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You speak to Gojo Satoru for the first time when you are twelve years old.
It’s the morning of the day before his birthday, and the sun hasn’t yet risen to melt the snow that traps the clan grounds under a sheet of white. One of your jobs will be to clean pathways when the housekeeper comes around to your room with a list of chores, and you will listen and not complain and work diligently.
Before you have to get dressed, though, you have five minutes of time to yourself. Five minutes that you will savor.
A weight hits your window with a dull thunk.
You take a cautious look around, but the other girls in your room haven’t stirred. There’s a beat of quiet breathing and the movement of fabric until it is again broken by another hit to the window, which is enough to make you sit up and pry them open.
The cool morning air rests on your bare arms uncomfortably, but it’s not what makes you feel frozen. What chills the blood in your veins is Gojo Satoru, head and heir, with the sleeves of his haori rolled up to his elbows and packing another ball of snow.
Your face heats up uncomfortably with both the confusion at what is happening and the realization that you’re in your pajamas in front of the young boy you serve like a king, and it takes a few seconds for your body to catch up with your brain and send you into a deep bow over the windowsill.
“Good morning, Gojo-sama.”
Sleepy murmurs cut through the cacophony of blood rushing through your ears, and you remain stiff as a board with the hopes that it will appeal to Gojo-sama enough for him to stop his assault on your sleeping quarters and bother someone else.
And as if he can read your mind, another thud hits the wall to your left.
You stand up, properly red with embarrassment, and Gojo-sama’s gotten closer. He hasn’t picked up another handful of snow yet, though. You clear your throat.
“Are you cold, Gojo-sama? Can I fetch you a blanket?”
His nose wrinkles, and you wince. “Do you not know my cursed technique? I’m not cold, I’m strong enough not to be.”
This is sorting out to be a miserable interaction. You bow again, this one a quicker nod of your head.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Gojo-sama blinks at you, and then sticks his hand back into the snow to form another projectile. Your hands ball at your sides.
“Can you stop?”
You freeze. The chatter behind you stops, too, the air chills, time slows. Gojo-sama’s face splits into a smile, and he continues beating the snow in his hand into a ball.
You wonder if this is the first time anyone has ever denied him something. Not that he’s listening.
Gojo-sama takes the ten steps to your window, and you remain frozen even as he holds out his hand, peace offering outstretched. Annoyance crosses his face.
“Hold out your hand.”
You do so quickly. Gojo-sama presses the snow into your hand with a little more force than necessary, and backs away. The snow digs knives into your bare hand. Gojo-sama smiles again, and holds out his arms.
“Throw it at me.”
You hear one of the girls gasp. This is a test, but of what? Your loyalty, or your ability to follow commands? You’d like to hit him and that cheshire grin, but he could turn right around and have you put to death.
“Come on.” He’s taunting you.
You lean your torso out of the window, wind your arm back, and toss the bundle of snow into a bramble. It leaves a smear of white on a leaf and your hands stinging. You glance back at Gojo-sama, try to gauge if you selected the right option, but his face is unreadable. After a moment of silence, he speaks.
“What’s your name?”
You tell him in one quick breath, and bow again for good measure. When you stand back up, Gojo-sama is gone. With shaking hands, you close and lock the windows.
The girls are silent when you lower yourself back into the room and begin to change. No one says a word to you, but you hear your name throughout the walls for the rest of the day.
---
The next morning, you are appointed to be Gojo Satoru’s handmaiden.
Aida-san, the housekeeper, looks weary when you answer her beckon. She starts with little preamble.
“I just spoke with Gojo Satoru’s mother, and he has specifically requested you to be appointed as his personal servant.”
She looks and sounds confused, as most anyone would when faced with a twelve year old being appointed to the side of a newfound god. You expected her to inform you that you are being banished from the clan, so this is welcome news. Maybe.
“You’ll be moved to a room in the main house. It might be smaller, but you’ll have it all to yourself.” You nod. “You won’t be working under me anymore, all of your orders will come directly from Gojo-sama.” You nod. “Stay in line. Should you act out, I won’t be able to do anything for you.” You nod.
Aida-san steps forward, places a hand on your shoulder. There are lines around her eyes that you’ve never noticed softening her face.
“Your mother would have been very proud.”
“Thank you, Aida-san.”
It feels like a goodbye, as you leave the housekeeping building and start the walk across the grounds to the main house.
You were born at the Gojo clan’s estate. There’s little to be known about your parents; your father was an unkind man, pushing your mother out of their shared life when she was pregnant with you, resulting in her having to find work with the Gojo clan. She then died anticlimactically from a cold when you were almost a year old, and you were raised in a sort of clandestine shroud by the maids until you were old enough to work. All you’ve ever known is learning to exist under the older women and trying to fit in with the girls your age to no avail. For the first time in your life, that has changed.
The stairs to the main house are where the indulgence begins. They’re a reflective metal you can’t quite place, too focused on keeping your balance in worn-out geta with poor traction.
