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There will be hell to pay for this tomorrow. Probably worse, depending on how the meeting goes. But the sun has just set, and it’s not tomorrow, so Satoru pushes the thought to the back of his mind and angles the suture needle over Suguru’s wound once more.
“This is the last stitch,” Satoru says. “Let me know if it hurts.”
Suguru sits on the edge of the bathtub and stares at the wall, eyes hard and distant.
“Do I have a choice anyway?” he mutters.
There’s no reasonable answer Satoru can give to that, so he threads the needle back into Suguru’s shoulder, through bleeding torn skin where his right arm is supposed to be. Suguru sharply inhales and tenses under Satoru’s hands as he finishes up the suture, but he still doesn’t say anything.
Satoru cuts the thread, then clears his throat.
“I'll try to get Shoko to see you properly sometime. She’s booked tonight, because”—because you unleashed two thousand curses on the city and nearly killed all my students—“well, you know. Obvious reasons.”
He thinks he meant for that to be a joke. It falls flat and tired. He dabs at Suguru’s wound with antiseptic. Crimson gnaws at white cloth.
Some sort of scowl twitches over Suguru’s face.
“Then what?” His voice trickles out like crumbled glass. “I’m a dead man either way.”
“I’m seeing the higher-ups soon. They’ve survived ten years of you walking around. They’ll live, and if not, I’ll make—”
“And then what?”
Satoru grits his teeth as he wraps Suguru’s shoulder in clean bandages. “Can’t we just figure out tonight first?”
Water drips from the sink like a countdown. Suguru raises his face. For the first time since Satoru lifted him by the shoulder in the alleyway, he meets his eyes.
“There wasn’t supposed to be a tonight. It was supposed to be over, Satoru. All of it.”
He says it like a fact, and Satoru hates it. He also hates the sound of his name in Suguru’s mouth like this, all jagged, blame thick in his breath.
“Over for you, maybe,” Satoru says, and it’s petty but he tosses the words out roughly, in taunt, in challenge. Suguru’s gaze hones into a blade, dark and sharp. The cloth in Satoru’s hands is soaked through. Cold blood crusts around the lines of his palm, sticks between his fingers.
Satoru’s phone rings from the living room. He drops the cloth in the bathtub and its bloodsoaked weight lands with a sharp clunk.
“I’ll be back soon. The guest room is on the left.” He wipes his hands on his pants as he turns around to leave. “Call me if you need anything.”
—
The meeting goes about just as well as Satoru expected.
The higher-ups throw the most colossal fit he’s ever seen. He almost expects them to place the order for his own execution right then and there, even though it would be physically impossible for anyone to fulfill.
For the first time ever, he is hyper-aware of the other sorcerers in the room, their gazes stalking him the moment he walked in and searing into his back. Part of him feels ridiculous standing here in front of everyone, announcing that he couldn’t complete his most important mission of the past decade, that he is in fact planning to do its exact opposite.
The rest of him doesn’t care. The rest of him revels in the shamelessness of it all. Thrill he hasn’t felt in a long time rushes through him as he faces everyone down, shoots down accusations, replies to threats with ultimatums of his own. So much for the higher-ups’ good little weapon. Rage practically radiates through their paper screens, and it feels like catharsis a decade overdue.
It ends with a room of fuming elders, most of which no doubt are plotting how to slip Satoru’s leash back on and tighten it for good. For now, he’s satisfied he negotiated terms keeping Suguru alive without basically declaring war on the entirety of Jujutsu society.
Shoko finds him outside not too long afterward. Weary shadows circle her eyes as usual, but now there’s a furrow in her brows that borders on disbelief.
“That was the worst council meeting I’ve ever had the misfortune of watching.”
Satoru offers her a jagged smile.
“Now imagine being involved in it.”
“No thanks.” She exhales a breath of smoke. “So do you have a plan?”
“What they said. He stays with me while he recovers.”
“After, I mean.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Your plan is to have a chat with him? After all... that?”
There’s a million things she can mean, and he doesn’t want to know which one it is. The war he just declared on the world? The students he attacked within an inch of their lives? The ten years of leading a murder cult?
“I—For now.” He sighs. This is not something he wants to think about tonight. “I’ll figure something out, Shoko.”
He’s relieved that she doesn’t ask more, especially with how stupidly unsure he sounds. Questions invade the silence anyway. Because half the city is in ruins and all his students are in the infirmary. Because Suguru called himself a dead man, and Satoru couldn’t deny it. Dead if not physically, then in every way that matters, a trail of blood pouring over the bathroom tiles and the path he’s walked the past ten years.
He could just be making it all worse. He’s held off the thought since sunset, but now the adrenaline’s evaporated and exhaustion sinks in alongside doubt. Maybe he will still have to kill Suguru at the end of it all. Maybe he’s just letting the wound fester before cutting it out anyway.
Eventually, Shoko mutters, “I need to get back to the infirmary. Good luck with... Good luck.”
Satoru watches as she stamps out her cigarette, white smoke rising then fading like a lost memory.
When Satoru returns to his apartment, it’s 5 a.m. and dead silent. The bathroom is empty, though smears of blood on white tiles remain. The guest bedroom door is shut and locked. Satoru doesn’t feel like sleeping, doesn’t think he can even if he wants to, so he spends the hour till sunrise wiping down the bathroom tiles and cleaning out the supplies.
Daybreak comes and Satoru finally hears shuffling from inside the guest bedroom. His hand hesitates for a second before knocking on the door.
Suguru opens it. His eyes are bloodshot and the pallour of his skin is highlighted by the morning light.
“Hey,” Satoru says. “How was... your night?”
Suguru’s eyes flick down to the paper bag in Satoru’s hand. “What’s that?”
“I talked to Shoko. Antibiotics and painkillers, I think. Can I come in?”
Suguru doesn’t give an answer, but he retreats back to his room with the door open and Satoru makes the assumption he doesn’t care enough to give him one. He feels like an intruder in his own home as he steps in.
The bedsheets look untouched, but the surface of the blanket has an imprint faintly stained red. He can too clearly see Suguru lying there all night, gazing up at the empty ceiling with that same distant gaze he had in the bathroom. Suguru stares out the window, and Satoru tries to ignore his shape in the corner of his vision as he dumps out the bag’s contents. Two bottles of pills tumble out alongside the note that Shoko wrote.
“She was only allowed to get half the antibiotics, so we’ll need to get you the rest later. So you take this one twice a day, and two of these every... Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not even looking to see which bottle is which.”
