Archive of Our Own ^beta

May, 2005

Satoru makes it look easy. He rolls the pen between his thumb and his index finger. Forward, backward, forward, backward. He’s hunched over his desk, forearms digging against the edge of the table, and his head is nestled firmly into the crook of his elbow, streaks of chalk-white cutting into the gleaming leather of his jacket. He’s not even looking at the pen in his hand but it does a smooth revolution around his palm. It dips in and out of the gaps between his fingers, long and spidery, bending at the joints to push the pen into the next valley. Thumb to index to middle to ring to pinky, and then it loops backwards. Suguru looks away and scratches graphite circles into his composition notebook. He wonders if there’s some sort of trick to it. 

“He’s late, isn’t he?” Satoru cuts through the silence baked into the room by the May heat. He sits up straight and swings around on his chair to face Suguru. Sweat sticks to his forehead, tickling his skin as it journeys down the planes of his face, down to his neck, disappearing past his shirt collar. The windows are cracked open just halfway, in a feeble attempt to let a breeze in but the air outside is still, almost stale. 

“He?”

“Yaga-sensei. Who else?” 

Suguru forgoes correcting Satoru’s keigo this time. It would be the seventh time in the last three weeks, feather light reminders to refer to his seniors with their direct names, to use the right first-person pronouns, to tack on the right titles at the end of Satoru’s addresses to other people. It makes Satoru laugh each time, boisterous chortles that end with a shrug and a shake of his head— and Suguru punctuates them with a secondary chide— but heat makes Satoru stuffy and irritable, and Suguru’s not particularly itching for a fight either, so he lets it go. He figures the reminder would be unwelcome. 

“Yeah,” he does a quick mental count, “by seventeen minutes.”

“Should we just leave?”

“You wanna skip class?”

“Suggesting there will be a class we’re skipping.”

“Sensei will show up.” Suguru sighs, slumping backwards into his chair now, thorough disbelief in his own proclamation etched all over his posture. 

“Shoko isn’t here too,” he turns to look at the door, and then at the blackboard, as if he could will Shoko to materialize out thin slate. 

“I’m aware” 

He’s aware. Things usually happen like clockwork at Jujutsu Tech; homeroom at 7:30 a.m., a cursory greeting from Yaga-sensei that borders on a sermon, followed by morning drills that stretch into late morning, real training, the kind that leaves bruises. Then two hours of classroom lectures, curse theory, battlefield etiquette, language, literature, all crammed together like overstuffed polyfill. Lunch around 12:30, a bland affair in the cafeteria with lukewarm miso soup and overcooked rice, and then afternoon missions or individual training. Suguru usually heads to the track field, Shoko to the clinic room, and Satoru presumably disappears into the deeper parts of the forest that skirts the edge of campus. He’s not entirely sure what Satoru’s solo regimen entails, if it even exists at all, despite them being almost halfway through their first year. He’s not sure he wants to ask, either. Regardless, Suguru has come to expect a certain rhythm to unfold each day, like scenes on a film set carried out with unwavering rigor, and he is a main actor in all of them. He wakes at six, swallows whatever venom coils around in his chest during sleep, runs it out through his legs in measured laps around the courtyard, and composes himself just in time to slide open the classroom door fifteen minutes earlier than anyone else does. That’s how it’s been going. That is how he expected it to go today. He half-expects a flurried stagehand to burst in through the hallway any moment now and end this scene. “Cut! Where’s the rest of the cast?” they’d shout, and the two of them would reset, shuffle back into their marks, and wait for the clack of the clapperboard and a resounding, “Action!”

As it is, it’s 8:20am and it’s just the two of them. It seems the film crew has taken the day off. It leaves Suguru reeling. This is his new anomaly. Satoru. Gojo Satoru, who’s currently facing away from him in stern meditation over how much chalk he could squander in doodles. Suguru allows himself to look for a second, just a second, and soaks in all of the visual information he can before he can’t pass off his eyes skittering towards Satoru’s back as anything else but a stare, a completely intentional stare. 

It’s almost as if the classroom worked in tandem with the sunlight to frame the lines of Satoru’s shoulders. The room is seized in a heavy sort of quiet, thick with heat and the low hum of fluorescents that flicker every few seconds. Their desks are scattered across the room in a crooked row like teeth, Suguru’s pristine, Shoko’s only barely chipped where the vinyl is peeling up from her constant needling, and Satoru’s ink-scarred and a pigpen of paper and gauds. His is pitched just slightly ahead of theirs, and Suguru counts himself lucky for the easy heist of a view. The sunwarm leather of Satoru’s uniform rustles with each breath he takes, and he’s not sure if it’s by virtue of Satoru’s net effect on him or the stillness in the air, but the sound of it hits his ears clearly: the buzz of the lights blending in with the cicadas outside, constant metallic, oddly alive. Each inhale, each exhale, the faint shifting of fabric, the compressions and rarefactions in the air. He’s sitting up straight but there’s that ease in his posture Suguru can never seem to look past. That unbearable ease, like he’s never held tension in his body at all. 

“I’m leaving,” Satoru announces. “Join me or stay here waiting for–,” he glances at his watch, a black strappy thing that seems entirely unbecoming of him, “-for god knows how long actually,” he says, turning on his heel like a graceful music box ballerina to look at Suguru. 

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet,” he muses as he gathers all his things into his backpack, a candy bar unwrapped halfway, wired earphones, a composition notebook with its cover peeling to reveal doodles Suguru can’t quite parse, bitten unsharpened pencils. He saunters over to the door, “Coming?” 

It takes Suguru all of three seconds to decide. Satoru simpers at him as he approaches the perch of the door. “Knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.” 

“Why would I have?” Suguru slings his bag around his shoulder. 

He can’t see his eyes but he knows somehow that Satoru followed that movement with his gaze. His right shoulder moving backwards, his hand gripping the clarino strap to his chest, his arm bending at the elbow. There’s something about the weight of it, Suguru supposes, that doesn’t get diluted through the sunglasses perched upon his nose, through the sticky summer air between them, through the reflexive wall Suguru has up. It pierces through and Satoru smiles at him, like he knows Suguru felt that. Felt him staring. 

“You up to spar for a bit? We can find Shoko after, I’m feeling restless,” Satoru doesn’t really wait for a response, no real indication he was expecting one anyway. But Suguru follows him in lieu of a confirmation, trailing slightly behind. He leads them to the indoor basketball court where the air is cooler and their jackets can be taken off without sticking to them. Suguru’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to this. To this life he’s been living for the last few months. He’s used to the mountains of Shirakawa-go, to mornings that splintered across the sky like eggshells, mist curling over the thatched rooftops of gasshō-zukuri farmhouses like breath made visible. To the shrill, sweet song of warblers in the distance. To the damp earth that gave under his soles when he stepped out each day, and to the biting cold that never quite left, even in June, when the rice paddies shimmered like glass under the overcast sun. There, summer came wrapped in dew, the heat brief and easily outrun if you took the uphill trail fast enough. There, the silence had a shape: wind rustling through cedar trees, a cow groaning in the distance, an old neighbor wheeling her cart of yuba past his gate. There, everything breathed in slow rhythm. There was space to exist in. 

Tokyo stifles.

The air here is thick and unmoving, like it’s been exhaled too many times without ever being taken back in. Heat presses to his skin like the crowds on the Yamanote Line at 8:00 A.M. Sweat forms faster than it can dry, and he feels it as he swipes his nape, even underneath the tree-laden paths towards the court. Even the sky looks different, less endless, more obstructed. Tokyo’s horizon is a cage of wires and windows, and when the wind does blow, it smells like warm asphalt and cigarette ash even as they’re a good distance away from Tokyo’s bustling center. The basketball court is sterile but mercifully cool. Its echo chamber quiets the city noise into something Suguru can almost ignore. 

He peels off his jacket and folds it in half. It’s a small act of control. A gesture he would have learned at home: how to take care of your own things, how to keep edges crisp and intentions tidy, straight lines and clean slippers once you cross the genkan after tending to the hens. Satoru drops his own onto the floor with all the reverence of a child shaking off rain. Suguru looks at him. There is something profoundly unrural about Gojo Satoru. Like Tokyo made him in a lab and gave him too much light.

And still, Suguru follows.

“I don’t know if this is the best idea for cooling off,” Satoru says, shaking the stillness out of his legs and arms before he gets in position at the key. “But there’s really nothing else to do.” 

“Sure there is. Don’t act coy, you just wanna fight,” Suguru tamps down the smile that almost curled around the words. 

“You don’t?”

And then Suguru actually smiles, lets the skin stretch on his face with no restriction because this is where they always agree: there’s always time for a spar. Suguru has always enjoyed a little physicality, and he finally met his match in Satoru. It’s refreshing. No one in Shirakawa could keep up with him, and it led to a permanent hesitance in all of his kicks and throws. It was Satoru that pointed it out the first time they sparred, on Yaga’s orders during general training. “You don’t have to hold back, you know? It’s insulting as hell,” Satoru had chirped at him across the court, right after he landed a punch to the left of his sternum. “I’m not,” he had said. He wasn’t aware he was doing it at all. 

“Yes, you are. You could have knocked me to the floor then. Why am I still standing?” 

“You must think highly of me,” Suguru had huffed. It badgered at him a little bit, this proposition that he may not be trying as hard as he could be. He knew he was strong. 

“I think of you as exactly who you are. And you could have knocked me to the floor then. Cut the shit and fight me for real,” Satoru had said. Something about his expression at that moment struck right through his brain. It was stern, all hardened muscle and pure conviction, and it unlatched something in his cerebellum, unlocked the dam that kept the force of his punches at bay, and a few minutes later, Satoru was on the floor, laughing up at him, “Told you!”. That was the first time Suguru took a full breath in years. 

He approaches Satoru now and takes his position. There’s no ceremony. No bow, no countdown. Suguru just levels his feet and gives him a small nod. And then movement. 

Satoru strikes first, of course. A forward lunge, fast and loose, his body language unreadable until the very last second, like a magician flicking his wrist before the reveal. Suguru steps back just in time, letting the heel of his foot drag along the court so the squeal of rubber can mark the moment. He reads Satoru’s movements the way one reads a half-finished sentence. He knows what’s coming, even when Satoru doesn’t.

A quick twist. A low kick. Suguru catches it with his calf, uses the rebound to slide in, palm open, aiming for the center of Satoru’s chest. But Satoru is already gone, already laughing as he pivots out of reach with a dancer’s spin, like the whole thing is nothing more than choreography for his amusement. Their hands brush in a passing feint, just a graze, and Suguru registers, for half a second, the warmth in Satoru’s palm. It lingers longer than it should, seeping into his skin.

“You’re getting slow,” Satoru calls over his shoulder, voice bright, eyes sparkling.

“And you’re telegraphing your steps,” Suguru replies, pushing forward again, not rising to the bait but not ignoring it either. Their bodies move in practiced contradiction. Satoru is all angles and abandon. He feints high and swings low, lets his limbs fly with reckless trust that his technique will catch up in time, because of course it will. Suguru is his moving contrast: centered, careful, every motion compact and tight, made with the kind of restraint that looks effortless until it’s too late to respond. He doesn’t waste energy. He doesn’t miss. 

There’s a moment, always a moment, when they stop thinking and start listening with their bones. Satoru lands a glancing strike to Suguru’s shoulder, and Suguru retaliates with a sweep that nearly takes Satoru off his feet. There’s no curse energy here, nothing but the rhythm of two boys who know exactly how far they can push each other without breaking. The fight is a conversation, one they’ve had a hundred times before in different forms, different places. This is just the cleanest version of it. An exchange of equal footing, something they can really only find in each other. The court becomes smaller as their pacing accelerates. Sweat begins to form again, clinging to their foreheads, sliding down their necks. Satoru’s eyes are still hidden. Suguru doesn’t need to see them to know what they’re saying. He sees it in the slight twitch of Satoru’s lips, the way his breath stutters when Suguru lands a hit just beneath the ribcage. He sees it in the faint tilt of Satoru’s head, curious and amused, like he’s examining a piece of art he didn’t expect to enjoy so much. Suguru’s own breath comes harder now, but he doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t want to. Satoru ducks beneath a strike and ends up chest-to-chest with Suguru for a breathless second, close enough to feel the heat between them, close enough that Suguru’s breath catches, just once, in his throat. He doesn’t flinch. Neither of them do. 

They move in tighter circles now. Satoru’s next kick connects with Suguru’s thigh, but he rolls with it, drops his weight low, and delivers an elbow strike that would have knocked someone else off their feet. Satoru just laughs, breathless this time, the sound echoing across the court and bouncing off the metal beams like birdsong in a cage. They’re grinning now, the two of them, without realizing it. It feels less like sparring, more like orbiting. Like waltzing. Like breathing each other in. Then, a pause, simultaneous and unspoken. Both of them are half-crouched, arms raised, chest heaving. Suguru's hair clings to his neck, sweat dripping onto the floor in small, quiet splashes. Satoru’s lips are parted, teeth catching the air, the tips of his fingers twitching slightly as if resisting the urge to close the distance again. 

Suguru exhales slowly, lowering his stance. “Still restless?”

Satoru’s grin softens into something quieter. “Always.”

But he doesn’t move again. He just lets his arms fall to his sides, noodle-like, the tension bleeding out of him like a wave receding from shore. His hair is damp, and Suguru watches a drop of sweat fall from his temple to his collarbones peeking out of his shirt, following its path longer than he probably should. Suguru straightens too, rolling his shoulders back, letting the hum of exertion settle into his limbs. They’re close enough now that Suguru can almost feel the heat radiating off Satoru’s skin. It’s a beautiful feeling, he never tires of it. 

“Alright,” Satoru says, voice smaller now, rounder at the edges, like the end of a yawn. “I’m calling it. Any more and I might actually break a sweat.” Satoru flops onto the court with all the grace of a cat belly-up in the sun, arms splayed, hair a silvery mess against the waxed wood.

“You already have,” Suguru mutters, nudging him in the ribs with the side of his foot before stepping away to grab their jackets. Suguru doesn’t bother telling him to get up.

“Can we not go back to class?” Satoru asks, voice muffled beneath his own forearm. “I vote for nap time.”

Suguru doesn’t answer, Satoru knows he’s going to follow regardless, he just tosses him his jacket and gathers his own things, cool now, slightly damp in the crook of his elbow. The weight of them feels good. Grounding.

When they do leave, it’s slow. No rush in their steps, no reason to fill the space between words. Companionable silence. The sun has dipped a little lower behind the gym windows. The corridors are quieter than before. They pass through them like shadows, jackets slung over their shoulders, brushing arms now and then. Suguru wonders if he’s walking all crab-like on purpose, grazing against his sides for a reason he can’t fully dissect, or if he’s just tuckered out. 

By the time they reach the common room, it’s empty, save for the low drone of the fan and the faint hum of cicadas slipping in through the open window. It’s always empty; the seniors are barely ever on campus after they get officially conscripted into the rusty cogs of sorcery, and teachers never come around these parts anyway and he’s silently grateful for that. Suguru sinks into the couch first, stretching his legs out along the length of it, spine sighing into the worn corduroy cushions. Satoru follows, not by any conscious choice but like it’s just the natural thing to do, collapsing beside him like gravity pulled him there. His head drops against Suguru’s shoulder, not quite asleep, not quite asking, and Suguru doesn’t move to stop it.

He just shifts slightly, enough to let Satoru settle in, and lets the weight of the day soften between them.

“I wonder if Shoko ended up going to class,” Satoru mumbles. His voice is a feather-like tickle against Satoru’s neck and it takes all his strength to not shiver. 

“Probably not, something probably came up with Yaga anyway so we’re all good.”

“And you’re nagging me about keigo. Where’s the honorific?” 

“Like you give a shit about that,” Suguru laughs. Satoru doesn’t deign him with a response, just sticks his tongue out at him and nestles his head even further into Suguru’s shoulder. They don’t move for a while. Time slips past them, slow and syrupy, the fan droning like a lullaby. It’s too hot to talk, too still to bother breaking the quiet with anything unnecessary. Suguru finds he doesn’t want to. There’s something holy about this, about the way Satoru leans into him like gravity’s working overtime, head resting on his shoulder, temple sticky with sweat. It should feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t. It feels like muscle memory, it lives in the same neural pathways as riding a bike. The weight is familiar now, as much as that puzzles him. Satoru’s presence, so loud in the field, in training, in conversation, goes almost delicate like this. In certain, precious moments, it is pared down to its quietest parts: the pressure of his leg pressed alongside Suguru’s, the faint brush of his breath at Suguru’s collar, miniscule things that creep up Suguru’s conscience and bloom into colors more vivid than they should be, into shades he can’t entirely name. But he catches glimpses of them where the light catches the curve of Satoru’s lashes, pale white as it caroms off the bridge of Satoru’s nose, carnation pink dusting the arc of his cheeks. Baby blue beneath those sunglasses. His fingers twitch now and then where they rest against his own thigh, like they’re itching to fidget but too tired to follow through. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, and it’s the kind of hey that doesn’t need a response. So Suguru doesn’t offer one. Just hums low in his chest like a reply, and lets his eyes fall shut for a moment. Lets it wash over him. This, he thinks, is the closest thing to peace he’s felt since coming to Tokyo. Maybe longer than that, if he allows himself to think about home for any longer than a second. 

“I like it here,” Satoru says, so softly it nearly blends into the hum of the room. Suguru almost doesn’t hear him. 

He turns his head a fraction. “Here as in—,” he clears his throat, “Jujutsu Tech? This room?”

“No.” Satoru lets the word sit for a beat. “I mean, yeah, this room’s nice,” his chuckle is a soft, breathy thing. Too quiet to really call it that, “Fan’s doing all the heavy lifting. But I meant here. Next to you.”

Suguru goes quiet at that. Everything buzzing inside him lulls, like cut wire, like his soul has been mollified slightly by that admission. He doesn’t quite yet trust himself to answer, at least not without letting something stupid slip out. Something warm and dangerous flickers under his ribs, crawling up his throat and curling against the base of his tongue. He’s always known Satoru talks too much, fills empty space with words like he’s afraid of what might leak in otherwise, but this is different. This is something scraped clean of performance. Stripped down. 

“I like it here too,” Suguru says eventually. He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. His curse technique has never lent itself to easy comfort. It's a grotesque sort of thing, all ingestion and assimilation, a power that requires proximity to death and rot. Even among other sorcerers, there’s a hush around it, an unspoken aversion, the way people recoil just slightly when he explains it, when they realize what it entails. Like it marks him as something too close to the monsters they’re meant to exorcise. The dour of that realization almost tasted worse than the most violent sort of curse. But with Satoru, there’s no such hesitation. He looks at Suguru like the technique is just another extension of his hand. It’s strange, sure, but he’s formidable. He’s worthy. Suguru doesn’t have to perform gentleness here to counterbalance what he can do. He doesn’t have to apologize for being who he is. And he suspects, he knows, Satoru feels the same. That somewhere beneath the self-aggrandizement and ease is a boy who’s also looked at like a weapon first, a person second. Who has never been looked at any differently. Maybe that’s why this feels so easy. So necessary. 

There’s another stretch of silence, but it crackles a little. Charged full of things neither of them are brave enough to name just yet, like words lost in transmission through a faulty landline connection. The common room is dimmer now, corners smudged with the pale yellow of mid-morning. Their usual blue corduroy couch sinks slightly under their weight, one arm frayed from Shoko’s habit of digging her elbows into it while reading. The wooden tables nearby are stained with cup rings and permanent marker ghosts, littered with candy wrappers and a half-built Educa Borras jigsaw puzzle no one seems interested in finishing. The air smells faintly of rooibos and old floor polish. The cabinets lining the wall are cluttered with mismatched mugs and overstuffed tins of tea leaves, most of them from Suguru’s mother, who had sent a box full of new blends with handwritten labels and polite requests to share. A dusty PlayStation 2 blinks red in the corner, flanked by a stack of scratched-up discs and a pair of controllers with the cords wound haphazardly around them. Nothing here matches, nothing is pristine, but it all feels lived-in. Like the inside of a secret kept between three people, and it’s just enough for them. In this quiet, with the fan blowing and the cicadas buzzing and their legs brushing at the knees, they are just themselves. Just boys, not sorcerers. Not prodigies. Not vessels of terrible power. Just Satoru. Just Suguru. 

It’s Suguru who finally shifts, just slightly, adjusting his arm so that Satoru’s head fits more comfortably against his shoulder. His fingers graze Satoru’s hair, damp and soft and curling faintly at the nape. He doesn’t think it’s safe to let himself linger. He does anyway.

“You’re weirdly quiet,” Suguru murmurs, half-joking. “Do I need to check for a fever?”

Satoru exhales a laugh. “Don’t jinx it.”

Satoru doesn’t elaborate either. He doesn’t say that sometimes, in rare moments like this, the world feels like it could hold still just long enough for him to rest inside it. That he’s always known the clock is ticking on how long they get to be like this. That he’s thought about it. Almost all too often. That sometimes, in the dead of night, he lies awake and stares at the ceiling wondering what part of this he’ll lose first.

He doesn’t say that he doesn’t want it to be Suguru.

But Suguru’s hand shifts again, gentle against his sleeve. Satoru closes his eyes.

Suguru, for his part, isn’t thinking about the end. Not yet. Not really. But there’s a part of him, buried deep under his certainty and calm, that recognizes how easily this could be broken. How fragile the architecture of this peace really is. Still, he doesn’t want to live like it’s already gone. He doesn’t want to brace for something that hasn’t happened yet, outrunning a future that isn’t concrete. So instead, he rests his chin lightly atop Satoru’s head, closes his eyes and tells himself he’ll get up in five minutes. It’s easy to convince himself that this isn’t indulgent and they’ve earned it, with their bruised knuckles and their sweat-soaked shirts and the quiet ache in their lungs from laughing too hard mid-fight.

“You ever think about what comes next?” Satoru asks, not lifting his head.

Suguru hums. “What do you mean?”

“Next year. Second year. Missions. Real ones. All of it.”

Suguru doesn’t answer for a long moment. “Sometimes.”

“I don’t think I’m scared,” Satoru laughs a bit, “I’m actually really excited. But I keep wondering if we’ll get to do this again. Just sit here.”

“You think we won’t?”

Satoru’s fingers twitch again. Then they go still. “Dunno. Feels like something’s gonna shift. Eventually.”

Suguru finally opens his eyes. He doesn’t like the heaviness in Satoru’s voice. Doesn’t like that it mirrors something quiet and buried in himself, something that threatens to claw to the surface each time he sets a veil up around a cursed ruin. But he knows what to say right at this moment, and he’s glad for the lack of hesitation.

“Then we make it happen,” he says softly. “No matter what shifts.”

Satoru turns his head just enough to press his temple into Suguru’s jaw. Not quite a nod. Not quite anything. Just an arbitrary action, but Suguru almost wishes it was more, as if the movement was left incomplete and Satoru was still about to say something, do something. He feels Satoru’s pulse beating through his skin, and he wants to put his fingers to the quivering vein, but he settles for the simple brush of their pinky fingers. They’ve got reels of time stretching out before them. 

The fan keeps spinning overhead. Outside, the cicadas cry louder. The day bleeds on, golden and slow, thick with a kind of beauty that makes Suguru hurt. He recognizes that particular brand of pain when he glances at Satoru tucked into the side of his body, breathing slow. At peace. 

Neither of them move until Shoko shakes the two of them awake hours later.

December, 2005

Shoko gets a 12-pack of Asahi Super Dry and Satoru supplies them with Coke. Suguru just laughs at the two of them. 

“You know this is—” 

“Illegal? Yeah, we know. Did you bring the bottle opener or not?”

Suguru sighs and digs through his pockets, reluctantly passing the orange plastic opener over to Shoko once he finds it in the lint-ridden mess of his sweatpants. 

“If Yaga catches us, he’ll—”

“Have our heads and beat us up with his cursed dolls? Yeah, we know. Do you want to spend Christmas alone?” Shoko smiles up at him from where she’s crouched on Suguru’s vinyl dorm room floor. She cuts open the plastic wrapping around the bottles with a scalpel that she tucks back into her jean pocket once she’s done. 

“Well, no,” Suguru mumbles, eyes naturally skittering towards where Satoru was, flipping through his box of CD’s on his desk. “Whatever. You’ll help me clean up after, right? Won’t you?” 

“What do you mean, Geto?” Shoko’s smile turns just marginally sharper, too subtle to notice unless someone’s well-versed in Shoko’s playbook of expressions, unless they’ve spent day-in, day-out with her like he and Satoru have, “No doubt about it.” 

“You know you—”

“Anyway,” Shoko bounces up on her feet and claps her hands, “Gojo, have you chosen a CD yet?”

“Hm,” Satoru says, “he doesn’t have anything good”

“Hey, what the hell?”

“Sorry, man,” Satoru laughs, teeth-bared and beautiful. “Don’t you have something peppy?” 

“I have a lot of something peppy,” Suguru stalks over to his music collection. He frowns at Satoru on the way, or at least musters up the best impression of one. It sits wrong on his face. His eyebrows don’t furrow enough and his mouth can’t quite commit to the downturn. It softens too soon, the corner twitching upward in betrayal. It’s impossible to frown at Satoru, even more so lately. Especially when his eyes crinkle like that behind those ridiculous glasses and he’s leaning against Suguru’s desk like he owns the place, like the very idea of being anywhere else is unfathomable. Suguru exhales through his nose, gives up on the pretense of annoyance, and turns back to the stack of CDs.

He flips through the cases with a kind of reverence, fingers hovering on every CD as he deliberates— Satoru wouldn’t like the long-winded instrumentals, Satoru wouldn’t like the drum beats, Satoru would think her voice is too nasally— until they land on a well-loved copy of Mellow Medicine by Naoko Gushima. The plastic jewel case is scuffed at the edges, but the cover’s still vibrant, Naoko’s face lit in warm golden light and dreamy tones that always reminded him of a world just a little softer than theirs. He slides it into the CD player perched on his bookshelf, and the soft, nostalgic hum of You Can Fly trickles out of the tinny speakers.

Satoru pauses. Tilts his head, appraising. “Okay, okay. That’s not bad.”

Suguru doesn’t reply, only smirks faintly as he takes the plastic bag Satoru’s holding by a finger and sets it down on the floor. Shoko drops down beside him, and the three of them start pulling out their spoils like kids at a picnic. Convenience store onigiri, three flavors of chips, one of which Satoru insisted was “for science”, some sort of umeboshi crisp mutant that had Suguru recoiling from the 7/11 discount shelf and had Satoru gravitating towards it, and curry buns. 

“He picked the seaweed salad,” Satoru says, nudging Suguru’s shoulder as he unceremoniously drops the plastic container between the three of them, “Like we were planning a funeral.”

“It’s good for digestion,” Suguru replies, deadpan. He plucks a pack of Pocky from the bag and tosses it at Shoko. “You picked this. Don’t act above it.”

“Yeah, well,” Shoko shrugs, tearing it open and immediately chewing on a stick, “We may as well be planning for one everyday anyway.”

Satoru makes a face. “Say that again and I’m kicking you out.” 

They’d gone shopping that morning, Satoru and Suguru. Not exactly hand-in-hand, but close enough. The three of them had decided they deserved a little Christmas fun, and the tasks between them split up just naturally, Shoko being relegated to alcohol and streamers duty while the two of them were in charge of the food. The hordes towards Meguro Station pushed them together in the train car, swaying and swinging with the rhythm of the crowd. All as one, yet all trying to move slightly away from each other in the few millimeters of space they were afforded. Satoru just defied the natural order of things, as he does, pushing further into Suguru until their sleeves brushed. At first, it was only the lightest graze, a passing thing that could be blamed on the swaying carriage. Then it was their arms bumping again, deliberate this time. Then their pinkies hooked for a moment too long to be accidental, something that wasn’t the product of Suguru’s wishful imagination. By the time the train rattled past Ebisu, Satoru’s whole hand was resting against Suguru’s, warm through the thin cotton of his sleeve.

Suguru gave a small, half-hearted swat. “You’ve got space on your other side,” he muttered, jerking his chin toward the cluster of people just barely avoiding touching him. His heart beat in overdrive. 

“Not really,” Satoru said, voice bright, that irritatingly sweet smile stretching across his face. “Nowhere to go.” He didn’t even bother pretending to shuffle away.
“Move over a bit,” Suguru said, but it didn’t come out as sharp as he wanted. They both knew it. He didn’t need to look to see the grin deepen. Satoru was tall, broad-shouldered, a figure people instinctively made room for. All he had to do was slide his sunglasses down his nose by a notch and look at the sweat-soaked, half-asleep salaryman next to him and everyone in the immediate area would twitch away without question. But he stayed, shoulder pressed into Suguru’s, the gentle roll of the train making their hips knock together every so often.

By the time they slid into Meguro Station and spilled out into the cold air, Suguru had gotten used to the pleasant weight of him, to the quiet rhythm of Satoru’s breathing against the sway of the train. There was a faint scent clinging to him, fruity and just a little sweet, like citrus twisted over something softer. It was the kind that settled in, mixed through the air until Suguru couldn’t tell if it was still there or if it had simply sunk into him. When they stepped apart to head to the 7/11 at the Central Square, Suguru found himself, just for a brief, sharp second, mourning the loss of contact. 

The walk wasn’t very far and yet, Satoru had almost driven himself up the wall in choice paralysis by the time they got there, all kinetic energy barely contained in the shape of a man. He leaned his entire weight onto the cart like a bored child while Suguru took charge of the actual choosing, weaving through aisles that smelled faintly of starch and fryer oil. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, bleaching the air into something faintly unreal, and Satoru, never one to suffer quietly, kept complaining about how they made his skin look like ‘week-old tofu’. Suguru silently disagreed, nothing could have dulled Satoru’s glimmer, but he managed to read between the lines there; the avalanche of visual information under the brilliance of 5500KK tubelights must have made his eyes sting. Suguru hurried up a bit, while Satoru plucked bottles off the shelves just to read their ingredient lists out loud in increasingly deranged accents, switching from a Kansai drawl to something vaguely Tohoku-like before settling into a deep, mock-documentary narration about the lifecycle of the ‘humble oolong tea’.

The store moved in its own quiet current. Bleary-eyed salarymen in rumpled suits shuffled past, clutching plastic-wrapped bentos like lifelines, their shoulders sagging under invisible weight. Schoolkids burst through the aisles in plaid skirts and blazers, the sharp scent of winter air still clinging to them, a strawberry shortcake and bottle of soda balanced between their mittened hands. Suguru watched them dart out in a flurry of laughter, and without really meaning to, found himself in front of the dessert case. Rows of cakes glimmered under the glass. Strawberries lacquered in syrup, curls of chocolate like thin shavings of bark, cream swirled into perfect peaks. He pictured Satoru with each one: lips curling around a forkful of chocolate, or the way his eyes might catch on the fluffy cream of a shortcake. In the end, he chose one crowned with berries scattered like bright, careless confetti, and slid it into the cart with more care than he’d ever admit to, even though he knew the frosting wouldn’t survive the trip back. 

When he straightened, Satoru was already weaving back toward him from the drinks aisle, a bottle of cola in one hand and two cartons of iced tea balanced in the crook of his arm. His hair was slightly mussed from the crowd, and that faint, fruity scent of his shampoo brushed past Suguru like a ghost of summer. He dropped the drinks into the cart with an easy grin, glancing down at the cake and raising a brow as if to ask, is that for me?  Suguru rolled his eyes and pushed the cart ahead towards the checkout.

They paid quickly, bags swinging at their sides, the automatic doors sliding open to let in a sharp slice of winter air. Outside, the street was all steam and neon, breath pluming in front of them as they stepped into the night. The crowd thinned in the open air, but neither of them moved apart; their arms still brushed as they made their way toward the station. Somewhere above the hum of traffic, the faint ring of a bell marked the hour, and the whole thing— the warmth of the bags in his hands, the weight of Satoru at his side— felt like it might stick in Suguru’s memory far longer than it had any right to. Not for the first time in the day, Suguru found himself wondering if he had any right to this. If it was alright to take it so easy. If they could take an evening off like this, when he could see fly-heads hovering above the milling crowds, when he felt the tannic aftertaste of curses in his throat, down his windpipe still, from their mission yesterday. The thought lodged itself like grit under his tongue, small and impossible to swallow. Even here, with the press of night air in his lungs and the summery warmth radiating off Satoru, there was that low, familiar thrumming in his chest. The wrongness. It rose up like bile taking over every part of his body, whispering of things unfinished, things waiting for him in the shadows just outside the safety of the streetlamps.

He must have gone quiet for too long, because Satoru tilted his head to look at him, and he slid his glasses down slightly, just enough for the fullness of his pupils to peek through. “Guess it’s not so bad, spending Christmas with you,” he said, almost idly. Except his hands stayed buried in his coat pockets instead of swinging loose like they usually did, like they were clenched inside, and he didn’t look away. His gaze caught Suguru like the pull of a tide, blue the way deep water looks just before dusk, hiding something restless underneath. It was the same shade as summer skies in Shirakawa, as the glaze on antique porcelain tea cups in his mother’s kitchen, and Suguru found himself pinned by it, the quiet weight of being seen pulling him clean out of the drift of his thoughts and back into the now.  There was a shyness to the way his eyes stayed rooted on him, like the words were only the surface but there was life teeming beneath, the brief breach of a deep-sea whale coming up for air. 

“Yeah,” Suguru chuckled at his coyness, “it’s not so bad.”

It’s really not bad at all. Shoko ended up overperforming with the streamers. They drape from corner to corner like tangled ribbons of sunlight and candy, pale blue, pink, and red crisscrossing in arcs over the ceiling. It is drastically different to the walls softened by shadow, shelves heavy with the deep browns of wood and the muted spines of paperbacks leaned into each other like confidants, some stacked precariously high, others lying flat with bookmarks peeking out, splayed open as if caught in mid-thought. There are long-winded philosophy texts with penciled-in margins, the echelons of Nietzsche, Baudrillard and Sartre, manga with creased spines from Satoru’s constant flipping and folding, poetry collections that still smell faintly of secondhand shops. Between them, old movie posters and half-faded band flyers jostle for space, their curling edges overlapping. The desk in the corner bears the evidence of a mind that worked in bursts: a loose scatter of ink pens, a chipped mug half-full of cold tea that Suguru goes to chuck into the potted cactus perched atop a notebook. A stray incense stick, burnt almost to the end, lays forgotten in its dish, its faint sweetness lingering in the air. A worn sweater slung over the back of the chair, still holding the shape of the last time he’d shrugged out of it. Suguru pretends to not notice how Satoru slips it on over his shirt without a question, with unerring confidence that he wouldn’t mind. Near the window, a potted plant bends lazily toward the faint winter light, its leaves dusted at the edges. The room feels lighter now, like it has shrugged off its brooding corners to join the celebration. The streamers sway gently whenever the air shifts, catching the faint current from the heater and the subtle stir of their movements. They brush against each other with a papery whisper, like the room is breathing alongside them, celebrating with them. 

