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After Suguru leaves, life goes on.
Satoru lets himself grieve for three days. Then he picks himself back up, because he's the Strongest. He picks himself back up because life goes on.
Sometimes life goes fast, in days where Satoru is busy exorcizing curses. Sometimes it goes slow, tantalizingly so, in days where he sits in the pitch black darkness of his room and his senses pick up faint residuals of Suguru's energy in corners like forgotten cobwebs, curling in fluorescent on his mind even with his eyes shut. A ghost in the doorjamb where he'd written 'Satoru is stupid' in small letters sometime ago unbeknownst to Satoru, probably with a shit-eating self-satisfied grin. Or on the windowsill where he watered the cacti sitting there when Satoru had forgotten to. Or in Satoru's wardrobe where his jacket used to hang because Satoru wore it more than he did.
Suguru's energy calls faintly, singing to Satoru of old memories and laughter and good times, left behind and barely tangible, so faint no one else can pick it up besides Satoru and his Six Eyes.
In these days, he doesn't cry. He doesn't grieve. He sits on the creaky bed of his dorm room all night, not sleeping, not moving, alone with ghosts of Suguru all around him. When dawn cracks, he uses Reverse Cursed Technique to patch up his lack of sleep, then he goes to Yaga's office and demands more missions.
"You already have four solo missions upcoming," Yaga says, checking Satoru's schedule with a deep crease between his brows, "and that's for this week."
"Squeeze one more in," Satoru says, rapping a knuckle impatiently against the leg of Yaga's desk.
A long pause stretches between them. Yaga stares, expression indecipherable. Satoru stares back at him. He feels all the dolls sitting on his office staring at him as well. And the gecko behind the sofa. And the signature residuals of a dearly departed, all too familiar, curling around the empty chair next to him, reminiscent of all the times they used to sit here getting lectured.
He feels suffocated, but he keeps his back straight, his smile steely, and minutes tick by until Yaga sighs and starts typing on his computer. He breathes.
"Are you sure?"
"The more the merrier," Satoru sing-songs, but his tone falls flat. He stands up, chair screeching as he pushes it back. He hears Yaga sigh deeply.
"Satoru—"
"Thank you, Sensei," he cuts, chirpy and cheerful, shoving his hands into his uniform pockets. "I'm going to pack now."
He turns before Yaga says anything and exits the office without closing the door. Just for the sake of it.
A month after Suguru leaves, Satoru requests to switch rooms. The college grants him a new one with no questions, given there's more than enough empty space to pass around, and no one knows that it's because he's sick of feeling haunted.
His new room smells of dust and cockroach, but at least it doesn't have Suguru's cobwebs stuck in every piece of furniture. He cleans his room and lies in his bed, brand new linen sheets he'd purchased feeling nice under his skin. He still doesn't sleep. At the first birds' song, he reverses his body and asks for missions.
Nanami's never on campus, and Shoko doesn't talk. But sometimes she comes over to Satoru's room and stinks it up with her cigarette smoke. Sometimes she sleeps over, with arms crossed and not touching him. They don't talk—it used to be that way, too, before Suguru left. She's always been closer to Suguru. Besides, Shoko knows better than to talk to Satoru about him.
Nobody tries to talk about Suguru anymore, now. Everyone either acts like he's dead, or just never existed, and people tiptoe around his name like it's forbidden to say it. Satoru thinks he's grateful for it. They know better than to talk.
Two months after, he's barely at the dorms anymore. It turns out moving out of his old room doesn't help much when he's still holed up in the place he and Suguru first met. He's still down the hall from Suguru's room. The cobwebs are everywhere. His Six Eyes are aching.
So he's out more than he's in, and it's mission after mission after mission, traveling places far and near and executing perfect exorcisms and being praised by the people he saves. He used to love it, and so he loves it now. And nobody worries about him, nobody asks if he's overworked, or tired, or why he's doing this, because he's the Strongest.
Satoru doesn't question himself either. Sometimes he blacks out after exorcisms—Reverse Cursed Technique isn't flawless in patching up his lack of sleep. But he manages. He picks himself back up.
Satoru doesn't grieve, he got over Suguru leaving all in the span of three days. He doesn't grieve when he sits in silence not sleeping, he doesn't grieve when he vomits his food back up because he remembers eating the same meal with Suguru. He doesn't grieve.
One Tuesday, Shoko kicks down his bathroom door and finds him unconscious under a running cold shower. She dries him off and drags him to his bed and brings him herbal tea. He'd forgotten to reverse his lack of sleep that day. She doesn't ask, doesn't probe, but the next day she brings him a bottle of sleeping pills.
"I use it all the time," Shoko says simply, tossing the bottle at him.
Satoru catches it and checks the label: melatonin. He grins up at her. "Then why'd your eyebags look like that?"
"Eat shit," Shoko says, then proceeds to fill Satoru's bedroom with cigarette smoke. When Shoko leaves to go smoke in her own damn room like Satoru tells her to, he drinks five pills and sleeps for two days.
When his pills run out, Shoko leaves another bottle on his bedside table.
On the third month after Suguru leaves, Satoru's doing better. He sleeps, he eats. His 18th birthday comes around. Nanami texts him a simple 'happy birthday', he's out of town. Shoko's in town. She barges in his room and sticks her lighter under his nose and he blows the half-assed excuse of a candle out and grins. She asks him if he wants cake, and he says he doesn't eat sweets anymore. She shrugs.
