Work Text:
December 24th, 2017
The probability of seeing snow in Tokyo in late December was close to zero. Statistically insignificant. The city sat too low, too warm, wrapped in concrete and residual heat, more accustomed to cold rain than anything that dared call itself winter. When snow did come, it was usually hesitant – thin, brief, gone by morning. Christmas Eve almost never earned it.
And yet, it was already snowing when Satoru opened his eyes that morning. He noticed it absently at first, a pale movement beyond the glass, light enough that it barely seemed real. Tokyo didn’t keep snow. It rejected it. Whatever fell usually melted on contact, erased by heat trapped in asphalt and steel. He assumed this would be no different.
But it stayed.
Satoru spent most of the day indoors. Christmas was just an interruption of routine. No labs open, no lectures to prepare, no work to lose himself in – nothing to do but sit with the empty hours and wait for them to pass. He drifted around his apartment, looking for something to occupy his hands, his mind, anything, and finding nothing every time.
That was Shoko’s fault, technically. She had made him clear his schedule to rest, though she herself was working at the hospital and wouldn’t have a few days off until later. Which was fine, he supposed, but still.
The apartment felt emptier than usual, quiet except for the faint hiss of the radiator and the occasional creak of the floor beneath his feet. Not surprising, considering the fact that Satoru was not used to things being that way. He didn’t like the quiet, nor did he like peace. He needed to move, he needed his mind to move.
So he went over his notes and presentations, running through everything he had memorized at that point – not out of necessity, but to fill the emptiness, to keep time from dragging. He cleaned the apartment methodically, moving from one room to the next, straightening, dusting, putting things in order. The hours passed slowly, and the snow outside continued to fall as if the city itself had forgotten how to resist it.
By the time the clock nudged toward nine, Satoru was already on his way to Shoko’s place. The crisp air filled his lungs, but it wasn’t biting or harsh – just cold enough to make him tuck his nose into the scarf he had wrapped around his neck before leaving. Not for long, though. His warm breath quickly dampened the scarf and he hated when that happened, because it kept his chin wet. He groaned and let his breath turn into fog before him with each exhale instead.
Soft flakes drifted down around him, catching in his hair, melting against his lashes, vanishing the instant they touched his coat. He slowed without realizing it, steps faltering as he lifted his gaze to the sky. The clouds hung low and heavy, bruised by the city’s light. Cold seeped through the soles of his shoes, inching up his legs, but he barely noticed.
“Hey, Gojo! Wait up!” He turned, and there was Shoko, cheeks pink from the cold, coat zipped high, purse swinging in one hand. She was out of breath, steps hurried over the snow-covered pavement. “Are you deaf or something? I’ve been calling you since the bus stop!”
“Oh, yeah I didn’t hear you. Why are you here though?”
“Bus was late, duh.” She caught her breath, shoulders rising and falling. “But Utahime got everything handled, so we’re good.”
Satoru hummed in response, letting a faint smile tug at his lips as they walked. Shoko whined about having to work late. They were almost at her place, just one turn away, when her phone started ringing.
“What’s up? Hey– calm down.”
Satoru frowned, glancing at Shoko as her expression shifted. “What do you mean he’s there?” She went quiet for a moment. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll tell him. See you in a minute.”
She slipped the phone back into her coat pocket and let out a slow sigh.
“Utahime just called,” Shoko said. “Geto came after all.”
Satoru’s stomach tightened, an uneasy twist curling low in his gut, causing his breath to stop somewhere halfway to his lungs. He grabbed the edges of his coat, searching for something to steady himself with.
Suguru had left years ago, after healing from the accident that took away his love for writing, leaving him hollow inside. And Satoru had tried – hard. He had poured himself into making Suguru feel better, tried to anticipate what would make him laugh, what would ease the weight that always seemed to hang over him. But every attempt, no matter how well-intentioned, seemed only to push him further away. Suguru didn’t need Satoru – not in the ways Satoru had imagined. Whatever it was that Suguru needed, it was something Satoru could never provide.
He reached out, sent messages that went unanswered, left doors ajar in case Suguru ever returned. Yet trying wasn’t enough. He couldn’t hold onto someone determined to disappear. Gradually, Satoru was excluded from Suguru’s life. And then one day the distance became absolute. Suguru moved away, carrying with him the spaces they had once shared.
And Satoru was left with the echo for ten long years. The empty corners of his apartment, the half-finished sentences in the journals Suguru left behind, the ache in his chest that no new routine, no stack of books, no lecture could erase. He tried to replace the missing pieces with work, with movement, with keeping busy – but the absence of Suguru stayed. And it was stubborn. Every year, every holiday that came without him reminded Satoru that he was left behind.
He didn’t want to blame Suguru for any of it. And yet, the ghost of all those failed attempts – the laughter he couldn’t summon, the comfort he couldn’t give, the presence he couldn’t hold – flared again, heavy and suffocating, as real as the snow drifting silently to the ground. And Satoru was angry.
“What?” Satoru’s voice came out sharper than he meant it to. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s not supposed to be,” Shoko said quietly.
He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Okay. Then why is he here?”
Shoko exhaled, the breath briefly clouding the space between them. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want him there, I can deal with it.”
“No.” Satoru dragged a hand through his hair, fingers catching, tugging harder than necessary. “It’s fine. I agreed, didn’t I?”
It wasn’t fine. The words tasted wrong the moment they left his mouth, because even though he agreed to him being invited, Satoru did not expect Suguru to actually show up. It hadn’t been fine since the day he left. The anger sat hot and restless in Satoru’s blood, sharp enough to sting, coiled tight beneath his ribs.
Shoko studied him for a moment, like she was deciding whether to push or back off.
“You don’t have to stay long,” she said finally. “Say hi. Say nothing. Leave. It’s up to you.”