“It’s a shame we don’t have gifts,” Shoko sighs, “but I really would not know what to get for you both.” 

She lies. She’s always known. Last year she’d handed Satoru a pair of mirrored sunglasses so obnoxiously reflective they’d blinded him for a week; he’d worn them every day until they fell off his face in a fight, cracked, and were promptly buried in his junk drawer. She’d tracked down an out-of-print poetry collection Suguru had once mentioned offhand while drunk. He’d opened it, read two lines, and immediately went quiet in that way he did when something cut closer than he expected. Shoko had a knack for that: gifts that lodged themselves under your ribs.

Suguru leans back against the bedframe behind him, frowning faintly. “It’s okay. This was a last-minute indulgence anyway.” He moves toward the 12-pack, the caps of three beer bottles catching the light before he pops one open with ease. But before he can pour, Satoru cuts in. 

“Actually, I did get something.” He crouches beside his bag, rustling through it before emerging with three lumpy, paper-wrapped parcels, each one sealed haphazardly with mismatched tape. He lines them up on the floor, one in front of each of them. “Okay, so I got myself a gift too, but it was necessary. You’ll see why,” he grins, rocking back on his heels,“Open them.”

“What is this?” Suguru looks at him puzzled.

“Just open it!,” he swats him on the shin and rocks back and forth impatiently. 

The paper gives way to cotton. A pale green t-shirt with a Tibetan fox graphic, caught in that peculiar, unimpressed half-glare that seems to see through everything. Shoko’s shirt bears a cluster of mushrooms, round caps and thin stalks fanning outward like a little forest. Satoru’s is a sly little octopus, its tentacles curling toward trouble. None of them says anything right away, but Suguru remembers the time Shoko threatened to shave her head just to stop the bobbed hair jokes, only to spend the next week doodling little mushroom caricatures in the margins of her notes, deadpan as ever while the others cackled, the way Satoru once insisted on making tako-san wieners for lunch and somehow managed to turn half the kitchen into collateral damage, then grinned like it was worth it just to watch the little octopus shapes flop on the plate, the way Suguru’s own expression in the mirror had been mistaken for sarcasm more often than not. Shoko’s the first to break, laughing as she leans over to thump him between the shoulder blades. “You’re ridiculous,” she says, and somehow it lands like a compliment. Suguru just sits there for a beat longer, looking at him with that quiet, heavy stare that doesn’t let him squirm away. A soft, “Thanks,” paired with a small nod, like it’s enough to convey the somersaults in his heart. Satoru scratches at the back of his neck, muttering something about how they don’t have to wear them right now if they don’t want to, which of course guarantees they’re pulling the shirts over their heads thirty seconds later.

“When did you even buy these?” Suguru asks, pouring beer into three cups. He hands it to each of them and balances the cap back on.

“Last week. When I was in Sendai,” he brings the glass up to his nose to smell it, and frowns, “I was passing by a store real quick when I saw these three shirts on mannequins lined up at the front display. Thought of you. I thought it’d be funny. I was gonna give them to you guys as soon as I came back, but then Shoko brought up spending Christmas together so I figured it would be perfect.” 

Satoru stops fiddling with his glass and looks right up at Suguru. He doesn’t have his sunglasses on. “Do you like it?” 

“I love it, Satoru.” 

Satoru’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile too hard, but the faint flush across his cheeks gives him away. His eyes dart down to the table, then over to his beer, then anywhere that isn’t Suguru, and brings up the sleeve of his sweater up to his face like he needs something to hide behind. Suguru watches him for a minute longer than is necessary, amused and a little too aware of the tug in his chest. Satoru sitting in his room, with his sweater on, the one he wears nearly everyday. He wants to possess. He wants to own. It’s the kind of look that makes him want to say something he shouldn’t with Shoko sitting right there. So instead, he lifts his glass.

“To us,” he says, smoothly enough that it almost covers the warmth in his voice. Shoko lifts hers immediately.

“To a very Merry Christmas,” she adds.

Satoru raises his last, the faint blush still hanging on. “To each other.”

The first sip goes down easy, the second even easier, and before long the quiet clink of glass against glass becomes a rhythm of its own. The little table is crowded now, the mess of torn wrapping paper, beer bottles sweating in the warm room, the cake box shoved into a corner to make room for the plates. Shoko’s already sliding a knife through the cake Suguru brought, its glossy vanilla frosting separating n neat slices, at least until Satoru reaches over and swipes a fingerful of whipped cream off the side.

“Hey, stop it.” Shoko tries to sound annoyed, but the way her mouth twitches ruins it.

“It’s for quality control,” Satoru says solemnly, smearing the cream across his upper lip until it curls into a ridiculous moustache. He tips his chin up. “Behold. Mini-Santa.”

Suguru snorts into his drink. “Mini? You’re 6’3.”

Satoru shrugs. “Spiritually mini. Santa might be taller, y’know.”

Shoko leans back in her chair, shaking her head. “More like emotionally mini.”

He gasps, clutching his chest in mock offense. But he’s grinning again a second later, that easy, open grin that dares you not to smile with him.

They eat in fits and starts; someone saying something funny enough to make Shoko set her fork down, Satoru trying to feed Suguru a piece of cake on the tip of his fork, Suguru retaliating by shoving the plate closer to him until a chunk of frosting smears across the table. Nobody touches the seaweed salad. The air smells faintly of sugar and berries, warmed up by the soft crackle of the space heater in the corner.

At some point, Satoru finds a compilation of Christmas jingles in Suguru’s box of CDs and puts it on, not before grilling Suguru on why he had a CD like that in the first place. It’s tinny through the speakers, but Last Christmas plays anyway, and Shoko hums along between bites. Suguru catches himself smiling into his beer more often than he means to. Somewhere along the way, the bitterness in the drink faded into something mellow, easy.

Shoko’s holding steady, beer hardly touches her, but Satoru—

Satoru’s glassy around the edges now, the kind of loose-limbed relaxed that only comes when the world is pleasantly tilted. When his brain is just fuzzy enough around the edges to forget who he is. His laugh runs a half-second late, like he’s savoring the sound before letting it go. The smile on his face is always easy, but now it’s brighter than the string lights blinking over the window. It’s blazing.

His hair catches the glow in strands of pale silver, falling messily into his eyes. The flush on his cheeks makes him look warmer than the room could ever be, and the little crease at the corner of his mouth deepens every time he grins. His blue eyes, clear even under the haze of two bottles of beer, glint like they’ve been cut out from the winter sky, but there’s nothing cold about them.

Suguru watches him for a moment too long, the noise of the room muffled under the mesmerizing pull of it. Ethereal feels like too small a word for him right now; he’s not untouchable, not distant, but so blindingly alive it’s almost hard to look straight at him. He’s beautiful. He’s all he wants to look at. Suguru blinks when he realizes how long he’s been looking, but the moment he glances away, it’s too late.

Satoru’s head turns towards him, just slightly, like he’s listening for something no one else can hear. “What?” His voice is quieter than it should be, slipping under the music and the scrape of forks.  

Suguru shakes his head, lips twitching into something faint. Almost a smile, but not really. That’d mean admitting to something he wasn’t ready for yet. “Nothing.”

“That didn’t look like nothing.” The words come out with a lazy slur, softened by the beer and the buzz in the room. Satoru leans back on his arms, slender legs stretched across Suguru’s carpet, watching him with the unhurried satisfaction of someone who’s exactly where he wants to be, who’s seeing exactly what he wants to see. “You were staring.”

Shoko, oblivious, is busy wrestling with the cake box, muttering about who put it so far away from the trash.

Suguru exhales, meeting his gaze again. He takes a sip, smirks around the rim of the glass. “Maybe I was.” 

That earns him a slow, crooked grin. “You like what you see?” It’s teasing, but the edge is dull. Too much fondness bleeding through to make it sharp.

Suguru doesn’t answer right away. He just lets his eyes linger one second longer than polite, taking in the ridiculous frosting moustache Satoru still hasn’t wiped away, the sparkle of light in his hair, the flush still warm on his skin. He wants to wipe the frosting away, taste the sugar. He wants to show Satoru just how much he likes what he sees. Then he tilts his head in a small, almost imperceptible nod.

Satoru’s grin widens, but this time it’s smaller somehow, less about being seen and more about seeing him back. “Good,” he says simply, before reaching over to steal another bite of cake from his plate. They drank until the edges of everything softened. Songs bled into one another. Satoru kept switching the CDs, hands clumsy while sliding the discs in, until they collapsed into some absurd mix of city pop, an Enka track, and a scratched-up pop album that Suguru could almost hum by heart. The room got louder and smaller and then bigger again: laughter ricocheting off posters, the clack of bottle caps, Shoko’s running commentary about the moral laxity of their choice in snacks. Plates piled up, napkins went missing, and at some point a fork became the instrument for a duel that ended with frosting smeared across Shoko’s and Satoru’s noses.

By midnight, the beer had stopped biting and started sliding down like velvet. Satoru drifted pleasantly further from careful. His sentences slurred in the most disarming way, full of soft emphases and sincerity. He leaned closer when he laughed, the sound running sharp and bright, and every time Suguru reached for something, the brush of Satoru’s hand against his felt like punctuation: a soft, affirmative click. They traded stories they’d never tell anyone else, embarrassing training mishaps, half-remembered dares, the tiny cruelties of life as a sorcerer, and Suguru felt that buoyant looseness that follows a night of reckless honesty, of smiling too hard. 

Time thinned. The clock struck 1:14, then 1:37. Satoru began rearranging the streamers as if they were confetti for a parade, draping one awkwardly across Suguru’s shoulder and giggling when it snagged on the collar. Suguru laughed back, more often than not without knowing why; the room had a way of compressing memory and present into a slick, luminous thing that felt easier to live inside than to explain later. A glowstick that they cracked to give them light for a few hours, to be disposed of later. Satoru’s head kept finding its way nearer, on Suguru’s shoulder, tucked under his chin, then once with an arm slung across Suguru’s waist as if he’d decided there was no other place to be. He stayed there, rooted, arm curling tighter every time Suguru tried to shuffle away. 

When Shoko finally stretched and yawned, the clock over the door read 2:02 a.m. She blinked at them both with mock scandal. “I need a cigarette and then bed,” she announced, already fishing for her lighter. She paused at the threshold, taking them in: the cake carnage, the string of empty bottles, and Satoru half-crumpled and half-asleep, wrapped like a warm thing against Suguru’s side. She smiled, sharp and fond. “You didn’t help me clean up after all,” Suguru called, half-teasing as he pushed back the mess of Satoru’s hair tumbling over his face, checking to see if he’s asleep. His eyes are dopey crescent-moons, barely present. 

Shoko’s laugh was a bright blade. She bumped Satoru’s shoulder on her way out. “He might help you,” she said, voice pitched to be heard and also to prod, and then she walked on. At the door she turned, gave them both a conspiratorial wink, and the doorway swallowed her cigarette-lit silhouette until only the faint glow of the street behind her remained. She waved once, casual, practiced, then closed the door softly behind her.

The apartment sighed with the hush that follows a storm. The clock struck 2:07. Satoru shifted in his sleep-drunk doze and hugged tighter; his breath warmed the side of Suguru’s neck. Suguru let his arm come around the small, heavy weight of that hand and leaned back onto the floor, watching the streamers sway in the heater’s lazy eddies. For a long minute he just listened: the soft thrum of the radiator, Satoru’s even breathing, the city’s distant pulse. The world outside went on being curse-ridden and hazardous and loud, but here, under the crepe paper sky, none of it mattered. The warmth was deceptive. Suguru knew it was coming from Satoru, from the ridiculous, stubborn way he’d draped himself against him like a living blanket, not just drunk-clingy, not just the sloppy drape of someone too tired to move. The way Satoru’s arm had curled around his ribs, elbow hooked in was like he was afraid the night might try to pull Suguru away if he didn’t hold tight enough. His palm was splayed open, fingers bunching and re-bunching every loose fold in Suguru’s shirt as though there might be a prize hidden in the cotton if he just gripped hard enough. It anchored him. It unmoored him. He was falling on solid ground. 

His whole right side was tingling from the contact, the solid press of Satoru’s hip against his own, the rise and fall of a chest that never seemed to slow even when he was half-asleep. Suguru could feel each warm exhale against the curve of his neck, the faint catch in Satoru’s breathing when he shifted. There was no space here for anything else, no stray draft from the window, no rustle of crepe streamers, just the lazy rhythm of a boy who could level mountains, curled in close like something fragile. He didn’t know if Satoru realised he was doing it— if this was deliberate, or if three bottles of 5% ABV beer really were enough to turn the world’s strongest into a sweet, mumbling mess— but Suguru loved it. He loved it so much it almost hurt. He could picture it, how easy it would be, with a few more sips of his own glass, to just let the words fall. He could almost admit it out loud, could almost—

But before the thought could settle, Satoru shuddered him out of it by moving, tender as a breath, the slow sweep of his hand dragging heat up Suguru’s ribs, one careful inch at a time. Fingertips traced the line of his sternum, pausing at the hollow of his throat, before catching the collar’s hem between thumb and forefinger. Tug. Release. Tug. His touch was absentminded, almost lazy, but every nerve under Suguru’s skin sharpened to it. 

Suguru’s eyes darted down in reflex, and found Satoru watching him. Not glazed-over and half-gone, but fully, intently looking.

“Hey” Satoru says, the kind of hey that doesn’t need a response again, so Suguru doesn’t respond. He’s not entirely sure what to say, what to do, if he’s allowed to reach for Satoru’s hand splayed against his collarbones, if he can hold this eye contact so brazenly. The calm before the storm. Satoru’s eyes in Meguro had been different; sharp, searching, almost clinical in their precision, as if he were trying to read a book Suguru had dipped into water with ink running down its pages in rivulets. But now there’s something almost unbearable in the way he’s being looked at. This is different, disarming in its sweetness, its unabashed warmth. Something devastatingly gentle. He’s being seen in a way that peels him apart, down past skin and sinew, all the way to his smallest, most breakable atoms, until he’s nothing but the barest shape of himself in Satoru’s hands. 

There’s a strange, dangerous thing that happens when you get too close to fire. The skin’s nociceptors send a message along a chain of electric signals to your spinal cord before the brain even gets involved, sending urgent instructions to pull away before the burn can sink in. Heat expands water in your cells, bursts membranes, leaves you blistered. It’s an old system, older than language, older than humanity itself, an evolutionary insurance policy against the things that can burn you alive. The reflex arcs are short, efficient: pain receptors flare, sodium channels open, muscles contract, and your body jerks back before thought catches up. It is survival boiled down to chemistry. And yet. 

Suguru had never been the kind of child to test the limits of that mechanism. He’d kept his hands well clear of the bubbling pot on the stove in his mother’s kitchen, never dared the licking flames of a match. He knew the pain well enough without feeling it. But the warning system is awake now, every nerve ending alive with the same urgent electricity. His body recognizes danger before his mind can name it, except this isn’t the flare of a match, isn’t fire. It’s Satoru, too close to his face, looking at him like that. And instead of pulling away, he stays right there in the heat, caught in the split second before the recoil, letting himself burn. 

“Y’know,” Satoru murmurs, the brush of a down feather, “you get this look sometimes. Like you’re looking somewhere else, somewhere far away. And I haven’t been able to figure out where it might be. If it’s a place, a thing,” he breathes in, eyes flicking from his fingers curled up in Suguru’s collar to his face again, “A person, maybe.” 

Suguru blinks, slow, the words slotting into him with a quiet weight. “What do you mean?” 

Satoru’s mouth tips into something that isn’t quite a smile. “It’s like—” he pauses, fingertips flexing minutely against the hollow of Suguru’s collarbone, “—you’re here, but not. Like you’ve left some part of yourself somewhere I can’t reach. And I don’t know,” his laugh is soft, but there’s no real humor in it, “I guess I’ve been trying to catch up.”

He shifts his hand, knuckles brushing along the edge of Suguru’s jaw before falling back to rest against his chest again, as if that brief contact was enough to soothe him. “I just— I notice. When you’re gone like that. Don’t assume that I’ve been blind to it.” The air between them goes thick and syrupy and Satoru only watches, like the answer might be written somewhere in the stillness of Suguru’s face.

“I’m always here.” Suguru says. The words land unevenly, like he’s not sure if they’ll hold. He swallows, tries again, this time a little smoother, a little surer. “I’m always here. I’m always looking at you.”

Satoru freezes. His eyes widen, not much, just enough to give him away. A fractional lift of his brows, the smallest flare of his pupils, a breath catching halfway out of his lungs. His lips part as if a reply is forming, but it never makes it past the starting line. Even his hand stills against Suguru’s chest, caught in the gravity of the moment.

“You do?” he asks, like the thought had never occurred to him before.

That’s when Suguru’s mouth tips into a crooked, knowing smile. “Yeah,” he says, tilting his head slightly, “you notice me zoning out sometimes, but you don’t notice me looking at you?” 

Satoru’s lips curve, a breathy laugh slipping out, but his gaze doesn’t break. His fingers are still curled at Suguru’s collar, grazing the base of his throat like he’s testing the shape of it. Suguru shifts, leaning in just enough that their knees bump against the mess of bottles and cake over the floor, the press of bone against bone sending a faint ripple of awareness up his leg. His hand drifts to Satoru’s side, light at first, then firmer, his thumb brushing the sharp line of a rib through the fabric. It’s a grounding touch, though it feels more like a claim. When Satoru starts to draw back, just a fraction, Suguru’s hand finds his hip, fingers curling in, holding him there. Not hard, but firm enough to make it clear: stay. Satoru’s eyes flick down to where Suguru’s hand rests before lifting again. He cranes up, his hair falling forward, and Suguru feels the heat of his breath ghost along his cheek. 

“You’re drunk,” Suguru says with no real warning in his tone, just a simple observation. The sky is blue, the sun rises from the east. Satoru is beautiful, Satoru is drunk. 

Satoru tips his head closer, so close their foreheads almost touch, the faint scent of beer and vanilla frosting curling between them. “Not too drunk.”

Suguru’s thumb traces a slow arc along the jut of his hipbone, almost lazily, but he doesn’t let go. His other hand comes up to rest at the back of Satoru’s neck, fingertips grazing the short hairs there. Satoru’s breath catches, so slight it could be missed, but Suguru feels it in his bones. “You sure about that?”

Satoru hums, the sound reverberating through the thin space between their chests. His knee nudges further in until their legs almost tangle, and for a moment it’s impossible to tell who’s leaning into whom. “I’m sure.”

Suguru lets the hand at Satoru’s neck drift forward, fingers brushing along his jaw before trailing down to his collarbone. He catches Satoru’s wrist where it rests at his collar, his thumb pressing lightly into the delicate skin there, over the thrum beneath it, warm and quick like standing too close to a bonfire and feeling the heat pulse outwards in waves. “If you were sober,” he murmurs, his voice pitched low enough that it feels like a secret, “I’d make you prove that.” 

Satoru’s grin is slow and wolfish, but there’s a hitch in it, like he’s holding back the impulse to close the last inch between them. “And if I said I’m sober enough?”

Suguru leans in, so close their noses almost graze, and lets the pause stretch until it’s just shy of unbearable. “Then I’d call you a liar,” he says, the faintest smile ghosting his lips. His hand stays at Satoru’s waist, but he’s the one who finally breaks the stare, pulling back just far enough to make the absence sting.

Satoru exhales like he’s been holding his breath for hours. Suguru leans back just enough for the air to move between them again, his hand still a firm weight at Satoru’s hip. “We should probably go to bed,” he says quietly, almost reluctantly, like each word is a tether tugging them away from the moment. He looks at the mess scattered across the floor, bottles tipped over, crinkled packets of curry buns and onigiri, but he doesn’t move to clean it. “We can deal with that tomorrow.”

Satoru’s eyes stay on him, unreadable but intent. “Can I—” His voice hitches, exhaustion settling heavy on his shoulders. “Can I stay? Just for the night. Or—” he glances at the clock on the wall, its hands dragging toward dawn, “—whatever’s left of it.”

There’s a second where Suguru doesn’t answer, though the answer is already there in the way his grip doesn’t loosen, in the way he studies Satoru’s face like he’s trying to memorize the exact shape of this request. Finally, he smiles, gentle, irrepressibly fond. “Of course,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. 

Something has shifted between them, a nearly indiscernible change, like stepping from one room into another without realizing you’ve crossed the threshold. Neither of them name it. Suguru doesn’t need to, not when Satoru follows him up from the floor without a word, the sound of their steps falling into an easy rhythm. Satoru drops onto the mattress, toeing off his fuzzy slippers, the faint scent of beer still clinging to him. When Suguru slides in beside him, Satoru shifts instinctively, curling toward him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His arm comes around Suguru’s waist, fingers brushing along his spine, and Suguru lets himself breathe in the warmth and weight of him. 

It’s different. Suguru can feel it in the way Satoru doesn’t bother with his usual flippancy, in how easily his guard seems to have slipped somewhere between the floor and here. But it doesn’t feel like something to worry about. Not tonight. Not when the slow rise and fall of Satoru’s breathing is syncing with his own, and the faint press of a knee against his thigh anchors him to this exact spot in time.

Suguru closes his eyes, one hand resting lightly at the small of Satoru’s back, holding him in place. Outside, the sky is just beginning to pale, and the day will bring questions, maybe even regret. But here, now, with the warmth of Satoru’s body pressed against his and the slow, sure cadence of his breath filling the quiet, it feels almost like an answer.

March, 2006

They start sleeping less and traveling around more. The sunny tides of March wash them onto the shores of Ito and Suguru couldn’t be less thrilled, the ache of acute sleeplessness only placated by Satoru right next to him, pulling his hand towards the capybaras splashing about six feet away from them. 

“Satoru, they’re not gonna go anywhere,” his feet drag against gravel, bird seed and fodder baked into the stones.

“We gotta pet them, Suguru. Before the crowds get here.”

“There’s nobody around. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

The once bustling Izu Shaboten Zoo is now barren. It had always been a chattering, clattering sort of place, bright with the squawks of parrots, the chatter of tourists, the slap of webbed feet on wet stone. Steam rising from the capybara onsen would mingle with the air rich with the smell of feed and damp earth. Now, the stillness sits too heavily. The enclosures are streaked with fallen leaves, the greenhouses dim behind their glass panes. Somewhere far off, a flamingo stirs, the rustle of its feathers unnervingly loud in the quiet. Beyond the zoo’s gates, Ito itself has gone silent, as if the whole town has drawn in a long breath and refuses to let it out. Shops shuttered before sundown, fishing boats pulled in early, conversations clipped short. The silence has weight, and it clings to the rumors that drift inland from the harbor: corpses found tangled in kelp, faces pale and water-swollen, each with the same uncanny expression. Mouths open as if caught mid-breath, eyes glassy and fixed toward the horizon.

Satoru’s entire face lights up the moment the onsen comes into view, steam curling lazily around the rounded backs of the capybaras. He crouches low, boyish in his glee, murmuring nonsense to them as if they might answer back. Suguru feels the tight knot of exhaustion in his chest loosen just a fraction. For all the bleary-eyed train rides, the midnight exorcisms, the endless trail of curses blurring into one another, it was worth waking at four in the morning just to see Satoru like this. Just to have a moment that wasn’t spent scraping sea-brine sludge from a pier after a drowned spirit’s tantrum, or tearing through the basement of a countryside inn to drive out a nest of glass-eyed child apparitions. Satoru grinning wide, white hair ruffled by the sea breeze, cooing at rodents soaking like old men in a bathhouse; it was a rare pocket of stillness, beauty that was just his to look at, a brief breath between the long, unbroken days of work.

Suguru watches a pair of capybaras slip beneath the steaming water, their eyes half-lidded in bliss, and exhales through his nose. “Alright,” he says, quirking his head toward the exit, “as much as I’d love to spend the day soaking with them, we should get moving. The longer we wait, the more likely we’ll be pulling another body out instead of a curse.”

Satoru stays crouched down anyway, hand outstretched toward the nearest capybara. “Five more minutes won’t kill us.”

“Maybe not us,” Suguru replies, a dry edge to his voice, “but I’m not counting on the curse being as patient.” He nudges Satoru’s knee with his own, a small push to get him upright. “We still don’t know what we’re dealing with, which means staking it out might be our only shot. I’d rather not spend the night on the beach, but—”

Satoru stands at last, brushing gravel from his hands, his mouth turned up in that half-smile that says he’s thinking about making a joke but restraining himself. For now. “Fine. But if we do spend the night, I’m bringing a capybara with us. For morale.”

Suguru lets out a laugh despite himself, and they start toward the gates, the hush of the zoo following them out into the quiet streets.

Jogasaki Coast sprawls before them like a wound carved into the earth, the black volcanic rock slick with salt spray and old rain. The ocean churns in mottled shades of bruised green, its surface heaving and folding beneath a restless wind. Each wave hurls itself against the cliffs with slow, punishing force, shattering into veils of white foam that drift upward before collapsing into a cold mist against their skin. The taste of the air is metallic and sharp, the tang of brine laced with a faint, almost cloying sweetness, the kind that clings to rotting kelp at low tide. Between the heavy crashes, thinner sounds surface: water threading itself through hairline fractures in the rock, an unseen tide breathing in and out. The coastal path twists unpredictably along the cliff’s edge, hemmed in by pines that lean seaward as though pulled by something far below, as if straining to escape the silence inland. In the distance, a suspension bridge swings in a slow, uneasy arc, its rope complaining in guttural creaks. The water lies empty of boats, the air empty of human sound. All they see is the vast sprawl of the sea, its horizon drawn too near, like Ito is quietly folding in on itself. 

They follow the path until the pines thin, giving way to a small inlet where the cliffside slopes into a narrow strip of rock and sand. This is where the fishermen had found the first body, where the tide seemed to deposit its dead for reasons none of the locals could explain. The body is still there, nearly swallowed by the shore, its shape wrapped in layers of damp sand and salt like a crude burial shroud. What skin shows is sunken and gray, the edges of the face blurred by crusted seafoam. The fishermen hadn’t wanted to touch it. Neither had the police. No one had, until the so-called city shamans arrived. The air is heavier here, the salt sharper, mixed with that same cloying rot Suguru had caught at the harbor. The sand is mottled with damp patches where seawater has seeped in, darkening the grains to near black. Stray lengths of kelp sprawl across the ground like limp, slick ribbons, their edges frayed by the tide. Even from a distance, the water inside the inlet feels wrong. Its surface is still between waves, as if it's holding its breath before shuddering forward again. Satoru crouches at the shoreline, his sunglasses sliding low on his nose as he squints at the water, but Suguru hangs back, eyes moving between the cliff shadows and the pale stretch of horizon. Somewhere in the churn, something moves— too slow for a fish, too steady for driftwood— and the hairs on the back of his neck lift. 

“Satoru,” he whispers, getting ready to summon his hookworm curse in a flash. He realizes later Satoru had already seen it, already broken it down into its weaknesses and strengths, its attacks and counterattacks. Suguru feels it first in the hollow behind his sternum; a small, animal alarm that translates into cold along the skin and a tightening in his fingers. When he lets his gaze drop beneath the oil-slick surface, there’s a shape there: slow-moving shadow work, limbs or tendrils folded in on themselves, the sort of motion that belongs to something waiting rather than hunting. He didn’t expect it to reveal itself so quickly, though it isn’t looking at them. For reasons Suguru can’t name, it isn’t moving to strike. The pause feels deliberate, like a predator holding still to listen for a second sound. He knows, with the same blunt certainty he uses to read Satoru’s next move when they’re sparring, that it’s not coming for them yet. The water carries the faintest shimmer of cursed energy, a residue that ripples against the surface like oil, pooling heavier where the waves break against the inlet’s curve. They move a step further into the inlet, boots sinking into the dark, damp sand, and there, where the water narrows and the rocks form a small hollow, are the places the fishermen had pointed to. Two nights after the first, the second and third had been found there, dragged close together by the tide and fixed in a grotesque intimacy. The bodies lay half-ashore, limbs tangled as if hugging to keep from being pulled away, kelp braided around wrists and ankles, seaweed clinging to hair. Their faces bore an arrested tension, as though whatever had taken them had frozen the last flicker of will in their muscles, leaving the features stretched and wrong. Their skin was waterborne pale and blotched, a faint crust of brine breaking over dark, branching lines of cursed residue. Up close, the marks looked less like stains and more like something that had rooted in the flesh, ink-black filaments tracing toward the eyes and mouth, as if still searching for a way back inside. One of the hands remained clenched in the other’s jacket, nails broken down to the quick from the pressure of the grip; a small, terrible proof of the violence of cursed death. 

Suguru straightens slowly, eyes still on the hollow where the bodies are resting. He prays for them silently. “It’s at least a Grade 2,” he says, voice low, the words weighed down by the sight in front of them. “Maybe higher.”

Satoru nods, that faint, lopsided smile pulling at his mouth. “Piece of cake, then.”

Suguru exhales through his nose. “You always say that before it gets messy.”

“That’s because it’s always true.”

He scoffs, and finally lets his eyes shift from the water to Satoru. “Just— be careful.”

“Careful’s boring.”

“Yeah. But you’ll do it anyway.” Suguru adjusts the grip on his bag, turning toward the inlet’s mouth. “I trust you.” 

Satoru’s face brightens, but his eyes, behind the shades, are sharp, on the hunt already. “And I trust you, partner. Let’s clean this up.”

The inlet is quiet in the way an animal holds still before it pounces, still, but thrumming with intent. The water reflects nothing, the sky above a thin wash of gray that seems to bow lower the longer they stand there. Suguru keeps his gaze fixed on the middle of the inlet. “It’s here,” he says, quiet in anticipation. “It’s been here the whole time.”

Satoru looks right at it, lips curling into something close to a smirk. “Guess it finally wants to say hello.”

The water ripples from pressure, the surface dimpling inward as if a giant’s fingertip were pressing against it. Then the sea peels open. A slow spiral of displacement widens until the water is bending back over itself, sheets of green-gray rolling away to reveal something moving beneath.

It doesn’t breach all at once. First come the limbs, tendril-like, but jointed, slick as if greased in oil. Barnacles crust over the ridges, and long shreds of kelp hang like rotting banners. Then the torso emerges: a tangle of translucent sinew stretched over bone lattices, the ribs gleaming faintly as they flex. Beneath the membrane, shadowy shapes twitch and coil, curses feeding on curses. Its head, if it can be called that, pushes free last. A domed shell of calcified bone, split down the center, opens and closes in stuttering motions. Inside: rings of teeth as thin as sewing needles, endlessly spiraling toward a black center that doesn’t reflect light. From either side, two cavernous sockets pulse faintly with a sluggish, abyssal glow. The cursed energy coming off it rolls over them like a deep-sea current: cold, crushing, and metallic on the tongue. Suguru’s curses stir restlessly in his shadow, sensing the magnitude of what’s in front of them.

It moves with the deliberate lunge of a predator already mid-strike. Two limbs punch into the sand, spraying grit into the air as it launches forward in a low, unnervingly fluid arc. Satoru doesn’t wait. His hand lifts, palm open, and space collapses in front of him with a hollow, resonant pop. Blue swells to life, a distortion so intense the air bends visibly toward it. The cursed spirit’s advance stutters as the pull grips it, limbs splaying out, chunks of beach and driftwood tearing loose and vanishing into the distortion.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” Satoru calls without looking back.

Suguru moves, his shadow blooming outward into a rush of shapes. Hookworm curses thick as cables, their black, glistening bodies wrapping around the spirit’s lower limbs and burrowing into the sand to anchor them. From above, a cloud of winged curses drops in a coordinated dive, talons slicing at its back. Each strike shears away strips of translucent flesh, sending ropes of muscle and fluid splattering into the tide. The spirit’s response is a soundless scream, felt more than heard, a vibration that shivers through the ground, making the tide shudder at the shoreline. The water around it churns with a growing tempest of cursed energy, thickening and writhing as if the spirit itself were summoning the ocean’s fury to its aid. Jagged shards of cursed energy crackle along its limbs, glowing with an ominous light that flickers dangerously in the spray of seawater. A tendril snaps free from the pull and lashes at Suguru with harpoon speed. He sidesteps, planting one foot and snapping his hand upward, releasing a wave of cursed energy honed to a blade’s edge. The tendril falls in two, brine jetting from the stump and hissing where it hits the sand, leaving pockmarks like acid burns.

It thrashes, pulling against Blue, but Satoru is already tightening it, collapsing the distortion until it’s no bigger than a coin. Satoru steps forward, water pooling around his boots. He lifts his hand, and the air bends. Blue flares, a sphere of impossible pull, drawing the mist and sea toward it with crushing inevitability. The light floods the inlet, turning the waves into molten sapphire. The cursed spirit roars, a phlegmy, cracked howl, muscles coiling beneath translucent sinew as it twists away from the crushing pull of Blue. Its mucous limbs snap and swing with brutal precision, slicing through the air in wide, savage sweeps meant to tear Satoru apart. But Satoru is already moving ahead of it, each dodge and counterstrike calculated. It’s effortless. His eyes flick over the spirit’s pattern, predicting its rhythm, anticipating its feints and strikes before they fully form. When a tendril whips toward his side, Satoru pivots, redirecting the momentum with a flick of his wrist that sends a crashing wave surging toward the spirit’s exposed flank. He exploits every opening Blue’s pull granted, using the distortion’s inescapable gravity to funnel the cursed energy where it would hurt the most.

Suguru catches himself watching, he can’t not. In the shifting halo of cursed energy, Satoru’s grin is a surge of electricity, untamed, feral in its joy. Seawater runs down his hair and lashes, each drop catching the glow as if the sea had shattered just for him. He’s spitting water, eyes wild, a man lit from within by the happiness of the fight. The spirit’s whole frame buckles toward the singularity, joints bending in ways that shatter cartilage and burst membranes. 

