Chapter Text
The first curse of the morning tasted like soggy dog food and vomit. That wasn't unusual. The thing had been pretty weak — just a grade two nesting in the walls of an abandoned apartment complex — but the taste always lingered. It sat heavy in the back of his throat for hours afterward.
The strength of a curse didn't really affect its taste. Weak curses tasted awful. Strong curses tasted awful. Every variation of awful simply occupied its own category.
Suguru walked beside Satoru down a cracked rural road, hands shoved into the pockets of his uniform as evening settled over the mountains. The sky was pinkish at the edges, bleeding slowly into a pretty orange. Cicadas screamed from every direction, a constant shrill accompaniment that made the silence between them feel fuller than it was.
The mission had taken longer than expected. They often did these days. Cursed spirits have been festering like maggots everywhere lately.
The next three curses he absorbed during the first mission tasted significantly worse. Another grade two and two semi-grade ones. They tasted sour and like rot, like a rag soaked in sewage that was left to ferment beneath the summer sun.
Four curses exorcised. Four curses absorbed. Breakfast had been skipped and lunch probably would be too. He wouldn't have time for dinner at the end of the day. Hunger apparently intensifies their taste, or at least his perception of it.
Satoru is talking. Suguru was, for the most part, listening.
"... and then Yaga looked at me like that," Satoru complains, waving his hands dramatically. "You know the look."
"No."
"Eh? You absolutely know the look."
Suguru hums, "Okay, yeah, I do."
The conversation continues the way it always does. It's easy and familiar. Satoru had a talent for filling silence without making it feel crowded, and it was one of the things Suguru liked most about him, though he would have denied that with considerable confidence if asked. Their next mission is in a few hours. Satoru slings an arm over Suguru's shoulders.
“Suguruuuu,” he said, stretching his name into something theatrical and infuriatingly endearing. “You’re not listening to me.”
Suguru let out a small laugh, looking at him sidelong. The darkening sky caught in Satoru’s shades, turning the lenses into mirrors for a second before the reflection shifted and broke. Heaven in his eyes.
"I am. I just can't believe you're still complaining about Yaga-sensei after a mission."
"Because it was totally unfair!"
A breeze stirred their hair as they continued walking. Mild nausea, no dizziness yet. His throat still carried the faint, unpleasant ghost of curse aftertaste.
A passing thought occurs to Suguru.
I wonder how many it would take.
Suguru frowned. Where did that even come from?
The question itself wasn't strange. He asked questions constantly. How many curses could he store before his body reached a limit? Did his technique have a limit? How long could he maintain control over multiple summons at once?
Those were practical questions. Fair ones.
This one wasn't, though the answer was probably easy enough to discover.
There were countless questions regarding Cursed Spirit Manipulation that nobody could answer. There are no textbooks, no advice, no previous users. Just him, trial and error, and higher-ups hungry for results.
It was a ridiculous idea. An irresponsible one. A waste of time.
And still, a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"What's that face?"
He glances sideways.
Satoru is staring. He blinks.
"What face?"
"The weird one."
Suguru does make a face at that. "I don't have a weird face."
"You absolutely have a weird face."
Suguru clicks his tongue and holds back a biting comment. Instead, he just shrugs. "Just thinking."
Well. For the sake of research, that was all. Nothing more than curiosity. He wanted to know whether his body would fail before his technique did.
The drive back to the school took long enough that the horizon had darkened into a deeper blue. A strange sort of relief loosened something in his shoulders when he saw it. Not because he was tired — though he was — but because it meant food, eventually, and somewhere to rest, and a brief interval in which no one expected much from him.
They made it just in time to catch the very end of lunch. The mission report could wait ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Yaga knew what to expect when they're back from these missions by now.
The cafeteria was warm and bright when they stepped inside, the smell of rice and ramen and something fried drifting through the air. It hit Suguru all at once, uncomfortable and tight, the thought of eating only made him more aware of the lingering curse taste at the back of his throat.
Shoko was there, apparently waiting for them, one elbow on the table and leaning over a tray without a cigarette in sight — a miracle, truly, which meant she had probably been forced to put it out outside, or had been interrupted before she could light one. She looked up when she heard them approach and nodded at them in greeting.
"You're late," she said first, eyes moving from Satoru to Suguru and back again. “Mission held you back again?”
Satoru groaned immediately, sinking in the chair beside Shoko, as if he had been waiting all afternoon for someone to give him permission to complain. “It was terrible, Shoko.”
Shoko patted Satoru's shoulder with a sigh. "My condolences."
"We were sent out for a weak-ass curse in the middle of nowhere and it turned out to be, like... a million weak-ass curses in a trench coat.”
"I wouldn't really have said it like that, but yes, that's what happened," Suguru sat down across from them, setting his tray onto the table with less care than he usually would have.
