divine violence;

Three days is, objectively, not a very long time. It's barely a fragment of a week. It's the distance between one lesson plan and the next small crisis caused by someone forgetting their assignment in the most theatrical way possible. It's one pile of papers graded with a pen too expensive for the emotional state you’re in. It's three mornings of coffee, three evenings of resisting your own hand, three nights of turning your phone screen down as if that makes the contact inside it less present.

Three days is nothing and also absurdly long when his number is sitting in your phone again.

Not Champion. Not the stupid contact you once teased him about because of course he would save himself into your phone like a brand and a challenge and a warning. Just Sukuna. Plain, clean, almost too bare. There is something more intimate about that than you expected, like you removed all decoration and still found him there underneath it. It stares back whenever your thumb hovers too near the search bar, whenever you open messages out of habit, whenever you check a notification that turns out to be your phone company or a coworker asking if you finished adjusting next week’s lesson plan.

You tell yourself you are being normal.

You are not.

On the first day after your birthday, you don't text him because the conversation still sits too fresh under your skin.

You sleep warm and unsettled, the expensive pen on your desk among the other birthday gifts, its weight ridiculous even before you use it. In the morning, you tell yourself it was a good conversation, that’s all. Necessary. Maybe overdue. It doesn't need immediate continuation. You both got to say things. You accepted the apology. You gave him a way back into contact, but that doesn't mean you have to rush toward it like a fool who forgot what hurt feels like.

You are not that foolish.

You are also, unfortunately, not that detached.

You go to work. You smile at students. You use the pen he gave you because refusing to use a perfectly good pen would be childish and because part of you wants to know whether it writes as well as it looks. It does.

Annoyingly.

The ink glides without skipping. The weight is perfect between your fingers. It makes your usual pen feel like a plastic straw. You hate that he chose so well. You hate that you love it. You hate that every red mark you leave on a paper feels like some small betrayal of your own attempt to remain composed.

You write “Please expand this point” beside one student’s paragraph and think, entirely against your will, that Sukuna would probably say the child has expanded nothing except your suffering.

You nearly laugh alone at your desk. That irritates you too.

Three students receive corrections written with luxury ink they don't deserve. One of them, a girl who notices everything, pauses when you hand back the paper and squints at the pen in your hand.

“Teacher, is that new?”

You look down at it as if you have been caught holding evidence.

“It was a gift.”

“It looks expensive!”

“It's obnoxiously expensive,” you say, softly.

“From your boyfriend?”

You almost laugh, but it catches oddly before reaching your mouth.

“No,” you say, and keep your tone neutral in a way that makes it sound like the truth and not a door opening onto an entire private country. “From a friend.”

Friend.

The word behaves badly in your mouth, but it's the only available word that doesn’t demand explanations you’re not ready to give. But it's too small for him, and too generous, and too cautious all at once. Sukuna has never fit inside clean labels, which is partly how you ended up two years into loving him without knowing what to call the thing you were living in.

You spend the second day being normal with the determination of someone forcing a door shut while wind presses from the other side. You are not sitting alone in your apartment, staring at Sukuna’s contact like a woman who has lost every ounce of dignity to a black sedan, McDonald’s fries, and a pen too expensive for grading fractions of effort out of ten. You are not simply lying in bed with your phone in both hands, his name bright on the screen, convincing yourself one message would not be a relapse if it's typed with clear intent and emotional responsibility. You are, in fact, doing very normal things.

You go to work again. You teach. You answer emails. You eat lunch in the staff room with Maki, who watches you with the peripheral attentiveness of someone pretending not to monitor your emotional stability while absolutely monitoring it. You grade with the pen again. You go home. You shower. You stand in front of your closet longer than necessary even though no one is coming over and you are not going anywhere.

Sukuna doesn't text.

That shouldn't surprise you. He said he missed you, but he didn’t ask for anything. He put his number in your phone, but he didn’t send a message after driving away. He gave you the room to decide whether the contact remains decorative or alive.

It makes you feel safer, but also restless in a way you don't want to admit.

