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“The usual.”
Satoru narrows his eyes over his sunglasses. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
Shoko doesn’t look up from her phone, expression unmoving. “I know you’re going to that boujee cafe again.”
Satoru huffs as he stands. He kicks up some dirt towards Shoko, who sidesteps with irritating ease.
“You’re impossible,” he says, but starts towards the campus cafe anyway. He could feel the smugness rolling off her behind him as he walks.
“Throw in a bagel if they have some!” she hollers.
“Yeah, yeah.”
The cafe wasn’t exactly boujee; it’s only because the rest of campus was so horribly drab. The cafe at least had a consistent style—it was rustic yet modern, with woods and potted greens every corner. It’s a biophilic hipster’s wet dream.
There’s a fair crowd in the cafe, tables crammed with students and a small line at the counter. Not a surprise given the hour; it’s right after the common lecture slot.
Satoru joins the queue and begins swiping his phone. He manages to send three memes to Shoko before it’s his turn. He shoves his phone into his pocket and prepares to rattle off his order when he locks gaze with the barista.
The words shrivel on his tongue instantly.
“Suguru.”
The man turns to look at him, face twisting with effort. For the first time, Satoru notices that the bags under his eyes were less pronounced. Funny, how the weight of imminent death was a relief. Ten years ago, Satoru couldn’t even begin to fathom the workings of the brain of the man before him. He thought he knew, then realised how little he really did.
Now, watching the tired slope of his mouth and fading crease beneath his eyes, he thinks he gets it, a little.
“ ———”
A look of shock flits across the man’s face, and it’s innocent, almost. He gapes at Satoru like he’d just dropped a bomb on him. Satoru couldn’t understand why.
Then all at once, the man began to laugh, eyes alight with mirth and something else that made Satoru’s gut twist horribly.
“At least curse at me a little at the very end.”
The barista is staring at him with a look that Satoru thinks might mirror his own—eyes wide and lips parted in an aborted statement. The hand poised over the register has stilled and the spoon he was holding in his other hand clatters uselessly onto the countertop. He looks every bit as shocked as Satoru feels.
“Geto!”
The barista blinks back to his senses. His eyes flit over Satoru frenziedly, like he was afraid Satoru might run away, before he glances back over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Get back here for a second!” A voice calls back from somewhere beyond the curtains behind the counter.
The barista, Geto, turns back to Satoru, whose voice had yet to return.
“I’ll be right back with you.” Geto grimaces, like he’s considering his words. “Wait here for me, alright?”
With that, the dark-haired man disappears behind the curtains. The counter was now desolate. Satoru lets his gaze linger on the curtains, his heartbeat deafening in his ears. He feels his cheeks burning, and when he glances down at his hands, they’re shaking. Satoru shoves them into the pockets of his joggers.
Satoru considers bolting—his body feels on fire and he has the irrational urge to do something. Jump, scream, flip the tables, anything. He didn’t come here for this, didn’t plan to be confronted with the face that has plagued the recurring dreams he’s had since 18.
There’s a commotion stirring behind him in the queue. Satoru has half a mind to shush them. His brain was going to combust from all the stimuli. He didn’t need the additional disturbance.
He wasn’t sure what he was so afraid of too. He had happily jumped on the hype train for the whole soulmate business. Waited around impatiently for the onset of the prophetic dreams. The revered snippets of alternate universes. Of moments lived between two people who were inextricably linked across time, from one incarnation to the next.
The first of the sort Satoru had was gruesome. Blood smears on a stone wall; a torn arm and a tired smile; the sound of a body dropping onto the ground.
Satoru had woken up feeling a deep sorrow he couldn’t place, for a person he didn’t know, for a life he hadn’t lived.
Blessedly, Satoru had been getting tamer dreams since then, spliced between the recurring nightmare fuel. Some were in traditional minka dormitories, others at food stalls, and some by the beach in Okinawa. All of them had the same man with bangs.
Satoru had been thinking about those bangs for a good two years now. And the gauges—shiny black metal. He didn’t think he would ever see the way the metal glinted under the Tokyo sun, through the skylight of his boujee campus cafe.
And now he could put a full name to the face. It had always been just Suguru. Suguru this, Suguru that. Even Shoko was calling him Suguru, and something always felt wrong about that. ‘Suguru’ felt sacred, the way dream-Satoru had said it, like an unspoken promise, or an inside joke that meant more than it was funny. Satoru was going to make her call him ‘Geto’ from now on.
It was a pretty name. Geto Suguru. They even had matching initials. Satoru feels a little giddy at the thought.
“Sorry for the wait.”
Satoru jolts and quickly unshoves his hands from his pockets. Geto Suguru is back at the counter, already looking at him. The curve of his smile is awkward, and he fiddles with the rings on his hand. Satoru’s eyes catch on the black polish adorning his nails.