He poked at his food once, twice, pushing the rice around in circles until it no longer looked like a meal and more like something he had examined and found uninteresting. His stomach tightened faintly at the thought of having anything substantial.
He let his chopsticks rest.
Satoru, meanwhile, had stolen something from Shoko’s tray, and Shoko immediately hit him for it. The exchange was so practiced neither of them seemed to think twice about it anymore. Suguru chuckled quietly; Satoru always turned Infinity off at the worst times.
Suguru sat across from them and rested his chin against his hand, watching the argument unfold. For a moment, he simply listened, smiling at them.
The cafeteria buzzed around them with the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. Their underclassmen had left already, and the place was nearly empty.
It was peaceful. A brief pause between missions. A breath before the next assignment.
Shoko, still chewing, laughed at something Satoru said and stole a piece of tofu from Satoru’s plate. He gasped as if she had committed a crime.
“Betrayal.”
“Sue me,” she said flatly.
Satoru stared at her for half a second, then reached over and took one of the desserts from her tray out of pure spite.
“Piece of shit."
Suguru’s mouth twitched. Satoru was already more than halfway through his own lunch and showed no signs of slowing down. With the constant use of his Six Eyes and Infinity, keeping up probably took more than most people would ever need.
Even when he looked relaxed, his technique was always there beneath the surface, burning through energy and demanding replacement. Suguru watched him with detached fascination and something close to affection for a beat longer than necessary.
His own tray remained mostly untouched between his hands. He took the water bottle beside it and drank instead, the coolness briefly settling the constant unpleasantness at the back of his throat. Better than nothing.
“You’re not eating,” Satoru said at last, glancing over between bites.
Suguru’s expression did not change. “I’m not hungry.”
The lie came easy enough to pass for truth.
Satoru only hummed and immediately lost interest, apparently satisfied by that answer. He reached for another piece of food without pausing.
Shoko glanced over from her salad, the look she gave Suguru lasting less than a second. Not quite concern, just a quick assessment, then she returned to eating.
"Stomach acting up again?"
Suguru hummed, "Something like that."
She nodded once, as if that explained everything it needed to. Neither of them pushed further. They had all seen it before, after long missions and too many absorbed curses, Suguru’s appetite vanished into the same place his patience often did. He'd get sick enough to vomit sometimes, but they didn't need to know that much.
They rarely even batted an eye anymore.
Another thought occurred to Suguru before he had time to decide whether he should ignore it.
He lifted one hand, hesitated only briefly, then pushed his tray toward Satoru.
Satoru blinked. “What’s this?”
“You look like you want more," he shrugged, smiling at him like he always does. "Probably need it, too."
Satoru grinned, genuine and bright, and gladly started taking food from the tray. “You’re so generous, Suguru!"
Suguru assumes Shoko rolls her eyes. He's too focused staring at Satoru in amusement to really notice.
He kept the soup and the water bottle. The soup remained mostly untouched, and the water disappeared quickly. Liquids were much easier to stomach.
“You should still eat something, though,” Satoru said, gesturing towards the tray, but there was no real worry in it. Just the same offhand practicality he used for everything else.
Suguru just shakes his head, and the conversation moved on after that. Satoru began complaining about all the missions they've been taking on. Shoko complained about the morgue and paperwork. Satoru complained about paperwork. Shoko complained about Satoru.
Suguru made a comment here and there, and the cycle repeated itself with such consistency that Suguru suspected they could continue the same arguments indefinitely and never run out of material.
He found himself relaxing despite the nausea, or maybe because of it. The discomfort had long become familiar enough to settle into the background of his thoughts. Easy to ignore and to compartmentalize.
His gaze drifted toward the windows. The very last rays of sunlight spilled across the cafeteria floor in long golden strips. It wouldn't last much longer. They still had another mission.
As if summoned by the thought itself, the cafeteria doors slid open.
"Ah, good, you're here," It's one of their underclassmen, Ijichi, and his mere presence makes Satoru throw his head back and grow in annoyance. Both Suguru and Shoko look at him in only mild disapproval.
The poor guy looks like he'd rather do anything else. He forces himself to stutter out their names and continue, "Gojo-san, Geto-san... There's a car out front ready to take you both to your next mission."
"We literally just got back," Satoru complained with a whine. Suguru now found himself sharing his annoyed expression, and Shoko deflated as well.
Ijichi visibly wilted. "I-I know, but—"
Shoko sighed loud enough to be heard over Satoru's complaints. "Gojo, it's not Ijichi's fault everything sucks. I almost feel bad for him."
Suguru watched in amusement as Ijichi shifted from foot to foot, smiling awkwardly at Shoko kind-of-maybe-defending him, clutching a folder to his chest like it might shield him from Satoru's complaints.
