Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Becoming a teacher, legally speaking, requires only one thing: A teaching certificate.

You don’t have to have a lifelong passion for educating others, or eyes that mist over at the idea of inspiring the youth of tomorrow. You don’t have to have been a good student with a vested interest in learning. Your college degree doesn’t have to be in education. You don’t even need to like children.

All of that is fortunate for Gojo Satoru, physical science teacher at the middle school division of the prestigious escalator school Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu Academy. He chose to major in physics more or less at random and obtained his teaching license on just as much of a whim. Throughout most of his time as a student at the same school he now works at, he’d earned subpar marks, despite his homeroom teacher—the same person who offered him his current job—insisting he could do better (of course he could have; he had just rarely wanted to). And, most importantly, he doesn’t care much for kids.

Even when he himself was a child, he hadn’t gotten along well with his peers. Most of them were either stupid brats with bad attitudes or simpering goody-two-shoes. Only in high school did he make his first actual friends, and still, he considered—and continues to consider—them exceptions, uniquely exalted above the masses.

Age and experience have changed him a bit. From reflecting on his own youth, he can recognize those years now as a critical time that should never be encroached upon or stolen away by adults—himself included. To that effect, he still doesn’t find any deep personal fulfillment in interacting with or looking after children. At work, he engages directly with them only as much as he has to; off the clock, he goes out of his way not to talk to or really think much about anyone under approximately age twenty.

Don’t get him wrong, though—he’s as good at his job as he is at anything else, and as such a nice, great teacher, he knows how to set aside any personal biases and tend to his students’ needs. Why else would he be spending his Sunday afternoon not idling around inside his roomy, air-conditioned apartment or hanging out with friends, but standing in the warm June sun to await the arrival of the two kids who are to stay with him from today on? Why else, for that matter, would he have agreed to take in those children in the first place?

There’s no other possible reason, obviously. One of his students—and also her brother, who isn’t technically his student right now but will be next year anyway, and besides, the whole point is keeping them together—had made a request, and he’d agreed to do everything possible to grant it, and that was that.

Still… however clear the why is, Satoru has to admit that anyone looking in from the outside would remain baffled by the how. How, exactly, had a man with no tender feelings for children or desire to have any of his own come to accept a role as two pre-teens’ temporary legal guardian? How had a teacher—even a great one—with no blood ties or deep personal connection to those kids been considered for the part in the first place?

That, too, is easily explained.

*

It had all started about two weeks ago, when Satoru was summoned to Principal Yaga’s office.

No advance warning, no reason, nothing. Yaga had just shown up as Satoru was packing up for the evening, rapped his knuckles against the staffroom door, and called out, “Satoru, a word” before heading back down the hall in silent expectation.

From across the office, even busy consoling a student whose tears were probably better attributed to having to deal with her than their grades or whatever, Utahime snickered. Her eyebrows quirked, though, as if to ask What’d you do this time?

Satoru could only shake his head, because he honestly had no idea. He’d been on time (close enough) for all (most) of his classes that week. He hadn’t left campus in the middle of the day once (besides, he knew where the security cameras’ blind spots were and Gakuganji had appointed sleep-deprived, easily bribed high schoolers at the exits instead of actual guards, so no one would know if he had. Which, again, he hadn’t). He’d only ditched his lesson plans a single time, and everyone had agreed that they’d learned more from the screaming gummies—a sour kind Satoru had bought by accident and thus took pleasure in disposing of in potassium chlorate—than they would have from their shitty textbook.

He went to Yaga’s office anyway. Yaga was out of sight by the time Satoru caught up, but he had walked the path so many times he could do it blindfolded. He entered casually, hands in his pockets, and blinked as Yaga, already behind his desk, pointed to a chair opposite him.

“Oh,” Satoru said, “so this is the kind of conversation I have to sit down for, is it?” The couches on either side of the room were much more comfortable, but he took the chair—and kicked right back in it, teetering up off the ground.

That one muscle in Yaga’s jaw began twitching in a record three-point-seven seconds. He braced himself on his desk, made direct eye contact, and said, “Did you or did you not offer to foster Fushiguro Megumi and Fushiguro Tsumiki?”

The chair slammed back down.

Okay, so maybe it had actually started a little bit before that.

The judo club Satoru advised by and large did not listen to him, even though he gave them a lot of good advice; he, in turn, didn’t pay much attention to what they said, especially about their personal lives. Second-year Maki, though, was not only the team’s MVP but from the Zen’in family, whom Satoru had grown up knowing as one of his own family’s foremost business rivals/allies, and also supremely fucked up in a way that could be entertaining. The words my cousin and his sister alone had caught Satoru’s interest.

He’s still a bit hazy on the finer details, but the gist, as he’d understood it then: Five years ago, Maki’s estranged cousin remarried a woman who already had a daughter around his son’s age. Six months ago, both parents left their children and didn’t come back. One month ago, the Zen’ins found out.

Although the Fushiguros’ options were being presented as a simple binary—either Megumi would rejoin the Zen’ins and be separated from his sister, or they would both go into foster care and be separated from each other—Satoru had seen a few alternatives. Apparently the one he’d suggested aloud, that an unrelated party—a Jujutsu staff member like himself, for example—take over their care, had reached Maki and now Yaga.

“Oh, yeah, I did,” said Satoru, after a few seconds of no noise or movement save the buzzing of the overworked AC unit. “Why?”

Yaga’s frown and the premature wrinkles surrounding it only deepened. “I should be asking you that.” He brought one hand up to his temple. “Look, Satoru,” he said before Satoru could give the obvious explanation of what a good guy and caring teacher he was, “I… heard about you and Suguru. Is…” He trailed off, looked down at his desk and the hand-sewn dolls decorating it, and then cleared his throat and brought his gaze back up. “That is, are you…?”

