Archive of Our Own

Suguru opens his eyes.

Wind rushes against his face as he cracks an eye open to peek at the land below. From his vantage point so high in the sky, the sparse treetops seem like nothing but ornately patterned carpet, although Suguru doesn’t think it would be as comfortable to land on should he fall. The view is only slightly diminished by the buildings that sporadically jut out from between in a vain attempt to touch the sky, and Suguru mentally notes to add the curse he balances on to his repertoire of transportation if it provided such a fanciful view each time.

Suguru shifts the star plasma vessel in his arms—although he feels strange addressing her as that, even in the confines of his own mind. On the outside, she looks like nothing more than an unassuming junior high schooler, her face a perfect mask of sleeping calm save for the worried wrinkle between her eyebrows. In another universe, one deviation away, Suguru has no doubts that she would still be at school, scribbling down notes, gossiping with friends, trading lunches. As it stands, she’s just barely managed to survive being thrown from the top of a building.

Once Suguru’s made sure the girl—Riko, if his memory serves him—is secure in his arms, he pilots the curse he’s sitting on to face the source of the explosion—a north-facing room made obvious by the smoke emanating from the shattered window. A man with a mask covering the lower half of his face stands by the wreckage, and Suguru watches with no small sense of satisfaction as the previously proud look on his face morphs into one of bewilderment when he spots Suguru and his curse hovering in the air. A Q member, a cursory scan of his outfit tells Suguru.

That’s all the information Suguru gleans from him before descending like a wrathful god.

Suguru doesn’t feel very receptive to the Q member’s following pleas of mercy after one of the quickest battles of his life, but as he continues scrolling disinterestedly through his phone, he eventually comes to recognize his disposition as boredom.

“What’s your name?” It’s the first time Suguru’s spoken since he smashed into the building.

The other man quivers within the grasp of Suguru’s curse. “Kokun,” he eventually says, and there’s a pause after he responds that fills the room with blessed silence, but soon enough he’s back to groveling. “Please, spare me, I have a wife and kids—”

“No you don’t,” Suguru says back distractedly. He’s received a text from Satoru, and when he pulls it open, he sees a picture of Satoru grinning at the camera, flashing peace signs as he poses next to what looks like a very battered and bruised corpse. Satoru’s eyes are crinkled closed from how hard he’s smiling, and Suguru can’t help the fond smile that flits across his own face. Only an idiot like Gojo Satoru would look so delighted next to a conquest of his battles. Although calling it a battle was probably an overstatement in itself—Suguru had no doubt it took less than a minute to have the other Q member out of commission.

The twitch of irritation on the Kokun’s face quickly morphs into a frustrated scowl. “What can brats like you even do?” he starts blustering with confidence Suguru doesn’t think is earned. “We have Bayer, Q’s strongest soldier—”

Suguru cuts him off by shoving his phone into Kokun’s face. “This him?”

The way Kokun’s face drains of color is answer enough for Suguru.

Unfortunately, Kokun’s wails only become louder in their attempts to garner pity from Suguru. Suguru makes a mental note to buy earplugs before they leave.

Suguru starts typing out a response of his own, but with his next intake of breath comes the stifling sensation of a foreign object lodged in his throat. He coughs lightly, a hand on his throat, but the object persists. He coughs harder and feels it start to rise, tickling the back of his throat. He tries again, coughing hard enough for Kokun to stop his wailing and stare at him with a mixed expression of glee and curiosity.

Hell no, Suguru thinks. He’s not letting Kokun get the satisfaction of seeing him choke to death right in front of his eyes. With a final racking cough, the object finally upheaves itself into the palm of Suguru’s hand.

It’s a small flower, no larger than Suguru’s earrings. Its white petals are soft to the touch, and Suguru can’t help but wonder how such an unassuming object felt so intrusive in his throat. On that note, he’s not exactly sure how it got in his throat in the first place. Suguru’s never seen a flower like it before, and he’s sure he would have noticed if he’d accidentally inhaled it at one point. He’s almost convinced he’s hallucinating the entire ordeal, but when he turns to dispose of it, he notices Kokun’s eyes zeroed in on the flower in his hand. Suguru isn’t pleased to see his eyes are wide with a strange sort of gleeful panic.

“You have hanahaki?” he asks, and he sounds sure enough to give Suguru pause. Suguru doesn’t want to indulge him in any way, but with a frown, asks the question regardless.

“What’s hanahaki?”

Kokun’s eyes widen even more, and just to spite him, Suguru makes sure the curse holding him captive squeezes just a little tighter.

“A disease that stems from unrequited love,” Kokun explains through a wince. “You start coughing up flowers every time you think of the person you love.”

Suguru’s frown deepens. He’s never heard of a disease like that in his life. “Don’t bullshit me,” he snaps. “I’m not even in love with anyone.”

“You just coughed up a flower,” Kokun insists. “After you got a text from—” Kokun cuts himself off, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “Wait, are you gay?”

Suguru doesn’t dignify him with a response. Instead of acknowledging him, Suguru turns back to his phone, but not before releasing another curse to wrap itself around Kokun’s head. Suguru listens with no small sense of satisfaction as Kokun starts sobbing for mercy again.

Still, Suguru can’t help the way his hand curls around the small bloom in his palm.

Suguru hates flights.

It’s not that he’s scared of heights—between the two of them, it’s surprisingly Satoru that has more reservations about being higher up in the sky, but when he argues the case for traveling to Okinawa by flight instead of on the road, even Suguru has to acknowledge the plan has merit.

Then again, maybe it’s not fair to say Suguru hates flights—after all, it’s technically the first time he’s ever been on one.

Suguru is pretty sure he’s never voluntarily stepping foot on a plane again.

The cramped space and crying babies are one aspect, but with Satoru very loudly playing garbage music through headphones that don’t leave much to the imagination, bopping his head completely off the beats, Suguru really can’t be blamed for not being enthralled with the idea of more flights.

The flight is made slightly more bearable when Satoru eventually falls asleep—or at least pretends to. Suguru has no doubt Satoru is only feigning sleep, but the quiet that comes from it is enough for Suguru to marginally relax in the last leg of the flight.

At least, he was able to relax, until Satoru’s head lolls to the side to land on Suguru’s shoulder. It’s not a novel experience for Suguru, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still startling enough for Suguru to cough. The movement shakes Satoru enough for him to crack open an eye, peering up at Suguru through his unfairly thick eyelashes.

“You okay?” Satoru asks, and Suguru nods, opening his mouth to explain that he was just startled, but what comes out instead is another cough.

Satoru straightens, a question swimming in the seas captured by his eyes, but Suguru waves him off before he can ask anything.

“Bathroom,” he rasps out, and after a quick glance to make sure the seatbelt sign is off, he unbuckles his belt and makes his way to the bathroom, where he quickly finds another reason to despise airplanes.

He supposes he should be lucky that airplanes have bathrooms at all, but seeing the state of this one doesn’t exactly make him feel fortuitous. He gingerly lowers the cover of the toilet before another heaving cough forces him to sit down, one hand still clenching the sink inches away for support. A wave of turbulence rocks the confined space in a way that almost sends the box of tissues on the side flying, and Suguru just barely manages to stop it from hitting him in the face. He coughs again, this time taking a tissue and covering his mouth as his body continues to rack with repeated coughs. He faintly wonders if he’s coming down with a cold.

The coughs stop abruptly when Suguru feels something in his mouth. He spits it out into the tissue, and finds—

—another flower.

Suguru falters at the sight of another bud. Once was a coincidence, but twice? And what looked to be the same flower, at that. Did Kokun’s rambling have merit, after all? Unrequited love…

Another wave of turbulence rolls through, and Suguru takes the opportunity to quickly dispose of the flower without further thought. He didn’t have time to think about whatever was happening to him—he had to focus on making sure Rainbow Dragon safely transported the entire plane to Okinawa. If he let himself get distracted by stray flowers, turbulence wouldn’t be the only thing rocking the plane.

Stick to the plan, he tells himself. Save Kuroi, return to Tokyo, complete the merger.

After all, hanahaki was just something Kokun made up to get inside Suguru’s head. Flowers stemming from unrequited love? What a joke. Suguru wasn’t ever even in love to begin with.  

Satoru is cackling about a sea cucumber with Riko when Suguru wonders if, just maybe, he might be in love.