He'd thrown away the bags of candies and chocolates stored in his old room when he moved out, and he doesn't purchase them anymore. They mostly used to be for Suguru anyway, to help him wash out the bile-tasting curses he had to swallow. Satoru finds no purpose in keeping them anymore, sweets would do nothing but remind him of memories he swallowed. He sleeps, he eats, he swallows and swallows and swallows the yearning threatening to spill out of his throat, and he doesn't need to pick himself back up anymore.
He walks with his back straight and his hands in his pockets. He buys himself new shades, because the old one has him seeing ghosts. He changes his habits. He's doing good.
On the fourth month, he finds Suguru.
Suguru's not far, it turns out, just five towns away from the technical college. All this time that he's been hopping from city to city, all the the overseas trips he's flown to, and Suguru's only been five towns away.
Satoru wasn't assigned to this town, his mission is one station over, but sometime after his tight schedule of missions become routine, he started growing the habit of taking detours. Seeing people. Letting himself breathe.
It wouldn't be a lie if Satoru said he isn't looking for Suguru, but it would be a lie if he said he isn't hoping to see him.
He steps off the train like any other day. It's calm, the weather's nice, the bright blue sky's mottled slightly with white. The town's almost clean of curses. It's not rural, but it's not bustling with citizens, either—exactly what Suguru's answer was, sometime ago when Satoru asked to describe where he'd like to settle down after retirement.
His Six Eyes pick it up as he exits the station: Suguru's residuals riding on the cool air of late winter. The realization doesn't dawn on him gracefully—it stabs him like a hot knife through the stomach. He could never mistake the scent for anyone else's.
He doesn't double over, he doesn't panic. He keeps walking with his back straight. He feels his throat close up. He swallows and enters the first coffee shop he sees and orders espresso and sits down.
Suguru's here, in this town, and he's been here for a while. That much Satoru knows from the amount of cobwebs covering the town. Not cobwebs—live spiders, singing on the top of their lungs. He doesn't know how he feels about it, or if he wants to look, or wait around long enough to see if he manages to bump into him.
His hands don't shake when he lifts the mug to his lips. He doesn't flinch when the bitter taste of coffee burns his tongue. He watches people walking down the street through the window for some time, and then he closes his eyes.
After a while, he senses it—a spider big enough, singing Suguru Suguru Suguru in a string of colors all too familiar dancing in the back of his eyelids. He opens his eyes. It's not a spider, it's two, and it's not coming from Suguru. It comes from two little girls, walking down the street hand in hand.
They're small, wearing school uniforms, emanating faint cursed energy the way untrained sorcerers would. Twins, he notices, one dark-haired and one blonde. The way they hold themselves, walking slowly and close to each other, the lack the carefreeness of children, Suguru's residuals coiling protectively around them—these children aren't familiar with how children should be.
Satoru pinches his earlobe, questioning, thinking.
Suguru never had little sisters, he's an only child, like Satoru. These two are newfound. Suguru's not the type to mentor anyone, he's too selfish and too hungry to waste precious time taking anyone under his wing. Satoru would know, Suguru's never been as charitable as everyone and Suguru himself thinks—but then again, maybe it was Satoru who pictured his own Suguru in his head, completely detached from reality, because everything proved that Satoru didn't know him well enough. That's a possibility, then.
'Maybe I should follow them,' he thinks, tracing his thumb up and down his jaw, 'and see if they lead me to him.'
He entertains the thought. It squeezes at his chest, his ribcage suddenly too tight. He wonders if Suguru's changed his looks, if he still wears that strand of hair loose over his forehead. He thinks about meeting Suguru again, thinks about if he'd bristle if he saw Satoru, or if he'd smile instead like he always used to before everything happened.
Satoru watches the twins walk past until they disappear beyond the confines of his vision.
He doesn't need the twins to find Suguru. He won't even need to turn this town upside down, won't need to search for long. He can just follow his senses. His Six Eyes are honed enough, like search dogs especially sensitive toward Suguru's traces, waiting for command. It would only take minutes. He could start counting, start searching, he could see him now, he could—
Satoru sits still in his chair for another half hour. He feels himself breathing. He can count how many times his heart beat in his chest.
Then he finishes his coffee, now cold and bitter and tasting like dirt. He stands up. He pays. He leaves.
He goes one station over and overexerts himself in exorcising a Grade 2 for no particular reason he can figure out.
On the fifth month, Satoru drowns himself in routine, not thinking, not feeling; Suguru's birthday passes insignificantly and Satoru takes four sleeping pills to celebrate.
On the sixth month, he's on his last year in Jujutsu High. It's suffocatingly lonely to share his 4th year only with Shoko, who has grown an interest in the morgue. He doesn't like being alone. He doesn't want to feel empty constantly. He comes back to the town.
This time, he follows the traces. He follows them down a dead-end road, leading to a house so regular it throws him off. Suguru's not home, Satoru's Six Eyes tell him he's not. It's midday, anyway, and Suguru's probably out and about committing murders, or whatever it is he's up to. Satoru doesn't really want to think about it.
He scratches the base of his neck. The girls he saw before aren't home, as well. The house is empty, but it's covered in fresh cobwebs of Suguru's telltale cursed energy. He now knows where Suguru lives. What he doesn't know is what he's going to do with that knowledge.