Satoru blinked another few times before laughing outright. “Where’d you hear about that? Utahime? Nah, I bet it was Mei-san, she’s always been a gossip.” Though the image of her and Yaga swapping rumors about who was—or, in this case, was no longer—screwing who got another snicker out of him. Yaga didn’t clarify. “Well, whatever,” Satoru decided. “Why’re you bringing it up now?”

Yaga slowly set his hand back on the desk and folded the other over it. The AC seemed to start whirring twice as hard.

Realization jolted Satoru upright in his seat. “What,” he said, grin broadening, “you think I’m breaking down or something?” He snorted. “Chill out, Principal, this isn’t about that at all. We broke up, like, two months ago, and it was super mutual and amicable. I’m cool. Suguru’s cool. Everybody’s cool. Actually, he just started fostering some brats too.”

Yaga’s expression only grew stormier. “Satoru,” he said, “it’s one thing to compete with someone in matters of physical strength or academic performance, or even those of no importance to anyone else. But childrearing—”

“Whoa.” Satoru threw up a hand. “Who said anything about rearing anybody? I just said I could maybe put two kids up for a while, not rear them. They’re, what, eleven and twelve? That’s pretty well-reared already, isn’t it? I’m gonna stop saying ‘rear’ now.”

“Thank you,” muttered Yaga.

“Hey, man, you started that. And anyway,” Satoru added, ignoring the vein pulsing in Yaga’s forehead, “I’m not trying to compete with Suguru. It’s not about him at all. It’s not even really about me. It’s about—” he paused for effect (for effect, he said, totally for sure on purpose) “—Megumi and Tsumiki. You know, the kids who are about to have the best years of their lives sucked into the Zen’in void and ruined forever. I mean, you see or hear about Maki and Mai basically every day, right? And you remember Naoya.” He made a face. Few of his kouhai besides Nanami, Haibara, Ijichi, and Amanai stood out in his mind, but where they were uniquely interesting to tolerable to useful, Zen’in Naoya was uniquely shitty. “How many more of those do you want running around?”

A flicker ran through Yaga’s otherwise impassive expression. “Did you forget their names just now?”

“Of course not. You just said them. Fushiguro Megumi and Fushiguro Tsumiki. It’s a steel trap up here.” Satoru tapped his forehead. “Anyway, you never answered my question. What does it matter what I did or didn’t say about them?”

Yaga stared at him for almost a minute before sighing. “It matters,” he said, “because the Zen’ins are seriously considering your proposal.”

Now Satoru was the one staring. “For real?”

“They’d like to resolve this matter quickly, cheaply, and involving as few people as possible—criteria all met by this option. They have their pride, after all, and the competition for the next family head will be fierce enough without Megumi’s inclusion.” Yaga slid his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “I do know Maki and Mai,” he said, sternness sloughing away, “and I do remember Naoya. I remember every Zen’in who’s set foot in this building in my time here.” His fingers lingered by one eye, scratching over his cheekbone, as he brought his head back up. “And no matter what, Satoru, I do think you’re capable of providing them with a better life than the Zen’ins can.”

Satoru opened his mouth and then closed it. A few more seconds trickled by. Finally, Yaga put his glasses back on and cleared his throat.

“Zen’in Naobito would like to discuss the matter next week,” he said. “Will you meet with him?”

After all of that, “Yeah, sure, I’ll be there” was really the only thing Satoru could say. As Yaga nodded, he sat back and rested one leg across the other, foot bouncing. “Sometime before then, could you set up a private meeting with just me and the Fushiguros? If these kids are going to start living with me, I should probably get to know them a little first.”

The firm resolve in Yaga’s face disappeared. “You haven’t even…?” His voice faded out, and he pressed his fist into his forehead.

“Tsumiki’s a first-year, right? So I would recognize her if I saw her. Probably.” They were only a couple of months into this school year, after all, so—“But I haven’t spoken one-on-one to any of those kids yet. And if Megumi’s still a primary schooler, I definitely don’t know him.”

Yaga took in a very slow, very deep breath and let it out just as painstakingly. “All right. Tomorrow, at three thirty, I’ll call those two here. Do you hear me, Satoru?” His eyes pierced into Satoru’s. “Three thirty sharp. Do not be late. Not even by a few minutes.”

“I gotcha, I gotcha.” Satoru waved a hand. “Three thirty. Steel trap, remember?”

The next day, Satoru arrived at exactly three thirty-eight. He was already prepared to sigh off Yaga’s fury, but he was met by pure silence.

Satoru stopped in the doorway. His blank stare went unacknowledged as Yaga, sitting behind his desk, calmly drew a needle through a lump of fabric.

“Have a seat, Satoru,” he said without looking up. “They’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

“What do you mean, twenty minutes?” demanded Satoru. “You said they’d be here at three thirty.”

“I told you that. I told them to show up at four.” Yaga snipped off the end of the thread. “Now please sit.”

Out of spite, Satoru flopped onto one of the couches this time, throwing one leg over the armrest and all. Yaga just kept making whatever he was making.

For the remaining—apparently—twenty minutes, Satoru dicked around on his phone, ending up in a Wikipedia rabbit hole that led to learning about tongue-eating lice and messaging Shoko about it. When she didn’t reply, he opened up the rhythm game Haibara had gotten him into recently and Utahime also played. Satoru was already ranked well above her, but making the victory absolute didn’t hurt.

At three fifty-five, Yaga traded his sewing kit for a stack of documents. The instant the clock struck four, a knock came at the door.