Suguru thinks maybe he should be worried about the fact that he finds Satoru’s ugly laughing so attractive, or the fact that he might be in love at all, but before he can spend any time thinking about his latest epiphany, his coughs return with a vengeance. After a quick glance to make sure Satoru’s still preoccupied, he turns to hide his face so he can hack out his lungs in peace.

Suguru’s not sure if it’s a good thing that he’s not surprised by the flower that lies in his palm after the coughing bout.

Instead of dismissing it like he did the other two times, Suguru actually takes the time to inspect the flower. All the flowers he’s hacked up have looked the same—small, white, with four petals around a light yellow center. He cautiously brings it to his nose, but then has to immediately pull it away after his senses are assaulted with a powerful fragrance.

Suguru still doesn’t know what’s causing the flowers—but he knows it can’t be hanahaki. More likely, it’s just a curse he ingested that he still hasn’t gotten fully under control. Suguru can’t remember the last flower-related curse he ingested, but that would be due more to the sheer number of curses Suguru intakes every day rather than a lack of memory. Still, a curse like that would be easy to dispose of. If it came to it, he could just have Satoru exorcize it.

Suguru clenches his fist, feeling the soft petals bend against his skin, ready to drop it among the multitudinous grains of sand below his feet, but he’s stopped by a soft voice.

“Geto-kun, do you have hanahaki?”

Suguru startles more at the word than the sudden voice. He turns, and finds Kuroi staring at him, horror writ across her face.

“Hanahaki?” Suguru repeats slowly, and he can’t tell if he’s imagining the way his heart rate slowly begins to ratchet up. His field of vision shrinks until the only person he’s aware of is Kuroi, fidgeting and nervous. Suguru wonders if the ground below them has really disappeared, or if he’s just so disconnected that he can’t feel the individual grains of sand against his feet.

“It’s an old curse,” Kuroi starts to explain, and Suguru’s hit with a sudden wave of relief—a curse was easy. A curse could be exorcized. “Well, not exactly,” Kuroi quickly amends. “It’s not a literal curse in the way we know it now, but it stems from feelings the same way.”

“I don’t understand,” Suguru hears himself say.

“It’s a curse that comes from love,” Kuroi says, but she looks like she’s reciting a death sentence, and that doesn’t exactly instill Suguru with confidence. “Unrequited love, to be exact. Flowers bloom in your lungs the longer you think about them, until—” her voice grows quieter with every word, but Suguru can only hear the words getting louder as they echo in his skull, “—you die.”

“Unrequited love,” Suguru repeats to himself, and his mind wanders to broken sunglasses, cherry lollipops, and lazy mornings.

Kuroi looks like she might cry, her bottom lip trembling as she continues. “Geto-kun, how long have you had it?”

Suguru’s mouth feels as dry as the land they stand on. “I don’t have hanahaki,” he says carefully as a non-answer. “Because I’m not in love with anyone.”

Kuroi’s eyes dart to where Satoru and Riko are now chasing each other with the sea cucumber, then back to Suguru. “Aren’t you in love with Go—”

“I’m not in love with anyone,” Suguru repeats, not unkindly, but with enough emphasis to cut Kuroi off.

He can’t tell if he’s lying or not.

Kuroi still looks hesitant, but before she can try to shake Suguru’s world any further, Satoru’s voice shatters the bubble that had surrounded them, and color once again floods Suguru’s vision when he squints against the bright sun to where Satoru waves.

“Suguru,” he says, and Suguru thinks he’ll never get tired of the way his name rolls off Satoru’s tongue, the way the vowels are curved with what Suguru would almost dare to call fondness. He sounds breathless, and Suguru wonders just exactly how much he was running around with Riko. “How about we leave tomorrow morning instead? The weather’s great,” he says with a grin that’s all too pleased.

Suguru hesitates. “You’ve been using your technique nonstop since yesterday, haven’t you?” he murmurs, leaning in until Satoru’s flyaway bangs brush his cheek. “And what about sleep? You were planning on staying awake all night again, right? Are you sure you don’t need to get back to Jujutsu High?”

Satoru’s eyes crinkle with mirth. “Nah, I’m good. I think playing 99 years of Momotaro Dentetsu is harder,” he responds flippantly, and he leans back, hands in pockets. His head’s tilted to the side, and with his sunglasses atop his head, Suguru is beholden to the full, piercing gaze of Satoru’s eyes on him. “Besides,” Satoru starts, his grin growing fonder. He leans in again, knocking a shoulder against Suguru’s. “You’re here, too.”

Suguru swallows the phantom rising of flowers in his throat to give a weak nod.

Riko decides the first activity she wants to do after visiting the beaches of Okinawa is go kayaking, which Suguru finds a bit strange, but he knows better than to question it. As it is, it seems like Riko shares the same affinity for bodies of water that Suguru holds himself, something he figures out when Riko chatters effusively about the aquarium she wants to visit after they get lunch.

Once they arrive, Suguru, almost on autopilot, stands ready behind Satoru to board the same kayak, but Satoru’s expression when he sees him gives him pause.

“What?” he asks, wincing internally at the trickle of self-consciousness that runs through his tone.

“Nothing,” Satoru says, his head tilted to the side. “But don’t you think it would be a better idea to split up on each kayak, just in case?”

Suguru blinks, glancing at the other kayak, where Kuroi watches him with an inscrutable expression.  

“Yeah, stop hogging Satoru all for yourself!” an impudent voice interjects, and Suguru startles when he finds Riko by his side, although she quickly moves past him to clamber into the empty spot behind Satoru.

“Aww, Riko-chan, I didn’t know you liked me that much!” comes Satoru’s puerile response, and their subsequent bickering lingers behind Suguru as he somewhat reluctantly makes his way to Kuroi’s kayak.

She says nothing the whole ride, but Suguru can sense the way her head turns every so often when he happens to glance at Satoru—who has apparently started a competition with Riko as to who can kayak faster, even though they’re on the same boat.

Suguru once again finds himself wondering how he could possibly even consider being in love with such a childish idiot.

The kayaking does wonders for building up everyone’s appetite, but Riko decides she wants one more stop before heading off to lunch: a flower garden, of all places. Suguru has to bite his tongue before he can ask if he can sit it out, although the overpowering smell of the flowers has him reconsidering his tact. For once, Kuroi is in front of him, so he doesn’t have to deal with her burning gaze against the back of his head. Satoru keeps in stride alongside him, humming something Suguru can’t make out off-key under his breath.

Suguru almost startles when he feels fingers brush the outer cartilage of his ear. He glances up and finds Satoru inches away, his hand tucking a flower behind Suguru’s ear.

“Satoru?”

He grins. “You look nice.”

The flower burns like a star against his skin. “Thanks,” Suguru manages to say, even as he feels his own blooms bristle in discomfort against the back of his throat.  

Suguru is immensely grateful to learn that their next stop is a restaurant. As Satoru guides them through the streets of Okinawa, Suguru can’t help but wonder how Satoru even knows where everything is. He knows Satoru’s never been to Okinawa before, but Suguru’s always held suspicions that Satoru had an entire itinerary for Okinawa shoved somewhere in the crevices of his dorm room.

Suguru’s half-surprised when the restaurant they arrive at is not, in fact, a dessert shop, but an actual restaurant with actual meals. Suguru isn’t surprised, though, when the dessert menu ends up being longer than the main one. He decides to order a matcha cake with a side of cherry blossom tea, but is startled when Satoru’s order after him doesn’t include anything sweet.

“I’ll just share with you,” is Satoru’s explanation, and Suguru can feel Kuroi’s burning stare on him without looking up.

Suguru frowns when the dishes arrive and all that’s set in front of Satoru is a pithy salad.

“That’s it?” he can’t help but ask, eyeing the small plate with derision. Satoru’s only ever had an appetite for sweets, but with Infinity running overtime and Satoru running on little to no sleep, Suguru doesn’t appreciate the way Satoru shrugs carelessly.

“I’m not that hungry,” is Satoru’s response, and Suguru’s eyes narrow. Satoru may have boundless cursed energy, but he’s still human.

Suguru doesn’t bring it up again for the rest of the meal, but if he sneaks a few shrimp from his own plate to Satoru’s, it’s no one’s business but his own, even though Suguru can tell from Kuroi’s hawk-like stare that she disagrees.