He imagines barging in one day, kicking the door open, surprising Suguru enough to make him fight Satoru immediately. He'd probably hiss, "Finally come to get me, huh?" and Satoru would say, "Waiting by the door the entire time?" and then they would fight with their powers all flashy and dramatic. He wonders how many curses Suguru has up his sleeves now. The last few months, Satoru worked on his teleporting skills, he can now manipulate short distances. Suguru would make such a funny face when Satoru pulls the trick on him, disappearing and reappearing behind him to say, "Surprise!" and Suguru would curse him out, and—
Satoru's cheeks feel stiff. He reaches up to touch them and realize he's smiling.
He turns his back on Suguru's house with an ache so great strangling his chest. He thinks his ribcage finally rebelled, bones twisting to press against his heart.
On the seventh month, he's not doing as well. He'll admit that much.
He's in Shoko's room. It's sometime past midnight. Shoko's doing some reading in the dim yellow of her night lamp, scribbling annotations over a medical book, feet stretched out, left hand holding a cigarette. It's cherry red end burns quietly, the smoke a thin line curling out of the open window. Satoru's lying beside her, massaging his eyelids gently because they've been hurting lately.
He presses his eyes with the heel of his palms and then looks at the ceiling, blinking away stars. Then he looks up at Shoko.
"Can I have one?"
Shoko doesn't look at him, flipping a page. "One of what?"
Satoru reaches over her to grab the pack sitting on her windowsill. Shoko smacks his arm with the pen she's holding. "Ow," he complains lamely, retracting. "If you can smoke then why can't—"
"You won't like it."
"You don't know," he argues, but it comes out whiney.
"They're expensive and you're going to waste a perfectly fine cig," she deadpans, dog-earing a page before shooting Satoru a look.
Satoru bats his eyelashes. "What if I say please?"
They stare at each other.
Then she flips the cigarette in her hand so the unlit end faces Satoru. "Take a drag from this."
Satoru pinches it with his thumb and index. He inhales and, feeling a surge of pride, he doesn't cough. He holds the smoke in his lungs and exhales slowly, watching grey smoke disperse in the dim lighting of Shoko's room.
"Not bad, right?" He says to Shoko, because he's nothing without validation.
Shoko's eyes crinkle by the corners. "You tried Suguru's, didn't you?"
He locks eyes with Shoko. A beat. He opens his mouth to reply, then suddenly forgets what he's about to say.
In his head appears the memory of Suguru, a cigarette between his teeth, his parched flushed lips looking pretty clamped over it. The slight scrunch of his eyebrows as he cups a hand around the tail of his cigarette and lights it. His inky hair spilling over his shoulders, loose and dripping with water.
The first time Satoru's seen Suguru smoke was after a mission, some night two months before he left. The rain poured hard over them. Satoru had Infinity on, water bouncing off of him like on plastic, but Suguru didn't have the same privilege. They took shelter in front of a convenience store, Suguru grumbling about the unpredictable weather and Satoru trailing behind, dry as cotton.
Suguru went in the store and came back out with a lollipop and a pack of Camels. His hair was shaken free from his bun, matted with rainwater. He unwrapped the lollipop. Satoru waited with an open mouth, Suguru stuck it in.
They leaned on the wall of the store side by side. Satoru shoved the candy to his cheek and looked at Suguru who's hitting the pack upside down over his palm.
"That's gonna give you even worse breath," Satoru quipped, muffled around his lolly.
Suguru gave him a look, shaking out a cigarette from the pack and putting it between his teeth. "I don't go around breathing on people, Satoru."
"I sympathize with whoever you're gonna kiss," Satoru said, huffy.
Suguru barked a short laugh, shaking his head slightly in ridicule. He lit the cigarette and Satoru stared at the embers casting red and oranges around his lips, the fire dancing caged by the curve of his palm. He stared until gray smoke escapes Suguru's mouth and the other turns to catch him.
"Something on my face?" Suguru asked, looking at him with a half-smile. He put the lighter back inside his pocket.
"Yeah, former wrinkles of a smoker's ugly skin," Satoru said. "When did you start smoking?"
Suguru ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake out the water. "Sometime ago."
"With Shoko?"
"Yeah." Suguru looked at him, seemingly reading his face, then said, "I'm not excluding you. You don't need more bad habits. Stick to your diabetes program."
"Give me one," Satoru replied instead, plucking the lollipop out of his mouth, because whatever Suguru does, he wants to do, too.
"No."
"Please?"
Suguru sighed. "You're gonna hate the taste," he says, then lifted his cigarette to Satoru's mouth, because he's always indulgent of Satoru's wants.
Satoru took a drag and coughed. He made a face. Suguru laughed and took a drag for himself.
"See?"
"Try again," Satoru demanded.
Suguru raised it again to his lips, a faint smile on his face. Satoru leaned forward to take another drag. Suguru's fingers brushed Satoru's lips. Satoru suppressed a shiver at the contact. There was a strange feeling deep in his gut that he can't explain.
He took a successful inhale this time, exhaling the smoke softly into the night. He looked at Suguru, proud of himself. Suguru raised his hand to scratch Satoru's nape, a familiar gesture. Satoru leaned to the touch.
"You're crying."
Shoko's voice shakes him out of it.
"Ah, really?" Satoru wipes his cheek and realizes that he is.
"Yeah."