Even if Satoru hadn’t already known the boy who entered was a Zen’in, his dark, messy hair and sour expression were dead giveaways. It was just as easy to see that the girl beside him shared none of his genes—she not only had no basic physical traits in common, but light in her eyes and an earnest smile.

As it turned out, Satoru did recognize her. Not from class, but from the time they had, in fact, spoken one-on-one.

“Oh, hey,” he said, sitting up. “You’re the one who was crying on the roof the other day.”

He’d gone up there to eat his lunch (a konbini bento, sad and cold but more ambitious than the chips and candy he’d mostly been bringing since he stopped living with someone who regularly cooked and gave an active shit about eating a balanced diet) without anyone bothering him, and he hadn’t heard the sniffling until the door was already swinging shut. When the crying girl—Fushiguro Tsumiki, apparently—had spun around, he’d pointed out that students weren’t allowed out there without permission. She’d wiped her cheeks clean and bowed, promising to accept whatever punishment he saw fit. Writing students up was more trouble than it was worth, so Satoru had just cracked open his bento and waved her along.

Now, Tsumiki tensed and darted her eyes toward Yaga. He kept sifting through his papers, pretending not to listen.

“You were crying?” Megumi, meanwhile, hissed. “Tsumiki—”

“It’s okay!” Tsumiki summoned up a fresh smile and clasped her hands together. “Our, um, milk cartons for lunch were just broken, and I got some in my eyes.”

“If that were true,” Satoru cut in, “wouldn’t you have been in the bathroom washing it out?” Her cheeks flushed, and Megumi’s eyes narrowed. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to lie, it’s better to make it one of omission, or at least more believable. Like, say they were serving onions that day or something.”

Yaga, choosing that moment to tune back in, cleared his throat. Satoru shrugged at him but slid to his feet.

“Right, anyway,” he said, “that’s not really important right now. You know what is, right? Your dad—” he pointed at Megumi “—and his awful family, and all of that. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Megumi tightened his jaw. Tsumiki’s still-folded hands lowered to her waist.

“I bet a lot of people have been telling you a lot about what you should or shouldn’t do.” Yaga was still looking at Satoru, more curious than reprimanding. Satoru set a hand on his hip and kept his gaze on the Fushiguros. “I’m probably going to be the only one to ask: What do you want? Where do you want to go? The Zen’ins, or somewhere else?”

The two glanced at each other, then back at him. Megumi’s hands curled into his backpack straps so hard the charm attached to it—a dinky little piece of plastic featuring what Satoru had to assume were the three wise monkeys—rattled. For a moment, his gaze rested on the floor.

Then he lifted his head, eyes locking onto Satoru’s. “I want Tsumiki to be happy,” he said, definite. Tsumiki’s attention snapped toward him, but he didn’t look away. “If I go to them, will she be able to be happy?”

“No way,” Satoru said immediately. “Absolutely not. I guarantee it.”

Megumi’s teeth gnashed, and his fists tightened. Satoru couldn’t help but grin.

“What about you?” he turned to ask Tsumiki.

Her own eyes slid up. “I want to stay with Megumi,” she said, just as firmly.

Satoru nodded, then let his smile spread in full and patted each of their heads. “Got it!” He drew his hands back and returned them to his hips before either Fushiguro could do more than blink. “Just leave the rest to me, then. I’ll take care of everything.”

Everything was, as it turned out when he met with Naobito and associates, mostly a fuckton of paperwork. He considered texting Suguru—not only a bigshot human rights lawyer, but the one-in-a-million attorney who passed the preliminary exam fresh out of high school—to make some sense of all the dense legalese, but, well, however cool and amicable they were even eighty-odd days out, he was probably busy with that job or those newly acquired kids. So after a certain amount of pages, Satoru just started signing his name without paying much attention to what exactly he was agreeing to. It probably wouldn’t hold up in court anyway.

Aside from the immediate guardianship arrangements, Satoru was still living in a one-bedroom apartment. He had already been absently looking for something new, since his lease was up at the end of the month; now, he refined and hastened his search. It took even more paperwork and a decent amount of money, but at the end of it all, Satoru had a 3LDK about half an hour from Jujutsu Academy, plans for Megumi and Tsumiki to join him in it, and transportation to get them there.

When he met his friends for drinks last night, their Saturday evening tradition for about ten years running, he’d expected his announcement to be met with awe or at least begrudging respect. Instead, the air at their izakaya table cooled.

Utahime was the first to speak. “Gojo,” she said, like she was explaining the permanence of death to a child for the first time and also really hated that child, “you cannot adopt two traumatized children just to prove something to your ex-boyfriend.”

“First of all,” said Satoru in the same patronizing tone, “I’m not adopting them, they’re just staying with me for a while. Second, don’t just call Suguru my ex-boyfriend like we’re not still best friends who broke up mutually and amicably like mature adults. And third, I don’t know why I have to keep saying this, but this isn’t about him anyway.”

A beat.

“But,” he added, “if you want to, like, keep track of our individual parenting successes and compile them into a monthly leaderboard, I’d definitely win.”

The uproarious laughter from the soused salarymen next to them really emphasized the silence from everyone except Haibara, who contributed a polite chuckle. Shoko looked mostly disinterested in anything but chugging her third beer in twenty minutes, but Utahime and Nanami were glaring outright.

That wasn’t that unusual. Utahime was Utahime and always mad at Satoru for no reason. As for Nanami, Satoru had beaten him here and gotten to do his bit of leaping up onto his seat and shouting Nanami, over here! the second he walked in, so he was going to be miffed until he got another drink or two in. That reaction was, of course, most of why Satoru kept doing it.

Usually, Suguru acted as a partial buffer—but Suguru hadn’t joined them in over twelve weeks. Which honestly kind of annoyed Satoru because one, it was the perfect way to show how cool they were, and two, he now had to bear the full brunt of the table’s unwarranted aggression.