Three torii gates frame the main entrance like a lavish painting. You feel inadequate already, having to use two hands to pull open the gilded doorknob.
The genkan you’re greeted with is normal enough, save for the clear indicator of which slippers belong to the Gojo family provided by the impressively clean pillow they’re arranged neatly on. Across from them, there’s a haphazard arrangement for the staff. You replace your shoes, pleased by the comfort that already surpasses the servant’s quarters.
The next step is finding Gojo Satoru’s mother. She has a reputation among the staff, despite many having never served under her, and you wander placidly through the hallways barren of people until you hear soft chatter.
The Gojo matriarch is a beautiful woman. Her hair is dark, just barely lightening with age, but her eyes are the blue of her son’s, even though they lack his sight. You wait for her to finish speaking to another housekeeper before dismissing him with a nod and turning those eyes on you. He all but runs out of the room.
“You’re young,” she says, not looking at you but rather a tapestry on the wall. Something more interesting, more sightly. “Are you Satoru’s age?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She regards you, then. Her clothes are lavish, fine fabrics, immaculate detailing. There’s a tear in your right sleeve.
“I’ll have you a new kimono made,” his mother says, giving your working clothes a final glance before her head turns. “A light blue, to match Satoru’s.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
A slight smile pulls at her lips. “You are to do whatever Satoru wants of you. He has asked for you under the guise of a handmaiden, but I think he simply wants a friend.” A smile blooms on her face, and for a moment, she is no longer the virginal Mary but someone human. It leaves soon thereafter. “You are to be that friend. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes close, and she leans against the back of her chair. “Satoru should be in his room working on his studies. You are dismissed.”
You bow, even though she can’t see it, and leave with the same haste that the housekeeper before you did. She never told you where Gojo-sama’s room is, and you’re not sure how to find it.
Though, he manages to find you first.
It’s startling, to round a corner and be met with startling blue eyes and a hand around your wrist, touching-not-touching you. Gojo-sama presses a hand over your mouth and stares, hard, before flourishing a pair of shears in front of your face.
You wonder if he’s planning on killing you.
If he is, it’s not an immediate murder. Instead, he peers around you to look down the hallway you just walked down, drops his hand from your mouth, and makes a mad dash. You trip after him, let him pull you out a door and down the engawa, past the koi pond and through his mother’s garden. You follow him until your feet hurt, until your legs burn, until he stops abruptly in front of a tree stump and turns to you with a wide, uncanny smile.
Gojo-sama hands you the shears. You wonder if he’s going to ask you to kill him and delight in watching you fail.
Instead, he turns his back to you and takes a seat on the tree stump. You blink at his back.
“My hair’s getting too long, it’s annoying. Cut it.”
You blink again.
“I… I don’t know how to cut hair, Gojo-sama.”
“I don’t really care, I just need you to cut it.” Irritation edges his voice. You wish you could see his face, parse more words out of it.
He sounds a little bit like his mother when he talks like that. You think of her and all of her details, each one placed immaculately. You look at Gojo-sama’s hair, a little shaggy but not unkempt.
You give him an awful haircut.
It’s choppy in the back, layered strangely in the front. You don’t touch his bangs. He can’t see it, yet, but he sounds delighted when you silently pass back the shears, and you think again of his mother. He’s set you up once more, surely, because you couldn’t say no to him but now you’ll be pinned with her mirth. You wonder if this is for her. A reminder that her son is not to be contained.
Gojo-sama takes you back to the koi pond by the main house. The two of you sit on a rock and sit in silence until a housekeeper walks by, stops, stares, before silently retreating back to the house. Gojo-sama’s mother finds you five minutes later, and with clenched teeth, talks at you all stern in a way that makes it clear she is trying to address the boy next to you.
When she leaves, Gojo-sama delightedly starts telling you what he’s named each koi and what their day job is. You listen and wonder what life he’ll end up weaving for you.
---
A month into your time with Gojo-sama, you hear through the grapevine that Aida-san has died.
You overhear one housekeeper say it to another, and then mention a small funeral service at the end of the day. You’re out with Gojo-sama, walking aimlessly while he talks at you, and something akin to grief renders you silent, chills your skin and runs down your spine. You speak very little for the rest of the day, and once Gojo-sama has gone to dinner with his mother, you go to your room and cry.
Selfishly, you do not attend the funeral service. You cannot stand to see the faces of the women that raised you.
Your mother would have been very proud, Aida-san had said. You’re not sure why. You feel like a traitor to her, to all of them.
You get one hour of sleep that night, and wake up to Gojo-sama trying to braid your hair.
You don’t address him, and he doesn’t acknowledge that you’ve woken up. He pulls at your roots a little too tightly.
Respect is a strong word, but you most certainly fear Gojo-sama. On your third day, he had given you two conditions. One, if I tell you to do something you don’t want to do, then you are not to do it. Two, you must call me Satoru.
Okay, Gojo-sama.
The pout on his face had made you smile. You have yet to disobey his orders again.