"I'm having flashbacks," he admits, feigning amusement as he wipes his face. He hands the cigarette, ash collected on the tip, back to Shoko. "Can you believe that? How embarrassing."
Shoko stays quiet. She snuffs out her cigarette on the windowsill, chucking the stub out the window.
"Over some mass murderer, too," Satoru adds, lying back down on the bed. He throws a forearm over his eyes.
"You miss him, Gojo?"
Satoru scoffs. "He has a death penalty, Shoko."
"That's not what I asked."
"It doesn't matter if I do. He's as good as dead."
"You don't hate him," Shoko says. It's not a question.
A moment stretches before Satoru says, "I don't know how to."
"You don't plan on hating him."
"It's not like I can." Satoru pauses, takes a breath. "Shoko, he's everywhere. Traces of cursed energy. Here, in my old room, in the campus. On myself."
"Your Six Eyes see him?"
"Yeah. I see him everywhere. In cobwebs."
Shoko traces her pen on the edge of her book. "I'd track him down if I were you."
"To do what? Execute him?"
Shoko levels him a look. "Why would you?"
"What other reason to see him?"
"You still—Gojo. You're grieving. He's not dead. You can just get up and see him."
"I don't grieve," Satoru denies. "And he's as good as dead."
Shoko shrugs, as if saying, 'Suit yourself.'
She goes back to her reading and time passes and sometime in the night he returns to his room to sit on the floor next to his bed. He stares down at his plain black carpet and traces the edge with his blunt fingernails. Back and forth, back and forth.
"There's no meaning to it, Shoko," he mumbles to the silence, an old echo of Suguru's voice, a dull comfort like a blanket for his aching.
He searches for meaning to put as reason. He spends the next few nights in sleepless search, thinking and pondering and going back and forth and back and forth if he really should see Suguru. He knows where Suguru is. He doesn't want to come with a hollow voice, because Suguru will hate him for it. Suguru hates actions that are done for no reason. Suguru hated the way Satoru never did things with reason.
He goes back and forth, back and forth, in search for something to present as reason.
Eighth months after, Satoru finally finds it.
Not exactly. If he's honest, he'll admit that some night into the search he gives up on it. He's sick of being in over his head, and he's never been nearly introspective enough to pull coherent conclusions, that has always been Suguru's role. But in a way, he sees it now. It gives him a glimpse into what he thinks Suguru went through most nights, always the one who questions things, who does double takes, who makes sure and reassures. It's tiresome. It burns him out. This was Suguru's thing, never his, and he sees why it drove him into a pit.
In the end, he doesn't prepare what he's going to say or what he's going to think for when he sees Suguru. He'd like to believe he's gained reason, but thinking in loops do nothing but feed his desperation, and finally he figures that's all he needs to bring to meet Suguru.
Gojo Satoru, the Strongest, the Honored One throughout the heavens and the earth, is admittedly quite pathetic. He wants to laugh at the prospect.
He doesn't remember it ever being this hard, seeing Suguru. The change of things, the sudden unscalable wall he's never prepared himself for, it pains him delirious, and he figures, to hell with it. He pockets his yearning and the fruitless search for an excuse to see Suguru and goes.
So Satoru comes back to the town again, he finds Suguru like a search dog, well-trained and desperate, to say hello.
He raps his knuckle on Suguru's front door. One loud knock. Two rapid following. Another one to close it off. He used to knock that way when he wants to bother Suguru in his dorm room. Suguru would open the door a crack then close it in his face, but Satoru would wedge a feet between the door and the frame and shove his way in, and Suguru would pretend he doesn't want Satoru in his space. The way Suguru would suck on his teeth gives it away every time.
This time, Suguru opens the door fully.
He looks about the same as when Satoru last saw him, just in different clothing and longer hair. Black t-shirt and loose pants. Black hair that had grown longer throughout the months, tied half-up with a piece of hair let loose to cover his face. Gauges on his earlobes still the same size. His face is the same as Satoru remembers it: sharp elegant features somewhat foxy; beautiful. No new scars, no lack of sleep. He doesn't carry those eyebags anymore, nor there are any dark circles curving beneath his slanted eyes. His eyes are widened. And they're dark, so dark they sparkle somewhat purple, trained at Satoru with eyebrows raised high.
"Hello," Satoru greets with his hands inside his pockets, a straight back, and a grin.
Suguru looks at him for another second. Then he doubles over and laughs.
Satoru stares at him, his grin dimming slowly. He adjusts his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. "Hey."
Suguru's laughter tapers to a stop and he straightens up again, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. There's still a smile on his face when he nods and says, "Satoru."
The signature fondness in his voice, the unchanged way of Suguru saying his name—so familiar it sends an arrow sharp through Satoru's chest. He masks the pain, nodding back and saying, "Suguru."
"Have you finally come to kill me?" It's said with a lilt in his voice, dark eyes twinkling.
"I might," Satoru replies airily, matching Suguru's tone. "But the weather's too nice for killing."
Suguru grabs something from beside the door: keys. He steps out into the small patio. Satoru shifts to make space as he locks the door behind him. "That's never stopped me," Suguru says, his eyes crinkling by the edges as he pockets his keys and looks at Satoru. "But you're right, the weather's nice. You want to take a walk?"
It's an olive branch, a charitable offer, a limbo. Satoru gestures his hand in an unspoken 'after you'. Suguru walks ahead of him. He trails behind.
