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Then a torrent of words he wished he never heard in this lifetime struck Sukuna speechless. He can only stare at Yuuji over the book he’s reading after Yuuji professed his feelings.
“I don't think I’m the right man for you,” Sukuna said after the long silence, before he continued reading.
It’s neither yes nor no! Yuuji decided as he threw away his right to regret. Although he did sniffle a little from the silence, he had promised himself he wouldn't let sadness carry him away.
It’s love after all; it's an overwhelmingly potent stuff, unlike sex. And when Sukuna was Yuuji's age, he had written in his book that love is a more inviolable law than cause and effect, leagues beyond good and bad.
“Who is the right man for me if not you?”
“Find that out on your own. And stop using my character's dialogue, attention-seeker.”
Sukuna reads again. Except the silence this time around only fuels Yuuji with a little more conviction than the first.
“You love me too, right?”
Sukuna shakes his head firmly. "Why don't you turn on the TV and watch those hideous cartoons you love so much?"
"You won't know that if you don't love me."
"Kugisaki-chan knows that for a fact, and she's your friend."
"Duh, Sukuna; I am gay."
"I'm homophobic," Sukuna retorted without missing a beat.
Yuuji snorts amicably. "You're saying nonsense because you can't find the right words to make me stop talking. Besides, Mom told me you're bi."
Yuuji cursed the day the poet that goes by the name Jogo was born, because Sukuna still won't put that book down to take Yuuji seriously.
"Well, if that's the case, then I must tell you how much more physically appealing I find Fushiguro-kun compared to you," Sukuna said smoothly, as he finally put down Jogo's poetry anthology on the coffee table in front of him.
He looked up to a frozen Yuuji, staring him down.
No longer does he sway, tap his foot nor fiddles with his fingers; the young man completely stops everything he was doing in order to look Sukuna dead in the eyes with a body so rigid that Sukuna feels like he's looking at someone else.
"I pray that somebody, or a group of people, will make you feel the exact pain you have made me feel," was the way Yuuji put a curse on him, with gritted teeth and freshly flowing tears.
Hours after the disastrous confession of love, Kaori—also known as Kenjaku—parked her car in the garage and found Sukuna squatting on the stairs leading to the living room. He let his head hang low in between his elongated arms which are supported by his knees.
"What have you done?"
"You're going to hate me, senpai," Sukuna mumbled.
Kaori simply stood akimbo, her keys clanking from her movement.
Sukuna groaned. "I said a ruthless no."
She pinched the bridge of her nose in equal parts frustration and the proven expectation from which she knew that such fate was to befall her poor son: To love a once abandoned child is to bear the brunt of others' cruelty, she had warned Yuuji.
"How many times should I say that you make him happy? Quit thinking you should earn enough money to earn him. I have more than what I need for retirement, I can give it to you!" Kaori hissed.
Sukuna stuck out his tongue. "Easy for you to say, millionaire. The way you raised him? I don't have the heart to snatch him from this much luxury; it will break him eventually."
"You sad man. You're underestimating my child, and for what? For him to stop loving you, so you can drool over your own fantasy of what life would be like with him till the day you die? What a waste!"
That's when Sukuna rises to his full height. "You'd be wise to remember how lucky you are to have gone through the rags-to-riches formula—"
"My book was viral; that's the word, Sukuna."
"—only a few have achieved. Look at you, coming home in a car, chastising me about not loving your 22-year-old son the way you want me to!"
Kaori grabbed at Sukuna's mocking hands. "You look at me in the eyes and tell me I am not the Kaori you know, Sukuna," she pleaded. "What happened to love conquers all?"
But Sukuna snorted. "You've clearly forgotten how it feels like munching on as little food as you can, knowing you definitely won't have anything else to eat the day after. And that was, what, twenty two years ago?"
"Stop being so anxious, Sukuna. It will never be as bad as you think, and I know you're a good man, that's the only reason I have given you—"
"I've made my decision."
Sukuna grabbed the luggage that was invisible to Kaori under the dim lighting of the garage, and left the house he lived in for two years.
Nobara nudged Yuuji from under the bar and shouted, "Stop drinking so much, Itadori! You know you cannot handle it!"
But Yuuji doesn't care. He then proceeded to order his fourth drink to the bartender. It's the only day he could let himself be as impulsive as he gets.
They're in a hip nightclub, frequented by the crème de la crème of Japanese pop culture or the people who have enough money to pose as one. It's crowded, loud with thumping beats Megumi loathes, and brimming full of scantily clad celebrities (or ex celebrities) who'd make Nobara feel self-conscious.
He sensed that both Nobara and Megumi already felt out of place here by the time Yuuji ordered their first drinks, and that is a good thing, that is a good sign. He wants them to feel exactly how lonely and out of place he felt in his own house (the trio's base-camp) once Sukuna left it, hours after the writer eviscerated Yuuji with his choice of words.
They refused to comprehend that what he's feeling is not a crush; it's love in its full force, and they were silently laughing at him for it, hence this treatment.
"Why are we here, Yuuji?!" Megumi said to his ear. He was shouting, but it sounded so soft. It's obvious that a deep-seated worry lathered his voice. "Are you looking for someone?!"