Suguru seizes the distraction Satoru’s afforded him, letting the hookworms writhe deeper into the gashes carved open by the winged curses. They sink inside, tearing through from within, splintering bone, shredding muscle. The domed skull splits fully now, the teeth within snapping uselessly as its body caves.

Satoru drops the core of Blue directly into its chest cavity. For a second, the implosion is silent. Then everything collapses inward, folding in on itself with such force the surrounding water is yanked forward in a single, massive surge. When the distortion winks out, nothing remains but a swirling black residue boiling on the water’s surface, breaking apart into oily shimmers before dissolving entirely.

The inlet exhales. The sky feels a fraction higher again.

They only talk about it on the train to Odawara. The train rocks gently as it cuts through the coast, the gray smear of the sea sliding by on one side, low, pine-covered hills on the other. Suguru’s got his elbows on his knees, eyes half-lidded against the afternoon light strobing in and out between the tunnels. His stomach still turns in uneven waves, the ghost of that curse clinging to his tongue no matter how hard he works the ginger candy. Brine and rot. Salt and iron. He almost hadn’t taken it in at all, not with the way its energy crawled against his skin, but he never wants to take it in. He does it every time regardless. 

Satoru’s sprawled across the opposite seat, long legs kicked out, sunglasses in his hand as he leans forward just enough to look at him. “So,” he says, voice casual, like they’re talking about the weather, “What the hell was that thing’s deal?”

Suguru shuts his eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose until the nausea ebbs. The taste lingers, saltwater and something foul, like fish left too long in the sun. The image comes anyway: slick jointed limbs, patches of barnacle growth, a mouth lined with teeth that didn’t quite fit.

“Could be some kind of yuki-onna offshoot,” he says finally. “Not snow, though. Saltwater. Tied to the coast. Born from the fear of the sea itself.”

Satoru leans back against the seat, gaze sliding to the window as the train bursts out of a tunnel into open coastline. “Makes sense. People drown all the time. Boats vanish. Or you’re stuck out there with nothing but water in every direction. That’s enough to make anyone lose their head.”

“Maybe.” Suguru shifts, resting an elbow on the window ledge. “Could also be like the iso-onna, the ones that cling to rocks and pull you in. Or the funayurei. Sailors who never made it home, taking it out on whoever’s unlucky enough to cross their waters.”

“Funayurei usually go after ships, though. This one was swimming straight for us.”

“True,” Suguru says. “Iso-onna, funayurei, umibozu, they’re all variations on the same thing. Something out there wants you gone. This one just adapted. Shocking enough to make you stop thinking, then it drags you down before you realize what’s happening.”

He watches the waves break against the rocks far below. “It didn’t feel like it was trying to kill quick. More like it wanted to keep you under. Let the tide work you over. That taste—” he pauses, sucks in the bile threatening to rise, “It’s been at it for years.”

Satoru makes a low noise of agreement, sunglasses tapping idly against his knee. “Guess that explains why it was such a pain to exorcise.”

The tracks curve inland for a stretch, and the view swaps to low fields dotted with persimmon trees, their fruit a faint ember-orange in the pale light. The train rattles past the last glint of sea and into the quiet sprawl between towns, narrow farm plots cut into rectangles, bordered by low stone walls and irrigation channels that catch the middling sun. Scarecrows lean in the wind like they’ve been standing too long, and laundry lines sag under the weight of heavy work clothes. Beyond it all, the Hakone mountains hover faint in the distance, their slopes softened by a thin haze. Odawara’s close now, just a quick stop to scrape another low-level nuisance off the map; some earthbound thing rotting in the rafters of an abandoned soba shop, snapping windows and keeping the locals from stepping too close after dark. The kind of job that’s more tedious than dangerous, but it still chips away at their sleep, at their minds.

Suguru leans his temple against the glass, watching the neat geometry of fields slip past. Odawara isn’t even the end of it; there’s still Yokosuka after, and the trouble festering by Kannonzaki Lighthouse. Mariners talk about lights that don’t belong to the beacon, pale drifting shapes out on the waves, moving in ways the tide can’t explain. Instruments go haywire within a mile of shore, compasses swinging wildly, radios choking with static. A few people who’ve gone to look say they lost hours without realizing it, came back with no memory of where they’d been. Whatever’s out there, it’s not in a hurry. It’s waiting, and they’re heading right into the mouth of it one day from now. 

This is how it’s been more often than not lately. Trains instead of classrooms, the blur of countryside replacing the low hum of campus life. The weeks bleed together into a rhythm that feels less like living and more like serving some faceless mechanism, one that runs on the bodies and minds of jujutsu sorcerers, grinding them down until they’re just another replaceable part. It’s the same cycle their seniors lived through, the same one their juniors will inherit, a chain they all pretend isn’t there because the work has to be done, and there’s never enough hands to do it. There’s no pause between exorcisms, no real rest, only the shuffle from one cursed wound to another, no matter how far, no matter how late. Suguru lets his eyes drift from the glass to Satoru across the aisle, slouched in his seat, sunglasses dangling between his fingers. He’s tapping one knee against the seat leg, restless even in stillness, the peach wash of late afternoon brushing over the pale edges of his silhouette. The light drapes over him like it’s been waiting all day for this moment, catching in the silver-white of his hair and spilling down the lines of his face. It threads through his lashes, pools warm at the hollow of his throat, makes him look almost unreal, like the world bent just slightly to frame him exactly this way, and Suguru happened to be the only one who noticed. 

He remembers that afternoon in their first year, sitting cross-legged on their blue corduroy couch, wondering if there would ever be a point where they would be just allowed to exist again. No curses waiting like open jaws in the dark. Just time to be young and whole and unneeded. The thought feels impossibly far now, but he’s grateful Satoru’s here with him through it all. They’ve spent more time side by side than apart, drifting from futon to futon in the same drafty ryokans, their bags slumped together by the door. Meals have been whatever they could scavenge between jobs, half-decent shokudo with cracked formica tables, scummy broth that left an oil sheen on the surface, noodles gone soft from sitting too long. Satoru always complained, theatrically, chopsticks waving as he declared it the worst meal of his life until the next one, which was inevitably worse. Suguru would remind him to not swing his chopsticks around like that and then they’d laugh about it anyway, heads tipping toward each other over the steam. In the midst of all the exhaustion and rot, it’s been a quiet kind of grace: to be able to look up and find Satoru there, catching his eye just because he can. 

Odawara turned out exactly as expected, tedious, not taxing. The curse had been clinging to the rafters of the soba shop, its shape barely holding together, more sour air and malice than anything tangible. A few minutes’ work and it unraveled into nothing, leaving the place still and echoing again. The owners wouldn’t open for weeks yet, but the job was done, the ledger cleared for now. Suguru picked up a packet of extra strong spearmint gum. 

They ended up in a different soba shop a few streets over, one still very much alive, lacquered tables worn soft at the edges, the broth’s scent drifting from the kitchen in curling waves. Satoru ordered like he’d fought for hours instead of minutes: two large bowls, tempura, and a plate of pickles just to see if Suguru would say something.

“You’re gonna die before a curse even gets the chance,” Suguru said. Steam fogged up Satoru’s glasses as he leaned forward.

Satoru slurped obnoxiously, grinning. “At least I’ll die a happy man.”

The rest of the meal passed in that lazy, familiar rhythm before the train took them to Yokosuka, ticking up north before lurching south, the line running out towards the sea again. By the time they reach the cliff of Kannonzaki Lighthouse, the air shifts, salt slicing through the green scent of the shrubs lining the narrow trail. The lighthouse rose somewhere ahead, hidden for now by a shoulder of land, its pulse of light eerily absent. The climb was steeper than it looked, and for a while, they move in easy silence, their breathing the only interruption to the distant rush of waves.

Satoru slows to flick a pebble from the path, watching it tumble out of sight toward the rocks below. “Funny thing,” he says, like playing it off as a non-sequitur, “how none of this would even be here if people didn’t screw it up first.”

Suguru glances at him, “None of what?”

“This,” Satoru gestures loosely at the overgrown trail, the silent lighthouse, the air thick with something they hadn’t yet found. “The curses. The messes. All of it.”

It is the kind of thought he drops like a stone into still water, waiting to see if Suguru would follow the ripples. “Don’t you ever think about that?” Satoru asks as they pick their way over a patch of loose rock, hands shoved in his pockets like the incline doesn’t bother him at all. 

Suguru ducks under a low branch, catching it so it wouldn’t snap back into Satoru’s face. “That’s the job description, isn’t it? They think, they fear, they curse. And we spend our lives cleaning it up.”

Satoru cranes his head, pausing to watch a fat green beetle crawl along the spine of a leaf. “Kinda makes you wonder if we’re actually solving anything. Or just mopping the floor while the pipe keeps leaking.”

Suguru exhales, the heat of the climb making his shirt cling between his shoulders. “Pipe’s not gonna fix itself. And they’re not gonna stop being people.”

“Maybe they should,” Satoru mutters, half-smiling, before stepping around a puddle. “Could save us a lot of train fare.”

“You know the school compensates us for that, right?” 

They keep going, boots scuffing against uneven dirt and rock, the air cooling the closer they get to the cliffside. Satoru’s voice is light, but there is something under it, something worn down by the constant motion, the endless small disasters. Suguru doesn’t press. 

“Not the point.” Satoru’s smile is quick but tired, his words skipping between the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. “We keep running all over the country to patch up messes made by people who’ll never know we were here. Half the time they don’t even believe in the things we’re stopping. Kinda kills the motivation.”

Suguru looks at him, the side of Satoru’s face caught in the slanting light between the branches. “So what, you want thanks? A parade?”

“Wouldn’t say no,” Satoru says, pretending to think about it. “Maybe a national holiday. ‘Satoru Gojo Appreciation Day.’”

“That would be the day more curses get born out of spite,” Suguru replies, and they both laugh, the sound swallowed by the wind off the water.

The tang of the ocean weaves through the scent of sun-warmed leaves. The sound of the sea is clear now, a strong hiss and crash growing louder with every step, salt riding the breeze in sharp bursts. Satoru stops once to pick a small burr from the cuff of his pants, flicking it aside. “Honestly, if non-shamans could just keep their emotions in check, we’d be out of a job. But they can’t. They won’t.”

“That’s humanity for you,” Suguru says. “They break, and something else is born in the cracks. We’re here to make sure what crawls out doesn’t eat them alive.”

“Yeah,” Satoru says, quieter now, eyes fixed on the dirt path ahead where the trees began to thin. “And sometimes I wonder if the thing doing the eating is us.”

Suguru doesn’t answer right away. The sea fills the space between them, the pulsing crash and retreat against the rocks below. When he finally speaks, it was with the kind of ease that came from knowing the conversation wouldn’t end here. Not today, not tomorrow. “If it is, we’re at least the lesser evil.”

The lighthouse slips into view at the far end of the trail, its tall frame pale against the deepening sky. Satoru glances at him, letting the words settle. Lesser evil. Suguru could say that and mean it. He could believe it down to the bone, carry the weight of it without flinching. Satoru wasn’t built that way. Not really. He’d been raised in a house where strength was everything, where he was the uncontested strongest, where the weak didn’t matter unless they were leverage. Protecting them wasn’t noble, it was a chore relegated to those who had to prove something. A responsibility for someone else to deal with. And yet here he is, running himself ragged across the country putting out fires that would never stop burning, because Suguru thinks it matters. Because Suguru believes people deserve saving even when they are the ones birthing the curses in the first place.

Satoru never minds the fight itself, ending a curse is the simplest part of the job. What weighs on him was knowing why it always fell to people like him to do it. He cares, probably more than he should, about the ones who couldn’t see the danger coming, about the ones who wouldn’t stand a chance if they did. The twiggy kid stuffed into the locker who doesn’t know any better. The tired construction worker who doesn’t realize the brush against his back up at the scaffolding isn’t a cold draft. Yet, it gnaws at him that strength is a lottery, and the winners are the ones expected to keep everyone else safe. Born with it, stuck with it. The world calls it a gift; most days it feels like a responsibility carved into his bones. There are moments he wishes he could set it down, just to see what it would be like to live without that weight pressing between his shoulders. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. There is something intoxicating about being able to hold the line when no one else could, about knowing he could meet the worst the world had to offer and come out the other side. He wants humanity to learn to do the same, to not always need someone like him, but until that day comes, he will keep showing up and he trusts Suguru will too, right alongside him.

Suguru has this deep, maddening faith in people, an unshakable belief that they are worth the trouble no matter how many times they prove otherwise. He sees strength as something you used because you could, a tool in your arsenal, but where Satoru bristles at how few people ever bothered to hone it, Suguru seems content to meet them where they were. ‘It’s our job to protect the weak’, he says when he spots the cynicism kicking in, like a mantra, like a lifeline. For Satoru, it is a constant itch under his skin: the knowledge that if more people sharpened their own blades, fewer of these messes would land in his hands. Fewer of those days Suguru spent bent over the sink, willing the nausea to go away. 

Satoru, not prone to idolatry and yet, finds the two of them in Atlas, shoulder to shoulder under a sky no one even notices, no one could notice, holding it there so it wouldn’t crush the ones beneath. Some days the weight felt impossible, others it felt like the only thing keeping him upright. And yet, watching Suguru, he couldn’t dismiss the other side of it. Suguru’s way makes the grind feel different, less like holding up the sky and more like choosing to keep it from falling. He meets people in all their fear and fragility without resentment, without the bitterness Satoru sometimes feels creeping in after too many train rides and too many empty towns. He loves it, he realizes. Loves his steadiness. Loves his stubborn faith. Loves his biting jibes. Loves those stupid bangs. Loves his strength. Loves his weaknesses. Loves—

They are quiet for a stretch. A branch snags his sleeve, and he flicks it away, letting the thought tumble out without much fanfare. “You ever notice,” Satoru says now, kicking at a loose stone and watching it skip down toward the cliff’s edge, “that curses born from fear feel-” he pauses, wondering what the hell he’s asking, “-heavier? Meaner?”

Suguru gave him a sidelong look, brow creasing just enough to show his surprise. “What, you getting philosophical on me now?”

“Just curious. Feels like something you’d have a theory about.”

“Well, maybe,” Suguru replies, a touch shy. “Fear sticks around longer, maybe makes curses harder to get rid of. Hatred, grief, terror. The curses just grow to fill them.” 

Satoru hums and looks up, traces of daylight dappled through the trees catching in his hair. “And the ones from envy? Or resentment?”

“They’re sharper, dangerous in a different way. They hurt to fight and hurt to look at,” Suguru shrugs, “The shape of the curse matches the shape of what birthed it.”

“Guess that’s why I like them,” Satoru murmurs, almost to himself. “They’re honest. Ugly and honest. People aren’t like that. They pretend.”

Suguru glances at him, catching that flicker. The rare, honest glint that came when Satoru let something slip past his usual mask. Beneath all the bravado, there was still the young heir who measured worth in strength because that was the only language he’d been taught, the softer part of him shaped by years of standing between danger and the people who’d never even see it coming, a man who has learned to live with the weight because putting it down is never an option.

“You don’t have to like people to protect them,” Suguru says.

“No,” Satoru agrees. “But it’s easier when someone’s around to remind me why it’s worth it.”

Suguru meets his gaze, shifting across his face, like he’s prepared to stand there as long as it takes for Satoru to look away, like he is looking for something. An answer of some sort. A confirmation in the arch of his eyebrows, in the flare of his nostrils, the tilt of his neck, but Satoru doesn't look away, not yet. The air between them sizzles with the rising urgency of taking care of whatever is in that lighthouse a few feet away. They need to move, they need to get out of here before nightfall, they need to board the next train to Yokohama for another exorcism at Minato Mirai but Satoru finds himself cataloguing stupid little details in the seconds they don’t have spare: the way Suguru’s hair clung to his temples from the climb, the faint crease at the corner of his mouth as he is holding back a smile, the way his shadow cuts across the trail to brush against Satoru’s boots.

The dirt underfoot shifts as they leave the narrow path and step onto the lighthouse grounds. The tower looms above them, its silent glass eye fixed on the horizon. The smell of salt thickens, sharp enough that it could almost be coming from the thing inside, and the sea sounds closer than it should be, the crash and pull echoing off the stone. 

“Most people,” Satoru says finally, voice quieter as they near the weathered door, “need a reason to be worth the trouble. You’re not most people.”

Suguru’s brow lifts just slightly, like he was about to ask what he meant by that, but Satoru is already glancing away, letting the words dissolve into the space between them. He tugs his sunglasses from his pocket, the plastic cool in his fingers.

“Hey,” Satoru says, and it was the kind of hey that doesn’t need a response, so Suguru just waits, watching him sweep his eyes across the ocean spread out below, then back to Suguru for a beautiful stretched out second.

The shades slide into place, hiding whatever flickered there a moment ago. “Just be careful.”

“That’s my line,” Suguru says, opening the door for the two of them. 

August, 2006

It takes Suguru two tries to break open the coconut. It takes Satoru one, and of course, he makes it look easy. He braces it in one hand, the other swinging the heel of his palm in a clean strike right along its center. There’s a sharp crack, a neat split, and the two halves fall open like a book down the middle. Suguru watches the way the movement flows through him, shoulders rolling, forearm tightening, tendons flaring subtly under sun-flushed skin. Down at the shoreline, Kuroi is holding up the hem of her skirt while Riko charges headlong into the saltwater, her laughter carried back on the wind. Satoru leans on his elbows on the sand with the sun gilding every angle of him, his red Hawaiian shirt loud against the gentle blues and creams of the beach, the peach-pink heat of the day painting him from collar to collarbone. Suguru can’t look away. His hair is as white as the sand beneath their feet, as the wisps of cloud scattered overhead, as the soft meat of the coconut in his hands; he is the most beautiful thing on this beach, which is saying something, considering they’re in Okinawa.

Suguru wipes his palms against his shorts, partly to clear the grit, partly to disguise the way they’ve gone warm. Satoru tosses one half of the coconut toward him with an easy flick, and Suguru catches it against his chest, the shell rough and still damp from the ocean spray. 

“Show-off,” he says, though it doesn’t quite land as an insult.

Satoru grins, wide and unbothered, settling into the sand with the other half, sipping at the cloudy water like he hasn’t just made a spectacle out of splitting it. Beyond them, Riko is already waist-deep, splashing at the waves with all the fearlessness only a fourteen year old can carry, while Kuroi stands just shy of the foam, her shoes dangling from one hand, her skirt bunched neatly in the other. The water glitters in shifting fragments, sunlight breaking it into coins that scatter and vanish before they can be caught.

Suguru takes a slow drink, the sweet freshness a counterpoint to the salted wind. Satoru leans back on one elbow, sunglasses slipping a fraction down his nose, watching the same shoreline but with that lazy, half-lidded expression Suguru knows too well; he’s not really looking at the sea at all.

“You’re staring,” Satoru says without turning his head. 

“Maybe I am,” Suguru replies, and leaves it at that. Somewhere down the beach, a seagull calls. Satoru tips his face toward the sky, hair glinting in the sun, and Suguru thinks, yeah, the island’s beautiful. But it still doesn’t stand a chance. 

They’ve been in Okinawa for two days now, one more than planned. A day carved out of borrowed time, stretched thin as seafoam. A break for all of them, sure, but really, it’s for Riko. An extra day to live. It doesn’t go unnoticed, not by any of them, that this is the last time she’ll get to see it: the waves tumbling over themselves in their endless rush to the shore, the tiny crabs scuttling sideways into the safety of their holes; the driftwood bleached pale and brittle as bone, the tide pools that glitter like bowls of glass, hiding darting silver fish and snails with fragile, painted shells. Even the humid press of salt air, even the stick of sand on her ankles; these are things she’ll never touch again.

Riko seems determined to devour it all, to laugh louder than the surf, to run until her lungs burn, to let her hair whip salt-stiff in the wind. Suguru watches her wade further into the shallows, and for a moment he envies her. Her ability to pretend the clock isn’t ticking. There’s a kind of courage in the way she meets death. Unflinching, almost casual, like she’s greeting an old friend rather than an ending. Suguru wonders how much of the bravado is real, and how much is a veil so thin it would rip apart if anyone pressed her to stay. Maybe no one’s ever tried to hand her a reason to hold on. Or maybe she wouldn’t take it anyway. Maybe she’s already folded herself around the truth, carrying it with the ease of someone who’s known all along that this was how it ends. But for him, for Satoru, for Kuroi, it’s all edges. Every sound, every color, every ripple of the tide feels sharper, heavier, weighted with the knowledge of finality that’s not even theirs. Even the sweetness of coconut on his tongue tastes fleeting, already slipping away. Riko shouts something back toward the shore, her voice breaking against the wind, and Kuroi raises a hand in answer, her shoes still dangling neatly from her fingers. Suguru follows the exchange with a hollow ache settling in his chest. She’s only fourteen. Fourteen, and yet she moves like someone older, like someone who has already rehearsed this farewell a hundred times in her head.

Beside him, Satoru shifts, the lazy sprawl of his body at odds with the quiet weight Suguru knows he carries. Sunglasses tilted, hair catching light like spun glass, he looks unbothered, as though the day is just another blur of sun and sea. But Suguru knows better. He can see it in the angle of his mouth, in the  still way he listens to Riko’s laughter; Satoru is memorizing it all, hoarding the details, holding onto them the only way he knows how. 

Suguru is memorizing the details too. The way their footsteps drag through the beach dunes, Riko’s sandals dangling from one hand while she insists the sand feels better between her toes. The way Satoru perks up when she points at the canoes lined up by the water’s edge, as if the very idea of it has chased away the weight he’d been carrying all morning. Kuroi trails behind them, careful as ever, her attention split between the path underfoot and the small figure darting ahead of her. It all feels almost ordinary. Four people meandering from one bit of shoreline to the next, sunburnt and salt-sticky, following a whim.

The tour carries them into Gesashi Bay, where the mangrove forest rises around them like a living cathedral. Roots twist out of the water in knotted tangles, arching high and dipping low, while the branches overhead weave together into a canopy that breaks the sun into shards of shifting gold. Their paddles cut slowly through the water, sending ripples skimming toward the banks. In the boat ahead, Riko leans forward, pointing out crabs skittering along the roots, her laughter ringing sharp and clear. Satoru lets her chatter fill the space, tilting his sunglasses down just enough to glance where she points, a smile tugging at his mouth. He looks, for all the world, like someone on vacation.

But Suguru notices more; the rigidity tucked beneath that ease, the faint stiffness in Satoru’s shoulders even as he pretends to match Riko’s carefree energy. He notices, too, how Kuroi sits straight in the bow of his own canoe, her eyes never wandering too long from Riko, as though she’s bracing for something she won’t name aloud. And Suguru feels it, that same undercurrent, laced through the dappled light and drifting water. The quiet dread. The choking guilt. His gaze drifts to the mangroves, their roots curling and merging into one another, thick knots of wood swallowing the water beneath. They remind him too much of Tengen’s barrier, of that great, gnarled tree waiting to merge with— erase— Riko tomorrow, to take that bright laugh and fold it into something vast and unrecognizable. He forces his paddle forward again, but the thought clings like the heat pressing down on the bay.

They don’t talk about it, he realizes, not really. That they’re escorting a child to her own doom for the sake of— he’s not exactly sure what. Balance, tradition, the greater good, words that sound like excuses when stacked against the slope of Riko’s smile. The most they’ve acknowledged is agreeing it’s up to her in the end. They won’t push her to the edge if she doesn’t want to be there. But they’re walking her right to the drop regardless. It doesn’t matter if they never place a hand on her back. They’ll still be the ones who brought her there. The thought eats away at him. He hears her laugh carry downstream, bright, careless, so alive, and the idea of it snuffed out makes his chest tighten in a way he can’t ignore. What does it make him, to sit there and keep paddling anyway? To play his part, knowing where this river ends? He tells himself it’s duty, necessity, inevitability, but none of those words taste right. He paddles until he can’t anymore. 

Suguru finds some respite under the blue washes of the Churaumi Aquarium, if respite looks like watching the harsh lines of Satoru’s back soften when he spots a cluster of clownfish weaving through anemones, their mouths working lazily at the fronds. And it does, he feels it in the way his own shoulders come down from his ears. Satoru leans closer to the glass, cooing under his breath, not unlike the way he’d fussed over capybaras back in Izu Shaboten. But fish, Suguru remembers, have always undone him more. A memory surfaces, hazy and gilded around the edges: on yet another mission in June, somewhere in the bowels of Tokyo, Satoru had nearly pressed his face flat against the glass of a dingy little tank in a pet store they had entered to escape the heat for a few minutes, raving about how the betta fish’s tail looked like silk in the water. He’d badgered Suguru for weeks afterward about buying one, despite their dorm rooms being a disaster zone and neither of them knowing the first thing about taking care of fish. They weren’t even entirely sure if they were allowed pets. When Suguru had finally snapped and asked what on earth he’d even do with it, Satoru had grinned, bright and thoughtless, and said, “Just watch it. Isn’t that enough?”

And maybe that’s what he’s doing now, Suguru thinks, as Satoru watches the fish drift and dart, every line of tension in his body easing in the glow of the tank. Just watching. Letting himself love something simple, tracing the movements of tiny scales with his eyes as if they hold a kind of salvation. Beside him, Riko presses her face near the glass, pointing at the quick flicker of a ribbon eel vanishing into its burrow, the elegant drift of jellyfish like lanterns suspended in water. She lingers the longest in front of a tank of lionfish, transfixed by the delicate spread of their spines. Kuroi hangs back, but Suguru notices her eyes soften at Riko’s wonder, a rare break in her careful guard. The three of them scatter and gather again in front of each display, laughter or small remarks echoing in the dim corridors, footsteps tapping against the aquarium’s polished floors.

And through it all, Suguru follows in step, letting the shifting blues and greens wash over him, the hum of filtration systems blending into the muffled awe of children around them. Every tank feels like a prelude, each glass wall opening onto a world stranger and more fragile than the last. The seconds trickle past like water through the stream by the goldfish tank, each one sliding out of reach the moment he notices it. The whole day feels tilted, off-balance, like he’s been walking with one shoe heavier than the other. And in that lopsided weight grows a sudden, blinding urgency, to find Satoru in all this glass and light, to tell him this can’t be what it looks like, that they can’t be guards escorting a cuffed and blindfolded innocent to the gallows. To say something that cuts through the quiet dread curling in his gut. But what clings sharpest at the back of his teeth isn’t defiance at all. It’s the simpler, selfish impulse to tell him he looks beautiful like this, haloed in light.

The hallway opens up suddenly, the corridor spilling them into the heart of the Kuroshio Sea. A wall of glass stretches before them, so tall it swallows the room, so wide it feels less like an exhibit and more like stepping onto the floor of the ocean itself. The water rolls in shades of deep cobalt, light filtering down in fractured beams, shadows moving like passing clouds. Schools of silver sweep by in fluid arcs, scattering when the hulking shape of a manta ray glides overhead, wings unfurling in slow, impossible grace. Children press their palms to the glass; parents murmur, pointing upward, Riko is already darting to the far end of the room, her voice bouncing high as she names each fish she can recognize. Kuroi follows at a slower pace.

Suguru stands still, anchored in place by the sheer immensity of it, by the silence that seems to bloom within all that motion. And then he realizes, only Satoru remains at his side. Not chattering this time, not pressing forward like he usually does, but quiet. His sunglasses dangle loosely from one hand, forgotten, his eyes fixed on the slow approach of a great white shark, its bulk cutting clean through the dark water as though it owns it. For once, there’s no grin, no chattering commentary, only a soft intake of breath before Satoru murmurs, almost reverent, “Isn’t that something?” 

Suguru looks, because he should. At the shark, at the way the light bends across the glass, at the impossible scale of it all. But his gaze slips. To the reflection on the glass instead: Satoru’s profile, all edges blurred into softness by the shifting blue glow. The light catches on the pale curve of his cheekbone, scatters across the faint shadow of his lashes, and settles in the slight part of his mouth as he breathes. Just Satoru— eyes wide with something close to wonder.

Suguru feels it hit him, sudden and disarming. The sharp ache of how young they still are, and how fleeting this softness might be. He notices the slope of Satoru’s shoulders, how the tension that rides him everywhere else seems to dissolve here, replaced by a boyish awe that tugs painfully at Suguru’s chest. He wants, stupidly, to bottle this moment, to keep it tucked somewhere safe where the world can’t strip it from them. Something too large to name swells between his ribs, an ache edged with tenderness, and he hears himself answer, helpless. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s beautiful.” 

For a breath, Satoru doesn’t look away from the shark. But then his head tilts, just enough, and Suguru knows he’s been caught. Through the pane of glass, their reflections collide, his own gaze meeting Satoru’s in the shifting blue. It lasts only a second, but it feels longer, stretched taut, like the water itself is holding its breath. And then Suguru turns. Really turns, no longer pretending to study the tank, no longer hiding behind half-glances. He lets himself look at the clear sweep of Satoru’s profile, at the faint smudge of tiredness beneath his eyes, at the way the light breaks over him. It’s all there in front of him, all his to look at, and Suguru doesn’t flinch away. 

Satoru must feel it, Suguru’s eyes lingering like a hand against his skin, because his brows lift, just slightly. “What are you looking at?” he asks, voice low, as if the question is only half-serious.

“You,” Suguru answers before he can think better of it. The word slips out plain, and it hangs between them with a weight that makes Satoru’s lips part. For once, he doesn’t have a quip ready. A faint flush rises along his cheekbones, startling against the wash of aquarium light, and he looks away a beat too late for it to matter. 

Suguru doesn’t let him escape. “I’m always looking at you,” he says, softer now, almost an admission. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Satoru blinks, then meets his gaze again, and there’s something vulnerable, real, in the way his mouth tilts upward, the faint contours of shyness. “You did,” he murmurs. “And I told you not to stop.”

Suguru’s brow furrows faintly, the corner of his mouth tugging. “I don’t remember you saying that.”

“I thought you’d have known,” Satoru replies, the blue light flickering in his eyes like a secret laid bare. “Don’t stop looking at me.”

Suguru exhales, a quiet sound that might be a laugh, might be something closer to surrender. “I couldn’t,” he says, “even if I wanted to.” 

Satoru’s hand twitches at his side, so slight it could be mistaken for nothing, but Suguru has been watching too closely to miss it. He’s always been watching too closely. He doesn’t think. His own hand shifts, fingers brushing lightly against Satoru’s knuckles, testing it. The contact is barely there, but it sparks through him sharp and alive, like a wire touched to flame. He feels the jolt travel all the way up his arm, lodging in his chest, and he almost pulls back. Almost. But then Satoru’s fingers curl, hesitant but deliberate, catching against his own.

Suguru stills. The world seems to recede, the endless drift of fish and the soft crush of water against glass fading until there’s only this: the quiet heat of Satoru’s skin, the strain of his heart threatening to beat out of his ribcage, burst out of his skin, until it’s on his sleeve for everyone to see, for Satoru to see. How it beats just for him. 

Satoru doesn’t look at him right away, eyes fixed instead on the slow sweep of a manta ray overhead, as though he can pretend this isn’t happening. But the faint pink still lingering at his ears gives him away, and when he finally glances over, it’s quick, shy, and devastating.

Suguru tightens his fingers, just enough to let him know he won’t let go. Satoru feels the pressure of Suguru’s hand tighten, grounding, unrelenting, and his breath catches before he can help it. He swallows, eyes flicking once more to the glass as if it can offer him an escape, but the words are already pushing past the barricade of his throat.

“You’ll ruin me, you know,” he says, so softly it almost gets lost beneath the hum of the water. His lips curve like he means it to be a joke, but the crack in his voice betrays him, lays him bare.

Suguru doesn’t flinch, doesn’t laugh. He only watches, probing, as though he’s memorizing every flicker of expression. “Then let me,” he murmurs back. 

Satoru’s fingers tighten around his in answer, no hesitation this time. He finally turns fully toward him, the aquarium light catching in his eyes, making them shimmer like the sea. “I think I already have,” he says, and there’s no armor left in his voice.

Suguru’s breath hitches, just faintly, at the words. He doesn’t answer right away, not when Satoru is still looking at him like that, bare of all the bluster and shine that usually shields him. And then Satoru shifts, a subtle step forward. It isn’t much, just enough to narrow the space between them, but it’s enough for Suguru to see things he never could from a distance: the way the light catches at the tips of his lashes, the fine scatter of pale freckles dusting across the bridge of his nose, tracing the slope of his cheekbones, the way a single lock of hair has slipped loose against his temple, how his lips part with each uneven breath as though he’s also caught in this same gravity.

Suguru can’t help staring, can’t help cataloguing every small detail like they’re treasures he was never meant to hold. Up close, Satoru doesn’t look untouchable. He looks human. Fragile, even. And that makes Suguru’s chest ache all the more. The hand in his own is warm, anchoring, and when Suguru finally exhales, it shudders out of him like he’s been holding it in for years. “You don’t even know what you do to me,” he whispers, not sure if he means for Satoru to hear it.

But Satoru does. His lips tilt, soft and uncertain, and the step he’s already taken feels like it could so easily become another. “Where is all this coming from?”

Suguru’s not sure. He’s not sure where he’s found this fountain of courage within him; perhaps it’s come from that peculiar sense of dread rising through the day, like the seconds are counting down toward something he can’t place a finger on. Perhaps he’s just tired of keeping it all down, of looking away when he’s looked at. Or maybe it’s the gnawing sense that they’re running out of time, unsure if they have any left at all.

He thinks he might be borrowing courage from everywhere at once: from the countless evenings Satoru’s spent sprawled across his bed, smashing buttons on his console with a grin sharp enough to split the room; from the tchotchkes and wrappers and scraps he’s left scattered over Suguru’s desk, colonizing the space so thoroughly there’s nowhere he can look without being reminded of him; from the ramen runs at midnight, the quiet walks back from missions when neither of them spoke but their shoulders brushed, the cheap rings Satoru once insisted were “his thing” before losing them in a week. All these small, ordinary fragments of years since 2005, so woven into his days that Suguru can’t imagine the shape of his life without them, come crashing together in this moment, coalescing into a single point in his chest. It feels like a red string tugging, pulling taut since the day he first laid eyes on that boy with hair cropped at his neck, standing a few feet away at the entrance of their school. And now, at last, he sees where it’s been leading him. Right here. Right in front of him.

Suguru’s mouth twists, like he almost wants to swallow the words back. “Hell if I know,” he mutters, though it’s softer than the words deserve. His eyes stay fixed on Satoru. “Maybe it’s just been sitting there too long.”