They take the sidewalk framing this small road, leading them away from Suguru's house and toward the main street. The sky is a clear blue, the sun hidden partially behind light clouds. The weather is humid and warm. Spring is making its exit, slowly blending into Summer. Satoru takes off his windbreaker and carries it on his forearm, thankful of the way his thin white t-shirt sits lightly on his skin.
"Did they send you after me?" Suguru isn't looking at him. He's squinting at the sky.
Satoru kicks a pebble off the sidewalk. "The higher-ups want to," he answers. "Yaga knows better than to ask me, though."
Suguru slows his pace. Satoru catches up. "Do you have a mission here?"
Satoru shakes his head. "Is it so hard to believe that I'm here just to be here?"
At his words, Suguru's eyes turn into crescents, the way he always is when he's pleased, but not aimed at Satoru, just somewhere in front of him. "Did you finally miss me, Satoru?"
'I've always missed you,' Satoru thinks with an aching somewhere between his ribs. Instead, he lets the question drift away with the sound of their footsteps and asks, "How's your new life?"
"I'm managing," Suguru answers after a moment's consideration. "It's different, but not so much. I still do exorcisms for non-sorcerers, do you know?"
"I thought you hated them."
"I do. Still, I can expand my collection, and it's good money."
"You have a new family to support, yeah? The twins?"
Suguru doesn't bristle at Satoru's revealed knowledge, but the lines of his shoulder tense subtly. He turns to look at Satoru, the smile in his eyes dropping. "Did they—?"
"No one knows. Nothing's issued over them, I accidentally saw them by myself," Satoru placates quickly. "It's not my first time here."
They take a turn to the main street. Suguru's tense shoulders relax. "Was it my energy that gave them away?"
"Curled around them like an anxious mother," Satoru replies, relaxing too. Suguru chuckles.
"I'm sending my girls to school again," Suguru purses his lips, as if tasting something bitter, "with the monkeys. But they deserve a proper childhood, so I'm willing to compromise."
"Can't believe I'm hearing this with my own two ears. You to be a single father at 18?"
Suguru's eyes are crescents again. "Me to adopt a new philosophy and two girls."
Satoru scratches his neck and adjusts his glasses. "New year, new hobby: adopting stuff?"
They look at each other and crack up. The way they did a million times before. Then it starts to hurt. It hurts to reenact when the situation is completely different, it hurts to crack dry jokes again and to hear Suguru's laughter fill his ears and it stings him when Suguru touches his shoulder in amusement, but Satoru doesn't acknowledge it. He drowns it in Suguru's laugh, warm like a blanket wrapped around his shivering.
The laughter tapers out. They walk some. Satoru sniffs. "Why?"
"My girls, I found them mistreated. That pushed me to take the steps I've already thought through about taking," Suguru answers with no hesitation, as if rehearsed.
"A last straw type of thing?" Satoru chews on his cheek.
"You could say so," Suguru answers simply.
They walk past storefronts, the midday sun glinting on the windows, weaving around passerby. Satoru curls his fists and uncurls them deep inside his pockets. "You've thought them through, yeah?"
Suguru looks ahead. "I found out why I need to do what I do."
Satoru looks at his feet, stepping one ahead the other in turns. "Is it good enough reason to do all this?"
At that, Suguru stops walking. "You, talking to me about reason, Satoru?" His voice isn't that of a sneer, still level and calm, but the undertone of it is there.
Satoru walks a few steps ahead before he stops and turns toward Suguru. "Answer me."
"It surprises me that you'd question what's good enough for anything."
Satoru looks away, Suguru's words cold like sudden ice pressed to his nape. "Is it good enough reason to leave me behind?" His voice doesn't crack. He says it casually. Even so, he knows he sounds pathetic. It's not news. He doesn't care.
Suguru walks again, and so does Satoru, in pace. Silence stretches before Suguru says, quietly, "It's always about you, isn't it?"
"Did you not consider us when you thought it through?" 'Us' slips through—he meant to say 'me'.
"It's bigger than us, Satoru," Suguru deflects. "It's bigger than everything."
He wants to scream. He nods instead, says, "Fine if you stand by that," and they continue walking.
If he's honest, Satoru doesn't give two shits about the 'everything' that Suguru is referring to: humanity, or the Jujutsu world, or the balance of it all. He doesn't think about it like Suguru does. He doesn't question morality or the norm or the cogs that makes the world turn. If he's honest, he would sacrifice the world if it meant his happiness. He never strayed far from selfish. He knows where these traits are placed in terms of good and bad. He doesn't know how it ended up with him in the light and Suguru on the other side.
He knows his honesty would only tick Suguru off. He knows Suguru hates his lack of care, he knows they used to clash at this point. He's not here to pick a fight. He knows he has to pretend he's beyond that point to play civil with Suguru, and that if he were to vocalize his selfishness, it would no longer be met with open arms, or fists, or roughhousing like they used to, but with a coldness he doesn't recognize.
A back turned against him and feet walking away. He felt it once in Shinjuku. It cuts deeper than any spar with Suguru could achieve. He's still nursing the wound.
Suguru says, "I don't expect you to understand."
"I think I gave up on trying to understand you. I shouldn't have."
"That's okay, I don't seek understanding." It's a quick back and forth now.
"I could've listened better."
"Don't lie," Suguru scoffs. "You couldn't."
"You think I've done my best?"
"I do, actually. I know you well enough."
