared down the shaft of her now broken umbrella in disbelief, then to her car, parked at the very end of the parking lot because she had thought she was safe. Now all she had to protect herself from the elements was the poncho she wore over her dress and it would have been fine if it were waterproof, not water resistant.
“If something’s too good to be true,” she muttered, folding up her broken umbrella and tucking it back into her bag and tucking her bag under her arm, “it always is.”
She pulled up her hood, holding it down with one hand while she clutched her car keys in the other. The poncho would just have to do. There was no time to leg it back to the Infirmary and ask to borrow someone else’s, not if she wanted her first impression to Utahime’s friend to be marred by lateness. Such was Gojo’s modus operandi, not hers.
Bracing herself for a battering, Shoko took a step—
—and the rain stopped. Shoko blinked. She heard a noisy slurping to her right, and when she turned, Gojo was disintegrating an empty juice box with hollow. He watched her impassively. Shoko watched him back. She took an experimental step towards her car. Gojo stepped almost in tandem. Shoko paused, eyeing him skeptically. She chanced another step and Gojo followed suit, expressionless. One step after another they marched until they stood by Shoko’s driver side door. Gojo leaned forward and opened it for her.
“Is this a freebie?” Shoko was careful to not look too hopeful as she buckled her seatbelt. She only felt marginally guilty for tricking him the other two times. It was difficult to feel wholly guilty where Gojo was concerned. The man’s penchant for pranks and mischief always overbalanced any inclination he had towards benevolence. Yaga for instance, was able to attribute every grey hair of his towards a specific misdeed of Gojo’s.
“No,” said Gojo. “It’s compounding interest.”
“You’re already rich. How can you still be so greedy?”
“Because I can,” he replied petulantly. Shoko was sure she had unwittingly set herself up to become the punchline of an inside joke, watching Gojo smile. He stepped away from her car before she could comment on it and sauntered back towards campus, waving over his shoulder. “Send me a wedding invite, ‘kay?”
“Dick,” Shoko muttered, succumbing to a smile despite her annoyance.
4
Following the dumping in the park, Shoko had made a beeline for the nearest convenience store to lick her wounds, stocking up on beer and unhealthy snacks to numb the pain. The storm that been gathering over Tokyo since Monday had finally spilled over by the time she had left the check-out counter. Shoko retrieved her umbrella from her bag but only to pass it on to a girl hurrying to shelter under the awning right as the drizzle turned into a downpour. The girl had been eager enough to take it, but the shift in her eyes from gratitude to concern only tightened the knot in Shoko's throat. Shoko forced a smile and quickly turned away, stepping out from under the awning. She welcomed the rain; if she was going to waste this Saturday afternoon crying over a man, the rain would go a long way in disguising it.
Shoko made it three steps before she realised that she was still bone-dry save for her cheeks; that her blurred vision was also a result of a water curtain falling down all around her, barely an arms-length away and moving with her to keep her rain-free. Shoko paused and glanced around. Down the street, she spied a familiar silhouette standing calmly in place while the rest of the city denizens hurried past with their heads down, too concerned with their own affairs to notice him. The wall of water in front of Shoko began to extend, gently repelling anyone from stumbling into her path as it formed a tunnel straight to him. Shoko clutched her beers tight to her chest, watching him warily. There was a catch, she was certain of it.
Gojo jerked his chin once, and when Shoko glanced over her shoulder to follow where he was looking, she saw that another tunnel had been extended behind her in the opposite direction, to where her car was parked. An invitation and an out.
“If anyone asks,” Gojo said conversationally as Shoko arrived in front of him, “Ken totally tripped over his own feet into the fountain. He should really watch where he’s going. Slippery, ya know.” He tilted his head down and winked at her over his sunglasses.
Shoko quickly swiped away the fresh tears welling in her eyes and her palm came away smudged in black. So much for waterproof. “The fountain?” She repeated with a sniffle. She was sure she resembled a raccoon at this point.
“Well it would have been the nearest lake, but I heard a rumour he can’t swim.”
“He can’t,” Shoko confirmed and she realised she was smiling.
5
Monsoon season. Shoko had left campus before the emergency alerts started lighting up her phone, before the rain even started. Even so she still found herself caught in a flash flood right as she was crossing the one ford she needed to pass on the drive down the mountain. As her hatchback slowly began to slide off road, pushed downriver by the current, she opened her sunroof and quickly unbuckled her seatbelt. Rain battered at her, drenching her in the seconds it took for her to make the climb. She removed her phone from her teeth, called emergency services and sent the text she had saved in her drafts for such a scenario to the group chat:
Hi. If you don’t see me tomorrow, consider this my notice. The spare key to my apartment is in my desk. Whoever gets to it first has carte blanche to take whatever they want, so long as they take the cactus too. His name’s Mr. Prickles and he’s been good to me. Please be good to him.
There was an instant barrage of texts in the chat, but Shoko had no time to respond to them, too busy listening to the woman from emergency services telling her to ‘stay calm.’ She did take note of a message from Mei Mei challenging Gojo to a race and putting money on it, which admittedly made Shoko chortle.