"W-well... The vehicle is waiting," he said carefully, stepping back slowly like they wouldn't let him leave otherwise. "Yaga-sensei asked that you leave as soon as possible."
Shoko leaned back in her chair and pointed her chopsticks vaguely toward the doorway. Ijichi jumped with a yelp as if she was pointing at him. “Go on, then, you two. Don’t keep the helpless civilians waiting.”
Satoru let out an impressive string of curses under his breath. “We should be allowed to refuse missions after lunch. This is inhumane.”
Suguru huffed softly, already standing. The chair legs scraped against the floor with a muted squeal.
His stomach had not settled. If anything, the brief rest had made him more aware of the persistent ache in it. The water had helped a little. Not enough to call it relief, but enough to keep the nausea from becoming something distracting.
"Come on, Satoru," Suguru called out to the other, his voice a soft purr. "You can complain on the way there."
Satoru sighed dramatically as he finally pushed himself out of his chair, relenting. The remains of the two lunches disappeared from the trays with alarming speed.
“Don’t die,” Shoko called out after them as they left. "Or do. I'd have fun picking you two apart."
Satoru made a genuine gagging noise and Suguru laughed.
★
The drive to the site took a little over an hour and a half, long enough for the sun to disappear completely.
Satoru spent most of it alternating between complaining, like promised, and presumably napping. One moment he was grumbling about the amount of missions they've been taking on lately, the next his head was tipped against the window in complete silence.
Suguru let himself shut his eyes for a few moments as well, though he was never actually asleep at any point. He felt almost hyper-aware of everything, and somehow simultaneously removed from all of it.
By the time they arrived, the sky had darkened into deep indigo. It was a waning moon night.
The mission site turned out to be an abandoned shrine tucked into the outskirts of a small forest. The building loomed against the dark sky, several windows broken, sections of the facade stained black with age and water damage. A veil was drawn shortly after they entered.
Suguru stepped out of the vehicle first, and it was immediately clear that this was another cluster of curses. Most of them would be weak, like usual, but there could be some strong ones. Ones worth keeping.
“Ugh,” Satoru muttered, tilting his head back as he looked up at the building. “This place sucks.”
Suguru hummed in agreement. “Charming architecture.”
Satoru made a pouty face, then shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking toward the entrance without thinking twice about it.
Suguru followed, also without thinking about it, just slower.
The first curse they found had wedged itself into a ceiling corner of the first floor, swollen and pale and dripping something black onto the floor below. It jerked when they entered, a wet little sound catching in its throat.
"Ew."
"Disgusting."
They both stare at it for a moment in varying levels of disgust. The mission report was vague enough to keep them guessing, and if Suguru had to make an educated guess, it was one of the stronger curses in this place. Also one of the grossest.
Satoru lifts a hand, ready to blast it, when Suguru also raises a hand and makes him pause. "Eh?"
“Don’t,” Suguru said, already stepping past him. “I want to absorb it.”
Satoru turns his nose but shrugs, crossing his arms. "Be my guest. That one probably tastes like shit."
Suguru just hums, and it's not long before the curse is an orb in his hand despite its attempts of crawling back into its hole. "They all taste like shit, Satoru."
There is no response to that. The orb sat in Suguru's palm for only a moment before he swallowed it.
Immediately, regret.
Mildew, still water and something metallic underneath it all, like rusty nails stabbing his throat.
His stomach tightened and turned. Suguru swallowed again anyway, just spit this time.
Nausea increased immediately. Still no lightheadedness.
The first floor was crowded with weaker curses. Things that hid beneath floorboards and behind broken walls. Things that fled the moment they sensed them. Some they exorcised without trouble, moving in synchrony and working together like twin cogs in a machine, and some Suguru claimed first if he deemed them interesting enough.
The second floor proved to be better for two reasons:
Not as many curses there.
A handful of larger, potentially useful ones. Suguru finds himself almost giddy.
The cursed energy was thicker there, pooled heavily around an old prayer hall. With a hand motion, Suguru summons one of his curses — a large centipede-looking one, its legs reminiscent of paws — and with it, he and Satoru quickly exorcise the few weaker curses there.
"It's been a while since you got Noodles out," Satoru says, gesturing towards Suguru's centipede curse with a grin.
"... Noodles?"
"Yeah!" Satoru beams, poking one of... Noodles' paws. "That's their name."
Suguru stares between him and the curse for several seconds, almost forgetting about the other curses on the floor. "Alright."
Noodles clicked its mandibles. Satoru patted its side proudly. "They like it!"
It's not the first time Satoru has apparently named his curses, but it still catches Suguru off guard. Noodles. He shakes his head, an unfortunately fond smile on his face. He's ridiculous.