'Why didn't you do your best, too? I can't save you if you don't want to be saved,' Satoru wants to say. 'Why didn't you reach out your hand?' Instead, he says, "Limits shouldn't have been a problem."
"That's characteristic of you," Suguru says with a half-laugh.
"There was nothing I could do to change things?"
Suguru looks at him, eyes unreadable. "I'm not a cause."
"I'm your—" Best friend. Closest person. Something. He must've been something to Suguru. Looking for the word, he trails off, leaving it unspoken.
"I was bound to get here sooner or later. I found my destiny. Don't sound so regretful, it's out of character."
"Don't dictate me. I needed to hear it."
"Satoru, I could never be happy in this world. I have to do something about it." His tone is final.
"In another?"
"Maybe."
Satoru nods. They walk some distance in silence, Suguru leading him to a park somewhere in the heart of the town. It's quiet, the skirts of the park well kept.
"How are you?" Suguru asks, and it would be funny how conversational he suddenly sounds if it weren't for the slight hitch in his voice.
"I'm fi—I'm doing better," Satoru replies.
"Shoko, Nanami?"
"Shoko sleeps with me sometimes," he says. At Suguru's sharp, surprised look, he grins. "Literally. Not touching. Just company." Suguru looks relieved. He laughs. Then, "Nanami's distant. We're out most of the time, don't cross paths."
"Solo missions?"
"Like always."
They walk in silence again, accompanied by the songs of cicada and their shoes scraping against the pebbled path.
The path leads them deeper into the park, where a Torii gate made of wood stands, its pillars rotting from the weather and uninhabited. The area is clean of energy, there are no curses in sight. Suguru leads Satoru to climb the few stone steps, steep and covered in moss.
"I'm going to take over the association," Suguru says as he walks under the gate.
"The Time Vessel Association?"
He hums. They trudge through foliage, approaching an abandoned shrine standing not far from the gate.
"So that's why you told me no," Satoru half-jokes, remembering that time, the weight of Amanai's frail body in his arms, his head hollowed out, the sounds of clapping all around him.
Suguru doesn't laugh. "You didn't do it for reason," he says. "I regret not finding it sooner. Purpose."
Satoru sits on the edge of the shrine. It's damp, cool with moss. He traces his finger along the wood. Suguru sits beside him.
"I would help if you ask."
"I'm not asking."
"Why did you assume," Satoru says, "that I won't share your vision?"
"I didn't," Suguru replies simply, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a pack of Camels.
Satoru grates his blunt nails on the wood, moss dirtying his fingers. "So you chose a place for me," he says carefully, "on the opposing side."
"I chose a place for myself," Suguru corrects. He flips open his pack, shakes one out, and pulls a cigarette with his teeth.
"Did you find purpose in standing opposite me, or was the positioning coincidental?"
Suguru lights his cigarette. Satoru waits. "That's half true," he says finally. "We're face to face now, Satoru, and I'm more grateful."
He looks at Suguru, who's looking down, pinching the cigarette, twirling it around. His side profile is smooth yet sharp, framed by strands of hair, so familiar yet so distant. "We were side by side."
Suguru shakes his head. "We weren't," he says lightly, finally turning his head to make eye contact with Satoru. "I like the view here. I like looking at your pretty face."
If it were months and months ago, Satoru would have to fight giddiness, but now in its place is a void he can't touch. "You don't want me with you anymore," he says, not quite masking the hurt in his voice.
"Is it a new feeling, Satoru? Being unwanted?" Mean. Suguru has always been mean, but now it lands harsher when he says it with an undertone of bitterness, an introspective jab at his own self. At Satoru's lack of response, Suguru takes a drag, then exhales smoke. "It was pointless to stare at your back."
"That's a lie," he says. It comes out phrased like a question. "You were never looking at my back."
"I used to deny as well."
He kicks his feet on the ground. "Should I stop trying to understand?"
"That's for you to decide," Suguru says, flicking ash off the tip of his cigarette. "I'm not here to babysit you anymore, Satoru."
"I know. You've hardened up quite some."
"Should I apologize?"
"Don't."
"Being hard to you isn't something that comes naturally."
Suguru raises a hand, then lets it hover behind Satoru's nape—a gesture all too familiar. He stops himself, pausing. Satoru realizes the waver in his energy, a small burst of color spiking behind his neck.
He craves, he craves it so bad, he craves the touch and the warmth and the comfort he always gets around Suguru. He craves it, having been deprived so suddenly when the only contact he used to have was from Suguru. He lets his Infinity flicker off for the first time since they met again. Gingerly, he leans back to the touch.
Suguru doesn't move. Then, after a moment, he moves his fingers to scrape Satoru's neck, tenderly, like he always used to do.
Satoru doesn't say 'I miss you', he keeps his mouth shut tight in case it rolls off his tongue clumsily. He doesn't dare say anything for as long as Suguru scratches the base of his hair, the moment going on for so long that he grows afraid of it ending. He wants this forever. He wonders if there's a crack in his cursed technique allowing him to expand time into infinity the way he can expand the distance surrounding his body. He wants to try. He desperately wonders why he hadn't at least learnt it before, so now he can freeze both him and Suguru in this moment in time, in a bubble, for infinity. He wants to beg. He wants to beg Suguru to go back, to stay with him forever.
The moment ends. Their meeting goes to end not long after. Suguru has to go home and unlock the door, because classes will be over soon and the girls don't bring house keys.