But whatever. Satoru could smile and let it bounce off just fine on his own. “Your face is seriously gonna freeze like that one day,” he told Utahime, sipping his soda like the laidback, easygoing guy he was. “And then you’ll really die alone.”

Utahime’s lip curled, proving his point. “Oh, like you’ve got so many options?”

“Uh, duh. Look at me.” Satoru snorted. “People for sure started throwing parties and parades when the news came out that I was single again.”

“Right, let’s get back to that, shall we?” Utahime was still on her first beer; she drained about a third in one swig. “Why couldn’t you have just broken up like normal people, without dragging anyone else into it?”

“Because they’re not normal people,” suggested Shoko. Utahime glanced at her half in appreciation and half in resignation.

The look Satoru shot her was full disbelief. “Hey, Shoko, you want me to pull up the texts you sent me about those parasites that eat fish’s tongues and then become their tongues? That wasn’t normal.”

She hadn’t gotten back to him for hours, but the excruciating level of detail she’d gone into had more than made up for the delay. It reminded Satoru of her med school days, when she’d tell him and Suguru about some freaky rare disease or gory residency experience—sometimes inspired by whatever trashy B-movie they were watching, but often completely unprompted—until even they, by no means squeamish, got grossed out and bribed her to shut up.

She was as unrepentant now as she had always been, only shrugging. “You texted me about that first.”

Nanami’s throat-clear diverted them back. “You could have at least refrained from involving children,” he said, chin raised in judgment. “Do you even understand that individuals under age eighteen are sentient beings with their own personalities, wills, and very specific needs for which adults are responsible?”

“I’ve been a teacher for, like, eight years,” said Satoru. “A great one, too.”

Utahime scoffed. “The one and only reason you haven’t been fired yet is that Principal Yaga likes you and lets you get away with shit.”

“I think what you’re doing is very honorable, Gojo-san!” said Haibara, the only person here whose opinion mattered. Satoru threw a companionable arm around him. “As long as you give something your all and it helps other people, your reason for doing it isn’t important, right?”

“Exactly, exactly!” Satoru patted his shoulder—at first fast and firm, then gradually, as if powering down, more slowly. “But the reason I’m doing it is because it’ll help people. I’m a nice guy like that.”

“A nice guy who wants to set up a parenting leaderboard,” deadpanned Shoko.

“Well, yeah.” She obviously didn’t care like Utahime and Nanami did, just wanted to join in on ribbing him, so Satoru halfheartedly kicked her under the table. She kicked him back. “It gets boring being the best at everything if you never have to defend that title, after all,” he added, tucking his legs as far out of reach as he could manage when they were by far the longest here. “But that’s not the point. The kids are.”

“We understand that.” Nanami leveled a stare at Satoru beneath the rims of his glasses. “Do you?”

Everyone at this table except Satoru was a terrible listener. “What,” he said, “so Suguru can adopt—foster, take in, whatever—two random kids out of nowhere, but I can’t? Total double standard, you guys.”

“We called Geto an idiot, too,” said Utahime. “You just weren’t there to hear it.”

“Furthermore,” said Nanami, “I do honestly trust Geto-san, who can at least act like an adult when he so chooses, more with children than you, who are in many ways still a child.”

“I guess that’s one point for Geto-san already,” Haibara mused.

“Hey, isn’t that actually in my favor?” insisted Satoru. “Since it means I can understand the child mind better.”

Haibara snapped his fingers. “One point to Gojo-san too, then!”

Satoru nodded firmly. “See how competitive this is getting already? You’d better get your bets in now.” Under everyone else’s continued disdain, he straightened, drawing back the arm still halfway around Haibara. “But seriously, this isn’t about Suguru or us breaking up. Why would it be? It was—”

“Mutual,” said Shoko.

“Amicable,” muttered Nanami.

“And you’re still best friends,” finished Utahime.

Ignoring the distinct mocking tones, Satoru waved his finger along to each point. “Exactly! If I, a financially and emotionally stable single adult, want to offer a home to two students without one out of the goodness of my heart, that’s well within my rights. And I guess it’s within yours to be contrary about it—Utahime would straight-up spontaneously combust if she had to agree with me about anything—but I’m not listening to any more of it. They’re coming tomorrow, anyway, so it’s not like it’ll change anything.”

Haibara nodded pleasantly along. Utahime’s lips twisted like she’d been sucking on a lemon all night (her nasty beer couldn’t be too far off in taste, honestly). Nanami looked at Satoru as if he was a particularly stupid bug caught between the screen and the glass.

Shoko, meanwhile, polished off her beer. “If you’re such a nice, financially stable guy,” she said, flagging down a passing waiter, “you can pay for drinks for once.”

Satoru agreed with no further arm-twisting, and indeed, they didn’t bring either the Fushiguros or Suguru up for the rest of the night.

*

Back in the present, Satoru’s head snaps up as a car pulls into the lot. He sends off the text he’d been writing—a string of crying laughing emoji in response to Utahime’s karmically earned hangover—and slips his phone into his pocket with one hand while waving with the other. He would be hard to miss already, as both the most distinctive person in Tokyo and the only person in this particular ten-meter radius, but he might as well make it that much harder.

It seems to work: The car parks a couple of steps from him. From the backseat exit Megumi and Tsumiki. Both are wearing about the same expressions they had in Yaga’s office—and, despite it being the weekend, their school uniforms, backpacks and all.

Satoru ignores Ijichi stepping out of the driver’s seat to eye the cheap duffel bags also hanging at their sides. “Got any more luggage?” he asks by way of greeting.

“No, Gojo-san,” answers Ijichi.