“What made you want to become a servant?”
It’s then that your grief turns into anger. You want to snap at Gojo-sama, want to yell at him and hit him, want the family you work under to have to resort to keeping you muzzled like a dog. You do not want to be placid. You are mad because Gojo Satoru is too powerful for a boy who knows nothing, you are mad because he gets whatever he asks for and he just happened to ask for you. You are mad because he has made your life better and now is doing your hair like you’re a doll, and you are mad because you’re letting him. He will discard you when he’s done doing your hair, dressing you up, and you will go back to being a girl who cleans and listens and obeys. And you will be mad then, too, because the kindest time of your life was spent as Gojo Satoru’s doll.
“I’m mad at you right now,” you say, quietly.
He hums. “Okay. Why?”
“Because you’re selfish.”
There’s a shooting pain in your scalp, and you can’t tell if the tugging was purposeful or not. An accident or a pull at the reins.
“You don’t have a cursed technique. You’re not some distant relative. How did you get here?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“I’ll find out, eventually.”
You sit up, prepare yourself to say something vicious and true, and Gojo-sama’s hands fall from your hair. His eyes pierce you. Disarm you. The half-made braid in your hair spindles, falls. Gojo-sama smiles at you, and holds out his hand.
“Let’s go eat.”
You place your palm in his. Skin touches yours, warm and smooth, and you’re unable to hold back a gasp.
Gojo-sama smiles. Really smiles, stands up, pulls you out of your room.
You let him, and wonder if you will ever feel him like this again.
---
Having a day off is something you are still not accustomed to.
Being Gojo Satoru’s personal handmaiden/friend/plaything is something you have grown used to in the year you’ve been with him, but the days where you’re woken up with a servant of the main house referring to you with an honorific and letting you know that Gojo-sama will be with his mother in meetings until dinner is rare. As he gets older it will become more and more common, but now, he is a child, and his presence is little more than a formality.
You seldom leave your room during these days. Gojo-sama has been poorly teaching you to read, and you spend most of your time deciphering old books littered all over the estate that detail the storied past of the Gojo clan.
By noon, you’ve gotten through the ones stored away in your room and venture out with arms full. Gojo-sama’s mother gave you access to the smaller library in the main house, and you plan on scouring it for anything other than The Gojo Clan: Heian era, part XVI with the rest of your time off.
You’re derailed, though, by passing a shoji panel slid open and hearing an all too familiar voice.
“I’m not getting married.”
You never really make the active choice to eavesdrop. Your body does it for you.
“Gojo-sama, the Kamo clan has offered up a young girl with a very promising cursed technique-”
“You really think I’d marry some prude from the Kamo clan?”
The room falls silent.
“I-I’m sorry, Gojo-sama, b-but you will need to choose a wife sooner than later.”
“I’ll decide who I want to marry and when I want to marry.” There’s a beat of silence, and you can picture the lissome grin on Gojo-sama’s face. “And I won’t marry a Kamo girl, that’s for sure.”
You peek, then, and it’s at that moment Gojo-sama leans back to lock eyes with you. You breathe in sharply. His glasses slip down the bridge of his nose, smile becomes something more crooked. It lasts for a moment before he’s sitting straight again and you’re all but scrambling the opposite way down the hall, arms still heavy with books and trying not to run.
You can hear Gojo-sama’s voice in your head, hear what he’ll say later that evening. Can’t get enough of me, huh? Your footsteps morph into stomps. A housekeeper passing by smiles tersely, and you quiet.
The library is still when you enter. You can tell which books you’ve read so far by which spines are devoid of dust, which ones you’ve considered by a finger’s line ran across the top. You practice alphabets when placing each book back, and grab a new one to its right each time.
Your library is the smaller one in the main house, but it is by no means small in isolation. You’ve adopted a seat in the corner by a window, already opened a crack to relieve the stuffiness, and recline into your favorite chair on the estate.
A moment later, a blade rests against the back of your neck. You open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.
“Stay quiet,” a harsh voice says, and the knife at your neck presses in just an infinitesimal amount. “Put your arm behind your back, palm up.”
You comply, and something small and cool is slipped between your fingers.
“Tonight, you will pour this in Gojo Satoru’s mouth when he is sleeping. You will promise me this. After you make this promise, my cursed technique will ensure that you keep it, or else you will die. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Tell me you promise to pour the contents of that vial in Gojo Satoru’s mouth when he is sleeping.”
“I-I promise.”
The knife presses in further. It begins to sting.
“I promise to, um.” You can’t swallow. “To pour the contents of this vial in Gojo Satoru’s mouth when he is sleeping.”
The pressure relents. You hear the window close, the stillness of your breathing, the incessant pounding of your heart.
You stand up, and walk out of the library with the vial tight in your hand. The gilded topper cuts into your palm, and you begin a haunt of the hallways on shaking legs.
You are both surprised and annoyed that during that whole encounter, you never once considered administering the poison to Gojo-sama as you promised. It probably wouldn’t even kill him, but now it’ll kill you.