Suguru isn’t sure how Satoru eventually manages to goad Riko into a spicy eating competition where the only competitor is, in fact, herself, but he can’t help the amused smile on his face when Satoru gleefully upturns about half a bottle’s worth of red chili flakes into Riko’s meal. Satoru’s laughing only becomes more boisterous when Riko’s face turns an unflattering shade of crimson, her eyes watering, and Suguru can’t help but wonder why such a strong feeling of fondness runs through his body every time he sees Satoru act like the spoiled brat he is.

The thought is immediately succeeded by a tickling sensation in his throat. For a brief instant, Suguru finds himself fervently praying to any higher deities that it’s just a piece of food, a stray shrimp, a clump of rice—but when he starts coughing, and the coughs don’t subside, the sinking sensation in his gut takes precedence.

“Bathroom,” he wheezes out amidst coughs, and wonders if his eyes are tearing up from the way his coughs rack his body, or if Satoru’s vigorous shaking of the spice bottle released some particles into the air to assault Suguru’s eyes. He remembers to push in his chair, but in the brief recess between coughs, when he meets Satoru’s eyes, startled and wide behind his glasses, his hacking resumes with a furious vengeance.

He hears another chair screech back as he flees inside the restaurant, where a bewildered waiter points to the bathroom—or rather, a single sink. Suguru’s fingers grip the rim of the sink, shaking with exertion as he continues dry heaving. In the back of his mind, he faintly wonders who else it was that left their table. He finds himself wishing fervently for it to be Satoru and concomitantly feverishly hoping it is anyone but.

Suguru, fortunately or unfortunately, doesn’t get much time to fret about the dichotomy.

“Geto-kun?” a voice asks, and Suguru doesn’t need to turn to recognize the soft voice he’s slowly coming to despise when it continues to clutch his name in what feels like the throes of death.

Perhaps he’s being unfair. Kuroi means well, after all. Suguru just simply can’t stand the cloying pity that seems to drip from every word she addresses to him.

“Geto-kun,” Kuroi repeats, and her voice stands firmer. “You shouldn’t ignore this.”

Suguru ignores the brash stubbornness he knows runs through his voice. “I’m not ignoring anything,” he rasps out, and with a final cough, he releases not just one, but two flowers that drop anticlimactically into the sink bowl beneath him.

Kuroi pales dramatically at the sight of the new blooms. “Two flowers, already?” she mutters under her breath. Suguru can do nothing more than stare blankly at the flowers that lay limp in the sink. Louder, Kuroi says, “I know you don’t want to admit it, but denying you’re in love with—”

“I’m not in love,” Suguru interrupts, dangerously quiet. His fingers dig into the porcelain sink, and he half wonders if Satoru will pay for it if he breaks the sink. “I’m not in love with anyone, and I’m definitely not in love with Sa—” Suguru cuts himself off. The fear that his words will ring false, even to his own ears, stops him from finishing the sentence. “I’m not in love,” Suguru repeats, and the unconvinced look on Kuroi’s face tells him he’s not being very successful. “So you don’t have to worry about me, Kuroi-san,” he finishes, his voice becoming softer. “Let’s focus on keeping Riko-chan safe, yeah?”

Kuroi still looks like she wants to protest, but she must see the barely-masked desperation lingering in Suguru’s eyes, because with a nod and a final worried glance at the sink, she hurries back to the table.

Suguru’s eyes follow the flowers as they’re whisked away down the drain.

When he returns to the table, there’s a dark cloud of gloom draped across the occupants. Satoru picks sullenly at the last vestiges of his meal, but looks up instantly when he senses Suguru. Even as Suguru slides back into his own seat, Satoru leans in, and Suguru isn’t quick enough to respond when Satoru’s nose is suddenly inches from him.

Up close, Suguru can nearly see each individual eyelash framing Satoru’s eyes. In the Okinawa sun, they glint like pearls against the ocean floor.

“What happened?” Satoru demands, and Suguru finally remembers to move his face away.

“Something got stuck in my throat,” Suguru lies easily, but he can’t help the way his eyes drift to Kuroi, who fidgets with her napkin. His eyes snap back to Satoru, and with more effort than he’d think required, gives what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “I managed to cough it out, so I’m fine now.”

Satoru looks skeptical, but doesn’t question further, leaning back in his own chair to stretch.

Because he trusts you, a traitorous voice in Suguru’s head whispers surreptitiously. It sounds an awful lot like Kuroi. And you’re lying to him.

Suguru doesn’t have time to argue with himself because in a stroke of perfect timing, the desserts finally arrive.

To Suguru’s mild concern, Riko’s ordered a slice of cake almost the size of her head. Kuroi looks like she might pass out when Riko starts grabbing at it with two forks, and the way Satoru’s eyeing it, Suguru thinks maybe it was a good idea for Satoru to restrain himself and just share.

And although the small, rounded matcha cake looks immensely appealing when it arrives, topped off with its own small cherry blossom to pair with the tea Suguru ordered, Suguru doesn’t think he’s ever felt less hungry in his life. The sight of the flower itself is enough to send his stomach rolling, and so with no real feeling of loss, he gently pushes the plate towards Satoru.

“I’m not hungry,” Suguru says honestly, but even as Satoru yanks the plate closer to himself, shielding it from an enthusiastic Riko who somehow managed to finish her entire dessert already and is now eagerly pawing at Satoru’s, he turns to pout at Suguru.

“You said we’d share,” he whines, and Suguru is surprised to note the genuineness behind his wheedling. It’s rare that Satoru doesn’t jump at the opportunity to take things for himself, especially when it concerns his frankly ridiculous love for sweets.

“If you need help finishing that…” Riko starts, her body halfway across the table in a vain attempt to reach the light green dessert. Kuroi is fretting over the younger girl, as if she’s not sure if she should pull Riko away or help her obtain the cake.

Satoru makes the decision for her by shoving the entire cake into his mouth.

Suguru, Riko, and Kuroi all stop to gape at Satoru.

After a few moments of impassioned chewing and a large swallow, Satoru faces them all with a shameless grin. “I’d like to see you get it now,” he taunts Riko, and narrowly misses the fork she throws his way. “Hasn’t anyone told you violence is never the answer, Riko-chan?” he simpers, catching the plate she chucks at him next between two fingers.

“So much for sharing,” Suguru mutters as the two continue to hiss and claw at each other like a pair of feral cats.

Once the two fractious children have considerably calmed down, Suguru opens his mouth to suggest heading back to their respective hotels. Suguru admittedly didn’t eat much, but a sense of fatigue still seems to hang over him that he refuses to think much harder about. But more than that, he assumes Riko will be tuckered out enough to—

“Aquarium,” Riko blurts out. “I want to go to the aquarium.”

Suguru closes his mouth.

A few minutes later, they find themselves at an aquarium that boasts of having the largest water tank in the country. Suguru only truly realizes what this means when they walk through to the innermost chamber, where a massive tank curves around the sides of the corridor. The light is dim enough for Suguru to only be able to see a few feet ahead of him, but with some squinting and groping around the walls, Suguru manages to find a place to sit, the cool glass against his back a refreshing reprieve from the scorching heat they had to walk through to arrive at the aquarium.

He watches fondly as Riko brushes her fingers against the glass, her eyes wide with a sense of wonder and awe Suguru doesn’t think he himself has felt in years. The blue light that reflects around the cavern bounces off the contours of her face as she gazes at the fish lazily meandering through the artificial reefs, and Suguru hurts for this child, so ruthlessly torn from a life of normalcy for the whims of jujutsu society.  

A weight lands on his shoulder, and he only flinches slightly when he glances over and finds Satoru resting his head on Suguru’s shoulder, his lashes separated enough only to peer at Suguru. His Infinity’s off, for what Suguru thinks might be the first time since they found Riko. Suguru doesn’t miss the slight bags forming under Satoru’s eyes.

“Tired?” Suguru murmurs, and Satoru hums, the vibration of his body against Suguru sending shivers down Suguru’s spine.

“This is maybe a little more tiring than playing 99 years of Momotaro Dentetsu,” Satoru admits, and Suguru flicks his forehead gently.

“Idiot,” he chastises quietly. “We could have gone straight to Jujutsu High after the beach, you know?”