Satoru nodded. He felt his pulse climbing, his shoulders drawing tight, his jaw locking in place. He told himself it was just a conversation. Just a room. Just a person he used to know. Just a chance to make amends and move forward.
Just Suguru.
—
Satoru had imagined their reunion more times than he cared to admit. In some versions, Suguru would see him and look away immediately, pretending he hadn’t noticed him at all. In others, he would hold Satoru’s gaze, those honey-brown eyes steady and unreadable.
Sometimes, Satoru imagined himself crossing the room without hesitation, pulling Suguru into a tight embrace before either of them could think better of it. He would bury his face against him, breathe him in, thread his fingers through that long, dark hair as if touch alone could undo the years between them.
It couldn’t. And it wouldn’t. Still, sometimes, Satoru caught himself wishing it might.
But, even though he had pictured their reunion countless times, running through it in his mind until every possible reaction seemed familiar, he had never imagined it would unfold like this. And yet, there they were, sitting among their high school friends on a Christmas evening, neither of them saying a word.
It felt surreal, like watching a familiar film run in reverse, the colors muted, the sounds muffled. All of their friends – they moved and laughed around him, but it all seemed distant, like light filtering through frosted glass. Every cheer, every clink of a glass, sounded hollow in his chest.
They sat at opposite ends of the table, as if gravity itself had pulled them apart. The air between them vibrated with unspoken words, memories curling and snapping in the space where conversation should have been. Satoru could feel it in the tension gripping his shoulders, in the way his fingers itched to reach out, to close the distance. Suguru’s eyes flicked up once, then away, a motion so small it almost didn’t happen. Every heartbeat thundered in Satoru’s ears, each one a reminder of everything they had lost, everything they hadn’t said.
He wanted to laugh, to cry, to run, to stay – simultaneously. His mind spun with all the possibilities of what he could do, none of them good, none of them safe. So he stayed frozen, trapped in that fragile, agonizing pause.
“Hey, I’m gonna go smoke, you coming?” Shoko nudged him with an elbow.
Satoru blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and nodded almost instinctively. He followed her without another word, letting the chatter and laughter inside fade behind him as he stepped onto the balcony.
“Want one?” She asked, shaking a pack of cigarettes in front of his face. He hesitated, fingers twitching at his sides, and finally shook his head. His eyes stayed on the falling snow, watching the flakes twist and spiral in the balcony light. The cold bit at his cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the heat beginning to boil in his chest.
“You know,” click. “Since both of you are here,” inhale. “You should probably talk,” exhale. “I really wish it could be like it was before –ah,” Shoko shook the ash from the scarf she had wrapped around herself like a blanket.
Satoru clicked his tongue and frowned, “no shit, yeah.”
He almost leaned his forearms against the balcony railing, shoulders already rolling forward out of habit – and then he stopped. A thin line of snow had settled along the metal, untouched. He hovered there for a second, hands suspended, before letting them drop back to his sides instead. For a moment, he said nothing more, jaw working like he was chewing on words he didn’t want to swallow.
Shoko watched him from the corner of her eye, cigarette glowing faintly as she took another drag.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Satoru said eventually, voice lower now, scraped raw. “I just don’t know where to start. Or how to stop once I do.” The smoke drifted between them, pale and shapeless, torn apart by the cold air. Somewhere behind the glass, laughter spiked and fell again. “I’m really angry, Shoko. I don’t want to fuck up again.”
“Of course you’re angry,” Shoko said quietly. “But you didn’t fuck up. I’ve said that before.” She sighed, rubbing at her temple. “When is that going to click for you?”
Satoru just shrugged.
—
In the span of an hour, two things happened. First, Suguru spoke. Just once, and only because they bumped into each other in the hallway. A quiet sorry, automatic and restrained. Satoru didn’t respond. He stood there longer than necessary, staring at Suguru’s back after he passed with his heart going thump, thump, thump loudly in his ears.
It was nothing – a brush of fabric, an accidental touch – and yet the place where Suguru’s arm had grazed his burned. It ached viciously, stung so sharply Satoru thought, distantly, that he might start crying right there in that damn hallway.
The other thing that happened was Haibara Yu. And Mei Mei.
Somewhere between the second bottle of soju and the strawberry cake Utahime made, things tipped sideways. Satoru was focused on fishing out melting ice from his juice when Yu suddenly pushed himself up from his chair, nearly knocking over two things in the process – his own empty glass, and Suguru’s untouched coffee.
“Okay,” he announced, far too loudly. “We are doing something fun.”
Mei Mei, lounging comfortably with her glass balanced in one hand, didn’t even look surprised. “You mean a game,” she said, already smiling.
“Truth or dare,” Yu declared.
Mei Mei finally glanced up at him, slow and assessing. “That’s boring,” she said mildly. “People lie through truth and pick the safest dares.”
Yu frowned. “Then what?”
She tilted her head, smile sharpening just a little. “Stricter rules. No skipping. No backing out.”
Nanami groaned immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, relax,” Mei Mei said, waving him off. “If you refuse, you drink, the non-drinkers are not my problem” her gaze flicked briefly across the table – from Satoru to Suguru – before moving on. “And if the dare requires privacy,” she added, voice smooth, “we have a spare room, no?”
Something in Satoru’s chest went tight at her words. Not sharp, not sudden – a slow, creeping pressure, the kind that announced itself only once it had already taken root. It spread the way a flower pushes up through wet soil, splitting the ground grain by grain, forcing space for itself where there had been none. There was resistance at first, a dense weight pressing back, but the anger kept rising anyway – stem, then leaves, then bloom – unfurling through his chest, his throat, his jaw.
It wasn’t explosive. It didn’t need to be. It grew with purpose, filling him steadily, patiently, until there was no part of him it didn’t touch. It was the implication. The casual way Mei Mei said it, like tension could be solved with a locked door. Like years of silence, distance, and restraint could be condensed into something playful. Entertaining. Digestible.