“I can read the labels myself.”
Cold shoulders have never bothered Satoru, but the flat tone sends irritation flickering inside him. Suguru still refuses to face him, body turned away as his gaze stays firmly locked on whatever he’s staring at outside. Satoru leaves the note on the desk and walks over. He stands by the bed, facing Suguru’s back.
“I spoke to the elders this morning.”
Suguru’s silhouette shifts.
“As long as you agree to stay here and not absorb any curses, your death sentence will be suspended.”
Suguru turns around. Sunlight cuts a line over his shoulder. His eyes are cold.
“So now what?” he rasps. “Is this what you wanted? I live here like a prisoner?”
“Of course not. This is just temporary. I’ll argue with them again when—”
“Until they decide I need to die anyway.”
“Well, I won’t do it.”
“Look at me.” Suguru steps forward. His hand rises to clutch the shoulder of his injury. Blood is already blooming over the bandages messily wrapped over it. “I’m missing an arm. I have no curses. You don’t need to be the one to do it anymore.”
“Whoever they choose, I won’t let them.”
“And how long will that last? Until you get tired of playing bodyguard?”
“However long it takes for them to change their mind.” Satoru sighs. “I know this isn’t perfect, but I’m trying to help. Why can’t you see that?”
“No, no, stop—” Suguru shakes his head with a heaving breath. “That’s not the point.”
“Then tell me what the point is.”
“Satoru, what is this?”
The question spills out like acid, but the ring of raw desperation beneath it sends Satoru’s mind stuttering in its tracks. It sounds too much like the same plea he’s been fighting not to hear this whole time. What is this? What is he trying to accomplish here? What is he hoping for by insisting on helping someone who won’t even look him in the eyes?
“I don’t want to kill you,” Satoru says. His words are too soft even in the newborn silence, and he feels like a fool. There’s nothing else he could think of saying. “Can’t you accept that?”
Suguru stares at him. Satoru didn’t notice it until now, but he looks tired. It’s not the weariness that comes after a long fight or a sleepless night. Satoru knows that type. This looks like it’s steeped into his very being. The morning light dies in the dark wells of his eyes. His black hair is a veil draped limply over his shoulders.
“The world doesn’t work that way,” is all he says before he turns away again and waits for Satoru to leave.
—
Suguru’s existence in the apartment makes itself known to Satoru not with presence but with evidence. Wrinkled teabags in the trash bin. A missing bowl from the cabinet. Moisture on the shower tiles. But the door to Suguru’s bedroom remains shut day in and day out. Satoru only confirms he’s even still there through the cursed energy concentrated around the door.
With classes shut down and the school rebuilding, Satoru finds himself at home longer than he’s ever been used to.
He’s never hated silence this much.
It clings to him, thick, like dust on something abandoned for far too long. His thoughts have too much room to pace around, to zoom into every glaring irrationality of his decision with razor-sharp focus.
He didn’t know what he was planning to do when he approached Suguru in the alleyway. He assumed he was just going to end it—unwavering, ever faithful to his orders as always. A flick of his fingers was all he needed.
But he didn’t.
One split-second, selfish act.
And now he spends afternoons trying not to hear the footsteps in the room down the hallway. He orders takeout for two and leaves it on the dinner table, and most of the time it remains untouched the next morning. He’d said this was only temporary, but with each day it becomes increasingly difficult for him to picture anything other than this stiff staggering routine.
The only time he really interacts with Suguru is when he changes his bandages. The first time, Suguru had his eyes trained on the ground the entire time Satoru replaced stained gauze with clean ones. He felt like he was dressing a mannequin more than a person. The next time doesn’t go much differently.
They’re a few days into this, Suguru seated back turned as Satoru unwraps a fresh gauze roll, when Suguru says, “Where are my daughters?”
Daughters. Satoru knows exactly what he’s referring to, but now he is abruptly, painfully aware of the gulf between himself and the man in front of him. Suguru has two daughters. He has people whom he truly considers family. An entire new life that Satoru has only ever glimpsed into.
Satoru rips a new strip of gauze.
“Still in custody at the school.”
“Until when?”
“Until the higher-ups decide on what to do with them.” He winds the bandage around Suguru’s shoulder. “Most of them want to execute them. I’ve been trying to get them enrolled into the school instead.”
He feels Suguru tense.
“Not the school. They can’t be at the school.”
“It’s either that or execution.”
“That’s the same thing.” Suguru’s back is still turned, but his voice ricochets off the bathroom walls with icy intensity. “Going to this school is just another death sentence.”
“They’re not going to die. Not at the school, not on any missions. I’ll make sure of it.”
“And what happens to your other students while you’re doing that? What happens when there’s not enough of you to protect everyone?”
“The goal of training students is so that they eventually won’t need me to do this.”
“There’s no eventually, Satoru. As long as this world stays the same, one day an even stronger curse will be born. There’s nothing to wait for besides dying for this broken system.”
Bandage crumples between Satoru’s fingers. There’s a part of him that wants to respond, to listen and talk and truly know this part of Suguru that pulled them apart all those years ago, but it’s buried under mountains of exhaustion. He forces his fingers loose.
“Think what you want about the school or the system.” His voice is surprisingly calm. “Either your daughters are executed as they sit in their cells, or they get a second chance as two girls and not criminals with active death sentences.”
Suguru doesn’t respond for a few seconds. Satoru can hear the deep breaths he takes to compose himself, inhales and exhales punctuated by the drip of the faucet.
“I just want them to live,” he says, resigned, like it’s impossible to ask for.
Satoru finishes tying the bandage.
“Then you know how I feel.”
It’s midnight and the apartment is painted by navy wash when Satoru sees Suguru again. He blinks against neon white refrigerator light, scanning snack options, when the guest bedroom creaks open. Soft shuffling perforates the air but he doesn’t turn around. He hears Suguru pause by the kitchen for a second then continue to the bathroom when Satoru doesn’t react.
If Satoru really wanted to avoid Suguru, he should have returned to his room before he came back out. But he finds himself hovering by the kitchen counter, spoon tapping against the container of the yogurt he finally picked out, even as the bathroom door opens.
Satoru’s eyes flick up and accidentally catch Suguru’s gaze. His mouth opens but he doesn’t even know what he wants to say, why he’s still standing here out in the open.
For better or worse, Suguru speaks before Satoru can.