The shoji panel has been closed. You wrench it back open, and the meandering chatter of elders peters out. Gojo-sama looks right at you, pleasantly surprised.
You hold out a closed fist. “I’ve been asked to poison you.”
The knife slices through your neck.
Both Gojo-sama and his mother stand up, him moving towards you and his mother away like opposite poles of a magnet. A hand presses up against the back of your neck, mats your hair. You see him in dots, hear him like he’s underwater.
Go get someone!
Your skin sparks with something unfamiliar, picking you apart like electricity. It expands from Gojo-sama’s fingers, floundering and failing in your skin before it recedes. He does it again.
You pass out.
---
There’s a large man standing in the corner of the room in the infirmary, and when you lift your head, he leaves.
You blink. Your head hurts, and it all comes back in a moment’s thought.
Your neck is wrapped in three layers of bandages, all of it sore sore sore. Your palm’s wrapped, too, loose sleeping clothes on, the kimono you were wearing neatly folded up at the foot of the mat you’re laid on. You take it in, close your eyes. Try to go back to sleep.
Gojo-sama bursts through the door, immaculate timing and all. He says your name, no teasing honorifics, no drawn out chaaan, grabs your bad hand. You go to wrench it away but the strength has seeped from your body, and it results in an embarrassed flounder.
The second time you try to pull away is interrupted by Gojo-sama’s mother entering the infirmary, presence enough for your arm to fall prey to the boy at your side. She circles the mat you lay on like a predator circling prey, and the only thing keeping you calm is knowing that if you were suspected to be a part of a conspiracy to assassinate jujutsu’s boy god they would’ve let you bleed out on the floor.
She kneels down, all regal beauty, delicate yet insuperable. She cups the back of your head, matronly, and it’s then that you realize that something is different. Gojo-sama releases you when your hand goes to join her own, not caring that you’re touching her skin when you realize that your hair has been replaced with a jagged buzz.
“It was the doctor,” she says idly, fingers moving to twirl around the longer chunks that frame your face, “He said it was needed in order to treat the cut on your neck. We’ll need to cut it again once it’s grown out more for Satoru’s ceremony in December.”
You nod, and Gojo-sama’s mother stands.
“You’ll be moved back to your room this evening.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Your voice is a scratch on wood, grating and unwelcome.
Her lips twist. “Good to know that the fall didn’t knock the manners out of you.” She addresses Gojo-sama, who is as silent as you’ve ever seen him. “Come, Satoru, I need to speak with your grandfather.”
Gojo-sama moves, but takes you with him. It’s startling, a hand on your back to push you up before grabbing at your hands and pulling you onto shaking feet, quickly pinching the fabric at the small of your back when your shift slips down your shoulder.
“We’re going to the gardens,” Satoru announces, and his mother nods, leaves without a fight. You think the dynamic between them is fascinating, if not a little sad, and wonder what it’s like behind closed doors.
Gojo-sama holds onto you while you slide on slippers left at the door, and is uncharacteristically gentle when helping you through the halls. You don’t dare say anything lest it breaks the spell and he remembers your place below him in the hierarchy he tops, drops you and leaves you on the floor for a housekeeper to find.
He keeps hands on your wrists the whole way to his bedroom, skin against yours warm to the touch.
“These aren’t the gardens,” you say slowly at his door, a little woozy from the exertion. Gojo-sama laughs, escorts you further inside.
“Your observation skills are as excellent as always.” He sits you at his bed and lingers, watching. “Of course we’re not going to the gardens. I’m an assassination target, aren’t I? What if they’re still out there?”
Thinking of the man at the window makes you shiver. Gojo-sama touches the skin at the base of your neck, runs his finger up to the thick bandages collaring you. His touch prickles.
“That’d be dangerous,” you murmur, blinking slowly, and Gojo-sama nods sagely. Your brain fogs and your limbs feel heavy, lack of sleep and blood catching up to them.
“You are to stay in my room tonight, just in case some other jealous lowlife tries to kill me.”
You nod, despite being in no place to defend Gojo-sama against an assassin. The prospect of walking back to your room just feels too daunting. Your mind is already asleep when the hand at your neck moves to your shoulder and eases you down onto downy sheets, body following once its encased in a cloud of a blanket.
In the morning, the doctor comes by Gojo-sama’s room to have him find you, only to do the job himself. You get chewed out for staying in the young lord’s bed overnight, get called uncouth as the doctor changes your bandages. Gojo-sama escapes the doctor’s narrowed gaze up until the man goes to leave and he turns to you from his perch on his bed, loudly says he’s never known you to be this self-indulgent.
You don’t speak to him for the rest of the morning out of principle.
---
On the morning of the day before Gojo-sama’s fifteenth birthday, you invite yourself into your room and press cold fingers on the back of his neck.
“I’m going out,” you whisper, and he squirms, half awake. “Don’t tell your mother. I’ll be back before lunch.”