Satoru swallowed, jaw flexing once.
“Are you fucking fifteen?” he asked, his eyes finally lifted to Mei Mei, sharp and cold. “Because that’s what this sounds like.”
For a beat, the room went quieter.
Mei Mei didn’t flinch. She smiled – slow, amused, entirely unbothered – and took another sip from her glass before answering.
“No,” she said calmly. Then, tilting her head just enough to meet his stare, “are you fucking fifteen? Or are you just scared?”
His left eye might’ve twitched a bit.
“Yeah, maybe let’s not–”
“No, it’s fine Shoko,” Satoru said, without breaking eye contact with Mei Mei. “Let’s play.”
One thing about Gojo Satoru is that he is stubborn. And he did not like what Mei Mei suggested. So, about twenty minutes later, they were all sitting in a circle, the room hazy with the lingering sweetness of soju and the faint smell of cigarettes clinging to Shoko’s clothes. Satoru’s hands were restless, drumming a rhythm on his thighs he didn’t care to name. Everything around him felt too bright, too sharp, scraping against his nerves.
It really wasn’t that he couldn’t have declined – quite the opposite actually. However, he genuinely had no idea what he was doing. It hit him really hard when the dare flew past his ears.
Seven minutes in heaven. You and Geto.
Stupid. So stupid. And infuriating. Every single piece of Satoru, every cell in his body was screaming at him. He wanted to listen to the part of him that urged refusal, that begged him to just step away and talk to Suguru like they were meant to. But he couldn’t. Guilt and regret were mixing with anger inside his belly and he wanted answers. He deserved answers. If that was how he was going to get them, then so be it. It clearly did not seem like Suguru was interested in talking either, so.
He took a hesitant breath, half-expecting Suguru to ignore him, to refuse and make him feel small again. But instead, Suguru was already standing. Waiting. And no one said a word. Satoru froze mid-motion and frowned. His pulse quickened, his hands twitched, and for a long moment he simply stared, trying to make sense of the deliberate calm radiating from Suguru.
Nothing made sense that day. Absolutely nothing. Not the way he’d woken up that morning, with snow already falling, trying to smother the entire city. Not the hours spent over notes and presentations. Not the cold, not Suguru showing up. And surely not the fucking game he’d agreed to – nor his own hand dragging Suguru behind him.
“Seven minutes, starting the second you close that door!”
Yeah. Sure.
11:53 PM
Suguru closed the door behind him, the soft click echoing louder than it should have. He didn’t say a word, just stood there, calm, steady, his gaze fixed on Satoru.
Satoru shifted his weight, then started pacing. One foot in front of the other, back and forth, back and forth, the movement restless, urgent. He dragged a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands as if it could pull the chaos out of his skull.
Satoru’s pacing faltered, but only for a heartbeat. He whirled to face Suguru, voice sharp, eyes blazing. “Are you gonna say anything?”
Suguru cleared his throat, “what would you like to know?”
“Wha– are you serious?”
Without thinking, Satoru lunged, hands gripping the front of Suguru’s shirt with a force he barely recognized as his own. He shoved, hard enough that their bodies collided with a solid thud against the wall. The impact sent a shiver up his spine, the world narrowing to the press of Suguru against him, the heat radiating off his chest, the sharp scent of him filling every corner of Satoru’s senses. His forehead nearly grazed Suguru’s, breaths mingling, chaotic and ragged. Fingers dug into fabric as if he could claw some clarity, some explanation, out of him.
“Haah, fuck. Not exactly how I imagined it’d go. Would you perhaps like to talk this out over tea, Satoru? My arm–”
Satoru’s eyes wandered down to Suguru’s right arm. Or rather to where it was supposed to be.
“Fuck, sorry. I’m sorry,” he threw both of his hands up but didn’t step back. “I didn’t…”
Satoru looked into the sad, steady brown eyes in front of him, and for the first time in ten years, he really saw Suguru. Not the memory, not the ghost in his chest, not the echo from a photograph or a laugh recalled too late. He saw the living, breathing man – the warmth radiating from him, the subtle tension in his shoulders.
All the anger he had carried – ten years of resentment, frustration, and guilt – collapsed inward like a star imploding. It didn’t matter. It was gone.
His chest loosened, then tightened again, a tide of emotions washing over him in impossible waves. Relief. Grief. Desire to yell. Desire to collapse. Desire to never let go. His heart thumped so loudly it felt like it would pierce through his ribs, each beat screaming the truth he had buried beneath sarcasm, under pride, beneath a decade of silence. Suguru was here, and everything else – the years apart, the arguments, the mistakes – they were irrelevant.
Satoru felt himself shrinking and expanding at once, a ridiculous, childish sensation, like he had been compressed under a lifetime of pressure and now the walls had finally blown open. He was a stupid teenager again, knees weak, cheeks hot, the familiar ache of first springs and first heartbreaks and first battles with fate all pooling inside him. Before the accident, before the years that had carved them apart, before the world decided he had to survive alone – there was Suguru. His other half. His constant. The one piece of gravity that had kept him from floating entirely away from the world.
Time slowed. The faint light in the room caught in Suguru’s hair, dusted the curve of his jaw, painted his lips in warmth that made Satoru’s chest ache. He wanted to breathe him in, memorize every detail, burn it into his brain, forever.
Satoru’s fingers twitched, longing to reach, to anchor, but even as he stood frozen, there was a tenderness swelling in his chest, delicate as frost on a winter branch, fragile as the first snowflakes that fell that morning in Tokyo. Satoru’s entire being was reduced to awe.
His best friend was back.
“Why did you leave me? I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to help.” Satoru’s voice cracked, his eyes glassy and bright, tears threatening to spill. His face hovered mere millimeters from Suguru’s, every unspoken word, every lost moment, pressing into the space between them.
His one and only.