Satoru clicks his tongue. “And miss out on watching Riko-chan down a bottle of chili flakes? No way,” Satoru whines, but when he shifts to lean even more on Suguru, his voice softens. “I don’t want her to have any regrets. Kids should be kids, right?”

Suguru bites his tongue before he can ask how much older Satoru thinks the both of them are.

“You shouldn’t overexert yourself,” Suguru can’t help adding, but Satoru only shrugs.

“Better me than her,” Satoru says, his laconic response quiet enough for Suguru to think he wasn’t meant to hear.

And therein lies the contradiction that is Gojo Satoru, the universally accepted Strongest. They know Satoru is nowhere near the god they praise him to be, but hold no qualms in having him shoulder the burden regardless. They know the fissures that spread through the foundation of jujutsu society, and see no problem with throwing Satoru to the wolves as a slapstick band-aid of a solution. They know Satoru is a child, as human as any, and in spite of that, they stack expectation after expectation and watch with quiet satisfaction to see if Satoru will tumble.  

He doesn’t. Satoru takes the filipendulous threads of fate that threaten to seal him into a life of monotony and struggle and weaves them into a tale solely his own, through methods unfathomable to Suguru. He knows the way Satoru recoils in disdain with every letter from home, he knows the way Satoru fights even just to stay at Jujutsu High against his clan’s wishes, he knows the way Satoru rebels in every minute action he takes, because he knows Satoru.

And yet his perception of Satoru is as ever-changing as the tides. One minute he’s acting cold and supercilious, playing into the intrinsic belief he holds that he is better than everyone, and the next he’s complaining about a degree increase in temperature, like the childish brat he is, forced to grow up too quickly in an unforgiving world. One minute he’s gleefully cutting a kid in line to get ice cream, and the next he’s bending to Riko’s every whim with the simple goal of making her happy.

It makes Suguru wonder—how will Satoru change as he gets older? Suguru finds that he can’t imagine an adult Satoru as bitter and jaded as he sees Yaga sometimes, but only as a slightly altered version of himself as Suguru knows him in the present. He supposes that goes for most of the people he knows: Shoko, he knows, will never tire of smoking or teasing Satoru; Nanami, he knows, will never get rid of that stick up his ass; Haibara, he knows, will never stop spreading his contagious joy, even to an unwilling Nanami. At the same time, Satoru feels so much more immutable.

Suguru has the sudden, unbidden thought of Satoru as a father.

Not immediately, of course. Suguru shudders to think of the Satoru he knows now thrown into the depths of parenthood with no time to gain a semblance of maturity, but Suguru is still stunned at how easily he can imagine it: Satoru at the dinner table, flicking his son on the forehead to pester him for details of his day; Satoru at a dance recital, cheering embarrassingly loud for his daughter to the chagrin of other parents around; Satoru at their graduation, pretending like he’s not a sentimental breath away from tears.

Suguru wonders where he stands in this future of Satoru’s.

The answer comes to him almost too easily. Suguru would be at the dinner table, ruffling his son’s head when he sulks at Satoru’s antics. Suguru would be at the dance recital, recording the entire thing to save for later reminiscing. Suguru would be at the graduation, silently offering a tissue to Satoru as he bawls unashamedly backstage.

Because where else would Suguru be, but by Satoru’s side? Suguru is trapped in orbit with the sun he calls Satoru, impossibly far away and forever within reach. In what future would Suguru even attempt to escape that orbit? In what future would Suguru not be irreversibly connected to Satoru, by heart, by soul, by body?

Oh, Suguru thinks, staring down at the Satoru he knows now. The light reflects a pale blue across his hair, shimmering like opalescent stars against a light blue sea. When Satoru chances a glance up, Suguru catches the night sky in his eyes—a myriad of dark blue hues with a smattering of light cerulean.

Oh, Suguru thinks. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

“I killed Gojo Satoru,” the man says, baring his teeth in a garish grin, and Suguru’s entire world grinds to a stop beneath his very feet.

Later, when he lies motionless, bloody and battered against the unforgivingly rough ground, Suguru remembers Okinawa beaches, manta rays, and white flowers.

Gojo Satoru is dead.

Suguru cannot seem to understand this.

Or rather, he cannot seem to reconcile this fact with the Satoru he knows—the Satoru he knew—inimitable and permanent.

And though he tells himself otherwise, Suguru’s own body cannot seem to cope with this errant knowledge, and it rejects it in the only way it knows how. Suguru’s abnegation, as expected, results in the form of saliva-dripped bouquets.  

The resurgence of flowers culminates in a visit to Shoko, whose eyebags have only been growing deeper by the day. She says nothing when he silently reveals a crushed clump of flowers in his hand, but the flash of recognition that darts over her face says more than enough.

She takes an x-ray.

“But he’s dead,” Suguru says when he sees the way vines wrap possessively around his lungs, resolutely ignoring the way his voice falters on the last word. “Why are they still there?”

Shoko shrugs. “It’s not a rational curse.”

It’s not a curse at all, Suguru remembers Kuroi saying.

It feels an awful lot like one.

“I can cure the damage done to your lungs, but that’s it,” Shoko says, the snap of her plastic gloves ringing like a gunshot in the silent morgue.

“Thank you,” Suguru murmurs, but his eyes remain glued to the x-ray. He tells himself he’s imagining the way the vines seem to distend in the picture, but he also can’t help the short inhale he’s forced to take when a sudden pain strikes him through the chest.

Suguru wonders how much longer the ground below him will remain stagnant.

“You’re late, Suguru,” Satoru says, and Suguru’s world slowly begins to turn again.

“Does there need to be a reason?” he asks, and Suguru can’t tell if the bile that rises is from flowers or something else entirely.

“Of course,” he tells Satoru. “It’s important,” he says, even as the pleased faces behind them begin swimming in Suguru’s peripheral vision. “Especially as jujutsu sorcerers.”

He wonders if his words have always been this hard to get out.

Geto Suguru is fifteen years old and wants to go home.

“Seriously,” the white-haired boy across from him insists, gesturing wildly at Suguru. “His bangs are ugly.”

A girl with brown hair lopped at the shoulders snickers. “I wouldn’t say they’re my type,” she adds, and the white-haired boy apparently finds this all too entertaining, because he doubles down on his efforts to make Suguru want to disappear into the floor.

“You know, I can’t even see them clearly ‘cause of these,” he says, tapping the rim of his sunglasses, “but I can just tell. They aren’t even proper bangs, are they? Just two random strands of—”

“Satoru, enough,” the commanding man beside Suguru snaps, and with an exaggerated pout, the boy—Satoru—closes his mouth long enough to tip his chair back to a dangerous degree. The man next to Suguru pinches the bridge of his nose hard enough that Suguru worries it’ll break. “Suguru, these are your classmates for the rest of the year. Ieiri Shoko,” he points at the girl, who waves lazily in response, “and Gojo Satoru.”

Gojo lands his chair back on the floor with a sonorous thump. He leans half his body across the desk, and even though he’s still a few feet away from Suguru, Suguru feels strangely trapped. He’s not new to detecting cursed energy, but the tendrils of energy radiating off of Gojo still raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Whatcha say your name was again?” Gojo asks callously, and Suguru feels his jaw clench. He’s increasingly moving away from trepidation and towards wanting to punch this kid in the face.

“Geto Suguru,” he says, as calmly as he can muster. Unfortunately, his parents have raised him to be polite. “Nice to meet you,” he grits out.

Gojo snaps his fingers. “I’ll call you Suguru, then.” At Suguru’s frown, his voice lilts a tone higher. “Unless you prefer bangs boy, Su-gu-ru?”

Suguru’s hand twitches.

“Suguru is fine,” he responds with a placid smile.

“And you can call me Satoru,” Gojo declares proudly, as if he’s bestowing a blessing upon Suguru. Suguru has never wanted to strangle someone so much before.

“Of course.” Over my dead body.

Suguru reaches to tap Satoru on the shoulder and watches as his fingers still to infinitesimally slow. Suguru’s breath catches in his throat, and for a moment, the only thing he can see is his hand, quivering in the slightest of amounts as it hovers over Satoru’s shoulder.

Satoru senses him anyway, because he’s Satoru.

