―

The sun pierces through the crevices of the paddle. The light flashes across your arm as soon as the surface hits the hago, successfully sending it straight to the ground—and then your feet momentarily leave the grass, jumping high while hitching the ends of your kimono up—light shines brighter and it pools against the surface of your cheeks, gleaming. 

“I won!” It’s a joyful exclamation: your opponent, a cousin of yours, can only offer you a meek expression in return. “I’m the greatest!”

The hagoita slips off of your careless hand, though you find yourself not caring about it at all. You circle the nearest patch of flowers, cheering and skipping, tainting the hem of your clothes with mud and soil; you could almost hear the impending disdain that your mother would let you hear as soon as you were fetched for lunch; at the moment, however, you were far too consumed in your pride to ever dwell on what comes next. 

“That’s not true,” a voice, quite as small as yours, “I am.”

You slowly stop running around, your head tilting immediately to the side, a grimace overtaking your previously ecstatic expression. There’s a certain kind of blue in the distance, faint like ice cubes though they shine like glitters stuck in glue, and you think to yourself that it’s growing on you the longer you try to focus on what shade it is. “But I was the one who won at hanetsuki.” 

“I could beat you.” The boy walks closer toward you, taller people trailing directly behind him, wearing yukatas that bore a more muted shade of his attire. You didn’t know this boy. You didn’t know the women behind him, either. Though your previous opponent seems to know him, judging how she immediately ran away at the sight of him. “Do you want me to?”

“You’re mean.” You pop out your bottom lip, clenching your fists beside you. “I don’t want to play with mean kids.”

You watch him tug on the silk ribbons hanging by the hips of his guardians, ushering them to bend down to his size. You stand there, unknowing, oblivious to whoever this boy was and the purpose of his presence. You don’t question it; instead, you chant it inside your mind, the words of your mother: refrain from something-something questions. You’re visibly confused now. 

“She said she doesn’t want to play because I’m mean.” He copies your action from before, tilting his head to the side as well, almost as if he picked up the context of the gesture. This somehow only irritates you. “Is it because she’s weak?”

Your ears perk up, and you’re close to exploding, but the boy’s guardians immediately step in front of him as soon as you pick up your fallen paddle and wave it menacingly towards his direction. Barely six years old, and he was calling you weak! Your mind is going rampant; but you’re a kid, too, and you’re also barely six years old, but you deem that fact irrelevant inside your own brain. The women send you an apologetic glance, instead kneeling down to help straighten your kimono. The boy remains quiet with his shade of blue, uttering no words.

“Dear,” one of the ladies calls out to you, “I apologize for that. Would you like to take me to your guardian?”

You push your eyebrows together, hard as you could. The lady doesn’t waver. After a few minutes, you’ve convinced yourself already that she’s prettier than your mother.

“Okay.” You extend your hand towards her, though it’s too short to quite reach her person. “Will you hold my hand? I think I messed up the rocks in the garden when I was running around. I don’t want to trip. I’d scrape my knee if I did.”

She does not pause at all. You find her charming because of it. “Of course.”

Your opponent from earlier was long gone, but the boy with snowy hair was still there, and he’s behind you, and you’re forcing yourself to ignore him before you say something rude. That would show him.

“I can take you to my mother, pretty miss.” Your formalities are still a work in progress, but the woman shows her understanding when she pats your head, a beautiful smile casting itself on her expression. You’re in awe.

“Alright, little one. What should I call you?” She asks, soft as she could. You ponder on the question for a few minutes, blinking uncertainly three times before finally comprehending her query.

“My sisters call me [Name].” You smile at her. “I don’t know how to spell it, though…”

“Heiwa [Name]. That’s okay. I got it,” was her only response; you drop it after that. The sun is setting, you point out. Your little fingers are wrapped securely around the nice lady’s hand, and only when you smell the distant fragrance of the fireworks do you remember that it’s New Year’s day. You’re beaming, possibly more cheerful than you ever were before, almost as if you were not at all close to bursting into a fit of irrational irritation earlier. So, you twist your head until you can see the boy through the corner of your eye. You force yourself to remember his head of white hair.

“I won’t lose to you if we play! I won the first round, which means I have ultimate luck this year!”

You stick your tongue out, and he copies you again. You make a fool of him inside your head: you snicker to yourself when you address him as the boy who knew not of hanetsuki. Though this would not be the last time you’re meeting Gojo Satoru, you are praying silently, in that little head of yours, that it was.

―――

You’d come to know, later on, that the boy with hair much like snow has a personality that heats up quicker than the sun: not because he’s warm, but because he possesses the same kind of grandeur. Most powerful man alive. Your cousins whisper rumors of a young God walking within the estate, and you wonder if that’s what he is.

―――

There’s a patch of healthy soil in one corner of the garden directly outside of your quarters in the clan's estate; it’s empty, and it’s dying soon, but you don’t know how flowers work, and you’re too stubborn to ask for help. You’re past the age of eight but you’re still, undoubtedly, the one who fills the Heiwa clan with boisterous noise. The servants know better than to try and subject you to their scoldings; they know their words have no place in your mind.

It’s an unspoken fact around the estate. The only person whose words carry weight is your mother.

“Master Gojo will be visiting again later.” Your mother, with ugly wrinkles below her lashes, tells you over a cup of tea one morning. “You will play nice, won’t you?”

You stare at her and her empty brown eyes. Your mother was the eldest daughter of her clan; conservative, unspeaking, as though she was but a vassal with a ring on her finger. Her hands hold the tea cup as if it were the most precious thing to her at the moment, and you find it compelling—how she tends to clutch onto the most mundane objects in your household, how she does her duties with utmost urgency in spite of how little they matter, how she sees the importance despite the dull, gray, lifeless ceilings of the estate. The wrinkles under her eyes are prominent; the years of her exhaustion are painted keenly on her face.

In your head, you try to acquiesce her life as something you’d soon have in the future. It sends nothing more than shivers down your back.

“What does the Gojo clan want with us?” Your lips curve downward. “The Heiwa clan has nothing worthwhile to offer.”

Sharp glare; however accustomed you are to your mother’s piercing glances, the lingering fear remains, swirls unsteadily on the forefront of your brain—that if you do not keep your words in line, she will one day treat you as a duty and not a daughter: clutch you tightly until you’re suffocating from your lack of control. She knows you’re afraid of her. 

“Quiet, stupid girl.” She hides her lips behind the rim of her teacup, eyes fluttering close. “If they hear you, you are finished. Not even I can save you should that happen.” There’s a pause in between her words, a bitter lump in her throat. You nod slowly. Nor would I want to save you. Somehow, the words she left to die in her throat roared louder than the ones she spoke. Eyes down on the floor, no higher. Barely nine years old, and yet you are already grieving for the life you have to force yourself to be satisfied with in order to survive.

“The Gojo clan is the top sorcerer family,” this time, she gently pushes an empty cup toward your side of the table along with a woven rattan coaster, soon pouring tea resembling liquid gold in it. “They do not need us for anything at all except for companionship. We are the only clan who will not bring harm to that boy as he continues his education.”

You urge her to continue, taking in the aroma of the tea. Golden rooibos, most probably with caramel. Her favorite brew.

“Do not forget what I am about to tell you,”

The wife of the Heiwa clan chief stares at you with eyes that look as though they’re about to pop out; you’re terrified in the calmest way possible, unnerved by your mother’s demeanor. When you nod carefully after a few seconds, she eases her posture.

“Gojo Satoru,” she begins, ignoring the grimace that creeps up your expression, “will inevitably become the greatest sorcerer alive, if he is not that already. Do not think, even for just one second, that you will one day be worthy to stand beside him. You are here now only to entertain. You will be gone soon enough.”

You blink twice, and things start to make sense. The wrinkles beneath your mother’s eyes are not the results of years and years of hard work around the household: they are the proof of her responsibility, how she bore a child for her now-obsolete clan and how she was raised to act exactly as she is at the moment. Thirty-one years old and the values her clan engraved in her head are seeping out through the words she’s telling you now. You will not matter if you are not useful. You are unworthy because you are nothing. You will remain nothing if you do not fulfill your duty. 

You do not know how to tell your mother that you do not want to end up like her—so you keep your mouth closed. The silence is overbearing. You do not understand why you were already labeled unworthy before you could even prove otherwise. You do not understand the weight of your worth yet.

“My lady,” a servant interrupts, entering the room, “the Gojo family has arrived.”

Your mother sends the servant away with a flick of her wrist. Somehow, when she keeps her eyes glued to the floor, you are more terrified of her than before. You steal a glimpse of the garden right outside your open window, flowers and shrubs lined up neatly near an empty patch of soil, painting the landscape with vibrant green and dying yellow. When you hear your mother blowing away the steam of her tea, you gently stand up from your seat, bowing first before exiting through the door.

And there he is.

It’s the same head of white hair—like snow. Much, much like snow. He’s your age, you’re almost sure, though you are still taller than him by a few inches. You don’t feel like a kid when you see him: you feel as old as your mother, that when he waved you over, you imagined long, tired lines beneath your eyes, as though you bore the very same wrinkles she had on her skin.

Gojo Satoru notices your despondence, your bitter frown, though he does not care about you enough to ask. This is your sixth time meeting, and yet you feel as if you’ve known him for hundreds of lives prior to this one. Soon, the vestige of his pupils glean with arrogance; he’s about to open his mouth, but you decide to beat him to it.

“Are you really the greatest sorcerer alive?” You whisper.

The young God looks at you with interest, as kids often do. You pull painfully hard on the braid holding your hair captive, sucking the insides of your cheeks in until you were keeping your gums hostaged between your teeth. Gojo stares at you.

“I am.”

You do not allow yourself another second of hesitance. “Then teach me how to garden.”

He raises his eyebrow, “I don’t do stuff like that at home.”

“Then,” you turn away from him, eyes falling to the grass at the same time your foot prances on it. “Doesn’t that mean you’re...not that great at all?”

He whistles a tune, trailing behind you, and you recognize it as the nursery rhyme you often heard from your tutors. “Not being good at one thing doesn’t discredit my strength.” He points to the healthy patch of soil in the distance, and then he snaps his fingers, “though I bet I can still plant better than you even if I don’t know how to.”

You tilt your head, curious, “That’s just stupid. I watch our gardeners everyday. You are okay with losing to me?”

“I won’t lose to you.” His tone isn’t cruel, though his next words almost pierce through your heart. “You’re weaker than me.”

You point to the garden, now your turn to copy his actions. His blue eyes are reflecting the sun; you would find them to be a lovely shade if only you weren’t driven down underground every time you look at them. The shade is still lost in your head. Faint like ice cubes, though they shine like glitters stuck in glue. Hypnotizingly so.

“Let’s do it, then.” You flash him a small smile. “But you can’t call me weak anymore if I win.”

He laughs at your statement, his small fists stuffed neatly inside his haori’s pockets. Gojo does not say anything for a while, only stares at you with amusement. In the back of your head, you’re trying to ascertain whether or not he was patronizing you.

Gojo gets a hold of your sleeve and tugs you to his guardians. You find yourself thinking if the continuous act of obliging is what you were born for.

“Follow me.” On his lips is the widest smile you’ve seen him fashion out of the six times the two of you have met, “I saw a pack of wormwood seeds somewhere.”

―――

You are the second daughter of the Heiwa clan’s current head, though you can count the times you’ve conversed with him with only your fingers in one hand. That’s normal.

You hear he’s kind and soft-spoken in spite of his rugged exterior; your father has a scar, slashed straight across his left eye, and it curves all the way to the top of his head. You were taught, at a young age, that you were not to disturb the head of Heiwa unless you were at death’s door. The guards in the estate stood beside the entrance to his dojo, hands clutching the handles of their swords, almost as if they did not wish to waste too much time swinging them out of their scabbard when danger approaches. You understand, of course. Your father is an important man; although polite, he is still a diplomat first before he is ever anyone’s friend. The servants in the estate know that. The guards know. You and your siblings know; which is why his absence mattered very little to all of you. With only the recurring presence of your mother in tow, and occasionally the presence of your younger sisters, you were subjected to a life free from the company of a patriarch.

Even still, he constantly gave his daughters enough attention to inform them that he breathes the same air. Your father wishes for you to finish reading the Kojiki within the day; the book awaits you in the library. Your father requests that you perfect your Nihon buyō lessons in a week’s time. Your father is in the middle of preparing calligraphy lessons for you and your older sister, my lady. It was always these abrupt lessons, always interjecting when you’re trimming your bushes and watering your flowers. Truth be told, though, at age 12, you were only beginning to grasp the true meaning of what it means to be the second daughter; a secret known only by you—and, well, a certain friend as well.

The Heiwa family resides in Nakatsugawa, a quaint city nestled between Kyoto and Tokyo, with rivers and valleys that trail on for miles. The clan was established shortly after the peak of sorcery in Japan: the finishing years of the Heian period. Heiwa Tsukeniyo, the very first leader of the family, was on the run from life as a sorcerer when he built the foundations of the ancestral home. It is written in the transcripts in the library, in dark ink that’s been restored and printed on durable parchment.

Tsukeniyo longed to spend his remaining days in peace; growing trees, playing shogi, recording the compatible flora in the ancestral home’s surrounding area. Since then, the clan hasn’t been recognized to be particularly strong, though it’s well-known to be a family of great silence, comfort, as members do not stray from the ancestors’ traditional values. You do not know anything else about your family’s history—however, you do know that Tsukeniyo was said to be deaf, bleeding and half-dead, when he wrote the detailed description of the cursed technique that was to be passed down for generations to come among Heiwa women. Cursed Sound: Cacophony. The technique was out of your territory, however, as only the elders and as well as the inheritors of that ability were allowed to truly touch upon the topic.

As a non-sorcerer, your duty as one of the honorable daughters was to prove that you were a woman worth marrying. A bargaining chip of sorts, to maintain the peace that your clan upheld, to strengthen its relations with other sorcerer families. Your fate has been sealed, and yes, in spite of being only 12 years old, you dedicate most of your time to making sure that you do not disappoint the high elders.