Suguru’s hand lifted slowly, lightly brushing Satoru’s arm with his left. The touch was so soft, and it didn’t burn like before. “I know. I never should’ve left,” he said, voice low. “I’m sorry.”
And just like that, whatever space that was between them – disappeared.
11:54 PM
Before Satoru opened his eyes, there was just silence. Not silence like in a quiet room, but silence like the air had been wrung dry, like every molecule had forgotten how to move. His chest rose and fell in shallow jerks, lungs dragging in air that burned as it entered. His whole body thrummed, too much energy rattling through him, the bones in his arms buzzing like struck glass. The aftermath of that impossible space – the one he knew and didn’t know – still lived in his nerves, infinite impressions stamped into a finite body.
Then he opened his eyes and saw him.
Suguru slumped against the wall, one arm gone, the rest of him slick with blood. Limp. Empty. His head lolled just so, and something inside Satoru lurched, misfired. His vision blurred at the edges. He blinked, but the haze stayed.
That was when the rush began. Memories not his own – but somehow his – ripped through him in a flood.
War?
The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,
and curses, so many curses, their shapes twisting over each other, teeth and claws and shrieks that rattled the ground, and students – wait – his students, and his friends, faces he knew and didn’t know, voices calling out, screams, laughter, battle cries, all tangled until he couldn’t tell which belonged to the living and which to the dead. Blood – so much blood, slick on the stones, splattering hot against skin, metallic in the air – and energy, cursed energy, endless, suffocating, sparking like static, pounding like drums in his veins. Too much, too fast, his vision snapping from one corner to another, so much going on, too much to hold, and he was fighting too, he knew that, he could feel his muscles remembering the strain, his hands raised, his body moving. And there were so many people – faces blurred by motion – Yuta, yes, and Rika’s monstrous shape bending the world around her, love, so much love burning so fiercely it hurt, braided with fear, choking fear, and the adrenaline pushing everything faster, spinning, spinning until his mind went in circles, caught in the loop of it. How did he know this, where was this coming from? Miguel – there was a Miguel – why was there a Miguel – he didn’t even know a Miguel and yet he knew him, his voice, his weight, the clash of blows ringing in his bones, and–
“No,” the sound barely made it past his throat before his body gave out, sliding uselessly down the wall and pitching forward. Panic tore through him in a single, violent wave, hot and blinding, stripping thought down to instinct. His hands shook as he lunged for Suguru, fingers slipping on blood-slick fabric before finding skin.
“Hey– hey, look at me,” he gasped, voice cracking immediately. “Suguru. Come on.”
He pressed two fingers to Suguru’s neck, right where the pulse should have been. He pressed harder, as if pressure alone could summon it. Nothing.
His breath stuttered. He shifted, tried again – different angle, different spot – his hands clumsy, desperate.
“No,” he whispered, disbelief hollowing the word out. “No, that’s– hold on–”
He leaned in, ear pressed against Suguru’s chest, listening so hard it hurt, like he could will sound into existence. His own heartbeat roared in his ears, thunderous, obscene. Beneath it – nothing. No rise. No fall. Just stillness.
His fingers slid down, splayed uselessly over Suguru’s sternum, as if his body refused to accept what his mind already knew. “Breathe,” he said, too softly now, almost confused. “You’re supposed to just breathe.”
Something in Satoru fractured. Not loudly. Not all at once. It went with a quiet, internal snap, like a thread pulled too tight. “No– no, Suguru. Please, come on, we’ll get you some help, come on, get up, I–”
He pressed Suguru’s body against him, cradled him like he could somehow bring him back in his arms. “You’re okay, you’re fine, it’s fine, don’t you dare– not again– I’ll get you out of here, just–”
Satoru’s hands shook violently as he tried to shift him, to somehow ease the agony in his own chest. He could feel the warmth of Suguru’s blood, slick and sticky, seeping into his sleeves, painting his palms crimson. He started rocking him gently at first, then more frantically, desperate to get any response, any twitch, any sign of life.
The world narrowed into the heat of the moment – the taste of iron on his tongue, the weight of blood on his hands, the thrum of energy vibrating through his bones like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing. Every second stretched impossibly long. Every heartbeat in his chest felt like a hammer pounding into his ribs.
And then his head joined the chaos. Not with words, not with thoughts, but with a high, relentless static that hummed behind his eyes. A thousand tiny sparks, buzzing and snapping, crackling across the inside of his skull. The sound was everywhere and nowhere, it filled him whole, rattled the edges of his vision.
11:55 PM
Each sound, every whisper and every scream has its beginning as something small. Just a ripple in the air, a sound wave, a vibration. It enters the ear canal and strikes the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. The vibrations pass into the ossicles, three tiny bones in the middle ear that lean against one another. From there, the vibration is sent into the coiled chamber of the cochlea, where liquid stirs and rows of delicate hair cells sway. Each bend of those hairs sparks a signal along the auditory nerve, and in the brain those signals are gathered, translated, and given form. A sound is born not in the air, but in the mind.
In general, the range of human hearing spans from zero to about a hundred and thirty decibels, including sounds between twenty and twenty thousand hertz.
What it means is that there are two ways of measuring the sounds.
Frequency – measured in hertz – calculates the number of vibrations in a single second, and relates to how high- or low-pitched the sound is. Since it has basic dimensions per time and is an absolute unit, the external factors don’t impact it.
On the other hand, the amplitude is measured in decibels, and describes the pressure or force of the sound waves, which can be translated into volume or intensity of the sound in question. Decibels are actually measured logarithmically, so the calculation will increase exponentially. Unlike hertz, they can be impacted by the external factors or simply the medium the sound is travelling through.