“Sorry,” Satoru says with a tilt of his head when he sees the look on Suguru’s face. “I’ve been trying to work on my technique more.” He continues explaining, but his words are drowned out by the rush of sound rising in Suguru’s ears. Again, his eyes remain pinned on his hand, an impossible distance away from Satoru.

“Basically, I’m trying to make it a habit to keep Infinity up all the time,” Satoru finishes, and he looks expectantly at Suguru.

“Oh,” Suguru says. He faintly wonders if the gaping cavity he feels in his chest is real.

“I don’t need it around you, obviously,” Satoru adds, and with an easy shrug, Infinity’s gone, but it’s too late. Suguru’s hand has already dropped through the empty air, grasping at nothing.

Gojo Satoru has always been untouchable to everyone around him.

It’s the first time that group of people has included Suguru.

“Suguru, have you lost some weight?” Satoru asks, and Suguru barely avoids startling. “You okay?”

Suguru ignores the side-eye Shoko sends him. Has he lost weight? It’s a laughable question. Suguru’s been coughing up half his body’s weight in flowers on a daily basis, and his appetite hasn’t exactly been helping him make up for it.

Suguru coughs before he can stop it. “Just a little tired from the summer heat,” he responds quietly. “It’s not a problem.”

Satoru eyes him suspiciously. “Maybe you had too much somen noodles?”

Unbidden, Suguru coughs again, and he covers his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, maybe.”

Satoru’s gaze only sharpens. “You’ve been coughing a lot recently, too,” he remarks, and Suguru’s throat tickles at the sensation of petals clinging to the back of his throat. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“I think I’d know if I was sick,” Suguru shoots back, resolutely ignoring the way Shoko coughs intentionally behind him. “Seriously, I’m fine, Satoru.”

Satoru looks like he’ll protest more, but before he can, his name is bellowed out across the field by Principal Yaga.

“Ugh, I bet it’s another mission,” Satoru groans, and Suguru is only slightly relieved at the change of topic. Undeniably, it was going to be another mission—a solo mission, at that. As Suguru predicted, Satoru had already started advancing in ways Suguru could only dream of. As Satoru was called away with greater frequency to missions, Suguru found himself with more alone time than he could ever want. He’d find an interesting picture on his phone and turn to show Satoru—and find no one at all. With nothing but his thoughts and his flowers to keep him company, Suguru was almost relieved when he began doing solo missions in other parts of the country.

Almost relieved.

Missions came with their own brand of poison. Suguru began to notice a trend in the cases he’d be called to: a multitude of low-level curses convalescing over a higher grade curse. A perfect way to stock up on the weapon that was Suguru Geto.

Exorcize. Consume. Repeat.  

Suguru still wasn’t sure which one he hated more: the nauseating taste of curses he had to force down his throat so often, or the cloying, saccharine taste of flowers that forced their way up his throat so often.

Cough. Flush. Repeat.

Visits to Shoko became an integrated part of Suguru’s routine in no time. It was easier than expected to avoid Satoru during these visits, for the sole reason that Satoru was simply never around anymore. Their clandestine meetings were short and efficient, with little words passing between Suguru and Shoko, which was exactly how Suguru would have it. He didn’t know what he would answer if Shoko dared to ask about the wretched flowers that plagued Suguru’s every breath.

So when he meets Haibara by the vending machines one chilly afternoon, it’s a welcome interruption from the grueling cycle of repetition Suguru can’t seem to escape from.  

“Hi, Geto-senpai!” Haibara greets, effervescent as usual.

“Haibara…” Suguru blinks up at the bright boy.

“Hope all is well!” Haibara chirps, and Suguru swallows down the acrid response that builds on his tongue.

“What can I get you to drink?” Suguru asks instead.

“What? No, I couldn’t possibly…” Haibara starts to bluster, but it’s not long before a grin breaks across his already effulgent face. “I’ll take a coke!”

Suguru gets Haibara a coke.

“My mission tomorrow is pretty far away,” Haibara explains, and the coke in his hand shakes as he gestures.

“That so? I’ll be expecting a souvenir then.”

“You got it!” Haibara says eagerly. “Something sweet or savory?”

“Satoru will probably have some too, so maybe something sweet,” Suguru says off-handedly, and Haibara nods his head enthusiastically. Before he can add anything more, he’s interrupted by Suguru.

“Haibara. Are you okay with being a jujutsu sorcerer? Doesn’t it bother you?”

Suguru doesn’t know what compels him to push the words forward, and once he says them, he instantly wants to take them back. Before he can attempt any sort of backtracking, Haibara hums in contemplation.

“Good question,” he starts. “I’m not really the type to think too hard about things.” A part of Suguru envies him for that. “Giving my all toward something I know I can help with is a great feeling!” Haibara concludes with a blinding grin and thumbs-up.  

Suguru wonders when he stopped thinking the same.

“I see,” he ends up saying. “Yeah, you’re right.” Is Haibara right? Suguru doesn’t know. There’s a sense of naiveté in Haibara’s words, but Suguru can’t deny Haibara’s truth.  

Before he can add anything more, he’s interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.

“Are you Geto?”

Suguru blinks.

“What kind of girls are you into?”

Nanami finds him later.

His usually neatly combed hair is unkempt with stray flyaways, and his eyes are sunken deeper into his skull than Suguru’s ever seen.

“This box of sweets was found in his hotel room,” Nanami says, the first words he’s spoken directly to Suguru in the five minutes he’s stood silently outside of Suguru’s room.

There’s no need for him to specify who his is referring to.

Suguru quietly takes the proffered box, and without another word, Nanami is gone. On top of the small box is a note in Haibara’s distinctive loopy handwriting.

For Geto-senpai and Gojo-senpai!

Suguru opens the box to put a sweet in his mouth.

It tastes bitter.

Five days after dispatching the person in charge (Jujutsu High third-year Geto Suguru), 112 residents of the former village □□□ were found dead.

Initially thought to be caused by the curse, further inspection discovered residuals belonging to Geto Suguru’s curse manipulation technique.

Geto Suguru fled. In accordance to Article  9 of the Jujutsu Regulations, he is now considered a curse user and subject to execution.

For the mutilated remains that were once his parents, Suguru leaves a flower by each, watching with fascination as the pristine petals quickly turn dark sanguine amidst a pool of blood.

Suguru Geto is fifteen years old and wants to die.

“A mission with him?” Suguru can’t manage to keep the horror out of his voice.

“Aww, you’re gonna make me think you don’t like me, Suguru!”

“I really don’t.”

“Suguru…” Gojo sticks his lower lip out in a pout. “Don’t be mean to your senpai!”

“You’re two months older than me.”

“That’s still two months, isn’t it? Suguru-kyuuuun?”

Suguru wonders where he gets such temerity from. Next to him, Yaga looks like he’s close to bursting a blood vessel.  

“This is a joint mission,” he repeats instead, and Suguru can’t deny that he finds the tick forming above his eyebrow highly entertaining. “Suguru, you will accompany Satoru. I expect both of you to behave.”

“I always behave!” Gojo declares proudly, and that’s how Suguru learns Gojo is a chronic liar.

The mission is also how Suguru learns Gojo is not as untouchable as he seems. Suguru, loathe as he is to admit it, did some research on the Gojo name after meeting the insufferable heir and was suitably impressed with the sheer documentation surrounding the one person. He was even able to find sonnets extolling the boy from his youth, which Suguru found both pretentious and badly written. “Eyelashes as white as a polar bear against freshly fallen snow?” Really?

Still, after his slapdash attempt at research, Suguru’s mental encapsulation of Gojo drastically changes from an annoying idiot to a powerful annoying idiot.

So when Gojo turns around triumphantly after eradicating all the curses within a cramped alleyway and promptly collapses on the ground, Suguru feels as though he has reason for mild worry.

The perpetrator ends up being a small, slithering curse with hooked teeth that Suguru easily captures. When he turns back to Gojo, he finds the other groggily sitting up, one hand still on the ground, and the other pressed against his eyes.

Pressed against his… eyes…

Pressed against eyes that Suguru can see.

For the first time since he met Gojo, Suguru sees him with his sunglasses off. A quick cursory glance shows that the black-out sunglasses perpetually on Gojo’s face had fallen off during his fantastic tumble, and another inspection showed that the bridge of the glasses had snapped entirely, rendering it a useless piece of dark plastic.