A good wife is obedient and wise; though her intellect is needed rarely, there could be no harm in honing her brain with history and culture. That is all women are good for. No politics. Nothing of the sort. A good wife has a husband for those things. 

It’s baffling, really. History and culture are inherently political. Perhaps their brains are the ones in need of honing.

“What are you reading?”

Admittedly, though, you never expected that one of the bridges you would have to cross in order to become a Heiwa daughter worth honoring is the companionship of the boy who altered the balance of the world—that is, tolerating him and his annoying, silly questions whenever he visited you. 

“The Kojiki.” You yawn, not bothering to rip your gaze off of the page you were reading. “Have you not read this, Gojo?”

The male scrunches his nose, abruptly placing his chin on top of his palm as a means of support. Gojo huffs, leaning forward to catch a peek of the page you were on. Almost immediately, he ends up rolling his eyes.

“It bored me.” He shrugs. “Pay attention to me instead.”

You shake your head, grumbling. “What are you? A child?”

“I’m twelve. Of course I am.” Playful glare; you feel his focus glued on you. “And you are, too. Come on, act like one already!”

“No.”

“You are so boring.” He groans, rocking your chair back and forth with one hand. God, this kid is irritating. At this point, that was all you could think of; if he weren’t regarded as the most powerful, strongest, what -fucking- ever sorcerer in the entire world, you would have punched him square on the jaw. He’s relentless. “Play with me already, Heiwa!”

Light pink dusts the high points of your cheeks when he calls out for your last name; you brush it off before it gets worse. “Please stop. You’re making me dizzy. I still have an afternoon filled with lessons and assignments to trudge through.”

He cocks a brow. “Geez, what even for? They should just make you attend those standard elementary schools. You’re not a sorcerer, anyway. You’re so normal and boring and—”

“Weak. Yes, Gojo, you are absolutely correct.” In recent years, you took pride in the fact that his words never went past the guards around your soul; the boy, in general, is hard to predict and even harder to understand, though you were certain of one thing—the names he calls you, the insults, the words he utilized in order to remind you that he was stronger were said with little to no thought. Most times, he didn’t even mean them. “However, the lessons are necessary in order for me to fulfill my duty as the Heiwa leader’s daughter.”

Curious. Gojo pokes your side. “And what duty is that supposed to be, anyway?”

You fake a cough, covering your mouth behind the sleeve of your yukata. You refuse to look at him.

“To marry into a sorcerer clan,” you begin, voice going an octave lower, “in hopes of bearing a child who possesses our family’s cursed technique.”

Gojo’s eyes widened in surprise, almost as if your response was something he wasn’t at all expecting to hear. You get it. Just getting reminded of your responsibility is enough to make you pause and speechless; to this day, you could not wrap your head around the idea of meeting suitors and getting yourself mixed into an arranged marriage.

He’s quiet; that even when he speaks, his voice no longer has the same volume. “That’s stupid. You’re stuck in the seventeenth century. You’re no better than that Zen’in clan from Kyoto.”

You shush him, your eyes panic-stricken, quickly scanning if any of the servants tending to the shelves in the library heard Gojo. “Are you crazy? My family will hear you!”

“They can’t touch me.” He’s too confident, you tell yourself. “I’m stronger than everyone here.”

“That’s besides the point. Our family values tradition, they uphold it, I cannot simply just run away from what I was born for.” You glare at him, the book you were enjoying now lying idle on top of the table, closed and bookmarked. “You wouldn’t understand. As you’ve never failed to remind me, Gojo, you are strong. That is the difference between us.”

Gojo scoffs, soon getting a hold of the Kojiki, turning to a certain page and pointing at one of the illustrations. You follow the tips of his forefinger, and you recognize the drawing from the first volume. It was of Izanagi and Izanami, the deities who solidified the ocean in order to shape the first landmass; getting wed thereafter. It’s your turn to raise an eyebrow at him.

“We could be like them,” he beams at you, too irritatingly wide for your liking, “just marry me, then. So you can drop your boring book and pay attention to me all the time.”

You flush, losing composure. He does not yield. 

You do not bother pointing out that Izanagi, in their far off future, sees what remains of Izanami’s decaying figure in the underworld and denies her of his love; in your head, you wonder if he knew that, too. You wonder a thousand times with pink cheeks and a quivering frown if Gojo would leave you once you’ve grown out from your appearance; it stings. The thought of being left behind by your only friend to date. The fact that you knew anyway that Gojo could visit you each summer, spring, each free week without training, and still he’d always leave, regardless of your attachments.

You stand up from your seat, head held high and away to avoid his careful gaze.

“Gojo, you are so annoying.”

―――

Days after that, the young God asks you to call him Satoru. The rest of the world knows him as Gojo, he says, but Satoru is reserved for those he cares for. Gojo would carry on to be the strongest. Satoru would carry on to be the most beautiful; stringing along with him various packs of garden seeds, offerings for when he visits you. You think this must be what it feels like for divinity to cast its gaze on you.

―――

The anxiety that came with you when you strutted through the door of your father’s premises dwindles down when the entrance shuts close with a harmless squeal. You did not turn back, and instead chose to bow your head down, your knees indefinitely glued to the wooden floor. You felt his eyes on you; you understood on the spot that your father is a kind man to his constituents, his peers, although significantly colder when face to face with his children.

First, he recited your name in a way that made him sound hesitant, as if he was unsure if that was even your name; then, “Raise your head.”

You did as you were told, not quite eye to eye with him yet. It was his turn to understand.

“The Heiwa clan does not cause disputes. We do not participate in feuds.” He spoke calmly, a stick of cigar sandwiched between his lips. “That said, I am formally entrusting you with the task of keeping Gojo Satoru company when he is within our estate. It would be foolish to make him an enemy.”

You swallowed a thick lump of words you could not say down your throat, your hands practically shaking. He stared you down as hard as he could, and you were one step away from running away and succumbing to the punishments he would bestow on you thereafter. You crumbled under the gaze of the clan leader. Everyone did. Your mother, your sisters, the clan elders. 

“Do you understand?”

You do. The tension deviantly crawls out from your throat. The smell of smoke blew past you, your nose scrunching in instinct. “Yes, father.”

You feel yourself going back to earth shortly after, a catalyst breaking you out of your trance. You suck the insides of your cheeks. That memory was one of the longest, if not the actual longest, conversations you’ve had with your father. You’re 15 years old now, and it’s been quite a few years since then, but you still cower under the intensity of his gaze. Or, cowered, anyway. 

The worst has happened.

You direct your attention to the woman who forcefully pulled you back to the ground, staring at her unknowingly, unable to ascertain what your purpose is. She’s clad in black, her hair disheveled, and she’s ripping through the paper of the shoji in front of you. You do not know how to extinguish her anger; you do not know where it stems from.

“That fool,” she mutters, over and over, and there’s nothing else you can do except watch. “How dare he die before I did?”

She doesn’t stop repeating the words, each time speaking them with more venom, more spite. You don’t stop staring at her either. In the back of your head, you’re trying to figure it out. Your sisters are all standing beside you, it’s the first time that all of you remained in the same room for longer than 30 minutes. You wonder if they’re trying to make sense of what’s happening to your mother, too. But they’re just there: they’re like you, just standing there, barely keeping up with what she’s doing.

In the back of your head, you wonder if your mother hated your father. If she’s loathed him ever since, then you didn’t notice at all. It’s the end result of having to be married off to a cold man—of having to be forced to marry someone she did not love, of having to instill it in her mind ever since she was young that she had to follow what was laid out for her. Her responsibility, role, her lack of freedom and control of her own life. It is the end effect of now having to bear the weight of the duty your father left behind. The clan elders decided two days after his parting: your mother would assume the role as clan leader, and she was to fulfill the things he left untouched until a more suitable candidate presents itself.

The worst has happened. Your father has died.

“[Name].”

Someone tugs on the hem of your yukata; you have to coerce yourself to pry your eyes away from your mother, soon learning that it’s one of your younger sisters, Yasu. You kneel down to level with her, combing her hair, albeit you weren’t quite close enough to be doing so. She doesn’t seem to mind, anyway.

“What is it?” You whisper, eyes on the floor. Always on the floor.

“Someone’s waiting for you outside.”

You place a chaste kiss on her forehead, rendering Yasu just as surprised as you are, before nodding in acknowledgement and turning away from the scene you were fixated on. Your sisters send you reassuring glances, some even going as far as squeezing your shoulder as a means of comfort, and you find it endearing that they actually seem to be nice girls. You do not have enough space in your head to wonder if you would have gotten along with them smoothly if your circumstances weren’t so perplexing.

You escape through the back door, taking silent steps to not trigger your mother’s mania further.

It doesn’t take long for you to see your visitor, and in all honesty, it doesn’t surprise you at this point that it was none other than Satoru, without the presence of his usual guardians. He’s wearing a uniform, full-black, with round sunglasses of the same color adorning his face. Your lips quiver, and he notices in an instant.

“Hey,” he waves, pushing himself off of the wall he was previously occupying, “Let’s take a walk.”

As soon as you nod, he gestures to you to follow him. There’s a certain kind of silence that overtakes the surrounding atmosphere; not quite uncomfortable, though you can’t say that it didn’t leave your mind wandering off to obscure places. The night is growing darker with each step the two of you take towards the empty garden across the pond in your estate, in the left wing. The two of you are five meters apart and the bridge you have to cross in order to head to the flowers you frequently tend to doesn’t seem to be wide enough at all to accommodate your distance.

You’re walking side by side now, and he stops you, tapping your shoulder before leaning on the railing for support. You copy him.

“So,” he begins, voice flowing like honey, “how’d the old man go?”

You wince upon hearing the question. You don’t want to answer it.

“He was ambushed,” because of you.

“Any names come to mind? Did he have enemies?”

“No.” You sigh, instinctively smiling when you say your next words. “The Heiwa clan does not cause disputes.”

He was killed for protecting you.

Satoru immediately rolls his eyes, a small smile adorning his lips. The moonbeams carve through his hair and you take note, inside your head, of how it resembles the streaks of clouds in the sky whenever it’s bright. No longer like snow. You shake the thought away.

“What-fucking-ever. Sounds stupid.” He grimaces. “Your clan is too conservative.”

You stick your tongue out at him, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear before soon trying to locate the sentences to speak next. That’s neither here nor there, you almost want to tell him; but the silence is back. You don’t like it. It feels empty, devoid of anything substantial.

“Did you come here to say goodbye, Satoru?”

He visibly flinches, concealed eyes directing themselves to your figure. You allow yourself to lean on the railings until you could swing your foot playfully out of the boundary, nearly slipping a few times.

“On the contrary, I came here to say hello.” Satoru grins fondly, pointing to one of the buttons on his uniform. “Before I leave for Tokyo again, anyway.”

“Jujutsu Tech, huh.” You hum in response. He watches you with his careful eyes. “One step forward towards taking over the sorcery world, I suppose.”

The boy clicks his tongue, one eyebrow raised. Fifteen years old and he still looked like the Satoru you met almost nine years ago; he’s never going to change. Not in your eyes, at least.

“Two steps forward, actually.” He shrugs. “If you decide to marry me.”

The tension is back to how it usually is when it’s just you two—sweet, light, almost with a hint of love mixed into it, though not the romantic kind, you assure yourself. He flicks your forehead, and you don’t quite register that into your head until his face is only a few inches away from yours.

“What’s it going to be?”

This is tradition, you tell yourself, and then you smile. “Satoru, please. I do not wish to give my father a heart attack in the afterlife. That is not what he would have wanted.”

Curious. His interest is piqued; you realize your mistake.

“Really, now?” He tilts his head, lips angling themself near your own ones; if either of you move, you’re certain something unfavorable would happen. “And how about you? What do you want?”

I want to live a life far from how my mother lived hers, is what you want to tell him, though no sound comes out from your mouth, no word of protest or affirmation or anything: you stare at him, dumbfounded, clueless as to what to say without breaking the rules inside this wretched, cruel clan. The Heiwa clan does not cause disputes. You repeat it in your head like a mantra. If I entertain this folly, people will come for my head. My mother is a widow because of him.

But another thought enters the forefront of your mind: I want to marry Satoru.

And you realize, almost as quickly as the thought arrived, that Satoru was more cruel than your family, your elders, your upbringing. He was cruel for dangling the idea of a good life alongside him with empty words. Cruel, evil, heartless of him to get your hopes up only to inevitably crush them in the end. You were weak, you are weak, and he knows that—you hate him for it. You hate him for being strong. You could hear his steady breathing, you could see his unyielding arrogance spilling out through his facial expression, and you can feel his hand slightly inching towards where yours was placed on the railing. He’s testing just how far you could go without breaking away from what your family taught you. You hate him for being strong. Maybe if he were weak—weak like you —then maybe you two could be together without being tied down to fear. Satoru is a cruel, cruel man and you want nothing more than to give in already to his petty games.

But the harsh truth is that you cannot— must not.

“I want…” You look away, gently pushing his chest until there is finally enough space for you to breathe again. “I want you to have an enjoyable time in Tokyo.”

Satoru looks almost disappointed—you refuse to believe in that, however. He shrugs, now raising his head to turn towards the sky, carefully picking out his next course of action.

“I’ll visit every week, you know.” He states confidently. “So don’t get too lonely.”

“Every week? There’s no need for that. You act as if we will no longer be seeing each other because of your big move.” You poke his sides teasingly, red filling your cheeks. “Besides, Tokyo is only four hours away.”

He hums in agreement. “You say that like you have plans to visit me.”

“What do you know? Maybe I will.”

“And risk your flowers getting mishandled by your sisters? Yeah, right.”

There is no more serving of awkward silence, no more traces of uncomfortable air. In the corner of your peripheral vision, you sneak a glance at your garden; the growing flowers on them. Satoru whistles a tune beside you.

“I’ll be busy over there.” He says.

You nudge him lightly with your shoulder. “I know.”

“You should write to me if you have time.”

You turn to face Satoru and you meet him with a grin, the thought of your father now only idle in your head. You’d have to pay your respects later, you think to yourself, as you do not know just yet how to make Satoru leave your brain. He’s a cruel man. He doesn’t even think of just how lovely his presence is, how he affects you more than he should, and how he makes you want to tell your responsibilities to go to hell, so you can pull him until you’re but a cusp of a breath away from each other.