The halls were clean in no time, the weaker curses being easily exorcised. Suguru another grade one — spoiled meat and fresh roadkill. He successfully suppressed the urge to gag.
The strongest curse at the shrine made itself known when the place was cleared out — large, humanoid and armless, several eyes covering its entire body and looking in every direction except at them.
"You want that one too?" Satoru asked, tilting his head in his general direction and raising an eyebrow.
Suguru was much more nauseous now, staring at back at the hideous thing. His throat was sore. His body was giving him several very reasonable arguments against this course of action. He wanted it. He needed it.
"We'll leave after I absorb it," he nodded, walking towards the curse and dodging its attempts of attacking him and Satoru, as well as blocking its attempts at fleeing. The whole ordeal lasts less than thirty seconds.
When Suguru finally condensed it into an orb, he stares at it for a moment longer than necessary. It's a deep shade of blue, though it's mostly obscured by pitch black spots and swirls.
It's boredom. Curiosity. Scientific interest, even. The desire to feel something different after months of swallowing curses and moving from mission to mission until every day looks identical to the last.
The taste was, expectedly, atrocious.
Burnt incense. Human flesh. Old blood. Something medicinal.
Suguru swallowed. His vision blurred for a second before quickly stabilizing. Dizziness. He kept his eyes shut for a moment more just to be sure, then straightened. Satoru patted his shoulder once.
The shrine was silent and would now be left to rot.
Suguru dismissed Noodles on their way out, the veil lifting now that the mission was concluded. Satoru stretched and several joints popped at once.
"Ugh, finally," he muttered, seemingly unamused by the cacophony his bones had just made. Suguru was grimacing beside him. "What?"
"Nothing," Suguru shook his head, stretching his arms downward.
Satoru had already started toward the stone steps leading back down to the road when Suguru paused before speaking.
"Satoru."
He glanced back. "Hm?"
Suguru hesitated. Sometimes asking Satoru these things went about as smoothly as dragging a cheese grater across your skin.
"How are your eyes?"
The other boy tilts his head at him. "My eyes?"
Suguru nods. He can't tell if he's being too vague or if Satoru just isn't getting the question when the other just continues to stare at him. He rewords it after a beat, "Do you have a headache?"
Satoru stares like he's looking through him.
“Oh,” he eventually said, as if the question had not occurred to him at all. Which was absurd, because if anyone in the world should have been able to notice a headache progressing, it was Satoru.
Suguru frowns. Satoru did have the habit of neglecting himself until things got too difficult to just push through.
Satoru just huffed, rolling his neck once before looking away from him. Avoiding the question, then. If Suguru had to guess, it probably was just an insistent, annoying pressure building around Satoru's templates, behind his eyes. Not terrible, but it could worsen quickly if he didn't take it easy for a while.
“You should rest as soon as we get back,” Suguru said, walking towards the car without trying to make Satoru talk about it. It wouldn't get them anywhere.
He hears Satoru grumble behind him before he picks up his pace and catches up to him, walking by his side again. "You say that like I'm fragile."
"You're anything but, Satoru," he says, bumping his shoulder against the other boy's. The conversation, to Suguru's surprise, dies there.
Satoru got into the car first, as always, and Suguru followed him in after a brief pause to gather himself. The seats were warm from the day’s lingering heat, and the moment the door shut, the outside world became distant and muffled.
The car started moving, and the road began to blur into dark shapes and passing headlights. For a while, neither of them spoke. Satoru leaned his head against the window, eyes half-lidded behind his shades.
Suguru sat beside him with his own head tipped back, the drive making the nausea come and go in waves, worsening for a few seconds before settling again. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply to let it pass him by.
Satoru did not speak much on the ride back, but every so often he shifted, one hand briefly rising to rub at his eyes before falling back into his lap. Suguru noticed each time, cracking an eye open to check before shutting his eyes again.
When the school finally came into view and the car slowed, Suguru's head spun a little. He blinked hard a couple times to get rid of the feeling. Weird.
Satoru stirred much like a cat, blinking tiredly as he pushed himself upright. Suguru followed a moment later, feeling the fatigue settle more fully into his limbs now that the work was actually done for the day.
The dorms would be quiet at this hour; most other students would be asleep, except for Shoko, most definitely. She may not get sent on missions as often as they do, but she still gets overworked for her technique. Suguru makes a mental note to check on her in the morning.
Satoru stepped out with a long-suffering sigh, mostly dramatic but partly genuine, then paused just enough to glance back at Suguru, as if checking that he was still there. Suguru feels a little of that same giddiness from earlier.
“Get some rest,” Suguru said quietly, already feeling the edge of his own exhaustion now that the adrenaline had finally worn off. He gives Satoru a small smile.