Satoru studies him, eyes sharp in a way that makes it hard to breathe, in a raw kind of curiosity. “So we’re doing this now?” There’s no bite in his voice.

“Doesn’t feel like I had a choice,” Suguru admits, half under his breath. He doesn’t say more than that, not about the strange weight in his chest that’s been pressing down on him all day, not about the way the seconds have felt like they’re slipping through his fingers. He doesn’t tell Satoru that maybe it’s fear, or inevitability, or just exhaustion from holding so much down for so long. All of it stays caught in his throat, and what comes out instead is just the truth: that this, right now, was always going to spill over.

Something flickers across Satoru’s face, surprise, maybe, or something close to recognition, and he presses his lips together as though he’s fighting the urge to smile. “Then don’t take it back.”

Suguru frowns faintly. “What?”

“Say it again,” Satoru murmurs, a shade closer now. “That you’re always looking. That you won’t stop.”

Suguru holds his gaze, heart thundering like it’s trying to force the words out of him. And when they come, they’re unbearably honest. “I never have.” Suguru lifts his free hand before he can think any better of it, fingers brushing lightly against the sharp line of Satoru’s jaw before settling against his cheek. His skin is warm, startlingly so, and Suguru can feel the tremor in his own hand where it cups the curve of his face. He leans in just slightly, not enough to close the distance, just enough to make his devotion plain. “I never will.”

“Hey,” Satoru says, and it’s not the kind of hey that needs a response, so Suguru just looks at him, drinking him in like he’s been starved of the sight. The sharp lines, the small hesitations, the unabashed nearness; every part of him Suguru never lets himself linger on too long. He looks at the curve of his mouth when it softens, at the line of his throat working around words that almost don’t make it out, at the way his fingers twitch once in Suguru’s hold but don’t pull away. For once, he allows himself to drink it in as if memorizing the details could anchor him here.

Satoru looks at him straight-on, “You think you’re the only one losing sleep over this?” His voice is heavy, vulnerable in a way it never is, and there’s no mistaking the rawness in it. Suguru’s not entirely sure which part he’s talking about, the part where they hand a teenager over to her death in less than twenty four hours, or this crackling, undefined thing between them that’s only been expanding and taking up all the space in between them until there’s nowhere else to look. Either way, Suguru’s hand steadies against his cheek, thumb brushing once along the bone like he could soothe the fracture in his voice.

“Not at all,” he says. “Maybe it’s time to get some real rest.” 

___ 

In hindsight, he should have known. There’s no technique that can predict the future, but Suguru has always had this sixth sense for impending doom. But when Riko held her hand out, hope blinded him. He let himself believe, just for a second, that this could end gently, that she’d walk out with them into the fresh summer air, jump into Kuroi’s arms, that the world would bend in their favor for once.

And then there is a crack of a gunshot. And then there are the details; one moment her hand is outstretched, small fingers curling toward his, and the next it’s gone, her body dropping bonelessly, white shoes scuffing the wood before she crumples. And then there is evil. And then there is Satoru’s short-lived death. And then there’s nothing. 

___

November, 2006

The bay trees enveloping the sprawling footpaths offer little shelter from the chill. Tokyo has already begun recording its early lows, -2°C, the news had warned, and Suguru feels it in the way the cold bites through the thin fabric of his sleeves, how the siren of winter loops its chilled arms around his neck and doesn’t let go. His breath comes out pale and fleeting, curling into the gray air.

The ground is a patchwork of beige and shadow, soda cans crushed into metallic scars across the path, the sharp reds of cola and the soft creamsicle pinks bleeding into one another like the remnants of a half-forgotten festival. Suguru stoops, scooping up a few, their cold aluminum stinging his palm. He trudges toward the litter box and drops them in. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, he knows that, but the grass beneath his feet looks a fraction cleaner, and he takes the smallest relief in that.

Behind him, Satoru is waging a noisy war with his pockets. Receipts crinkle, buttons knock against one another, and his long fingers scratch uselessly against the lining. His sunglasses slip precariously down the bridge of his nose from how hard his face is scrunched, eyebrows drawn low. The only sound missing is the faint, bright jingle of coins.

Suguru glances back, lips quirking faintly. “What is it?”

“Looking for change.” Satoru’s voice is muffled, his arm halfway buried in his coat. “Do you want a drink?”

“Yeah, sure,” Suguru says, though he doesn’t really. He cocks his head. “Do you even have change on you?”

The question hangs, and Satoru is suspiciously quiet. He pulls both hands out, empty, and looks up with a sheepish tilt of his head. “I thought I did. I’ll cover you next time!”

Suguru laughs, more air than sound. “Yeah, sure you will.”

It’s almost too perfectly choreographed, the boyish contrition, the disarray of receipts, the comic timing of defeat, but Suguru finds he doesn’t mind at all. He missed it, really, enough to forget about adding this to the tab of running purchases he’s made for Satoru. He always forgets about it. He fishes out his own wallet, drops two coins into the slot, and presses the faded 35 button twice. The vending machine rattles awake, coughing out two cans that tumble into the tray with a metallic clatter.

Before Suguru can reach for them, Satoru swoops in, plucking one in each hand and holding them both up at eye level as though he’s stumbled on a pair of rare artifacts.

“What are you doing?” Suguru asks, unimpressed.

“Inspecting them.”

“For what?”

“Dents,” Satoru replies, solemn as a priest. He narrows his eyes, judging the surface of each can like the verdict might carry weight in heaven. Then, with a decisive nod, he hands one over. “This one has fewer. You’re welcome.” He smiles at him like the consideration was worth the 20 yen, and it might have been if it were left up to Satoru. Maybe worth even more. 

Suguru takes it, the faintest tug of amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth. “All that for a drink that’s going to taste flat anyway.”

“Maybe yours will,” Satoru counters, grinning, “mine’s blessed.”

Suguru shakes his head, but he lets the smile linger this time. He clinks the unopened can lightly against Satoru’s.

“Cheers.”

The cola tastes like petrol down his windpipe. He swallows too quickly, throat burning as if he’s siphoned straight from a rusted tank, and it sits in his stomach with the heaviness of spoiled meat. His tongue curls against the tang of it, memory darting unbidden to the stench of rice gone sour in their common room kitchenette, left too long in the cooker until the lid was nearly glued shut. That same rot seems to creep up now, bitter and clinging.

His jaw tightens. He runs his tongue along his teeth as if that could scrape the taste away, but it only presses it deeper, like trying to claw mildew off damp walls with bare hands. Satoru’s talking, something light, a joke, his soda can tipping lazily in his grip, but Suguru’s fingers tremble faintly around his own can. He wants to tell him to keep the can straight, to not spill, but the words get washed down with the petrol too. He blinks too long, once, twice, letting the cold of the can bleed into his palm as though it might steady him. It doesn’t. The carbonation hisses in his throat with each sip, but he keeps drinking anyway, like a man determined to choke down poison because it was handed to him with a smile.

Satoru’s smile is a hard sight to come by these days. When it does appear, it feels thinner than it used to, stretched like gauze over something scratched to the bone. He’s been looking worn, in ways he tries too hard to conceal while chasing after the perfect edge of his technique, hammering at it until it obeys, until Red blooms exactly when he calls for it. Suguru knows it isn’t about mastery for mastery’s sake. It’s about survival. About not being cut down again. Satoru never said it outright, never spelled it out in words to him like he’s so fond of usually doing, but Suguru doesn’t need him to this time. He can almost feel the phantom weight of the blade himself, carving down through ribs, dragging across skin and muscle. He imagines Satoru does too, every night, replaying the moment in the dark, unable to stop it from sinking in over and over. Suguru sees it in the smudges of purple blooming under his eyes during the rare times he strips the sunglasses away; tired bruises of sleeplessness, of surveillance sharpened into paranoia. Even then, those glimpses vanish quickly, like he’s afraid of being caught with his guard down.

Since Riko, he hasn’t quite been the same. None of them really have, but he sees it in Satoru more than he sees it in himself since he avoids mirrors with strict vigilance nowadays. There’s a tautness in him, a fear hidden beneath layers of his usual cheer that Suguru can’t unsee. He’s tired, endlessly so, but not tired enough to forget the knife-edge of that day, the terror that it might happen again, or that it might happen worse.

Now he sips his cola serenely, as though nothing claws at him underneath, but the smile has slipped clean away. He’s in a rush to get back inside, and Suguru can tell through his scuffed footsteps, longer than they need to be, the backside of his sole catching and kicking up frozen grass with each stride. The sound grates, crunching almost out of reach each time he speeds his gait up slightly, like he’s trying to outpace something. Suguru struggles to catch up. 

They’ve been out all day, exorcising yet again, and this had been one of the rare missions they were sent on together. It’s become rare enough that it felt almost foreign as they made their way to San’ya together in the morning, the rhythm between them strange and rusty at first in the Joban Line to Minami-Senju, before sliding back into place like it had never left by the time they got there. It pierces Suguru in all the wrong places, the fact that Satoru had stumbled while talking to him earlier, something that had never happened before. It was funny; something turned behind closed doors, cogs grinding the wrong way, screws loosened just enough for everything to shift, and the higher-ups decided to split them up to cover double the amount of missions during the winter uptick. A cleaner division of labor, they called it. More efficient. Fewer risks.

Suguru knows the truth of it. Separate them, and there’s less chance of collusion. Less chance that the two strongest sorcerers in their ranks might decide the system itself is rotten and act on it. He’s not sure whether to laugh or grit his teeth, because they’re right, and that stings worse than the cold. It’s really not about saving sweat, even if Gakuganji and Yaga and the other old farts at the headquarters tout it to be about efficiency. It’s about control. About watching how they move apart, if they stumble without each other, if distance might sand down the edges of what they’ve built. A deliberate test of loyalty, something shoddy and heartbreaking designed to see whether they still fall in step when no one’s looking. It needles at him, the idea of being measured in silence, as though every curse they exorcise, every decision they make is being tallied toward some verdict he can’t yet read. Worst of all, they don’t fall in step anymore. Suguru’s still trying to catch up. 

“Satoru,” he breathes out, “What are you rushing for?”

“Huh?” He pauses mid-step, gravel crunching sharp under his heel, and turns to see Suguru lagging a few paces behind. His frown creases, “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Suguru knows him well enough to catch the lie tucked in the apology. It’s not that Satoru doesn’t realize. It’s that he doesn’t want to be here, out in the open, for longer than absolutely necessary. The campus sprawls around them, darkened windows and frosted grass surrounding them, but Suguru can almost hear the static rattling in Satoru’s head, the flood of sound and sight and sensation he’s never able to turn off. The world pours through him like a busted faucet, impossible to contain. Somewhere in that endless surge is always the chance of missing something, some needle in the haystack sharp enough to gut him. He missed it once. It cost him nearly everything.

Now he doesn’t linger. Not outside. 

The wind cuts low across the courtyard, pricking at their skin, and Satoru twitches like he feels it sharper than he should. The cola can in his hand crumples noiselessly, metal folding into itself against his palm. Suguru watches the way his fingers flex and settle, restless, betraying what his mouth doesn’t. Infinity still slips from him, Suguru knows. It stutters, frays, leaves seams where there should be none. It’s there one second, gone the next, and then Satoru feels the ground underfoot, the snap of cold in his bones, the threat of something breaking through. It frustrates him that there’s space in which he can still be touched.

Suguru catches up, his breath slipping white into the cold. “You’re crushing that thing to death,” he says, nodding toward the mangled can.

Satoru glances at it, expression unreadable behind his bangs, then shrugs like he hadn’t noticed. “Fun texture.”

But he peers at  Suguru, brief, searching, skittish in a way that doesn’t suit him at all. He feels Suguru’s eyes, the way he always does when something’s wrong, when he’s worried about something or someone for some inexplicable reason. And for a second too long, he looks like he might actually explain himself, like he might say the words hanging in the air between them.

With so many things turning rare lately, there have been no dearth of moments like this. Where they pause somewhere, in the invisible spaces between seconds, and look at each other like they’re each at a confessional, and neither expected to see the other on the opposite side of the wood lattice. The moment hums between them, softer than prayer, heavier than penance. But neither of them speak. They just close their respective doors and meet each other right outside, like nothing happened, like absolution can be found in the act of refusing to ask. No one knew who was the penitent here. Maybe both of them, maybe neither. Maybe the penance itself was this: Satoru looking at Suguru like a deer caught in the headlights, Suguru looking at Satoru like a man who braked too late and swung forward later than he meant to.

So nothing passes their lips until they shoulder their way into Suguru’s room, the latch clicking shut behind them, the thin walls soaking up the quiet. The air is warm inside, too warm, and both of them let out sighs that sound more like surrender than relief. Twin exhales, mirrored in the fogged windowpane. Satoru tosses the crushed can onto the desk, its hollow rattle breaking the silence, and drops heavily onto the bed, like a man who needs to fill space just to prove he still owns it somehow, despite not having come over to Suguru’s room for a while. Suguru lowers himself to the floor with his back to the wall, knees drawn up, watching the faint tremor still lingering in Satoru’s hand.

He doesn’t say anything about it. Not yet. Instead, he tries his hand at more empty conversation.

“How’d you think today went?” Suguru asks. He’s not sure what tone he’s trying to put on here, it’s a shirt that doesn’t quite fit, casual but not quite relaxed, testing the ground before stepping on it.

Satoru tips his head back, staring at the ceiling as if the popcorn plaster has answers. “San’ya? Messier than it should’ve been. People everywhere, running in circles. I swear I spent more time herding bystanders than fighting.” He lets out a sharp breath through his nose. “Do I look like a babysitter?.”

Suguru gives the faintest shrug, knees drawn tighter to his chest. “Better that than blood on the pavement.” 

“Better than paperwork,” Satoru mutters, softer, and the corner of his mouth tilts as if he knows how that sounds. The mission itself had been San’ya in its purest, most unforgiving form. Narrow streets pressed close with boarding houses and men without fixed names, resentment steeped into the wood and stone like rot. The curse had risen straight out of that marrow-deep bitterness: a warped, many-armed thing with skin like flayed leather and a jaw that never shut, gnashing as though it could grind centuries of humiliation into dust. Suguru’s spirits balked at it, unable to get close, their forms unraveling under the sheer density of malice that birthed it. Even Satoru’s Red sputtered against its hide, blowing holes in walls and windows instead, scattering day laborers who were too desperate or too drunk to run far. For a stretch too long, it felt like the curse had the neighborhood itself on its side, everything conspiring to keep them cornered.

And yet, the tide turned, as it always seemed to when the two of them were together. Suguru thinned the air with his swarm of fly-heads, not to overwhelm but to blind, buying a second’s reprieve; Satoru’s Blue roared through the opening, tearing the curse’s center mass apart as if it had only ever been waiting for the right moment. By the time the veil flickered down, the creature was already unraveling, nothing left but smoke clinging to their clothes and the reek of split timber in the alleys. If it had been anyone else, they would have died in the attempt. The two of them, though, they walked out unscathed, save for dust in their lungs and nausea rolling through Suguru’s every cell. 

The radiator coughs to life in the corner, its sibilant sigh pushing stale warmth into the room. Outside, the wind brushes at the windowpane in restless intervals, carrying with it the faint hiss of passing tires on wet asphalt.

Satoru shifts against the bedspread, restless energy flickering at the edges of his posture. “You know,” he says suddenly, as though the thought had been waiting its turn, “There’s a new Digimon movie in December. Looks like trash. I’m still going.”

Suguru blinks at him slowly. “You’d go even if it were four guys in costumes with cardboard cutouts.”

“That’s called loyalty,” Satoru fires back.

“That’s called terrible standards.”

“Hey, my standards are fine. I just have range.”

The faintest hum escapes Suguru. He studies the fogged window as though considering whether to press his forehead against the glass, then turns back, flying blind even further. “Speaking of trash, Keigo Higashino’s new book came out. The forums have been raving about it.”

Satoru quirks an eyebrow, interest piqued if only out of boredom. “You read it?”

“Last week. It’s good. A little contrived though, you know what I mean? It was just too neat. Like you could see the stitches where he pulled it all together.”

Satoru’s eyes flicker toward him, amused. “You hate when people stick the landing, huh?”

“I hate when it looks like they tried too hard to.”

“When was it released?”

Suguru doesn’t hesitate. “August.”

And just like that, the levity evaporates. The word hangs between them. The radiator hums, then quiets. His chest hollows. Regret snakes up his throat, nausea biting at the back of his teeth. Outside, rain drums against the window, thin and constant. And it’s— no. It’s not rain. It’s clapping, jagged applause rattling against his skull, unrelenting, louder and louder until he can’t be sure which it is.

He stares at the floorboards. The air feels thick, sour with warmth. He doesn’t look up. Neither does Satoru. He lets the silence press, lets it burrow into the marrow of his bones until it feels as though he might splinter beneath the weight. The clapping doesn’t stop, impossible to tell if it’s outside, or in his ears, or in the space just behind his eyes. Each sharp report scrapes against his nerves, wearing him thinner. His breath stutters once, and he realizes his hands are clenched, knuckles sharp against his knees.

Then through the din, a voice. Satoru’s calling his name. He doesn’t register it at first through the thrum of claps roaring through his head. It slips past him, once, twice, maybe more. Until at last it lands, silk-soft, the rarest of things nowadays. His name tumbling from Satoru’s mouth in that schmaltzy, slushy tone. He notices. He covets it. Suguru takes that sound, careful and greedy both, and bottles it in a vial, small enough to string onto a chain, and winds it against his heart. And there it throbs. With every contraction, every systole, his chest seizes around it, forcing it through him. With every release, every diastole, the susurration of Satoru calling his name spills back, flooding the chambers, echoing in the valves like a leitmotif to his own life. Sort of like remembering the refrain to a song you loved once. Satoru’s voice becomes a pulse of its own, flowing into his arteries, wringing the syllables deeper into him, until he can’t tell if it’s his blood keeping him alive anymore, or that sound.

“Hm?” His voice emerges too slow, like dragging it up from underwater.

“Stop sitting on the floor like that,” Satoru says. Not a command, not quite, his eyes on him are too soft for that. It’s more like an insistence softened at the edges and Suguru is compelled to listen. “Come up here before your ass gets sore.”

A ghost of a smile tugs at Suguru’s mouth. “It’s tradition, you know. Tatami.”

“These floors aren’t tatami.” The words land with an uncharacteristic gentleness, even the rebuke softened. “Get up here.”

Suguru moves like a man wrung dry, every motion reluctant. His limbs drag beneath him with the resistance of sodden cloth, like mopping up a puddle that refuses to vanish. At last, he climbs onto the bed’s edge, settling there with his back turned to Satoru, spine bowed. Satoru shifts, a scuffle forward on the mattress, and before Suguru can brace, fingers hook sharp into the fabric of his shirt. One tug, then another, and Suguru tips back with a startled oomph , the breath knocking out of him. “Hey, what—” The protest never finishes. Satoru follows through, sprawling over him with deliberate weight, arms locking tight around his torso, legs curling around his own until there’s no neat line of separation. His head presses into the crook of Suguru’s neck, heat sinking there like a claim.

Suguru’s pulse riots in answer, hammering with blood propelled by the lingering echo of Satoru’s voice still reverberating through him. Each contraction wrings the syllables tighter, each release spills them back, until his chest feels less like it’s beating to keep him alive and more like it’s keeping that voice alive inside him. Only when the rhythm slows, when the violence of it softens into something almost bearable, does he manage words at all. 

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know” 

Satoru’s laugh is warm, muffled where his mouth brushes against the slope of Suguru’s throat, the vibration sinking straight into his skin. It isn’t his usual bright bark that cuts through walls; here it’s quieter, private, as though the sound belongs only to the space between them. The warmth of it spreads out slow, like steam rising from a kettle left too long, and Suguru feels it curl into his bones before he can stop it.

“You really don’t?” Satoru asks, voice low enough to pass for another pulse in Suguru’s neck. His breath fans there, hot and humid, carrying the faint taste of the cola he’d been drinking earlier. “I thought it was obvious.”

Suguru swallows, the motion brushing his throat against Satoru’s cheek. The contact is unbearable in its smallness, too much and not enough, and he feels every place Satoru has folded himself around him: the weight pressing his chest flat, the heat seeping through their tangled legs, the curve of his hands locked against his back like a seal. Each point of contact works as an anchor and a shackle both, tethering him to something he wants to flee from and sink into all at once.

Obvious. Of course it is. Suguru feels it in the way Satoru holds him tight, but not with any real force. The weight of him is full and heavy, pressing him deep into the mattress, though the edges of it quiver, just faintly, as if the smallest slip might send Satoru scattering apart. It’s the desperate brace of someone trying to keep himself intact, clinging to Suguru as though he were the last solid thing in reach. His arms curl around him with a fierceness that trembles at the joints, fingers digging in with a need too naked to disguise. The tremor passes into Suguru’s own frame, a vibration through skin and muscle and bone until it feels like their hearts are working in tandem. Heat seeps from the press of Satoru’s chest against his, the slow drag of breath dampening at his throat, every exhale branding him with the same urgency. And Suguru knows it, recognizes it with merciless clarity, because it’s his own emotions, mirrored back into him. The ache to hold and be held, to fuse so close there’s no room for unraveling, to stop both of them from flying apart.

“You’re heavy,” Suguru mutters at last, though his voice comes out thinner than he intends, a poor disguise.

“Good.” Another laugh, this one softer still, almost tired. “Means you’ll notice if I let go.”

“Are you planning on letting go?” he half-jokes.

“No.” 

It’s such a simple word. One syllable. The most base form of denial. But it sends Suguru’s heart reeling yet again, arrhythmic and harsh in the cage of his chest. He doesn’t know what to do with this: with this sudden honesty, with Satoru pressed against him after drifting so far away, with the cloying urge to take his face between his hands and kiss him until the world collapses back into place. His throat tightens around it, and all that emerges instead is silence, thick and restless.

Satoru shifts just slightly, nose brushing closer to the line of Suguru’s jaw, a touch so casual it borders on deliberate. “You smell the same,” he murmurs, almost to himself, though the words graze Suguru like a confession.

Suguru laughs, though it cracks halfway through. “Like what, sweat and shampoo?”

Satoru smiles against his skin. “Like you.”

Suguru is quiet for a moment, eyes fixed on some invisible point in the dark. Then, softly, “Why would I smell any different?”

Satoru stills. He doesn’t answer right away. The pause stretches taut, filled with the sound of their breathing pressed together. When he does speak, it’s quieter than before, as if the words themselves need coaxing.

“Because you’ve been different.”

It’s not an accusation. Not even a judgment. Just a fact, spoken like a comment on the weather. ‘ November in Tokyo is miserable and muggy.’ ‘The sun rarely comes out nowadays.’ ‘You’ve been different.’ Suguru feels it sink in like a pinprick under the skin, not enough to bleed, but enough to sting.

The words sit between them, deceptively light, but Suguru feels the scourge of them settle into the pit of his chest. He exhales slow, slower, as if he can push the ache out with breath alone. “That’s not very poetic of you.”

“Good thing you’ve always been the poetic one,” he says, voice soft as down, as though he knows better than to tip the moment into something truer. His arms tighten once more, the faintest tremor still pulsing through them. “I’ll just borrow your words when I need them.”

Suguru’s mouth twists into a smile that doesn’t quite make it. He’s glad Satoru can’t see his face. “Don’t. You’d butcher them.”

“Probably,” Satoru admits. “But they’d still be yours.”

The silence folds over them again, but it’s softer this time, stitched together with warmth and weight. Satoru shifts just enough to burrow closer, his forehead pressing into the curve where Suguru’s neck meets his shoulder, hair tickling against skin still damp from frost. His legs tangle tighter with Suguru’s, a deliberate curl that leaves no room for distance, and Suguru feels the press of his knees against his thighs, the curve of his calves molding around his own. Every point of contact is a quiet claim, a reminder that Satoru isn’t just holding him, he’s wrapping himself around him like he’s afraid to let even a fraction slip away. 

Suguru lets himself relax, just barely. His hand, which has been curled uselessly at his side, rises to rest against the back of Satoru’s head. His fingers find their way into the tangle of damp hair, slow and hesitant at first, before the strands give and his hand falls into a rhythm, gentle sweeps, absentminded circles at the base of Satoru’s skull. The effect is immediate. Satoru exhales a breath that sounds almost like relief, his body melting further against him, arms clinging tighter as if Suguru’s touch has given permission to collapse. And Suguru feels it too, the way the slight shiver in Satoru’s frame begins to reflect in his own, not weakness, not fear, but the unbearable ache of being needed this much. His chest constricts with it, every inhale pressed full of warmth and weight and want, until he wonders if either of them can survive the closeness without coming undone.

Suguru’s fingers linger in his hair longer than he means to, curling and uncurling, tugging just faintly at the roots like he wants to remind himself that this is real, that Satoru is here and not slipping away. Not closing himself off to the world, to him. Each drag of his nails earns the smallest shift in Satoru’s breathing, shallower now, warmer, until the sound of it spills across his throat like a secret. Satoru presses closer in answer, his mouth grazing the edge of Suguru’s collarbone. Not a kiss, not nearly as deliberate, but it’s so close to one that Suguru’s pulse leaps toward it, betraying him. The brush of lips through fabric is clumsy, almost thoughtless, but it brands him all the same, and his hand in Satoru’s hair tightens reflexively, holding him there for a moment longer.

Satoru’s nose nudges along his jaw as if testing the air, searching for something unspoken, and Suguru feels every brush burn into his skin, tingling down to his toes. Their legs shift again, interlocking tighter, Satoru’s thigh pressing flush against the line of his own, the contact sharp enough to drag his breath short. The pressure is everywhere now, the weight of him pinning Suguru down, the warmth of his breath spilling into every gap between them, the clutch of arms that won’t relent. And Suguru realizes with a start that he’s no longer only being held, he’s holding back, pressing just as fiercely into Satoru’s body, as if his hands, his arms, even the thrum of his heartbeat might be enough to answer what neither of them has dared to name aloud.

Suguru feels the strain in his chest before he hears it in his voice. “You don’t—” He cuts himself off, swallows, starts again, softer. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me right now.” 

Satoru stills, but only for a second. His breath fans heavy against Suguru’s skin, and then he shifts closer, impossibly closer, like the answer is to fold himself further into him. “I do,” he murmurs. Sure of himself. 

For a dizzying second, Suguru swears the room tilts, because the last time they had been like this, too close with words too heavy to ignore, it was in Okinawa, saltwater humming behind glass and Satoru’s voice breaking under the weight of his own honesty. And Suguru, sure of himself in a way that felt immovable then, had answered without hesitation. But here, it feels like they’ve traded places without ever noticing the shift. He’s the one who can’t seem to trust his own voice, the one with his chest caving under a want he doesn’t know how to hold. He doesn’t remember when he lost his footing, barely two months ago, he’d felt certain, solid, as though nothing could shake the axis they stood on. Since then, though, Satoru’s hardly been around. Neither of them have. Jetting across the city on missions, nights swallowed up by fatigue, days blurring past. When they did happen to cross paths, there was never enough left in either of them to reach for more than Shoko’s half-hearted movie nights, the three of them slumped into a tangle on that battered blue corduroy couch, too tired to speak, let alone unearth the things they weren’t saying. 

And now here they are, closer than they’ve dared to be since, and Suguru is only realizing in this moment how much it disappointed him that Okinawa never turned into anything more. How much he wanted it to. How much he wants this. It makes sense, though. Of course it does. How could anything have happened after Riko? After the sound of her body hitting the floor, that sickening thud that still rattles through him when he least expects it? The image won’t let him go, won’t loosen its grip. Before he realizes it, he feels the sorrow starting to settle, the telltale numbness crawling into his fingertips, the thick cotton clouding his head. 

But before it can drag him under, Satoru shifts, curling his fingers into Suguru’s hair like he’s been doing for him. The slow drag of his nails across his scalp is intimate in a way that steals his breath, coaxing him back into his body. He kneads gently, almost absently, like he’s memorizing the shape of his skull, smoothing every fracture Riko’s ghost tries to split open as if to tell him, ‘Stay here. With me.’

Suguru’s hand falters in his hair, fingers going slack before they clutch again, tighter this time, almost desperate. He's not sure what's going to happen now. If Satoru really does know what he's doing to him. He wants to laugh it off, to bury the admission under something casual, but the tremor in his chest betrays him. “Then stop.” 

Satoru exhales something between a laugh and a sigh, hot against his collarbone. “You don’t want me to.”

And Suguru hates how true it is, that the protest rings hollow even to his own ears, that his body curls tighter around Satoru’s without permission, as if to prove him right. The space between them grows charged, thick enough to choke on, every inch of skin they share a live wire striking electricity through every limb. Anything Suguru wants to say dies before it can reach his lips, caught in the raw static of Satoru’s words. It’s quiet, except for their breaths mingling, uneven and heated. He feels the tremor in Satoru’s chest press into his own, like two hearts trying and failing to find the same rhythm.

Satoru lifts his head just enough for the brush of air between them to sharpen, his cheek sliding against Suguru’s jaw, his lips close enough that the next inhale feels stolen. Suguru can see him now, the faint outline of his features in the dark, eyes lowered but flickering, as though he’s weighing the cost of something reckless.

“Then what do you want me to do?” Satoru whispers, the question honest in its intentions, trembling on the edge of confession. His lips ghost against Suguru’s skin with every word, a touch that isn’t quite a kiss but burns like one.

Suguru’s hand lingers at the back of his neck, thumb stroking once, unthinking. His throat works, but no answer comes, not when the answer is already in the tilt of his face, in the way his breath shortens with every fraction of distance left between them. The want is too sharp, too dangerous, and yet it hangs there, balanced on a knife’s edge, waiting.

“Satoru, I—” 

“Please,” his voice cracks, “Don’t say anything more.” 

The world breaks open when their mouths finally meet. Satoru surges forward like he’s been holding his breath for years, and Suguru takes him in with the kind of desperation that feels both foreign and inevitable. None of it is neat, nor is it careful, like how it should be. Their lips collide too hard at first, all of the years-long clumsy hunger and pent-up restraint unraveling, but neither of them pulls back. The shock of it, wet and heated, flares through Suguru’s chest like fire finding dry wood. He tastes rain, metal, something bitter at the back of his tongue that might be grief, but Satoru swallows it down like he refuses to let Suguru choke on it. The kiss deepens in uneven jolts, one of them pushing, the other answering, both of them caught in the same reckless momentum. Satoru’s teeth catch against Suguru’s lip, not by design, but by the sheer impossibility of slowing down, and Suguru feels himself shudder from the sting, from the way pain folds into want.

His hand tightens in Satoru’s hair, gripping like it’s the only anchor he has. Satoru doesn’t fight it, he leans harder, presses closer, his hands dragging down Suguru’s sides like he’s trying to map every line of him in the dark. Suguru thought they might have been a little more measured about this, but they’ve crossed the line of being tentative two seconds in; this is them breaking the seal they’ve held between their teeth since Okinawa, since before that, maybe since the very beginning, Suguru realizes in a flash of clarity. This kiss came with a force of a demand, a plea, a surrender, all wrapped into two willing hearts. 

And Satoru feels everything. The scratch of Suguru’s breath hitching, the wild beat of his pulse under the skin of his throat, the way he answers with a force that borders on fury. For the first time in weeks, months, maybe longer, Satoru isn’t running from the weight pressing down on him. He’s pouring it out, into Suguru, letting the kiss say what words can’t: don’t leave me. Don’t give up. Don’t stop being mine. He’s not sure which torn part of his limbic system those sentiments are coming from, but he can’t pause to think about it right now. He simply can’t. Suguru, for his part, can’t tell where the ache ends and the desire begins. His chest feels too tight, like the kiss is cutting him open, laying bare the fault line he’s tried to ignore. Every brush of Satoru’s lips makes the memories threaten to spill in, Riko’s fall, the silence after, the bullet through his heart when he had thought Satoru died, but they burn away in the press of another kiss, and another, until all that’s left is Satoru’s insistence against his mouth. He wonders, distantly, if this is what salvation tastes like. 

Satoru pulls back for half a second, lips swollen, breath shuddering out of him like it hurts to let go. His forehead falls against Suguru’s, damp strands of hair sticking between them, and his voice is ragged, almost pleading. “Don’t stop.”

And Suguru doesn’t. He tilts forward again, claiming his mouth with a force that feels like he’s sealing a pact, as if to tell Satoru the truth he couldn’t say aloud: I don’t want to stop. I don’t think I ever could.

The kiss swells like the crest of a wave. Every time they might pull apart, the absence feels unbearable, so they crash back together harder, mouths searching, colliding, molding to each other until Suguru isn’t sure if he’s breathing at all. The air between them tastes of heat and salt, sharp from where Satoru’s teeth scrape against him again, and he gives back just as fiercely, answering with a bite of his own. Satoru groans low in his throat, the sound spilling into Suguru’s mouth and vibrating through his body. It’s a sound of frustration and relief tangled into one, like he’s angry it took them this long, angry at everything in between, but unwilling to let go now that it’s finally here, angry at the mere idea of letting go. His hands slide lower, gripping Suguru’s waist, dragging him closer until their hips collide, until there’s no space left to bridge. He kisses like possession, like a claim, but beneath the rough edges Suguru can taste the quiver of fear. That if he loosens his hold even a little, Suguru might vanish.

And Suguru answers it. He tilts his head, deepens the angle, lets his tongue slide against Satoru’s with deliberate pressure, relaxed where Satoru is frantic. He kisses back like reassurance, like an oath stitched into flesh and breath: I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, he wants to say, wants to make Satoru believe. Every shift of his mouth is calculated surrender and insistence both, offering himself up while demanding the same in return.

The world outside them blurs into nothing. Suguru can’t hear the hum of the heater anymore, can’t register the faint groan of wood, can’t feel the ache in his back from being pinned so long. All he knows is the rhythm of their mouths, the wet heat of lips parting, meeting, parting again, the pull and give of two people who have already been undone and are remaking themselves inside the same breath.

Satoru breaks just enough for air, but doesn’t lift his mouth fully. His lips drag across Suguru’s cheek, his jaw, so incredibly desperate to keep contact, every brush leaving heat in its wake. He mouths at the corner of Suguru’s lips like he’s memorizing their shape, like he doesn’t trust the world not to take it away. His voice slips out between breaths, wrecked and trembling, “God, Suguru, that’s so good” before he’s dragging him back into another kiss, fiercer, deeper, like the name itself was too precious to be left alone.