“Um.” Satoru clears his throat. “Hi.”
Geto, no Suguru—Satoru can call him that right?—stares at him with thinly veiled amusement.
“Hi,” he says slowly. “Can I get your order?”
Satoru blinks, the cogs in his brain finally moving again.
“Yeah. Okay. ” Drinks first, talk later. “Iced Americano, vanilla latte with whipped cream and uh—” Satoru glances at the array of pastries in the display box and instantly decides he wouldn’t be reading any of the labels. “ —your best-selling bagel.”
Suguru raises a brow. His gaze slips to the display box then back on Satoru. His eyes are almond-shaped, just like Satoru remembers. Up close, he can see that they’re the colour of honey.
“That’ll be our sesame bagel. Would that be okay?”
“Yeah, whatever. Just bag it for me.”
Suguru makes a noise of affirmation and punches it into the register. Satoru considers if he should say something about the very blatant elephant in the room.
“Is the vanilla latte yours?”
Satoru freezes as he’s pulling his wallet out. “What?”
“You don’t drink Americano,” Suguru says as he slides open the display box. He eyes flicker to Satoru as he grabs a bagel out with a pair of tongs.
“Excuse me?” Satoru wasn’t sure what sort of face he was making.
Suguru watches him carefully as he slides the bagel into a paper bag.
“You have a terrible sweet tooth,” Suguru notes quietly. “You’d sooner die than drink black coffee.”
“Says who?”
“You,” Suguru says, unflinching.
Satoru feels his heart stutter. So they were talking about this now.
He almost hurls himself across the counter, arms braced against the countertop and as he leans forward. Suguru doesn’t budge.
“When does your shift end?” Satoru blurts, hands white-knuckling around the edge of the counter.
Suguru holds his gaze, lips curling up almost impercetibly. “In an hour.”
“I’ll meet you here,” Satoru declares, not breaking eye contact as he pulls out his card and waves it against the terminal. “Or somewhere else. You’re probably sick of this place, aren’t you? Anything you wanna eat? Like pasta. Or–”
“Here is fine.” Suguru looks like he’s struggling to contain his smile now. He holds out the paper bag until Satoru grabs it from him dumbly. “We can decide later. We’re holding up the queue.”
Satoru registers a scoff somewhere behind him. He couldn’t care less about the queue, but he also desperately needed to get out of here to regroup his mental faculties and critically dissect the events from the past five minutes with Shoko.
“Fine. Just give me a tissue or something.”
Satoru doesn’t dare to check the look on Suguru’s face as he passes him a napkin wordlessly. He grabs the marker Suguru is holding and scribbles his number on the paper. It rips slightly in his haste.
“Your handwriting is terrible.”
“Comes with the brains,” Satoru returns as he slides the napkin across the counter, his heartbeat pounding so thunderously he thinks he might get a headache. Suguru folds the napkin into the pocket of his apron with a chuckle.
“One more thing,” Suguru says as he picks up the marker and an empty cup. “Can I get your name?”
Satoru feels his cheeks hurting from how hard he’s grinning.
“You already know.”
“You have a class after this.”
“Yeah.”
Shoko raises a brow at him over her bagel. “You’re still gonna go.”
“Duh.” Satoru slurps his latte as loudly as he could, hoping to accentuate his point. This was only the most momentous moment of his life. What’s skipping a single lesson for it?
“Shoko. He’s the literal man of my dreams.”
Shoko makes a gagging noise. “You’re so fucking cheesy.”
Satoru snickers as he pokes little holes for eyes into his mound of whipping cream. “I’m kidding. I barely even know the guy.”
Shoko doesn’t make a quip about how much Satoru’s been talking about Suguru, or how he talks like they’ve known each other since a lifetime ago. Low-hanging fruit maybe, but Satoru can feel her stare on him, silent and weighty. He finishes the rest of his drink, ignoring her the best he could.
“When are you meeting him?”
“One.” He checks his phone. “Shit, that’s in twenty minutes.”
Shoko rolls her eyes. “Relax. You’ve never been early for anything in your life.”
She’s right. Satoru didn’t want to seem like he’d just been sitting around twiddling fingers while waiting either. He sighs dramatically and rests his head on the table to swipe at his phone in his lap, not really reading anything on his screen.
He hears Shoko sigh from somewhere above him.
“You should text him.”
“I don’t have his number,” he grumbles. “I just gave him mine.”
There’s a pause.
“Look at your cup idiot.”
Satoru props his chin on the table to give Shoko a look. He twists the cup, past the ‘Satoru’ scribbled in thick marker, past the doodle of a pair of circular glasses, and stops at a string of numbers near the bottom of the cup.
“Shit.”