Satoru mutters something he doesn't quite catch, and they part ways on the way to their respective rooms.
Once in his room, Suguru lets out his own long-suffering, dramatic sigh, still smiling despite himself. He unties his hair and keeps his hair tie on his wrist, running a hand through the loosened strands until they fell more comfortably around his shoulders.
He leaned against his door for a moment. The smile disappeared. The exhaustion felt heavier now.
It wasn't a sudden spike — it's just that there was nobody around to ignore it for. No one asking anything of him for the next few hours, at least.
Suguru set his shoes neatly by the door out of habit, and unbuttoned his uniform to shrug the jacket off his shoulders. The fabric clung to him slightly, and now that it was gone the room felt cooler against his skin. He folded the clothes with quiet precision and placed them on the chair. He would shower in the morning.
Everything in order. Everything under control.
After staring at nothing in particular for a few seconds, thinking, he walks to the bathroom attached to his dorm room, and the light flickers on with a soft click.
The room feels too bright as soon as he does that. He squints, crossing towards the sink and turning the faucet on, cupping his hands under the cold water.
The rinses his mouth once. Twice. Again and again and again. Everytime he spits the water out, he almost expects to see blood in the sink.
The strongest curse from the shrine still lingered unpleasantly in the back of his throat, stubborn as a splinter. Eyes looking everywhere but at him.
His eyes stayed fixed on the faucet, on the basin, on the tiled wall just beyond his field of vision. Anywhere that wasn't the mirror hung above the sink. He wills himself to avoid his reflection. There was no point.
The taste eventually dulled, however little, after he lost count of how many times he spit the water out and brushing his teeth twice. The water bill there wasn't his issue, anyway.
He washed his hands too, methodically at first, then progressively more aggressively as though the act itself could get rid of the unpleasantness and filth still in his body. Clean, controlled, and only slightly desperate. When he was done, he dried them carefully on a folded towel, paying no mind to his now irritated hands.
He could do better tomorrow. He would do better. If there was a limit, he wanted to find it. He leaves the bathroom and walks back into the almost deafening silence of his dorm.
He sat on the edge of his bed and rested elbows on his thighs. The ache in his stomach tightened again, mild but insistent, and he forced himself to ignore it. He was used to discomfort. Used to running on empty. Used to the strange clarity that came with hunger after it had been around long enough to stop feeling absolutely miserable and start feeling normal.
It was predictable and he could control it.
The tension behind his ribs had become difficult to separate from the nausea. He exhaled slowly.
Maybe he should try to sleep.
He stood and switched off the main light. Darkness immediately engulfed the room, and Suguru entertains the thought that maybe this is what his curses experience when they aren't let out.
When he lays down, he stares at his ceiling. He can't see much in the dark and there isn't much to see, anyway.
And so he thought of Satoru, probably sprawled out in his room in some ridiculous position and he'd definitely complain about being in the pain 'for no reason'. He thought of the way he had paused on the steps earlier, just long enough to glance back and make sure Suguru was still there, as if he had anywhere else to be.
He really hoped he was actually asleep by now.
He thought of Shoko, too, who was probably still working now, and the way she would likely chew him out if he looked too tired in the morning. The mental image makes him smile tiredly.
He turned onto his side and pulled the comforter over himself without really noticing when he had started shivering. Sleep came slowly, in fragments. That was fine.
★
The following days settled into the usual pattern.
Exorcise. Absorb. Exorcise. Absorb. Exorcise. Absorb.
At first, it felt disappointingly uneventful.
Suguru continued skipping breakfast. Lunch too, more often than not. Dinner was optional and something he occasionally acknowledged when Satoru complained enough about him picking at his food.
Tea and water were easier. Neither tasted good after a day of swallowing curses, but they were tolerable. Food was not.
Every absorbed curse layered another unpleasant taste over the other until eating felt more daunting than simply enduring the hunger. He barely even had an appetite anymore.
The number of curses in his possession rose gradually. Suguru had no interest in sabotaging the results by pushing too hard too quickly.
Initially, the dizziness only came when he stood too quickly. Then it began arriving while he was still walking, and while he was standing still. Every now and again, it would come sharp and sudden enough that the world would tilt sideways for a moment before righting itself as if nothing had happened. Suguru quickly learned to school his expression and keep his breathing even when it happened.
He couldn't afford to look weak. Not on missions, not in front of Satoru, not in front of Shoko, not in front of Yaga. But especially not in front of himself.
He didn't let himself even think about his reflection in the bathroom mirror when he was rinsing his mouth. He didn't think much of it when the uniform jacket started to hang a little differently off his shoulders, or when he needed to adjust his belt. He simply fastened the buttons and told himself he was noticing nothing useful.
Useful things had results to show. This did not need attention or a name.