“Satoru,” you mutter. Your voice captures his attention; he’s wrapped around your finger, though you do not have even the slightest idea, “I don’t need to write to you, idiot. We have phones.”

―――

Your days, ever since your father’s passing, consisted of tending to what needed attention inside the estate. Your eldest sister had been married off as soon as she turned 18 years old; your mother sat as the matriarch of the clan, which meant that the mundane was left for no one except you to take care of, being the second daughter of the current clan leader, anyway.

Even though they passed by relatively fast, certain days felt like long seasons filled with only the harshest wave of winter; you wake up to the cold, the chill, you are freezing even when you’re wrapped in your delicate kimono, even when you’re under the heat of the sun. Between working, working, working, and non-stop studying of your history and other prerequisite lessons needed for you to get a certificate that indicates your completion of home-education, frankly you’ve been exhausted: as though the bags weighing underneath your eyes would gradually grow to be the same lines that your mother had beneath hers.

At 17 years old, however, your days of working will not come to an end yet, nor will it disappear so easily.

“Sister,” Your sibling calls out to you. She looks similar to how you look, the main difference being her wide eyes and distinguishable mole. She goes by Ichika; ten years old, barely even scratching the surface of what it means to be a Heiwa daughter. You tilt your head to the side.

With a hagoita on hand, you hit the incoming hago, successfully receiving it and watching it flutter towards your younger sister’s side of the game. “What is it?”

She lunges forward, struggling to hit the hago with her paddle, though she manages to do so anyway. Her hair blocks her eyes for a moment, disheveled and curly, urging a small smile to creep up your lips. Over time, you’ve learned to develop your relationship with your sisters, one by one befriending them until they feel comfortable enough to search for your company. You do not want them to grow up like you did: alone, terrified, shackled only to responsibility without a means of leisure in tow.

The eldest daughter is known as Kameko. She’s older than you by a year, bearing the same hair color as you, although her eyes are much more similar to that of your father’s. You are the second daughter: [Name], with features that automatically associate you to your clan. The third daughter, one of your younger sisters, is Yasu; four years younger than you, freshly 14 years old. She’s quite quiet; the most elegant one out of all of you, in your eyes. The next one is Yua, just a year younger than Yasu. Intelligent; she had her nose stuck inside a book all the time. The next one is Ichika, the one you’re with right now—as said before, she’s ten years old, being only three years younger than Yua.

The sixth daughter is possibly the one most detached to the rest of you: Chiasa, seven years old, plagued with the burden of inheriting the cursed technique. She’s typically busy inside the Heiwa dojo; if not with her combat, then with her music lessons, with her fencing lessons, whatnot. The youngest ones in your family were Ikuyo and Chiyoko, a pair of lovely twins that had a habit of poking fun at everyone in the estate, manners be damned. Two years younger than Chiasa; five years old, though they were only two when your father passed away.

“Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?” Ichika’s voice is as high-pitched as a ringing bell, but it’s eloquent all the same. You ponder on it for a few minutes all the while keeping your head in the game.

You affirm with a hum. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have remembered if you didn’t point it out.”

The sun rains its fury down on the both of you, kissing your skin fervently, each time burning the surface of it until you want nothing more than to wallow under a shade. Your sister remains rather enthusiastic, however, rendering you unable to satiate your exhaustion. She has her focus on the hago swinging back and forth between the both of you, though you could safely say that she’s planning to tell you something, judging solely on how she keeps opening her mouth and closing it in order to focus on hitting the target with her hagoita. You find it endearing.

“You’re turning eighteen this year,” she pauses. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll have to find someone to marry soon?”

You fall apart slowly, and then all at once.

Slowly: your eyes glimmer when they see the sun and your lips instinctively curve up to a smile, a formality. You kiss your teeth.

All at once: your world cambers over and you’re given insufficient time to realign it to its rightful place. You stop dead on the spot, your eyes fixated on the incoming hago, though you cannot feel your hand doing anything to receive it and pass it toward Ichika’s side. There’s a subtle ringing against your ears. You feel your throat closing up, and when the hago finally hits the pavement, you flinch away from your sister. Ichika frowns.

You smile at her, a formality, though it comes out stiff.

“Ah.” You rub your nape. “I lost. That means you’ll have great luck this year.”

Her eyes stay glued on you, and you know that she’s noticed just how uneasy you’ve become. She takes a few steps forward, her hand extending to reach out for you, but you refute her actions by turning your back on her and walking away.

“Sorry. I have to go make a call.” You take note of your hands, how they were gradually growing more numb the longer you stayed there, “I’ll leave my hagoita here. Maybe ask Yua to play for a while.”

You bolt out of the area, crossing the familiar bridge, skipping through the puddles near the pond. You run and you refuse to heed the calls of the servants and relatives you’re passing by, most of whom are asking if you’re okay, why you’re running away, but you don’t need their comfort—not when they’re not going to stand up for you when the time comes, not when they’re all accomplices to this wretched tradition of marrying away children in order to maintain the peace that they all disgustingly uphold, when they’re never going to be willing to help you. You hate it here. You hate everything. You can’t breathe.

Your knees give up on you behind a particularly tall shrub, your skin now riddled with light scars that came from the rocks you slid against. Hot tears cascade your cheeks: you look ridiculous, you’re almost certain. Not marriage-worthy in the slightest—which still remains irrelevant in the grand scheme of things; this family will not, will never, fail to see their goals through when they put their minds to it.

In a flurry of panic, you take out your phone, flipping it open and quickly skimming through your contacts until you finally reach his number. You’re flippant. Angry. Explosive. You want nothing more than to accept his offer and live a life free from the hands of your family; always dragging you by the ankle, down, down, down until you ultimately turn into the likes of them. The Heiwa clan does not cause disputes. You are a Heiwa daughter. You must not let us down. You must not fail your duties. You must not be the first to rebel.

The plants around you are blurred out by the tears: it reeks of herbs, freshly watered, and it reeks of wormwood, rosemary, and sage.

[name]: satoru, i am accepting your marriage proposal.│

You stare at your email. You can no longer rein yourself towards your responsibility: not when it’s too difficult. This is the last of your patience.

[name]: satoru, i am accepting yo│

You can’t bring yourself to click the send button.

[name]: satoru, i am acce│

You’re running out of time; something’s chasing you. You’re running out of time and you do not know how to get to the finish line: when will it all end? How long do you have to endure, endure, endure?

[name]: s│

The last of your message dissipates into the screen, the backspace hitting its limit. Your tears are still apparent, staining your cheeks, but the remnants of your desperation fade alongside whatever resolve you had in the past. You are shackled to your family and running away from your fate is as futile as it could be: destiny has cast its gaze on you and it told you to endure, endure, endure until your dying breath. You know better than to involve Gojo Satoru in your own fate. Why would a young God trifle with a life as pathetic as yours? No reason for that at all.

[name]: i hope you are doing okay there, satoru. visit soon.

sent 01/01/2008

―――

Gojo Satoru does not visit for a while, and you hear whispers of a man named Geto Suguru going rogue. The sorcery world is in shambles. When Satoru returns to you, he is splintered and bruised and drowning in insurmountable grief.

―――

You do not know how you ended up in this position.

Or, more specifically, you do not know how you ended up standing on the peak of Mount Ena, 45 minutes past one in the morning, huddled over on the ground with your head buried in Satoru’s chest. You’re shaking, though it’s not because of the cold breeze that December often brought with it, and the ground, as far as you could ascertain, is as stagnant as it could be; so it couldn’t be because of that. Your limbs are numb. Satoru is staring at you cluelessly, having no idea how to comfort you.

Twenty-two years old, and you’re falling apart against the chest of the most important person in the world. His arms are flat beside him, however, as though he does not know which parts of you he can touch without breaking.

“I’m a failure.” Your voice is riddled with choked sobs, breaking open each syllable to the point that you’re barely coherent, “I’m a failure, Satoru, except I do not know what I did to deserve to be one.”

That rings the truth. You’ve paid your dues. You have done good deeds, you have strayed away from the bad, from anything that could possibly instigate your downfall, and yet still you are 22 years old, deemed unmarriageable, all because the world thinks you have been dirtied by Satoru’s hands. Your life is over. Your mother, the elders, they’re all looking down on you and you have no choice but to keep your head low: eyes on the floor, always on the floor, as you are always the one cowering under their stares. You are always the one inconvenienced by their traditions.

“I have done everything. I have studied, I have trained myself, I have forced myself to accept my fate and I have tried, Satoru, I have tried so hard to endure.” You’re speaking quickly. You can’t help it. The words are spilling out and there’s no way to stop them now—almost as if the dam has been broken open and the water will keep gushing past, regardless if you want it to stop—and they wrack your body until you could feel nothing else.

“Stupid girl,” he whispers, though it’s softer than he probably intended for it to sound, “your first mistake is letting them dictate your life for you.”

You clutch the fabric that clung on to his torso, a bitter laugh escaping your throat. He doesn’t say anything more. “Big talk, hotshot. You act as if you are the one who chose to bear the weight of the shaman world.” You shake your head. “You will never understand, no matter how hard you try. You and I live in different worlds. Vastly different worlds.”

Satoru huffs, one hand reluctantly finding its place on the top of your head. “Stupid girl.” He says, this time with more emphasis, “that’s irrelevant. You choose to be weak. You have me. You can tell me to have your clan dissolved and you’d be free. But you’re too weak for that. Weaker than you’re supposed to be. You can’t handle it.”

Even with each stab of his knife, you could not bring yourself to hate him and his words, regardless of how cruel they are when they reach your ears. You’ve endured so much. All you did in that house was endure, accept, endure again until you’re sucked dry with no ambition left inside your body. Until you’re an empty shell they can easily fill with their own desires. Satoru’s right. He could have the Heiwa clan dismantled if you so graciously asked him; he’d probably do it faster than an apple could reach the ground, even. 

But you are too dragged in, too scared. Gojo Satoru notices your dejection, debility, your suffering, and he does not know what to feel about it. There’s something similar to anger—the loose threads of it, the beginnings of it, though you’re too worried of the outcome if ever you were to aid him in unraveling it. “I’ve always known that I’m weak.” You mutter. He clicks his tongue. “So allow me just one night to grieve for the life I will never come to have because of it. One night, Satoru, and I will go back to enduring,” slight pause; the tension is strangely palpable, “and you can go back to not caring at all.”

The breeze carries something terribly sweet in the air as though it is mocking you for being so undeniably angry at the world during the beauty of winter. Your sobs are worsening, his jacket’s absorbing most of them, and he’s shushing all your cries by stroking your hair awkwardly. He doesn’t do this kind of thing—not well-versed in the art of caring, art of comforting. Caring is one step away from loving. Satoru thinks he is meant for a lot of things, nearly everything, except that. He doesn’t do love. Not since Suguru. Perhaps not at all, perhaps never once more. A cruel thing.

You’re speechless against him. You want him to put his arms around you. You know he won’t.

This began during the early hours of the morning: initially, you were going to be summoned in the main hall to meet a few suitors from middle-rank sorcerer clans hailing from Kyoto. You were up at around six in the morning, in order to begin the preparations, to tidy up yourself before the meet; after all, three years have passed ever since you began looking for one, and you were still left with no viable options. You were growing restless. You wanted things to be over and done with already.

Come lunchtime, or at least an hour before it, representatives arrived in your suitors’ stead, all poise and held certain candor in their person. They spoke of their sudden disinterest, their reluctance to be associated with your name specifically, all because they heard that Gojo Satoru had his eyes set on you, and that he had tarnished you already. It’s all over the sorcerer world, Heiwa. Do you truly expect your daughter to marry at this rate? Try your luck with the next one. No one would want to marry those who have been touched by that Gojo.

Your mother made sure that you could feel her disappointment, her utter aggravation because of how worthless you are in the end; she made it clear when she slapped you straight across your face with her cane, leaving the color chartreuse on your cheekbone, eyes red from how hard you cried in front of her. As I expected. No one wants to marry Gojo Satoru’s whore. What am I supposed to do with you now?

Eventually, after hours of crying, you found yourself dialing Satoru’s number a few minutes past 11 in the evening; he answered with the same glee, though he was met with the sound of your whines. He almost instantly hung up on you, leaving you to your thoughts, but you’d come to realize that Satoru could warp now—which was hard not to figure out, seeing as he made it from Tokyo to Nakatsugawa in a matter of seconds.

A few hushed whispers inside your room, and you had your arms thrown around his shoulders, feeling his all-consuming cursed energy surround the both of you until you were, undoubtedly, on the peak of Mount Ena.

Currently, you could feel his chest reverberating with light laughter. An hour has passed.

Satoru repeats his words; warranting you no time to get hurt by them. “Stupid girl.” He faces upward, nose held up toward the sky, eyes staring at the sublime as though he had an idea of what the constellations across the heavens were even called. “Stop being so stubborn and marry me instead,” he says in gentle waves, almost careful. He pushes you backward in order to meet you eye to eye. “What better way to fuck with them than to marry the strongest man alive?”

You sniffle. This is tradition. Keep your eyes on the ground.

“I cannot marry you, Satoru.” 

Your mother’s words echo in your head, like distant gunshots, You are unworthy. You will never live up to Gojo Satoru. To bask in his presence is a luxury. Know your place.

Satoru looks at you displeased. You scoff inwardly. He is so, very, terribly cruel to you even when you’re most vulnerable. You want to hate him so much that it hurts—but you don’t know how to. You’re wrapped around his finger and like him, unaware of just how far you’d go just to appease him, just to feel as though you could have a place in his world.

You are nothing and you will stay nothing. You are worthless. Know your place.

“Why not?” Toothy grin. You were trying to stifle your tears, and he’s out here looking as if this is just another day in his life. The moonbeams never fail to weave wonders whenever they shine on his hair; he looks exceptionally, undeniably lovely. Like milky streaks of the lune. “Think about it. You’d get out of there. We can reform the world however we please. Maybe I’ll kill your mother for you. You won’t miss her.”