Sound takes shape as a traveling pattern of pressure through the air, a rhythm of crowding and release among invisible molecules. Each particle trembles in place, nudged forward for an instant before swinging back, while its motion presses against the next in line. The result is a series of compressions, where the molecules pack tightly together, followed by rarefactions, where they spread farther apart. These alternating zones ripple outward from the source like a pulse through a crowd, carrying energy forward without transporting the air itself. Though often drawn as a smooth sine wave on paper, in reality sound is the ceaseless push and pull of countless molecules shifting back and forth, a wave of motion written into the fabric of the medium.
In simpler terms, the process resembles the telephone game. A phrase begins at one end of the line and is whispered from person to person. Each player leans forward to pass the words, nudging the next one just slightly from their place. Once the whisper is delivered, the first player returns to their place, and the cycle repeats. No one races across the line, and the message never jumps ahead. Instead, it flows step by step, carried by the small pushes and recoils of each participant.
The rules of the game shift depending on the medium. In the vacuum of space, there are no people in the line, no one to lean in or to pass the message, so the chain ends before it begins. In water, they are packed shoulder to shoulder, so each push and rebound is transmitted more quickly to the next person.
It’s also a well known fact that exposure to sound greater than about eighty five decibels for two hours straight or more can actually damage the hearing. For example, AirPods used at maximum volume can exceed a hundred decibels. That is also why the Volume should be turned down notification keeps popping up. To put that into an even better perspective, a live rock concert can reach over a hundred and twenty decibels.
Sound is mechanical – a rapid succession of taps against the eardrum. The louder the sound gets, the heavier and stronger that tap becomes. If a sound is loud enough, it can – and it will – tear a hole in the eardrum. If a sound is loud enough, it can send a body crumpling to its knees, or hurl it backward, spine meeting the ground with a thud. When a bomb’s shock wave rips through a house, it is sound made tangible, breaking windows, splintering walls, and toppling brick by brick. Sound can wound. Sound can kill.
August 27th 1883, the eruption of Krakatoa – one of the deadliest and the most destructive volcanic eruptions ever. On that very day ranchers at a sheep camp near Alice Springs in Australia, heard a pair of sharp, rifle-like cracks. In fact, it was the eruption itself, tearing apart the Indonesian island, more than two thousand miles away. That single blast has been called the loudest sound humans have ever accurately measured. Its reach was astonishing – the waves of pressure it unleashed circled the globe multiple times, leaving traces in barometers far from the eruption. In England or in Toronto, the roar could not be heard, yet the air itself registered the spikes in atmospheric pressure.
It’s quite simple. There is no need to see the loudest thing in the world in order to hear it. And just because the sound cannot be heard, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. It is actually quite the opposite. Sound is powerful and sound is infinite. Ever-present. It surrounds humans everywhere on Earth, every hour, every minute, every second – whether people are aware of it or not.
A silly thing, the sound. Satoru studied it, lived within it. Those notebooks of his were crowded with sine waves and frequency charts, margins filled with the key words he would scribble out and underline three times during the lectures, when he himself was still a student. Every single article he’d read, every single definition he’d learned, every single law he’d memorised and every single textbook page he studied – all of it neatly sorted out, stacked on the shelves inside the archive of his brain. He took extra time to put it up there alphabetically, color coded it even.
And then, somehow, the tables turned. He became the teacher. The one standing at the front of the room, pointing at the diagrams he had once struggled to understand, explaining the sine waves, the laws, the equations. The one his students looked to, scribbling furiously, asking questions he now answered with the patience he had never had for himself. All that carefully catalogued knowledge – his alone for so long – suddenly had purpose beyond memory. He never had the chance to share it all with his best friend, so it had to breathe through someone else.
But alas, with Suguru limp in his arms, all that knowledge buckled. His throat convulsed, air tearing from his lungs, and he knew he was screaming – the muscles contracting, the cords vibrating, the force spilling out of him with the pressure of a blast wave. By every law he had studied, he should have heard it. A sound that intense should have slammed into his own eardrums, rattled through the ossicles, bent the hair cells into frantic motion. It should have been registered. It should have been calculated. It should have been translated.
But it hadn’t.
There was nothing. No signal. No sound. His scream reached no brain, not even his own. Maybe the air refused to pass it along, trapped it within the particles with no medium to carry it forward. Or maybe it was the sky opening up above him, letting the endless galaxy pour down onto Satoru, wrap itself around him and swallow him whole.
Whatever it was, he couldn’t hear his own voice. All the formulas in the world couldn’t account for that silence – the absolute betrayal of sound itself. His body trembled with the force of his scream, yet his ears gave him nothing. The science he’d trusted was breaking apart, scattering like glass, leaving only the unmeasurable pressure in his chest, the resonance of grief that no textbook had prepared him for.
But the thing about pressure is that it either has to be released or nullified. Satoru knew that much. Whenever he burned his finger on the oven or the rim of a pot, a blister would appear. It would swell up, ache, throb, fill itself with fluid, stretch the skin around it, until it hurt just to brush against it. He knew better than to pop those. He knew it could make things worse. So he would let the blister be, allowing it to dissolve back into the body on its own.
This time however – he couldn’t do it. This time he tore it wide open, not letting the pressure dissolve. It burst and it was ugly, completely unrestrained. Tears came streaming down his face, like rivers that would suddenly turn into waterfalls. They mixed with snot and spit, stringing from his trembling mouth that opened around another scream he couldn’t hear. Satoru’s whole body was shaking around the unmoving silhouette pressed tightly to his chest.
Satoru was scared.
11:56 PM
It was so cold. The air, the ground, the wall behind him – behind them. The chill seeped through his clothes, through his skin, settling deep in his bones, yet he barely felt it compared to the heat still buzzing under his flesh. His – cursed – energy hadn’t fully settled. It pulsed erratically, as if his body didn’t know how to return to normal anymore. Every tremor sent another shudder through Suguru’s body pressed against his chest. And his head hurt so much, Satoru thought it might burst any second.