You keep expecting the old force. The message at the wrong hour. The blunt claim. Coming over. Open the door. Picking you up. Not because he ever ignored your boundaries in the usual way, not because he ever treated your refusal as irrelevant, but because he had always moved like wanting was an engine and his confidence was the road. He used to arrive in your life with the pressure of a storm approaching. Careless sometimes, careful others, but unmistakably there. Now there is space, and the space is respectful, and respect shouldn't feel so much like an ache.

You try not to punish him internally for doing the thing you need him to do. That’s harder than you expect.

Three days still pass with all the small violences of an ordinary week. Bells ringing. Students asking whether an assignment is actually due if they did not understand it, as though deadlines operate on personal enlightenment. Staff room coffee tasting burnt no matter who makes it. Your birthday decorations slowly disappearing from your desk, little gifts finding places in drawers, the expensive pen becoming both tool and symbol against your will.

At night, you lie in bed and don't text him.

The first night, it's pride.

The second night, it's caution.

By the third, it becomes something closer to self-discipline, and you begin to resent how much discipline is required for a single message.

Then Yuuji destroys you. Apparently it’s an Itadori thing.

It happens around early evening, when you are at home wearing loose shorts and an old shirt, hair clipped back badly, trying to decide whether dinner should involve actual cooking or a dignified arrangement of leftovers. Your phone buzzes on the counter while you are rinsing a mug. You dry one hand on a towel and check it with no particular expectation.

Yuuji has sent a picture.

It arrives without warning in the late evening, after dinner, while you are sitting on your couch with one leg tucked under you and a drama paused on the TV because you have spent the past fifteen minutes scrolling through your phone instead of watching it.

The message preview is simple.

LOOK AT HER

You open it and the sound that leaves you is not dignified. It's not even human enough to be called a gasp. It's a small wounded noise produced somewhere between your throat and your ribs, immediate and helpless, because Yuuji is holding a very small orange kitten in both hands, and the kitten looks like someone took a tangerine, rolled it through dust, taught it resentment, and then gave it ears too big for its head. Her little paws are resting over Yuuji’s fingers. Her eyes are round and serious. Her fur sticks out in uneven fuzz. She is staring at the camera with the expression of an old queen who has been inconvenienced by commoners.

You zoom in. Then zoom in again. Your chest hurts from the amount of affection that slams through it.

YUUJI What is THAT Did you adopt a cat?????

His reply comes with the speed of someone who has been waiting to explain.

I WISH this is Sukuna’s new daughter

You stare at the words. Then at the kitten. Then back at the words.

There are several things your brain tries to do at once. It tries to imagine Sukuna buying cat litter. It tries to reconcile the man who used to glare at children who got too close to his bike with the phrase new daughter. It tries to preserve your emotional caution in the face of a kitten small enough to fit in his palm. It fails at all three with impressive speed.

I’m sorry Sukuna’s WHAT

Yuuji sends three more pictures as if evidence will clarify anything.

One is the kitten on Sukuna’s black jacket, chewing the zipper. You can see only part of his hand in the corner, large and tattooed, one finger bent as if ready to stop her from falling. Another picture shows her inside a gray pet bed, glaring at the camera with such concentrated displeasure that you have to press your hand over your mouth. The third is slightly blurry, taken while she is apparently trying to climb Yuuji’s hoodie string.

he found her at a gas station after he dropped you home took her to a 24h vet bought like half the clinic she’s small and stubborn and very loud still nameless I’m calling her Sukuling until he gives her a name

You laugh so abruptly it startles you.

Sukuling. Sukuna’s new daughter.

The sentence shouldn't hit you in the chest the way it does. It's ridiculous. It's a cat. A kitten. A stray, probably, judging by the slight unevenness of her fur and the seriousness of her little face. It has nothing to do with the apology, with the pen, with the way Sukuna said he missed you and did not reach for you after saying it. It has nothing to do with the way his hands stayed on the steering wheel during the drive, how restraint made the air inside the car heavier than touch would have been.

And yet.

Sukuna with a kitten.

Sukuna, who used to scowl at every tiny dog in apartment elevators as if disgusted by their existence. Sukuna, who once said people who dressed pets in clothes deserved some investigation, then spent too many minutes watching a video of a cat in a raincoat because you pretended not to notice. Sukuna, whose hands are built for handlebars, heavy tools, fists, trophies, your waist, and apparently now for holding something so little it can sit in his palm.