“I almost thought you’d missed it. Should’ve written it bigger for your poor eyesight.”
“Again, these glasses are for style and no, I was waiting to text you! Can’t have you swooning over me mid-shift since I actually care about your work performance.”
“I’m sure you do.”
They were at a diner on campus that was decidedly boujee-er than the place Suguru worked at. Suguru had paused at the threshold after glimpsing the prices, but stumbled in after Satoru shoved him, though not without a glare.
“I’ve always wondered what your go-to coffee order would be.”
Satoru pauses mid-bite into his burger to snort. “That’s the most barista-like thing you’ve said.”
Suguru laughs, just as a waiter arrives with his pasta. It was pesto, which Satoru had been very vocal about his distaste towards. Suguru thanks the waiter before turning back to Satoru.
“Maybe because I am one.”
“How do you have the time?”
“I cram my classes into the first half of the week.”
“Mm,” Satoru hums around a mouthful of food. “Sociology, right?”
Suguru nods. His bangs sway as he dips his head to eat. Satoru’s eyes track the motion.
“Wanna guess my major?” he ventures.
Suguru leans back in his chair, thoughtful.
“Physics.”
Satoru gapes a little. “How’d you know?”
“You said you liked it,” Suguru says, with the ease one might say the sky was blue, or that grass was green. “Well, in another universe you did.”
“We had physics?” Satoru hadn’t thought about the existence of regular university courses. There had been a magic school of sorts, with curses and sorcerers and fighting. Lots of it. Although, it wasn’t the craziest thing he’s heard—Shoko’s dreams had honest-to-god mermaids. Mermaids.
Suguru scoffs. “You wouldn’t shut up about it. Had something to do with your ability.”
“Limitless.” It felt weird to be talking about his dreams so openly, but Satoru decides he doesn’t hate it. “I was crazy strong wasn’t I? You too. We were unstoppable.”
A laugh wrenches out of Suguru. “You were unstoppable. Not me.”
All of a sudden, the air felt heavier. Satoru saw it again—a torn arm and a tired smile, a wave of his hand and a body falling against the ground.
“I killed you,” he says. It’s almost a relief, saying it aloud. He’d never told anyone this, not even Shoko. For the past two years he had been thinking about what it all meant, if it was some poorly disguised metaphor for his future with Suguru. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Were they doomed from the start? Crossed in the stars?
Or was it a lesson to learn from, not to make the same mistakes?
“Don’t go feeling guilty now.”
Satoru sputters, his mind screeching to a halt. “Who said I’m guilty?”
“It’s all over your face.” Suguru is smirking now, swirling the straw in his iced tea. Satoru knows he’s doing this on purpose, to pull Satoru out of his head. He was grateful for the diversion, but Suguru didn’t need to hear that.
“Whatever,” Satoru says as flippantly as he could. “You must’ve done something pretty heinous because I was totally the good guy.” He folds his arms behind his head and leans back, his shirt lifting a little. He catches Suguru’s gaze flicker to the sliver of exposed skin, then back to his face.
“What sort good guy wears bandages over his eyes?”
Satoru narrows his eyes at him. He tugs his glasses off and casts them onto the table, narrowly missing a pool of ketchup.
“What sort of good guy wears that freaky monk shit?”
“That freaky monk shit actually shares your name. It’s a Gojo Kesa.”
“Huh. Guess you never got over me those ten years.”
Suguru shrugs. “I could say the same about you.” Suguru opens his mouth to continue, but seems to think better of it, jaw snapping shut with a click. Satoru had a feeling he knew what he was going to say—he never found out what were the three words he told Suguru after all.
“I wonder what happened,” Satoru muses. He almost regrets how pathetic it sounded, but he couldn’t help but wonder. They couldn’t have pieced together the full timeline through the dreams—just a couple of snapshots in the film reel of their entire history. All he knew were the days of their youths filled with blue skies and laughter, and then fast forwards to a village bathed in orange and red, ten whole years into the future.
A future where Suguru had died. Killed, at his own hands.
Sometimes Satoru would stay up thinking about what dream-Satoru did after the incident. Satoru knows himself. He hadn’t looked like he had wanted to do whatever he did, and Satoru couldn’t bear to imagine what he must’ve felt after it, how he had to live with it.
So why had he done it?
“Does it matter?”
Suguru is already looking at him as Satoru’s head snaps up. His eyes are honey, warm and saccharine, brimming with such earnesty Satoru almost has to look away. There’s a smile playing on his lips, small yet sure, and Satoru feels like he’d just swallowed a star, his chest warm and swirling with things he couldn’t comprehend—not yet, but maybe someday.
“No,” Satoru smiles back and it’s honest. “Not anymore.”
They had a whole life ahead of them, and at least now, they had time.