Suguru lets out a sound he doesn’t recognize as his own, something that shivers up from his chest and into Satoru’s mouth, and he’s clinging, pulling, pressing until they’re tangled in a mess of limbs and breath and mouths that won’t relent. His body is taut, strung out like a bowstring, every nerve ending lit, every thought drowned and he is so grateful for it. There’s no space for hesitation anymore. There’s only hunger, only ache, only the way they’re devouring each other as if it could erase all the weeks of silence, all the walls they’d built, all the grief that has gnawed at their ribs. It’s a collision, a storm, a breaking open of everything they kept close to themselves, but beneath it all is the unbearable tenderness of two people kissing like it might be the last thing they ever get to do. Satoru doesn’t know if he’ll ever have this again. 

Satoru moves like something in him snapped, like he’s decided he has no time for restraint, unaware that he was showing any at all. His hand fists in the fabric at Suguru’s side, dragging hard enough to make it bite into his skin, holding him as if he means to fuse them together. His mouth slants over Suguru’s with an urgency that borders on violence, every kiss an open wound that refuses to heal, bleeding profusely everywhere, all the time. Suguru gasps against him, from the shock of being wanted this desperately, this openly, like he’s surprised about it and the sound only seems to drive Satoru wilder. To show Suguru what desperation looks like. 

Suguru claws for purchase, fingers sinking into the back of Satoru’s shirt, knuckles digging into the tight muscle there. He drags him down, harder, closer, until there is no distinction between who is giving and who is taking. Their teeth clash once, sharp and unforgiving, and Suguru doesn’t even flinch, he lets the sting bloom, lets it pull him into the reality of this moment. Because part of him can’t believe it’s happening, that Satoru is here, in his arms, kissing him like his life depends on it.

A thought cuts through the haze, piercing in its clarity: Is this what Satoru had felt in Okinawa? When he’d spoken those sweet words into the dark of the aquarium, when his eyes had searched Suguru’s like they were the only thing keeping him to the ground. The realization slices through Suguru with equal parts sorrow and wonder, and he kisses back with the weight of it, pours into Satoru everything he never managed to say aloud.

Satoru makes a sound, raw and broken, when Suguru grips his jaw and angles him just so, deepening the kiss until there’s no space left for even air to pass. His chest heaves against Suguru’s, the rhythm of his breath erratic, greedy. It feels like he’s unraveling in his arms, and the dizzying truth is that Suguru wants it. Wants to see him undone, to hold him through it, to be the one who can both break him open and catch him when he falls.

And then Satoru shifts suddenly, one hand leaving Suguru’s waist to cup his face instead, palm wide and warm against his cheek, thumb brushing in a trembling arc near the corner of his mouth. The kiss softens for a second, just a second, as though he’s trying to remember what Suguru tastes like when he isn’t devouring him, if he has memorized the taste enough to summon it when Suguru isn’t here. Suguru’s pulse stutters, every nerve alight under that touch, the contradiction of brutality and tenderness tangling until he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Still, it doesn’t last. The restraint shatters. Satoru’s lips part against his again, and Suguru lets him take, lets him consume, because he’s too far gone to pretend he doesn’t want this, want him, in all his ferocity. Every kiss is longer than the last, every drag of lips and tongue anchoring them deeper into a place they can’t come back from, and Suguru knows it, even as he clings harder, even as his heart hammers against the prison of his ribs like it could break free into Satoru’s chest.

But then, the urgency falters, soft in its letdown, like a tide receding. Satoru’s grip loosens where it had been bruising at Suguru’s side, his mouth gentling against his as though he suddenly remembers the fragility of what he’s holding. His Suguru, his one and only. The kiss slows, unspools, the sharp edges smoothing into something softer, and it feels less like conquest and more like surrender.

Suguru feels it instantly, the change in rhythm. The heat doesn’t vanish, it lingers thrumming just beneath the surface of their hands, their legs, their bodies interlocked, but now there’s something quieter taking its place, something that makes his chest ache worse than hunger ever could. Satoru kisses him like he’s memorizing the shape of his lips, like he’s afraid this will be the last chance he gets. His mouth is warm and trembling against Suguru’s, every brush of contact deliberate, careful, almost devoting.

Suguru’s hand finds its way into Satoru’s hair, not tugging this time, just carding through the strands, holding him close without demand. He tilts their mouths together again and again, each kiss drawn out, tender, weighted with all the things they’ve never said. It’s unbearably intimate, more than any bruising urgency could be. He realizes, with a kind of helpless clarity, that this is the part that will ruin him. The gentleness. The vulnerability.

Satoru breathes into him, a shiver of air that tastes faintly of salt, of exhaustion, of him. When he finally breaks away, it’s only by a fraction, lips still brushing as if reluctant to leave. Suguru catches the faintest sound in his throat, a sigh or maybe a prayer, and it steals the air from his own lungs. Their foreheads press together, noses brushing clumsily, and the stillness between them hums like a swarm of bees.

Suguru’s chest tightens, unbearable and sweet all at once, because he knows this softness, this terrifying, tender way Satoru is kissing him, is the truth of it. The absolute gospel of Satoru’s feelings. Not just want. Not just heat. Something deeper, weaved through every shallow breath, every trembling press of lips, every lingering touch. Suguru feels the words on the edge of his tongue, threatening to spill, but he swallows them down, afraid that giving them shape will break the spell. And then Satoru pulls back just enough to look at him, really look at him, glimmering even in the dark, unmasked and unbearably close. His eyes are bright looking up at him. Mind-numbingly blue, the rush of the pacific bogging Suguru’s body down underneath the weight of Satoru’s gaze. His lips part, hesitant, but the silence between them presses too heavy, demands to be broken.

“I don’t know how to stop,” Satoru admits, voice thin and uneven, like the words cost him. Maybe they do, maybe his heart has been breaking a million different ways all this while trying to stop something that was already put in motion the second they saw each other. His breath catches, and his mouth twitches as if he regrets it the moment it leaves him. “Every time I think I should, every time I try, it just,” he pauses,”gets worse.”

Suguru’s heart lurches painfully, because it’s the kind of confession he’s not sure either of them can take back. He feels his fingers clench reflexively in Satoru’s hair, grounding himself in the warmth of him.

“I’m not any better. It’s not any better for me, Satoru” Suguru whispers back, the words cracked at the edges. “You’ve been in my head every damn day. Even when I didn’t want you there.” His throat works as he forces the next part out. “Especially when I didn’t want you there.”

Satoru’s breath stutters against his lips. The honesty hurts and heals all at once. He leans in, brushing their mouths together again like he needs the reassurance of Suguru’s presence to hold himself together. For a long moment, they just breathe each other in, foreheads pressed close, lips barely parting, the air between them soaked in things too fragile to name. Suguru thinks he might come undone at the sound of Satoru’s quiet laugh, wet, broken, but real, as he murmurs, “Guess we’re both ruined then.”

“I’ve been ruined since I met you.” 

Satoru smiles at him sweetly, like he wouldn’t have traded this mutual ruin for anything else. His thumb moves in slow circles against the hollow of Suguru’s cheekbone, a rhythm so gentle it feels reverent, and for a while he seems content to just exist there, holding Suguru in the fragile quiet. Then something flickers in his expression, a thought catching hold. “Hey,” he says. The word is soft, tentative, a thread of sound that hangs in the dark between them, and it’s the kind of ‘hey’ that doesn’t need a response, so Suguru doesn’t answer, only watches as the smallest shifts play across Satoru’s face— his lips parting, closing again like he’s trying to catch the right phrasing before it slips away, the way his brows twitch downward, then smooth themselves out, betraying the hesitation he tries to swallow, the flicker of his eyes, bright and restless, darting to Suguru’s mouth and back again as though searching for permission. Every microexpression is so delicate and beautiful, until he asks, “Do you want to go to the Digimon movie with me?”

The sheer absurdity of it breaks the tension, and Suguru laughs, helpless and fond and so terribly ruined. He leans forward and kisses him, chaste and devastating, 

“It’s a date, then.”

February, 2007

February brings with it a strange sort of sweetness in its wind gusts and snow flurries, the kind that settles in the quiet hours between duty and sleep. And there is constant duty, so Suguru cherry-picks moments when he can. He finds himself memorizing the shape of Satoru’s grin in the half-dark, the press of his shoulder against his own when they walk side by side, the way Satoru’s hands linger a second too long after handing him something. There are stolen kisses in doorways, soft and clumsy and hurried, laughter muffled against each other’s mouths before they part like nothing happened. Some nights, when the world grants them mercy, they stretch hours thin until dawn, limbs tangled on futons, voices hushed like they’re scheming against the silence. These moments are fleeting, stitched into the margins of their days, but Suguru hoards them like relics, like proof that this, whatever this is, exists.

The last few months blur into a rhythm that feels almost like domesticity, fragile though it is. They share meals more often than their schedules should allow, squeezing every second out of the muddy, torn fabrics of their lives as sorcerers, chopsticks clashing as Satoru steals food from his bowl with the guileless insistence of a child. Some mornings are quiet. Satoru half-asleep, hair sticking up in improbable directions, slouching against the kitchen counter while Suguru brews tea. He complains about the bitterness every time, like clockwork, and every time Suguru tells him to add more sugar if he hates it so much. “But that’s not how you like it,” Satoru insists with a mock-serious frown, before promptly stealing the last mochi from Suguru’s plate. Suguru lets him, always. On colder mornings that crept in at the tail-end of November, Suguru finds him sprawled in doorways, blinking blearily like he’s forgotten he was supposed to leave twenty minutes ago. They exchange notes scrawled hastily on scraps of paper, tucked under pillows or into jacket pockets, silly sketches or fragments of inside jokes that would make no sense to anyone else. There are evenings where Suguru finds scraps of paper tucked into his sleeves: a doodle of two stick figures holding hands, a messily written “don’t forget you owe me ice cream,” once even a haiku about his hair. Satoru insists on bringing him sweets from every mission, as though confections could patch over exhaustion, and Suguru accepts them every time, if only to see the satisfaction flicker across his face. 

It’s this that settles into Suguru with a warmth deep enough to never really need the radiator anymore; he gets access to all these sides of Satoru that he’s never been privy to before, that no one has. He’s the first to see him slouch into a chair with his sunglasses tugged halfway down, rubbing at the tender skin under his eyes with the heel of his palm until they go faintly red, the air around him stripped of its usual overwhelming confidence. He’s the one who finds him dozing mid-sentence sometimes, jaw slack, head tilting onto Suguru’s shoulder, body surrendering to exhaustion in a way it never would in public. He sees exhaustion warp Satoru into a person who never surfaces during the day, around people. Once, Suguru wakes to find him at the edge of the bed, staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. His fingers twitch, curling, uncurling, restless. When Suguru reaches for him, lays a palm gently over his knuckles, Satoru startles like he’s been caught in something he shouldn’t show, then lets out a shaky breath and collapses back into bed without a word, curling into Suguru’s chest until his breathing evens out. He sees softer sides; his hair damp and dripping after a rushed shower, towel slipping precariously off his waist as he complains about shampoo stinging his eyes. His socks never matching, mismatched colors peeking out when he kicks off his shoes at the door with zero grace, the faint scar across his knee he never talks about, left uncovered when he walks around in shorts  Suguru’s certain he stole from him. The gnarled, purple scab down the length of his torso that Suguru finds him staring at sometimes, worrying his lips, eyebrows screwed together. 

“You see too much,” Satoru mutters once, catching Suguru watching him fumble with the lighter while trying (and failing) to set the stove going. His ears are flushed, his grin trying too hard.

“Maybe,” Suguru replies, stepping in to flick the switch for him, their fingers brushing. “But you let me.”

And that’s the heart of it. Satoru doesn’t let anyone else see him stumble, or falter, or fail. But with him, it’s different. With him, Satoru is only human, and Suguru guards that humanity as something sacred. And that is what he is, because this is Gojo Satoru, celestial and monstrous, shooting black holes through his fingertips because he can, who could level Earth if he wanted to, who has the strength of four generations running through his veins, who can pick a person down to their atoms with one glance. Because this is also Gojo Satoru, the boy who buttons his shirts up wrong when he’s in a rush, who eats jam by the spoonful straight from the jar, who gets scolded by his teacher like any other kid, the boy he loves, the god he loves, the person who’s ruined him. 

Other days are louder, filled with the kind of bickering that never quite has teeth. They argue about whose turn it is to wash the dishes, about whether Digimon is superior to Pokémon (“Pokémon’s an empire. Digimon’s a masterpiece,” Satoru declares, waving his chopsticks like a general at war). Once, on a mission-free evening, that have become diamonds in the rough now, Satoru threw a balled-up sock at him across the room, and Suguru, without thinking, flicked a curse to smack it right back into his face. Satoru laughed so hard he wheezed, and when he finally caught his breath, he said, “See? This is why I keep you around.” Like there was no other reason, like they weren’t both ruined. 

Sometimes it’s quieter. A long train ride where Satoru dozes against his shoulder, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, mouth slack in the least dignified way possible. Suguru never wakes him, even when his arm goes numb.There are convenience store runs at ungodly hours, where Satoru insists on buying every ridiculous seasonal snack he can get his hands on (“Peach KitKats, Suguru. I’ve never been prouder of our nation.”). A night on assignment where they collapse onto the same narrow bed, neither bothering to move, the weight of Satoru’s back pressed into his chest like it was always meant to be there. Those are some of his favorite times; nights out on the scarce missions they were still sent together stretched long and thin on the futon, the two of them pressed together, whispering nonsense until sleep takes them. Suguru remembers the way Satoru once muttered, half-asleep, “If you ever cut your hair, I’ll never forgive you,” and then immediately began snoring. Or the time he woke to find Satoru clinging to him like an octopus, his leg hooked tightly around Suguru’s thigh, his arm thrown across his chest as though staking a claim. In the dark, Suguru laughed softly, pressing his nose into the crown of his hair, inhaling warmth and shampoo and love and ruin. Suguru learns the sound of his breathing in sleep, the half-conscious mumble of his name, the way he curls instinctively toward warmth even before waking. These are the pieces of a life Suguru never thought he’d be allowed: ordinary, unremarkable, precious in their very mundanity. 

It’s these little fragments, these absurdities and intimacies, that fill Suguru’s memory like a quilt of mismatched squares. He finds himself cataloguing them, afraid that if he doesn’t, they’ll slip through his fingers. Afraid he won’t be able to prove to himself later that they were real. 

But memory is fickle, and as the weeks pass him by, he discovers how fragile all of this is in his hands, how sugar dissolves faster than salt. Laughter echoes too loudly in his head, bouncing off shadows until it warps into something unrecognizable.There are days he notices the edges of things beginning to blur, laughter catching in his throat like he’s forgotten the rhythm of it from the warped echo in his head. On the train home from missions, Satoru’s shoulder heavy against his own, he’ll look out the window and feel an inexplicable hollowness, as though the world outside is rushing past while he remains suspended, untethered. The sound of Satoru’s easy breath beside him in the dark reminds him of all the breaths that had stopped, the silence that followed them. Sometimes, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary moment— Satoru reaching for his wrist, the press of a hand at the small of his back— he feels it like a fracture running through glass, the certainty that this cannot last, that everything beautiful is already rotting from the inside out.

The weight of the curses he’s exorcised follows him home, clinging to his clothes, his skin like smoke. He doesn’t always tell Satoru about the missions he takes alone, skipping over the more gruesome details mainly because Satoru’s seen plenty of them himself but he doesn’t want to relive it, doesn’t want to put words and sentences to the memory. He doesn’t mention the blood, the faces, the pleading. Some nights he still sees them anyway. A boy no older than his students, bent and broken in a hallway, a woman clutching her baby until the last breath, deformed, ugly shapes. He wakes with the echo of their voices lodged in his throat, and for a moment it’s hard to tell whether he’s breathing air or grief.

Little fractures creep into his days, now a spiderweb burst of plate-glass that he’s looking through. He finds himself staring at his hands too long, turning them over as though searching for proof that they’re still his, that they’re not permanently stained. He starts forgetting small things. A stack of mission reports left unfinished on his desk for a week, a promise to meet Haibara that slips his mind until it’s already too late. Once, he catches himself halfway through tying his hair before realizing he’s been staring at the same section of mirror for minutes, unable to remember what came next. He covers with a laugh when Satoru teases him about spacing out, but the unease lingers. In class, when Satoru cracks a particularly ill-timed joke, Suguru sometimes feels a split-second of disorientation; he blinks, and their faces blur into a faceless crowd, just more people who will one day cry, or beg, or die. At convenience stores, he lingers too long by the windows, staring at strangers who pass outside, wondering how many would curse him if they knew what his exorcisms left behind.

Satoru fills their nights with noise and nonsense, but Suguru carries the quiet afterward like a wound. Each time he laughs, it feels more like defiance than joy. Each time he kisses him, he wonders how long it will be before even this turns hollow. His appetite falters; meals become harder, he tells himself he isn’t hungry, that he’ll eat later, but later doesn’t come. Even when Satoru drags him out for ramen, he only manages a few mouthfuls before his stomach knots, guilt simmering under his ribs as he watches Satoru’s easy grin over a bowl of noodles. He envies the simplicity of it, how Satoru seems to exist in the world without carrying its weight like stones in his pockets. Sleep grows erratic. Some nights he lies awake even while Satoru breathes steadily beside him. He traces the curve of Satoru’s collarbone in the dark, grounding himself, though it feels less like affection and more like desperation, like proof that Satoru is real, warm, still here. On the worst nights, he finds himself slipping out of bed, standing barefoot in the kitchen with the tap running just to hear the sound of water, anything to drown out the silence pressing in.

The others notice too, Shoko, Nanami, Haibara, though they don’t say it aloud. He catches Shoko glancing at him when his gaze lingers too long on the classroom window, or when he rubs absently at his temple during lessons. He forces smiles, forces patience, but sometimes his words come out sharper than he means, and the regret afterward clings to him for hours. 

And yet he cannot stop reaching, cannot stop wanting Satoru, aching for a simple life with him. A hand at his wrist, a kiss pressed to his temple in the quiet of early morning, these are the moments that keep him tethered. That, perhaps, is the cruelest part: that he’s never loved anything so much in his life, never ached so much at the thought of losing it. The sweetness only sharpens the dread, like sugar dissolving on the tongue while a blade waits at the throat. He begins to wonder if these small joys are not a reprieve, but a countdown. Though, he’s not sure entirely to what. And how much time he has left. 

Satoru has been away for a while. Mission after mission after mission. His dorm room feels cavernous without his noise filling it, the silence settling too thick against the walls. Suguru tosses and turns in their bed, sheets twisting tight around his legs, the pillow smelling faintly of Satoru’s shampoo but no longer enough to trick him into calm. His body hums with a nervous, jittering energy, too restless to sleep, too exhausted to do anything else.

It’s been a week. He flips open his phone for the tenth, twentieth, time that night. No messages. The absence doesn’t surprise him anymore, but it still stings in a dull, familiar way. There was a time Satoru would spam him with updates, nonsensical pictures, late-night rambling about vending machines and terrible hotel pillows. Lately, the messages have dwindled; from a constant running commentary on the banalities of his everyday life, to long nightly check-ins, then to quick texts in the morning, and now to nothing at all. Suguru stares at the blank screen until his reflection stares back, pale and drawn.

Suguru doesn’t blame him. He cannot, not after he’s seen the toll it takes, how Satoru comes back from missions looking wrung-out even when he laughs, even when he pretends it’s all the same as before. But knowing doesn’t make the ache easier. He misses the weight of him pressed to his side, the way his voice filled the room with careless ease. Now every creak in his room feels like proof of absence, every shadow stretching too far in the corners.

Suguru gets up, ventures to the common room. Paces the length of the kitchen barefoot, the tiles cool under his feet. He pours himself a glass of water just to have something in his hands, something to keep him grounded, though he doesn’t drink it. On the counter sits the bag of Peach KitKats Satoru bought weeks ago, mostly untouched. He opens the bag just to breathe in the artificial sweetness, then sets it aside. His stomach knots at the thought of eating, but he leaves the bag half-open, as if Satoru might appear and reach for it with that stupid grin.

The clock ticks past three. He sinks onto the blue couch, elbows on his knees, phone dangling loosely from one hand. He imagines where Satoru might be now, some hotel room in Miyagi if he remembers his schedule correctly, lying on stiff sheets, maybe too tired to even kick off his shoes. Or maybe walking alone down some foreign street with his hands in his pockets, sunglasses perched uselessly at night. The images flicker in his head, half-comforting, half-torturous. He wonders if Satoru is thinking about him too. 

When the silence grows unbearable, he dials his number. He lets it ring once, twice, three times before hanging up. He doesn’t want to hear the voicemail. Doesn’t want to hear the cheerful voice Satoru recorded months ago, back when things still felt easier, lighter, the voicemail Suguru persuaded him to record in the first place. He remembers it too vividly, that afternoon in his room. Satoru sprawled across the bed, phone flipped open against his chest, grinning like he’d been handed the most ridiculous assignment in the world.

“Should I say something like,” He modulated his voice all playful, exaggerated. “‘If you’re Suguru, leave a message after the tone. If you’re not, I’m not picking up your call anyway.’”

Suguru had rolled his eyes, but his mouth had betrayed him, twitching toward a smile. “You can’t put that on your voicemail.”

“Why not? It’s true.” Satoru turned his head, watching him from where Suguru sat cross-legged at the other end of the bed, a stack of magazines he was sifting through balanced on his knees. “Who else would I ever want to hear from?”

The words caught him off guard, the ease with which Satoru said them, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like it didn’t hurt him to voice these realities out into a world that might not grant it to him. Suguru tried to chide him, murmuring, “That’s rude, Satoru,” but his voice came out too soft. He set the magazines down on the bed, and moved towards Satoru before he could stop himself, pressing his mouth to his, silencing that grin with something hungrier, something sweeter. He kissed him out of fondness, out of love, out of a possessiveness he could never quite name, the kind that made his chest ache with the knowledge that this: this easy, fleeting warmth was his and his alone. Satoru laughed against his lips, fingers curling in Suguru’s hair, and for a moment the whole world felt too small to contain them. Like he could ruin the world for ruining them. The voicemail itself ended up simple, generic, almost careless, Satoru’s voice bright and teasing, as though he’d just turned away from Suguru mid-kiss. Suguru had thought it was perfect.

He sets the phone face-down on the table, presses his palms over his eyes until stars bloom behind them. He stays there, hunched forward, elbows digging into his knees, trying to breathe past the weight sitting on his chest. The room is too quiet, too still, too foreign without Satoru’s laugh bouncing off the walls, without Shoko’s drawl dragging against the floor, without anyone here but him. But that’s what it’s been like lately. Without anyone around but him. Every creak in the common room seems magnified, every tick of the clock like a hammer to the skull. He feels like he’s unraveling one thread at a time, pulled loose by silence. It’s been happening more and more this past week, moments where his body feels disconnected from itself, where he moves through his days like a ghost haunting his own life. Classes, errands, training sessions, he goes through them all in a haze, the world muffled as he's pressed between panes of glass. Sometimes he catches his reflection in shop windows and doesn’t recognize the man staring back: hollow-eyed, shoulders caved, mouth twisted into something between a frown and a grimace.

Sleep isn’t any better. It hasn’t come to him all week. He dozes, never rests. Dreams are muddled things, blood and laughter, hands slipping through his grasp. He wakes with his heart racing, chest slick with sweat, reaching instinctively for a body that isn’t there. By the time he realizes, the loneliness has already settled like lead in his gut.

He presses harder against his eyes, chasing the phantom sparks until they flare bright enough to drown everything else. But the fireworks behind his eyelids don’t help, the shape of phosphenes turning into images he can’t suppress. The muffled gasp, Riko’s small frame crumpling like a discarded doll, the awful second lag before his brain caught up to what had happened, clapping that swelled and swelled until it felt like it would split his skull in two. Constant, relentless. Bees in his ears and eyes that he can’t scratch out. He pushes harder, until his eyes throb, until pain blossoms sharp and nauseating at the backs of them. He tells himself it’s to shut the memories out, but part of him wonders, hopes almost, that if he just keeps going, something will give way. That if he pressed just a little harder he might pop them out altogether. The thought doesn’t scare him. The fragile globe of the eye straining against its socket, the thin membranes tearing like wet paper, fluid spilling hot and metallic down his cheek. The optic nerve snapping next, white-hot severing deep inside his skull, a cord yanked loose, agony flooding his brain in a blinding rush, filling every corner until nothing else could fit. For one horrifying moment, it almost comforts him. Blindness. A permanent injury. They’d have to take him off the field, wouldn’t they? They’d absolutely have to decommission him, right? He hasn’t heard of a blind sorcerer, who, at least, was not guided by a cursed technique. His technique is unsuitable for that. He’d be spared the missions, spared the faces, spared the children. He could finally rest. He pictures bandages, darkness, a body forced into rest. For one horrifying moment, it feels like relief.

The thought jolts him, sickening in its clarity. His palms drop from his face and he jerks upright, gasping in a lungful of air, as though he’s surfaced from drowning. The room swims in front of him from the relief of pressure, and for a moment he thinks he’s imagining it again, another trick of exhaustion.

Because Satoru is standing there. 

Snow melting into the collar of his coat, bag slung carelessly off one shoulder, eyes soft and rimmed with tiredness. Too vivid to be a dream, too sudden to be real. Too beautiful to have come out of his imagination. Suguru’s heart stutters, skips, then slams into motion all at once.

He just stares, afraid if he speaks, if he breathes too loud, the image will dissolve.

And then Satoru grins, wobbly, too bright for the weariness bleeding through him, and says, “Surprise!”

The sound of his voice breaks something open inside Suguru, and before he can think, he’s moving, swinging up from the couch, catching him in his arms as though to anchor them both to the same plane of existence. His grip is desperate, fingers curling into the damp fabric of Satoru’s coat, pulling him closer, tighter, like he’s afraid if he lets go even for a second, the body in his arms will dissolve back into the silence.

“Satoru,” he breathes, brushing his mouth against the crown of his head, the smell of cold air and summery shampoo filling his lungs until it aches. “What are you doing here?”

Satoru chuckles, soft and worn around the edges, the sound bandaging all the new wounds deep inside Suguru’s chest. His hand slides up the length of Suguru’s back with a slowness that feels deliberate, like he’s savoring each inch of contact, before settling in the space between his shoulder blades. His voice is muffled where it presses against Suguru’s neck, raw with exhaustion: “Missed you.”

Suguru swallows hard, his throat thick. The words should be easy, but his mouth won’t form them. “What are you— how—” His voice fractures, too many questions crashing together, none making it out whole. He pulls back just enough to look at him, and it nearly knocks the air out of him, the way Satoru’s lashes stick together from melted snow, the shadows beneath his eyes, the faint, crooked smile straining to hold itself together.

Suguru’s hands rise before he can think better of it, cupping his face like something precious, his sweetheart, his darling, his thumbs trembling as they ghost over sharp cheekbones, gone hollow from junk meals of onigiri and strawberry milkshakes, nothing nourishing going into his body when he’s out on work. He tilts Satoru’s head up by the line of his jaw, thumb pressing softly against the curve there, forcing him to meet his gaze. And then because he can’t hold himself back any longer, he kisses him.

It’s messy, almost clumsy from how long it’s been, but Suguru presses into it like a man starved, the heat of Satoru’s mouth stealing every thought from his head. Weeks of silence collapse into this one point of contact, the world narrowing until there’s nothing but the faint taste of salt on Satoru’s lips and the way his breath hitches, sharp and surprised, before melting into the kiss. He loves, he loves, he loves. 

When Suguru finally breaks away, he’s gasping, forehead pressed to Satoru’s, eyes squeezed shut as if it might calm him. “How are you here?” he whispers. 

“I finished up early in Miyagi,” Satoru grins, blinding and beautiful up close. Suguru can count all his individual teeth from here, all thirty two of them, straight and white. Perfect, like the rest of him. “I saw your call come in, I was on the way so I didn’t pick up, sorry. Wanted to surprise you.” 

“I’m surprised,” Suguru manages, a smile playing at his lips despite the heaviness still pressing on his chest. He says it softly, like he’s afraid of breaking the fragile air between them, though his arms remain firm around Satoru, unwilling to let go.

Satoru tips his head back, watching him with a brightness that feels both effortless and strained, as though holding himself together by sheer will. “What are you doing awake at this hour anyway? I was planning on sneaking in and surprising you in your room. But when I went in, your bed was still made. Your room was empty.” He shifts closer, peering at him, trying to catch details in the dark. “So I figured you’d be here.”

Suguru’s mouth opens, then shuts again. The words stumble over one another before they can form, his throat tightening around all the things he could say. Would it be fair to tell him? To admit that the shadows in his room twist into shapes he cannot bear to see, that the silence swells too large until it crushes him? To admit that every corner of this campus is haunted, and that sleep feels impossible, dangerous, when his mind keeps dragging him back to sounds he cannot silence: the thud of a body, the applause like bees in his ears?

His gaze drops, and when he finally forces out an answer, it comes halting, flimsy, “Just got up for a glass of water.” He gestures weakly to the glass sitting full and untouched on the countertop, the surface still perfectly still, unbroken. He hopes Satoru will glance past the growing fractures in the glass, the untouched water, the untouched bed, that he’d let the lie hang there between them.

But he doesn’t. Suguru can see it immediately, the way Satoru’s eyes narrow slightly, not in suspicion, but something softer, in concern, or maybe worry, or something too complicated to pin down without sleep or food or light. The blue of his eyes seem to pierce right through him, yet he says nothing. He doesn’t call him out, doesn’t push. Instead, he shifts his hand, hooking their little fingers together, the simplest hitch back to reality.

“You wanna go to bed now?” Satoru asks, his thumb brushing lightly against Suguru’s knuckle as if to coax him into saying yes.

Suguru stares at their linked hands for a long moment, throat thick, chest aching. And then he nods. 

They start the short walk back toward the bedroom, shoulders bumping in the narrow hallway, hands brushing until Suguru finally laces their fingers together. They don’t make it more than a few steps before Satoru turns, pressing Suguru into the wall with a kiss that steals his breath. The plaster at his back is cool, crumbling under his shoulder blade, but Satoru is all warmth and urgency, grinning against his mouth when Suguru’s teeth catch on his lower lip.

“Idiot,” Suguru whispers, but the word melts into a laugh, stuttering, caught between disbelief and joy. Satoru’s here, he’s here. 

Satoru laughs too, quiet, boyish, muffled against his skin as he kisses the corner of his mouth, the curve of his cheekbone, anywhere he can reach. They stumble down the hall like that, tripping over their own feet, bumping into walls, catching one another with hands pressed quick and sure against ribs and hips and shoulders. Suguru’s giggle bursts out unbidden when Satoru nearly knocks them both into the doorframe, and for a moment, it feels easy. For a moment, it feels like nothing can touch them.

When they finally spill into the bedroom, Suguru pulls him down onto the bed, the sheets cool against his overheated skin. Satoru doesn’t let go, arms wrapping tight around his waist as though anchoring himself there. For a while, they just breathe together, noses brushing, lips still tingling from every kiss along the way.

“You should change out of those clothes,” Suguru murmurs, brushing his hand against the stiff fabric of Satoru’s uniform. “You’ll be uncomfortable sleeping in them.”

Satoru shakes his head against his shoulder, hair mussed and tickling his neck. “It’s fine. I need to leave in a few hours anyway.” His voice is light, but it’s mangled with exhaustion. “More to do. There’s always more to do. I just—” He pauses, swallowing. “I just wanted to see you.”

Suguru feels it like a fist closing around his heart. He didn’t know what he was thinking, of course Satoru has to go back out there again. It hits him with the force of a tidal wave, the reminder that this is temporary, that he only gets these scraps of Satoru between towns and curses and death. His stomach twists, sour and sharp, but he doesn’t let it show. He can’t. If he did, Satoru would see it instantly, would read it in his face the way he reads every cursed technique, every trick in battle. Suguru can’t let him. He won’t. So instead, he lowers his mouth to the crown of Satoru’s head, pressing a kiss into the mess of white hair, letting it hide the way his expression falters. His fingers curl, clutching a little tighter at Satoru’s back, the motion casual enough to pass for comfort.

“You’re here for now,” Suguru says, voice soft, too stable for the wreckage rolling inside his chest. “That’s all that matters.”

Satoru hums low against his collarbone, the sound warm, trusting, content in a way that makes Suguru ache even more. His long fingers splay over Suguru’s ribs, as if holding him in place, and he lets all tension in his body bleed out and burrows in closer, as if determined to collapse the space between them until there’s nothing left but warmth. For a while, they just breathe, noses brushing, lips brushing every so often without the need to hurry. And it’s pleasant, it’s so incredibly pleasant; Suguru lets his hand wander up, mapping the slope of Satoru’s shoulder, feeling the muscle shift under his palm when Satoru exhales. He feels each tiny movement, his hair tickling his neck, the weight of his arm heavy and grounding across his waist, and memorizes again all of the tiny details that have slipped his mind over the course of Satoru’s absence. 

Satoru’s finger drifts lazily, tracing the curve of Suguru’s ear. “It’s so quiet in here,” he says, voice slurred with sleepiness. 

Suguru chuckles, a low rumble against his chest. “That’s because you finally shut up for once.”

Satoru snorts, nose nudging along his jaw, lips brushing skin as he grins. “Smartass. I mean it, though. This is the only place in the world where it’s quiet.” 

“Yeah.” Suguru’s thumb presses into the ridge of his collarbone, feeling the warmth of his skin under his calloused hand. “Feels rare, doesn’t it?”

Satoru sighs, almost too quietly to hear. “Like it shouldn’t exist. Like any second it’s gonna be gone.” His fingertip pauses at Suguru’s jaw, lingers there for a moment, then slides to the corner of his mouth.

Everywhere else, it’s relentless. Cities blur into one another, neon bleeding into shadow, the rattle of trains, the hum of power lines, curses muttering under the skin of the world like static. With his Six Eyes, it’s never just a building, but the latticework of steel inside it, the electrical work through its power sockets, the screws and bolts in every beam. It's never just a person, but the flicker of cursed energy flowing through their veins, their heartbeat, their pulse, their bone marrow spitting out new blood cells, sitting with lymphocytes and b-cells and t-cells. Colors fracture into sharper hues, sounds crowd one another, footsteps, whispers, the hiss of wind cutting between rooftops, all of it clamoring for attention in the limited space of his brain. Every surface has a shimmer, every edge hums with its own vibration, and all of it presses against him, moment after moment, until it feels like the world is trying to split him open. He tries not to dwell on it right now. He kisses Suguru instead.