You stare at him as if he’s a mad scientist professing profusely incoherent formulae of topics barely comprehensible; and although you know that that’s exactly what he is, he couldn’t possibly be serious. There was no way in whichever universe that his words rang true—not when he’s always been cruel. Not when he’s said these before and done nothing to show for it. Not when his promises have always been empty, hollow, selfish.

You deflate alongside with the wind. “You should choose the people you associate yourself with. It would be too much of a burden for you to marry one as weak as me, no?”

There’s a shift in his reaction, a sudden surge of irritation, it’s palpable and thick that you couldn’t bear to even remain near him so much that you take a step back. It happens quietly. A breeze swishes through and he purses his lips into a thin line, bathing underneath the light of the sky once more, but unmoving this time. It happens quietly. You wonder if this is his anger—if it is, then it’s just as beautiful as he is, and you hate it—or if this were just another one of his cold, blatant personas, reserved for those he despises. It happens quietly. Maybe he despises you.

A hitch gets caught up inside his throat, and you barely notice it. “Since when has that been,” Satoru hisses, wrapping one arm around your back, “for you to decide?”

The wind whistles past again and the two of you are near the edge of the cliff, free to fall anytime if either of you choose to make the wrong move, but instead you’re focused on each other, both fiercely trying to figure out what to make of this conversation: you’re certain now that you hit a nerve, but it’s unfair—he’s been insufferable, for almost two decades now, but you’ve never been in the position to complain. His eyes meet your own and you fixate your gaze on the space in between his. Decades have passed, and yet you are unable to look at him, still. You stare each other down, neither of you refusing to yield.

Until—surprisingly enough—he does. It’s his turn to keep his eyes glued to the ground.

(Satoru is the first one to look away, but the both of you know who truly lost.)

“Doesn’t matter if you’re weak or strong.” I’m always going to be stronger. An unspoken thing. He interlocks your arms together, drawing out a small squeal of surprise from you, “I still have to do my job, either way.”

Before you could ask him what happened, the same feeling from earlier surrounds your body; the flow of his cursed energy rendering you speechless for the nth time that night. In a matter of seconds, you’re back to your room, and the clock is only further adding to your anxiety with its constant ticking. 

“Satoru.” You mumble out, tugging on his jacket. “What’s going on?”

When Satoru quickly lets go of your arm, the cold seeps through your bones more quickly this time.

“Whatever. It’s nothing.” He whispers, getting ready to part ways, “just think about what I said.”

―――

In dreams, the both of you fall off the cliff in Mount Ena and you are able to experience what it feels like to be at peace. In dreams, Satoru is as strong as he says and he does not hold back from saving you; he is not broken and torn and as weak as you are. He is whole, he does not mask away his mourning, and he does not put you on the receiving end of his cold blue eyes. 

―――

“Okay,” You reach out for a hair tie, leaving it hanging on your lips while your hands work to comb your hair, “and then what happened?”

Looking forward, you watch the sunshine bounce on the frame of your silver laptop; although the corners were riddled with scratches from being overused, you brushed over that detail and stared at your screen once more. Painted across the surface of your monitor, Gojo Satoru looks even more unreal; the years have made themselves apparent on his skin, but not in a way that made him look unflattering. Not exactly. Not in the slightest, even.

“I exorcized it, of course.” He shrugs. Based on the interface, Satoru was inside his room, wearing an exhausted white shirt with noticeable folds on it. “When a curse is about to swallow a colleague, I don’t think there’s anything else you can do.”

You roll your eyes, sticking your tongue out at him. “Smartass. I was making an effort to sound invested in your story over here.”

Satoru feigned offense, his hand clutching the left part of his shirt. If you could see through the bandages wrapped neatly around his eyes, you knew you’d be facing the most sour eyebrow furrow in the entire world. You chuckle silently at the thought of that.

“Are you telling me you’ve been faking the whole time?” He shakes his head. “And here I thought we were having a nice conversation. Am I not enough for you these days?”

You hum in response, watching him spiral down within his faux dejection even more. “These days? Please, Satoru. You know I never would have been interested in you if not for my family duty.”

The both of you throw your individual arguments back and forth, not once pausing to take in a breath in fear that you’ll be forced to log out of your Skype account again any second now. The blue frames in your screen taunt you as you brush your hair: and you stare at them, at Satoru as well, memorizing each pixel as though this would be the last time you’re seeing it.

Life within the Heiwa clan estate was humbling, but not frugal. Of course, your family lived off of generational wealth and as well as the livelihood of the sorcerers in the clan; there weren’t many, but there were some. You knew that your older sister was one—Kameko, who was recently widowed—and you knew that one of your younger sisters was set to become a sorcerer as well; a few aunts and uncles, but none relevant enough to remember the name of. Technology was still widely new to the clan, and quite frankly, it wasn’t as accessible as you and your sisters had hoped. Even the laptop you were using now was a present from Satoru nearly a year ago.

Now, at age 24, over two years after the events in Mount Ena, you put on your most vibrant satin dresses all for the sake of landing a suitor. Your name was still clouded with bad rep, and yet the search did not yield; your mother, ever stubborn and ever prideful, would not let one of her daughters forget, after all, that they will suffer the same fate she did. 

“You are so dramatic.” You finally say after a while, leaning comfortably against your chair. You watch the ends of his lips curve up to form a smile, unfolding his arms in order to lay them quietly by his side. 

“Theatrics have never hurt anyone,” he leans forward, his face taking up most of the screen. You scrunch your nose. “Not that you would know, anyway. Have you even stepped foot inside a theater?”

“Hey! You know I’m a homebody.”

“Are you? I think you stay at home because they don’t allow you to leave,”

Satoru grins at you even as your glare pierces through his screen. You choose to ignore it, instead basking in the comfortable silence that followed suit. You turn towards the mirror situated right next to your device, soon picking up your brush again and dabbing it lightly into the powder; soon bringing it up to dust your face with the mixture. Satoru watches you idly.

You know he’s about to ask what you’re preparing for again when he attempts to open his mouth; but you stumble over yourself, you sputter out words faster than he could, “Fushiguro! He’s—Well…how is he?”

He purses his lips to a thin line, studying you through his side of the screen. The warm breeze of summer swishes through your room, billowing the puffy cloak wrapped around your shoulders. You pondered if your screen had lagged again; but you knew Satoru simply took his time.

After a while, his shoulders slump down and he leans against his chair. “He’s doing okay. You can call him Megumi, you know. He doesn’t mind.”

“You sure?” You pout. “I haven’t met him in person yet. I’m not even sure if we’re friends.”

As soon as you finish talking, the sorcerer flares up with laughter, his laptop nearly falling off his desk when he slammed his palm on top of it. You tilt your head to the side, defensively holding your cheek brush in front of you. “What are you laughing so hard for?”

“Man, you’re really worried about whether or not you’re friends with an eleven year old.” Satoru combs through his hair, shaking his head. “You must have nothing to do over there.”

There are three blunt knocks on your door, and all too quickly, one of your sisters peeks inside your room to gesture you out, brows glued together. Yua’s fingers furl and unfurl themselves; you hear Satoru humming in confusion, something-something What’s the matter? What’re you looking at? You tune him out, surprisingly enough. When your sister finally takes her leave, your grip on your brush tightens. You dwell over that simple thing for a few seconds—you hate it, you finally ascertain, you detest the way you hold onto things tighter than you should. You peer at Satoru, and you realize you do the same thing with him. Your mother did it too. She held onto teacups, fans, wrists with a death grip as proof that she had control, authority over mundane things, as if mundanity was the only thing she had.

You put a pin on it. Spiraling down was out of the question today.

“Hey.” You start, finding it rather difficult to string your sentences together. “I have to…go. Somewhere. I have to get going.”

He stares at you for a while.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Satoru grins, propping his chin atop his palm. He shakes his head. “No, actually—you know what? You look like I just asked you to marry me again.”

When you laugh, it rings insincerely against Satoru’s ears. For a moment, his face twists into a brief expression of distaste, you immediately know he doesn’t like it.

“Yeah.” You raise your hand, waving dismissively. “Don’t miss me too much, okay? Be careful over there.”

Satoru clutches the left part of his shirt again, now without a look of disbelief to accompany it. In its stead, a smile rests on his lips, his other hand presumably reaching for his computer’s mouse. “Can’t promise you that. I’ll see you around.”

The line ends after that. It was an unspoken rule between the two of you: you could call him whenever you needed a distraction at any point of the day, but he has to be the one who ends it. Something about him knowing you’ll end it as soon as you start to shy away. Something about not wanting you to hide away from him as well.

You close the lid of your laptop. It was an unspoken thing as well, you thought; the way you knew, almost instinctively, that Satoru was always going to be careful for the rest of his life.

―――

The train hums down, the faint squeals from before blending into the sound of the bustling station in the heart of the city. You pull your hat further down, waiting for the other passengers to finish pushing themselves out of the train. In your head, you remind yourself that this is unlike quaint Nakatsugawa; no, Nakatsugawa had less than 100,000 in population—Tokyo had millions. If you lag behind now, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.

Still, you swallow thickly; it’s completely normal for your legs to feel like they’re about to give up, right?

You stand abruptly from your seat in the train, now holding onto one of the handles to keep your balance. The line towards the exit was relatively neat, but you could subtly feel people shoving each other in order to finally get out of the cramped space. You knew that Tokyo’s morning rush hour was hectic as hell, but you had nothing to base it on back at home; had you known it would have been this bad, you would have opted for an earlier ride.

You string together small Excuse me’s and Sorry’s as you make your way out of the crowd, clutching your bag closer to your chest. In exchange, you receive a bunch of Get out of my way’s and Watch where you’re going’s. Neat. City folks are interesting.

Once you are finally able to step foot outside of the public transport, you heave a sigh. Within mere seconds of your arrival, you see Satoru—clad in a black sweatshirt, plain black jeans, and a black mask over his eyes in lieu of the usual white bandages—waving at you in the distance, soon showcasing a small salute.

The sun was not at its peak yet, and you already felt like melting. Nine feet away, Gojo Satoru still resembled the annoying kid you grew up with. Though he was taller now, and maybe stronger as well, he looked no different from how you remember him. He fashions a shit-eating grin, his free hand hidden inside his pocket; you wave back at him, jogging towards his direction with a smile etched on your expression as well.

“Look at you, city girl,” he shoots you a wink, “How was your trip?”

You give him a light slap on his shoulder, more relieved than you are annoyed. It’s been a year and a half since you last saw Satoru in person; up until now, it had mostly been video calls on Skype or continuous emails. He’s been busy with work (“Tokyo’s a shitstorm right now. You wouldn’t get it.”) , and you’ve been busy with preserving the estate (“Clearly you haven’t seen Nakatsugawa during winter.”); so when the opportunity came up, the opportunity being your mother heading to Osaka to meet with some relatives, you contacted him immediately and got on a train bound to the beloved capital—consequences be damned.

“It was a bit cramped in there, but I managed.” You reply, proudly patting your bag as though it were your chest. “Do you mind if we eat first before I show you my itinerary, Satoru?”

Interlocking his arm with yours, he hums, “I do mind, actually. I have an itinerary of my own, so you better adjust your pace to mirror mine, sweetheart.” Satoru, ever the menace, drags you forward with him without even letting you protest—combing through the sea of people quickly, checking every now and then to see if you were still conscious.

You were going to kill him before the day ends. The both of you know that. You tug on his hand. He stops walking.

Then, Satoru cocks an eyebrow. “What?”

“I’m seriously going to pass out if I don’t eat,” you reply, your voice slurring around the edges, ”I know you’d hate that. So, please?”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes, dragging you to the nearest vending machine, slipping in a few coins in order to get you a tuna sandwich. You flick the back of his head.

“What was that for?” He exclaims, smoothing out the folds on his sweatshirt.

Grumbling, you reluctantly take the sandwich he acquired, stuffing it inside your satchel. “You’re so stingy, Satoru. Can’t even take me to an actual restaurant.”

He winks at you again, before nudging your sides. Your irritation slowly bubbles up inside.

“That’s for tonight, baby.” The nickname makes you blush, but you try to pay little attention to it. “I told you, didn’t I? I have an itinerary of my own.”

— ꕤ —

Your first few hours in the city go swimmingly. Satoru makes sure to hold you close enough to him, especially during hectic crowds, so that you don’t get lost and get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

As it turns out, Satoru wasn’t talking out of his ass; he did have an itinerary. He planned the whole day, in fact, down to the tourist spots to visit, to places to eat during lunch, snack time, and dinner. See, he’s never been one for planning—thinks that spontaneity has its own quirks to it, something something—so it surprises you, beyond reasonable belief, when he pulls out a sheet of paper (neatly folded, too!) from his back pocket. He doesn’t show you anything specific on the page, but you steal a few glances midway and make out the time slots allotted to each activity he had scheduled for the day.

It’s precise and actually coherent.

(You have two theories. First: he somehow got Megumi to draft it out for him, either through coercion mixed with extortion or annoying persuasion. Second: trip-planning is unexpectedly another one of his natural, god-given talents.)

(The latter is most likely the answer, but it feels ridiculous to admit.)

He took you to the former Yasuda garden, firstly. He had signed the two of you up for a full tour beforehand, and he even took you straight to the stalls lined up near the entrance in order to purchase a variety of memorabilia and souvenirs. You were opposed to the idea of visiting a garden at first, especially since you already see enough plants back at home anyway, but Satoru promises to make it worth your while.

And, he delivers. You end up crying amidst the shrubberies. The green is so terribly, wonderfully healthy that you fall apart. (“Don’t you think it’s poetic, Satoru? Healthy roots still run through the ground of this land, in spite of the blood and anguish it’s witnessed before.”) (“Please stop crying. The other tourists are staring.”)

You end the tour on a good note. He buys you pastries from the vendors nearby. 

Next, he warps the two of you down to the Kameido Tenjin Shrine in Koto City, which wasn’t a far jump from Sumida, but he insists that there isn’t time to lose today. The token purple flowers from the garden there were out of season, but he pulls out a shard of hardened resin from his pocket: inside, there are violet wisteria flowers, pressed and dried and pretty, it makes you swoon. There’s a chain attached to the top of the shard, and you realize shortly after that it’s meant to act as a necklace. (“It’s unorthodox, I know. But I heard it’s trendy these days to propose without a ring.”) (“I’m not marrying you. Thanks for the necklace, though!”)