Satoru keeps his attention on the Fushiguros; Tsumiki shakes her head in agreement. “This was all we really had,” she says, hefting her bag.

“Huh. Well, I guess you won’t have to spend too much time unpacking, then.”

“I… guess not?” says Tsumiki.

Satoru’s phone has not stopped vibrating since he put it away, so he pulls it back out and mutes the group chat, where Utahime has sent enough messages to flood his entire screen. He also goes ahead and remits the money he’d offered Ijichi for his chauffeuring. A faint beep sounds from within the car.

“Right, I think we’re set here, then.” Satoru twirls his phone between his fingers and taps his foot. “So see ya, Ijichi.”

“Ah, uh—” Ijichi stiffens, eyes darting between about three separate random points. “O-Of course, Gojo-san.” He tips his chin toward Megumi, who is unmoved, and Tsumiki, who bows back. “It was a pleasure to meet the two of you. And, ah.” He adjusts his glasses with a shaky hand; they slip right back down his nose. “Best of luck.”

“Oi,” barks Satoru, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

Ijichi, already turned away, hits his head on the top of the car in his haste to reenter. He backs up, takes a breath, and nods at the Fushiguros again, then manages to climb back in. Once Megumi and Tsumiki have stepped closer to Satoru, he takes off.

“That guy doesn’t work for the Zen’ins,” says Megumi, not quite a question, as he watches the car disappear.

“Sure doesn’t.” Satoru almost snorts at the idea—someone like Ijichi would get ripped to shreds in that lion’s den even faster than the Fushiguros. He’d been more convenient for Satoru, though, than taking the train himself or renting a car, now that he no longer had easy access to Suguru’s (not that he ever really drove it anyway). “I think they’ve stopped caring about you guys since they signed you over to me. Hey, though,” he adds, returning his phone to his pocket now that it’s no longer buzzing incessantly, “if we have to talk about either Ijichi or the Zen’in family, let’s at least do it somewhere with AC and curtains.”

He pushes his sunglasses up by the arm—see, Ijichi, that’s how it’s done—and heads for the building entrance. Over his shoulder, he can just see Megumi and Tsumiki exchange looks before following.

The receptionist working today already seems to dislike Satoru for some reason, so he ignores her and moves straight toward the elevator. “We’re on the third floor,” he explains to the Fushiguros as he taps the button, “so I hope neither of you has a thing about heights.”

“They’re fine, don’t worry.” Tsumiki files in after him. She keeps spinning to take everything in, even though, in Satoru’s opinion, this apartment complex isn’t anything special. It’s nice enough, but half of what his old one had been in almost every respect. “It’s so clean here, isn’t it, Megumi?”

Megumi doesn’t reply, but he too glances around as they glide up. When his eyes catch Satoru’s in their reflections, he drops his gaze to his shoes and keeps it there until the doors open again.

“Room 314,” Satoru announces, leading them there. “Finding a place that doesn’t give a shit about those stupid superstitions and names their rooms and floors in a sensible order without skipping anything ‘unlucky’ was my number-one criterion, you know. That, and it having 3LDK options.”

“Three?” Tsumiki’s footsteps stutter. “So we have our own rooms?”

“Yeah. That a problem? They’re big enough that you could probably just share one if you really wanted.”

Both she and Megumi are shaking their heads before he’s done speaking. “Separate rooms are fine,” says Tsumiki. “It’s just… um.” She clears her throat, gripping her bag with both hands. “It’s been a while since we had that.”

Satoru digs for his keys in his other pocket. Upon unlocking the door, he doesn’t immediately push it open, but claps his hands and whirls back with a grin.

“All right!” he says. “Who’s ready for an ultra-special, once-in-a-lifetime, non-refundable tour?”

Tsumiki smiles hesitantly. Megumi’s apparent perma-RBF—sad to see so young, but it’s not like Satoru can do anything about it—stays in place.

Satoru huffs out a breath. “Well, whatever.” He lightly elbows the door open and strides in. “Here’s the genkan,” he says, arms spread. “You do genkan things in it, obviously. I don’t care how neat your shoes are—” he kicks his own off with no particular regard for where or at what angle they end up “—so do whatever with them.”

As he’d more or less expected, the Fushiguros ignore this and remove their loafers the polite way. He rolls his eyes, then tucks his sunglasses into the front of his shirt. It’s still pretty bright inside, on account of all the sunlight streaming in from the balcony, but not painfully so right now.

Once the Fushiguros step up into the apartment, he reaches around them to close the door, then walks on. “And through here,” he continues, “is the LDK in ‘3LDK.’”

That part, at least, is a step up from his previous apartment—as per the general increase in size, it too is bigger, with actual distinct gaps of empty space between each area. Satoru steps behind the kitchen counter, from which the dining table and the couch and TV set beyond it are in plain view.

“You can watch TV or go out onto the balcony whenever,” he says graciously. “I don’t use the stove for anything so you probably shouldn’t either, but feel free to use the microwave or eat whatever’s out here.”

He’d gotten a mini-fridge with a freezer compartment and all for his bedroom, so he really does mean that. He’d also spent most of yesterday afternoon buying things, including actual food—okay, mostly a variety of instant meals, but some fruits and vegetables too, which he opens the refrigerator door to display.

Megumi seems more concerned with the exterior. “Why do you have pictures of yourself on the refrigerator?”

“Who wouldn’t want pictures of me on their fridge?” Satoru closes the door again and leans, effortlessly model-like, against it. “And anyway, they’re not just of me.”

One way in which this apartment falls short of the old one is its comparative barrenness and lack of personality. The fastest, easiest way to make inroads on that was to stick up a few photos. Most of them are of himself and Suguru, since that composes the statistical majority of the photographs Satoru owns, and anyway, it’s normal to have pictures of your friends around. Shoko is in some too, and even Nanami and Haibara.