His eyes are half-lidded, almost luminescent in the dark. He grabs your wrist, fingers warm and familiar on your skin.
“Wh… where are you goin’?”
You pull his blanket up over his collarbone with your free hand. “Out. It’s really early, go back to sleep.”
When you go to move away, he doesn’t let you. Instead, he sits up, blanket pooling around his waist, and you pointedly turn your neck to the side. He relents, stands up, and goes to his closet.
“I’ll go with you.”
You watch his back move, and think that he’ll need a haircut soon.
“I thought beauty sleep was important to you.”
“Morning air is good for the mind and soul,” he parrots, either his mother or a teacher. Once dressed, he holds out a dark blue haori and takes to shoving your arms through the sleeves. You try your best to make it hard for him.
Gojo-sama holds your hand down each hallway, and you wonder if his cursed technique is dampening your footsteps. You’ve read a lot on Limitless and the Six Eyes thanks to the extensive documentation on them in the library, but jujutsu is still this incomprehensible entity to you, something that you only feel when Gojo-sama gets close enough to crush you with it.
(He’s only used it on you once so far, a moment you barely remember. He only told you about it a couple of weeks ago when you had asked, alone in the quiet of his room, back to him, his finger tracing the length of the scar on your neck.
Reverse cursed technique, he had said, voice quiet and sullen, I’m sure you’ve read about it. It didn’t work, not on you.
You didn’t ask why. You knew though; for the first time in his life, Gojo Satoru wasn’t strong enough.)
You have your own pair of bulky boots by the door, and when you bend down to tie them, Gojo-sama swats at your hands until there’s room for his. Maybe he’s practicing chivalry this morning. Maybe he knows where you’re headed.
The sun hasn’t risen yet, but the snow makes things bright. The walk is a silent one as you guide Gojo-sama through rows of buildings and your old home and you think that he must know because you’ve never heard him this quiet. You take to looking at prints in the snow, rows of dead flowerbeds, a few workers clearing pathways.
Tomorrow, you’ll have to wake up two hours earlier than usual to get ready for a celebration held every year on December 22nd. You will have to spend most of it at Gojo-sama’s side, kneeling on a mat beside him until your legs hurt while the Gojo elders go on and on about the future of the clan. Neither of you enjoy it. You will get to leave before him, and you’ll wait for him to come back with some sort of fizzy drink lifted from the kitchen and you’ll give him his present, which is a set of origami koi this year. The real ones on the Gojo estate didn’t make it through the first push of winter, so you’ve memorialized them in paper. He’ll say he likes it even if he doesn’t and fawn over you for the rest of the night, and you’ll indulge him without any scolding. That’s his real gift.
You arrive at the graveyard, turn away from grand plinths and take Gojo-sama down the hill to a pocket of small, uniform gravestones. This is your second year visiting since Aida-san’s death so her resting place is where you visit first, bow silently. Gojo-sama drops your hand to do so, and doesn’t take it back as you walk towards the older gravestones. Your mothers is in the middle of the third row.
Gojo-sama’s presence is strange, and you can’t yet decide if it’s unwelcome. He sits next to you, more obedient than you’ve ever known him, remains quiet as you pull out the water bottle tucked into your undershirt and carefully wash off the year’s decay, watch the water run down in rivulets, seep into the snow.
“Hi, mom.” You look at her name, her birthday. Try to remember her face. “I want you to meet my friend Gojo.”
You can feel him waiting for the honorific that’s all too familiar on your tongue. The air shifts without it and it’s a change you can feel, but you don’t want to introduce your mother to the boy who’s larger than life, larger than you. You want to introduce her to the boy whose hair you cut, who splits his dessert with you when you don’t get enough to eat. He taught you to read, and now you’re faster at it than him.
Gojo’s eyes linger on you for a long while before he speaks, addressing your mother’s grave.
“I’ll take good care of her, okaasan.”
Blithely, you think that it should be the other way around. Gojo locks an arm around you, finally coming into his gangly limbs, and you lean into it, into him. Your legs are cold from being in the snow. Gojo runs a hand up and down your arm, and you don’t know if it’s for comfort or warmth.
He stays like that, with you, until half an hour passes and the sun rises. It warms your cheeks so greatly that you want to smear them with snow.
---
Sometimes, when he laughs, you really do think Gojo is some sort of god.
He looks like one now, even when sprawled across tatami mats in a way that is notably ungodly. You’re detailing a dream that you didn’t realize was funny, thinking it more of a nightmare, and carefully making a spiral of dominoes on Gojo’s bedroom floor.
“I can’t believe that you have finally begun dreaming of marrying me. Are you finally in love?”
He’s without his glasses in your company, eyes bright and unyielding. They make glaring at him significantly harder.
“I woke up in a cold sweat.”
You dreamt of Gojo taking you to America and marrying you at an awfully tacky casino. The blame rests on a stack of books in poorly translated Japanese with tan women and shirtless men on the covers you had found in the library’s darkest covers and pored through in a bout of twisted curiosity. Now, they’re haunting your subconscious.
