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The still air was interrupted by a short breeze that filtered through the open sliding door of Shoko’s room. It blew her sheer white under curtains gently into the room as if to accompany her and Suguru, who lay on the floor facing it. Legs hooked on the bed, the two of them lay shoulder to shoulder on Shoko’s floor and looked at the ceiling as they talked; a mellow rock CD played quietly in the background of the hangout.
“Do you…think there’s a universe where we’re normal?” Shoko asked quietly.
“Normal?” Suguru responded. “You mean like without curses and stuff?”
“Yeah. No curses, no sorcerers, no missions. We’d go to a normal school and be regular kids. Maybe I wouldn’t smoke so much,” Shoko trailed off thoughtfully.
Suguru glanced at her and then looked back at the ceiling. “No sorcerers. So we’d all just be the same then?”
“Mhm.”
A little smile appeared on his face at that. “Doesn’t sound all that bad, honestly. There would be no danger.”
“Yes, there would! There’s danger everywhere; we just see it differently.”
“It’s kinda hard to measure danger when I’ve had malicious entities try to crush my skull with dark matter and ceilings.”
“Exactly.”
Suguru snorted. “Still sounds better than what we have now. And I’d rather not have you keep pulling my body from the brink of life-threatening injuries.”
“It’s not a bother,” Shoko responded flippantly.
“Doesn’t matter,” he frowned, eyes still on the ceiling. “I see the way you look afterwards. You always look so sad, Shoko.”
Shoko said nothing and just lay there momentarily before sliding her legs off the bed, slithering next to her open door, and yanking the curtain to the side, light pouring in slightly stronger. She lay on her stomach and supported her head on her left hand with an unreadable expression. The black t-shirt she was wearing swamped her, likely one of Suguru’s. It made her look much smaller than she normally was.
Suguru followed after her, rolling to lay next to her again on his back before turning onto his side and also propping his head up on an arm.
“What did I say?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” Shoko responded flatly. A lie.
“It’s not ‘nothing’, you’re upset.” Suguru then reached out to brush her hair out of her face, the soft brown strands flipping up briefly before falling back into her face.
“It’s just…what if one day I can’t save you? Instead of using my technique, what if I’m performing an autopsy instead? That’s why I wish we were normal. Even if we were still in this world, it would be better if we were just non-sorcerers.”
The boy next to her was silent and lay on his back again. The wind blew in and cooled his face as her words rolled around in his brain for a minute. When Suguru looked back at Shoko, she was now fully laying on her stomach with her face turned towards the trees outside, her head cushioned by her folded arms.
She continued, “But even then, we’re all here together based on circumstance, right? If we were all regular people, then we would’ve never met each other. If that’s the case, then maybe there’s no point in fantasising at all.”
Suguru chuckled at that and leaned to roll her over, a smile gracing his face as he looked at her slight pout when she turned. How cute.
They lay on the floor just like that: on their sides, eye to eye and searching each other’s faces.
“Is it really so bad to be a sorcerer, Shoko?”
“Can’t say I’m a fan of our limited life spans.”
“Not everyone dies.”
“But too many do.”
There was a silence. Suguru thought to change the subject. “What would the alternate versions of ourselves be like, d’you think?”
Shoko smiled again, and a little ball of warmth wormed its way inside Suguru’s chest at the sight of it.
“I would still be studying to become a doctor. Satoru would probably be forced into a business course by his parents. I think you’d be trying to be a counselor or social worker, though.”
“Me? A social worker? What makes you say that?!” Suguru’s tone was incredulous, and he raised a singular eyebrow at the girl in front of him.
“Well, you like to help people, don’t you? You want to protect the weak and stuff so in another universe, I think you would save kids from unfortunate situations. You’d protect them, maybe even take a few in so they won't ever feel unwanted or lonely.”
Brown eyes melted into each other as Suguru stared at Shoko, gaping slightly. “That’s…truly how you see me?”
“It’s reality. You’re a kind person, Sugu’.”
“No. No, I’m not; not at all.”
Large and tired eyes looked at him quizzically. “You’re kind to me,” Shoko said. “And you’re kind to Satoru, he’s your best friend. You’re kind to the two first years, too.”
“Well, you guys are my friends, aren’t you? Isn’t me being nice to you a given?”
Shoko smiled and bit her lip. “No,” she responded with a little sparkle in her eyes.
Suguru felt his cheeks turning pink as she looked at him. Damn Shoko and the way she effortlessly affected him.
Slowly, she reached out a hand, and he did the same. Their pinkies connected, then their middle fingers until their hands were laced with each other gently.
“If we were in another universe,” Suguru whispered, “I would want us to stay just like this. We would be together the way we are now, but the only threat would be undone homework instead of being sent out on a life-threatening mission. We would still lie on the floor, and we would still talk about everything and nothing. We would always be together.”
Shoko gripped Suguru’s hand a little tighter.
“Our world can easily tear us apart at any moment, Shoko,” he continued, his voice still quiet. “So for now, I want as much of you as I can get.”
Shoko said nothing and just inched closer and closer until their foreheads were touching, hands still connected. Suguru’s head dipped until their lips touched and they joined together in a kiss soft as a feather. They connected again, a little stronger this time.
Pulling away, Shoko looked up. “Stay alive, Suguru,” she said.
Suguru released her hand and caressed the side of her face. They cuddled together in a tangle of limbs. Shoko’s head was slotted into the space between his neck and shoulder like a perfectly placed puzzle and never in her life had anything felt more “right”.
“I’ll never leave.”
After Suguru defected and became a curse user, Shoko felt like her body had been filled with static. When facing him a final time in the city, she had been calm. Joking around with him like old times. Like nothing had changed. Before he left, the bastard had kissed her one last time and brushed her hair back as if it was just another day and he hadn’t changed the trajectory of their lives forever. She had wanted to cry at that moment, scream and plead and beg for him to come back, to see reason, to never ever leave her just like he’d promised. But it was too late. The kindness she had loved so much had been corrupted. The boy she loved was already gone. He should've just died instead - even the pain of that would've been softer than the constant sting of his betrayal.
So now, Shoko lay on her floor with her legs hooked on her bed as she smoked to the background noise of a new CD she had picked up in her rare moment of free time. Dulled eyes stared blankly at the ceiling with an arm stretched out, dressed in shorts and a black hoodie a few sizes too big that wasn’t hers. A stray breeze interrupted the still air and disturbed her curtain as if to keep her company. This time, though, there wasn’t a boy with sharp eyes and dark hair to kiss her and laugh at her stupid questions or move her hair out of her face with his steady hands when she was sad.
Maybe elsewhere, in another reality, she wasn’t here by herself. Maybe in another universe, everything was as it should be. But Shoko had no idea because that world wasn’t hers. It never would be again.
“Liar.”
A puff of smoke streamed into the air.