Suguru catches the kiss, deepens it just enough to leave them both breathless before he pulls back. His hand slides down Satoru’s spine, slow, reassuring. “Then stop thinking about what comes after. Stay here. With me. Just for now.” 

Satoru’s laugh is shaky, too thin around the edges. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Suguru’s. “I like when you talk like that. Maybe I can.”

“No, maybe you should,” Suguru murmurs, tilting to press a kiss at his temple, then another at the soft corner of his eye. “You never let yourself rest. You carry too much.”

“And you don’t?” Satoru asks. His hand drifts lower over Suguru’s ribs, thumb brushing back and forth like he’s afraid the shape of him might vanish if he stops. His voice is quieter now, the teasing edge long gone.

“I do,” Suguru admits, his words soft as he presses his lips against the edge of Satoru’s hairline. The truth sits heavy in him, poured into a jar whose lid he has screwed on tight. He’s been ragged for months now, years even, worn thin by curses that refuse to stop surfacing, by the endless tally of death that clings to his uniform and lingers in the smell of iron stuck to his shirts that he can’t wash out fast enough. He knows he can handle it, he always has. There’s never been a curse too large, too monstrous, for him to deal with. But when Satoru was still beside him on every mission, it was different. Easier, somehow, not in the fighting itself, but in the aftermath. After the dust settled and the adrenaline drained and the blood was wrung out his clothes, all Suguru ever had to do was turn his head and find Satoru there, bright and alive, looking back at him with that certainty, that strange fondness in the twist of his smile that he misses so dearly. He can’t remember the last time he had that, can’t remember the last time he felt the ground solid under him in the same way. “But it’s easier when you’re here. Like I can set it down, just for a while.”

That silences Satoru for a long moment. He nestles closer, tangling their legs together, holding him as if he can fuse them into one body. His breath stirs against Suguru’s throat. Finally, he whispers, “That’s what you are for me too.”

Something hot and fragile lodges in Suguru’s chest, too heavy for words. He answers the only way he can, tilting his chin down to capture Satoru’s lips again. This kiss is slower, lingering, a conversation all its own. Satoru responds in kind, mouth parting under his, fingers sliding into his hair, tugging just enough to pull a shiver out of him. When they part, foreheads still pressed together, Satoru chuckles softly. “I really missed you.”

“Are you keeping yourself warm out there? Eating well?” Suguru asks squirming in worry, but his hand stays where it is at the small of Satoru’s back, pressing him closer. The truth is, he worries more than he should, worries even when he knows better. Satoru is stronger than anyone alive, untouchable in a way Suguru will never be, in a way no one alive can ever be, and logically he knows there’s no real need to fret over whether he’s eating enough or keeping warm at night. Satoru can take care of himself; he probably does better when Suguru isn’t around to distract him from the job at hand. But the logic doesn’t quiet the ache. Suguru still finds himself lying awake, thinking about him on nameless rooftops in strange towns, the cold creeping in under his collar, exhaustion hollowing his face. He just wants to hear it from him, to be told he’s fine, to believe it in his voice, if only so the worry loosens its grip for a little while.

“Are you worried about me?” Satoru asks, grin audible even with his face buried in Suguru’s neck. He loves the way his speech twists as he smiles, syllables stretched out and gauzy through it. “I’m taking care of myself, I’m okay. If I don’t, Ijichi will have to carry me back here in a gurney and you’re going to have to feed me soup and gruel every day.”

“I’d do it for you,” Suguru says before he can stop himself, the words spilling out raw, unpolished. His hand tightens reflexively on Satoru’s shoulder.

Satoru stills. Then, slowly, he presses the softest kiss just under Suguru’s jaw, right where the pulse thrums. His voice is a whisper, but it’s just as true as the warmth under his skin. “I’d do it for you too.”

“But I hope neither of us will ever have to.” Suguru feels it in his bones, the truth of it, the way he can’t imagine ever releasing this warmth, the things he’d do to protect it knowing how fragile it is, the terror he feels at anything happening to it. He kisses him again, softer this time, lips brushing in a rhythm that feels like a promise.

Satoru hums again. His legs tangle with Suguru’s, his foot hooking lazily behind his calf.

The room coddles them, the faint hum of the old ceiling fan in the background, its blades clicking every so often like a heartbeat. The walls are marked here and there with faint scratches and uneven patches where plaster has chipped away. Posters have shifted and torn and changed from the first time Satoru was in it. The faint smell of incense clings to the air, changed to something sweet and vanilla-esque now burning on an old clay incense burner on the windowsill with ash dusting the edge where Suguru hasn’t bothered to clean yet, coming through with the clean scent of soap from Suguru’s sheets, sandalwood that has tangled itself into the fibers of the curtains. A single lamp glows dimly in the corner, painting the space in warm amber, making the shadows stretch soft and long like honey on toast. 

Satoru lifts his head just enough to glance around, eyes lingering on the familiar things. Books stacked haphazardly on the low shelf, the half-burnt candle on the desk in its chipped holder leaning at a slight angle, wax pooled and hardened in irregular dips, the cactus that’s grown slightly bigger since last Christmas, a jacket left on the floor. He’s seen it all a hundred times, yet he still drinks it in like something precious, notices it all with the ease of someone who has catalogued the space over a stretch of years.

“I like your room,” he says suddenly, a little muffled against Suguru’s skin.

Suguru laughs. “You’ve said that before.”

“And I’ll say it again,” Satoru answers without hesitation, tracing the planes of Suguru’s face with his palm. “I’ve slept in god knows how many hotel rooms, barracks, random empty houses while traveling. None of them feel like this.” He pauses, searching for the words, then grins. “This feels like home.”

Suguru feels the words hit deep, like they settle somewhere he can’t quite reach. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, smoothing his palm over the curve of Satoru’s shoulder as if that will keep the moment fixed in place. “Is that why you keep stealing my pillows every time you come here?”

“They smell like you,” Satoru says immediately, grinning like he’s proud of it. “Can’t sleep without them now. You’ve ruined me.”

Suguru laughs, shaking his head. “Such dramatics.” He can’t say it out loud, too true and big and scary right now but he writes it into Satoru’s back with his finger in indecipherable squiggles: You’ve ruined me too. I can’t sleep without you too. I love you too. 

“You know,” Satoru looks around, at the room, at Suguru, at the divots in the mattress, “I think I’ve claimed this room more than you have.”

Suguru tilts his head, bemused. “How do you figure?”

“Easy.” Satoru points toward the desk without even looking. “That magazine? The one on top with the blue cover? You’ve had it out for three months. Haven’t moved it. You know why?” He taps Suguru’s side like a drumroll. “Because I use it as a coaster.”

Suguru snorts. “No way, I just haven’t gotten around to finishing it.”

“And you never will because you’ve noticed that it’s become my de-facto coaster,” Satoru sing-songs, grinning. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you replaced the incense. I burned the last one down to a stub last time I stayed over. I like this one better, it’s a sweeter scent than I expected from you. Smells like me.”

“Maybe I just bought what was cheapest,” Suguru deadpans, though his hand absentmindedly drifts to Satoru’s hair, combing through the tangles.

“Nope.” Satoru shakes his head smugly. “You bought it because I said the last one made my eyes water.”

Suguru scoffs, hiding his smile against the top of Satoru’s head. “You’re imagining things.”

“And what about the teacup on your shelf?” Satoru doesn’t let up, pointing again, this time toward a small porcelain cup tucked beside a stack of worn paperbacks. “The one with the crack along the rim? I broke it months ago, tried to play it cool, I thought you’d throw it out. But you didn’t. You put it up there instead.”

Suguru glances toward it, lips twitching. He’s been caught. “You think I kept it for sentimental value?”

“Obviously,” Satoru says without hesitation. “It’s basically a shrine to me. Admit it, you’re obsessed.”

“Or maybe,” Suguru says smoothly, “I just didn’t want to risk you digging through my trash and cutting your hand.”

“Do you care that much?” Satoru punctuates the words with a quick, teasing kiss to the corner of his mouth, then another to his cheek, and another at his temple. He kisses like he’s scattering breadcrumbs, unable to stop himself, and Suguru feels each one sink into him.

“What do you think, aren’t you supposed to be a genius?” Suguru mutters, but his voice softens at the edges, unable to disguise the affection.

“I think,” Satoru says, poking Suguru’s side until he squirms, “you care more than you let on.”

Suguru smirks, grabbing his wrist to still him. “Are you fishing for attention?”

Satoru gasps dramatically, eyes going wide behind his glasses. “I don’t really need to fish. You’ll give me what I want anyway.”

“Cocky,” Suguru says, though his voice is warm, his thumb brushing across Satoru’s knuckles without thinking.

“Not cocky,” Satoru replies. “Confident. Big difference.” He shifts, chin propped on Suguru’s shoulder now, as if he belongs there. And he does. He can trust that finally. He belongs there, next to Suguru.

Satoru thinks of all the rooms he’s ever slept in, tatami and futon, sterile white walls, polished floors, hotel sheets that smell like bleach instead of anyone’s skin. None of them ever held him. They were spaces. Rooms. This one is different. This one is his, because it’s Suguru’s.

“Confident, huh?” Suguru drawls. “Just delusional, I think.”

“You wound me,” Satoru says, pressing a hand to his chest in mock despair before immediately brightening again. “But don’t worry, I’ll recover. My favorite nurse is right here.”

“You mean the one who’d happily feed you soup and gruel while you whined about it?”

“Exactly. You’re caught up with the program.” Satoru grins, tilting his head to nuzzle against Suguru’s jaw.

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet, you still keep me around. Must mean you’re the masochist here.”

“And you encourage it, are you a sadist then?” 

Satoru wonders. 

The question lingers on his tongue, but instead of answering, his mind drifts, unbidden, inevitable, always, to the Gojo estate. The place he was told was home, though it never felt like one. Long, shadowed corridors stretched out in every direction, their polished wooden floors reflecting lamplight like pools of black water. The fusuma doors bore elegant landscapes, mountains, streams, forests, but he wasn’t allowed to touch them, let alone walk through the painted scenery. He learned early that the beauty in that house was only for display, never for him. Tatami mats creaked under his small, bare feet when he wandered too far at night, and every sound seemed to announce his trespass to ears that never really listened anyway.

The silence of the estate still clings to him. A house large enough for dozens, yet emptied of warmth, emptied of family. His parents’ voices were always behind shoji screens, muffled, distant, meant for someone else but not their own son. If he strained, he could catch syllables, hear the rhythm of their stilted speech, but never the words. Never an invitation. What use are parents to a child who could raze half the country by the age he could read? 

The elders never let him forget it. He remembers kneeling in seiza for hours in front of them, back straight, legs trembling with the effort to stay still, while they recited doctrines about responsibility and lineage. If he fidgeted, one would rap a knuckle against his forehead, sharp enough to sting but never bruise lest they leave a mark on the clan’s most precious boy. “Focus,” they’d hiss, as though a six-year-old boy could summon an empire’s worth of control on command. He remembers the taste of the incense smoke in his mouth, the way it coated his tongue until water couldn’t wash it away.

“I’d call it balance,” Satoru says aloud, smirking, tugging Suguru’s jaw a little with his nose as if that could force him back to the present.

“Balance,” Suguru repeats, amused but skeptical, his hand still warm at the small of Satoru’s back.

The word tastes foreign. Balance. Something he’s never had. Not in that house with drills, endless ones. Days of repetition until his body felt less like his own and more like a vessel for what they demanded. His arms and legs twisted into shapes too large for his frame, every fall met with a curt command to stand again. He cried once, only once, when his eyes burned so badly from the strain of Six Eyes that his vision blurred white. The elder watching him only tilted his head, unimpressed, and said, “Then see through the pain.” And then he learnt crying gets you nowhere. 

“And if you can’t strike a balance?” Suguru teases. “What then, oh great sadist?”

Satoru laughs, but it catches on something softer in his chest. Sometimes, when the estate felt like it would smother him, he’d slip out barefoot through the outer gate and run down into the city. Neon signs, ramen stalls steaming up glass windows, crowds pressed together so tightly he could vanish in them; it was like stepping into a different universe. He’d stand on street corners, clutching candy wrappers he wasn’t supposed to have, watching people lean on each other’s shoulders, laughing so loudly the sound vibrated through his bones. Couples kissed without hesitation, friends tugged each other along by the hand, strangers shared umbrellas in the rain. He couldn’t understand it then. Why did it look so easy for everyone else just to exist, when he felt like he was choking all the time?

For years, he told himself he didn’t need it. Didn’t need softness, didn’t need love, didn’t need a place that held him. Being Gojo Satoru, being the strongest, was enough. Loneliness, he decided, was the natural tax of power.

“Well,” he drawls finally, leaning heavier into Suguru’s shoulder, “Lucky for me, I don’t fail.”

“Cocky as always.”

And yet, here he is. 

He wants to grin, to let the mask of arrogance sit easy on his face, but the thought gnaws at him. The memory of those halls feels like a bad dream compared to this room. Suguru’s room, which shouldn’t mean as much as it does. Scuffed floorboards and a threadbare rug by the bed. Blankets stacked in different textures and thicknesses, because Suguru knows he gets cold even if he won’t admit it, and likes to cocoon in different sorts of cloth. Empty coffee cups lined up on the end table, their rims marked where he’d sipped them absentmindedly while keeping Satoru company. Movie posters thumbtacked slightly crooked on the walls, piles of books leaning against each other on every surface like they might topple if he breathes too hard.

It breathes, this room. It feels alive. He’s memorized the uneven patches on the walls, the soundwaves of Suguru’s laugh inside it, the way the air seems warmer when they’re pressed together like this. He’s never had anything like it. Never thought he would. And yet here it is, his first real home, tucked into the crook of Suguru’s arm.

The elders bow to him now. When he walks into a room, their heads lower, spines curving toward the floor. They no longer rap their knuckles against his skull or tell him to endure. They whisper his name with reverence, not reprimand. He is no longer the boy straining to see through pain, he is the man who embodies it. The strongest. Gojo Satoru. 

But Suguru doesn’t bow. Suguru smirks, teases, brews tea too strong for him to drink without whining, tells him to finish his food with a sweet smile. Suguru presses him closer when he pretends not to need it. And in this room, with its warm lamps, its order in chaos, its softness, Satoru learns that maybe he is not only the strongest, not only the heir, not only the weapon they forged. Maybe he can be more than that, someone who is allowed to be lesser. Maybe he is someone who can laugh without cruelty, someone who can love without fear. Someone who doesn’t have to live behind plate-glass.

“I think you just like being taken care of,” Suguru says, voice teasing but softer now.

“Maybe I do,” Satoru answers, looking up at Suguru like he’s searching for the next stair in the dark. 

Suguru’s mouth quirks like he’s about to turn the moment into a joke, but Satoru doesn’t give him the chance. He leans in first, lips brushing Suguru’s with a hesitance that lasts only a breath before he presses harder, surer. It isn’t showy, it isn't about winning, it’s just a quiet, desperate thing, like he’s clinging to proof that he’s more than what the world demands of him.

Suguru answers without hesitation, his hand sliding into Satoru’s hair, grounding him. The kiss is patient where Satoru is hungry, calm where he falters. When they break apart, Satoru can’t quite hide the quiver of a smile, nor the shadow behind it.

“You’re beautiful,” Suguru says softly.

“I think I could use a little bit more work.”

Suguru scoffs, almost a laugh, but it melts into a sigh when Satoru pulls him down onto the bed. They fold into each other easily, limbs tangling, the narrow mattress creaking beneath their weight. In the dark, with only the faint glow of Mount Mushiro beyond the window, the world seems far away, and he wishes he could keep it there. Time blurs. Suguru traces patterns on Satoru’s wrist, the back of his hand, the line of his spine. Satoru, in turn, presses cold fingers under Suguru’s shirt just to hear him grumble, only to be pulled closer in retaliation. They kiss again and again, softer each time, like a secret being spoken too many times until it loses its shape. Between them, the hours slip like water. 

But dawn arrives anyway, in the thin curtains paling and shadows thinning. 

Satoru feels the shift in the air like a hook in his chest pulling him back to where he’s supposed to be. He buries his face against Suguru’s throat, desperate to steal a little more warmth, a little more time, but the light keeps climbing.

“Stay,” Suguru murmurs, devastated, broken. His fingers tighten in the fabric at Satoru’s shoulder as if holding him there could bend the sun back under the horizon. “Just a little longer.”

The plea cuts through him. Satoru wants to obey, wants to let himself drown in this room where the world’s demands can’t reach. His jaw works, searching for an answer, but all that comes out is a shaky laugh that doesn’t sound like him. “If I do, I’ll never leave.”

“Please don’t.” Suguru’s grip doesn’t loosen. His eyes are open now, fixed on Satoru with something too fierce to be mistaken for sleepiness.

And Satoru nearly breaks. Nearly lets himself collapse into the warmth pressed around him, into the first place that’s ever felt like it could hold him. But duty is merciless; it digs its claws in. He pries Suguru’s hand from his shoulder with more care than strength, kissing his knuckles once, like an apology he’ll never say aloud, for something he cannot atone enough for. 

Their last kiss isn’t soft. It’s desperate, teeth grazing, breath caught between them like a gasp for air. When he pulls back, it feels like tearing something vital out of himself.

The boards groan under his weight as he stands. Suguru doesn’t move, just watches, propped on one elbow, the blankets falling around him in uneven folds. His expression isn’t pleading anymore, only drawn, resigned, as though he’s already memorizing the shape of Satoru’s absence. And that breaks him. It breaks him into so many different splinters and shards that no amount of glue, no Reversed Curse Technique could put him back together. Only Suguru can, only him, yet he cannot stay. 

“Hey,” Satoru calls out, only to draw Suguru’s eyes back to him and not to the emptiness slowly creeping into the bed, into the room. Suguru doesn’t respond, only looks at him like a ghost who’s already dissolving into the air and it takes everything in Satoru to not climb back in, to hold his face, and kiss that awful expression away, “I’ll be back, alright?”

And then, because Satoru can’t help himself, because he aches too much already, because he’s in love, because he’s ruined, he leans in for one more kiss. A promise. “I’ll see you soon.” 

April, 2007

“Suguru?”

“Yeah?”

“Catch.”

Something arcs through the air, blotting out the sun for an instant. The shadow cools his face for the briefest mercy before he lifts his hand on instinct. It lands squarely in his palm.

“A popsicle?”

“Yeah.” Satoru grins down at him, shifting his glasses. “Last one they had.”

“Strawberry, too.” Suguru turns the packet over in his hands, clinging to the cold plastic longer than he needs to. “Your favorite. Don’t you want it?”

From above the lenses, Satoru’s eyes catch the light. The summer sky, endless. “Think you need it more.”

“Feeling generous?”

“Guess so.” He drops down onto the bench beside him, sprawling like he owns the whole street. The bench is wide enough for six, but he still presses in close, shoulder brushing Suguru’s. His Infinity is off.

“That’s rare,” Suguru mutters.

“I have my moments.” 

Suguru taps the cold packet against his head. “You can still have it.”

Satoru shakes him off with a lazy tilt of his chin. “Bought it for you.”

Suguru unwraps it. He’s never cared for sweets, but the first rush of strawberry is shockingly pleasant. Cool, sharp, sweet, it slips down his throat like something borrowed from a childhood he no longer remembers. It feels good. These days, not much feels good. He lets himself be grateful for it.

“You like it?” Satoru asks, leaning back until his arms stretch across the bench’s top plank, wide open, like he has nothing in the world to hide.

“It’s fine.”

“Just fine? Cold sugar on a hot day, that’s fucking excellent, dude.”

Suguru doesn’t answer. He bites another piece off, lets it burn the roof of his mouth. His gaze drifts over the crowd: mothers tugging along sticky-faced children, students laughing with shirts half-untucked, an old man bent over a cart of groceries. Simple. Fragile. They have no idea how thin the skin of their safety is, how easy it is to tear through. He knows. He’s torn it himself.

The popsicle drips onto his knuckle. He licks it away absently, the sugar going acrid in his throat. Satoru follows the movement with his eyes. 

“You’re quiet,” Satoru says at last.

“When am I not?”

“Quieter than usual.”

Suguru shrugs. “Not much to say.”

There’s too much actually, about the weight clawing at his ribs, about the way crowds make his skin itch now, about Satoru’s growing absences that tear through the seams of his patience. About how guilt curdles into something darker every time he closes his eyes. But he says none of it.

Instead, he eats in silence until the stick is bare, until only a pink stain clings to the edge.

Satoru nudges his knee, playful. “You should eat stuff like that more often. You always look like you’re chewing gravel.”

“Maybe I like gravel.”

“That’d explain a lot.”

Suguru exhales through his nose, not quite laughing. The stick cracks under his grip, a splinter catching in his thumb. He turns it over as if the broken wood might confess some secret about himself.

Around them, the world hums on: bells, chatter, the shuffle of lives untouched. Suguru feels the distance through the glass between him and everything else. He doesn’t belong to that side anymore. Maybe he never did.

“You’re a tough crowd, y’know that?” Satoru says, still smiling.

Suguru wasn’t always a tough crowd. Satoru wasn’t always a missing act. Yet, here they are.

He closes his fist around the splintered stick until it digs deep, reminding him how easy things break.

“You know,” Satoru tilts his head toward him, “I used to get a laugh out of you every five minutes. I’m losing my touch.”

“You’re not that funny.”

“Ouch. Brutal.”

The words roll off Satoru like water. They always do. Suguru used to admire that, his untouchable ease, his way of making the world bend without ever bowing to it. Now he wonders if it’s just another absence, another mask that slips the closer you reach.

Suguru chews on silence. On the ghosts clawing at the edges of his vision: Riko’s smile, the echo of applause, the wet crunch of flesh on floor. The certainty what he lives for is right clashing against the certainty that he’ll never be clean again. Beside him, Satoru is warm, impossibly close, and still far, far away.

“Thanks for the popsicle,” he says finally, voice flat.

“Don’t mention it,” Satoru replies, light as ever, but his eyes linger longer than usual, sharp as if trying to peel something out of him.

Suguru doesn’t look back. He can’t. He knows if he does, he’ll find pity, or worse, the same ruin coursing through Satoru’s veins, and all of it will only deepen the rot already spreading inside him. They throw away the stick and leave the bench behind, bags hanging from their wrists. A few plastic rustles, the faint clink of bottles inside. Just errands, nothing special. Rice, miso paste, the things Shoko keeps sighing about when they run out. It should feel like a normal afternoon, the sort of chore students complain about in passing, but Suguru can’t shake the cloying taste of artificial strawberry still lingering at the back of his tongue.

The sun is dipping, throwing long shadows over the sidewalk. Satoru walks half a step ahead, swinging the bag in his hand like a child. His gait is careless, practiced, as though the weight of everything never touches him. As though he can still pretend they’re kids running off after class instead of sorcerers dragging their ghosts down the street. Suguru’s fingers curl tighter around the smaller bag he carries. Something shifts inside, the lighter he’d bought on impulse, metallic clink against the carton of milk. He hadn’t planned on it. He doesn’t approve of Shoko’s habit, never has. But the color had caught him, terracotta, red-orange, exactly like her eyes. For one strange moment he’d felt stable enough to buy it. A small offering. Another tether. Maybe if he gave her something, she’d understand the words he couldn’t say. Maybe someone would.

Satoru kicks at a loose pebble on the path. It skips ahead a few paces before clattering into the gutter. “Did you notice something?” he says lightly, “I think the shopkeeper likes you. He kept staring like you were gonna steal his heart along with that milk.”

Suguru doesn’t bite. He keeps walking, eyes trained on the pavement, on the neat cracks that split the ground. “He was staring at you,” he says instead, voice quiet.

“Yeah, but that’s normal.” Satoru flashes him a grin over his shoulder, like it should lift the air between them. It doesn’t.

Suguru shifts the bag against his leg. The plastic crinkles. Something about the sound grates on him. Too loud. Too fragile. He imagines the bag splitting, spilling everything into the road, glass and milk soaking the concrete until it smells like rot. His stomach twists.

“You’ve been weird lately,” Satoru says after a stretch of silence, softer this time. “Weirder than usual.”

Suguru almost laughs. Almost. Instead, he pulls in a breath that tastes like dust and exhaust fumes. “Just tired.”

“That’s the excuse you always give.”

“It’s the truth.”

They reach the crosswalk. The light is red. Suguru stares at it like it might burn through him if he looks too long. His grip tightens on the bag until his knuckles ache. Tired, yes. Tired doesn’t cover it. He’s unraveling at the seams, pieces of himself slipping loose where he can’t catch them, can’t stitch them back. And Satoru is right here, close enough to touch, but what good does that do? What could Satoru even pull back from the mess hollowing him out? Does he even have the time to? 

The light clicks green. Satoru falls into step beside him again, their shoulders brushing. His Infinity is still off. Suguru notices, he always notices, and it feels like a gesture, some attempt to bridge the gap. He should be grateful. He isn’t.

“Shoko’ll be happy we actually remembered the soy sauce,” Satoru says, too bright, too easy.

Suguru nods. “Yeah.”

They walk through the gates of the campus, the evening air folding over them. Suguru looks down at the bag again, at the lighter buried inside. He thinks about giving it to Shoko, about her lazy smile, about Satoru cracking some joke in the corner. He thinks about all of it shattering anyway.

His chest feels tight.

Satoru glances at him once more, sunglasses catching the last slant of sunlight. For once, he doesn’t grin. Doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him like he knows, and doesn’t know what to do.

And Suguru thinks, maybe that’s worse than silence.

The common room is louder than usual when they step inside, bags tugging at their wrists. The air smells faintly of cheap incense and instant noodles, the kind of mix that clings to old furniture and students alike. Suguru pauses at the doorway, the sudden burst of voices pressing against the edge of his thoughts.

“Welcome back!” Haibara beams from the worn blue couch, legs folded beneath him. His uniform jacket hangs open, tie loose. He’s balancing a tower of snack wrappers on the frayed armrest, clearly proud of it.

“You guys bought everything?” Shoko leans against the windowsill, cigarette dangling from her fingers. She blows smoke toward the ceiling with practiced ease, though her eyes flick toward the bags immediately. “Tell me you didn’t forget the soy sauce this time.”

Satoru drops his bag on the low table with a flourish. “Doubt us? As if. We got everything on the sacred scroll.”

Haibara laughs, clapping his hands. “You’re lifesavers. I was about to volunteer to go, but then I remembered I have no money.”

Satoru tousles his hair in passing, grinning. “At least you’re honest about it.”

Suguru sets his own bag down more quietly, the lighter inside making a soft clink as it lands. He keeps his eyes down, fingers lingering on the plastic handles before he lets go.

Shoko stubs her cigarette out in a tray perched on the sill. “What’s this?” She fishes through the bag before Suguru can stop her. Her fingers close around the lighter, and she pulls it out, turning it in the slant of light from the window. Her brows rise slightly. “Oh? You got me a present?”

Suguru exhales through his nose. “Something like that.”

“It’s nice,” she says, and for once her voice softens. The burnt umber of the lighter catches in her hand, and she smiles faintly. “Good eye.”

Haibara leans forward, peering. “Cool! Does it shoot flames like a cursed tool?”

“Just a lighter,” Shoko says dryly. She slips it into her pocket like it’s nothing, but Suguru feels the faint relief of a thread tied down, something placed in steadier hands.

Satoru plops down on the couch, stretching out shamelessly until Haibara has to scoot over. “Alright, chef, what’s for dinner with all this gourmet loot we hauled back?”

“Don’t look at me,” Shoko says immediately, lighting another cigarette with the last one. “You two can cook for once. I’ll supervise.”

Suguru leans against the back wall, arms crossed, watching them bicker. The room feels alive in a way he hasn’t felt in weeks, with Haibara’s easy laughter, Shoko’s dry-edged calm, even Satoru’s deliberately exaggerated whining. The noise fills in the hollow places for a moment, but it doesn’t last. He can feel himself apart from it, fractured glass between him and the scene. He knows how to smile, how to nod at Haibara’s chatter, how to look amused when Satoru elbows him to back him up against Shoko’s teasing. He plays the role well, practically mastered the concept of method acting. 

Still, there’s a warmth in Shoko’s quiet glance when she pockets the lighter. A plain simplicity in Haibara’s grin. Even Satoru, throwing jokes into the air, his Infinity lowered, even that feels like something reaching out to hold him here, just a little longer. He grasps at the straws within his reach. 

Shoko exhales a curling wisp of smoke and taps ash into the tray. She scans the room, landing on the empty chair in the corner. “Where’s Nanami?” she asks.

Haibara perks up, sitting straighter. “Out on a mission,” he says quickly, like he’s been waiting to supply the answer. “Second-grade curse downtown. He said he’d be back before midnight.”

Shoko hums under her breath, not quite satisfied. She flicks her cigarette once, the ember glowing bright in the dimming light. “They never let that kid breathe.”

“Tell me about it.” Satoru tips his head back against the couch cushions, legs kicked out across the low table. His sunglasses are pushed halfway down his nose, eyes visible in the shadows. “They’ll run him ragged if he lets them. Run all of us ragged.”

The weight in his voice shifts the room. Haibara’s wrapper tower wobbles as his hands falter, and even Shoko stills, cigarette paused between her fingers.

“They just keep stacking them,” Satoru continues, quieter now, eyes flicking toward the ceiling like he’s looking through it. Maybe he is, maybe he’s looking past the cement, the wiring, the crawlspace, up at the vast, cloudless sky. “Mission after mission, curse after curse. Doesn’t matter if you’re seventeen or seventy. Doesn’t matter if you’re tired. Doesn’t matter if you’re—” He cuts himself off with a sharp breath, then huffs out a laugh that doesn’t land right. “It piles up like crazy. You stop for half a second, and suddenly you’re crushed under the whole damn weight.”

Haibara bites at his lip, shoulders curling in. “But that’s just how it is, right?” His voice is softer, less certain than usual. Sunshine caught behind a raincloud. “We’re supposed to keep going. That’s what we do. What we’re here for.”

Shoko smokes in silence for a beat, then tips her ash into the tray with deliberate force. “What we’re here for, huh.” Her mouth twists, a bitter edge pulling at the words. “And when we’re not here anymore? When we’re gone? Who picks up the next one, and the next, and the next? They’ll still pile them on, kid. Just on someone else’s back.”

Haibara’s eyes drop to his lap, fingers knotting together.

Satoru sits up a little, elbows braced on his knees. He runs a hand through his hair, restless, then shakes his head. “You can’t think about it like that, Shoko.”

“Then how should we think about it?” she asks evenly, her eyes narrowing just slightly.

“Like it’s temporary,” he says, almost fiercely. “Like it’s just the mission in front of you. One fight. One day. One curse. If you try to carry all of it, everything behind you, everything ahead, you’ll drown before you even get there.”

Suguru has been quiet against the wall, arms folded tight across his chest. He feels the words land in him, a weight he knows too well. Drowning before you get there. He doesn’t speak, but his gaze stays fixed on Satoru’s profile, trying to map the force in his voice onto the same boy who comes home bone-tired, shoulders bowed when he thinks no one is watching. But Suguru is, he always is. 

Haibara finally lifts his head again, eyes bright in the dim room. “So you just keep your eyes down. Focus on what’s right in front of you. Don’t think about the rest.”

Satoru looks at him for a long moment, then nods once. “Exactly.”

“Isn’t that just another way of drowning?” Suguru’s voice cuts through before he can stop it. It surprises even him, sudden and hoarse. The others glance toward him, the weight of their attention heavy. He doesn’t move from the wall, though his arms tighten around himself. “Not noticing you’re sinking until it’s too late?”

The room stops moving for a second. 

Shoko breathes in sharply, like a pneumonia patient convincing themselves they’ve recovered now. “Maybe. But noticing doesn’t save you either.” She leans back against the windowsill, smoke curling from her lips, and she stares somewhere far past the room. “Sometimes all you can do is pretend you’re not sinking. Or send out an S.O.S long enough to get someone else across.”

Nobody mentions it, the high probability that no one will ever get across in time. There’s simply not enough people for that. Haibara swallows hard, visibly unsettled, but nods like he’s trying to take the thought seriously.

Satoru shifts, restless again. He leans back, stretching out once more, the movement exaggerated all cat-like as if he’s shaking the heaviness off. “You guys are depressing,” he says, but his grin doesn’t reach his eyes. “We’re not sinking. We’re swimming. Barely, maybe, but still.”

Haibara laughs weakly at that, grateful for the lighter turn, and nudges Satoru’s shoulder. “Then I’m gonna keep swimming as fast as I can.”

Suguru looks at him, so young and bright and breakable, and something sharp twists in his chest.

The common room settles into a strange quiet after that, filled only with the faint hum of the heater, the rustle of snack wrappers, the clink of Shoko’s lighter as she flicks it closed and open in her hand. The conversation has left its mark, a heaviness beneath the perfunctory motions. Suguru leans his head back against the wall, eyes half-closed. He feels the distance as keenly as the warmth. Laughter, smoke, and chatter just beyond the glass. 

He keeps revisiting the evening later that night, far-flung into the countryside at 2:00 A.M. The window hums against Suguru’s temple, the vibration of the bus engine running through his skull until it’s more ache than sound. Night has soaked the world outside, only the occasional streak of neon or halogen breaking the dark, smearing across the glass in crooked lines. His reflection hovers faint and hollow, eyes ringed, shoulders pulled in tight.

The mission briefing had been short, another set of coordinates, another name of a town that will forget him the moment he leaves. He remembers nodding at Ijichi with the manila folder in his hand, remembers standing, walking out, but none of it feels like him anymore. Just the body moving where it’s told. He exhales slowly, fogging the window. His fingers twitch against his knee, restless, and he thinks of the common room earlier. Shoko’s lighter clicking open and shut, Haibara’s laugh a little too eager, Satoru grinning like he could force the whole world into being lighter than it was.

Swimming, not sinking.

The words replay in his head, but they feel thin now, like paper held up to the rain.