Gojo sighs loudly, flops onto his back. You suck in a breath, and your dominoes still. He’s pretty like his, soft and dappled by dying sunlight. “Everyone’s on my ass about settling on a girl to marry before I leave for Tokyo. Especially my mother.” You see his head turn in your peripheral, eyes catching the light. “She’s probably having nightmares about me eloping with you too, I’d imagine.”
“She doesn’t want me to be your housewife in Tokyo?” You place down a domino that has pips the color of Gojo’s eyes. In one of those books, there was a painful scene where the woman made a point of waiting for her boyfriend at his house in an apron and nothing else. The idea makes you shiver.
“Nah, when you move to Tokyo we can set you up with something you’ll like.” Gojo lifts an arm up and twists a strand of your hair around his finger. “A bakery, pet shop, tattoo parlor. Whatever you want. You just gotta ask for it nicely with a please, Satoru!”
You look down at him, taken aback. “‘When’?”
Something flashes through his eyes, and his finger brushes dangerously close to your cheek. “Once we’re both eighteen. I’ll leave this place for the last time and take you with me.”
What he’s saying is dangerously romantic. The shake in your fingers forces you to pull away from the dominoes, tuck hands under your thighs. You think about yourself away from him, the Gojo estate. All you can draw is a blank.
“I haven’t thought about what I’ll do after you leave,” you say quietly, honestly. It’ll be in a week. Seven days.
“I have.” Gojo’s voice is quiet like yours, but laced with something hard. “I’ve spoken with my mother. She’s moving you to a new room in the basement, but there’s a gas stove and bathroom. It’ll be like a little apartment. She won’t make you work and you’ll get whatever you ask for. I already have a cell phone for you on the way, so you can threaten to call me if anyone gives you a hard time.”
Gojo’s finger runs over the length of your jaw. You’re finding it harder to breathe.
“Satoru--” it comes out of you before you can think, and Gojo takes in a breath, looks at you strangely. “You-- I can’t do that.”
He sits up, presses his hip to your knee. Fingers dig into the softness of your cheek, rough but not unkind.
“Only took you three years to call me by my name. Say it again?”
You fix him with stern eyes. “Don’t change the subject. What you’re saying, it… I can’t do that. I’m not like you.”
“I can make you a Gojo, if that’s what you mean.” The sound of blood rushing through your head mixes awfully with his voice. “I was thinking you’d want to take things slower, but I’ll take you to America and marry you in a heartbeat if that’s what you need.”
“You’re not making any sense.” Your voice sounds distant, softer than usual.
“I’m taking care of you,” he says simply.
“I’ve never left the estate.” Words fall out of you, one by one. “Am I-- I’m not going back to work, when you’re gone?”
He shakes his head, moves towards you cautiously, treats you like a stray cat. It makes you mad, makes you want to scratch and bite at him. Leave a mark, tarnish him. Touch the untouchable Gojo Satoru. He’d let you. The thought marks you want to recoil away from him, his skin on yours. His right hand moves to the back of your neck and its jagged skin.
“My mother sees you as a distraction,” he mumbles. A finger touches the deepest run of the blade. “Maybe she’s right.”
You’re hurt, confusion only growing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means that you’re a weak spot.” His finger digs into your skin, nail resting on the incision line. “A vulnerability.” Satoru’s voice is strained. His eyes close, nose nudges into yours. “I’ll be gone for three years but once we’re both eighteen I’ll come back for you, okay? No matter what she says.”
You go to say something once your brain unsticks itself, but Satoru kisses you before you can get anything out. Pulls you closer by the back of your neck and presses you into him. You’ve never kissed anyone before and don’t think he has, either, but all you can think about is how warm it makes you feel. A strange mix of comfort and giddiness rushing through you in waves, leaving you light headed and high strung.
Then Satoru pulls away and subtly flicks the end domino. Your spiral, which had been built up to five arms, falls, and you miss half of it. Satoru leans in again, and you have to press your hands to his chest and feet to his stomach to keep him away.
“I won’t miss you being awful when you’ve left.”
Satoru smiles like he knows you’re lying. “But you know I’ll be somewhere else being awful. Doesn’t that make you jealous?”
You think of what it was like to kiss him, and then think of the kind of asshole it takes to topple the domino pattern you’d been building for the past two hours and shake your head. Satoru frowns and presses forward; once he starts trying, it only takes a second for your muscles to relent and body to fold in on itself, back hitting the floor abruptly once your knees press to your chest.
Satoru climbs over you, takes your hands. He stares down at you, and it’s a long while before either of you speak again.
“You’ll need to cut my hair again before I leave for Tokyo. I’m getting split ends.”
You nod as best you can.
“I’ll miss you when I’m gone,” Satoru says, quiet and earnest. You think it’s the most honest you’ve ever heard him. The tips of his ears redden, contrast stark against his hair lightened by the sun.