Suguru’s eyes are drawn back to Gojo.

His eyelashes really are that white, Suguru realizes, remembering the corny poems he’d read as Gojo rubs at his eyes. When he opens them, they’re a striking blue that entirely takes the breath away from Suguru’s lungs.

Ugh, that sounded exactly like a line from a poem he had read about those damn eyes.

“Oh my god,” Gojo blurts out, and his eyelashes flutter as he blinks repeatedly, still staring at Suguru. “You didn’t say you were hot.”

Suguru freezes.

“What?”

Suguru is buying cleaning disinfectant at a convenience store when he notices a familiar brand of cigarettes by the counter. His hand stills halfway towards the case, but before he can think too hard about it, the box is in his hands, along with a lighter.

The monkey ringing up his supplies lazily takes the cigarettes, and Suguru can’t help the shudder that runs through his body when their fingers accidentally brush. Suguru has half a mind to kill it on the spot, but he’s going straight home and doesn’t want to get the girls too accustomed to him coming home with blood dripping from his clothes.

He stalks away from the store as soon as he’s finished throwing money at the monkey, and flicks out a cigarette like he’s seen Shoko do hundreds of times before. Acrid smoke fills his throat quicker than he expects, and he’s forced to let out a few hoarse coughs.

The relief when no flowers are upheaved as well is palpable.

It doesn’t take long before smoke breaks become a regular part of Suguru’s daily routine. The fetor of smoke only serves to distract from the usual vileness of curses—now that he’s ingesting close to 200 a day—and the lingering aroma of blood that seems to follow him no matter how many times he washes his hands. Infinity would be useful, Suguru finds himself thinking one day as he sludges through deformed bodies laying in pools of their own blood, the viscous liquid clinging to the ends of his clothes.

But more than that, smoking replaces the sickeningly sweet taste of flowers with something hideous, something easier to hate than a physical manifestation of a love Suguru somehow still holds as his soul corrupts.

When he finds Shoko in Shinjuku, she doesn’t ask why he has a lighter on hand. He wonders if the acrid smell of smoke now also trails behind him, beside pungent flowers and sickly blood.

When he finds Shoko in Shinjuku, he doesn’t ask who she calls. They both know there’s only one person it could ever be.

Suguru takes a breath, noting absentmindedly that the air smells reminiscent of fried chicken.

“If you want to kill me, kill me,” he says, and the words fall dully into the impregnable space between them. “There’s meaning in that, too.” He can’t look Satoru in the eye. He doesn’t want Satoru to search his eyes and find the truth hidden in his words.

Suguru’s flowers bristle when he turns and walks away.  

After taking over the Star Religious Group, Mimiko and Nanako find Suguru off-stage, wiping off the remnants of monkeys from his face.

“Geto-sama,” Nanako gushes. “You’re so cool!”

Suguru has insisted before that the girls don’t need to call him by such an honorary title, but their idolization of him forbids them from addressing him as anything but.

Next to her, Mimiko nods vigorously. “So cool, Geto-sama,” she repeats.

Suguru wonders faintly if he should be feeling compunction for corrupting the minds of his girls, preaching his version of justice as the only one fit to rule the world.

Or, as Satoru would put it…

“...talking out of their asses about the norms of jujutsu society and how they have to be protected at all costs, it’s so bullshit!” Satoru exclaims, throwing his hands down with such vigor that they slam hard against the desk under him.

“I’m sure the higher-ups know what they’re doing,” Suguru says in an attempt to be placating.

“Know what they’re doing my ass,” Satoru shoots back. “This place,” Satoru gestures to the school around them, “is messed up. From the inside.”

Suguru cocks his head. He’s only been vaguely entertaining Satoru’s rambling for his sake, but he can’t deny he’s curious as to where the other’s going. “So?” he asks.

“So!” Satoru points at Suguru. “Change has to start from the inside, yeah?”

“Sure,” Suguru agrees.

“Which means,” Satoru continues, banging his desk again for emphasis. “The only way to fix the system is to become the system.” He stares expectantly at Suguru, who can only stare blankly back.

“You’ve lost me,” he admits, and Satoru rolls his eyes.

“Suguru, we have to become teachers.”

Suguru can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him. “Satoru, you? A teacher?” Suguru snickers.

Satoru crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “It’s not that crazy an idea,” he mutters. “Anyways, it wouldn’t be just me. You’d be there too, obviously.”

“And what makes you think I’d want to be a teacher, too?” Suguru asks with an amused smile.

Satoru sends him an exasperated look over his sunglasses, as if the question itself is too stupid to be answered. “Because you’re Suguru,” he says. “You want to protect the weak? Start with the kids.”

Suguru coughs.

He coughs again and again and again, until he can feel something salty against the back of his throat. With a final heaving cough, he moves his hand away from his mouth, clutching the flowers that emerged behind his back to hide them from view. Mimiko and Nanako’s faces are aghast, with Mimiko clutching her doll hard enough to pull at the strings holding it together. Suguru despises being the reason for putting such distraught expressions on his girls, and he hurries to placate their worries.

“I’m fine,” Suguru says before they can ask. “Something must have gotten stuck in my throat.”

The look on their faces tells Suguru he’s not being very convincing.

“Are you girls hungry?” Suguru asks. “I bet your favorite crepe shop is still open now.” Mimiko and Nanako, but especially Nanako, have a sweet tooth rivaling that of Satoru’s, and although Suguru would rather douse himself in acid before willingly rubbing shoulders with the monkeys that roam the streets of Tokyo, he’d do anything to please his girls. He tells himself it’s a coincidence when they so often end up at shops Suguru’s frequented with Satoru before.

The distraction is successful. “I want crepes!” Nanako chirps, and Suguru ruffles her light amber hair before putting his arm around them both.

“I’ll meet you outside, okay?” Suguru says with a light nudge on their backs, and although Mimiko still glances back with furrowed brows, she’s quickly pulled away by her enthusiastic sister. Once they’re out of sight, Suguru releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He pulls his hand away from his back and finds his fist clenched so tightly the knuckles are turning a scathing white. He pries his fingers open, unsurprised to find the usual clump of flowers—

—tinged with a not-so-usual shade of red.

Mimiko and Nanako very quickly get accustomed to the sound of Suguru retching up his lungs in the bathroom in the late hours of the night.

Every day, he finds the same sensation of flowers blossoming from the canals of his throat, rising up in such a surge that it entirely cuts off Suguru’s breathing. He’s been forced to switch from his bedroom to the guest room just to be closer to the bathroom, a move that doesn’t go unnoticed by his two girls, both of whom are now old enough to view his nightly escapades with a higher degree of anxiety. When Mimiko silently holds a flower, now soaked entirely crimson, it takes all of Suguru not to shudder at the way red threatens to stain her fingers.

“Where did you get that?” Suguru asks, and although his words are only a few decibels loud, they drop into the empty space between the bathroom where Mimiko stands and Suguru’s bedroom like bricks into open water.

“Bathroom,” Mimiko says simply. Her eyes betray nothing, but the barely noticeable tremor behind her words has Suguru clutching the doorframe harder, his nails digging into the wood. Fuck. He had been rushing the last time he was forced to clean up, but leaving an entire bloodied flower? That was careless of him.

Suguru coughs, the tell-tale tickling of flowers rubbing against the already sensitive skin of his throat. Without saying a word, Suguru closes the gap between him and Mimiko, gently sliding the flower out of her fingers. It sags under the weight of the blood it's absorbed, but Suguru is careful not to let it droop onto Mimiko’s fingers.

“A monkey must have left it,” is the best explanation Suguru can give. He knows, as Mimiko does, that Suguru would rather burn the world alive than have a monkey step foot into his home, but his equanimous tone doesn’t leave room for discussion. “Go back to sleep, Mimiko.”

Mimiko lets her hand drop, but continues staring inscrutably at Suguru. The light in the hallway is one perpetually broken that Suguru is yet to fix, and he finds her unreadable expression especially haunting as it flickers in and out of view.

A few moments later, she turns around and pads quietly back to her room.