Satoru taps one from their high school graduation. “See? That’s my friend Shoko and my—my best friend Suguru.” He’s annoyed at his hesitation, since even in the ten years they were dating he never thought of boyfriend or partner as superseding best friend and thus still often defaulted to the latter, and then he’s annoyed that he’s annoyed. “Though I guess you should call them Ieiri-san and Geto-san if you ever meet them. Well, Shoko probably won’t give a shit, but it wasn’t until like four months after we met that Suguru even started responding to me using his first name. Anyway!”

He claps his hands again and proceeds normally down the hall. He shoves open the first door he comes to, which turns out to be—

“Toilet number one,” he tells Megumi and Tsumiki, pointing at, in fact, a toilet. The door ricochets off the wall and swings halfway shut again, so he nudges it back open with a modicum less power. He does know his own strength, he just never bothers reining it in. “There’s another one connected to my room, so if you ever both need in really bad at the same time, I guess you can use that.”

Tsumiki’s cheeks and the very tips of Megumi’s ears redden. Satoru nods to himself and moves on to the next door.

“Washroom.” He sweeps a hand along the sink, where the extra toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste he’d ordered are strewn about, and reaches above it to show them the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. “There’s a washing machine—” he points to the corner “—but I’ll probably just take our clothes to the coin laundry down the street, unless either of you really loves doing laundry.”

He looks hopefully over his shoulder, but both Fushiguros remain neutral. Satoru snaps his fingers but continues along.

“And then the bath is through here. Pop quiz!” Satoru claps his hands the loudest he has yet. Megumi and Tsumiki jolt to attention the way about three-quarters of his students do when he tries that in class. “Morning showers, or night showers?”

“Morning,” says Tsumiki.

“Night,” says Megumi.

“Megumi wins!” Satoru points at him with both hands. If possible, Megumi’s brow furrows harder. “Just kidding. But I usually shower at night, too, so let’s say it’s first come, first serve for the hot water.”

Megumi shrugs. “I shower cold anyway.”

Satoru stares. “Never mind,” he decides, hands returning to his pockets, “you lose.” He draws himself back up before Megumi can react. “I just got the super generic body wash and shampoo and conditioner and whatever else, so if you want something different, ask and I’ll buy it.”

“We brought our own toiletries, actually,” says Tsumiki, lifting her bag.

“Oh, nice. Well, still, whenever those run out or if you just wanna try something else, let me know. Money’s not an issue, like, at all.”

Tsumiki and Megumi trade those glances again. Satoru shrugs and ushers them back out into the hall.

“My bedroom is down there,” he says, gesturing to the last closed door. “Don’t go poking around too much if I’m not in there. Or even if I am in there.”

“We’re not going to go into your room at all,” says Megumi. Tsumiki gives him a reproachful look but nods at, apparently, the general sentiment.

Satoru would feign offense at their disinterest, but though he doesn’t care about most social norms, he is in fact aware of (some of) them. Included in that is the potential outside perception of a single adult man—a gay one at that, however little that should matter to anyone with any amount of sense—living with unrelated children, so he thinks it’s better to not discuss his bedroom in any depth with two pre-teens. He pushes open the remaining two doors instead.

“Finally, last and second-best of all,” he says, “here’s your rooms!”

In a still fairly lifeless apartment, these bedrooms stand out as even duller than the rest. They’re moderate in size; a little on the smaller side, Satoru would say, but the sparse decorations—identical sets of basic beds, dressers, and desks—make the empty white walls and plain tile floors seem to sprawl on for longer.

Tsumiki’s eyes widen, though, like they’re castle quarters. Even Megumi’s hand falls away from his backpack strap.

Tsumiki takes a single step forward—then freezes and glances over at Satoru. “May I?”

It takes him a second to realize what she’s even asking. “You don’t need to ask—it’s your room,” he says with a snort. “Or I guess it could be your room. They’re identical, so you can decide for yourselves who gets which.”

Tsumiki has already stepped into the room farther from his. Although her head stays tilted in Satoru’s direction, her clear focus is on taking in every detail, and by the time she reaches the center of the room, she’s stopped pretending to listen.

Satoru laughs under his breath. Megumi stays in the hall, a tentative step from the doorway, but he seems unable to keep from craning his head forward, watching his sister if nothing else.

“Megumi!” Tsumiki calls after a moment. “There are windows!”

Megumi’s face remains cool, but he sets his duffel bag down and follows her in. Satoru trails after.

“They even open,” he tells Tsumiki. He gestures for her to back away; she withdraws both hands from the sill she’d been resting against, own bag placed on the bed, and stares wide-eyed as he cracks the window.

She leans straight forward again. Her eyes fall shut as she inhales, so deep it’s like she’s never breathed in the fresh air before (despite having stood in it less than an hour ago). When her eyelids lift, she gazes ahead at the sprawling Tokyo skyline. “What a beautiful view,” she sighs out.

“That’s the same from both rooms, too.” Satoru hasn’t actually checked that for himself, so he adds, “Should be, anyway.”

“Do you want this one, then, Megumi?” Tsumiki turns to ask.

Megumi, hovering in the middle of the room, shrugs. “I don’t care either way.”

Tsumiki laughs. “Neither do I.”

Satoru glances warily from one to the other. This seems more likely to evolve into the kind of passive-aggressive exchanges PTA moms have than the all-out brawls Maki and Mai get into about every other week, but he’s even less inclined to mediate the former.