The warmth is dangerous.

You want to know too much. You want every tiny detail — whether he panicked at the vet, whether he let the kitten sleep in his bed, whether he pretended not to care while buying little bowls and toys and food. You want to know if he named her in his head. If he talks to her. If she follows him around the apartment yelling at his ankles.

Then the want hits the obvious wall.

If you want to meet Sukuna’s new daughter, you have to text Sukuna. Possibly visit Sukuna. Possibly sit in his apartment again.

You lower the phone to your lap and stare at the paused TV. The actor on the screen looks devastated about something completely unrelated and therefore useless to you.

“No,” you say aloud to your empty apartment.

Your phone buzzes again.

she’s so tiny also she screams do you think Sukuling is too much

It's absolutely too much Keep doing it

You send a row of hearts you immediately regret, because your affection for the kitten is too naked and Yuuji will use it. Still, he only sends a sticker of a crying dog and tells you she is even cuter in person.

You endure another day.

That is the word. Endure.

Wanting to know means wanting to ask him. Wanting to ask him means opening that line again.

And that’s not nothing.

It's so easy to pretend the difficult part is whether you still have feelings for him. That answer is unfortunately clear. It sits inside you with the same stubbornness he does, heavy and alive despite distance, despite hurt, despite the whole year of trying to make peace with the shape of life without him. You love him. You have loved him through anger, silence, another relationship, through fireworks on a rooftop and panic outside a stadium, through the sight of him beside Kenny and the ache of imagining he had chosen a world that fit him better.

The difficult part is not feeling. The difficult part is deciding what you are allowed to do with it.

So you endure the third day with heroic self-control, which means you only look at the kitten picture six more times. Maybe seven. You don't text Sukuna. You don't ask Yuuji to send more pictures because that feels like using his brother as a contraband tunnel, and you have already promised yourself not to make Yuuji carry things between you. You simply go about your life like an adult woman with responsibilities and emotional intelligence and absolutely no weakness for tiny orange animals.

That night, you dream of a kitten meowing from inside a motocross helmet.

On the next morning your dignity loses.

Your students are louder than usual, or maybe you simply have less patience for ordinary noise because part of your brain keeps replaying the kitten’s grave little face. Maki catches you looking at your phone during lunch and narrows her eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was your guilty nothing.”

“How would you even know that?”

“I know all your nothings.”

You put the phone face down on the table and Maki leans back, her coffee held in one hand, eyes assessing.

“Is this about him?”

You don’t answer fast enough. Her mouth flattens, but not with anger. Concern first. Anger is behind it, available if needed, but she doesn’t draw it yet.

“He has a kitten,” you say, and she blinks. It's deeply satisfying to stun her for once.

“What?”

“A kitten.”

“Sukuna? That Sukuna?”

“Unless there’s another massive, emotionally constipated motocross champion collecting tiny orange kittens from gas stations.”

Maki stares at you, then slowly lowers her coffee.

“That sounds weirdly like a trap designed specifically for you.”

“It’s not a trap.”

“Does it look stupid?”

“It looks like a plushie that decided it would try to take over the world.”

Maki exhales through her nose and looks up at the ceiling as if asking for strength from whatever god supervises best friends with terrible taste in men.

“You’re going to text him.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m being so normal.” You raise your brows, offended, but not really. “I’m invested in the tiny little animal.”

“You’re invested in his accidental single-father arc.”

You hate her for phrasing it so well.

You survive the rest of the day mostly because work gives you things to put between yourself and your own weakness. In your defense, it doesn't come out of nowhere.

You are sitting at your desk after classes, the window cracked open because the room is warm from the afternoon heat, papers stacked in front of you, the expensive pen uncapped in your hand. Outside, students are leaving in waves. Your phone sits by your notebook. You don't touch it for five minutes. Then you do.

You open Sukuna’s contact.

Just Sukuna.

The contact still sits there like a reset, but not an erasure. You know too much for erasure. The road back, if there is one, can't be paved over old damage and called smooth because nobody wants to trip on it. You know that.

Still, your thumb hovers over the message field.

You type.

Delete.

Type again.

Delete.

You glare at the phone as if it started this.