You take a lot of photos with him. Next to a random tree, next to the tall walls surrounding the shrine, next to the field of not-so-blossoming flowers. In most of the pictures, you and Satoru smile as wide as the other, and his arm is covertly wrapped around either your shoulder or your waist.

Nakamise shopping street was the third place on the list, apparently. Before you went there, the two of you spent a few minutes (close to an hour) wandering around the food vendors, trying out street food and beverages. Satoru pays for everything, unsurprisingly. Something about being ‘loaded as hell’? You tried your hardest to tune out his cockiness, so you remain unsure.

Once you reach Asakusa, minutes begin to drift to hours. The two of you spend an awful lot of time hanging around each nook and cranny of every intriguing store.

By the end of it, Satoru warps out momentarily to drop all of you guys’ shopping bags to his apartment. His absence is brief, but you feel it strongly. When he returns to you after no more than five minutes, you cling onto his arm as you weave through the busy crowd.

The afternoon sun strikes through your pupils, but you think it to be lackluster next to the way Satoru smiles at you. 

— ꕤ —

Hours after that, you feel your entire body closing in on you. 

And that shouldn’t even be possible.

After visiting the busy shopping district, Satoru teleports the both of you to a restaurant. Chanko Tomoegata. Sumida again, according to the sign, and the aroma immediately flows through the air when you enter, so much so that it makes your mouth water. You don’t realize just how tired you are. Not until you sat down in one of the empty booths, your feet finally finding some remedy beneath the warm cloth of the kotatsu. 

When your forehead meets the top of the table, it’s enough for Satoru to realize that you’ll be out of it until further notice: so he orders on your behalf, beaming at the waiting staff. You tune him out.

Minutes later, when the steam worms its way to cloud your face, you raise your head only to be greeted with the sight of your companion watching a video on his cellphone. You yawn, before stretching your limbs out. “How long was I out?”

“About fifteen minutes. The pork’s almost done cooking.” He tells you, stirring the pot situated in front of you two. 

You blink twice, adjusting your eyes to the light of the room. “Are we heading to your place after this?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll pour my soup down your pants. Tread lightly.”

“I’m joking!”

“It wasn’t funny!”

Satoru pokes you with his elbow, a smile gracing his lips. He shrugs after that. “We’re not heading back just yet. We still have to visit one more place. And then I’ll let you steal my bed for the night. Alright?”

Satisfied, you nod. “Alright.”

You don’t say much after that, too exhausted to strike up another topic. You’ve been talking to Satoru non-stop ever since you got to Tokyo, and although the two of you were technically catching up because you haven’t seen each other in months, his affinity for being absolutely insufferable for no reason drained you out impeccably. 

When you feel as though you’re back to being a functioning human being (and not an empty battery shell), you take in the ambiance of the restaurant. Chanko Tomoegata is a fairly small restaurant, with quaint interiors and a lively staff to juxtapose the plain, cozy feel of the place. The cloth entrance to the restaurant is bordered with a red wooden doorframe, a few festive ornaments positioned near the windows and doors, signifying the coming holidays. The place is crowded tonight, mostly by couples and families. It has a certain familiarity to it—this restaurant, as though people have come here time and time again and worn out the furniture enough to make the room scream home. It’s a silly thought. You get lost in it, anyway.

“You okay?” Satoru asks you, after minutes of evident silence, momentarily dropping the stirring spoon down on the small plate right next to the pot. “Are you really that tired? You want me to carry you later?”

His question elicits a small laugh from you. “No, it’s fine. I’m just a bit tired.” Shaking your head, you think you like how he cares about you. Satoru is typically very affectionate, but often he hides it under the guise of being unbearable, so it appears unapparent. But you know he cares, he shows it during moments that matter: maybe not through words all the time, but it’s always been enough for you.

It takes you back to your childhood with him, more than anything. Cheek pokes in the library, distasteful jokes when you’re crying, hiding your plant seeds from you when you’re sick. Tasting food first for you, getting you a glass of water when you’re tired. Folding your blanket in the morning.

You sigh. He does a lot for you.

“Do you ever miss it?” Choosing your next words, you lean your head against his shoulder. “Nakatsugawa, I mean. Our estate. You used to stay there a lot.”

Satoru sends you a questioning stare. “I don’t go there for the estate, so why would I miss it?” After that, he flashes you a cheeky grin, his chin perched atop his palm. He plays with the straw of his drink. “Is that your silly way of asking if I miss you?”

Your cheeks flush a light shade of red. Embarrassed, you turn away from him, training your focus on the bowl of food presented neatly in front of you. You huff. He was being annoying, as usual. It’s not like you wanted to know if he missed you just as much as you missed him. No, not really. Not at all. You pick up your chopsticks, deciding to dig into the hot pot already as a way to ease the feeling of having his attention fall all on you. “No. I was just wondering, idiot. You’re so full of yourself.”

Satoru pouts. “How can you say that, when I’m paying for this sick ass meal?”

“I can say what I want!”

“And you say I’m the one who’s full of myself.”

You stick your tongue out at him after that. He chuckles lightly, taking hold of one napkin and using it to wipe the broth beside your lips. It’s a simple thing, and you’re used to it, so your cheeks cooperate with you this time around. You don’t blush a deep shade of red, but you feel your pulse beating through the cuffs of your jacket. Satoru hums a tune under his breath. You try to focus on that instead.

“Have you been eating well?” He asks, suddenly. “Or are you skipping your meals again?”

You ponder on his question for a bit, before answering, “I’ve been eating better, I suppose. You know, I cook my own food now.”

The young God grins again, and then he reaches out to pat your head. He keeps doing this when you two are together—touch you, hold you, anywhere. Satoru is typically very affectionate. It could just be his pinky finger grazing the back of your hand, it could be his palm finding its place on top of your head, or his arms snaked around your waist. It was always like this, in recent years. You’re used to Satoru living loudly, but you’ve come to notice that he lived especially obnoxiously around you. It’s an intimate thing. You understand why, but it’s foreign, still.

“That’s good to hear. Don’t want you passing out under the sun when you’re gardening, now, do we?” Satoru chuckles, later straightening his posture and picking up the chopsticks that were laid out for him, too. He breaks it apart, before blowing the steam off the bowl he served himself. “You’ve got to cook for me sometime, nerd.”

You roll your eyes. “Why would I do that?”

“‘Cause I told you to, of course.” He sips his broth. “Can you say no to this gorgeous face?”

“Quite easily, actually.”

“Come on!"

— ꕤ —

The darkness combs through the sky faster than you’d realized, and the cool air it brought along squeezes itself through the slits of your clothes. You stare down at the world, from over 400 meters above the ground, with your hands clasped tightly on top of your chest.

Below you, the city twinkles like minute christmas lights, flickering all over. In fractions of different hues, blinking towards the next and the next and the next, until it all blends into a portrait of frenzied gradients. They glimmer all over, and it’s difficult to find a focal point.

So, you choose to stare at the most beautiful thing, instead. You lean the back of your head against the glass, and then you train your eyes to Satoru, beaming. “I don’t know how I can enjoy my hometown after this. I love it here.”

“I keep telling you.” He bumps his shoulder against your own one. “You should just marry me. You won’t need to go back there if you do.”

Before exiting the restaurant earlier, Satoru specifically waited for the daytime sun to dip down the horizon. The setting sun colored the clouds with a duller shade of orange as you were walking towards your next destination, blending into the golden hues of the sky perfectly as eventide neared. You remember distinctly—he reached out to take off the fabric masking his eyes, eyelids relaxing upon being touched by the sun’s rays. The blue in his eyes mirrored the vibrance so perfectly well; it fluidly circled around his pupils each time he directed his attention elsewhere, pristine and wonderful and startlingly beautiful. 

Satoru has always been lovely; his eyes, most especially. Unmasked, they looked up from the depths and immediately caught the sun: and somehow Satoru was able to shine along with it. Somehow somehow somehow. 

You sigh in displeasure. Now, at Tokyo Skytree, the top floor is devoid of other people. The halls are empty, save for the two of you, and it evokes a specific kind of anxiety and peace at the same time. You're not quite sure what to make of it yet, but you know there's satisfaction underneath it all. In that moment, in the one you’re in now, and perhaps in more moments to come, you could think of nothing else that you would want more than being able to be an onlooker for the way Satoru effortlessly dares to be the most beautiful man alive. You think you might deserve it. You would like to feel like you do, maybe one day, maybe now, maybe soon enough. 

But you don’t. What have you done to deserve someone as grand as him? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Your head throbs, so much so that you remember the words of your mother. You think you might deserve it—what? What do you deserve? Remaining to be within reach enough to watch Satoru from afar? A scoff wants to escape your throat, and you hate how easy it is to mock yourself over your desires. Meek as they are. When it comes to him, there is no question of what you deserve. The only thing that matters is if he has gotten tired of having you around. It is not a question of whether or not you are worth something to him—no, not really—because so long as he thinks your companionship is necessary, then there should be no complaints on your end. You don’t deserve to be his friend, and yet you are, so you swallow the pain even if it tastes like tiny shards of glass. You are worth nearly nothing, and yet he spends his money on you as though you aren’t. So, what? Be thankful, then. Say nothing and be thankful. That’s all there is to it.

You do not deserve him. It doesn’t make sense for you to deserve him. One as weak as you and one as strong as him? No. No. No. It wouldn’t make sense. No. Not really.

You should just marry me. He says it so often, but he doesn’t mean it. Satoru doesn’t owe you honesty; that’s why he keeps asking, no? On some level, he knows the tradition just as well as you do. He keeps proposing because you keep shooting him down. Your rejection is inevitable, and he gets to live normally the next day. Satoru does not love you enough to take you seriously. He cares about you, that much you are certain, but he does not love you enough to offer you truth. 

But you do.

“I am already engaged to a man from the Zen’in clan.”

Quiet.

You refuse—no, incorrect—you can’t look him in the eye. You can’t bring yourself to. “We are to be wedded in two years.”

You say this in a way that evidently shows that you’re waiting for a reaction from him. Anything, really. Satoru knows you more than anyone in the world, which meant that he knew the ins and outs of everything that went on inside your head. He probably already knows that you don’t want this marriage. He knows that you’re doing this for your mother. 

He knows that you cannot verbally tell him all of these things, and he knows you are waiting for him to make the first move. It’s a silly thing, really. Awaiting his compassion. As though you deserve to have it. 

(You don’t. Nobody does. Gojo Satoru does not owe the world anything at all.)

The city lights continue twinkling underneath, and it’s starting to feel more like chaos.

Though Satoru’s grin stays plastered on his expression, and it grounds you. “That doesn’t sound like a no.”

―――

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m s-

The hurt does not subside regardless of how relentless your pleas are. You keep your eyes shut: as though doing so would help you tune out the world around you.

It doesn’t. It will never.

“Should’ve known you would be a failure,” the ghastly widow says, loose hair curled up against her sweaty forehead. She nibbles on the tips of her fingernails, pacing around the room tirelessly, the heavy pounding of her steps posing as enough reason for one to avoid the room the two of you were locked in. Your yukata rises above your knee, barely covering each patch of cold violet; they are reminders. Reminders of all the times you have failed the family. “Should not have put it past you to be such a disgraceful whore. Had I intervened sooner, I—” Your mother clutches the skin of her cheeks tighter than anything else she’s ever touched. “—I could have stopped this from happening. You could have been sold off to another clan. I would not have to be stuck with you.”

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I never meant to-

The wedding has been postponed. Somehow, the announcement hurts the mother of the bride more than it should— way more than it should. The elders from the Zen'in clan are on the brink of pulling out your supposed fiancé and calling off the ceremony altogether as soon as they found out about your trip to Tokyo with none other than Satoru. The rest is history. Now, your mother yells as if she has no more daughters left to pawn off to disgusting rich men; like she has realized that her appearance alone is enough to scare a toddler; like she has finally gone mad, once and for all.

Inwardly, you snort. No. Heiwa’s widow has been mad long before she was the clan’s matriarch.

“They think two years is enough to tighten you up.” 

Tighten you up because you have been sullied by Gojo Satoru. What good is having a whore for a wife? Give her two years more. That ought to make her clean enough to marry. 

Gojo Satoru. Satoru. Your Satoru. He’s not here, he’s not anywhere, he’s nowhere to be found. Where is he? You don’t bother whispering it out; your voice can’t take it, anyway. Where is he? He’ll get here soon. I know he will.

“How long will I be stuck with you? How long until you run back to that arrogant man and restart the process all over again?”

She walks closer towards you, kneeling on the floor. It’s quick. She makes it quick enough. She gathers her hands and she places it around your cheeks. Takes hold of your temple soon enough. Quick. She makes it quick. She runs her hands through the sides of your head and then she pulls your hair—you hear your scalp tearing out, and a scream dies down in your throat—she cries with her forehead placed directly in front of yours. Quick. Quick. Quick. The pain lingers but her fingers leave the scene in an instant.

The ghastly widow stands up and she turns her back on you, her face nears the crackling embers of the fireplace. You pray for her to be one with the ashes.

“You will never learn, will you?” She shakes her head. You watch from your corner in the room, folding yourself smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. “What must I do to make sure it sticks?”

Her hands find a home in the fire poker beside the spare wood in the room, keenly soaking it into the flames. 

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I never did anything wrong. Where is he? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.

“Yes, yes, yes, that.” She cackles. Sobs wrack through your whole body. “If I write it in seething characters, maybe he’ll leave you alone.”

I never did anything wrong I never did anything wrong I never did anything wrong I never did anything wrong I never did anything wrong I never did anything-

Your mother has always had sharp eyes, and you used to think they burned you like no other.

She makes you eat your own words when the poker carves through the skin of your shoulder, hot and sharp and slow. She hums a quiet tune under her breath, her free hand holding you in place as she engraves your skin with marks that’ll stay. It burns. 