“I didn’t thank you.”
Suguru’s eyes shift away for a second, like he’s also uncomfortable with this.
“For what?”
“For my daughters.”
“You don’t have to. I hate every decision those higher-ups make. I’d always oppose execution.”
“Yes, but you’re still doing what you can to help them. Even if it’s just the better of two evils.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Suguru. I hope you don’t feel that way.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
Suguru’s gaze is far-off.
“I should be the one helping them instead. Keeping them safe, protecting them. But all I do each morning is wake up and wait for the day to end.”
The refrigerator hums. Satoru stirs his yogurt. Metal scrapes against plastic.
“I’ve been feeling that way too,” Satoru says. “It’s been exhausting lately.”
Suguru blinks, and Satoru can tell that wasn’t what he was expecting. He wasn’t really expecting himself to say that, either. He swallows and makes himself keep talking.
“But it’s just temporary. I know it’ll get better.”
“How?”
“You won’t be stuck here forever. We’ll figure out what to do. And I’m going to get your daughters out of detainment.”
“You’ll... make sure they’re okay? No matter what?”
“Every young sorcerer should get a second chance.”
Satoru’s brows furrow and a contemplative look passes over his face.
“Okay,” he says after a while, softly. “Yeah. Okay.”
There’s none of the frigidity or bitterness Satoru was expecting. The two of them aren’t looking directly at each other anymore, but for once they’re not turned away.
—
“What are you doing?”
Suguru slightly jolts from where he stands in front of the balcony door. He’s wearing one of the loose black t-shirts Satoru gave him for the time being until they can get more clothes. As Satoru walked into the kitchen for breakfast this morning, the sight of Suguru just standing there in casualwear felt so ridiculously surreal he almost laughed. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to sharing an apartment with a former-best-friend-turned-enemy-now-roommate.
Suguru shrugs.
“Doing what I can to pass the time.”
“Do you want me to get you... some books or something?”
The higher-ups prohibited Suguru from using any communication devices, which Satoru only now realizes basically limits his entertainment options to the T.V. But he never seems to stay in the common spaces longer than what’s needed to get a cup of water or use the bathroom, and Satoru guesses he doesn’t have plans to.
Suguru doesn’t respond for a while. He absently stares out the balcony. He looks deep in thought, but Satoru is starting to recognize this distant gaze that sometimes crosses Suguru’s face. One day as he walked by Suguru’s room to do laundry, he peeked through the ajar door to find Suguru lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, eyes open but looking at nothing. He wanted to knock on the door and ask something, anything. What are you doing? What do you think about every day? Do you resent this? Do you hate me?
“That would be nice,” Suguru finally says.
—
Satoru is lounging on the couch and idly clicking through his movie catalogue when Suguru walks outside, a book under his arm. He freezes when he sees Satoru, a bit too much like a deer in headlights, but then seems to decide that it would be even more awkward to return to his room. He seats himself at the kitchen table and opens the book.
Pages flipping accompanies the soft clicking of the T.V. remote. Satoru goes through his entire section of recommendations before he turns to Suguru.
“How’s the book?”
Suguru glances at Satoru, then back at the pages.
“Not that good.”
“Really?”
“It’s kind of clichéd. I don’t think I’m the right target audience.”
“I thought the cover looked cool.”
“Because it has a dragon?” Suguru slightly frowns as he flips the book to look at the cover. “Also, I think this is the second book in a trilogy.”
“Oh, oops. Do you want me to get you the other books?”
“I’m good.”
Come to think of it, Satoru isn’t sure what books Suguru would enjoy. If he really tries to recall anything remotely related to Suguru and reading, it has to be the historical fiction novel he picked up at the end of their second-year. He knows for a fact that Suguru talked to him about it back then, but he can’t remember anything about it now. He doesn’t remember if he liked it or disliked it.
A page flips. Satoru shifts on the couch. He tucks a pillow behind his neck.
“By the way, I can bring you to Shoko this weekend. She’s finally free enough to give you a proper check-up.”
“Why do I need a check-up?”
“Just in case. You never got professionally examined.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You lost an arm.”
“I feel fine.”
“It’s not about if you feel fine. You know that.” Satoru’s back straightens. “She can also get you the rest of your pills.”
“I don’t need that.”
“You’re going to run out soon.”
Suguru’s hand is on his lap as he stares down at the book. He’s not flipping the page, clearly not even reading anymore, but his gaze stubbornly refuses to leave it.
“Can you drop it?”
“What are you saying? You need to do the full course or it won’t—”
“Satoru, drop it. Please.”
There’s an urgency in Suguru’s voice, too different from the apathy that usually encases it, and it sounds wrong. It sounds like a warning.
“Suguru,” Satoru says slowly. “Where are your pills?”
Suguru doesn’t respond, and that’s enough. Satoru’s on his feet and crossing the room before he makes the decision. The hallway feels too narrow, the walls too dark. For the first time since the first night, he steps into Suguru’s room. The air is stale. Drawn curtains cast the entire room in grey.
He slides open the desk drawer and two bottles clatter out. One is empty. The other is filled to the brim with small blue pills.
Satoru’s stomach sinks like pooling blood. Suguru’s footsteps follow him into the room.
“You haven’t taken any antibiotics,” Satoru hears himself say.
No response.
“Suguru.”
Suguru’s voice, low behind him. “This isn’t your concern.”
“It is. I threatened to bury the entire council. Pulled every string to get you the treatment. I’m one breath away from a treason charge, all this so you could be here, safe and alive and—”
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
Plastic stabs into Satoru’s palm.
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“You’re always saying stuff like that. All I want is to help you, and you’re not—”
Satoru’s breath snags and he forces a slow exhale to steady it.
“You act like you’d rather be dead.”
“What do you think, Satoru?”
It comes soft, too soft. Satoru turns around. Suguru’s silhouette is framed by the sharp shadow of the doorway edges, backlit by dark amber.
“You want me to get better. Say I do. I recover, I behave, the higher-ups eventually feel generous enough to let me outside. Then what?”
“That’s what we’re going to figure out, together, but I can’t do anything if you don’t—”
“There’s nothing to figure out.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I can’t live like this.”
The words slice right through Satoru’s frustration, through the retorts burning hot at the tip of his tongue. He helplessly watches Suguru step into the room.
“I have nothing left. No curses, no money, no freedom. Even if they lift this house arrest, I’ll never be able to go back to the life I want to live.” Darkness swallows Suguru’s face. “There’s nothing waiting for me after this. ”
“So you’d rather I killed you?”