He clutched him tighter, fingers digging in like he was afraid Suguru might slip away if he loosened his grip even for a second. The blood kept coming, the blood stained everything – his palms, his wrists, the front of his uniform. The blood mixed with his tears and with his spit. The blood was forming a puddle on the cold ground beneath them. It was happening. It was real and Satoru could feel everything.
His face ached from crying, his throat burned raw, his chest felt tight enough it might split open. He couldn’t tell where the screaming ended and the sobbing began – only that something inside him was breaking apart, piece by piece, with no clean edges left. His breaths came sharp and uneven, hitching in his throat. Each inhale felt too shallow, each exhale torn from him, his lungs refusing to settle. The static in his head persisted, a dull hiss layered over everything, swallowing sound before it could fully form. He could feel his chest heaving, his mouth open in another cry, but it was all swallowed before it reached him, like screaming into deep water.
Satoru felt his own mouth move – forming words that he himself wasn’t able to decipher. He could feel his arms move and clutch the place where Suguru’s right one was supposed to be. He pulled him even closer. Half of his best friend’s body was now draped over his chest and legs, and he was so small. He was so light, as light as a feather. And he wasn’t moving.
That was the worst part. The complete, devastating stillness. No tension in his body, no resistance, no familiar weight shifting in response to Satoru’s grip. He pressed his forehead against Suguru’s, shaking his head in small, frantic motions. He could feel the damp hair sticking to his skin, staining it with blood even more. Not his blood.
For not even half a second, his grip faltered.
Suguru’s head slipped a little, and fell against Satoru’s collarbone. Panic shook his entire body again. His arms locked instantly, pulling Suguru back against him with a sharp, desperate motion. The movement jostled him, shifted his weight, and Suguru’s head rolled further into the hollow of Satoru’s shoulder. There was no resistance. No instinctive correction. Nothing.
Satoru stiffened, then tightened his arms even more, fumbling, clumsy, trying to reposition him, to support his neck – all without much thinking. His fingers brushed the skin that was cooling too fast, the warmth fading in a way he couldn’t stop noticing.
“No–” The sound tore out of him, raw and broken, but it vanished into the static before it could reach his ears. His throat spasmed anyway, muscles straining around nothing, around silence.
He sucked in a breath that caught halfway down, chest stuttering as if it couldn’t remember the rhythm anymore. Another followed, then another, each one scraping raw against the inside of his ribs. His head throbbed with it, pressure building behind his eyes, behind his temples, a tight, unbearable swell that made his vision flicker. He squeezed his eyes shut, forehead now pressed harder into Suguru’s hair.
It all felt surreal, and yet, somehow wasn’t. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. They slid uselessly over Suguru’s back, his shoulder, the curve of his spine – searching, adjusting, correcting a posture that no longer mattered. Satoru kept trying to support him, lifting him just slightly, then pulling him back in, as if there were a right way to hold a dead body and he just hadn’t found it yet. As if Suguru kept moving and slipping from Satoru’s embrace. As if he were alive and trying to get away.
Satoru bowed over him, body caving inward, shoulders folding as the pressure inside him crested and broke in uneven waves. He shook around Suguru’s still form, breath hitching, fingers locked tight, holding on because letting go felt impossible.
Maybe, just maybe – if he held him close enough, he could give him some of his warmth. Maybe, if he breathed strong enough, he could be Suguru’s lungs too. Or maybe, he could cut off his own arm and give it to him. Maybe this would do, maybe he could share his own blood, maybe–
11:57 PM
A bird flew past the alley Suguru had died in. Its wings cut through the cold air, feathers catching the pale light for a single instant before vanishing. Satoru’s eyes burst wide open, his head snapping toward it, too fast, too instinctive, muscles stiff with shock. But it was gone. The alley was empty again. Concrete walls, shadows stretching like hands, the faint smell of blood still hanging in the air.
And yet – he felt it. Its presence. A fluttering, a vibration in the corner of his awareness. Just a second ago, he heard the chirping. He could feel the tiny ripple of its song brushing past his eardrums, a thread of life cutting through the static in his head.
He heard it.
“Suguru?”
Satoru did not recognize his own voice. It was completely unfamiliar. Rough. Raw. Torn in the same way the fabric of Suguru’s kesa was. The sound felt too loud, yet somehow muted, and his jaw ached from the effort as the words came out in short, ragged bursts.
“I’m sorry, Suguru,” a tear rolled down his cheek, before falling and disappearing somewhere in the dark hair beneath his chin. “I’m so sorry I–”
I’m so sorry I killed you.
Just a moment ago, Gojo Satoru had a rough idea of what had happened. A sketch, if you will – a few broken lines, a vague outline of events that he had experienced not long before, or perhaps only knew of. Those fragments flooded his mind as he stood in front of his best friend’s body, pressed against the cold wall, blood and shadow mingling around them. What did not occur to him, what he could not yet grasp, was the reason why Geto Suguru was there, in that state, unmoving, half of him gone, and why the world had allowed it to come to this.
It was at that very moment, when Gojo Satoru realised, that not only he was definitely not in the universe he was born in, but also he had just killed his best friend.
He couldn’t quite understand what was happening and why he was there, but he was undeniably himself. Just – stronger. Not human?
No.
But, why?
Again, in the back of his mind, he saw the faces of his students. But it was different, their faces stayed the same, but this – this must’ve been a dream, it–
And there it was. A memory, or something like a memory, not his own but somehow stitched into him now. Gojo Satoru had not chosen this life, it had chosen him the moment he opened his eyes. The Gojo clan, one of the three great pillars of the jujutsu world, had waited hundreds of years for someone like him – a child born with both the Limitless technique and the Six Eyes. A miracle. A weapon. A balance-breaker. From the beginning, the world had tilted around him, curses bending, sorcerers measuring themselves against a future they already knew they could not surpass.