Quick. Quick. Quick. The pain is slow but your mother is quick with writing. En - Mei. The name of your betrothed. 

The ghastly widow looks like your mother, but she is anything but. You stay rotting in that corner for weeks. The ghastly widow forgets where she left you. 

―――

The name forged on your shoulder continues to sting months after it was burned. Not because the scar still hurts, but because you’re unsure of what Satoru would think if he knew you had a man’s name eternally drawn on your skin. Could you still be his? Would he even want you?

―――

The crown molding is barely visible now that the ornaments are there to cover them. Truth be told, no amount of gold in the world could make you like the interiors of this place, anyway. The guests were widespread across the hall, each one either trapped in conversation with clan elders, stuffing their faces with the food served on nearly a dozen tables, or gushing about the portrait of you and your betrothed on the wall.

The party’s boring. You’re sitting beside your supposed husband; people are rushing over to talk to Enmei, and you’re barely there to them, they barely spare you a minute of their time, much less a second glance. You fear the day you’d get brushed over completely and be regarded as nothing more than just his wife, albeit you already knew that this is ultimately the beginning of the rest of your life.

“Why the long face?” You snap your head immediately to the source of voice, already feeling more upbeat. “You’re going to get uglier if you keep at it.”

“Satoru…” You smile, your shoulders relaxing. “You’re here.”

“Well, obviously. Did you secretly have me banned, or something?” Satoru doesn’t even look at Enmei, but you can see through the corner of your eyes that the latter’s not too happy to see your friend.

“I’d ban you as loud as I can, if possible. Surely, you know me better than that?” You patronize.

He doesn’t take his sweet time trying to humor your request for an argument, instead offering you his palm, now standing upright in front of you. “Why don’t we take advantage of the music,” he gestures to the dance floor, “for old time’s sake?”

Politely, you give your fiancé a small smile, only to acknowledge his presence, before reluctantly placing your hand on top of Satoru’s. There’s friction at first, and you feel almost scared to completely graze his skin; but he takes the opportunity to beat you to the tackle by fully entwining your fingers together, now trailing behind him as he led the both of you to the middle, where the other dancers were.

“You allowed me through infinity again,” you smile at him, sounding almost solicitous, though he knew you well enough not to let it get to him. “I must be very special, huh.”

“Not really.” He clicks his tongue, playfully spinning you around, readying himself to reiterate the same thing he’s been saying since you two were six years old. “You don’t pose a threat. You’re still much weaker than me.”

He puts his free hand on top of your waist thereafter; the music slows down, and the both of you melt into it. The silence is obscure tonight. He’s not talking, though he doesn’t at all look disinterested; you like him better when he cares, you take note, enjoying the way he’s hesitating to pull you towards him. You don’t miss a beat—you’re the one who takes the initiative this time, the desire to spread the remnants of his cologne on your dress growing at a rapid rate. You’re dancing with Gojo Satoru, unarguably the strongest man alive, but you want so much more of him that it still doesn’t feel enough.

“It isn’t too late to take me up on my offer, you know.” He grins, it’s frivolous and light, far too casual that you want to wipe it off his expression on the spot. He sways you on the dance floor, lips moving dangerously close beside your ear, “Why don’t you marry me instead?”

The world is steadily crumbling down and you’re letting it. The walls aren’t walls at this point, they’re something out of a dream, or a nightmare, and the paper’s tearing off with each step the two of you take in sync. The whispers around the room are dying down; you’re trying to think of the time that the voices weren’t so brittle. 

You don’t want to look around the room and lock eyes with the people you could never disappoint; so you keep your gaze on him, on Satoru, your Satoru, with your lips quivering ever so lightly. He does not miss the way it does. 

“Satoru.” Your breathing is growing erratic. “I’ll do it.”

He looks pleasantly surprised; almost satisfied with your answer, though the way he dips you down is quick and brisk and it does not spare you a second longer to figure out exactly what expression he adorned as soon as you responded. The world is continuously shattering into smaller pieces: he isn’t ready to pick them up for you just yet. Satoru’s clutch on your waist tightens; he’s getting so painstakingly close, you could feel the intensity of the room thickening. All eyes on the two of you.

“Just what is your family subjecting you to,” he pauses, his breath tickling your neck, “for you to become so desperate?”

You should hate him for that, but you reserve your anger for the day he doesn’t speak the truth. He’s right. You were desperate. He knew how to get the answers out from you with just his stupid, little jokes. They hurt less than staying in this life: than staying and taking all the burns and reading every single book they ask of you all because you must, and not because you can. Sick and tired of tossing and turning every night, wishing for some miracle, wishing to wake up in another person’s body. You were—you are—so, so desperate to get out. You’ve endured long enough, haven’t you? The burns on your shoulders are an indication of all that you have given up. Have you not paid more than what you are worth? 

You try to give him a genuine chuckle, though it falls flat. As if I could tell him all of those things. “Am I engaged to two people now?” 

He holds you closer than ever; even with the fabric around his eyes, you could make out his impossibly perfect pupils, wishing inwardly to see it—one last time, before the walls of Enmei’s abode cave in to gradually replace the world you’ve worked so hard on to establish. In the end, it’s true: Gojo, however strong, however powerful, is not mandated to save you, will not benefit from wasting time in order to pull you out of your situation, will never marry you no matter how many times he asks for your hand.

“No,” Satoru’s close, too close, and he’s getting your hopes up with every second that his fingers remain wrapped around yours. “Just one.”

―――

But Satoru doesn’t come back for you after that.

You lay still in the cold corner of the estate, where the empty patch of soil used to be, watering the flowers, the shrubs, the seedlings that would eventually grow to be trees. Hours spent curling and uncurling your toes on steel dry grass, green and prickly and riddled with weeds you’re too exhausted to pull out. Hours spent starting the day seated on the bridge across the pond, hours spent staring at the sun until the light couldn’t pierce through your irises anymore. Days pass by until they turn into grueling weeks that you wind up forgetting. Satoru doesn’t come back to you. Weeks turn into colder months and you think you’d soon forget the shape of his face—eternally erased from your mind, but only because attempting to remember it only further contorts the idea of him you’ve built up for two decades now.

The young God looks human, and most days he is.

In hush murmurs, the servants gossip about Gojo Satoru and the adventures he gets himself into each day: he exorcized a curse in the middle of the sea, he paraded around an abandoned village killing curses left and right with no second to spare, catching rays of the pale moonlight in his eyes each time he fights someone at dusk. Master Gojo probably won’t be visiting for a while. Did you hear? He brought in a new student. Took him in this month even though the kid stuffed a bunch of his classmates in a locker.

Everyone was keenly updated with everything that he did: he lived loudly, unapologetically. Occupied an unusually large space. If he had most of the world wrapped around his finger, where did that leave you?

Maybe you were coiled around his arm, obsessively finding a place to melt in on his palm. Hands roaming around his shoulder, clinging onto it for dear life, because that’s all you’ve ever known. You grew up knowing you could never be worthy of him and yet you think you are important enough to save. You aren’t.

Gojo Satoru has always been unblinking, restless, and you have always been easy enough. Back then, it used to feel like he was millions of worlds away from you, and on some level you know that to be true, but he has been close to you more times than you can count: the young God, although untouchable and great and heavenly and strong, has always been incredibly human beneath it all. Made for grandeur, too weak to take it. Onlookers watch his every move, and yet they fail to see how frail he is at the end of it all. The young God who has everything only has everything because people give him what they think he’s worth. Maybe he used to take, but now he is unmoving and relentlessly yearning, and you feel you are the only person in the world who is able to understand that.

It’s a fickle thing, his desires. He wants something one moment and then he doesn’t the next—because he thinks that is not something he should dream of deserving, thinks wanting small things would be an insult to the people who have given him more—and the cycle goes on and on. He burns like crackling firewood. Fueled by everything people drop on him.

Where did that leave you?

In Nakatsugawa, of course, hands deemed too stained and dirty so they’re tucked inside your pocket at all times. There is a ring in your finger, but the boy from the Zen’in clan thinks there could be no harm in waiting a few months longer before pushing through with the wedding. 

(He says you are past your prime, anyway. What’s a few months more?)

You don’t think he is cruel. You think he’s on the same boat as you are. Nursed with care growing up, to make imprinting clan values easier in your head; only to be tossed aside, treated like dirt, forced to face the reality of everything years later all at once, but never rebelling against the traditions you were instructed, all your life, to follow and uphold. In turn, it makes you either miserable or angry, sometimes both, sometimes numb, so it’s neither. Enmei has grown to be the spitting image of his clan elders. Snarky remarks in exchange for a few laughs. Glares that fall flat, because he is not as angry as they are. In fact, when you saw him for the first time, he looked almost as pitiful as you did—cowering underneath the gaze of those that mattered to him, shoulders slouched and tense, hands tucked inside his pockets. Like you.

But, still, he is a man, so the circumstances are different. He is treated like a savior for marrying you. You are taught to be grateful. He doesn’t understand it yet, but he is not as favored as he thinks himself to be. Because if the Zen’in clan valued him so much, then why would he be engaged to you?

His words sting, but you can’t bring yourself to resent him. It doesn’t feel worth it.

“How are your plants?”

A tiny voice, soft and beautiful, unlike anything you were used to. You don’t take your eyes off of the empty flower pot in front of you, too invested in the intricate ways it was made. You hum. “They’re fine. I can’t say much about them.”

Her shadow looks over you, until you could finally make out the silhouette of her person. Kameko, your older sister, crouches down beside you, poking through the garden tools that you had laid out on the ground earlier. “Why not?” She asks. “You don’t like them?”

“I do. I just don’t have anything to say right now. They’re fine. That’s all.”

Kameko offers you no rebuttal after that, choosing to find a place beside you on the grass in the end. She moved back into the estate a little over a week ago, and you know she’s unused to being back to this place. Kameko, your older sister, was forced to return to her little life in Nakatsugawa after her husband passed away at age 28. She’s been unsociable ever since. Cooped up in her old room, painting on empty canvases, though rarely finishing them. Or maybe you were wrong. What do you know about art? When do brushstrokes end, and when do they begin, anyway?

Your ears ring incessantly. Don’t think too much. Kameko, your older sister, probably sleeps wide awake. Encumbered by grief, dragged down by her mourning. You wonder if her baggage is heavier than yours.

After a few careful seconds, she speaks again. “Yua called me the other day. She said she’s settling in at her new house.” 

You nod. “Is that so?”

A smile takes over her lips, albeit solemn. She takes hold of the garden trowel. “Yes. She and Yasu are set to visit sometime next week, hopefully. A few days before Ichika’s wedding. That should be fun.”

You nod again. There is nothing else to draw from you.

“Are you okay?”

Another nod.

“Have you grown to resent me, too? For leaving?”

Kameko, your older sister, perfect eyes and perfect hair, the most desirable among you and your sisters, looks vulnerable and dejected but pristine and untouchable all the same. She asks you in a way that makes her voice shake, a decibel lower than usual. She had to leave; how could you hate her for that? She followed through with her obligation, duty, responsibility. Whatever. You turn towards her. An act of defeat.

You shake your head. “No, of course not.” You push the flower pot away from your hands. “Have you?”

She copies you. “No. Why would I?”

The sun kisses your forehead. You cross your legs atop the grass. Then, “I want to ask you something, if it’s alright.” She urges you to continue. “How have you been?”

She smiles at you, and you feel it might be genuine. Kameko tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, hitching the hem of her cardigan up so as to not tarnish it with dirt. “Better. Mornings are still difficult, but I’ve been missing the sun lately. I’ll be okay.”

“Are you grieving?” It’s a stupid question, you note. “Did you love him?” Better.

She looks down. “He wasn’t cruel to me.”

You tilt your head. “That’s not an answer.”

Kameko smiles vaguely at you before shrugging. You turn your focus to the grass.

God, it all felt so indisputably miserable. A life such as this. Having to settle for a husband, having to grieve for his death regardless if you loved him or not. He wasn’t cruel to me. Like that’s enough reason to grieve. He made sure I was treated fairly. Like that’s enough reason to leave home and start a family. You think, No. You don’t start a family because you are asked to carry over a bloodline. You start a family because you are ready to have an extension of yourself, to love that extension, wholly and unconditionally. You think, you think, you think. You start a family because of love. The absence of cruelty doesn’t make it love. That’s tolerance. Tolerance isn’t love. It’s one step closer to hate.

No. Don’t think too much. You do, anyway. Your mother has a penchant for grievances; thrives when other people are just as lonely as she is. That’s why things had to be this way. Kameko knows this. Yua and Yasu will come to understand soon enough. Ichika, too. Each and every one of your sisters will come to realize that being a Heiwa daughter means being forced to be one with the ghastly widow—her pain, her joy, her grief—and there will be no way around it, unless someone finally breaks the cycle. Internally, you scoff. None of you will.

“How about you? How have you been?” You’re back on earth when your sister taps your knuckles. Lightly, hesitantly. “Your friend, too. Gojo. Has he visited lately?”

The young God has other worldly problems. He does not have time to entertain you and your silly desires, whims, wishes. You wonder if Kameko knows this as well as you do. “I’m okay. Not much has changed ever since you left.” You glue your lips together tightly. “And, no. He has better things to do over at Tokyo. He hasn’t visited in a while.” A year and nine months. That’s how long it’s been.

You hear a hum from her, and then a sigh. “Do you miss him?” She asks.

Don’t think too much. You do, anyway. Gojo Satoru is fleeting and fickle and there is no one else on earth you miss more, and you want to tell your sister this—you want to tell everyone, really—but you won’t, because your longing does not have a place in this world. Don’t think too much. You miss Satoru like how the moon chases the sun. Irretrievably. You miss him because you know nothing else than that. Pining is the only thing you were allowed to do when it came to Satoru. You miss him, but this is also tradition: him leaving, you waiting for him. Satoru always comes back. Waiting has always been worth it. 

Quietly, you say, “I do.”

“Why don’t you seek him out, then?”

Because seeking him out means the hurt will be tenfold if he decides to leave. There is a certain kind of devastating vulnerability to be found when one seeks out a god, after all. You stare at your garden shears. You wish you could tell her the extent of your feelings, but your throat could not echo such words anymore. You’ve been out of commission for a while now.