“If you killed me like you should have, I would have at least died with a smile.”
Satoru hates how there’s no hostility in his voice, no rage or scorn or venom for him to fixate on. There’s just the words laid plain before him, waiting and final. Something cold lodges deep in his gut.
Suguru stands a step away. It’s the closest Satoru has been to him in over a decade.
“That’s not fair.” Satoru’s throat feels like sand. “You just... decided for yourself that killing you is the right thing for me to do.”
“I didn’t decide anything. It’s reality as long as you’re a sorcerer and I’m a curse user.”
“That’s not—Suguru, you didn’t have to be a curse user. You chose it. You chose to leave, you chose to massacre that village. You can’t just claim that’s reality and call it a day.”
“I can, and you’re being naive.” Suguru’s voice rises, just barely. “It was my only path. It still is. There’s no other world in which I can live sincerely.”
“Murder? Genocide? The only way you’ll be happy is if you kill everyone in this world? Do you hear yourself?” Satoru feels like he’s racing his lungs just to catch the breath to speak. “That can’t be right. That can’t be your only choice.”
Suguru’s eyes glint in the darkness. “Only you could say that. Still arrogant, Satoru.”
“You’re chasing something you know you’ll never reach.”
“Because that’s all that matters, right? Whether you have the power to do it. Whether you’re the strongest and can bend the world to your will. That’s what purpose means to you.”
Satoru’s hands are shaking. He wants to grab the shoulders of the man in front of him and tear open his soul to confirm for himself there’s really nothing familiar left inside. He’s back on that street again, yelling out to a silent crowd as the miserable summer heat crushes his shoulders.
“What are you saying? I’m strong, so I can’t tell you your goal is impossible? I’m arrogant for trying?”
“You can’t see why I need this.”
“Then tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Suguru snaps, too sharply, too easily. “I know what I need. I don’t need you to understand me.”
Satoru’s hands fly to Suguru’s shoulders. Suguru jolts, but he doesn’t push him away.
“Tell me anyway,” he rasps.
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“Then what is this for? Pity? Self-satisfaction?” Suguru laughs breathlessly, and Satoru feels it in the rattle of his bony shoulders. “I’ve had enough of it all already. At least lend me this dignity.”
“I just want to know—”
Satoru’s voice frays like an artery ripped open.
“I want to know why you can’t be happy, why nothing I do is helping. If I could’ve done something different back then, anything.”
His hands tremble on Suguru’s shoulders. His breaths come out ragged. His head’s fallen forward and the floorboards blur.
“I don’t know you anymore,” he whispers. “I can’t stand it.”
The realization drifts through him like the final exhale before death.
Is this why he didn’t kill Suguru? Because some part of him thinks that there’s still something familiar left to salvage? Is he hoping that if he smooths over all his mistakes from a decade ago, Suguru will turn back around this time?
Smooth skin touches Satoru’s hand and snaps him back to awareness. Suguru gingerly lifts Satoru’s fingers from his shoulders. Satoru steps back and drops his hand.
“It’s been ten years,” Suguru murmurs. “That’s only natural.”
“Not just that. Before that. After that summer.” Satoru swallows. The air around him feels too thin, and he feels too exposed. “We... Something changed.”
“A lot of things changed that year.”
“And I feel like I never knew why. You never told me anything.”
“You didn’t need to know.”
“I wanted to.”
“I think I knew that,” Suguru says quietly. His gaze lowers to the ground. “But I didn’t—” He lets out a deep breath. “I couldn’t tell you. You were so far away.”
It’s the softest thing Suguru has said, and an ache blooms somewhere deep between Satoru’s ribs. He doesn’t recognize it at first. It’s the same tightness he felt following Suguru’s departure whenever he let his mind wander too far. Whenever he relived their last year together, peeled apart every long silence and clipped argument, sifted through every word and glance for evidence of the end that would seize them.
He quickly learned to stop. It was pointless. His phone calls still got smothered by robotic beeps. Suguru was still somewhere far away in the city washing someone’s blood off his robes. He crushed the questions before they could eat through his mind—
—and now they’ve all clawed their way back up, starved and shaking.
Suguru stands too close. Satoru is afraid of touching him again. He feels more like a ghost cut out from old memories, faint and fictional and already fading.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” Satoru says. “When I wasn’t on a mission, I was hanging out with you and Shoko. Whenever I had time, I went to you.”
“Not just the missions.” Suguru’s lips tighten. “You were different. You became stronger. You were newer, more powerful.”
“I thought we were still friends.”
“We were. We were, but you...”
He trails off like he isn’t sure how he wants to finish the sentence. Satoru isn’t sure if he wanted to hear the end of it.
“I got stronger,” Satoru tries, “so you felt like our friendship changed? You felt like you couldn’t tell me what was going on? No matter what, I never changed the way I saw you. Or our friendship, or what—”
“It’s not that simple. We were living in two different worlds, whether you wanted to or not.”
“Then where were you? While I was far away, where were you, Suguru?”
It takes an unbearably long time before Suguru speaks again.
“In a bad place.”
Dissected memories float up in Satoru’s mind with the anatomy of every moment peeled open and labelled. Suguru’s smile reaching dark circles instead of his eyes. Suguru offering an explanation for every concern about his wellbeing too quickly, too easily. Satoru walking to Suguru’s room with snacks to find it locked and dark too early at night, and then too late in the following morning.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Satoru says hoarsely.
The look Suguru gives him is helpless like he has no answer. Like all he can offer is silence—always that same silence, strangling conversations in their final crumbling year, clogging the space between them on that crowded street, trailing them from alleyway sunsets to bloody bathroom tiles to clattering pill bottles.
Suguru’s eyes flick away then briefly squeeze shut. A tell of hesitation that Satoru remembers from their high school days. Too familiar, too painful.
Satoru notices the pressure building in his throat nearly too late. He swallows it down.
“It’s fine, actually,” he breathes. “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. If you never wanted to.”
He leaves. His heart pounds with the pressure of a dying thing trying to shatter his ribcage and escape, each crash against bone leaving a bruise.
It rains later that night.
Satoru doesn’t sleep, even though he spends the rest of the evening lying on his bed. He stares at his phone, listens to music, stares at nothing, listens to raindrops rattle against glass.
A knock.