Suguru wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t always the tough crowd. Satoru wasn’t always the missing act. Yet, here they are again. Him in this bus, alone, and Satoru probably somewhere in a place similar to this, on a mission similar to his, humming with a life that never pauses, not even when Suguru feels himself stilling, slowing. He doesn’t know exactly where the Jujutsu higher-ups have sent him tonight; he hasn’t kept up with Satoru’s mission schedule lately. The bus lurches over a pothole, and his bag slides against his leg. He catches it before it falls to the floor, stuffs it between his thighs. He thinks of the lighter now sitting in Shoko’s pocket, out of his reach. The faint look in her eyes when she pocketed it, softer than her words. It unsettles him how much relief that memory brings. As if giving something away, even something so small, meant planting a part of himself in better hands. He wonders if that’s all he has left, pieces of himself scattered in others, hoping they’ll hold what he no longer can.

A laugh echoes in his head, Haibara’s voice promising to swim as fast as he can. Suguru’s jaw tightens. What will happen when the boy realizes swimming isn’t always enough? When the water pulls harder, deeper, and there’s no shore in sight?

The bus slows for a stop, and the doors open with a hiss. A few passengers shuffle off, a couple shuffle on. Suguru doesn’t move. He keeps staring at the streaked reflection of his own face, watching it blur and reform under each passing streetlight.

Isn’t that just another way of drowning?

The thought sticks, heavier than the weapons in his bag, heavier than the cursed energy pulsing faintly under his skin. He shifts his gaze toward the aisle, away from the glass, as if refusing to meet himself in the dark.

The bus jolts forward again, carrying him closer to another fight, another exorcism, another nothing. He doesn’t look out the window this time. He closes his eyes and lets the engine hum fill the silence, as though it could drown out the questions clawing at him.

The bus rattles to a stop at the edge of a small town, and Suguru steps out into the night air. It smells faintly of damp soil and rust, a kind of heaviness that clings to the lungs. The streets are mostly empty, just a couple of shuttered shops, a vending machine humming softly in the corner, throwing its fluorescent glow across cracked pavement. 

He walks without hurry, bag slung low at his side. He doesn’t need to check the briefing again; the coordinates are etched into his memory. An abandoned shrine on the outskirts. Too much residual energy pooling, too many whispers of curses bleeding into town. The climb up the stone steps is quiet but for the chirp of crickets, the crunch of gravel under his shoes. He remembers coming to shrines when he was younger, standing behind his parents with palms pressed together, wishing for things too simple to name. He can’t recall the wishes anymore. Only the smell of incense, the murmur of prayers. The way it all felt safe.

The shrine ahead is broken-backed now, roof half-caved, prayer ropes frayed and dangling. Cursed energy seeps out of it like a wound. Suguru exhales, drops his bag, and draws the curses he’s stored within him. They spill out with practiced ease, shivering into the air around him, twisted, snarling shapes that obey his hand. The fight should be routine. He’s done this a hundred times. A thousand.

But tonight, when the first curse lunges, he falters. His control stutters for a fraction of a second, enough that the thing’s claws graze too close. He reacts late, slicing it down with unnecessary force, his pulse spiking hot in his throat.  

It’s nothing. It’s gone. But his chest doesn’t settle. His grip on the curses feels slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.

The rest come in a rush, ugly things born from neglect and fear. He pushes his power out harder than he needs to, the air around him vibrating with it. Each exorcism is clean, efficient, but sharper, crueller than necessary. The curses scream and vanish. His teeth clench with every sound.

And then it’s over.

The shrine is silent again, except for the ragged pull of his own breathing. His sleeves are spattered dark where the claws caught him. Shallow, already clotting, but enough to sting.

He sinks down onto the steps, bag at his side, head tipped back toward the night sky. His chest rises and falls like he’s been sprinting, though he hasn’t moved more than a few meters.

His hands shake faintly when he drags them over his face.

Routine. This was routine.

Routine becomes a series of movements, each day stitched to the next into the same cloth of violence. Shrines, alleys, schools, half-forgotten lots on the edge of farmland, all of them marked by curses festering like mold where no one looks too closely. Suguru goes where he’s told, steps into the rot, and clears it out. Exorcism is supposed to be cleansing, an act of release. To him, it’s consumption. His body bends, his throat tightens, and with every cursed spirit absorbed he feels less like a sorcerer and more like a container being filled past capacity. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on that. The motions keep him moving: summon, bind, consume, seal away. His chest heaves afterward, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, the air always thick with the rotten stench of cursed energy that never quite leaves his lungs. Each victory is neat and professional. Each one leaves him hollow.

The physical toll settles into his bones. Fingers stiff from keeping his technique braced so tightly, shoulders aching from nights spent half-dozing against bus windows or station walls, breath sour with the taste of curses swallowed down in quick succession. He’s too efficient sometimes, finishing an assignment in less time than Ijichi or the higher-ups expect, so they give him more. Another name, another town, another shrine with prayer ropes long since rotted through. His reputation builds with each report filed, but reputation doesn’t fill the empty hours between missions, when the silence rings louder than any curse ever has. Reputation doesn’t mean anything to him when it keeps him away from the only thing he cares about. 

He learns, over time, small tricks to blunt the taste of what he forces down. The first time he chewed gum afterward, it made him gag, the sharp mint only sharpening the filth coating his tongue. Something changed in his body chemistry from his first year to now, spearmint only exacerbating the taste now. But sweet flavors dulled the nausea, especially the cheap, fruit-flavored packs he bought in bulk at train stations. Strawberry or grape were manageable, citrus clashed too violently with the bile already in his throat. Wheat noodles helped the most, plain broth, no spice, filling his stomach with something neutral, something solid enough to keep him upright. Once, after a late exorcism near Kamakura, he tried a bowl of spicy ramen, and the heat made the curses churn in his gut until he thought he might vomit in the street. He hasn’t touched spice since. Salty snacks work better: crackers, senbei, dried squid. They ground him, kept his jaw moving, distracted him from the memory of what his throat had just endured. 

These discoveries are small victories, bits of control found in plastic sachets in a life otherwise dictated by assignments and expectation. Suguru holds onto them; gum wrappers folded neatly in his pockets, the habit of carrying a thermos of plain tea, the preference for meals eaten alone at counters where no one will watch him chew too slowly. Each adaptation carves out a sliver of survival. But the weariness accumulates all the same. His reflection grows thinner in glass windows, his eyes darker at the edges, the line of his mouth less prone to curving into anything like a smile. It is not just the work that drains him. It is what the work asks of him: to keep swallowing down the world’s filth, night after night, until he no longer tastes the difference between himself and what he consumes. It is what the work keeps him away from: bright eyes, a boisterous laugh, hands that can wrap around his hands when they shake too much. 

His life becomes a jumble of staccato moments. No real flow between one day and the next. 

The alley behind the shuttered supermarket stinks of rot and motor oil. A nest of curses crawls from the trash heaps, stringy and wet. Suguru summons and swallows them one by one, jaw clenched, eyes half-lidded. The taste lingers, sour and metallic, coating his throat like spoiled milk. He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, gum wrapper already waiting in his pocket. Strawberry. The sweetness cuts through the bile just enough. He breathes out, not shaking anymore.
This is routine.

A middle school gymnasium, the floor slick with condensation from faulty pipes. The curses slither from beneath the bleachers, small ones this time, shapes barely formed, gnawing at the air. He draws them in quickly, with practiced ease. Children’s drawings still hang on the walls, smiling faces, stick figures holding hands. The contrast makes his stomach twist harder than the curses themselves. Afterward, he finds a vending machine by the gate and buys a pack of senbei, chewing until his jaw aches, until salt drowns out the memory.
This is routine.

The mountainside shrine takes longer, he hates these missions the most. Old wood creaks under his weight as he steps inside, curses pooled in the shadows like stagnant water. They resist him, twisting, biting down even as he swallows them whole. His throat burns raw by the end, and he kneels outside, gagging into the dirt until only acid rises. When he can finally stand, he makes his way to the nearest noodle stand down in the village. Miso udon settling like a stone in his gut. Spice would finish him tonight. He doesn’t order it anymore.
This is routine.

A gas station parking lot lit too bright at midnight. Only one attendant inside, nodding off at the counter, oblivious. The curses crawl from the fuel pumps, oily and hissing. Suguru dispatches them in minutes, breath fogging under the fluorescent light. He buys a canned tea from the vending machine, holds it warm in his hands. Takes a single sip, too bitter. He pours the rest out behind the dumpster, watching steam rise from the gravel. His body seizes on the inside from nausea, but his expression doesn’t change.
This is routine.

By now the taste has become a second tongue. He recognizes them all, acrid, coppery, sour, mold-slick. He learns which candies soften which flavors, how tea with sugar helps, how water just spreads the taste around his mouth, in his teeth. Gum loses its effect after too many chews, but crackers still ground him, gives his jaw something to do besides clench and grind his teeth together while keeping bile down. He carries them everywhere. Tiny adjustments, tiny salvations, hidden in his pockets like secrets. And still, every mission ends the same way: his body sagging after the exorcism, throat raw, pulse thudding in his temples.

He repeats the words every time, in the dark, on buses, in shrines, in alleys. This is routine.

Back on campus, the world feels sharper, less like a prison and more like a temporary holding cell. Afternoon light slants through the tall trees of the courtyard, dandelion wisps dancing where the beams catch. Suguru stands off to the side, arms loosely crossed, watching.

Satoru is in the center of the ground, grinning, holding his hand out like a conductor. His Infinity hums around him now, so seamless Suguru can feel it in the air, the way a storm shifts pressure before rain. Shoko stands a few feet away with a bag of supplies pilfered from her desk, tossing them one at a time with all the enthusiasm of a bored lab assistant. A pencil arcs through the air, sharp tip aimed dead at his temple. It halts just shy, vibrating against the unseen boundary before it clatters harmlessly to the floor. An eraser follows. A pen cap. A binder clip. Each one ricochets or drops away like a bullet against Kevlar.

Satoru laughs, leaning back like he’s weightless, like gravity itself can’t touch him. “See? Perfect. Untouchable. I told you guys, didn’t I? You can’t even dream of laying a finger on me anymore.” His grin widens, endless, bright enough that even the morning feels dim in comparison.

Shoko rolls her eyes, flicks a highlighter his way. It stops just as neatly, dropping to his feet. “Congratulations,” she says flatly. “You were already untouchable when it came to being irritating anyway.”

Suguru doesn’t move. He watches the display, the objects bouncing off that invisible wall, the way Satoru doesn’t even flinch anymore. It’s second nature now. Automatic. He’s finally done it, every piece of the technique, every nuance folded into him like breathing. The strongest, without question. 

The thought should make him proud. Should make him feel safe, relieved. Instead, a pressure creeps through his chest, cold and tight.

He wonders what else won’t get through to Satoru now. 

If Infinity stops everything, would it stop Suguru too?

Would he make space for Suguru’s hands if they reached for him? If Infinity blocks out weapons on instinct, things that could hurt Satoru, would it still let him in? 

Satoru twirls the pencil lazily, letting it roll over his knuckles, catching it, spinning it again. His other hand sketches half-shapes in the air, the short-cuts and flourishes that he’s decided make Limitless less of a burden, more of a game.

“See?” he says, grinning, holding the pencil between two fingers like a conductor’s baton. “Red. Blue. Easy. I got it.” 

It had never been easy. Suguru knows that better than anyone. He’d seen the hours Satoru spent alone, pushing himself past exhaustion, the way his fingers trembled when he tried to align Infinity around his form with precision, the sharp flare of frustration when Blue and Red slipped and carved scars into the ground around him. He’d watched Satoru clench his jaw hard enough to ache when his own strength frightened him, when the balance he swore he had under control tilted dangerously close to collapse. No one else would have believed it— Gojo Satoru, stumbling, bleeding at the edge of his own power— but Suguru had. Because no matter how far he stretches the definition of it, Satoru is only human.

Suguru doesn’t answer. He can’t. The motion of Satoru's hands catches him too sharply, pulling him back to that first year class, the morning sunlight through the classroom windows, Satoru leaning against his desk with a cheap ballpoint pen and nothing better to do than spin it between his fingers while they had waited for someone to show up. The sound of it dropping to the desk when he missed, the searching look he’d thrown Suguru’s way when he asked if he wanted to spar.

He hadn’t known what that would grow to back then. Couldn’t have. Satoru was just someone at his side that he couldn’t entirely look away from. But even then something had rooted in him. A small thing at first, harmless-seeming with its baby twigs and stems. He hadn’t felt the need to unroot it. 

Now it’s enormous. He feels it pressing through him, a network of roots and filaments winding into every corner, choking him from the inside. A mycelial network, unstoppable, growing in silence until it was too late to dig it out. Suguru looks at his best friend, the person who ruined him, so easy in his skin, so brilliant it hurts to stare too long, and feels the edge of something sharp inside him. A gulf widening. The stronger Satoru becomes, the further away he feels, like light vanishing behind the glass Suguru’s always standing beyond. 

Shoko tosses another pencil, harder this time, and it bounces straight off, landing next to an acorn. Satoru throws his head back laughing, the sound ringing against the rustle of foliage. Beautiful, sweet. Not directed at him for so long now. 

Suguru forces his arms to stay crossed, his expression neutral. He doesn’t know if he wants to laugh with him, or walk out of the yard and never come back.

Satoru waits until Shoko drifts off with a yawn and her half-finished cigarette, until the courtyard hum quiets back down to its usual lull. Just the two of them again. Suguru hadn’t realized how much he’d been bracing for that, he couldn’t tell if it was in excitement or nerves. 

“You’ve lost a little weight,” Satoru says, too casually, pushing his glasses higher on his nose like it’ll hide the way he’s watching. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just the summer stress. I’m fine.”

Satoru hums, not convinced. “Did you eat too much somen?” A grin follows, waiting for the familiar volley back.

Suguru of five months ago could’ve laughed. Six months ago, he might’ve rolled his eyes, shoved Satoru’s shoulder, let the joke carry them into another stupid tangent. Could’ve kissed him silent. But now, the words land in his gut like lead. He has, in fact, had somen too many nights in a row, cold broth cutting through curses that won’t settle. He can’t laugh at that. It’s too close to the bone, too real, yet impossibly far from what it means. Satoru doesn’t know a fraction of it. 

His mouth stays shut, and Satoru’s smile flickers for half a second before reassembling itself.

Suguru wonders if this is Satoru’s way of reaching, roundabout, awkward, hiding the concern under a joke because maybe even Satoru Gojo doesn’t know how to say ‘I’m worried about you’, maybe he’s never needed to before. Maybe Satoru can’t bring himself to press for the truth the way Suguru hasn’t been able to voice a single one of his own jagged emotions. Instead, all he feels is rage. Not directed at Satoru, not really. Rage at the endless cycle of bile and sugar wrappers, at the missions that hollow him out one swallow at a time, at the weightless laugh that belongs to someone still untouched by filth. Hatred, churning anger, tangled towards a target he can’t quite yet put his finger on. A thought he’s been scared to face for too long lest it show all of its features to him too clearly. He’s afraid of what he’d find, if he’d recognize the image staring back at him. 

He wonders if Satoru has any idea. If Infinity keeps him too insulated, if it lets him miss just how close Suguru is to breaking apart at the seams.

He wants to shake him. He wants to scream until it shatters the glass he’s behind. He wants—

Suguru exhales instead, long and controlled. “I’m okay,” he says finally, voice calmer than it has any right to be.

Satoru blinks at him, searching his face. But whatever he’s looking for, Suguru’s buried it too deep. He tilts his head, still studying him, then breaks into something softer, more tentative. “Do you want to hang out for a bit? Together, I mean. You’ve got some time, right?”

Suguru hesitates, but only for a second. “Alright.”

They walk back across the courtyard in silence, past the lingering gold of late afternoon, up the steps and down the hallways they’ve memorized a hundred times over. The door clicks shut behind them when they reach Suguru’s room, muffling the outside world. For a moment, it’s just the two of them, the air caught between stillness and something waiting to fall.

Suguru turns toward him, and the impulse overtakes him before he can stop it. His hand lifts, searching, reaching for Satoru’s. Just something simple. Contact. Anchor.

And then—

Nothing.

Absence. A void. His fingers meet the wall of Infinity, seamless, absolute. The breath hitches in his chest before he can swallow it down. It’s on all the time now, right. How could he forget that? Satoru’s world, hermetically sealed, even from him. For a second, it feels like something in Suguru caves in, ribs folding around the hollow that’s been growing day by day. He doesn’t know if it’s rage, grief, or something nameless in between, only that it burns all the same. 

But then Satoru’s eyes go wide in realization, guilt, something else perhaps, electricity zapping him the second after. “Oh,” The barrier drops like glass melting away. He closes the space at once, pulling Suguru against him.

“Oh, Suguru,” he breathes, apologetic, soft as butter slipping off a hot knife. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t intentional.”

Suguru stands stiff in his arms, muscles locked against the tide of feeling threatening to break him open. He wills his face into stillness, lets none of it show, the heartbreak, the relief, the way that moment of nothingness cut into him like a curse’s talons.

“I know, Satoru,” he says quietly. “I know.”

Satoru doesn’t let go immediately, as if he’s afraid Suguru might turn on his heel and run if he loosens his grip. But eventually, the hold eases. His arms fall away, and Suguru steps back half a pace.

The room feels smaller for it.

They end up on the bed, side by side but not touching. The mattress dips under their weight, a hollow valley between them. Satoru leans back on his elbows, sunglasses slipping low on his nose so Suguru can see the blue cutting clear through. He turns towards him, studying him again.

“Sorry,” Satoru mutters. “Sometimes I forget I’m even keeping it on. It’s just second nature now. I guess that’s what I intended for it to be but I—”

Suguru hums non-committally, a sound that could mean anything. ‘Yeah, I get it.’ ‘I don’t care.’ ‘I can’t stand this anymore.’ He doesn’t trust his voice to carry through to Satoru without breaking on the way, fragile goods packed into a flimsy little cardboard box. He keeps his gaze fixed on the opposite wall, on the line where shadow and light bisect the plaster.

Satoru tries again. “You sure you’re okay?”

The question floats around in the space between them, dances between the dust motes and sun rays, unanswered. Suguru feels the weight of it, heavier than the silence they’ve built these past months, how much Satoru means it. He wants to say yes, because that’s easier, safer. He wants to say no, because Satoru is the only one who might listen. But instead, he does nothing, just lets the stillness stretch, a gulf neither of them seem willing to cross. 

Satoru exhales, a little laugh tucked inside it, like he’s trying to smooth over the moment with his high spirits. “Man, feels like someone died in here.”

His smile is sharp, practiced, but Suguru can see the edge of worry behind it. He wants to say, someone did. Someone did die. So many people have died. When will the next one happen? Who will it be? 

Suguru forces the corner of his mouth up, just enough to pass as a response. But the truth presses in on him like a stormcloud; Satoru is radiant even in this dim room, his presence heavy and brilliant at once, while Suguru feels frayed at the seams. They don’t belong together anymore, not like this. The air clings. Too heavy for the casual air Satoru is trying to summon, too brittle to carry anywhere worth going. Suguru shifts a little, just enough to change the angle of his shoulder, a fraction of distance more between them. The mattress creaks. It’s nothing, but it feels loud. Too loud.

Satoru notices, of course he does, he notices everything, but he doesn’t comment. He just pushes his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose again, even though there’s no reason for them indoors, in this room that doesn’t sting his eyes, and leans back further like he’s trying to stretch the room open.

“Guess you don’t really have anything in mind,” he says finally, voice too bright, too deliberately casual. “Not down to watch a movie or something, huh?”

Suguru hums again, the same neutral sound, a non-answer. It echoes back at him like a stranger’s voice.

Satoru chuckles, softer this time, almost to himself. He tips his head toward Suguru, blue eyes peeking over the rim of his glasses again, searching. “You weren’t always like this, y’know.”

Suguru’s chest tightens. He feels the words in his mouth, ‘Neither were you’ , but he swallows them down, lets them die in the hollow between them.

Satoru waits. He always waits, as if the sheer force of his presence should draw the truth out. When it doesn’t, he sighs, drops back onto the mattress, arms stretched out carelessly behind his head. The bed dips again, and the valley between them deepens.

“You’re killing me here, Suguru,” he says lightly, but there’s no heat in it, just a faint edge of exhaustion he doesn’t bother hiding. “You could at least tell me to shut up. Give me something.”

Suguru’s eyes stay on the wall. The line of shadow and light hasn’t moved, hasn’t bent, no matter how long he stares at it.

Then, quietly, like the words are pried out of him rather than chosen, Suguru says, 

“It’s tiring.”

Satoru turns toward him at once, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose so the blue of his eyes cuts through sharp and clear. Suguru faintly wonders why doesn’t get a better fitting pair, if it doesn’t get annoying having to adjust them all the time. But he’s glad for it, so he could catch this expression on Satoru through his periphery. He almost looks startled, like he wasn’t expecting an answer at all, much less that.

Suguru keeps looking forward, as if the wall will hold him up. “Keeping up. Pretending everything’s fine.” His fingers curl loosely against his knee. “I’m tired.”

Satoru doesn’t grin this time. His throat bobs as he swallows, eyes tracing Suguru’s face, trying to read more from the sliver he’s been given. “You could’ve just said you’re not okay.”

Suguru tries to smile at the redundancy of that sentence, but it comes out a wince. “Yeah. But that’s hard.”

It is so much harder. Suguru remembers reading something once, years ago, some book he had stumbled across when he was still an acne-ridden preteen and thought big words could explain away the perennial isolation in his bones. Infinite Jest, a mammoth of a novel he had kept stuffed in his purple cordura backpack wherever he went, in some sort of desperate bid that he’d crack open the thick octavo and get through it someday. He never did finish it, but the words lodged somewhere deep, and they return to him now, clearer than most things: “The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.”

He hadn’t understood it then, not really. He’d thought it was overwrought, melodramatic even, because equating the realities of physical harm to a mental state never made sense to him. Fire burned. Falling killed. Those were facts. The mind, though, it was supposed to be malleable, recoverable, something you could push through if you just tried hard enough. That was what he told himself at thirteen, fourteen. That was what he believed merely two years ago when he watched Satoru spin pens between his fingers with practiced ease, when Shoko drew neat lines of highlighter through anatomy notes. He remembers Shoko talking once, revising for a viva voce, about neuroplasticity. How the brain could bounce back like a rubber band, no matter how much stress it had been under. That it wasn’t fixed, wasn’t condemned to be one thing forever. You could form new synapses, she’d said. Strengthen some connections, weaken others. Prune the ones you didn’t use, let them wither. Whole brain regions could shift jobs if they had to. Lose your sight, and suddenly the world sounds sharper, smells sharper, feels sharper. The brain reorganizes, adapts, rewrites the rules for survival. Suguru had nodded, filed it away with a lazy kind of fascination. But now he wonders if it works that way with this. If his brain could really rebound, snap back like a rubber band, or if the band had already frayed too much, stretched too thin. If this was what RCT was supposed to do, tug the brain back into place, force the circuitry to find a new path around the damage. If he could become that person Satoru enjoyed being around once, not this— not the tough crowd. He tries to imagine his mind sprouting new pathways like roots searching through soil, pushing around the hard stones, navigating around the mycelial network Satoru had planted in his lungs. But it feels impossible, he can already feel the flames. 

They’re there, close enough that the air feels hot against his skin even in this quiet room. It isn’t that he wants to fall. It isn’t that the ground looks any kinder. It’s just that sometimes, when he shuts his eyes, he can feel the fire licking closer, and it’s hard not to think about windows. And the book had said it plain, “the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames.” 

The funny thing is, he always assumed they were all standing there together, side by side at the ledge: him, Satoru, Shoko, maybe even the rest of them. Nanami and Haibara, though they’re slightly newer inductees into this burning building. He thought they’d all feel the heat eventually. But lately, when he glances over his shoulder, he realizes no one else is at the window. No one else sees the flames. He’s the only one pressed against the glass. That was the part it had gotten right, Suguru thinks now, that the terror isn’t something you can explain from a safe distance. “You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” He hadn’t really processed it when he first read it, skimming lines he thought were too heavy-handed, but it makes sense now in a way that hurts. Because it means that no matter what he says, no matter how he frames it, the others will never really know. They can watch him from across the room, they can ask if he’s okay, they can theorize about malleable minds and bouncing back like rubber bands. But they haven’t felt the fire. They haven’t smelled their own skin beginning to burn.

“Suguru, you know you’re stronger than this, right?”

Oh. The words land like a fist to his gut. They’re meant to soothe, he knows that. Satoru always means well, always reaches for strength like it’s the only language he knows. But it feels like acid poured on an open wound. Stronger than this. As if what he’s feeling is weakness, as if it’s something he could just grit his teeth and outlast if only he were better, if only he were more. His chest seizes, something sharp lodging under his ribs. He can’t even look at Satoru because the pity in his voice is worse than fire. He wants to scream, to shake him, to demand if he’s ever smelled the smoke curling into his clothes, if he’s ever pressed against glass with no way out. If he’s ever seen it fracture bit by bit. But the words won’t come. His throat burns, his stomach churns, and all he can manage is a shaky exhale that sounds too much like a laugh.

Satoru doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. He won’t, he doesn’t know how. He pushes himself up from the bed too fast, the room tilting slightly with the motion. His palms feel clammy, his skin too tight against his bones. The air in here is suddenly suffocating, pressing down on him like hands around his throat.

“I just—” His voice cracks, and he cuts himself off, jaw tightening hard enough to ache. He doesn’t trust himself to keep talking, doesn’t trust himself not to break open right here in front of him. “I need a little fresh air.”

“Hey,” Satoru calls out, and he can hear the urgency, the confusion. The heartbreak. 

But he can’t tolerate it anymore. He moves toward the door, each step stiff, deliberate, as though the floor might give way under him if he lingers too long. His hands are trembling, but he shoves them into his pockets before Satoru can notice. The only thing worse than being misunderstood is being pitied, and right now he can’t survive either. 

“I’ll see you around later, good luck on your mission today,” he manages. The door shudders shut behind him, the kind of sound that made it obvious he’d fought not to slam it. 

September, 2007

The morgue smelled faintly of ethanol and something metallic, like a coin pressed to the tongue. Stainless steel stretched across every surface, walls, gurneys, the shelving built into the far side of the room. The overhead light was too bright, glaring against brushed metal, every edge throwing back a reflection. It made the room feel sharper than it was, like stepping into a blade. Suguru had rarely been in morgues before. The last time was Riko; after the fight, after Satoru, after it all. But he hadn’t really seen it then. He’d been too far gone, his mind a cavern echoing with claps and static, every sense numbed by exhaustion and grief. Back then, the world had blurred; he couldn’t have said what the room smelled like, or how the light bounced mercilessly off steel. Now every detail cut into him with surgical precision, too vivid, too present, as if the room itself wanted to make sure he remembered. As if it’s trying to tell him something. 

Haibara lays on the table in the center. The sheet drawn to his collarbone looks almost ceremonial in its flatness, the creases pressed crisp by some attendant who hadn’t known him. His skin has taken on that sallow translucence unique to the dead, a waxy undertone that denied any warmth ever lived there. His lips are parted slightly, as if caught mid-breath, but no air would follow. What Suguru can't stop staring at is his hair, damp, clumped with blood at the temple. Haibara, who always pushed his fringe back carelessly when it fell into his eyes, laughing like nothing could touch him. That small, ordinary gesture would never happen again.

Nanami sits in the folding chair just beside the table, both hands hanging limp between his knees. He hasn’t moved since they uncovered Haibara’s face. Suguru saw it, the way life itself had been pulled clean out of him the moment his eyes met that waxen skin. His shoulders hadn’t slumped, not visibly, but something in him had collapsed inward. It wasn’t exhaustion, it wasn't even grief, not yet. It was the exact moment the world reshaped itself around a loss too large to process.

And all Suguru can think is that it was yesterday. Just yesterday, he had seen Haibara bounding down the hall, voice too loud for the time of day. He’d bought Haibara a drink at the vending machine, pressing the cold can into his hand before the boy could protest. Haibara had grinned anyway, wide and boyish, insisting he’d pay Suguru back next time even though they both knew Suguru had three times the money and would never let him. It had been just yesterday. Twenty-four hours ago, there had been laughter, something easy. Now there was this. Cold steel. A sheet pulled too neatly.

He keeps replaying it, trying to find something, an inflection in Haibara’s voice, a look in his eyes that might have hinted at this. That might have told him this was the last time. But there was nothing. Just another day. Just another conversation with a friend. If he had known, he would have said more. He would have told him to run. Run as fast as you can, before they grind you down into nothing. Get out of here before you get killed. Forget the curses, they’re not what’ll take you. It’s people. It’s people like you and me, who believe we have to stay. It’s the higher-ups who won’t let us rest until we’re buried. It’s the humans out there bleeding and mourning and spitting out their own ghosts faster than we can exorcise them. It’s the non-shamans. It’s them. It’s—

Suguru’s throat goes tight, so tight it feels like swallowing fire. He stares at Haibara’s still chest, and for a moment, all he can see is the inevitability of it. How it could have been any of them on that table. How it would be, eventually, if they stayed. It would be all of them except Satoru. One by one, they would end up on tables like this, names whispered into morgue logs, bodies sealed away in white shrouds. And Satoru would remain. It’d be him, eventually, who had to pull the fabric over each of their familiar faces. Him who would light the incense and ring the bell. Him who would wash their bodies with trembling hands and dress them in white. Him who would stand by the crematorium as the flames licked higher, who would gather their ashes into an urn, bone by bone, as the heat died down. Him who would place their photographs on the altar, arrange offerings of rice and fruit and tea, fold his hands, and bow. Him who would mourn. Him who would grieve. 

Isn’t that too cruel? 

Isn’t there a way to stop this? 

It is as if Nanami were reading his mind, cutting straight through the spiral with a voice so flat it almost startles him.

“Where’s Gojo?”

Suguru blinks. “Fukuoka,” he says after a beat. “They’ve got him handling something there.”

It is always somewhere now. If not Fukuoka, then Osaka, Kanazawa, Sapporo. His name is written into every mission log, until the lists of assignments began to look like rosters for one man alone. Suguru had noticed the frequency climbing; first subtle, just a few more requests than usual, then gradually, inexorably, until it became impossible to ignore. The calls came faster, stacked one after the other, sometimes overlapping. The distances stretched wider too, dragging him to the far edges of the country, leaving him barely enough time to return before he was dispatched again. Sometimes, he just didn’t return at all. The higher-ups hardly even pretended to rotate the burden anymore; it was simply easier to send Satoru. And though things between them had been strained lately, the change chips away at Suguru all the same. Because there is no pause, no lull, no reprieve, just a constant push to use him up, to throw him at every threat the world produces. It is bordering on relentless. And despite everything, he finds himself worrying anyway. Worrying because there is only so much even the strongest could bear, that his Satoru could take. 

Nanami sighs, slow and heavy. “Why don’t they just send him on every mission?”

The question is simple, understandable even, but Suguru hears the accusation underneath it. The sharp edge of grief that couldn’t stop itself from asking why not, why him, why now. It isn’t fair, and Nanami, even with his voice flat and even, can’t quite disguise the fracture. There is no shouting, no dramatics, only that heavy, tired exhale carrying the weight of something unspoken: Haibara Yu did not need to die. If the higher-ups had seen clearly, if they hadn’t misclassified the curse, hadn’t underestimated the danger, hadn’t been so eager to treat young sorcerers like disposable offerings, it would have been Satoru sent on that mission. It was their fault, sitting behind their desks, classifying curses with cold, uninformed detachment, deciding from a distance who was worth risking and who was worth saving. They had called it wrong. Deliberately, maybe. Carelessly, certainly. And because of that, Haibara Yu is here on this table instead of walking back through the school gates, bright and loud and alive. Nanami doesn’t say it outright, but the implication rings through the silence between them. It should have been Gojo. The strongest. The one who could shoulder the impossible and walk away. Suguru could feel the grief twisting into blame, not at Satoru himself, never that, but at the way the world has arranged itself around his existence, the way everyone else is left to fill in the cracks where he wasn’t. Because the truth is brutal in its simplicity, Haibara had died not because he wasn’t skilled or brave or willing, but because he wasn’t Gojo Satoru. 

But it isn’t just that. The fact that it always had to end up on Satoru’s shoulders, that everything funneled inevitably toward him, was proof of a system broken at its root. If survival could only be guaranteed by one boy, just one boy, no matter how powerful, then what did that say about the world they were risking everything to defend? It was dependence, fragile and selfish. And who, ultimately, is it for? Who produces the curses they bled themselves dry fighting? Who is all this for? 

The thought sits like rot in his chest, sour and expanding, until it crowds out air. Non-shamans. The people who never once saw the faces of those who died for them, who keep on living without knowing how many are sacrificed to keep their streets quiet. They are the source, whether they knew it or not. Every morgue, every body, every scar, Suguru can trace them all back to that endless tide of human fear and malice made flesh. He tries to swallow it down. He had always told himself this was what being a sorcerer meant, that this contradiction is simply the life they were born into. You protect those who can’t protect themselves, no matter what it costs you. He had believed that once. He wants to believe it still. But standing here, staring at Haibara’s body, he can’t stop the bile from rising. How many times would they repeat this? When does routine turn into a death sentence? 

A fleeting thought of Yuki surfaces, her aloof certainty, the way she spoke as though she could see straight through the world. He pushes it aside, but its ghost lingers, twining with his own grief. Because whether he wants to admit it or not, the resentment is already there, pressing into his ribs like a blade. 

He stays a moment longer, then forces his gaze away from Haibara’s still form and back to Nanami. His throat feels raw, scraped out, but he manages, “I have to go, but if you need to talk, I’ll be around.” The words catch on something deep inside him, tugs hard enough to sting. Because it isn’t just Nanami who needs someone, they all do, but no one can offer something they’re lacking themselves. Like scooping out of an empty pot. Suguru’s chest feels too full, stuffed with grief and bile and questions with no safe outlet. He wants to spill them, to let someone else shoulder even a sliver of the weight pressing him down. But there is no one to hear him here, not even Satoru. Everyone is bound up in their own grief, their own silence. And besides, how can he say aloud what is beginning to calcify in his chest? That every death is sharpening the shape of something dangerous inside him? 

Suguru leaves the morgue with a weight in his chest that refuses to shift, even as the night air brushes cool against his face. The crickets are shrill, the world outside oblivious to the still body laid out inside. He wishes he could be oblivious too. 