He remembered being watched. Constantly. Every step evaluated, every breath weighed against expectation. Elders whispering behind screens, rival clans bristling with fear and resentment, the unspoken understanding that his existence alone kept certain wars from breaking out. He had grown up untouchable and isolated all at once, power wrapping around him like armor before he was old enough to understand what it cost.
He was a sorcerer. A jujutsu sorcerer, and not a weak one. Not ordinary. In that world, his name meant power – overwhelming cursed energy and techniques that bent space itself.
“What–”
The sound tore out of him before he could stop it, thin and broken, more breath than word. It didn’t feel like a question so much as a failure of language itself. His mind was sprinting ahead of his body, tripping over revelations faster than he could brace for them.
The strongest. Yes. That part settled with sickening clarity. This body held power the way lungs held air – effortlessly, constantly. Cursed energy threaded through him like a second circulatory system, vast and precise, responding to thought before intent. He hadn’t learned this strength. He acquired it and became one with it. He was strength itself.
Satoru’s heart rate spiked, each beat slamming so hard inside of his chest, he could feel it through the skin, in every part of his body. There was ringing in his ears that swelled into a high, piercing whine, drilling into his skull until it felt like his thoughts were being scraped raw. A bitter, metallic taste coated his tongue, thick and nauseating, and he swallowed reflexively only to choke on it. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The tremor traveled up his arms, into his shoulders, rattling his teeth as he held on to Suguru’s dead body.
He screamed again, but this time the sound tore straight through the ringing in his ears. It wasn’t a single note – it fractured, cracked under its own force, clawing its way out of his chest like a feral dog. He screamed until he couldn’t anymore, until his lungs had no more air to give.
The sound caved in on itself, splintering into jagged breaths that hitched and stuttered against his lips. His face twisted before he could stop it, eyes squeezing shut as the scream dissolved into sobs – and he gasped between them, breath catching painfully, over and over again. He folded forward, pressing his face into Suguru’s shoulder, then into his chest, tears mixing with the blood-soaked fabric.
“I’m sorry.”
11:58 PM
The memories surged faster.
They didn’t arrive in order anymore. They crashed into him in flashes and collisions, everything happening at once, overlapping and incomplete. Somewhere between them, he saw himself stepping into a mission that Nanami and Yu– oh.
Riko’s laughter followed. Sunlight on warm sand in Okinawa, the salt in the air, her voice bright and unguarded. He almost smiled at the memory. She was there, and he was there, and Suguru was there. The three of them together.
Who was Riko, though?
Satoru remembered how badly he had wanted to be a student at Tokyo Jujutsu High. How his entire body had itched to escape the suffocating corridors and paper screens, the constant eyes, the whispers that followed him everywhere. He had begged. Insisted. Anything to leave. He remembered the Genpuku Ceremony that he had agreed to with a single fine.
“No, no stop,” Satoru cried out. Every image, every sound, every sensation pressed against him at once, and he couldn’t block any of it. He wished – needed – for the noise in his mind to vanish, to go back into being just the static, for the memories to scatter, for just one second of quiet, of blankness, of nothing.
He remembered Suguru laughing among the cherry blossoms when they first met. He met Shoko that day too. The three of them had stood in the schoolyard, stiff and awkward at first, until Suguru decided to make fun of Satoru’s chopped-off hair. And he remembered how he almost punched the guy for that, swearing under his breath that he would cut Suguru’s bangs off in his sleep.
Every trip they had taken together, every photo he had ever saved on his phone, flickering like a slideshow he could never pause. Soccer games and baseball games, laughter echoing across empty fields. Curses tearing through city streets. The weight of Infinity humming beneath his skin. Suguru and him, riding a bike through narrow alleys, wind whipping at their faces, laughter spilling free and reckless. He remembered Mei Mei, Utahime, Ichiji, Nanami, and Yu. Everyone. Everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Countless jokes ricocheted through his mind, bouncing off the edges of panic and grief, and then the shock of discovering Shoko’s secret, the smoke curling lazily between her fingers. Missions they had endured together, fights that had scarred both body and soul. Sleepovers filled with arguments and laughter, the smell of instant ramen and sweat, the quiet peace that followed when everyone finally slept. And then Suguru standing across from him with unfamiliar eyes.
Entrance ceremony, the three of them. Graduation ceremony, the two of them. Words spoken and unsaid. A hand raised. A technique unleashed. Red. Blue. Purple.
A kid named Megumi. A kid named Tsumiki. Some asshole that shared a surname with those kids. He killed Riko, and then Satoru killed him. He could feel himself being suspended in the air again, weightless, as if the world had been peeled away, leaving only the raw pulse of energy flowing through his veins. The rush was intoxicating – pure ecstasy and power, a sensation so overwhelming it almost made him forget everything he believed in.
Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions. Missions.
Megumi again. All the teeth he had lost, all the arguments and laughter shared with Tsumiki, their voices filling the rooms. Every walk to the park with the two of them, the smell of grass and summer sun, the way Satoru had tried to keep them safe while letting them run free. The school meetings, the endless scuffles, the lessons, the moments of triumph and failure alike. Tsumiki’s curse. All the effort Satoru had poured into raising them, shaping them, despite barely being more than a teenager himself – his own growing pains folded into theirs, every decision heavy with responsibility, love, and exhaustion.
Teaching. His students. Him, being a teacher. A grown-up. An adult carrying the unbearable curse of being the strongest.
Geto Suguru.
Domain expansion.
“Please, stop. Make it stop!” as he pressed his body against Suguru’s, trying to anchor himself to the world. His mind was screaming, louder than he did moments ago, louder than the eruption of Krakatoa. Fragments of the past and the impossible present, melting together into pure chaos.
His friend.
His one and only.
His Suguru.
Infinite void.
11:59 PM
“Gojo?”