“If you can’t decide, rock-paper-scissors or flip a coin for it,” he suggests before clapping one final time. “With that, your one-and-only, limited-edition tour of Gojo Satoru’s—and also now your—place of residence comes to an end! Comments? Questions? Concerns?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Nothing? Cool, cool. If you think of anything, I’ll be in the living room.”

He waves and exits. Halfway down the hall, a voice calls out: “Gojo-sensei!”

Before he’s even turned all the way, Satoru clicks his tongue. “Does this look like school?” he asks as he faces Tsumiki. “You don’t have to be so formal here.” Or even at school, really, considering both Maki and Toge openly address him by his given name.

Tsumiki isn’t much like either of them, though, and she tenses. “Right, Gojo-sen—ah. Gojo… -san?” She peers up expectantly, smoothing her bangs out of her eyes.

“…Sure, that works.” Clearly it’s the best he’ll get. He rests a hand on his hip and cocks his head. “Need something already?”

Her shoulders tighten further, and she lowers herself into a bow. “I just wanted to say, Gojo-san,” she says as Satoru is still blinking, hand automatically falling, “how grateful we are for what you’re doing, and that we’ll do our best not to be more of an imposition or a burden than we already are.” She lifts her chin enough to show a faint smile. “Megumi probably won’t say it, so I wanted to, for both of us.”

“That kid is a bit of a punk.” Satoru raises his voice so it carries down the hall. In the relative silence of the apartment, Megumi must hear, but he gives no response. Satoru rolls his eyes at Tsumiki, whose smile widens. “See? I know he’s your brother and all, but god. Anyway—‘imposition’? ‘Burden’? What’s with all that, huh?”

“Oh.” Tsumiki’s expression falters. She straightens and folds her hands at her waist. “Well, we’re only guests in your home, Gojo-san, and, respectfully, we’re almost strangers. So we’ll do our best to take care of ourselves without relying too much on you or disrupting your life.”

For a few seconds, Satoru can only stare. “Are you really only twelve?” he finally mutters. She frowns, and he waves her off. “Never mind. That’s good to hear, ’cause I’m not big on babysitting, but I wasn’t just being polite or whatever, just now. One of those rooms—” he tips his head in its direction “—is yours, and so is the rest of the apartment. Didn’t I tell you that I’d take care of things? All you should worry about now is enjoying your youth.”

Tsumiki’s teeth dig into her lip. Her thumb traces an absent pattern along the back of the other hand.

“Got that?” says Satoru, and, reluctantly, she nods. He nods back. “Good. Anyway, speaking of taking care of things—” he checks his phone for the time and sees at least thirty new messages “—did you guys eat lunch already?”

The apparent change of subject makes Tsumiki blink, but she adapts with a quick swallow. “Yes. Ijichi-san picked us up some konbini bento.”

“Huh.” Maybe Satoru would send him a little more money. Maybe not, though, because he’d only requested Ijichi drive them, so he’s not responsible for anything extra Ijichi chose to do on his own. He returns his phone to his pocket and heads back down the hall as he thinks about it. “Any requests for dinner, then?” he asks when Megumi, still standing in the middle of the room, comes back into eyeshot.

Megumi looks at Tsumiki, who has followed Satoru and is already looking back. They both half-shrug, half-shake their heads.

Satoru scratches over his temple. “Okay.” With the afternoon’s excitement, he doesn’t really want to even toss one of the many frozen meals he’d bought into the fridge, and if he already feels that way now, he’s not going to be up for it in a couple of hours. “How about we go out for something? McDonald’s maybe?”

Instead of lighting up like any normal kids, the Fushiguros frown. “On a school night?” says Megumi.

“Without any special occasion?” adds Tsumiki. “And… all of us going together?”

“Wow,” Satoru deadpans, “you two have seriously lived sad lives up to this point.” Tsumiki drops her chin, and Megumi glares. Satoru shakes it off. “But don’t worry—you’re staying with the smartest, coolest, strongest, best-looking guy in all of Tokyo—no, Japan—now. If you need something to celebrate, how about that?”

Megumi strides over and shuts the door in his face.

Satoru turns, unbothered, back to Tsumiki. “Guess that means that room’s his,” he says, jabbing a thumb at it. “Hope you weren’t too attached.”

Tsumiki wheezes out a laugh. “I wasn’t just being polite, either, Gojo-san—I really don’t mind.” She taps her chin. “Ah, I did leave my bag in there, though…”

The door squeaks back open. From a crack in it emerges Megumi’s fist—and, clenched within, Tsumiki’s duffel bag.

Tsumiki takes it. “Thank you, Megumi.” He makes a vague sound of acknowledgment before closing himself in again.

Satoru snorts. “I never heard a no,” he points out, turning to leave again, “so Makku it is. Just come get me whenever you’re hungry.”

He makes it to the living room uninterrupted this time, and flops straight onto the couch. Though he can hear continued shuffling and murmuring down the hall—a bit odd after two months alone and the preceding years of living with and thus usually being in the same room as Suguru—he zones it out in favor of focusing on his phone.

He skims through Utahime’s initial rant and then the second wind that had come after ten minutes of silence. He drops a lol u mad and closes the app. He gives his emails a cursory scan, just to make sure the Zen’ins aren’t already trying to renege or anything.

Then he does what he really wants to and opens Instagram. He doesn’t even have to scroll—Suguru’s public account is the first thing in his feed.

Like most of his posts for the last couple of months, the pictures mostly alternate between himself and miscellaneous seasonally appropriate scenery. Although his face is always the only one in full clarity, once someone knows what to look for, they can see the traces of two eight-year-old girls: A shoulder here, the corner of a blonde or dark brown bob there. Their quiet inclusion, even cropped or blurred to avoid showing even a sliver of their faces or their school uniforms, is a notable shift from his previous features of Satoru and their other friends.