And just in time. A deluge of flowers roars its way up Suguru’s throat, almost vengeful in their vitriolic escape from Suguru’s body. He just barely manages to make it to the toilet, clenching the porcelain rim as his body heaves with gags. His eyes squint open after the attack, and he’s faced with a sight straight out of one of his own routine massacres. Blood mixed with bile clings to the walls of the toilet, and the flowers become a morbid decoration to what Suguru thinks is the ugliest sight he’s ever seen. The smell wafting from the bowl alone, a charnel concoction of acid and saccharine flowers, combined with the acetic taste lingering in his mouth, is enough for Suguru to nearly throw up again, but he resists.

It’s only now, so many years later, that the true effects of having his lungs go untreated by Shoko for so long kick in. Suguru leans against the glass divider for the shower, his throat scraped raw. He catches a glimpse of his reflection, emaciated and etiolated, his skin almost as pale as the porcelain he leans against.

It astonishes him. After all this time, this gross manifestation of love for someone who can never hold anything but hatred for Suguru after all he’s done persists.

Suguru knows he’s to blame. It’s his fault, for getting trapped in the orbit of the star that Satoru encompasses. It’s his fault, for not pulling away when he knew he was getting in too deep. It’s his fault, for never forgetting bright grins, long fingers extended into peace signs, sunglasses that threaten to tip off the edge of his nose.

Suguru flushes the toilet, watching years go down the basin.

Suguru hears about the new first-years: a special-grade cursed human, a cursed corpse mutation, the descendent of the cursed speech users, and, of all things, a monkey parading as a sorcerer.

He thinks it’s about time for a visit.

Geto Suguru is fifteen years old and hates his job.

Not that he has a job, per se, but he can’t really think of another word to describe these missions they keep sending him on.

“That doesn’t look fun,” Suguru hears Satoru say from above him as Suguru swallows one of the many curses piled up waiting to be taken in.

“Because it’s not,” Suguru responds, even as his hand reaches for another curse to ingest.

There’s silence where Suguru knows he’s being scrutinized without needing to look up. Recently, Satoru’s taken a sort of liking to Suguru. Ever since Satoru unceremoniously complimented Suguru out of the blue (Suguru refuses to acknowledge the way his face heats up every time he remembers), Satoru has apparently deemed Suguru as worth his time. For Suguru, this means being greeted by a much too close-up shot of Satoru’s face every morning as he leaves his room, being forced to listen as Satoru babbles about Digimon for the third time in a day, and being another recipient of Yaga’s glares when Satoru inevitably gets them both in trouble.

It’s not all bad, though.

Knowing he has someone to wake up to—even if it is someone as rambunctious as Satoru—always makes leaving the bed easier. When Satoru finishes his rants about Digimon, Suguru knows he now has someone to listen to his own ramblings about his favorite manga series. Being Satoru’s accomplice-in-crime has most undoubtedly lowered his reputation in Yaga’s eyes, but Suguru could care less when he’s treated to the sight of Satoru laughing his ass off when Yaga gets his own stuck in his seat due to some well-timed glue.

Satoru has also taken to wearing his glasses less around both him and Shoko. Suguru will never admit how long it takes for his breath to stop hitching when he catches a glance of the iridescently blue eyes.

And it’s those same blue eyes that threaten to burn holes in the back of Suguru’s head.

“What’s it taste like?” Satoru asks, and Suguru grimaces as he brings the curse to his mouth. It goes down like any of the hundreds of curses he’s ingested before, but the rancor that stays in his mouth is a taste he will never get used to. Like swallowing a rag used to wipe up vomit, he wants to say.

“Bad,” Suguru replies simply instead. “It tastes bad.”

Satoru falls silent again at that, but a few moments later, a white stick is dangled in front of Suguru’s face. When he looks up from where he’s crouched on the ground, he finds Satoru pinching a single red lollipop with his fingertips out to Suguru.

“For the taste,” Satoru clarifies, his head tilted in such a way that the light glinting off of his glasses almost blinds Suguru. “It might help.”

Suguru grasps the lollipop by the thin stem, standing up as he does. “Thanks,” he says, turning it in his fingers before removing the wrapper to pop it in his mouth. A burst of sweet cherry expands on his tongue, and Suguru’s eyes widen in surprise.

It’s sweet.

Suguru is tired.

Ten years—has it really been that long? Was it not just the other day Suguru had walked away unscathed from Shinjuku?

Unscathed is not a word Suguru can use anymore to describe himself. The dull throbbing where his left arm used to be feels as numb as Suguru himself has felt all these years. Still, a delirious part of him bestirs him to keep shuffling along the wall he uses as support now, as if a few more feet traveled would be enough to regain his arm.

But when he catches a glimpse of white, he stops, sinking to the ground.

“Satoru,” he says, the name falling out fonder than he intends it to. “You’re late.” It never was like Satoru to be punctual.

Satoru says nothing.

“Is my family safe?” Suguru asks, even though he knows the answer. He squints up at the abendrot sky, turning a darker shade by the minute.

“They all ran away,” Satoru admits, his voice barely loud enough to traverse the distance between them. “You gave the same orders to the ones at Kyoto, right?”

Suguru glances at him from the corner of his eye. “It’s because I’m nice, unlike you. You sent those two specifically so they could be done in by me and trigger Okkotsu’s explosion, right?”

“It’s because I trusted you,” Satoru says. “I knew you wouldn’t kill young sorcerers for no reason.”

Suguru can’t stop the surprised snicker that escapes his mouth. “Trust, huh?” After all this time, Satoru still finds ways to surprise him. “To think you still held some of that for me.”

After flicking Okkotsu’s student ID back at Satoru, he lets himself slump further, his hand dropping from where it was uselessly clutching his shoulder—or what remained of it.

“Any last words?”

“No matter what anyone says, I hate all monkeys,” Suguru says, his head tilting forward to let his bangs cover most of his face. “But it’s not like I detested anyone from Jujutsu High.” What an understatement. As if Suguru wasn’t still, after all these years, helplessly, hopelessly in love with Satoru. Okkotsu had previously had the audacity to lecture him on pure love? Suguru should have killed him on the spot for that alone. “It’s just in a world like this…” Suguru continues, “I can’t laugh from my heart at all.”

Satoru stares at him, and Suguru wonders how, after all this time, Satoru continues looking at him as if he’s someone to be valued, as if he’s someone worth protecting, as if he’s someone Satoru could lov—

Ridiculous. The delirium from his wound must have finally caught up.

Hanahaki wasn’t called a curse of unrequited love for no reason, after all.

But Suguru will always love Satoru like the moon loves the sun: indubitably, impossibly, eternally. Curse or not, Suguru knows this is a truth intrinsic to his very soul.

Suguru coughs. Nothing comes out, and for the first time, Suguru’s mildly relieved half of his body is missing. He’s sure a later examination will reveal the garden that has been growing perpetually in his lungs, but he has faith that Shoko will have enough tact to bury his secret with him in the grave.

“Suguru,” Satoru says. Suguru wonders if he’ll miss the feeling of Satoru’s tongue curling around the syllables of his name.

“------------, -------------.”

Suguru stares at him blankly before huffing out a short laugh. How embarrassing.

“At least curse me a little in the end,” Suguru manages, and just manages to stop himself from laughing at the irony. It’s only fitting that Satoru lands the coup de grâce, after all these years.

With flowers bristling on his tongue and vines tangled around his lungs, Suguru closes his eyes.

Geto Suguru is fifteen and wants to move to Kyoto.

Not that he has any particular affinity for Kyoto, but if there’s one thing that Suguru knows for sure isn’t in Kyoto, it’s one Gojo Satoru.

Then again, Suguru had no doubt Satoru would pack up and move to Kyoto in an instant if Suguru slipped a word, and the thought of Satoru gleefully chasing a desperate Suguru around the country is enough for Suguru to drop the idea entirely.

In the present moment, Suguru is very much stuck in Tokyo and perpetually attached against his will to an insufferable white-haired bastard. The insufferable white-haired bastard in question is currently sprawled across Suguru’s bed, sunglasses tossed aside as he squints at the pixels on his flip phone. Suguru isn’t exactly sure how Satoru even made it into Suguru’s room in the first place, but Suguru has learned by now it’s better not to question.

Suguru has been puttering around his room, cleaning up the few scraps of paper on the ground courtesy of Satoru’s enthusiastic attempts at… something. In all honesty, Suguru wasn’t even sure what they were originally for, but he didn’t particularly enjoy the failed attempts decorating his room.