The structure of it all had become comforting.
The missions came so quickly they began to blur at the edges and he could barely tell them apart anymore. A village, an abandoned house, a field in the middle of nowhere, an old mansion with a rotting body still in there, alone. The entire world seemed to be full of grief and suffering, leaving everything decay and fill with curse spirits, and Suguru moved through all of them as though he were being carried along by the current of someone else’s life.
Everyone was exhausted. He saw Nanami and Haibara less and less often these days, their own assignments piling up until they were little more than brief apparitions in the hallways, and he saw his upperclassmen even less; the scent of smoke and death clung to Shoko more heavily than it usually did, the circles under her eyes darkening — sometimes Suguru would find her asleep at her desk or slumped over medical reports she had never finished reading; and Satoru —
Suguru rubs a hand over his face. Satoru was trying, that much he could say.
The headaches — migraines, actually — were becoming more frequent. Not debilitating yet, just painful enough that Suguru would occasionally catch him pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes when he thought nobody was looking.
Sometimes he would stare blankly through the window for a few moments after a mission ended, looking oddly distant before immediately snapping back into himself the second he heard Suguru's voice, or when he got a text notification from Shoko asking if they were on their way back.
Suguru had meant to suggest something practical. Noise-cancelling headphones, maybe. Just something to dull the information overload and ease the strain a little, though he assumed it'd be like slapping a bandaid over a stab wound. Would Satoru even entertain the idea? Would he see it as a weakness?
That conversation never happens. Neither does every other meaningful conversation they could have.
Suguru just stayed on task. He stayed ready. He stayed useful. He stayed out of the way when he could.
He drifted farther from them all without meaning to. Not entirely on purpose, at least. He still spoke when spoken to, still hung out with them in-between assignments, even if those moments seemed to wear him out more than what he was doing to himself.
Witnessing everyone else laugh and banter and eat and exist with an ease he no longer had in him only made him want to dwell further into this experiment of his. He would sit with them and feel, with growing certainty, that he was an outsider. He was someone that absorbed cursed spirits in a world that exorcised them.
There were mornings when he woke with the taste of stomach acid in the back of his throat, threatening to rise to his mouth, and his body would shake for several minutes like he was out in negative degree weather. There were nights when sleep didn't come at all, and he'd need to force himself to stomach coffee to get through the day even though his limbs felt heavy and mismatched like they were someone else’s, just stitched to his body.
One random day is what completely fucks Suguru over.
He gets cornered at breakfast by his two stubborn, hard-headed best friends that insist that he's the stubborn, hard-headed one. They aren't wrong, but he isn't either.
Shoko threatens him with a rice ball and Satoru glares daggers into him. They aren't intimidating to him by any means, but Gods, he's tired. Definitely too tired to argue with them and dance around what he's doing until they drop it.
Suguru eats just enough to get them off his back for the time being. As he ate what he deemed to be good enough, he realizes he couldn't really taste it. Unimportant; it still sat unpleasantly in his stomach for the rest of the morning.
They're dispatched to another mission shortly after breakfast. Suguru spends the drive trying not to think about the half a rice ball sitting in his stomach.
The assignment itself is unmemorable. The cursed spirits there aren't anything exquisite, either. More of the same, just in different forms.
Suguru absorbs a grade four because why the fuck not, the more the merrier, and crushes the skull of another curse beneath his heel. He watches with tired admiration as Satoru practically tears another curse apart from the inside out.
Two semi-grade twos, a grade three, another grade four, a grade one. The mission unfolds and ends in the same rhythm it always does.
The veil is lifted soon enough.
"Morning missions are hellish," Satoru complains with a grumble.
Suguru makes the mistake of nodding in agreement. The movement proves catastrophic when his stomach lurches and the world around him shifts sideways.
He has exactly one second of awareness. He turns away sharply and takes three long strides towards the nearest wall, pressing a hand against it to steady himself.
No. Not here, no, no, no—
The first heave tears through him hard enough to make his eyes water and his knees nearly buckle.
The little breakfast Shoko and Satoru bullied him into eating comes back up accompanied by water and stomach acid. The lingering taste of curses makes the entire experience infinitely worse like always.
Another heave follows soon after, and all he can do is accept it. His chest hurts, and he almost wished his ribs would break under the pressure and puncture his lungs. This was humiliating.
He vaguely registers footsteps coming behind him, then stopping. His eyes sting and he squeezes them shut tightly.
He is used to vomiting when it becomes too much to handle. He is not used to doing so in front of people.
And out of all people for this to happen in front of —
Did it really have to be Satoru?
After getting through another dry heave, Suguru wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, still supporting himself against a wall and breathing heavily.
There's several seconds of uncomfortable, loaded silence. Suguru forces himself to steady his breathing. In and out, slowly. In and out.