Soft and short, trying to make itself as small as possible. Dread keeps him weighed down, but after a few seconds, Satoru pushes through and opens the door.
Suguru stands in his doorway. His weight shifts side to side.
“Can... I come in?”
Satoru nods and steps aside. Suguru walks in, footsteps light, scanning the room. Satoru sits back on the bed and leans back on his arms. His eyes slide between Suguru and the bedsheets bunched under his fingers. He isn’t sure where to look.
Suguru stops by the foot of the bed. He faces the window.
“I can’t sleep in the rain.”
That is not how Satoru was expecting him to start the conversation.
That doesn’t sound right, either.
The June of their second year brought a long rainy season. Missions were coming in slowly, so at one point, he, Suguru, and Shoko all decided to sneak into Satoru’s room to marathon as many horror movies as possible. They fell asleep three movies in. Satoru woke up first to the roll of a rainstorm against the window panes. Suguru stayed curled on his side, sound asleep on the floor, even when thunder boomed and startled Shoko awake.
Now Suguru stands, the hollows of his cheeks dark and sharp.
“Since when?” Satoru finds himself saying.
“For a long time now.”
Satoru doesn’t really know what to do with this new information. There’s too much to ask, too much he still doesn’t know. He didn’t know Suguru wanted to kill most of the world until it was too late.
“Ever since our mission from that summer,” Suguru says.
Satoru’s gaze jumps from the bedsheets to Suguru. Suguru keeps staring out into the dark, rain-splattered window as he speaks again.
“I stopped being able to stand the sound of rain. Or applause, or a laugh that was too loud, or a smile too bright and carefree. I couldn’t stand days that were too sunny, or mornings that were too cloudy.”
Satoru’s breath tilts.
“Was it all from the mission?”
Suguru turns to him. He looks more like his younger self without any grandeur or hostility, loose nightwear hanging off him instead of sweeping robes. His brows are tense, carrying a strain that Satoru thinks he would have missed before tonight.
“I was blind to the truth of the world, and the mission simply opened my eyes.”
Satoru shifts on the bed.
“Do you want to sit?”
Suguru shakes his head.
“I made peace with what I learned long ago.”
“What did you learn?”
Satoru’s breath hangs on the inhale. The air is too brittle, and he feels like the wrong exhale will shatter it. It’s the realization he never made, the question he never asked until an entire village was slaughtered and all he had left was a bloodstained button.
Suguru’s eyes close.
“There is no end to the suffering of sorcerers as long as non-sorcerers exist. You can slave and puke and die for them. At best they ignore your suffering, at worst they revel in it.”
“You told me that the strong exist to protect the weak. It wasn’t about reward or recognition.”
“It’s not.”
“I know.” Satoru shakes his head. “Even now, I know that can’t possibly be the issue for you. Then what is it?”
When Suguru opens his eyes again, a shadow passes over them.
“You died and only returned by pushing the limits of your mortal existence. I thought I would die choking on my own blood as my chest split open. And at the end of it all, when I opened those doors, you were holding a corpse, and all I heard around both of us was celebration.”
It’s not a memory Satoru dwells on often, but it still resurfaces with crystal clarity. Sterile white walls and pale smiles. He reflects on it now with distant sorrow at his own failings and the loss of an innocent life. But he remembers that back then the people around him didn’t look real and their clapping didn’t sound real. Riko’s body in his hands, cold and limp, didn’t feel real either. The only thing that felt real in that moment was Suguru slowly opening the hall doors and the sinking realization that something fundamental had shifted.
“Riko was smiling when she died,” Suguru says.
Satoru blinks.
“I didn’t know that.”
Satoru never saw Riko’s face again from the moment he told her to run as he faced down Toji. When he retrieved her body from the cult, he didn’t touch the white cloth draped over her. He couldn’t find the energy to confirm what he already knew with dead cold certainty.
“I told her about our plan, that we were going to give her a choice. She cried, and then smiled while still crying. It looked like she was learning how to smile sincerely for the first time in her life.” Suguru blinks slowly. Shadows fill his eyes. “Then she was shot in the head. She was still smiling even as her brain splattered out over the tiles. Like foam. Like the icing on a dropped cake.”
Suguru never talked about that mission with Satoru. The evening after they submitted their reports to Yaga, Satoru showed up to Suguru’s room with a bag of instant ramen and a fighting game he was planning to mindlessly loop until he fell asleep.
Suguru glanced at Satoru with those distant eyes and murmured, “I’m too tired.”
Satoru didn’t see him leave his room again until the next evening.
“These are the same people I told myself I was meant to protect,” Suguru says. “The same people who only perpetuate our suffering. By birthing curses, by spreading their evils.”
“You know that cult wasn’t... normal,” Satoru says slowly. “Those weren’t normal people.”
“But they’re everywhere, Satoru. On every street, in every shop window. When I looked up from Haibara’s corpse on the autopsy table, I saw one of them smiling in the corner of the room.”
“I...”
Satoru doesn’t even know what he wants to say, what he can say. He’d known Suguru didn’t leave that mission unchanged. He’d known something was off that entire year. He didn’t know it was like this.
“Every time I swallow a curse, their filth pours into my mouth. Everything I ate tasted like their shit.”
When Suguru turns to Satoru, there is none of the hatred Satoru anticipated. The closest thing he can call the expression on Suguru’s face is resignation. Bleak eyes, fallen shoulders, lips a tight line. Like he inhaled, choked on, and eventually learned to swallow a writhing thing whole, bones and skin and all.
“I tried to find meaning again,” Suguru says hoarsely. “I couldn’t. There is no ending. There is no meaning in fighting and labouring and defending non-sorcerers when their very existence creates our suffering. What meaning could I even find, when just thinking about them made me want to die?”
“I don’t know, Suguru.”
Satoru feels like such an idiot. Here is Suguru, finally excavating the depths of what he never said, pulling out every painful thing Satoru was begging to hear for so long, and the only response he can muster after all of it is useless, speechless uncertainty.
Did Suguru live that entire last year like that?
“Do you need a purpose?” Satoru tries again, softly. “Do you need to find a meaning in all of this?”
A slow, ragged sigh leaves Suguru. His shoulders slump more, and then, finally, he sits on the far end of the bed. His gaze is lowered to the floorboards.
“If there’s no meaning, then why did I spend all those nights over a toilet choking on bile?”
His head bows, and his shoulders drop lower.
