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In the cluster of woods behind the borders of Jujutsu High, next to a slow-flowing creek, stands a bellowing chestnut tree. It’s where you’d go on mornings following particularly gruelling missions: the branches and their leaves offering coverage for the rainfall Tokyo is so prone to in the summer. It’s where you confessed to your first love, where you’d meet him when you needed more privacy than the locked doors of your dorm rooms.
It is, among other things, where you and Suguru shared your first kiss.
(He was nervous. You could tell from the look in his eye, the practiced intensity. It suggests overthinking, as he was prone to do. He needed it to be perfect.
But when he kissed you the first time you knew he’d do it again, and again, and again. Knew he'd never get enough. His face was boyish, ears dusted pink, brown eyes molten with need. There’s a greed to him that he keeps carefully concealed. How was that? he had asked, breathlessly, licking over the stupidly pleased smile on his lips. Not too much? Here, let me try again…)
Suguru died last winter: bled out against a brick-wall by one of Jujutsu High’s many stone-tiled pathways, leading to the temple gates at the corner of the school. If you had kissed him then, you would only have tasted iron.
Today, you’re not here to seek shelter, but to mourn. The air smells of wet wood and rain, earthy and thick, something uprooted and on the cusp of ripening. Weighty with droplets, the leaves and branches of the chestnut tree sway, dropping hard-shelled knots to the ground. Some of them break open upon impact and reveal sunset-brown chestnuts. Your shoes are wet with dirt and moss, and your heart lays heavy in your chest— the whole world’s dyed in monochrome, like a flickering, slow-playing movie, the kind you’d watch in Satoru’s dorm until Yaga-sensei slammed his fist against the door and yelled at you to Go to sleep, I can hear you from across the hall. You have a mission tomorrow, don’t you? And, of course, you always did.
Yaga-sensei didn’t kill him, but you think he helped. Always missions, missions, missions, not a clue what to do with a self-starving student. Satoru did kill him, but it’s hard to hate him when he’s just as dead as you.
Which way should you throw the stone of your grief? Who could it possibly shatter?
(You, maybe. You probably hurt him worst of all.)
“… Huh.”
You’re brought back to reality by a soft-spoken voice. Suguru is standing underneath the chestnut tree across from you; his lips ajar.
“Did something happen?”
“No,” you answer, too quickly. Yes, you think. The worst of all. “I just wanted to look at you.”
One of his brows rise.
“You’re lying.” He says it like it’s fact, easy on his tongue. It was stupid of you to think he’d play along when you’re like this. His gaze sears into you, the weight of it inviting, warm with worry: today marks the only day it’s made you feel like puking. “What’s wrong? This is the first time you’ve used your technique on me."
That makes your throat tighten. Because it’s not really you, you’d like to say. I’m not really speaking to you, you’re not even a ghost. Never mind the grief, this doesn’t even help, it’s not even cauterizing— just pouring salt in the wound. You’d hate it if you knew what I was doing to myself. "I’m not,” you lie, twice-told. “Seriously. I just wanted to talk to you.”
A moment’s pause. He considers the question you know is resting at the seam of his lips; weighing it out carefully. “Can you not talk to me on your side?” His eyes narrow near imperceptibly, and his voice is soft, cautious when he asks, “Did something happen to—”
You cut off your technique before he can finish, snapping the wavering thread in half.
The illusion sputters out.
A sharp intake of breath. Your lungs constrict, gentle pressure around them, like the flat of a palm pressing down on either side. You try again: maybe this time he won’t mention it, maybe this time you can wallow in his voice. Another Suguru. Younger by four months. The same face, baggy pants, same length of hair and brown eyes, a touch more bewildered. He’s only known you for a week. This memory is from your first proper conversation. He followed you to the chestnut tree after a sparring session left you rattled, and you mistook it for an ambush, foolishly on edge as you were from the change of environment following your enrollment. Naturally, he never forgot. Used to bring it up in jest, just to see your face twist with embarrassment.
This Suguru makes a small, contemplative noise before saying anything. Studying your aged face.
“Ah.” It clicks into place. “This is your technique, then?” He looks down at his palms, furls his fingers inwards, then unfurls them again, eyelids flickering with thought. “I was wondering how it would feel… It’s like I’m in a dream."
Suddenly his stare shifts, and he’s looking you up and down— no hint of anything hound in his gaze, only ample curiosity and something more respectful. Cautious observation. He looks you in the eyes when he asks, his voice the picture of youthful politeness:
"Can I ask for your age?”
“Twenty-eight,” you answer.
Suguru hums.
“Twelve years…" He tastes the thought, tips his head sideways, distant for a moment. As if he’s trying to picture it. Then he’s looking right into you again. "Are we dating?”
How straight-forward.
You fix him with another question, throat raw with the words. “… Do you think we are?”