"'Til we meet again," Satoru says, still sitting on the shrine's edge as Suguru stands.
Suguru drops his cigarette on the ground and extinguishes it underneath his sandal. "When we do, I hope you'll accept your position."
"Anywhere across from you is a place I dread to be," he says. He slides his sunglasses up above his head, pushing his hair back.
Suguru's eyes crinkle again by the edges. "Don't half-ass it. Find purpose."
"Suguru, I won't seek you out again," Satoru says, resolute, meeting the other's eyes.
He sees a flicker of disappointment there. "Even when you're opposing me?"
"I don't really oppose you."
"...yet," Suguru adds, and it sounds hopeful. "I stand across your ideals."
"I don't have concrete ideals," Satoru contradicts, aware of how petulant he sounds. "I don't advocate for balance or justice or any of that shit. You can do whatever. I'll stay out of the way. I won't seek you out."
"Selfish. Always about you and never about others."
Satoru shrugs. He doesn't avert his eyes. Suguru doesn't either, his dark eyes locked on to Satoru's blue. Satoru can see the way they dart between the both of his eyes, in thought.
Suguru says, "How can I make you hate me enough?"
He looks at Suguru, really looks at him now that there isn't anything between them. The greens and foliage of the park pose a fresh contrast to his pale skin. He stands there, the midday sun casting speckles of light through the trees, falling on his hair, his face, his clothes. His energy buzzes soundlessly, a pulsing glow around him. The shrine gate behind frames him in a perfect photograph for Satoru's memory.
"You can't," Satoru replies finally. He brings his hand to clutch as his own shirt, on the spot on top of his heart. "I'll keep you forever."
"Shit, that won't do," Suguru sighs, scratching his temple, but he's smiling. "Satoru, were you always this corny?"
Satoru grins back. Suguru reaches out and touches Satoru's ear, tugging it lightly. Reflexively, Satoru leans in to the touch.
Then Suguru's fingers are gone, and he watches Suguru turn his back to him, for the second time, not looking back. This time, it leaves a smaller cut, a softer touch, not fully bitter but peppered with a sweet aching to Satoru's heart.
When Suguru disappears out of sight, Satoru stands up. They part ways.
Nine months into Suguru leaving, Satoru feels it. The cut not healing. The last soft touch leaving him to bleed out alone.
On a rainy night, after a mission a few towns away, he teleports to the stairwell leading up to Jujutsu High. He's been trying to perfect his long-distance teleportation technique. It's good on the good days, but this time when he lands, a sharp pain pierces through his skull. He stumbles against the first two staircases, landing on his hands and feet. He has half a mind to teleport again to the top of the stairs, safe inside Tengen's barriers, before the stars behind his eyes explode and he blacks out.
No one's found him when he comes to. He's still at the same spot, sprawled on the paved ground near the entrance of Jujutsu High. He doesn't know how long he's out cold. He blinks his eyes open, pain throbbing behind them. His sunglasses are askew on his face. It's still raining, he's wet all over. Infinity switched off while he was out. He props himself up on his elbows, dripping like a wet dog.
He feels pathetic. He feels weak. He wheezes out a laugh.
Then he lies back down and cries.
He cries until his eyes hurt so much he deliriously thinks he's going blind. The notion overrides him with fear. His Six Eyes aren't that fragile, aren't they? He throws his glasses to the side and presses his palms on his eyes, the pressure barely helping ease the pain. He sobs and sputters and breathes in water and coughs like a mess. His chest hurts. He clutches his clothes over where his heart is, and he cries.
He bleeds alone on the pavement, curled in on himself. There's no red in sight, no pools of crimson under his body, no physical injury, he's unscathed. Yet there he lies, in enough pain for him to writhe.
Gojo Satoru, the Strongest, the Honored One throughout the Heavens and the Earth. Suddenly so small and minuscule and unimportant lying on the grounds of the school, in physical pain not because of a curse, not because of a fight.
He claws at his chest, feeling his fingers dig into his ribs, and it brings him no ease. His head is static noise. His vision is nothing but murky colors. The ground is cold under his cheek.
"It hurts, Suguru," Satoru croaks into the night, voice hoarse and swallowed up by the rain. "Fuck."
His mind latches on to Suguru's name. A steady tempo laced between the mess in his head. Suguru, it hurts, Suguru, come back, Suguru, this is your fault, Suguru, come back, Suguru, how could you leave me behind?
He doesn't know how long he lies there. The pain subsides after a while, but his migraine persists. He goes to the infirmary and rummages the cabinets for painkillers. He downs some and slumps against the door.
Nanami finds him in the morning. He says, "Jesus," then hauls Satoru back to the dorms, soaking the side of his shirt in the process because Satoru's drenched to his bones, but doesn't complain, or blame Satoru, or even grumble about it like he always does.
There's a towel wrapped around him and hot tea shoved in his hands. "Thanks," Satoru mumbles, and Nanami gives him a curt nod, closing his bedroom door.
The next time he sees Nanami, he jokes about something stupid, and Nanami is kind enough to act like he never saw Satoru that night.
Ten months after Suguru's defection, he's fine. Eleven months after, he's better.
On the one year mark after Suguru left, Satoru hears the news: Suguru's taken over the Time Vessel Association. He'd killed the head and sat on the throne.
The higher-ups call him in directly to the headquarters.
