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“Why’re you sulking way over here?”
Suguru looks up from his notebook. He doesn’t need to look up to know who is there, nor even to know what expression he wears: wry, like a fox. Like a cat who’s gotten into the cream.
He looks anyway. Call it force of habit. Something inside Suguru has always been weak to temptation.
Suguru thought he’d manage to buy himself a little more time than this. He’d found an out of the way corner of the Jujutsu High campus, tucked into a courtyard between seldom-used buildings under a knotty old linden tree. The branches are bare with a mild winter wind whistling through them, but down at the tree’s feet Suguru sits sheltered, unbothered by the cold.
It’s a good spot, somewhere he could call his own for at least a little while. A place to clear his head and put his thoughts in order.
Yet Satoru always finds him faster than he anticipates.
“Not sulking,” Suguru answers. “It’s called thinking. You should try it sometime.”
“Bleh.”
Suguru gives a little hum. “Expected as much from you.”
Satoru lumbers over. For someone so slender, so effortlessly graceful when his duty demands, Satoru’s footsteps fall heavily, carelessly— or he’d like you to think that, anyway. Suguru’s been onto him for a while. Satoru slumps to the ground by Suguru’s side, unnecessarily close, propped up against the trunk of the same tree.
Their shoulders rub where they meet in the middle. The sensation grates at Suguru, not because the company is unwelcome… because it isn’t. It feels right to have Satoru by his side. He resisted the notion for long enough, their whole first year until now, but it’s tedious lying to oneself. Suguru has decided to give it up.
He can be honest, at least in his own mind.
So no, it’s not the company that grates but the suddenness, the jaggedness, the topsy-turvyness of Satoru. It’s the moment of anticipation that hangs a half-beat too long before the inevitable impact. It’s the way Suguru knowingly lifts his pen so that when Satoru jostles him— as though he was aiming for Suguru’s lap, actually, but missed and arrived instead by his side— the movement still won’t spoil his penmanship.
Stating the obvious: he didn’t stumble, and he didn’t miss. That’s all a ruse, too. Gojo Satoru is only clumsy when and how he wants to be.
“Whatcha writing?”
There’s a sing-song note to Satoru’s voice, just this side of mocking. He peels his dark shades away like they’re merely a prop in his grand performance. Using the earpiece to point, he peers at the open page in Suguru’s notebook.
“I am doing my assignments.” Suguru feels a smile creep up on him and he lets it loose, against his better judgment. That, too, is part of Satoru’s influence. “I don’t imagine that rings any bells for you.”
“Is that all? I finished mine already.”
Satoru punctuates the statement with a roll of his eyes and the whole scene tilts— but that’s just Suguru catching himself the moment before falling. It’s easy to do: leaning too close, looking too long, caught in the riptide. He should find some higher ground.
(Or not. They say the higher the cliff, the harder the fall.)
“Tch. Too bad. I thought it was your diary.”
“Your eyes are better than that,” Suguru scolds, without heat. “You could see it was maths at a kilometer.”
“But, see, I wasn’t looking at the paper before.” Satoru furrows his brow. “If that’s all you’re up to, then why’re you making that face?”
“What face?”
“Love-sick.” Satoru over-enunciates, dropping each syllable with a clatter and an irritating pause for effect.
Suguru holds his eyes. He knows what Satoru is doing and he won’t fall for it, this call and response. If Suguru reacts, Satoru will have him where he wants him. Better to give him nothing to sink his teeth into, nothing at all.
Nothing.
“So who is she?”
“Cut it out.”
“Why?” Satoru counters, shameless as ever. “Do you have a diary?”
Suguru thinks about it. “Not really.” He starts packing his school things away. It’s almost time for class.
“Not really? But that’s not right, it’s a yes or no question! Where do you write down all the hot gossip? All your pettiest and most sanctimonious thoughts? Your heart’s secret longings?”
Suguru feels his eyebrow arch. “Why would I write any of that down? Sounds like a liability to me.”
“So that I can find it, of course,” Satoru teases him, teeth glinting sharp as a winter wind. “How else am I gonna figure you out?”
“The old fashioned way, I guess.” Suguru dusts himself off as he stands. It isn’t until they start walking that he feels the wind shift— and recognizes its absence these last several minutes. It’s like stepping out of a soap bubble.
Satoru.
“That’s it!” The words burst from Satoru’s chest, his feet shuffling in a matching burst of speed. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He pinballs around for another moment, jumping in the air, then turns to jog backward on the footpath as Suguru makes no effort to match his erratic pace. “Dissection! That’s what you meant, right? I could crack you open to see what’s inside.”
Suguru scoffs. “Not your best subject, I’m afraid. You would have failed anatomy if Shoko hadn’t come to your aid.”
Satoru gasps, “You wound me,” then smiles broadly because he knows there’s truth in that.
It isn’t that Satoru is an incapable student— far from it. His recall is nearly photographic, for one thing. But when they miss lessons for important missions, a common-enough occurrence for the two of them as their first year comes to a close, it’s only Suguru who ever reviews the missed material after the fact. Satoru says he can’t be bothered.
“Are you saying I get by on my looks?” Satoru flirts.
With a sigh, Suguru says, “I suppose you probably could. But then, people would have to stomach the personality that comes with it.”
“Not people,” Satoru answers him, clearly picking out only the parts he wanted to hear. “Just one person.”
Suguru’s pace doesn’t falter, carrying on with one step after another. He holds his head up the same as before. Only his fingers flex deep in his pockets, unseen. It’s a bit like what a cat does with her tail, all those minute adjustments, finding the balance needed to pace along the top rail of a fence. Like the pen raised in anticipation, tactical, knowing. Like the moment alone to clear his thoughts, calm before the storm.
He won’t lose his balance with Satoru. Not because it’s effortless, but because he puts in the effort.
(That cliff is looking mighty high from here.)