Once finished, he shuffles onto the part of the bed Satoru isn’t taking up with his gangly limbs. Satoru has apparently tired out of tapping on his phone, for his eyes are shuttered closed and his mouth is slightly agape.

Suguru is half-surprised Satoru isn’t filling up the room with obnoxious snores, but he’ll take the wins he can get. He pulls out a book he hasn’t touched since he first joined Jujutsu High, flipping to the bookmarked page as he tries to remember the pages prior.

The room stays suspended in a comfortable silence, the only audible noise coming from the occasional flipping of pages from Suguru’s book. He flips with one hand, and when he thinks to use the other, he finds it lightly trapped under feather-light hair.

Somehow, Suguru’s free hand has gravitated to the diaphanous mop of hair adorning Satoru’s head. Suguru’s hand stills when he notices how he’s been absentmindedly tracing patterns along Satoru’s wisps of hair, and he thanks every higher being that Satoru isn’t at least awake to witness it.

Suguru’s eyes drift down to meet Satoru’s very blue, very open eyes and immediately retracts those thanks, jolting back his hand as if burned.

“You’re awake,” Suguru blurts out, and regrets the words as soon as they’re out.

Satoru’s gaze remains pinned on Suguru, and he finds himself for once wishing fervently that the other was wearing his glasses.

“You know,” Satoru hums. “Your bangs aren’t actually that ugly.”

Suguru stares at him blankly before unceremoniously shoving Satoru off of the bed. With a squawk, Satoru lands in a tangle of limbs on the floor below, and he glares at Suguru as he sits himself back up.

“That was a compliment,” he whines petulantly, rubbing the top of his head.

“Some compliment,” Suguru mutters, shifting to occupy the newly freed space on his bed. It doesn’t take long before Satoru’s once again sprawled on his bed, with no real regard for Suguru’s personal space. Suguru is utterly unsurprised when half of Satoru’s torso lands on his own, but the sudden increase in his heartbeat tells him he’s not as unaffected as he’d like to be.

“I mean it,” Satoru says again, his mouth turned in a slight frown. “Your bangs aren’t ugly.” Before Suguru can bat his hand away, Satoru reaches up and flicks the aforementioned bangs.

Suguru catches Satoru’s hand before it can drop. “Where’s this coming from?”

Satoru shrugs as much as he can from his awkward position. “Dunno.” His hand, trapped in Suguru’s, curls inward until his nails slightly graze Suguru’s palm. “Just thought I should say.”

Suguru drops Satoru’s hand, pretending the sensation doesn’t linger like lightning along his nerves. “Thanks, I guess,” Suguru says mildly. His eyes flicker to the individual strands of straw-like hair that glint in the morning light pouring into his room. “You’re not too bad yourself, I guess.”

He’s taken aback by the way Satoru’s eyes grow to the size of saucers. “Really?”

Suguru shifts awkwardly. “Sure.”

Satoru hums, a pleased grin furling across his face. He closes his eyes, eyelashes resting gently closed, and as Suguru stares down at him, he wonders what it would be like to kiss him.

Oh, Suguru thinks. Hm.

This might be a problem.

Don’t worry. When I say one minute, I mean one minute’s worth of time inside Gojo’s brain.

Satoru opens his eyes to the sensation of being restrained by sinewy fetters that threaten to viscerally triturate his very being if he dares to move.

Satoru thinks he should maybe be worried about this. In fact, he is infinitely more preoccupied by the stranger standing in front of him.

But the stranger in front of him is the furthest thing from a stranger that Satoru knows, and that is somehow the most chilling thing he’s seen in Shibuya thus far.

What stands in front of him is a mockery, a pitiful replica of a person Satoru knows by heart, knows by soul, knows by sight, smell, touch, in every way that matters, looking as hale and hearty as the last time Satoru saw him.

That’s a lie. The last time Satoru saw Suguru, half of his body had been blown out.

“Who are you?”

Satoru knows the answer. Simultaneously, he utterly rejects the answer.

“Geto Suguru,” the simulacrum says, a hand brought to his throat in faux offense. “Did you forget?” Satoru’s jaw clenches. “How sad.”

“Your body, and even your cursed energy,” Satoru grits out. “My Six Eyes tell me you’re Geto Suguru.” He can’t seem to look away from the row of stitches decorating Suguru’s forehead. “But my soul knows otherwise!” he yells, and he surprises himself with the acrimony of his words. “Hurry up and answer,” he demands. “Who the HELL are you?”

Even the impostor looks mildly taken aback by Satoru’s diatribe. “Yeesh,” he snickers. His fingers—Suguru’s fingers—go to the barely visible string on his forehead and expertly ease it out. Satoru can do nothing but watch in agonizing disbelief as the entire top of Suguru’s head comes off, revealing a monstrosity Satoru can’t even describe. “How’d you know?”

Kenjaku, his Six Eyes informs him, is the name of the vile creature inhabiting Suguru’s body.

Kenjaku continues talking.

Satoru cannot hear a single thing over the deafening roar rising in his ears.

Suguru was dead.

No, Suguru is dead. The twisted reanimation talking in front of him doesn’t change that.

Suguru is dead. Satoru knows this.

That doesn’t change the way his heart seems to rise in his throat.

Satoru only starts registering anything else Kenjaku is saying when Suguru is mentioned again.

“This body was pathetic before I took it over, anyways,” Kenjaku says off-handedly, limply waving a hand as if to prove his twisted words. The constraints of the prison realm tighten around Satoru, as if it can feel his murderous intent. “Twelve years is a long time to die over you.”

What?

“A wretched thing, you humans have. This idea of love—you humans praise it so much, without caring for the side-effects.” Kenjaku muses. “Physical side effects in Suguru’s case. I did him a favor, really. His love for you was shredding his insides—to the point where if you hadn’t killed him, he would have dropped dead a few days later, anyways. Poor kid had the worst case of hanahaki I’ve ever seen. It’s a wonder he survived as long as he did.”

Satoru cannot comprehend a single word coming out of Kenjaku’s mouth, but he knows he hates the way he holds Suguru’s name.

“You’re lying,” Satoru fulminates. He knows what hanahaki is—a myth, a fable, a tale of caution, but not real. Not Suguru’s.

Kenjaku shrugs again. “Well, it’s not like he’s around for you to ask, anyways.” An unnatural expression of barely concealed glee unfurls across his face. “Good night, Gojo Satoru. Let us meet again in the new world.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s good night for me,” Satoru says. “But it’s about time for you to wake up—how are you gonna let yourself get used like that, Suguru?”

Satoru isn’t sure what he expects, but it’s not for Kenjaku to keel over, breaths coming out in ragged gasps until the gasps are replaced by phthisic coughs that shake Kenjaku’s entire body. When he straightens, the corners of his mouth are red, and cupped in his hands is a sticky mess of blood-tinged flowers.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Kenjaku snorts, and now he’s bent over again, but this time from the exertion of laughing. “That’s rich.” He carelessly tosses most of the flowers away, save for one untouched by blood that he twirls in between his fingers. “Mahito had theorized that the soul came before the body, but the body is the soul, and the soul the body. That explains the flowers.”

Satoru cannot think of a single thing to say.

“I don’t understand,” he murmurs, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by Kenjaku.

“What’s there left to understand?” Kenjaku asks, and he bends down to tuck a pristine white flower behind Satoru’s ear. He leans in, his mouth inches from Satoru’s ear. “How does it feel,” he says quietly, but each word falls like a drum beat, “knowing that you killed him twice over?”

Satoru doesn’t get a chance to respond. When he opens his mouth, he finds himself cut short by something blocking his throat. He coughs, his movements stilted by the constraints of the prison realm, and the foreign object refuses to budge.

He coughs again, and again, and again, ever aware of Kenjaku’s mocking stare from above. Finally, when his throat has been coughed raw, he’s able to spit out—

“A pale red carnation,” Kenjaku notes sardonically. “My heart aches for you. How poetic—and a full flower, at that.”

Satoru can do nothing but gape at the flower laying limply on the floor below, its ruffled petals acting as a cheerful slap in the face.

“I’m sure your flowers can keep you company for the next hundred years,” Kenjaku simpers, his voice dripping with false pity. Satoru’s eyes snap back to the other, a thousand curses filling his tongue, but it’s too late.

“Gate close.”

The sun flickers out.