“I’ll miss you too, Satoru.”
When Satoru goes to kiss you again, you let him. When he asks you to say his name again, you oblige him. The rest of the afternoon goes along those lines.
---
One week later, Satoru leaves.
You stay the night in his room, wake up when the sun’s already out to a swathe of kisses on your cheek. There’s a phone charging to your left. Satoru tells you goodbye before you’re awake enough to process it, and it is the last time you see him for one year.
He put his contact into your phone before he left, his name with an excess amount of emoticon hearts and kissy faces. A text comes in soon after he leaves, a picture of himself squinty-eyed on the shinkansen. You send back a thumbs up, feeling strange. The room is quiet.
You aren’t going to send one back? (ಥ﹏ಥ)
It takes you two minutes to figure out how to open the camera. Your eyes are closed in the picture you take. You send it to Satoru, and he immediately comes back with a cute (♡μ_μ)
He texts you again, but you don’t open it. You lay back in his bed and try to fall asleep.
You manage to not respond to him for almost a whole day. It starts with you leaving his room and retreating to your little apartment below the house, stocked to the brim with food and toiletries. There’s a bookshelf in your room that wasn’t there days earlier and a stuffed bear on your pillow. Satoru calls you once the sun has set, and at that point you miss him enough to answer.
“Hello.”
“You’re so mean to me. Meanest girl I know.”
His voice is tinny, far away. “Have you met your classmates?”
“Yeah. They’re both weird, but they have strong techniques. One’s a girl, but she’s not as pretty as you, so don’t go getting jealous.” He pauses. “Are you crying?”
You are, and it’s so embarrassing that you hang up the phone and bury it under your pillow. There’s a calendar on the wall that’s blank save for yours and Satoru’s birthdays marked in red pen. There’s a book on your bookshelf about all the things you can cook with three ingredients.
You lay down on top of your buzzing phone and read it.
---
In the coming months, you fill Satoru’s absence with books.
He texts you every day, and on the weekends he walks you through the streets of Tokyo to bookstores and cafes. After reading through all that’s on your bookshelf, you tell him which Murakamis and Ogawas to get and at the end of the day he ships them all off to the estate. You detail your long and boring days and he tells you about his missions.
And even when the calls get fewer and far between, he still sends you books. Most you’ve requested, some with notes tucked into them explaining that his friend Suguru said it was good or that Satoru liked the cover. He sent you Heaven, and it sat on your bedside table long after being finished.
You began writing a book once Satoru had been gone for three months to the day. His absence has become suffocating in a way that makes you sick with it, so you take to beating out space to breathe with words on paper. The cute stationary that Satoru sends in his Tokyo care packages is finally put to use, and you text him for the first time in two days to ask for more during a weekend where he’s in Kyoto for a mission.
Hello. Could you send a notebook in your next box, please? Take a picture of Kyoto for me if you can. Stay safe
You get a response two minutes later with Satoru and a boy you know to be Suguru in front of a flowering sakura tree.
> All the guys are here with their girlfriends, but I’m stuck with Suguru (╥﹏╥) killed a big curse tho! It looked like the human centipede
Gross. Did you get a picture!
> No i didnt (￢_￢;) weirdo
> I wish you were here
> Even if ur into the human centipede
> Sorry I can never be him 。゜゜(´Ｏ`) ゜゜。
> Suguru wants to know what youre having for dinner
Suguru got invested in your three ingredient dinners through the conduit of Satoru, and you oblige him when requested.
Cheating a little, but teriyaki chicken and rice. The teriyaki is from the recipe book; it’s equal parts soy sauce, sake, and sugar.
> Suguru squinted and nodded
> He just said “is that really what you sent her?”
> He just hit my arm (×_×)⌒☆
Thank you for the play by play
> Of course
> Gotta go now. Human centipede 2!
> (*¯ ³¯*)♡
You send back a thumbs up.
A week later, a box arrives with fifteen spiral bound notebooks with Tokyo’s streets on the covers and a DVD copy of The Human Centipede that never sees the light of day.
---
A year ends. Satoru visits you twice, once for his birthday and once for yours, and the rest of time is spent writing and reading and cooking and taking up the mantle of feeding the koi after an elderly member of the gardening staff falls ill.
Then, something happens. You don’t find out about it until later, just get a text from Satoru saying he and Suguru have a super important, top secret mission. You wish him luck, stew in radio silence for three days. The phone call comes when you’re about to go to bed.
“Satoru?”
There is a long silence. You say his name again, hear a shuddering breath when he says yours back.
“Satoru, are you… is everything okay?” You’re tense, and it bleeds into your voice. Unsure of what to do. Worried. You wonder if this is why Satoru doesn’t like it when you cry.
“What book are you reading right now?
You grab it off your nightstand, hand shaking a little because you’ve never heard Satoru’s voice sound like that. “It’s another Murakami, about a guy who’s in love with this girl who goes missing. There’s a lot more, but I don’t want to spoil anything.”