“Why did I realize I was different from everyone around me before I even knew what a sorcerer was? I saw monsters nobody else could. I’ve swallowed the taste of every possible vice and atrocity a human being can commit.”
Suguru presses a trembling hand against his face.
“If there wasn’t a meaning to all of this, then why do I exist?”
For the first time ever, the silence that envelopes both of them doesn’t sound like something dying alone. It sounds like the birth of something delicate and too new to name.
“I... didn’t know.” Satoru’s words feel almost shamelessly small. “I didn’t know that’s how you felt. About yourself, about non-sorcerers. Everything.”
Suguru shakes his head.
“I said before. It’s not your responsibility.” His voice is muffled. “You didn’t need to know.”
“But if I did, would it have helped?”
Suguru cautiously lowers his hand. He turns to Satoru with furrowed brows, like he doesn’t understand the question.
“If you told me about this, about all of this,” Satoru says, chest thumping, steady but rapid. “Or if I asked you more, noticed more, could it have helped you—” There’s a lump in his throat. “I don’t know. Could it have at least helped you want to die a little bit less?”
The echo of his own fumbling words fills the pause that follows, and it’s nerve-wracking watching Suguru’s dark eyes whirl.
“I don’t know what would have helped me,” he says quietly.
“How does it feel telling me now?”
Suguru’s shoulders bunch up, like he’s bracing for an impact, an attack, an agony that is sure to follow.
“I don’t know.” His voice scratches harshly. “I don’t know, Satoru.”
Satoru thinks that before tonight he would’ve mistaken the roughness in Suguru’s tone for annoyance, and he might’ve snapped something back in response. Now he can hear the strain beneath it, threads of despair and exhaustion all tangled underneath.
He waits.
Rain falls.
All the tension leaves Suguru’s body. He curls forward, clenches his hand over his lap, and lowers his face.
“I was just... so tired. And so alone.”
It takes a moment for Satoru to notice the tremor in Suguru’s shoulders.
Satoru tenses. He thinks of moving away, of giving Suguru space, giving himself space, using that shield of distance and dignity for both of their sakes.
He forces his body to relax.
Suguru’s breaths come out in soft stuttering exhales.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” Satoru says. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice what you were going through.”
Suguru shakes his head.
“You asked. I didn’t tell you.”
“I should’ve asked more.”
“I wouldn’t have told you the truth.”
Satoru huffs.
“You know I’m stubborn. I would’ve gotten it eventually.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, who can say. I didn’t know anything back then.”
“You didn’t.”
“I wish I knew.”
“I know.”
“I wish I could have helped you somehow.”
“I know.”
Suguru’s eyes are squeezed shut. His jaw is clenched, breaths muffled, and even the shaking of his shoulders comes in stops and starts like he hasn’t given himself permission to release them. Like he never has.
Satoru doesn’t know what to do.
Nothing feels enough.
Everything feels impossible.
How do you mend a fissure that’s already calcified? Scrub away blood that’s already fused with cloth, catch up to a time that’s already washed away into the faraway galaxies?
What can he do now?
Here in his bedroom, ten years too late?
Satoru takes a deep breath, then shifts over on the bed towards Suguru. He leans sideways on his arm in Suguru’s direction.
His hand lands on the bed behind Suguru’s body.
His shoulder touches Suguru’s back.
Suguru tenses, then—
A breathless sob leaves him. His trembling deepens, and Satoru’s own body shares in the movement as he presses forward against Suguru. Suguru doesn’t lean back, but he doesn’t move away. A wet glimmer trails down his cheek. Satoru lowers his eyes to the floorboards.
“I can’t stop seeing them,” Suguru whispers between ragged breaths.
“That’s okay.”
“I can’t stop hating them.”
“That’s okay.”
Satoru sits with his shoulder pressed against Suguru’s back. He doesn’t know what this is. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he doesn’t let go.
Suguru’s breaths break more and his body slumps in Satoru’s direction. His hair falls over Satoru’s shoulder. His weight falls against Satoru. Through cotton, the feverish warmth of his skin permeates Satoru’s own. Satoru still doesn’t let go, even when his own breathing grows shallow and shaky.
The rain hums on, soft and sad like a requiem for everything they never realized they lost.
—
They don’t really talk about it.
But Satoru notices Suguru existing in the apartment longer. He starts waiting behind the kitchen counter instead of retreating to his room while the kettle boils. He drinks his daily morning tea at the breakfast table instead of behind a bedroom door.
One morning Satoru walks out of his room, yawning as he sweeps his hair out of his face, to see Suguru on the couch. He leans on one end, holding his novel up to the sunlight streaming through the windows.
“You still reading that?” Satoru says without thinking. The stove clicks as he turns on the burner.
Suguru looks up at Satoru, then goes back to the book.
“Yeah. I’m almost done.”
“Does it get better?”
“Surprisingly, it does.”
“Want me to get you the whole trilogy?”
Suguru huffs. It almost sounds like a laugh.
“I guess I might as well find out who’s behind the kingdom assassinations. Though it’s pretty obviously the royal adviser.”
Eggshell crackles as Satoru breaks open three eggs.
“Well, I’ll bet it’s actually the dragon.”
“I wish.”
Oil sizzles. The ventilator hums on. Satoru slides his plate of over easy eggs onto the table.
“By the way,” he mumbles between bites. He hears Suguru look up and he swallows. “Good morning.”
Orange-yellow yolk oozes out on his plate from where the surface of his egg broke. A few seconds later, Suguru’s hesitant voice drifts over the table.
“Good morning.”
—
Satoru can tell that Suguru is uneasy, and that he hates it, and that he hates that Satoru can tell. As he waits for Suguru to tie his shoes, he keeps his attention on his phone and swipes back and forth between two photos in his gallery. The knot slips from Suguru’s hand for the second time, and his inhale is harsh and frustrated as he redoes it. It’s not just that he’s not used to doing it with one hand now. His movements have been stiff all morning since Satoru reminded him of his appointment. Satoru doesn’t comment on it.
Ijichi’s car is already out front. Suguru’s steps falter upon seeing it.
“Ijichi, Jujutsu Tech assistant manager,” Satoru offers. “Our driver. He joined after you left.”
Suguru doesn’t comment but acknowledges Ijichi through the car window with a polite nod. Ijichi looks even more uncomfortable than Suguru as he returns it.
Suguru spends the car ride staring out the window and Satoru spends it watching Suguru from the corner of his vision. Suguru’s fingers twitch from where they rest on his lap. As they drive past the school gates, he takes in a quiet but deep breath.