"Was it one of the curses?" Satoru asks, and to his credit, he sounds genuinely curious. The question still almost makes him laugh at the absurdity of it all, and he needs to gather himself for a minute longer to answer.
"Probably," he manages to say, letting out a deep, shaky breath. Satoru doesn't push for a more elaborate answer.
Eventually, Suguru pushed himself away from the wall, and the movement made his head spin again. He steadies himself quickly this time.
He can't get himself to even glance at Satoru after this, much less look him in the eye. He can feel his face burning with embarrassment, and if it were possible, he'd request a different car to be driven back to Jujutsu High.
The walk back feels far longer than it actually is.
Suguru keeps a careful distance between them, one hand shoved into his pocket and the other clenched at his side, nails digging crescents into his palms to ground himself. The nausea has mostly subsided now, leaving behind a painful exhaustion that settles deep in his bones.
"Is that something that happens often?"
The words make Suguru shiver, though he rationalizes it to be caused by his vomiting. Nothing else.
"I don't know what you mean," is what he chooses to say, getting in the car first. Satoru follows a moment after, ruminating over his lies.
He has a couple minutes of peace before Satoru speaks again, a bit quieter this time now that they're in the car. "I think you should go see Shoko."
Suguru shuts his eyes.
"There's no need."
"Just- let her see if something's up."
"Satoru—"
"I'm just saying—"
"Satoru." Suguru says again, firmer this time, but far from sharp or actually irritated. He says it like a plea. "Please stop talking."
Silence, immediate and absolute. Suguru hates himself for feeling relieved.
The rest of the drive is just as quiet as Suguru had wanted it to be, and it feels like the last nail on the coffin. The distance between himself and everyone else was a gaping wound.
Suguru makes the conscious decision to avoid everyone from then on, officially pouring salt into the open wound. He gets up earlier than he usually would, before the first rays of sunlight and even before Shoko, finishes mission reports alone — he's doing Satoru a favor, he tells himself, the latter hates doing those —, and changes his entire routine around theirs.
If he sees Shoko heading somewhere, he turns down another hallway and walks the longer path. If he hears Satoru's voice somewhere nearby, unmistakable even from a distance, he finds something else to do elsewhere.
He gets used to slipping out with a cup of tea and wandering the grounds while the sky slowly lightens, the campus silent around him. The air is cold enough to hurt his lungs. Sometimes his hands shake around the cup and he has to set it down to calm his tremors.
Even his missions with Satoru dulled. That was Suguru's doing, too. Satoru still complained during long drives and even longer assignments, still bought terrible amounts of sugary drinks and junk, still narrated his own fights like a sports commentator whenever he was bored.
Suguru just stopped meeting him halfway. At first, Satoru would shoot him strange looks whenever a joke died halfway between them, or he'd pause mid-sentence and wait for a response that never came. Sometimes Suguru would realize several seconds too late that Satoru had asked him a question. Then the questions stopped altogether.
The day it finally stopped being manageable had the nerve to begin normally. Missions came and went, cursed spirits were exorcised, and he was tired. Satoru was too, if his silence and closed eyes on the drive back were anything to go by.
They parted ways without much to say, and Suguru still couldn't quite look at him. Satoru had paused as if he were going to say something, then seemed to think better of it, instead making a beeline to his own room.
Suguru's room felt too warm when he walked in. He immediately took his jacket off and threw it in the general direction of his desk, but didn't bother checking. He blinked black and white spots away from his vision, attempting to gather himself before the inevitable eventually happened, but to no avail.
He crossed the room quickly, one hand clenching around the edge of the bathroom door as he shoved it open. He didn't bother turning the light on; he barely even made it to the toilet before the first violent heave hit, his knees harshly hitting the ground. His hair cascaded over his shoulders and face, loose and messy.
His stomach convulsed again, and again after that, each wave harsher than the last. His eyes were watering and, if it weren't a natural reaction to throwing up, he was sure he'd be crying anyway.
Suguru made a small, weak sound and forced himself to spit what little remained in his mouth into the bowl. He could feel this hair sticking to his forehead, the sensation a sensory nightmare on top of everything else.
Another spasm ripped through him, weaker than the first but no less miserable. He gripped the toilet bowl harder, knuckles whitening, and breathed through his nose in short, unsteady pulls while the nausea kept dragging through him in waves. He loses track of how long he stays like that, his eyes half-lidded and hazy.
At one point, he thinks he imagines footsteps coming towards him. He doesn't think much of it until they prove to be real.
"Suguru?" Satoru is approaching, and Suguru feels his blood run cold. He wants to shut and lock the bathroom door but can't move from his pathetic position; he considers summoning one of his curses to do it for him, but —
He hears Satoru sucking in a breath, and knows he's there then, without having to look. Almost like it's on purpose, another dry heave hits him.