Another beat of silence. “Will you read it to me?”
You’re at the novel’s end, but you nod anyway, tuck your phone between shoulder and ear while searching for your bookmark.
In the end, you read the rest of the book to him in that one night. He’s silent the whole way through and you keep reading even when your throat begins to hurt, even when your flashlight dies and you have to plug in your phone and use it, instead. When you finish he’s either asleep or not talking, and you can hear his breathing.
You fall asleep on the silent line a little while later. Not too long afterwards, it becomes a part of your routine.
---
Satoru doesn’t visit for the entirety of his second year. He sends you a large box on your birthday with lots of books and stuffed animals and fancy pens, texts you on weekends and calls you at nights. He’s changing, just as you are, but you know something terrible has happened.
His third year begins unceremoniously. You have the day marked on your slowly filling calendar, and spend it down at your mother’s grave, reading to her what you’ve written. You take the long way back to the main house and take a picture of the new koi, send it to Satoru with a hope everything is going well.
He responds to you a week later telling you one of his juniors died on a mission.
That night is home to a mostly silent phone call, where you tell Satoru about your day and he soaks you up like a sponge. You read him a passage from your writing for the first time, and he tells you he loves you. You say it back, and fall asleep on the line.
A month after that, you wake up far too early in the morning because there’s a boy in your room.
He’s backlit by the lamp in your kitchen, and doesn’t give you the time to see his face. You’re disoriented, half awake and not sure whether to laugh or cry or hug him but he makes the decision for you, collapses onto your mattress and molds himself into you. It is the first time you have seen Gojo Satoru in over a year. You hold him fiercely.
“Suguru killed an entire village. His own parents.” His voice is broken, his words drenching you in a cold sweat. His tears stain your shirt.
He tells you about Riko.
You’re crying with him, eventually. Neither of you bother turning off the light, and you don’t know or care if his mother knows he’s back. You hold him and let him cry into you, because what else is there to do? You can’t change the past, can’t say anything to comfort him because right now his grief is so large that it fills your lungs. All you can do is hold him. It’s something you’re good at.
The sun rises soon thereafter. Satoru breaks away from you for the first time in hours, kisses you firmly. His cheeks are warm, ran through with tears. You twist your fingers in his hair and think about how he needs it cut.
Satoru pulls back, takes in a breath, looks at you reverently. “We’ll pack today, leave tomorrow morning. Stay in the dorms for another year.” He kisses you again until your head swims. “You don’t mind, do you?”
You shake your head, because a small part of you has been waiting for this for a while. Making a home outside of the estate is as exciting as it is terrifying, inevitable as it is daunting. Satoru gets off your bed and moves towards your bookshelf before pulling out the three ingredient cookbook and flipping through the marked recipes.
You make the eggs that Satoru decides on and he goes to find his mother. You get him back half an hour later when food is plated, and you spend a quiet morning with his hip to yours at your small table passing the salt and tabasco. The rest of the morning is spent packing your things, books piled into boxes that’ll be shipped to the school, your favorites in a backpack that you’ll keep on you. Satoru goes through your closet and delights at the skirts in it, packs them all. The end result is two suitcases fit to burst.
The afternoon is spent on the grounds, starting with a visit to your mother. Satoru asks for a private moment at the grave and you oblige, visit Aida-san and spend the whole time wondering what he’s saying.
His smile is subdued when he collects you. Your curiosity grows, and is stifled when Satoru informs you that your favorite koi, a white one with long whiskers, is having an extramarital affair.
After you’ve gotten your fill of wandering, you and Satoru make a brief appearance at his family’s dinner. The Gojo elders all look on the brink of explosion when Satoru shows up, loud and late with an arm around your waist, and something in them tenses further when he hits a fork against a glass and clears his throat like all of the attention in the room wasn’t on him to begin with.
“I have decided who I am to marry.” The tension in the room is palpable, elders all scrounging at the bit, hanging off his every word.
He says your name, and your ears ring. The room goes into quiet chaos, and you find yourself unable to meet anyone’s eye as Satoru takes you into a bridal carry and out of the room. You hear a crotchety voice follow you, yelling, “Gojo-sama, what’s her cursed technique?”
You were sure Satoru would leave it, but he lights up, sticks his head back into the dining room.
“She doesn’t have one!”
He carries you all the way to your room, your bed. Tucks you into it, turns off the lights, messes around in the kitchen. When he makes it to your bed that night he spends it revering you; a god, on his knees at your altar. It is the last night you spend on the clan’s estate.
Come morning, you wake up to Satoru easing you into a coat, sitting you upright and tying your shoes. A breakfast is packed, and once it’s in your bag and you’ve gotten everything on, Satoru’s hand is in yours the rest of the way. The goodbyes you say to the grounds are small and only in your head as Satoru takes you quietly through the halls, out the door for the last time. The walk to the torii gates heading the estate feels shorter than it is.
Satoru bends down, kisses your temple, and takes you through them.