“I do.” His voice is light, his words cut-throat. For a lying child, he always struck you as endearingly earnest. “Or, that’s the feeling I get. I don’t know you very well yet… but when I saw you, I felt like it was going to be you.” He reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. Not an absent gesture, but rather meant to distract, keep you from noticing the way his pupils flicker down, as if hearing that thought spoken aloud made him feel ridiculous. You know this boy. “Something like that. I just thought I’d ask, that’s all.”
“We’re married.”
“Oh.” He blinks. A moment’s pause, and then: “Am I a good husband?”
Typical Suguru. Forever fixated on living up to self-imposed expectation. But it’s refreshing for him to ask. You’re sure your Suguru kept gruellingly quiet, hesitant to plead for reassurance. You got married at the cusp of 22, not without trepidation, though he was enthusiastic and though you knew he was serious. Deathly so. Your wedding was far from traditional— only your vows bore any weight, the finely tailored silver bands around your fingers. He told you he’d marry you again, do it better.
(It was a sweet September’s day: his lips against yours, your heartbeats sputtering together with something tender and wild. I’ll do it for you, he had whispered, right at the column of your throat. I’ll burn it all into nothing but embers.)
“Very."
Suguru tries not to arch his brow. You can tell, because he doesn’t quite manage to hide the twitch of it, like a question he isn’t sure how to name. He watches you strangely.
"… You look sad.”
You cut off the connection.
The memory simmers out, flickers like a sheet of transparent glass before losing its shape. Your fingers reach for the bridge of your nose, pinching harshly, shooing away the barest twinkle of stars in the corners of your visions. It’s already starting to hurt. Near-searing heat at your temples, like someone is holding a match to your skin and watching the flame flicker. Exhaling a breath, you wait for your senses to stabilize.
Once you’ve pushed through the momentary vertigo, your hands slip into a familiar seal— already itching to try again.
The woods are silent, save for the murmurs of ravens and the flow of the creek.
Your circuits burst to life, unravelling like a tapestry from your nerve ends to your fingertips, like paper burning in a straight line. Your cursed technique is a play on memorabilia: a forceful puppetry of sentiments that gather in particular locations, in the objects surrounding it, short bursts of cursed energy and particularly strong wavers of the soul. Park benches, stairways, crashing cars. Powerful memories always leave their mark. You can dig them out, and breathe them to life, speak with eye accounts that would otherwise be lost: the dead, the living, witnesses just moments after the sighting, their memories still fresh. A technique proficient in gathering intel.
To use it to mend grief is frowned upon.
(Unheard of, really. Your family consisted of nothing but perfect sorcerers: perfect in the sense of emotional detachment, disregard of anything that cannot be of use. A corpse is one such thing. People matter until they die, after which they don’t, they are better left forgotten.
They’d laugh if they saw you like this. Lapping at your own wounds, like a dog left to bleed.)
“You look sad."
There’s another Suguru, older, his features sharpened by age. Sculpted cheekbones, monolids like crescent moons, eyes as dark as the chestnut tree behind him, bleeding ochre and obsidian. This Suguru is 26 years old, and already knows that he’s going to die— just not within the next year. His lips are kiss-bitten.
You remember this. Your back against the tree, his thigh between your legs. His ever-steady hand cupping the curve of your jaw. You like this memory.
He tilts his head, thoughtful.
"Did I let you down, darling?”
His smile is a careful thing. He knows you, already knows, too calculating for his own good— he knows he’s dead, or maybe close to dead, knows something is wrong, and his voice is soft enough to make you queasy. You want to prostrate yourself and tell him you're Sorry for everything, sorry for not noticing, sorry for not killing Satoru back in high school. Instead you swallow around the lump in your throat, and look him in the eye.
“No.” A chestnut falls from the branch behind him, clatters down onto the ground below. “Never. Not once did you ever let me down.”
You will the illusion to shatter when you realize that he’s realized, gentle pity in his eyes. He disappears before he can say anything else, your lungs burning with the strain. Blood is trickling out of your nose now, clinging to your bottom lip.
Squeezing your eyes shut, you choke on a sigh.
It’s all hopeless. They’re not him, just your mind playing dolls with itself, matching faded sparks of cursed energy with the eyes of the chestnut tree in front of you. Suguru is dead. Suguru is in the ground. Suguru isn’t anywhere. Suguru bled out before you could say goodbye or kiss him or thread your fingers through his hair the way he used to like. Anything your mind makes up is nothing but a movie— a half-baked triple feature, for you to play on loop. The theatre is empty. You’re the only one still watching. Suguru died last winter, and the world didn’t end.
There are no words for this.
You exhale through your nose. Tears sting the back of your eyes, you realize, burning hot where they pool at your lashline. You must look a mess, grief-sick.
(What would he say if he saw you like this? Not your memoria, but him, in the flesh, honey-eyed and head held high. You play with the idea, his voice spinning in your head: I’m already dead, so don’t mourn me. I died a long time ago, I died when summer ended. What use is there in crying when I was always dead?
Save yourself the grief. I much prefer you smiling.