Staying calm was easy enough; Shoko did not fear death. She had spent enough time in its company, confronted its face whether it was on an operating or an autopsy table, to feel zero fear about when her number came up. If anything she was miffed that Satoru Gojo, man with ten thousand targets painted on his back, would be outliving her. That technically didn’t count as regret, did it? Haunting this ford would be inconvenient to her fellow staff if it did. Perhaps she would manifest into a curse that only healed.
A crow landed on the roof by Shoko’s feet and Shoko smiled at it. Not today, I guess, she thought to herself.
“I guess Mei wins,” she said to the crow.
“Yeah right,” said the crow.
Shoko blinked. That was Gojo’s voice. He cleared his throat and she found him hovering overhead in a bubble that repelled the elements, chronically amused as he was always wont to be when facing a situation he had control over. He scooped Shoko into his arms, wincing a little at the cold when she put her own arms around his neck.
“Thanks.”
Gojo snorted. “Higher-ups were shitting their pants,” he said. “Someone in the chat snitched about your ‘notice.’ Safe to say your notice has been rejected.”
They rose into the air right as her hatchback was swept downriver, eventually capsizing in the process. Shoko sighed, thinking of the rigamarole she was going to have to go through in sorting out her insurance.
Gojo chuckled suddenly. When Shoko glanced back to him he shook his head. “Mr. Prickles.”
Shoko snorted and nudged him. It was the only defence she could muster in her current predicament.
They teleported. Shoko assumed back to campus, since she had left her bag back in her car, but was surprised to find him setting her down outside her apartment door.
“Oh. I don’t have my…” Shoko trailed off as Gojo held up her spare key between his index and middle finger.
He leaned forward in the silence and unlocked the door for her. Then he took her hand and pressed her key into her palm, closing her fingers over it. Warmth spread through Shoko’s body at the contact. It was the adrenaline of nearly dying, she told herself. Nothing more.
And yet, even after he let go, Gojo didn’t turn his back and leave as she had expected, nor did he crack any of his usual lame jokes. He simply dallied and said nothing, watching her.
“The principal’s doubled, hasn’t it?” Shoko asked.
Gojo dragged a hand down his face. It was not the reaction she had become acclimated to. She stared at him.
“And she’s the one who graduated uni,” he muttered to himself. He glanced back to her, fixing her with a deadpan expression. “You know what a metaphor is, Ieiri?”
“Metaphor?” Shoko repeated, confused.
“Yes, metaphor. Metaphor as in, there are some things you can’t put a price on, because they’re beyond value.”
Oh, Shoko thought.
Ohhhhh…
Heart beating so hard she was certain he could hear it, Shoko hobbled into her apartment—one of her heels had washed away downriver—and held the door open for him. “I have tea and towels,” she said, watching him take off his shoes. “And… Hi-Chews.”
“I should hope so,” Gojo said with a sniff.
Shoko reached up and gently pinched his ear.
“Hey,” she said, smirking as she imitated him. “You know what a euphemism is, right?”
+1
The rebuild post-Kenjaku was as gruelling as the Culling Games had been, but everyone endured, for there simply was no choice but to. It was the unspoken agreement from sorcerer to sorcerer, instituted long before Kenjaku had stolen Geto’s body and took humanity on a joyride through Hell.
There would be no tears shed until their dead were properly laid to rest, and the injured were back on their feet again. Shoko took advantage of the lulls in between her shifts as best she could to visit Gojo, but she was unexpectedly put out of commission by a stomach bug and thus the weeds she had cleared away from his tombstone on her last visit had returned with a vengeance.
(Getting sick was weird; Shoko hadn’t come down with anything since she was six years old.)
Gojo was not buried with the rest of his kin on the family estate but on the school grounds. He might have died alone on the battlefield, but Shoko fought tooth and nail to make sure that the stubborn idiot—her stubborn idiot—rested with people who actually loved him. Not for what he could do, but who he was.
Sensei. Sweet Tooth. Rule Breaker. Never On Time. Habitual Hater. Serial Complainer. Loser. Idiot. Dumbest Smart Person Alive. Strongest.
Friend.
Someday, it would be her time. Shoko looked forward to that day. There was an ear in long, deserved need of a good pinch, making her clean up after him. And then after the ear pinch she was going to kick him in the balls for good measure.
Shoko regaled Gojo about her day as she worked. She had to move quickly because the sky had darkened considerably since she arrived. It always tended to rain when she visited. The scientific explanation was of course climate change. Quietly, Shoko liked to think that Gojo in his infinite mischief had gotten hold of the rain button in the afterlife and pressed it when he saw her coming. She thought this because she once told him that she only cried in the rain because ‘people can’t tell if you are.’ Gojo’s response was to give her a good long look, as if what she had said had shifted the gears in his head.
“Noted,” he had said eventually, which to Shoko’s highly trained ears sounded suspiciously like Challenge Accepted.
Shoko yanked out the last weed, feeling triumphant that she had again managed to beat the rain—until she glanced up and noticed that it had been raining and for a while now, too.
Just not on her.
Immediately, a knot formed in Shoko’s throat. She turned her gaze skyward as her vision began to blur, watching raindrops slide across the apex of the invisible dome. And here she had been thinking the weight gain was a byproduct of peace time.
“Bastard,” she said thickly as the first tear slid down her cheek. She started to laugh. “Stupid, no good bastard! Like I don’t have enough work on my plate.”