By the time he reaches his quarters, the campus is quiet, dipped in the hushed grief of souls pretending to rest. He slides the door open and steps inside. For a long moment he just stands there in the half-dark, looking at the scattered belongings on his desk: half-drunk tea gone cold, a folded uniform waiting for tomorrow, mission papers tucked beneath a paperweight. Life, going on.

He pauses, and for some reason his eyes snag on the folded bedding in the corner. The pale sheets, the crumpled pillowcase. And before he can stop himself, his mind drifts. He sees Satoru there, not tonight, but in a dozen other yesterdays. He remembers the first time Satoru had fallen asleep here, in the seedling stage of their friendship still, stretched out on the bed like a starfish, limbs thrown wide, sunglasses tossed carelessly on the desk. The soft hitch of his breath when he finally, finally let sleep take him. Suguru had stayed up that night, reading in the lamplight, and every time he looked over, there Satoru was, white lashes catching the light, so ridiculous, brilliant, beautiful.

Life, going on. With Satoru by his side once. Some mornings Satoru would sit cross-legged on the bed, eating taiyaki he’d smuggled in before sunrise, sugar dusting the edge of his grin. Some afternoons he’d sit backwards in Suguru’s chair, knees braced against the desk, spinning it lazily while he complained about paperwork. The way he’d trail fingers along the shelves, poking at books he’d never read, picking them up only to set them down again. He was everywhere in this room, like he’d left fingerprints in the air itself.

Standing in the quiet aftermath, the room feels like a photograph that’s been drained of color. The outlines remain, but the warmth is gone. Suguru’s gaze catches on the desk chair, the rug, the window Satoru used to lean out of even when Suguru told him not to, all of it aching with memory. Satoru had been here. Everywhere. In this room, in his life, in every breath Suguru took without realizing it. Even in the silences, Satoru had a way of filling space. He’d lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, eyes bright with some half-formed thought, just watching. Sometimes they didn’t speak at all, just sat near each other, breathing in sync. He remembers the way he’d kick off his shoes without thinking, socks still perpetually mismatched, fingers fiddling idly with whatever was in reach, a pencil, a paperclip, the edge of a blanket. He remembers him curled up on the couch in the common room, snow-damp hair dripping onto the cushions, humming tunelessly through a mouthful of candy. He remembers the warmth of summer evenings when they’d both end up in the courtyard grass, Satoru lying with his arms flung wide like the sky might take him if it only asked nicely. He remembers him in doorways, in hallways, in sunlight and in lamplight, that stunning presence he couldn’t look away from. And he remembers, most of all, how Satoru had looked when he thought no one was watching: tired sometimes, lonely sometimes, but soft, always soft. It comes to him now like a litany, each image stacked gently atop the next, a cathedral of memory built from moments that were never meant to feel this far away.

Life, going on. Satoru’s somewhere across the country, his name inked into yet another mission file.

He forces himself into motion. His mission starts later during the night, and habit demands preparation. He kneels by his bag, sliding it closer across the rug, and begins his inventory with mechanical precision. Cursed tools, each wrapped in cloth so their edges don’t nick the fabric. He unwraps one, runs his thumb across the flat of the blade, then rewraps it tighter than before. Charms folded neatly into compartments, their ofuda paper rustling as he flips through them one by one, checking for any tears or smudges. A spare uniform, rolled tight, tucked into the bottom where it won’t shift. His movements are quick, practiced, the kind of ritual muscle memory had carved into him years ago, but each item he tucks away feels heavier than it should, as though he’s loading stones into his own body, one weight at a time.

He pauses with his hand resting on the last charm. The ofuda’s paper is crisp, faintly fibrous beneath his fingers, and it smells of ink still sharp enough to sting. That tiny, ordinary detail catches in his chest, absurd in its simplicity, and his throat clenches around it. How many times had he performed this same ritual, folded paper and tied cloth, as though careful preparation could guarantee survival? This was the life they were trained into, tools, assignments, death logs, replacements. Always replacements. A body goes cold and another takes its place. A name written down and then crossed out. And for what? For a world that would never even know Haibara Yu’s name, never know Amanai Riko, never imagine their infectious laughter, never picture their clumsy optimism? For the world who would never know Gojo Satoru, the man holding up their sky? 

The thought twists inside him. Suguru sets the charm down a little too sharply on the desk and exhales, trying to breathe out the gnawing bitterness that clings tighter every time he tries to push it down. Non-shamans, blissfully unaware, went about their lives tonight, laughing in their homes, drinking in izakayas, complaining about deadlines, buying flowers for someone they loved. And all the while sorcerers were counting their dead in morgues and on mission reports, carrying the rot of curses in their very skin. All while Satoru works himself to the bone for yet another night. He knows he should shove the thought away, seal it off like he always has, but it sticks like tar.

He rises to his feet, restless now, and shucks on his jacket though it’s still too early to leave. He checks the sheathed tool at his hip, drawing it just enough for the steel to flash under lamplight. He tests the edge with his thumb though he knows it doesn’t need checking; he sharpened it yesterday. He slides it home, only to unfasten it again a moment later, as though repetition might settle him. Anything to keep his hands moving. On the desk, his mission documents wait, folded once, creased neatly. He picks them up, smooths the paper between his fingers, reads them again under the dim light. A mid-level curse, the higher-ups had written with sterile certainty. Mid-level, manageable, straightforward. Suguru no longer trusts their classifications. He no longer trusts their eyes behind those desks, the ones who had called Haibara’s mission the same way. He no longer trusts much of anything. 

He figures he has time to waste, so he pulls his phone from the inner pocket of his jacket. The screen lights the dim room in pale blue, cold against the warmth of the lamplight. A few notifications wait for him, scraps of life nudging at the edges of his night. His mother, asking if he can visit sometime soon, as though geography and duty weren’t whole oceans between them. He misses her. He misses home, though he can’t do anything about it. He hopes he can visit sometime soon regardless, if he can carve out some time in between classes and missions. Shoko, sending another song link with no explanation, trusting him to listen, to know what she meant without saying it. And then, Satoru’s chat. Blank.

Suguru stares at the empty chat for longer than he means to, thumb hovering over the screen. He tells himself it’s just a call, just his best friend, just his everything, just his reason for it all, just something to pass the time before the mission. But the thought doesn’t hold. Because what would he even say? That he’s restless? That he feels like every step he takes is weighted with stones, like the air is thick with questions he can’t push away? That sometimes, when the bitterness comes too strong, the only thing that keeps him sane is Satoru’s voice pulsing through his body? He had tried to once, and it was fruitless. 

He presses the phone face-down on the desk, then pulls it back into his hand almost immediately. If he calls, Satoru will answer. He always does. He’ll sound tired but okay, carrying that same impossible faith that somehow everything will be fine. But Satoru’s nights are already too long, too heavy. He works himself raw for a world that only takes from him, and what right does Suguru have to pile his own unrest on top of that?

The silence stretches, broken only by the quiet hum of the lamp. His thumb lingers at the edge of the call button, pulse matching its hesitation. He can almost hear Satoru already, unbearable fondness in his tone cloaked by a sorry pretense of imitation: ‘You’re so dramatic, Suguru. Just say what’s on your mind.’ And maybe that’s what makes it harder. That with Satoru, there’s no mask, no easy way to package what’s festering inside him. That if he didn’t understand, he wouldn’t be able to bear it. It would break him. He tells himself he’ll wait. He’ll see him in a few days. He’ll survive one more night with the silence, he has survived so many already. And yet, his eyes keep drifting back to the screen. 

He’s about to put the phone down when it rings in his hand, sudden and loud, the royalty-free jingle Satoru had chosen for him months ago, declaring that a ‘world-class sorcerer deserves a world-class ringtone.’ At the time Suguru had rolled his eyes, but now the sound claws right into his chest. He fumbles it up to his ear, and the first second of Satoru’s voice hits him so hard his knees nearly buckle. He sits down heavily on the edge of the bed.

“Suguru! Good evening.”

“It’s 10:00 P.M, Satoru.”

“Oh, oops.” He sounds entirely unbothered, breezy as ever. “Well, that doesn’t really matter. How’s it going?”

For a fleeting moment, Suguru wonders if Satoru knows. If this call is about Haibara. If Shoko told him because Nanami would be hard-pressed texting Satoru directly ever. The thought tangles in his throat, lodges there until he can’t push it out, so he settles on the safest thing he can say.

“Packing for a mission.”

“Boring.” There’s a rustle on the other end, as though Satoru is flopping down somewhere. “I met the weirdest guy this week. Swore up and down that his family’s cursed, but not like, in our sense of the word. Said his great-grandfather made a deal with a kitsune and now every man in their line can’t grow facial hair.”

Despite himself, Suguru laughs, more at Satoru’s voice than its actual content. “That’s a curse?”

“Apparently. He was devastated, poor guy. Kept clutching his chin like it was a tragedy worthy of the gods. He asked if I knew any rituals that could help him grow a beard because he saw me stuffing talismans into my pocket. Can you imagine? Me, helping some guy with his grooming problems?”

Suguru shakes his head, fond of the image. “Did you tell him anything?”

“Told him I had a special ointment. Charged him double for the joke. Don’t worry, I gave it back when he realized it was just drugstore hair oil.”

“That’s awful.”

“I’m generous, Suguru. I gave him hope. Even if it was for just a second.”

Suguru leans back on one hand, listening to the rise and fall of Satoru’s voice. Satoru moves from story to story effortlessly, an old woman who claimed her neighbor’s cat was a shikigami sent to spy on her, a group of kids who dared each other to sneak into a supposedly haunted park. Each tale spins out bright and ridiculous, punctuated by Satoru’s laughter, by his talent for making everything sound lighter than it has any right to.

Suguru listens, asks for more details here and there, smiles when Satoru embellishes. But he notices, too. Notices how none of the stories brush too close to the bone. Nothing about their assignments. Nothing about curses strong enough to kill. Nothing about loss. Satoru is keeping everything safely on the surface, wrapping the conversation in cotton so it won’t cut either of them. And Suguru lets him. He lets himself be carried along by Satoru’s voice, by Satoru’s laughter fizzing through the line, infectious in its carelessness. “Oh, and get this, one of the kids at that haunted park? He swore he saw a glowing handprint on the slide. He was shaking like a leaf. When I checked it out, you know what it was? Glow in the dark paint. Probably been there for months.”

Suguru chuckles softly, rubbing at his temple. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Of course not. I said he had a sharp eye, thanked him for his service.”

“And when he realizes the truth?”

“He never will, probably. He was just another boy, might have inspired him to do something though.”

Suguru lets the words simmer, smile tugging at his mouth even as the weight in his chest doesn’t quite lift. Satoru has always been like this, taking the sharp edges of the world and rounding them down until they barely nick at him. And somehow, he makes Suguru believe, for just a moment, that it’s possible.

“What about you?” Satoru asks, syllables breaking because of the reception. “Met anyone else interesting?”

“Not really,” Suguru laughs. He doesn’t say how he tries not to interact with any of them anymore. He can’t. 

There’s a pause on the line, faint static carrying their shared silence. Then Satoru’s voice dips, not heavy, but a little too knowing. “What, gone shy all of a sudden? Since when do you keep to yourself like that?”

Suguru leans back, fingers pressing against the bridge of his nose. “Just busy. Missions, prep, the usual.”

“Right.” Satoru hums, not quite convinced. “Funny, though. You used to collect people like strays. Couldn’t walk ten steps without some random stranger spilling their life story to you.”

“And you’d mock me for it.”

“Mock? I was jealous. You actually listened.”

The words are light, tossed like a pebble into water, but Suguru feels the ripple anyway. He swallows, staring at the faint glow of the lamp. “Maybe I got tired of listening.”

And he had, once. People really did approach him, constantly, inexplicably, like they couldn’t help themselves. He was never sure what it was about him that drew them in, whether it was the gentleness in his voice or the flicker in his eyes, but something about him seemed to tell strangers they were safe to be honest. The waitress at the Sukiya he and Satoru had frequented had almost pulled out a chair once, apron still tied at her waist, while confessing how she feared her marriage was fraying, about her husband’s silence at the dinner table, the way he never touched the food she made anymore. At Family Mart, the cashier had held up the line for minutes while admitting his struggle with a new puppy, a tiny thing that wouldn’t stop barking at the older dogs in his home. And once, on the Joetsu Shinkansen, the train conductor himself had struck up a long conversation when he noticed Suguru was bound for Niigata, reminiscing about his own boyhood as a farmhand there, the sting of cold mornings, the way he could still smell the rice fields after all these years. Suguru had been a listener to many. But not many had listened to him in turn.

On the other end, Satoru exhales softly, and for once there’s no quip waiting, no easy joke to plaster over the gap. Instead, he says, “Guess that just means you’re listening to me more now. Can’t complain about that.”

Suguru’s lips twitch. He lets out a soft breath, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Lucky you.”

“Lucky me,” Satoru agrees, tone so bright it almost convinces Suguru the dip in the conversation hadn’t happened at all. “What mission you got tonight?” 

“Just a boring thing,” Suguru replies, shifting the strap of the small bag he’d packed already. “Curse haunting a village of maybe a hundred-odd residents. Should be back tomorrow morning.”

“That’s perfect,” Satoru says quickly, as if seizing on the timing. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Keep yourself free.”

“I always have time for you, Satoru.”

For once, the other end doesn’t immediately burst with laughter or smug agreement. Instead, the line hums with low static, faint and restless, like the soft hiss of waves rolling against sand. Suguru frowns slightly, lips parting to ask if something’s wrong—

“I called for a reason,” Satoru says, cutting in before he can.

Suguru sits up a little straighter on the edge of the bed. “Why?”

There’s a short exhale, Satoru bracing himself, words uncharacteristically deliberate. “I thought you’d be more receptive to conversation if it was over the phone.”

Suguru blinks, caught off guard. “What does that mean?”

A pause. A sigh, this one quiet, almost softened by the static. Not malicious, not resigned, more like Satoru adjusting the weight of a truth before he sets it down.

“Suguru,” Satoru says, “You know I really like you, right?”

The world stills, listening. 

“I really like you,” he continues. “So much that it’s confusing sometimes. I don’t know what to do about it half the time. You know what that feels like? To be so confused, you don’t know your lefts from your rights? It’s like that. I think about you and I forget which way I’m supposed to go.” 

“What are you—”

“But it’s always been fine. It’s alright. Because I always knew you’d be going the same way as me. It’s okay if I forget sometimes because all I have to do is look up and find you,” Satoru sighs yet again, a heavy, grief-stricken thing, and Suguru’s confused. He draws circles on his thigh with his finger, remembering a time he had done the same for Satoru. 

“Lately though, I don’t know where you are. I don’t know where to look,” Satoru says. 

“I’m here, Satoru. I’ve been here.”

“Have you really? You’re somewhere I can’t reach, Suguru.” 

The words land like a blow, quiet but devastating, and Suguru sits with them, chews on it, rolling it over and over in his head, trying to learn the shape of it. There’s truth there, and it presses against something inside him he’s been avoiding for too long. Since last year, maybe. Even longer. There have been nights where he’s caught himself scanning the press of bodies in Shibuya Station, the tide of commuters sweeping past in every direction. His eyes had darted from face to face, over heads bowed toward glowing phone screens, across briefcases clutched tight and umbrellas dripping rainwater onto the tile. He searched for Satoru’s ridiculous height cutting above the crowd, for the flash of white hair or that smile he loves so much, something to ground him in all the noise. But he never found it. Without it, the whole station had felt unmoored, stairways twisting, exits collapsing in on themselves, no fixed point to guide him through the press of strangers.

Suguru drags a hand down his face, reacquainting himself with the planes and slopes of it, as if the gesture could soothe him. He wants to deny it, to say of course he’s here, hasn’t he always been? But the truth is murkier than that. The truth is, he has been drifting. Moving on instinct, but never quite sure of the path, because every time he tries to look up, Satoru isn’t there anymore and the direction slips. His bearings scatter. And yet, God, the pull of him. Even now, even in this distance too long between them, Suguru feels it. That aching, undeniable draw toward Satoru, like red string beneath his skin tugging him forward. They’ve always had that effect on each other. He feels the rustle of another time against his skin, the roar of clapping all around them, the sound steeped with something hollow and cruel. Satoru had looked at him then, murder in his eyes, compass going all haywire, and Suguru had simply said no. That it wasn’t worth it. That there was no meaning in it. In that moment, Satoru had listened. He had steadied. His compass recalibrated. 

Now, he can’t find any of that conviction. The needle wavers. He looks for Satoru where he always has, just ahead, waiting, but the image doesn’t line up anymore. His world tilts, his sense of direction slips sideways, and the sting on his skin only sharpens. Because Satoru is still the point he longs to follow, but for the first time, neither of them seems to know where the other stands.

“I don’t know if it’s me, or something else, but something’s been driving you away for a while. I’m asking you to talk to me. Give me a chance,” Satoru’s voice is so quiet, Suguru almost misses it, barely a breath over the line.

He takes a second before replying, collecting what feels like his brain matter scattered all over the room, every wall marked by the wreckage of Satoru’s words. 

“Okay. We’ll talk when you’re back. I’ll be waiting for you.”

The words feel foreign in his mouth, the layer between this and the darker things churning in his gut cellophane-thin. The resentment and rage, the bile that rises every time he sees another human stumble along in blissful ignorance. The murderous itch that has been slicing at the edges of him, demanding release. It presses hard now, a cruel reminder of what he’s been becoming. And yet, for the first time in too long, Suguru wonders if he might be allowed to voice it, to bare the rot to Satoru, and maybe, just maybe, be pulled back from the brink. Saved, even, if saving is still possible.

“Hey,” Satoru says, pausing. Suguru can hear the faint rasp of fabric, the click of something being shifted. He can summon the image of him in picture-perfect accuracy; phone cradled between shoulder and ear, crouched to lace his boots, his sunglasses pushed down his nose so he can see what he’s doing. His long fingers tugging at the laces, lips pressed into that distracted little line, white hair falling in his eyes until he huffs it away. Suguru sees him as if he’s in the room, and helpless fondness shudders through his body, warm and traitorous. Love, stubborn and bone-deep, even here, even now.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

Suguru swallows, feels his throat tighten. “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, as if both of them are reluctant to let go. Then, before Suguru can brace for it, Satoru rushes out, almost tripping over his own tongue,

“Oh, and Suguru—”

A breath, heavy with all the things he can’t quite say.

“I do really like you.”

And the line clicks dead before Suguru can answer.

___

In hindsight, he should have known. Salvation was never waiting for him. Whatever chance there was, it burned away long before he reached this village. He finds two girls chained up in the dirt, thin wrists, hollow eyes, abandoned like refuse. Something in him cracks at the sight. 

And then, there is rage, pure and blinding, white-hot.

The first body falls quickly. The next even quicker. 

And then, there are 110 more. 

Every strike is supposed to quench it, to dull the fire clawing up his throat, but nothing does. Each kill only feeds it. 

And then, there is the realization, too late, that the fire has already reached him, and now there is nothing left to burn but the world around him.

In the struggle, the second button tears from his uniform. He slips it into his pocket. When the village lies silent, when all 112 are gone, he places it on the shrine’s first step. An offering, a confession, an answer he couldn’t give earlier. 

And then, there are the stars. White, cold, blinking far above, too far, always too far. He thinks of Satoru, as he always does. 

___

Suguru’s room is unchanged. Days have passed, but Satoru hasn’t touched a thing. The teacup Suguru had brewed still sits on the desk, the liquid inside dulled to a stagnant brown. The blanket on the bed is folded back just as he left it, pillow still bearing the shallow indentation of his head. A jacket is draped carelessly over the chair, one sleeve brushing the floor. Everything stands as it was, frozen mid-breath, like the room itself refuses to accept he’s gone. Satoru hasn’t moved either. He sits on the edge of the bed, staring at all of it, hands lax at his sides, sunglasses abandoned on the nightstand. He doesn’t hide behind them today. His Six Eyes are wide open, turned cruelly on the place Suguru left behind, all of its information endless, insistent, refusing him the grace of dullness as if he means for it to hurt. And it does. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. 

He sees the thin film of oil on the tea breaking into iridescent fragments on the cold surface. He sees the faint hairline cracks in the porcelain, branching like veins, evidence of use, of time. He sees the ring it left behind staining the wood. It’s a constellation of particles, a perfect circle of Suguru’s carelessness, the sort of thing Satoru would have teased him about. He sees the blanket’s web of fibers unraveling at the edges, every thread catching light differently, as if still remembering the pull of Suguru’s hands. The book lying open bleeds detail into his vision, dust motes resting on the page, the ink faintly raised where the press struck hardest, the faint crease where a thumb once lingered too long. Even the margin bears the slightest smudge of oil from skin. Suguru’s skin. Suguru’s hand. It is more intimate than anything Satoru has a right to see, and he cannot look away. It hurts. 

His gaze drags across the room, and every detail cuts into him sharper than the last. The pillow dips in the exact slope of Suguru’s skull, the chair bears the shape of his shoulders pressed into the jacket, even a stray thread sways in the stagnant air, recording absence in its trembling. Everywhere Satoru looks, Suguru is here, in the microscopic traces his Six Eyes refuse to let blur. It’s torture in high resolution, and Satoru doesn’t turn away. He lets the world carve him open, detail by detail, because dullness would be mercy, and mercy is the last thing he deserves.

The pressure builds in his chest, crushing and insistent. His throat is raw from holding it all in, his body humming with a grief he has nowhere to put. He leans forward, elbows to knees, fingers digging into his scalp as though he can claw it out, drag the weight of Suguru’s absence up and out of himself. But it won’t move. He thinks if he closes his eyes, he’ll smell him, the faint cedar-sandalwood of his soap, the bitter hint of tea steeped too long. He thinks if he breathes deep enough, he’ll catch it in the air, living proof that Suguru was here only a few days ago. Instead, all he draws in is dust, stale and empty, and it makes him gag. His stomach twists like he’s swallowed glass, jagged edges grinding against one another. His chest shudders with the kind of ache that has no outlet, no sound, no scream loud enough to match it. His vision fractures under the relentless clarity of the Six Eyes, every detail a blade, and he lets it cut. He wants it to cut. It hurts. It hurts. 

When Yaga told him what Suguru had done, the violence, the murders, he had dug the button into his palm so hard it split skin. Suguru’s button. The one he left just for him. Proof he’d still been lucid enough, deliberate enough, to choose what he left behind. Proof he knew exactly what it meant.

The cut is scabbing now, a dull line across the heel of Satoru’s hand, but the memory won’t close. He’d been so stupid not to see it sooner. He knows the meaning of a second button, what it’s supposed to be. A promise. A confession. This is the answer he’s always wanted, placed into his hand at last, but he never wanted it like this. It should feel like salvation, but that was never waiting for him. All that was waiting for him was an empty room. It feels like a wound splitting wider every time he thinks about it. He feels himself tilting toward the edge of a break, the kind of sob that could tear him apart, but it doesn’t come. He doesn’t let it. He can’t.

He opens his palms to stare at the wound, the way he used to when frustration knotted too tight in his chest. Suguru had found him like that once, awake long past midnight, turning his hands over and over in the dark, hating himself, resenting himself, not in control. Suguru hadn’t said a word, just covered his restless palms with his own and pressed them still, holding him until exhaustion took him under. Satoru turns them over now the same way, but there’s no one to soothe them. Only the ridged sting of the scabbed cut. Only the button burning a hole through his trouser pocket. 

This is all he has left. The only things Satoru can hold onto are the stains Suguru’s existence pressed into the world. The ghost of an alive man. The shape of a love never spoken out loud. To look away would be to admit they’re fading, and Satoru cannot, will not, let that happen. So he keeps staring, until the room is nothing but Suguru, until the pain is nothing but love with nowhere left to go.

___

Suguru looks like a stranger standing in front of him. The voice is his, the shape of him is the same, but everything beneath has been scraped out and replaced with something unrecognizable. He names all these terrible emotions like items on a laundry list, things to be picked up on the way home, stuffed into the backseat. Weakness, anger, death, twisted ideals. But that twinge of something isn’t there, his face is a plastic mask of nothing. No emotion. No horror. No guilt. There’s just this strange sweet sickness in his pallor, like the color wants to rush back to his face but all the capillaries and veins are blocked with sludge.

“Suguru, please just—” The words don’t reach him, or at least Satoru doesn’t think they do. Suguru maintains that same expression on his face. Far away, looking somewhere Satoru can’t reach. That expression he’s seen a million times before, but has never prodded into. Eyebrows just slightly raised, mouth set in a straight line like he’s fiddling with the aperture and lens, trying to bring the world back into focus. Why didn’t he push? Why didn’t he take Suguru by the shoulders and shake him until his brain snapped back into its meninges, settled in its cerebrospinal fluid, until he looked at the person standing right in front of him again? 

“Satoru,” he says, so sweet, so familiar, a three-step trip of syllables down Suguru’s mouth, teeth and tongue curling around it like they always have. It’s so familiar but it isn’t. He calls him arrogant, turns the knife of his own strength against him like he’s never done before. Satoru, for the first time, hates it. Hates what he was born as, hates who he’s become. Hates that he never saw any of this brewing under the surface. 

Hey, he wants to say, talk to me. Talk to me. I'll listen to you, whatever it is. Give me a chance. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Give me a chance, Suguru. But the words don’t come out, not when Suguru is looking at him like that. Like he’s a stranger in his own body. Like he’s accepted the carnage. Satoru doesn’t even notice the throngs of people elbowing past him. All he can see is Suguru’s face, his hands, the ones that have held him a thousand times before, the ones that are pushing him away now. Satoru realizes, in the space between one breath and the next, just how much he adores him. He loves him. The slope of his mouth, the weight of his voice, the way his hands have cupped his own. He loves him in a way that terrifies him, in a way that feels like standing barefoot on fractured, smoldering glass. He doesn’t know how to hold it all at once, this love, this grief. It overwhelms, suffocates, tears him clean in two. Please talk to me, he wants to beg. Let me love you enough to bring you back. Please talk to me. Let me hold your hurt for the both of us. Give me a chance. I love you. 

He doesn’t end up saying a word. He doesn’t even stop Suguru as he turns his back to him. And that image— Suguru’s silhouette dissolving into the crowd, his hair catching the light one last time— becomes the thing Satoru wakes to, dreams of, drowns in, for the rest of his life.

___

December, 2017

Satoru has always loved Suguru in the sunset. The warm light did something for his skin, lit it from behind until he glittered like gold. There had been a summer once, long ago now, so far he can’t even remember the month, when they’d sat on the shrine steps with drinks sweating in their palms, trading idle complaints about the elders. Suguru had leaned back, shoulders relaxed, the last of the sun catching in his hair, and Satoru had thought, helplessly, stupidly, he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Another time, returning bloodied from a mission, Suguru’s curses trailing behind him like shadows, Satoru had caught him grinning wide in the dying light, the horizon burning at his back. All Satoru could think about then was bottling the image forever, keeping it in a locket against his heart to revisit it on long nights. He remembers sunsets in fragments: Suguru’s hands folded on his knees, the slope of his throat when he tilted his head to listen, the rare curve of a smile that softened him into something almost boyish again. The way he’d absently tuck loose strands of hair behind his ear, as if unaware of how the light made them glow like spun silk. The faint creases at the corners of his eyes when he squinted toward the horizon. The lazy way his shoulders would round when he finally let himself relax, legs stretched out like he planned to stay there forever. The long shadows across his cheekbones, sharpening him into something half-real, half-divine. The gold rim that caught in his lashes when he blinked, in the corners of his mouth when he almost laughed. The warmth gilding his collarbone, his wrists, his fingers. Small things that turned sacred under the sunset, small things Satoru loved and loved and loved. 

The contours of those memories have blurred with time, dulled by the decade of silence between them. Satoru has tried not to chase them, because every time he did, they slipped further from reach, Suguru’s face dissolving into the dark, details bleeding out until there was nothing left but ache. But standing here now, looking at him again in the same light, it all comes back. It floods through him like water through cracked stone, unstoppable, brutal. Suguru’s face is older, wearier, carved deep with choices that broke them both. And yet, in this hour, in this light, he looks almost the same. The boy Satoru once adored is still there, shimmering through the ruin, and Satoru realizes with the force of a blow that he loves him no less than he did then, is no less ruined than he was. 

“Suguru, do you have any last words?”

The words taste like acid in Satoru’s mouth, tearing up his throat as though they’ve scraped him raw on the way out. He never thought he’d be the one to say them. Not to Suguru. Never to Suguru. The sound of them feels like betrayal, like the last act in a tragedy he’s been trying not to watch unfold for a decade. He’d always imagined this differently, if he dared to imagine it at all. If the two of them ever reached the end together, it would’ve been far from blood and curses. He had thought maybe, if they were lucky, luckier than most sorcerers, they’d grow old, older than the average life span permitted for people like them. Gray and frail, but together. He thought maybe one of them would get sick, or maybe just wear down with time, and they’d see it through quietly. He would’ve been there, he would’ve held Suguru’s hand in those last hours, kissed his temple, his cheeks, the slope of his jaw, anywhere he’d allow it. He would’ve pressed himself into every breath, every heartbeat, and let the ending come gently. No violence. No torn flesh. Just peace.

But this is nothing like that.

Suguru is heaving in front of him, each breath a ragged claw at the air. His face is pale, sheened in sweat, lips trembling with effort just to stay upright against the wall. The calm mask he always wore has cracked wide open; pain etches itself across every line of his features. His robes, once immaculate, hang heavy and ruined, soaked dark with blood. One arm is gone, sheared away, and the empty sleeve sways when his body shifts, obscene in its incompleteness. His hair clings damp to his temples, strands plastered against skin too waxen for someone who once glowed like the sun. Satoru wants to cradle him, to reach out and wipe the blood from his face with the same care he might’ve used to brush away an eyelash years ago. But his hands won’t move. His whole body feels nailed to the ground. 

Suguru’s lips tremble, and he says he has no regrets, says he could never smile sincerely in a world like this and it should sound like conviction. It should sound like finality. But it doesn’t.

Satoru knows him too well, knows the truth of it more solidly than the asphalt beneath his feet. Suguru’s lying. He can hear it in the brittle edges of his tone, see it in the half-second where his gaze falters, in the way his breath catches at the end like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Satoru.

There was love. There was so much love.

And Satoru sees it now, even in the haze of blood and ruin. He sees the flicker of memories skimming across Suguru’s face, shadows of a life they’d once lived side by side. He sees it in the quirk of his mouth, almost-smile shaped by reflex.

Satoru remembers.

He remembers Suguru falling asleep at the library table, his cheek pressed into his sleeve, lashes fanned like soft ink strokes against his skin. He remembers their hands brushing in the space between them, neither of them pulling away fast enough, the shock of contact lingering all night. He remembers Suguru laughing at something stupid he said, so hard he covered his mouth with his hand like he could hide it, but his eyes gave him away, bright and crinkled and young. He remembers walking home together, dusk soft around them, and Suguru matching his stride without a word. He remembers Christmas, twelve years ago, the beginning of this decade-long thing between them sparking that night. They ache in him like phantom limbs, impossible to forget, impossible to reclaim. What shatters him most is that Suguru remembers too. Suguru was just as much ruined as him. He sees it in the faint crease between his brows, in the way his eyes linger just a fraction too long, as though the years have collapsed and they’re boys again, simply in love, reaching for each other without meaning to. Satoru hasn’t forgotten the shape of Suguru’s soul. Even after ten years, even buried beneath anger, beneath choices too jagged to mend, he can trace it as easily as his own. It’s still there. His Suguru is still there. 

Satoru’s voice breaks the silence, rougher than he means it to.

“What happened to ‘Then we make it happen, no matter what shifts?’”

The answer he’s reaching for isn’t here, it lives back in the common room twelve years ago, blue corduroy sinking under their weight, a fan cutting the heat into manageable strips, cicadas sawing at the window screen. Rooibos in the air. Shoko’s frayed elbow-print on the armrest. Satoru remembers the quiet of that morning, Suguru’s chin resting on his head, their pinkies brushing like a promise neither of them could name. Something had clicked inside Satoru then. This is it, he’d thought. Suguru is it. There’ll never be anyone after him.

And there never was.

He’s lived an entire lifetime in the decade that has unspooled since. He’s completed missions that would have crushed lesser sorcerers, learned to carry the title everyone insisted on, learned to fine-tune every inch of his power until nothing surprised him. He’s stood at the front of classrooms, with the authority of someone who has finally learned patience, teaching gentleness to children born into a brutal world. He’s taken two children into his care, Megumi with his sharp edges, Tsumiki with her gentle heart, learned how to pack bentos and braid hair badly, stood in the doorway at night watching them breathe and grew a new muscle for love he hadn’t known he possessed. But through it all, through the triumphs, the responsibilities, the hard nights, nothing ever came close to what Suguru was. What he still is. Nothing ever measured against the simple fact of Suguru beside him on a sagging couch saying we’ll make it happen. Nothing ever did.

Suguru’s gaze drifts toward him, blood still at the corner of his mouth, and for a moment his face softens in something perilously close to tenderness. He shakes his head, slow, weary, his hair brushing his cheek. “I meant it,” he says, voice paper-thin. “Back then, I meant every word.” A pause, breath hitching. “But things shifted faster than I could. I kept reaching, and one day my hand just closed around air.” He looks away, shame and stubbornness warring in the tremor of his mouth. “You kept your balance, Satoru. I didn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“You never needed to be strong. You just needed to be here.” 

Suguru manages a laugh, raw and broken in his throat. “Always so simple with you,” he murmurs, a wry curve tugging weakly at his lips, like the words are a decade late. “You say it like staying would have been easy. Like I wasn’t already falling apart.” His eyes glint in the dying light, sharp even through the fog of pain. “Maybe you were always better at love than me. You made it look effortless.”

Satoru’s chest caves at that, at the thought that Suguru ever doubted he was loved. That he ever thought Satoru hadn’t seen him whole. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes. 

And then Suguru says it, softly, suddenly, cutting through the evening like a red string pulled taut.

“Hey.”

It stuns Satoru, that one word. The casual tilt of it, the way it slips off Suguru’s tongue with the same easy warmth Satoru himself had always used, back when the world was small enough to contain the both of them. For a breathless instant, he could believe they’re teenagers again, laughing under summer air, pinkies hooked, ruined.

Suguru swallows, blood catching at the corner of his mouth. His gaze doesn’t waver.

“I love you.”

The world holds its breath with him.

And Satoru, with every part of him breaking, does what he was always meant to do.