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“In the end, everyone dies alone.”
Utahime can’t believe that she’s hearing his voice. It’s not real, she still has enough of a grip on reality to know this. It’s a voice from a memory. The end of a tough day, after an even tougher assignment. Drinking beer after beer, the only ones left at the izakaya. Piercing eyes that make her think of galaxies far far away. A colour so brilliant, she felt that maybe her brain couldn’t really comprehend what she was looking at. As if (normal, non six) eyes weren’t physically able to see them for what they were, dulled by normal human limitations.
But in this moment, she feels that there are plenty of other people, people she actually liked, that she could be, should be, thinking about right now.
The importance of the moment was that Utahime was dying. She had been dispatched for what was supposed to be a routine exorcism of a grade 2 curse at a Kyoto junior high school, only for the intel to be wrong. Special Curse User. Utahime didn’t stand a chance by herself, surprised and unprepared. She didn’t have a chance to even think, maybe didn’t even realize that she was about to take her last breath before a hole was punched through her shoulder.
She must be close to dead if she wasn’t considered worth finishing off. Left lying there, on the roof of the school’s main building. Her eyes gazing upward. Beyond the curtain above, she knew the sky was a beautiful blue with white puffy clouds. A perfect spring day. It didn’t match the mood at all. If only the universe could read the room. As she contemplated the inappropriateness of the sky, she was reminded of him again.
“U~ta~hi~me~ don’t you know you’re weak? You should leave this kind of thing to the strong! And I’m the strongest you know!”
She never pretended to be stronger than she was. She was content doing what she could, but believed that she should work to do more, to get better.
Not everyone is born a monster like you, idiot, she thought bitterly.
Her breathing was getting raspier. There was a rattle in her chest. She felt warm and sticky, coated in the blood and tissue that was pouring out of her. She imagined looking down at herself, from above. The red stain on the school’s roof on such a beautiful spring day.
As dots started appearing in her vision, she thought of her students. That’s better, she thought. Those were the people she should be thinking about right now. She wanted to see them grow even more and laugh together again. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“Hime~ Be careful~ A sorcerer’s life is short. A weak sorcerer’s life even shorter.”
Damn him. Damn him! Damn him!!
Why was it his face she was seeing? She thought of her students and she thought of her family and Shoko, and her other friends, but she also thought of him. Another annoying skill of his, staying in people’s heads. No one could quite forget Gojo Satoru.
And, she came to a startling realization, the kind you can only get when you see how your life is going to end, everything shifts in perspective, like watching a movie again after seeing the ending, you can see the set up happening, all of it leading to a conclusion. And her conclusion, the wrap up that the universe wanted her to realize was this; she was going to miss him. Even though she didn’t know if she was going somewhere she would have the ability to miss anyone. She missed him now, already, knowing that she won’t see his face again. His stupid laughing face. His ridiculous galaxy eyes. His foul attempts at humour. This pest that has followed her around for years.
Where are you? I’m dying, you know. The one time I want to see you and you’re not here. That’s typical.
At this point, Utahime’s vision was fuzzy and dark, but, all at once, a bright light burst through the darkness. It seemed like the sky had been ripped open, revealing a shining brightness beyond it. For a minute, Utahime thought that this was it. Her moment had come, she was really headed towards the beyond.
Not yet. Please. She gave one final plea to any higher power that might exist.
A silhouette of a man covered in light emerged from the glow. If she was anyone else, this would be another, final sign of the end. A beautiful angel sent from above to carry her away, the higher power she was pleading with. Yet, that silhouette covered in light emerging, from what she now recognized as the curtain coming down, meant something else entirely to her.
So he did come.
Utahime’s memory after this moment comes in snapshots.
She didn’t even realize she was being lifted, all spatial awareness apparently gone, until she felt her hair move across her face with the breeze of movement. Then she became aware of the pressure around her from being held. If she thinks hard about it, she can remember that there was a voice, but she couldn’t answer him.
The last thing she remembered, and she wasn’t even sure if it really happened, or if it was her brain providing a false memory, or even a hallucination; a shock of white hair ruffling in the wind and crystalline blue eyes piercing into her, so sharp it hurt, blindfold hanging around his neck.
She doesn’t know if she laughed out loud or not, but she had never seen Gojo look so serious before. Her body wouldn’t cooperate, but she wanted to trace his frown with her fingers, wanted to remember this face. So you can look at me seriously, huh? All it took was dying.
Then everything goes black.