When they exit the car, Suguru sweeps his eyes over the entire school grounds, expression calm and set. But during the walk down the garden, then down the main hall, then through the infirmary wing, he keeps his gaze firmly pinned on his own footsteps. Satoru wonders if the walk is stirring up any memories for Suguru like it is for him, walking side-by-side like this. It’s the same path they’d take after particularly messy missions.
The infirmary door slides open before they can knock. Shoko’s impassive eyes flick from Suguru to Satoru then back to Suguru.
“Well, if it isn’t the criminal again. War criminal now, I guess?”
A brittle laugh leaves Suguru, to Satoru’s surprise.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
The corner of Shoko’s lip quirks up in amusement. Satoru doesn’t really get it, but Suguru seems to relax the slightest bit. Satoru sits on the bench to the side of the room, watching Suguru remove his shirt and seat himself on the examination table.
“Looking good so far. Tissue is scarring healthily. No sign of infection.” She nods in Satoru’s direction. “Good job with the sutures, Gojo.”
Satoru waves a half-assed thumbs up back. Shoko scribbles on her clipboard and glances at Suguru.
“I’m told you didn’t take any of the antibiotics I assigned to you.”
“No.”
“If I tell you to start taking them now, will you?”
Suguru’s eyes dart from Shoko to Satoru, then back to Shoko.
“I’ll try.”
Shoko clicks her pen.
“Then that’s all I got. Take the full course of antibiotics just in case. Have some more painkillers too.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s my job.” Shoko pulls off her gloves with a sigh. “Though your whole war thing had me considering changing careers. Lost years off my life that night.”
The room stills. Satoru always stepped around the topic, unwilling to risk agitating the already volatile shared space they somehow managed to establish. He watches Suguru, waiting for some kind of recoil or retaliation.
Suguru’s expression remains collected.
“Sorry.”
His lips dip contemplatively.
“Actually, that might not be sincere. I don’t regret doing it. A full-out war was always my inevitable final step.”
Shoko snorts.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you get to be sorry after that even if you really are.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Suguru sighs as he pulls his shirt back on and sweeps his hair out from the neckline. His hand pauses at the last second.
“But I wouldn’t do it again. I don’t know if it makes sense to me anymore. After... everything.”
Satoru’s spine straightens in his chair. Suguru never makes empty promises—that is something he is dead sure about. Even back in high school, Suguru never acknowledged fault without weight in his words, without honesty in every amends.
Eventually Suguru takes a paper bag from Shoko and puts on his coat. Satoru stands up, following. When he’s about to exit the infirmary door behind Suguru, Shoko waves good-bye.
“I guess having a chat wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” she murmurs, soft so that only he can hear.
“You think so?”
“He’s not as hatefully genocidal as I was expecting.”
Quiet rain and muffled breaths from the night neither of them talk about floats up in his mind. From the hallway, Suguru looks back at him, brow raised in confusion.
“You know,” Satoru says, surprised by his own words, “I’m not sure he ever was to begin with.”
—
Satoru doesn’t ask Suguru about the antibiotics. He almost feels afraid to. The memory of Suguru frozen at the table, ready to bolt at a twig snap, brings up a dread that he doesn’t know how to deal with.
Suguru said he would try though, and Satoru clings to the fact that he doesn’t say careless things for comfort.
It doesn’t feel as hard as before.
Not worrying.
They’re eating takeout together at the dinner table when Satoru gets the text from Yaga.
“The enrollment got approved.”
Suguru looks up from his food. Satoru shows him his phone screen.
“Your girls will join the classes when the school reopens in a few weeks. They’ll start as first-years.”
Suguru’s chopsticks click together. He frowns.
“I still don’t like the idea.”
“I know.” Satoru shrugs apologetically. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll be their teacher.”
Suguru’s face makes some sort of look. Satoru hasn’t seen it during their entire arrangement so far, crooked lips and raised brows, like something halfway between a smile and a grimace.
“That honestly makes me more worried,” Suguru finally says.
Ah, Satoru realizes dumbly. Amusement.
“Shut up,” he huffs. “My students love me.”
“Do they even learn?”
“Just look at how well they did against you.”
“Okkotsu’s control over his cursed energy needed some work.”
“You don’t get to nitpick when you lost to him.”
“Well, at the very least someone should teach him not to open-mouth kiss curses in combat.”
“Oh. Maybe you have a point.”
A bark of laughter leaves Satoru before he can stop it, and Suguru softly snorts in response. He picks up a piece of katsu.
“I never imagined you would become a teacher,” he says. “It’s weird.”
“I became a teacher because of you, you know.”
Suguru freezes.
“What?”
Satoru draws circles in katsu sauce with chopsticks.
“After that mission, I spent every waking moment making sure I was strong enough to never be bested again. But it was still no use helping you when you needed it. Strength wasn’t enough.”
Satoru’s nape tingles.
Somehow this plain admission makes him feel self-conscious in a way he isn’t used to. Not declaring his absolute failure to finish off his orders in front of the entire council, not grabbing Suguru’s shoulders with trembling hands and pleading with a cracked voice.
Suguru tilts his head.
“Do you really think you can make a change like that?”
“I don’t know,” Satoru says. “But my students get stronger each day. I’m proud of them. I think change is happening.”
“How can you stay hopeful?”
Suguru’s question is disbelieving. Like he genuinely doesn’t understand how Satoru can think this way, how he can even believe there’s a possibility he can succeed like this. The back of Satoru’s mind still instinctively scours his tone for judgement or malice—but all it comes back with is earnest curiosity.
“Because,” Satoru says, resisting the urge to glance away, “I want to make sure what happened to you at the school will never happen again.”
Satoru watches the way Suguru absorbs the words and digests their meaning. He stares at Satoru, eyes wide and whirling, like he’s staring down someone new.
“I never knew that,” he says quietly.
Satoru shrugs.
“There’s a lot of things we don’t know about each other.”
“I guess so.”
It’s the first time Suguru has sounded wistful, the first time Satoru’s own ache has heard its echo. Vindication and bitterness stirs inside him in equal parts, and he takes a big bite of katsu to cover up the taste.
As he chews, the thought comes to him suddenly. Words form quickly on his tongue, but he holds them there, afraid to let them become real enough to be crushed underfoot.
He realizes that Suguru has stopped eating. He swallows.