You tug the sleeves of your sweater closer to your body, and you feel the etched mark on your shoulder sizzle lightly underneath. A reminder. There is a certain kind of devastating vulnerability to be found when one seeks out a god, only to be met with cold desertion.

“What would be the point of that?” The trees rustle. “He’ll leave in the end, anyway. He always does.”

“But he returns, doesn’t he?”

Don’t think too much.

“Sometimes.”

She frowns. “Are you okay with that?” It’s a stupid question.

You look down.

“He has better things to do over at Tokyo.”

Kameko tilts her head. Solemn.

“That’s not an answer.”

―――

Ichika gets married three weeks before you do and she is whisked away from the estate, quicker than you could bid farewell. The young God does not return to you, and you think yourself to be irrelevant now, so you forget the way his first name sounds on your tongue. Like commonfolk, like everyone else.

It burns you like no other.

―――

He watches you shake your head timidly, the sound of your chuckles repeating inside his head. Somewhere deep inside his ribcage, something aches terribly.

You’re all I’ve ever known. You’re all I know, nowadays, too. Each day, he finds more and more words to say to you. But I’ll lose you too, won’t I? But he speaks none of them out loud. He thinks there would be no meaning in doing so—no satisfaction, either. Just a desperate attempt to humanize himself.

He feels your hand cling tightly on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, your head finding its place on his chest. “I just thought you should know that. You’re invited, after all.”

It feels like a sick joke he doesn’t have the capacity to understand. Something aches. “I haven’t told any of my sisters yet, but I’m sure they know already. I just,” you pause, sucking in a deep breath, “I wanted to tell you this in person. I feel like I owe you that. Does that make sense?”

It does. He’s your best friend. There’s no doubt about it. He nods silently, wrapping both of his arms around your torso.

You’re all he’s ever known. But he’s losing you, too. It's happening too fast. It's happening again.

“Thank you for taking me here, Satoru.”

He hums in response. “Don’t mention it.”

“All the flowers we saw earlier were lovely, too.” You begin, the cracks in your voice growing more audible the longer you speak. “But I love this part the most. I've always wanted to see all of Tokyo with you.”

It feels like farewell. Satoru holds you tighter. “You still haven’t seen it all, you know.”

“I know.” You smile at him. He doesn’t want to let you go.

So don’t go just yet. “We’ll get together some other time, then. I’ll take you sight-seeing again.”

“You don’t have to, Satoru.”

“I’ll take you everywhere. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll be there with me?”

The view of the city from the top of Tokyo Skytree will come to haunt him in his dreams, after this. A poignant reminder of that which he left unfulfilled.

“I will. I promise.”

Gojo Satoru is twenty-eight years old and he feels as though he will grow to be no more than that.

Within the comforts of his ancestral home, he washes the blood off of his clothes. Gojo Satoru is twenty-eight years old and he is too young to have killed the one most dearest to him—but life has a way of fucking things over until the fruit is too rotten to eat, so he accepts his sins and he shoulders Geto Suguru’s suffering as well. He thinks there might be a meaning to that. Doesn’t know what it is yet, quite unsure if he’ll ever find out, and still he holds onto the sliver of hope that he will.

Unlike his boarding in Tokyo, the Gojo clan’s ancestral home in the countryside houses tall trees and dull grass, untainted with blood. The security within the estate was strict to the point of suffocation. He was the only one who knew how to bypass it. Teleport straight to the center, nine feet to the right. His designated place in the garden. A blindspot—covertly hidden from the eyes of those watching. Snow covers his hair and it soaks through the garments of his clothes as it melts slowly. Gojo Satoru is twenty-eight years old and he is filled with grief much bigger than the space he is used to occupying. Geto Suguru lies idle inside his head: his rotting corpse, the blood on his chest. Geto Suguru dies idle inside his head. Over and over. Gojo Satoru puts him out of his misery. The only person he curses is himself.

First, Gojo Satoru buries himself underneath waves and waves of his coldest regrets. One way or another, he knows he’s bound to do this; drown, that is, under a sea of everything he’s come to fall short on. So much for being the strongest sorcerer alive. He carries the suffering of everyone he has met. Doesn’t understand the weight of their crosses, though he carries them anyway. The burden that comes with wielding power—people start to forget you can only carry so much, too blinded by the light of salvation, that they disregard your well-being altogether. I will carry your crosses as if they were mine. But I will not pass onto you the weight of my pain because it is too heavy for anyone else. He is on the receiving end of everybody’s sins but he is forced to carry his own all alone. The peak is the loneliest part of the pyramid.

Second, he basks in the stillness of the wind. The trees rustle in the distance. During winter, stars are often out of sight in the sky because pounds and pounds of clouds cover them up; not a problem for the young God with Six Eyes—not a problem at all—but he wishes he could see them without feeling the ache of his ability. The hurt takes away the beauty. He knows beauty is supposed to hurt; thinks it shouldn’t be that way.

Third, he weaves through memories he’s long since forgotten while he sits in the middle of an empty garden. The servants are eating inside. It’s Christmas eve—his cousins are probably quietly whispering inside the dining hall, he wonders how many of them he’s actually spoken to. Wonders if anyone is still alive. It’s been ages since he returned to this place; Nakatsugawa had nothing to offer him, and he knows that returning here would only bring him more things to fret over. Nakatsugawa is nestled between Tokyo and Kyoto. Nakatsugawa is quaint and small, and he grew up traveling back and forth and back and forth all because people wanted to be able to meet the young God with Six Eyes. Six Eyes that glew a dazzling shade of blue. He weaves through memories but he has forgotten them long ago. He remembers only snippets of a girl and the packs of seeds he used to send out at the start and end of each season.

Gojo Satoru is twenty-eight years old and he has not allowed himself to think of you for the last two years. He can’t. The same ache resides in his heart whenever you enter his mind—even more palpable each time he remembers Geto Suguru. Two people he has lost all because of things he had no control over. So much for being the greatest person in the world. So much for being a young God. I carry so much. Too much.

You, to yourself. Suguru, to time. Gojo Satoru has lost it all and he feels his hands growing more numb by the second. The snow blankets his arms until he could no longer see the droplets of blood on them.

Gojo Satoru is twenty-eight years old and yet he feels as if he were back to being twelve. Lonely. Freezing. Indifferent. He is too young to have loved this much. Too young to have lost so much.

Last, he takes off the bandages wrapped around his eyes and he opens them and he sees the stars. Through the misty white clouds. Through the tears streaming down his perfect porcelain cheeks—chiseled and beautiful, like he was crafted by deities—and he thinks that the pain is worth it sometimes; even if it tires him out, even if it sucks him dry. He lies down on the snow until the cold has swiveled through his clothes, until the wind has carried itself in through each crevice of the fabric.

Today he had killed his one and only. Tomorrow he would see the one he wanted to love get taken away from him by another man. So much for being the strongest. I can’t even protect the people I care for. How could he deserve good things when he doesn't even know how to inflict anything other than anguish?

Today he had killed Geto Suguru and he has forced himself to stop mourning. Tomorrow he will grieve for the loss of someone else: inside his head, he imagines a version of you clad in white clothes, ornate golden jewelry, smiling through gritted teeth with makeup covering the dark bags underneath your eyes. He imagines someone else holding you close and he imagines the wince you’ll be choking yourself over for years—he knows you can’t be heard sighing, whining, complaining: knows you’re only supposed to be prim and proper—and he imagines the rising and setting of the sun and the dread that creeps in each time you wake up, only to do it all over again, over and over, tirelessly, no end. Left with no choice to endure. 

Today he had killed the second person he has ever had the pleasure of growing with. Tomorrow he will lose the first one as well.

Gojo Satoru laughs at his misfortune, the irony of it all; the bitterness coats his tongue until it’s all he could taste. The only salvation he could ever know is the end of the knife.

―――

The mirror bears your reflection, and you see the years taking its revenge on your skin.

You resemble your mother, and your loathing is spilling through the hollowness of your irises.

After Ichika’s wedding, you’ve had little to no time to care very much for yourself. Day and night, you’re out and about preparing for your wedding, getting accustomed to the traditions they so greatly uphold in the Zen'in clan. For a while, the most fulfilling thing you could do in one day was to watch the gardeners trim away the grass outside of your residence; listen to the sound of the soles of their boots crunching the crisp grass during summer, their shears flattening out the long leaves during spring, the sound of sweeping when it’s autumn.

The mirror bears nothing interesting today. It’s the day of your wedding, you’re dressed now, you have all of your jewelry embellished on your skin. All that’s left is to seal the deal and live forever as someone who can only look out of the window.

And throughout months of leaning on the window pane, hitching your kimono higher from your knees, staring blissfully as each flower blossoms and falls with the changing seasons—you’ve imagined a life where Gojo Satoru came back for you.

Most days, you imagine him knocking on your door at night, with a pack of flower seeds in his hand. He’s too prideful to give you a bouquet. You know he’d flatter you with an excuse—something, something You could grow better flowers, anyway —and you imagine him telling you to run away with him, leave everything behind the both of you and never look back; in the house you live in, nothing was worth sparing a second glance. Not since they subjected you to a forlorn life of being kept indoors. Most days, you imagine Gojo pulling you out of your prison and helping you get back to the world you carefully crafted with him in the past, when you were children.

Much to your dismay, he never did do any of those things. After years of always falling like putty in his palm, you don’t have the capacity to think that crumbs of reciprocity were ever present in even just a sliver of his person.

It’s real this time , you force yourself to think, I hate him to the point of no return.

He’s a hypocrite. He’s told you over and over and over again—you can only save those who want to be saved. You used to believe him, too. Maybe that was your fault. Or maybe it was his. Maybe your mother was right, in the end, that nothing good will bear fruit from continuing to frolic within Gojo’s world. Everything you could juice out of that pipeline was gone as soon as he graduated high school; he dignified that truth the moment the assassination attempts ceased. And while it was generally a good thing to stop fearing for your life every goddamn minute of every day, it was solemn and painful all the same: it was as though the world was made aware of how irrelevant you were to him. Maybe he screams it out. Or maybe he doesn’t talk about you at all. You don’t know which would hurt more.

Maybe that’s why he never understood. Maybe it’s his fault. Maybe it’s not yours, even though it is. How many times has he given you a chance to escape? Plenty. And yet each time he inches closer to asking the right question, you put a firm hand against his chest and you push him away: there is always hesitance, you’ve come to observe, there is always hesitance whenever he backs away. Like he could save me any time but I have always been stubborn and I have always been careful of how to be with him; because being with him is all that I know how to do and I fear that it will change the moment I say yes to the things I’ve always said no to.

Like Satoru lets himself get pushed away because love is something he does not know how to put an end to; because if he dives in, there is no guarantee that he won’t drown me with him; because I am terrified of what comes after and he knows that I am too weak to take a chance on what happens next. 

Like ‘I could save you any time, but what if I forget to love you?’

You’re pulled out when you hear the blunt sound of something solid knocking on the glass you’re too familiar with. It’s inevitable. His return, that is, because that has always been tradition. 

Your eyes fall to the floor. No higher. You try so hard to tell yourself that he's too late. 

Even in the moment, you’re reminding yourself that he's taken too many things from you. To the point that you're sick and tired of just the sight of his hand, always appearing to be there to help you, only for them to quickly turn into instruments that ultimately only mock your entire existence. Gojo has taken too many, too much, and he's about to reach out for you and add insult to injury. And you're sputtering around the room, absolutely ready to do what he asks of you. Give what he requests from you. It's not an honor anymore to be friends with the greatest man alive; it's a curse.

But he slides the window to your room open, so you begin to list down everything he's stripped away from you. The ability to accept your fate.

He's stepping closer, dusting off his shoulders, moving forward with a smile on his face and you hate it. “It's been a while, hasn't it?" 

You’re pinching your arm underneath your sleeves, wondering if you’re imagining him again, but that doesn’t even seem relevant anymore. Waiting has always been worth it, but you’re unsure if that still rings true. His return to you has always been inevitable. It’s tradition. It is. But you waited too long this time, so you remain unmoving.

“What are you doing here?” The despair you grew up with. You're breathless, you feel almost hopeful, pulling on your wedding attire to inch away from him. It does nearly nothing, but Gojo takes note of your apprehension, anyway. You do the same thing. Hope is something difficult to resist, more so when it is given by the young God.

It’s the morning after Christmas eve, and somehow the room is increasingly colder not because of the winter air or the yuletide snow: it’s the two of you, whatever pathetic tension’s circulating the area you’re both in. He’s quiet; so are you. You dislike it.

You watch him carefully analyze the room, and before you know it, he's opening your closet, he's rummaging through your clothes. But you're still there, awestruck and angry at him, for leaving you all alone for almost three years right after his promise of a tomorrow you can live with. You don't know what to say. The ability to breathe when he's around.

“Take it off.” His focus is fixated on digging through all the clothes you have. “Take off your dress.”

You don't know what he's saying—you have no idea what he's doing here, what he's referring to, what he's tormenting you for. You could hear the distant ticking of the clock on your wall, taunting you of the minutes left before you're successfully given to the Zen'in clan, but even still, you refuse to budge.

Gojo snaps his head to your direction. “Can you not hear me?” He's tilting his head to the side again, and now you want nothing more than to run to him. Gojo picks up casual clothes for you to wear and pushes them in your direction.

“Change out of your clothes.”

Nearly all of your words.

You reluctantly stand up from your dresser, loosening the knots of the ribbons tied around your dress; your waist feels free after short moments of tugging—after a while, you've stripped down to only your undershirt and white shorts, your confusion growing with each second. You haven’t seen him in three years—you’ve gone on longer with little to no contact with him, but somehow he’s returning to you this time and he’s changed; for the better, you’re still unsure, but you can see yourself in him; the dark bags under his eyes, covertly hidden beneath his mask, the faint lines on his face. Gojo looks as exhausted as you, if not more, as though he was mourning for something that he could not rest without.

“Gojo.” You whisper. “Where are you taking me?”

