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They tried to stop me holding your funeral. Said it was disrespectful to all the victims of the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. But I bought the gravestone anyway. It’s funny, the stone is taller than you used to be, Suguru.
I placed it beside a cherry tree. The branches stretch over and around it, like it’s hugging the stone. I made them put a fence round it and planted a bunch of blue flowers. Shoko came and watched while I dug up the earth. She didn’t help though. Hah. It really is like old times, eh?
I spent half a week just tidying up that graveyard space. And I didn’t cry. You know, I wasn’t even sad during that half-week. I turned all that sadness into anger instead. Every time I felt myself on the edge of tears I pulled my blindfold down and remembered the smile the world took from you. That kept me going.
We held the ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Kinda twisted, I know. But I couldn’t start a new year without you, Suguru. What’s the fucking point of a new year when one whole third of your soul has been carved out and buried in the dirt?
Anyway, it was a small ceremony. Me, Shoko, Yaga. I couldn’t contact your girls, so they weren’t there. But they probably held their own funeral anyway. You were like a dad to them, right? I never got to be an uncle before you left.
I don’t like to think about it. Even though I can’t forget it. I’m never gonna unsee the candlelight against that jagged rock, your name carved into it with such finality: Geto Suguru. Yaga put his arm round me, and god, I feel like that was the first time he ever hugged me for real, you know that? The first time in my god damn life he—
Do you remember when we went to Ueno, Suguru? To see the old town. Remember that art gallery with the fountain spraying black paint? We bought the fancy strawberries then dropped half the box on the dorm room floor when we got back. They weren’t even that good. You had strawberry juice all down your chin like an idiot and I could not get the seed thingies out of my teeth. Shoko was coughing up her god damn lungs laughing at us. Do you remember that, Suguru? Do you still remember it, wherever you are?
I slept by your grave that night, after the funeral. I sat there thinking of all the things we could’ve been. The security guard wanted to kick me out but I wouldn’t let him.
“The only man I’ll ever love is DEAD!” I screamed at him, “He’s DEAD you asshole! I’m not LEAVING!”
Even if everyone else thinks you’re a monster, I’ll always know the truth. That’s what I told myself. That your memory can live in me. As long as I’m alive, so are you. It’s the only way I could move away from that gravestone. I let my hand linger on its rough edge until my arm was stretched to its limit. I stared at your name for what felt like forever, holding onto it like I was holding onto your shoulder. I saw your smiling face in front of me, the blue sky in all its infinity framing you like you were Jesus. I saw you there. Then I reminded myself that it’s just a fucking stone. That you were gone, and it was my fault.
I never looked back.
Some nights I just sat in the infirmary with Shoko and stared at that empty medical bed and asked myself why the fuck I didn’t bring you back to her.
“I could’ve saved him.”
You know what Shoko’s like. Not much of a talker, but a good listener. So she listened to me say the same damn thing every time. She did her crying on her own, like me. Your absence sat between us like the grand canyon. Every single thing I did after your death was an attempt to fill that void. To undo what could never be undone. I’d be the teacher Yaga never was, be the father I never had. And every fucking night I went to bed and wished you were there beside me. Every fucking night, till I stopped feeling sad and just felt numb instead.
Seeing that thing puppeting your body woke me up. I decided then, if it was the last thing I did, I’d kill it and let you rest. But I was too weak to do that too. Too fucking pathetic. I should’ve killed that copycat as soon as I got out of the prison realm. He buried me deep beneath the ocean and it still wasn’t enough to stop me finding you. Cos his energy was your energy, and your energy is something I’ll never ever forget. Rainforest green, beautiful down your shoulders, thick and heavy as a trenchcoat. All the weight of the world. How could I ever forget you?
I couldn’t kill that menace. He knew it. I couldn’t kill him, because he had your face. So I ran away and challenged Sukuna instead. There’s something grotesque about the fact that Yuta killed you twice, but I won’t hold it against him. He’s a good kid. You would’ve been a good teacher Suguru, you know that? I know you’d never believe it, but the world was better with you in it. It was.
The last thought that crossed my mind as Sukuna cut me in half wasn’t that I let everyone down, though I was definitely thinking that. It wasn’t that I was alone, though without you in the world my love, I was. It wasn’t any sad thought like that.
No, there was only one word in my mind in that moment.
“Finally.”
The afterlife washed over me like a warm ocean. The hissing of the waves became the murmur of crowds. I found myself standing in a sheltered walkway, next to a tax-free store aimed at tourists. I looked down the street, through the throng of people, and like a sunbeam in the clouds, there you were.
“Suguru…”
I didn’t wait to see if you heard me. I strode forward, and did what I should’ve done the first time we met on this street all those years ago.