He did not move. Not a twitch, not a shift. Every inch of his body ached, as if flames were licking his skin from the inside out. Maybe, he thought, he really was being burned alive – maybe this was a dream, a cruel one, stitched with impossible realism. The air around them felt so heavy, thick with the metallic tang of blood, curling around his lungs with every shallow breath. Shadows flickered on the walls, dancing in rhythm with the imagined flames that threatened to swallow them both. Maybe, if he closed his eyes long enough, the fire would consume him, and he would wake up – and none of this, none of Suguru’s stillness, none of the unbearable ache in his chest, would have happened.
“Gojo.”
One arm slid under Suguru’s back, lifting and supporting him, keeping his head from tipping too far to the side. His fingers threaded through damp hair, brushing and stroking gently, completely absentmindedly. The other hand gripped around Suguru’s waist, pressing him in a futile attempt to feel connection, to resist the emptiness of loss. Satoru had his lips pressed against Suguru’s temple, and swore he could feel his body getting colder each second. He could taste the blood and sweat on his tongue, and he could feel his salty tears mixing with them.
Again.
“Gojo, please.”
Even though he didn’t want to hear her, he didn’t want to see her, and he definitely did not want to have a chat with her – he turned his head, slowly, smearing more blood around his face. Satoru frowned almost immediately – even though this version of her existed in his mind, he was not prepared to confront her in person.
Shoko stood there, just beyond reach, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She clutched the lab coat she wore tightly to her chest, both hands gripping it. Stray strands of hair fell across her forehead, shadowing tired eyes, and Satoru couldn’t tell whether it was smeared makeup or bruised-like bags beneath them.
“What do you want, Shoko?”
“We need to–” she paused, jaw tightening as she looked away. The cigarette trembled between her lips. “We need to dispose of the body. If you– I can deal with it. ”
Dispose.
His jaw locked. His shoulders went rigid. Dispose, as if Suguru were refuse. As if he hadn’t laughed and bled and lived, as if he weren’t still a human being, right there, pressed against Satoru’s chest.
Maybe there was a fire after all. Because the moment her words reached him, the blood inside of his veins started to get dangerously warmer. That heat started to spread through his entire body, crawling his spine like a ladder, tingling every cell that it touched.
Maybe that fire around them was swallowing him, swallowing them both – and maybe Shoko was meant to be swallowed too. The three of them, together. Satoru felt it like a wildfire tearing through dry land, unstoppable, faster than sound, faster than thought. The fire was spreading deep inside his gut and he was too tired to run from it. The muscles in his face twitched as the heat pressed harder and he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.
“Are you insane?” He didn’t mean it. Satoru didn’t want to say any of this to her, it just– happened.
Shoko flinched. Not much, but he noticed the way she shifted her weight from one foot to another, the thin stream of smoke slipping unsteadily from between her lips. Her gaze flicked to Suguru, then to Satoru, and then back to some place on the ground.
“Listen, I know–“
“Go away, Shoko.”
She exhaled slowly. A long, tired breath.
“Gojo, I know that–“
“I said go away!” Satoru swore he didn’t mean it, but the fire burned so bright, and it was so hot compared to Suguru, and– “Stop. Just stop. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here, I–“ His voice cracked. “It really is all my fault, I shouldn’t have gone with you. I never should have played this stupid game. Fuck–“
“What are you talking about?” Shoko cut him off. “What game? This is a game to you?”
“I lost him,” Satoru said, quietly. “He’s dead! I lost him again, I–“
“I lost him too, Gojo!” Satoru stared at her as she threw away the cigarette. At the tears clinging to her lashes, at the way her mouth trembled despite how hard she was trying to keep it steady. “He was my friend too, you know.”
Satoru closed his eyes, pulling Suguru closer to his chest.
“I’m sorry.”
12:00 AM
Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru were different. Contrasting to the point that you would never consider them to be friends in the first place. They would get in stupid fights because they couldn’t agree on the best dish. They would start throwing hands at each other just to prove that one is stronger than the other. They would laugh at each other’s clothes and hair, and Shoko would be there every time to tell them that they’re both stupid so it didn’t matter. She would often whine about having two incarnations of pain in the ass right in front of her.
Satoru’s eyes blinked open, chest heaving, heart hammering, sweat cooling against his skin, and for a moment the world spun. Disoriented. Unsteady. And then – there they were. Those honey-brown eyes staring back at him. Relief and disbelief collided in his chest so violently he didn’t even realize he had been holding his breath until it escaped in a ragged whoosh.
Without thinking, he crashed into Suguru, wrapping him in a tight hug that seemed to dissolve every ounce of pressure, every heartbeat of fear. His words came out in broken murmurs, frantic and breathless, repeating it over and over. “You’re– you’re okay. You're alive–”
Satoru’s hands roamed without thought – running through Suguru’s hair, brushing along his jaw, tracing the lines of his face, searching, confirming. No blood. No wounds. Just him. Warm, real, breathing. The trembling in Satoru’s own body grew as the weight of everything else finally gave way. He broke down there, pressed against Suguru, letting tears fall freely, hands still moving as if he could memorize him by touch, every feature, every detail, until he could finally believe.
“Yeah,” Suguru murmured. “I’m here.”
Suguru’s arms went around him, steady and grounding, and Satoru let himself be held. Let himself unravel. Let himself cry, let himself breathe, let himself feel, because somehow, the universe righted itself again.
Satoru never knew why his life had crumbled ten years ago. He never understood it, and he doubted he ever would. Neither did he understand whatever the fuck just happened. But he supposed it didn’t matter.
Maybe he was meant to hold his life in his hands as it came – meant to endure it, all the grief that arrived in waves, relentless as the ones in Okinawa. However it happened, however it broke him open, it had brought Suguru back.
He would love him again.
If I were ever to curse you, Satoru thought to himself, I know it’s selfish, but please–
“Never leave me again.”