He helps you put on the sweater he picked out, his fingers combing through your presently-ruffled hair. He carefully places your arms through the sleeves of the top, straightening the crumples. You can’t pry your irises away from him, you realize, as though he was the flurry of fireworks that flash across the heavens during summer festivals. Not before long, he opens his mouth to respond, and in the process, raises a portion of his blindfold that covers his right eye.

“Getting you out of here.” He pauses, his breath lingers on your forehead; he’s freezing cold. “We can live in Tokyo.”

Every ounce of love you're willing to give out.

Tears are streaming down your cheeks now and he's wiping them away for you; you can't move, can't feel your legs, you feel so happy that it's utterly nauseating. He understands. Wordlessly, Gojo—no, Satoru assures you a lifetime filled with reparations of his past mistakes when he gently aids you in dressing up; sliding the jeans up to just below your torso, buttoning them close, not even attempting to joke around to thin out the tension. He takes off his mask entirely like he's done caring for whatever consequence his Six Eyes brought him. You stop yourself from counting after that. His eyes are blurry in your vision; the tears are taking up too much space, but you tell yourself with certainty anyway that his shade of blue puts to shame all scenic views you’ve seen in your life.

And he's done it, you realize, you're a goner. Satoru has taken everything from you and you're in love with him; or you were, and it’s been years since then, but now he's ready to give it all back.

Though the fight's not over, far from it—he's acting as your support as you walk around inside your room together, packing only the important things inside the duffel bag he found somewhere. Your eyes are swollen from welling up with tears. Satoru’s laughing at you. He's squeezing your hand. Calling out your name. You let him. It feels right for once, because it is, and the way it slips off his tongue reminds you of when the two of you were younger: every time he jokingly proposed, all of his antics, the competitions the two of you created and your wins and losses. The fight’s not over, though it certainly feels like time is ready to provide you two with the rest you need. The road has been treacherous, and it has been cruel to the both of you—whether together or apart, that was irrelevant. 

You think you hear him speak; low whispers of I’m sorry for leaving. You’re never going to lose me again. Promises. Short ones. I won’t leave you this time. I’ll make you happy again. We can start over. Apologies. Promises. Ones that you knew he’d fulfill. I won’t forget to love you. I won’t.

The minutes are catching up, but you have all the time in the world, and you're ready to waste it all hand in hand. The walls are falling away, the world is steadily going back to its axis. He’s aligning himself with the stars in your sky and still he’s the one scooping you in his arms. 

There’s a container in the corner of your desk, and it doesn’t take long for you to realize that he’s retrieving the pack of freshly pressed flowers, carefully placing them inside his pocket before tightening his grip on you. Then, the window slides open with a squeal again, and you're inside his arms; his shirt smells like summertime, the scent of the wind when the annuals are blooming, the distinct fragrance of wormwood—except there’s no bitterness anymore, nor will there be absence. Satoru, your Satoru, is soaring up the winter clouds with the snow blending into the shade of his hair and you decide, then and there, that you are never going to let yourself look away from him again.

―――

“Plants must hate me.”

“That’s silly. Plants don’t hate you. I’m just better than you at gardening.”

The young God shrugs nonchalantly, rattling his new pack of seeds in his hand. You are kneeled down on the ground with your knees carrying the weight of your person, desperately trying to ignore the way they ache. Gojo watches you with his shade of blinding blue, and yet you could not bring yourself to hold his stare. 

Among the two patches of soil, only one had sprouted beautifully into a herb. Yours grew to be small and short; vaguely resembling weeds more than shrubs. You recall your deal from half a year ago. ‘No more calling me weak if I win, okay?’

“This means I win, right?” Gojo starts, plopping himself down on the ground, “I win and you lose,”

Evidently, it doesn’t sting when he says it like that. You lean closer to him, trying your hardest to ascertain whether that coy smile of his was genuine or laced with mockery. He doesn’t yield, his smile growing wider the longer you keep your eyes on him. You had pretty eyes. You knew he liked your eyes just as much as you liked his.

A question comes to mind. Followed by another and another and another; until you are eye to eye with Gojo, intently focused on seeing just how long you could keep his gaze without faltering; without letting your eyes fall back down to the ground, no higher. You wonder if young Gods entertained questions from kids like you. You wonder if you two were friends. If you were, then could he keep coming back for you? Maybe he would want to.

“Are you angry?” He asks.

You shake your head, later tilting it to the side. “Why? Would it bother you if I were?”

Curious. He slowly nods his head.

“I think it would,” he musters out, poking your nose with his forefinger. You find it endearing. “Maybe. I’m not sure if I care for you yet. What do you think?”

You hum. “I think you like me.”

He gestures to you to proceed, silently pursing his lips into a thin line. You think Gojo looks best when he’s not gloating or moving. Like a neat porcelain doll. Thick white eyelashes that made him look otherworldly: he stood out, that much was true, especially considering that your clan consisted of heads of long, dark hair. He was beautiful. Always has been. You always knew that, too.

You shrug, in the end. “Not because you want to like me, but because I’m the only person you know. Can’t really like anyone else if you don’t talk to anyone else, right?”

“Okay.” Gojo pauses, almost like he was trying to make sense of what you were saying. “Then what about you?”

“I don’t know if I like you.” You test carefully, afraid of being on the receiving end of his anger. Gojo doesn’t react to that; he only keeps staring at your pupils. Like they were the most interesting things in the world. And they were. “You never seem to take me seriously.”

He’s about to respond to that, batting his eyelashes at you as though he was about to rebut your last statement. You don’t let him. Instead, you cut him off before he could even begin.

“But I like your eyes,” it’s your time to smile. “I love your hair.”

You’re betting he’s lost inside his own head, because he leans forward and you don’t want to believe that he’s doing that knowingly. You raise your hand, tracing the edges of his messy fringe, lightly patting the top of his head thereafter: and when his hair flows along the gust of wind that follows, the sunlight seeps through the strands.

You force yourself to look away from him. 

“And whenever I look at them, I think to myself—” slight pause, your finger taps his chin carefully, “maybe I could like you, too. As you are. And not because of your family name.”

The first and last time you hold his stare, Gojo decides that he’d like it if you thought of yourself as worthy of him. He’d like to be worthy of you, too. 

Salvation comes to you in the form of an empty garden and an even emptier bedroom, though Satoru promises you a lifetime’s worth of flower seeds and memories. He promises to tell you about the man he loved before. You’re unsure of who Satoru is to you, but you know you used to love him. You’re unsure if he loved you back then as well—but you know he could love you now.

The timing is off, but the two of you are happy. There is no room for complaint.

The Heiwa clan has long since banned you from ever returning to them, and you’re certain that a few of your sisters have grown to resent you for leaving; however, you know that your older sister understands, and you know that she’s working earnestly in order to help the rest of them understand as well.

Your mother has subjected herself to total isolation, and now there are rumors of the clan being dismantled altogether. Unsurprisingly, you haven’t decided yet if you’re concerned about it. Life has been slow. You’ve been walking alongside the pace it follows. None of your family members seem to be extremely concerned with getting you to come back; understandable, really. You know you wouldn’t want to come back for someone who was taken by Gojo Satoru. You know they think it best to just finally leave you alone. 

Though, even still, you think you miss the estate. Tokyo carries a vastly different aura. It was unlike Nakatsugawa. Much unlike the valley you grew up in. You think you miss the patch of dried soil there, barely fertile enough to house the flora you’re interested in growing, and you think you miss all the rooms in the estate where Satoru and you used to hide in as kids. And Satoru thinks it’s funny— hilarious, even—that you are sentimental enough to miss the literal dirt of the home that never gave you any other option than to endure. And he thinks it’s ridiculous of you to miss the rooms. He thinks it’s ridiculous of you to reminisce. If you keep holding onto the past, how are you going to move forward to the future? The past gave you nothing but grief. 

(Most days, you wonder if you could tell him the same. The past gave you nothing but grief as well, Satoru. You cannot move forward without mourning. You know that as much as I do.)

You curl your toes on the grass, barefoot and satisfied, the prickly points of the green lightly scratching the soles of your feet. How many hours a day do they try to justify their excuses? To satiate the lingering guilt, rapidly swirling inside them somewhere, because even though they did not take part in chasing away the esteemed young God’s most longest companion, they chose to watch cruelty unfold in front of them? You wonder if they resent you, too. Your grandmothers, your uncles, your cousins. Or if they blame you for having the sorcery world’s eyes on them now. Or if they even feel sorry enough to carry half the crosses you were forced to bring with you when you left.

The last one seems far-fetched, but you give them the benefit of the doubt. You forgive your mother a thousand times over because you find her pitiful the most. You forgive, in the end, even if the thought of doing so alone ravaged the entryways of your throat until it burned.

The sunlight glimmers in the distance, and you could only squint. Winter is not as harsh this year. You could make out the intricate linings of the sun even through the misty white clouds.

“Get your head back in the game, stupid girl.” Satoru waves the paddle to your direction, tossing the hago up and down to catch your attention. He’s clad in beige and muted green, the ends of his yukata trailing just below his ankle. His hair frames the sides of his eyes—shaped like rough paper cranes, folded amongst themselves. You nod in response, shrugging off the nickname he used on you as though his words weighed nothing. Sometimes, you believe that’s the case. Most times, you know he says that out of love, or at least something vaguely similar to that.

“Ultimate luck again,” you whisper cautiously, daring him to serve the shuttlecock. “Hit me. I bet I can win this time.”

“You used to say that every year,”

“Don’t get too cocky now. I had some help back at home.”

The word slips out before you could even analyze the repercussions of what it implied: home, that is, and you do not know what you think of when you say it. Your mind paints a pretty picture of a garden—nourished and delicate, with hanging flowers and crawling fruits, lovely pink, yellow, purple, and orange overpowering the green of it all. Your mind goes back to a decade back: the paddle you dropped to the ground, the sister you left there calling out for your name, the message to Satoru that you erased long before you could even send it.

Your mind is reeling. You say home but you really mean something else. A house, the estate; more than four walls, safekeeping memories both good and bad. Your sentiments feel foreign on your tongue. You think of home, and you wonder if you could paint a different picture. You wonder if an empty room and an emptier garden could be the something new you’d been searching for all your life. 

The world stills down, but you stay moving. The brightly colored shuttlecock is passed around between you and Satoru, the tapping ceaseless. The sun drips down in the form of light. Kisses your skin until you could feel no other.

Home. Maybe this could be. Or maybe you were cursed with never having one. Maybe Satoru was the same—or maybe he had it, once, like you did, and he ended up having to search for a new one as well. Maybe the both of you could be something similar to each other—like warmth in midwinter and coats and bottles of scorching alcohol; like wooden closets and worn out socks and hair down the shower drain; like freshly cooked meals, detergents spilling outside the washing machine, broken clothespins. Like having both of your names written on a mailbox, mails addressed to the two of you, words meant to be shared between the two of you, the two of you.

When you pass him the hago with your hagoita, he doesn’t swing it back with a paddle. He catches it with his hand.

You stay adrift, barely awake. “What are you doing?” Confused, you tilt your head to the side. “You know that means you lose, right?”

He emits a low hum, strutting over towards you with his hands stuffed neatly in his coat’s pockets. You watch him with careful eyes, a smile on your lips, and a flushed nose. When you look at him, you remember everything you went through. You remember your old laptop, the Skype calls, Tokyo tower from years ago. The bridge in the estate; the library, the garden, the peak of Mount Ena. When you look at him, you think of the way you used to choke on your own breath all because he took up an unusually large space: he lived rather loudly, one of his charms. Always worked to his favor.

You look at him, you see hope. You used to see nothing.

“Aren’t you cold?” He leans forward, now tossing the hago up in the air and catching it immediately, doing so for a few more times. “We can head back inside if you are.”

“No, it’s okay,” you whisper, fixing your gaze on his hands, “I’m okay. Are you?”

He throws the hago towards your direction, and it flies past your shoulder. “I am.” He says.

You turn around, forefinger pointing towards the shuttlecock. “What are you doing?”

“Cold hands.” Satoru laughs softly. “Must have slipped.”

You roll your eyes fondly, later flicking his nose, and twisting around to pick the hago up from the ground. The feathers are fading out, and you knew that this one’s nearing the end of its cycle already. You’d have to craft a new one before winter. Somehow, it’s comforting to have something to look forward to.

You hold the hago in your palm. Steady and still. When you turn back to face him, Gojo Satoru is down on one knee with a box sitting neatly on his hand. 

“Satoru, what are you—?”

“I want you.”

You pause.

“And for as long as I live,” he continues, neither corner of his lips curving up. The silence is palpable. You stare at him, wide-eyed, charged with fireworks coursing rapidly through your veins, “I will continue to want you.”

The grass is covered with melted ice, but still you could feel the warmth of it all. You wonder why you’re not freezing yet; instead allowing your toes to curl against the ground again, almost as if you weren’t close to completely going numb. You kneel down in front of him, too, cupping either side of his cheeks. You nod, a response enough to urge him to continue, bringing your forehead closer to his.

He breathes carefully, calculated, almost afraid. “I’d give you everything if I could.” Slight pause. It’s him who can’t seem to hold his stare this time—you tell yourself that he kind of looks like you; eyes plastered to the ground, no higher. Always to the ground. Were you worth that much? You’d never know unless he’d tell you. You’d never know unless you learn to believe him. “I’d give you everything if that’s what you’d want.”

Then, a thought. His question from before. The day of your father’s burial, atop the bridge, lost in the very little time that had already passed. And how about you? 

“If you’ll have me,” Satoru takes the ring off its box, letting the cube drop down to the ground afterwards. He’s careless when he’s not fighting. He’s careful when it’s you. “If you could love me again,” he hasn’t changed at all, you note, and you think you could affirm his statement after this. You could love him again. “Then I wouldn’t want anything more.”

What do you want?

It happens quietly.

You stare at his shade of blinding blue, his hair covered with snow. You take the ring off his hand and you slip it through your finger.

I want to marry Satoru.

There is no harsh truth this time, you note. No room for that, no room for cruelty. There is only sincerity and grief and forgiveness and peace—and more room to grow in, too. More room to learn and relearn everything that he has come to forget. More room to get used to saying Satoru again.