Then, before you can overthink your way into another whole day of suffering, you write:

Were you planning to keep your little fluffy ball a secret for longer? Also, what is her name?

You send it. Immediately, your stomach drops.

It's absurd. You are not sending a confession. You are asking about a cat. A small cat. A cat whose existence Yuuji already revealed with no discretion whatsoever. This is a normal message. Friendly. Light. Reasonable. It gives him something to answer without making either of you bleed on the floor.

Still, you lock the phone and put it face down. Then pick it up ten seconds later.

No answer. You put it down again.

You last almost a minute.

When the screen lights up, your body reacts before your mind can maintain dignity. You grab the phone so fast the pen rolls off the desk and clatters against the floor.

Sukuna sent an image.

The kitten is sitting on his palm. Not both hands. One hand.

That’s what gets you first — his hand is so large that she looks unreal on it, a bright, fuzzy little ball arranged with complete seriousness, tail curled around her side, paws gathered under her chest. She is cleaner than in Yuuji’s pictures, orange fur fluffed, eyes clearer, ears absurd. His thumb rests near her side, not touching, just close enough to show the scale. The contrast does something terrible to you. The same hand that once gripped handlebars at impossible speed, that carried the weight of a machine through the air, that touched you like certainty when he still had the right, now holds a kitten like a fragile secret.

Under the picture, his message reads:

Probably gonna have no name. I call her Pest. Creature. Little shit when she screams nonstop

You make a sound that is half laugh, half offended gasp.

That is no way to speak of a little princess

Princess is generous She tried to eat my shoelace and then screamed because it moved

She’s a baby. She’s learning the world.

She can learn quietly

You smile despite yourself. It's immediate, soft, and so familiar you almost feel the ache of it under your ribs. This rhythm. The insult that isn’t an insult. The way he lets you correct him because he likes it even when he pretends he doesn’t. The sharp little back-and-forth that used to fill cars and kitchens and long, tired evenings after events.

His typing bubble appears.

Disappears.

Appears again.

You’re free to give her a name

You still for a moment and worry your lower lip between your teeth.

It's such a small invitation. Just a cat name. Nothing more.

Not nothing, though.

You know it's not nothing because your heart has started doing that stupid, unhelpful thing where it beats harder than the situation requires. He is offering you a place in something new, a tiny domestic detail, a creature he rescued the night after he saw you. He is not asking you to come over. He is not pushing. He is not saying he found a way to put something between you that you can't resist.

But he is leaving the space open.

You stare at the picture again. The kitten stares back like she already expects tribute.

I’ll need to meet her to name her properly

This time, he answers quickly.

Obviously. She’s too important for lazy naming

You smile despite yourself. Then his next message comes.

Come by after work if you want. No pressure.

No pressure.

You read it twice.

The old Sukuna would not have added that. Or he would have said it with enough arrogance to make it meaningless. This one writes it plainly and leaves it there, a small, careful boundary marker, almost awkward from his hands. No pressure. Two words that shouldn't feel so intimate, and yet they do, because what is more intimate than a man like him choosing not to shove his want into your space and call it honesty?

You breathe in. Breathe out.

I can stop by for a little while

She’ll be awake. Unfortunately

Good. I’m coming to see her, not you

Cruel woman.

You stare at the words, feeling the old rhythm flicker between your ribs.

She probably deserves better company.

She bit my finger this morning, so maybe you’re right.

You laugh alone in the classroom. Then you pick up the pen from the floor, cap it, and spend the rest of the afternoon pretending you are not aware of every passing minute.

By the time you stand in front of Sukuna’s apartment door, your nervous system has become an unreliable employee.

You have been here before, and that’s precisely the issue. Everything looks the same.

Buildings don't care about breakups. Elevators don't hold grudges. Hallways don't pause because your pulse changes when you step out on a familiar floor. Still, your body remembers. The path to his door sits in your muscles before your mind approves it.

How many times did you come here with a bag of clothes after work? How many times did you let yourself in because he gave you a key with no ceremony and expected you to understand the weight of it? How many evenings did you arrive to find him half-dead on the couch after training, or fresh from a shower, or sprawled in the kitchen eating something because you threatened him into feeding himself properly?