“You could probably visit the school, you know,” he says. “Hang out during lessons and missions. Help, if you want.”
“Really? Your students—” Suguru’s lips purse. “I don’t think they’d want to see me.”
“They know you’re with me, and they trust me enough. Besides, I think you would’ve been a good teacher.”
“Why?”
Satoru shrugs.
“You’re patient. You always knew what to say to the civilians. And you care. About people, about doing something worthwhile.”
A shadow crosses Suguru’s face and darkens his eyes. It looks like mourning.
“I don’t think I could ever become a teacher for this school.”
Satoru picks up another slice of katsu, ignoring his disappointment. It makes sense. It was a wishful thought, and clinging to wishes has never worked out for him.
“I know. I’m not asking you to do anything.”
Chopsticks clatter against ceramic. Satoru returns to his meal and idly mixes his rice with the sauce, watching all the colours blend into a deep brown.
Suguru’s voice floats over his plate.
“I’ll think about it. About visiting.”
Satoru looks up.
“Really?”
Suguru sets his chopsticks down and meets his gaze.
“Yeah.”
—
It rains, and Satoru watches an obnoxiously loud action movie on purpose. Suguru doesn’t comment on it, but halfway through he joins Satoru on the opposite end of the couch. Satoru leans forward to rest his chin on the pillow between his crossed legs.
A car chase blitzes before them in neon colours and random gunshots. Satoru wasn’t really paying attention to the plot. Something about an artifact that the protagonists are trying to protect. The entire movie ends with a slow-motion explosion.
Satoru risks a glance at Suguru when the credits roll. Suguru sits slouched back, a pillow squeezed between his arms. His eyes are half-lidded as he stares forward distantly.
“Are you okay?” Satoru says.
Suguru blinks back to the present.
“In general? Or right now?”
Both.
“In general,” Satoru says.
“I... think so.” A slow breath leaves Suguru. “But to be honest, I don’t really know what ‘okay’ feels like anymore.”
“What about right now?”
“Less okay than usual, I guess.”
“Where do you go?” Satoru turns his pillow over in his lap. “When you do that.”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The credits end and the movie’s theme song fades out. Suguru licks his lips.
“Sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m real. I know that my body is sitting on this couch, and my mouth is moving to say these words as I talk to you, but I’m not the one doing it. Sometimes, I feel like I died that day, and this is just a bad dream.”
There’s no bitterness or blame, none of the venom that Satoru would have braced himself for before. At some point, he’s come to understand Suguru’s rhythms, the ebbs and flows of his mood and mind. There are nights when Suguru’s laugh comes more easily, when Satoru calls him over for dinner and notices Suguru taking pills alongside the food. There are other nights when Suguru doesn’t move, doesn’t talk, when he retreats into himself and Satoru can only wonder what he might be reflecting on, remembering, regretting.
Satoru keeps his eyes on the TV screen as he reaches his hand out. It drifts past his pillow, past couch cushions, over to where Suguru’s hand rests over his lap.
His thumb brushes a knuckle.
The contact is an electric shock. Satoru fights the instinct to pull back.
Slowly, he encloses his palm over the back of Suguru’s hand.
“Does this help?” Satoru breathes.
For a second, Suguru doesn’t move. Satoru’s heart thumps so fast and fierce in his chest it feels like gunfire. He’s pretty sure his fingers are trembling.
Then Suguru’s hand turns over. His fingers slot between Satoru’s, and the creases of his palm press against Satoru’s. He still doesn’t say anything. Satoru doesn’t either as his thumb draws circles over Suguru’s skin.
They wordlessly watch a second movie like this.
The warmth of Suguru’s skin spreads from where their palms meet, blooms up Satoru’s arm, and tucks itself somewhere between the curve of his ribs.
When the movie ends, Suguru murmurs, “Satoru?”
They’ve ended up leaning against each others’ sides. Satoru’s hand rests over Suguru’s, and both their hands rest on top of Suguru’s lap. Suguru’s temple falls against Satoru’s shoulder, and Satoru’s cheek presses against Suguru’s head.
“Yeah?”
Satoru can’t see his face but feels the gentle rumble of his words.
“Are you okay?”
The hard thump in Satoru’s chest fills in the silence where his response should be. His mind gathers itself and pushes through the unexpectedness of the question.
“You know, I never asked myself that.”
It’s not an answer, because he doesn’t know what the answer is, and he knows Suguru can tell in the soft huff that leaves him.
“Maybe you should, then.”
“Maybe I should.”
The TV turned off from inactivity minutes ago. Their reflections form blurry shapes on the dark screen. The outline of their slouched forms are familiar. It looks like that moment in the alleyway, Suguru collapsed against the wall and Satoru kneeling down beside him to carry him up. The same posture, the same silence, the same realization that something between them has changed irrevocably.
“Satoru?” Suguru says again, softly.
“Mhm?”
His fingers tap a heartbeat against Satoru’s knuckles.
“Thank you.”
—
Satoru pulls out the last segment of thread. The tissue on Suguru’s shoulder has healed over, leaving behind scarred skin. Satoru pats it down with antiseptic, and Suguru winces.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.” Satoru eases up the pressure. “Is that better?”
“Yeah.”
Satoru tosses the cloth into the sink, and Suguru looks down at his own shoulder contemplatively. His hand floats up. His fingers gently brush the bumps and ridges where the suture was.
Satoru sits next to Suguru on the bathtub’s edge.
“Do you miss your arm?”
“Yeah. Hurts like hell sometimes.”
“It sucks that you lost it.”
“I was expecting to die that day. I didn’t really care about my arm.” He traces a few more circles over his scar before speaking again, this time with a sigh. “But, yes. It does suck. A lot.”
“Shoko might be able to do something about it.”
“I feel like I’ve bothered her enough.”
“Yeah, you were a pain in the ass for both of us.”
Suguru laughs.
“Still not too late to end the misery.”
Satoru laughs, too, then tucks a loose hair behind Suguru’s ear.
“What do you want, though?”
“Seeing her would be nice. The next time you go to the school, maybe I could go with you and visit the infirmary.”
Satoru blinks.
“That’ll be the first day of classes. Are you sure?”
Suguru drops his hand.
“Stop asking or I’ll change my mind.”
Satoru grins, cheeky, and grabs Suguru’s wrist.
“Too late to change your mind. You’re coming with me.”
Suguru rolls his eyes, then opens his hand to let Satoru lace their fingers together.
“It’s not like I ever had a choice.”