None of the randos in his comments would know this, but it’s also weird as hell for someone who likes kids as much as Satoru does—in other words, not at all.

In his usual outward politeness, Suguru had always been nice enough to children, sure, putting on the same show of respectful indulgence as he would for any stranger or acquaintance—but an obvious twitch of annoyance would always creep out before long. They’d established even before they got together that neither of them really wanted kids of their own, biological or otherwise, and over time had only become firmer in that conviction. Suguru would never lie about that type of shit, either, certainly not to spare Satoru’s feelings.

It’s impossible to know how or why his opinion has changed, or if it even has. Suguru hadn’t said anything about the girls’ existence when they’d broken up. He still technically hasn’t, because, despite his own insistence that they remain friends and explicit promise to call later, he and Satoru haven’t spoken one-on-one once in ninety-four days.

Instead, about a month ago, Satoru had learned about the girls—whose names he’s honestly already forgotten and can’t even deduce from Instagram, because in addition to obscuring any identifying physical details, Suguru also doesn’t talk about them in captions or comments—from Shoko. Not on purpose, either; they’d been killing time looking through old videos while they waited for everyone else to show up to Saturday night drinks, and she had gone a little too far in her camera roll.

She’d moved the fastest she probably ever has and ever will to shut her phone off. But Satoru has sharp eyes, and he’d caught the flash of dark hair and piercings before his own reflection replaced it. After a few seconds, he’d realized what had happened and let out an incredulous laugh.

A bit of cajoling later, Shoko had shown him the picture. It had been of Suguru, as expected, with, less expectedly, a little blonde girl sitting on his shoulders and an identical-faced but brown-haired one clinging to his shirt. All she would explain, though, was that he’d met them on the weekend trip he’d taken to his shitty hometown at the end of February (a week or two before the breakup, in other words), the situation they were in at the time was—verbatim—“bad,” and now they were and presumably still are living with Suguru in whatever new apartment he’d found.

But once again, Satoru’s decision to take the Fushiguros in has nothing to do with any of that. Sure, he’s confused, and yeah, he’s annoyed, and okay, maybe a part of him is even hurt. And sure, even a few months ago, he probably wouldn’t have noticed Megumi and Tsumiki’s position or have anything to say about it besides maybe damn, sucks to be them.

But all jokes and barbs aside, the only reasons he’d welcomed them in today are the exact ones he’s been stating. He hadn’t done it to prove anything, or to enter into some stupid one-sided competition, or whatever else people have been thinking.

…To take a page out of Suguru’s lawyer book and play devil’s advocate for a moment (okay, sure, his specific specialty probably doesn’t do that, whatever), though—so what if he had? Which he hadn’t, but just as, you know, a thought experiment or whatever. Like that cat in that box or that poorly designed trolley.

As Haibara had said, doesn’t action matter more than intent? And for all that Suguru hadn’t said when they broke up, he had gone on some crazy philosophical spiel; to paraphrase it, aren’t end results the most important thing of all? So long as Satoru treats Megumi and Tsumiki well, who really cares why they’re here?

And really, how hard can accomplishing that be? Plenty of people have and raise children. A decent amount do so in a way that society deems healthy and positive. And none of them are even Gojo Satoru, famously good at anything he tries. This shouldn’t be an exception.

Satisfied with his logic, Satoru nods to himself and closes Instagram before he can do something like actually comment on one of Suguru’s recent posts. He switches to that rhythm game. Just like he’s been sweeping the board, he’ll come out on top here too. Everyone will see.

He messes around until about five thirty. Neither of the Fushiguros have approached him about eating, but he’s starving, so he tosses his phone aside and heads down the hall.

With the way the rooms are laid out, he can stand in between them and talk into both at once. That doesn’t turn out to be necessary now, though, as it turns out that they’re both in Megumi’s room, sitting together on the floor and—

“Are you seriously doing homework?” Satoru demands, slapping the door frame mostly in disbelief but a little bit to snap their attention away from the textbooks and problem sets. They both jump, so it works, at least. “Why are you doing homework?”

Tsumiki quirks her head. “It’s due tomorrow,” she says slowly, not even stopping writing. “With everything going on, we’ve been a little behind, so…”

“As a teacher,” adds Megumi, “shouldn’t you want us to do our homework?”

“There’s scientific proof that it doesn’t even help that much.” Satoru can’t actually remember now, though, if that’s something he really read or just wishful thinking. “Look it up,” he adds anyway. “But get ready to go first, ’cause it’s dinnertime.”

Earlier bemusement forgotten or at least pushed aside, they file out with him. Between the three of them, they eat like eleven burgers, six five-piece sets of nuggets, their combined body weight in fries, and three McFlurries. Okay, most of that is Satoru’s doing. But he does tell Megumi and Tsumiki they can order whatever they want and pays for the few things they do request.

Once even Satoru gets full, they linger at the table and lay out a basic schedule for the next few weeks. Well, mostly Megumi and Tsumiki lay out the schedule they’ve already been keeping to on their own, and Satoru nods along. (This somehow isn’t the first semi-serious conversation he’s had in a fast food restaurant in his life or even recently, and he doubts it’ll be the last.) He’s always hated predictability, so he’s not thrilled about keeping to a routine as strict as theirs, but they seem self-motivated enough that, in this area, there isn’t anything for him to take care of.

When they return to the apartment, Megumi claims the bath and then goes straight to bed. Tsumiki waves goodnight to Satoru before also disappearing into her room.

See, Satoru thinks as he prepares for his own shower, this parenting shit is easy. If he and Suguru actually had a leaderboard, he’d crush it in no time.

But they don’t and never will, because, for the last time, this isn’t about them.