A hand hesitantly touches his shoulder. Suguru’s stomach cramped again, his shoulders tensing with it, and the hand was gone. His throat feels raw, and still a little broken noise makes its way out before he could force it down.
Satoru moves and he's right there, kneeling beside him, both his hands now gathering the loose length of Suguru’s hair and holding it back with far more care than necessary so it wouldn't fall into the bowl. It makes Suguru's grip tighten on the bowl; his entire face was burning with shame.
The dry heaves were always worse than the actual vomiting. Every spasm pulled painfully through his ribs and abdomen and his muscles tensed from the effort.
A hand settles between his shoulder blades, the other still holding his hair back. Steady and present, more than Suguru had the right to want in this situation. He hated how much he needed it.
The nausea eventually eased enough for him to breathe without immediately gagging. His forehead rested against the cool porcelain seat. He opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't get the words out. Cool fingers brush his hair back from his sweat-damp forehead, and it was so tender it hurt. Suguru thinks he might cry.
Minutes pass. Suguru manages to lift his head a little, tilt it towards Satoru, and the movement makes black spots dance across his vision. When they clear, blue eyes are already staring at him, no shades in sight. Nothing for either of them to hide behind.
He wished, so badly, that Satoru was angry. And maybe he was and was just pushing it down in favor of everything else, but it'd be much easier to handle anger. Anger he could understand. Anger he could answer to. He could apologize for anger, argue with it, endure it until it passed. The look in his eyes now, though, was just —
Too much.
His eyes reflected him in a terrible way.
The skin beneath Satoru's eyes was reddened, almost irritated. If he were any braver, and if he felt any better, he would've reached out and lightly rubbed his thumbs under his eyes.
"You lost weight," Satoru says, softer. It's not a question nor an accusation. Suguru isn't entirely sure why he says it at all. The Six Eyes are taking in more information than Suguru ever wanted him to have.
"Stop," Suguru barely managed to mutter, though his voice cracks and he has to start again. A shaky breath, "Stop... looking at me like that."
The words came out much smaller than he meant them to. The silence stretched between them, filled only by Suguru's uneven breathing and the faint hum of the light from his dorm.
"I'm not looking at you like anything," and the worst part is Satoru sounds sincere when he says it. It made something raw and ugly twist in Suguru’s chest. He should get up.
The next thing he knew, though, he was half-slumped against Satoru's shoulder. He hadn't even realized he'd done it. He doesn't think Satoru himself really noticed, either, because wouldn't he have pushed him away otherwise?
Satoru reached up and brushed another damp strand of hair away from Suguru's forehead, his other arm around his shoulders to keep him up and close to him, as though he was something worth handling with care. Oh. His chest hurts.
"You're shaking," Satoru points out, merely a whisper between the two of them. Suguru wished he hadn't brought awareness to it.
Every muscle in his body is tense, a constant tremor running through all of them. The bathroom felt cold, now, despite the sweat sticking to the back of his neck.
"M'just tired," He murmured, no longer having the energy to pull away. He forces down a frustrated sound and manages to just breathe through the soreness in his throat.
Satoru doesn't speak for a moment. When he does, Suguru could've sworn his voice was a little shaky. "Yeah, I know."
Neither of them move from their positions on the cold floor, and Suguru is sure he's never felt weaker than he does now.
His vision had begun to narrow around the edges. The last of his strength slipped its grip by degrees, leaving him increasingly aware of the floor, the cold, the heat, the ache deep in his bones, the way Satoru’s arm held him upright because he no longer seemed able to do it properly on his own.
The edges of the room went soft and indistinct, as did his vision of Satoru, no matter how hard he tried to blink awareness back into his eyes.
"Suguru?" Satoru’s voice was closer, sharper now, and his head lolled to the side. The hand previously in his hair comes down to touch his face, cradling his cheek, and he's too tired to not lean into the touch.
He should answer. He knew he should. And he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried. He ends up leaning harder against Satoru, though it's against his will — his body is losing against gravity, or maybe Satoru is just pulling him closer naturally, the way he always seemed to do.
“Hey—hey, Suguru," Satoru's voice sounds more distant now, like he's underwater. He's right there, he can feel him, and he's so far away. "Stay with me.”
Stay with me. Suguru could've laughed. He tried to stay focused on Satoru, but there was too much blur at the edges, too much static, heaviness pulling at his eyelids, too much of his consciousness already drifting somewhere.
"Suguru, please."
Distantly, he realized Satoru sounded afraid. That seemed like such an absurd thought — Satoru wasn't supposed to sound afraid. Not for him, at least.
The thought barely had time to form before darkness crowded the edges of his vision and swallowed him whole.