Yuuji shook his head, his eyes staring daggers into Megumi's eyes but Megumi would be none the wiser.
Yuuji has never felt envy toward any of his childhood friends before Sukuna. He actually feared the opposite might happen for how much financial gap separates their respective parents, and yet Yuuji is the one seething with both jealousy and envy for them. It's so strong, it might pop a vein or break his fingers from the tight fists it formed in his hands.
Then the inevitable happened.
Once Nobara and Megumi had enough of Yuuji's strange demeanor, they dragged him to the restroom and splash him with enough water to wet and wake him. Then they took him to the busy road that Tokyo is during a summer, and there, in between the hustle bustle of Tokyo night life, the three of them stumble upon Ryomen Sukuna standing outside a book event for an upcoming author.
"You sad, sad man!" Yuuji roared, prying away from his friends' grip, shaking out whatever's left from his drunkenness. "You stupid, sad man!"
Sukuna searched Yuuji's eyes while the younger man kept poking on his chest with his finger.
"Here," Yuuji starts again, walking backwards to shove Megumi to stand in between Sukuna and himself. "Have a go at him, you poster child of a condom company¹!"
Megumi turned to Yuuji, shaken more from trying not to laugh at Yuuji's insult and less from utter confusion. So different from Nobara who simply laughed as loudly as she could.
But Yuuji and Sukuna are still on with their staring contest. Both are visibly breathing slowly, and thus Nobara pulled Megumi from their line of sight in an instant.
"It's happening," Nobara reminded Megumi, to which he only nodded.
"We were looking for you in Narita, Haneda. I almost had the police search the airports for you. I knew you'd fly back home."
Sukuna yawned.
Yuuji glanced at the promotional pamphlet in Sukuna's hand.
"You fancy that guy, Jogo?"
"He's a talented colleague."
"Why did you leave?"
Sukuna aggressively rubbed his own face and looked away.
"Sukuna!"
"You were not looking for me," Sukuna started, the end of his forefinger pointing at Yuuji's forehead. "I was in an airport lounge when a white-haired man suddenly rant his sacrifices for love."
Only then Yuuji smelled alcohol coming from Sukuna. Did he get drunk over Yuuji? And Sukuna's bloodshot eyes supported the idea.
"Of course," Yuuji quickly said, holding back a growing smile. "Did you even buy a plane ticket?"
"How can I?" Sukuna snorted. "How can I not see you in that man when I saw him cry into his coffee?"
"Would that mean you left because of what I said this morning, and that I was in your thoughts the entire time you weighed on actually leaving or not leaving?"
"Should I spell out the word for you or should I say the boring sentence?"
"What could possibly hurt you from saying you lo—"
Sukuna pulled Yuuji and kissed him on the lips.
Megumi and Nobara clapped.
"Crap, now I'm actually worried," she complained to Megumi.
"What are you talking about? He won't stop inviting us over just because he got what he wanted—Sukuna has always been there!" Megumi offered. "If…losing our base-camp was what you're worried about."
Nobara put her elbow on Megumi's shoulder before she said, "Need I remind you that Ryomen-san arrived here only two years ago? Ryomen-san is a tough cookie, Itadori will change."
"In what way, exactly?" Megumi said while he waved Yuuji goodbye. "Call us later!" he shouted to Yuuji.
"In swooping him off the floor bridal style into a passionate ever after," Nobara said as she turned to a direction opposite from the one Yuuji and Sukuna walked to. "I know this from his books actually, specifically from the kind of anti-heroes he wrote."
"I honestly never read his books."
"Have you read Yuuji's Mom's books?"
"The romance one," Megumi responded subtly while still waving at Yuuji. He's walking backwards alongside Nobara.
"Good. That book was based on Sukuna and his first love. It happened when he was our age."
"How come I didn't know about this? Is Yuuji picking favorites now?"
"No. His mother and I have this woman-to-woman thing going on."
"Whoa, that's…awesome."
Nobara stood firmly right next to a slowing bus at the bus stop. "She said," she started as she watched the bus coming closer to them, "that he was in a destructive love affair with this classic manic pixie woman. She used suicide to prevent him from leaving her, but Sukuna was apparently too fickle and just as manipulative as she that the threats didn't matter; he wouldn't leave her anyway. It was so annoying that Yuuji's Mom and Ryomen-san's other friends had to intervene to end it.
"Now you and I know how annoying Yuuji can get, don't we?"
Megumi guided Nobara to enter the bus without interrupting her speech. "Of course," he said once they're inside the bus.
"Best friends, like lovers, accept our flaws."
"Nobara, I honestly don't know where you're taking me with this."
"Sukuna is explosive, with cunning; Yuuji is fiery, from the youthful fountain of passion; the biggest problem is there's no water to balance things out!"
"I'd be the water for him."
"Aw, I was actually saying you never have to suffer through their train wreck—no, Megumi—"
Megumi immediately let the other passengers swallow him to avoid Nobara. He understood that he had been caught red-handed.
"Megumi! Don't ever think I missed your tears when they kissed, Megumi! That insults my intelligence!"
Megumi cursed his cousin Zenin Maki under his breath for her loose tongue. Intelligence my ass, he thought. He should've trusted his guts never to tell anything private to Nobara's girlfriend ever again.