He’d wipe away your tears with gentle fingers, always gruellingly gentle with you. Hands meant to crush, meant to strangle, but with you they were careful. He’d wipe the tears away one by one, sighing sadly when sobs would start sputtering out at the base of your throat, like he put them there himself, like he could somehow be at fault for all the ways in which your heart bleeds. He’d smile, he’d tell you something that would only hurt you more, something like I love you, darling, dearest. No more tears, now. Be strong for me.)
You taste salt on your lips. Then iron.
The world, blurry through your eyes, shows no remorse for its actions. The sun slips from beneath the clouds in gleeful mockery. The sky bleeds ochre. It falls across the cluster of trees, across your lips, bitten raw and bleeding, illuminates the figure at the root of the tree-trunk. He flicks his gaze about, lazily.
Was he always there? Waiting, ever-so-patiently, for you to tire yourself out?
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. It’ll only hurt worse.”
“Maybe,” you mouth, more air than sound. Your hands come together.
The next half hour you spend sifting through your memories, more out of grieving desperation than any real desire for conclusion. Half-heartedly, dried tear-tracks running from your eyes to your jaw, the inside of your mouth raw and red, your technique exerting your body and mind until your fingertips prickle with numbness, chills down your arms, your eyes sunken with self-hatred. Suguru died last winter, and you weren’t there to say goodbye. Suguru died, and all you can do is cling on to what remains of him, which is nothing, nothing more than air and the memories you are desecrating.
It aches. In your chest, in your ribs, in the furthest marrow of your bones.
But it hurts less than the alternative.
“Are you alright?”
(Seventeen. Bright-eyed.)
“You’re bleeding, should I—”
(Fifteen. Not yet used to butchery.)
“Who did this to you?”
(Twenty-two, the week before your wedding. He looks like he could kill the world and still not feel gratified.)
“Did I die? Is that why you’re doing this? Darling, I need you to stop. I’m telling you to stop. Do you understand?”
(Twenty-seven. The last time you were here, his lips at your cupid’s bow, a teasing touch amidst the weight of his hands at your hips, voice sweet with promises he would not get to fulfill. You told him about Okkotsu Yuuta, and he kissed you in return.)
The illusions sputter out, one after the other.
The figure by the chestnut tree does not stop you. Watches as blood seeps from your nose, out of the corners of your lips, as the Sugurus in front of you grow increasingly alarmed, each one furrowing his brows in the same way as the others. Some are panicked, some are calm, some do not bother to hide their anger.
You’re hurting all of them.
Finally, your body cannot bear it: your knees buckle, your head wrung tight with hot flashes of pain. The ground beneath you is wet with dew.
“Are you finished?” comes a bored voice. Velvet-smooth. “I told you, your technique isn’t meant for repeated use within such short intervals. You’ll fry your brain at this rate.”
I know, you want to tell him. I think that’s why I’m doing it. But you don’t respond at all.
You picture Suguru, his hand under your jaw. His gaze admonishing. He wouldn’t want you to torture yourself. You know this. You know because you love him, and a part of him is rooted so far into your soul you couldn’t dig it out if you had scalpels for arms, anesthesia to numb all your nerve-ends. Does it matter when he’s gone? The sky is still bleeding, a tangy orange hue. It bleeds surrender. It bleeds guilt, red-hot like the blood on your chin, your lips marked crimson. Wetness seeps through the fabric of your pants.
It hurts to breathe.
(There is a memory you do not want to touch.
It went something like this: a boy looming over you, an August gone too early. His tongue in your mouth. Your fingers in his hair. You should have noticed, you think. Suguru was always a gentle kisser. It was a cry for help. An admission of guilt. He snuck his tongue down your throat like a robbery, and you let him, because that month being able to hold him was enough of a miracle, like reaching into blind waters and catching a litany of squirming eels. You let him kiss you and kiss you and kiss you, until your lips were swollen and all you could taste was his spit, his chest keeping you on your back against the matted ground, two battered teens panting like dying dogs in the sweltering, rotten heat of summertime.
You were happy just to breathe inside his mouth. Lying pliant beneath him while he took what he wanted, sweat budding between your bodies, his fingerprints stinging the flesh of your hips. You think it made him feel disgusted with himself.
You think that, after all, you really did hurt him the worst.)
Blood lays thick on your tongue. The heady taste of iron. When your hands come together to form a seal, you can no longer think of anything.
If this is a movie, you’re all out of tape. You picture end credits rolling down the scene: across the trunks of the trees and the shimmer of the slow-flowing creek and the look on your face that says nothing but Here lies the living, already dead. There was no need for sacrifice, I’m already dead. I was already dead when you left me.
I was already dead when your lips left mine.
“My offer still stands, you know.”
With what remains of your strength, you raise your head to face the figure in front of you.
Suguru sits by the root of the chestnut tree. The same sculpted face, the same dark eyes, the shade of his skin only slightly more pale; lips twisted into a black widow’s smile, soon to be bitten raw and swollen with spit. His eyes are sharp with knowing. If it weren’t for the row of stitches strung across his forehead, you’d think him just another memory.