He stands in the center of the room, surrounded by doors placed evenly apart encircling him, shielding the higher-ups from his vision. As if it works against his Six Eyes. He looks challengingly at the people behind each door, sensing their shapes, their energy pulsing with life.
The meeting goes shortly. They order him to exterminate Geto Suguru, referring to article number whatever, and Satoru says: "I will not take this assignment."
"Pardon?" A voice comes from behind one door, in surprised anger.
"Meaning no disrespect, assign someone else."
Another voice raises: "Why, you—"
"I am against the crimes stated, and I support the order of execution upon my—Geto Suguru," he says, rattling formalities, barely trying to suppress disrespect. "But I'm not fit for the job."
A murmur of disagreement and a collective energy spike, suffocatingly hostile. "Who are you to deny an order?"
"Gojo Satoru," he answers plainly, leaving his titles unsaid, yet it echoes around the room. He bows mockingly. "Permission to leave."
No one grants him permission, not like he needs one anyway. He could murder the entire room if he wants to—a knowledge both he and the higher-ups are aware of. Nobody stops him. He walks out.
After hearing word from the higher-ups, Yaga suspends him for one week. He doesn't really care. He takes pills to sleep and when he wakes up he takes them again. The minute Yaga lifts the suspension, he takes an overseas mission.
Time flies fast when mundane routine colors his days. It's grey after grey after grey. He's numbed himself enough. It's pleasant. It's empty. He's content with it. He graduates. Shoko stays on campus, flitting between the infirmary and the morgue, finding a new hobby in cutting dead people open with a constant cigarette between her teeth. Satoru also stays on campus in formality, taking mission after mission.
The next year he takes Fushiguro Megumi under his wing. He itches to tell Suguru about it, to joke, hey, we're both single fathers now. Should we get together and raise a bunch of snotty kids? Maybe the Fushiguro siblings will get along with your girls. He chuckles at the notion. How warm.
After Suguru leaves, life goes on. Satoru thinks about him almost every day—that doesn't change. He misses Suguru in the space between his fingers, on the line of his hair fading down his neck, in the void beneath his ribs. He misses Suguru when he sees black, like the deep raven of his hair and clothes, or in purple like the way his dark eyes glinting in certain lights. He misses Suguru in every crack he sees. In the sky, in the trees, in the breeze. In Torii gates and shrines. In sweets, which he started picking up again after a while. In the curses he exorcises. In cobwebs and spiders.
The next time Satoru meets him, it's a decade after, in the form of taunting the school. Satoru knows he's going to come before he does, the cobwebs he leaves fresh and littered here and there like breadcrumbs. He almost wants to laugh at himself. Seeing Suguru again, in the flesh, donned in a clothes of his name, a gojo-gesa, as if it's a memoir dedicated to a past lover. It makes him inappropriately giddy.
"Satoru, it's been so long," Suguru says, eyes crinkled up in familiar crescents.
Satoru suppresses a smile. He plays his role right this time. He protects his students. He antagonizes Suguru. He stands across from him without half-hearting anything, proudly taking his stance to prove to Suguru that he's gone and found his footing now. He proudly takes his place across Suguru, their ideals differing clearly. He sees it in Suguru's eyes, murky with the delirious hatred inside it, but a piece of it is still there, the same glint he's seen years and years ago, reserved only for Satoru.
Satoru is thankful. He's never truly felt anything unless it's with Suguru, and even though he still can't find it in him to directly face the other, he finally feels again. Everything comes back to him in waves. He feels the tips of his fingers like they're real again, he feels the wind on his face like he's real again.
He knows Suguru's going to kick it. It's about time to end his descent to madness, he's down in the pits, he's truly lost it. Satoru knows how far Suguru's corrupted himself by the change in his energy. It should be heartbreaking, and devastating, coming like a punch to his gut, but he doesn't mourn yet. He's glad to be able to see Suguru again, to feel something one last time.
Suguru's time comes. Yuta makes his first impact in the sorcerer world with a great victory. Satoru's a proud teacher.
He follows the webs and finds the spider taking refuge in an alleyway, clutching one shoulder deprived of an arm.
"You finally made it, Satoru," Suguru says with a smile despite being slumped against a wall bloodied by his own injuries. "So you'll be the one to take me down, huh?"
"It's a pity," Satoru replies, his hands deep in his pockets. "The weather's so nice today."
Suguru laughs. He asks about his family. He inquires Satoru's motives. He gives Yuta's ID card to Satoru. His breathing grows halted, his voice stutters. His last moments are ticking. He says some words, slurred together, delirious.
"It's just that in this world," he says, "I couldn't truly be happy."
"Suguru," Satoru says after a moment. "In another world. We'll be together in different circumstances, and you'll be happy then."
Suguru stares up at him with widened eyes, then smiles.
"'Til we meet again," Satoru says, a promise.
Suguru laughs, a soft sound, Satoru's favorite song.
"At least curse me a little at the very end."
It takes some time, but Satoru finally makes good of his promise. They meet again, in the airport, waiting for departure to the afterlife. They're back to the way things are before Suguru ever left. They take the same plane. They sit in the same aisle, side by side, no carriages, no burdens to bring. If they sit too close, or if Suguru's fingers fill the waiting gaps between Satoru's, then nobody else sees them do it.
After Suguru comes back, life doesn't go on anymore, but it's not like Satoru needs it to.