The hallway is familiar in a way that catches under your ribs. The elevator ride, the polished floor, the lighting that used to make late-night arrivals feel a little softer because you were tired and he was beside you, his keys in hand, his shoulder warm against yours. You remember coming here after races with his gear bag knocking against his leg, both of you smelling like sweat and dust and stadium food. You remember weekday evenings when he would open the door with his hair damp from a shower, shirt loose, face already scowling like you had personally inconvenienced him by arriving at the time he told you to.

You remember leaving too.

Not from here, not that last night, but in all the ways that mattered. The things Shoko returned. The shirts sent back. The key no longer in your life. The drawer that belonged to you, emptied. The absence of his apartment becoming one of the many quiet disciplines of healing.

Now you stand here with your work bag on your shoulder and your heart being dramatic because of a kitten.

You knock.

There is a beat of silence.

Then a high, thin meow from inside.

Your face changes before the door even opens.

It's awful, the way seeing him in his apartment hits differently from seeing him in the car. Here, without windshield, steering wheel, night air, or McDonald’s bags as buffers, he is simply there. Black shirt. Loose sweatpants. Bare feet. Hair messier than it was three days ago, pushed back with less success. The scar on his face visible in the afternoon light. The single carmine eye going over you once with enough restraint that you feel the effort of him stopping before it becomes hunger.

The first thing you notice is not his size, though it still fills the doorway. Not his scars, though your eyes touch them like a habit you have not lost. Not the black shirt stretched across his shoulders and broad chest, not the sharp line of his jaw, not the dog tag chain glinting at his collarbone.

It's the orange blur trying to climb his pant leg.

Sukuna looks down with deep offense.

“No.”

The kitten answers with a furious little sound. You forget how to be nervous.

“Oh my God.”

Sukuna lifts his gaze to you, and something in his face eases at your expression. He doesn’t smile outright, but the corner of his mouth shifts up, and the single red eye on you warms in a way that makes you wish your heart had better manners.

“She heard you outside and started screaming,” he says.

The kitten meows again.

You step in because the door is open and because the little thing is looking up at you now, ears forward, body vibrating with the confidence of an emperor trapped in a tennis ball. You crouch automatically.

“Hello, tiny baby,” you coo at her.

Sukuna makes a rough sound.

“She’s not a baby. She’s a parasite.”

“She is absolutely a baby.”

The kitten approaches your shoe, sniffs, then places one paw on it as if claiming the territory. You press a hand against your mouth to contain yourself and fail. The sound that escapes you is soft and ridiculous, and Sukuna watches it happen like he has forgotten the correct shape of his own face.

You reach a hand out slowly. The kitten sniffs your fingers. Her nose is damp and tiny. Then she bumps her head into your knuckles and begins to purr.

Loudly.

Too loudly for her size.

Your chest caves in around something dangerously sweet.

“Oh no,” you whisper.

Sukuna leans one shoulder against the doorframe after closing the door. His arms are crossed, but not defensively. More like he needed to put his hands somewhere. His shoulders are slightly lowered. His face has the guarded severity he wears when something inside him is too exposed and he is pretending it isn’t.

The kitten climbs onto your bent knee.

“Oh, we’re bold.”

“She has no fear. Or brains.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“She does that to manipulate people.”

“It’s working.”

“Weak.”

“You sent me a picture of her sitting in your hand like a cute trophy, you’re no better.”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“That she exists.”

You look up at him from where you’re crouched, fingers scratching gently under the kitten’s chin while she stretches her little neck with shameless delight.

“You took her to the vet, bought her an entire apartment’s worth of supplies, and let Yuuji call her your daughter.”

“I didn’t let him do shit. He’s just a brat with a loud mouth.”

“Like your daughter.”

His eye narrows. The kitten meows. You smile down at her.

“Exactly.”

Sukuna turns away first, but not fast enough to hide the tiny shift in his mouth.

“Come in before she decides your shoelace is her prey.”

His apartment is both exactly the same and not.

The furniture remains where it was, the couch, the low coffee table, the clean lines, the shelves with too many trophies and not enough sentimental objects. The space still carries him in every corner — dark, expensive without seeming decorated, orderly in a way that suggests control rather than domestic enthusiasm. But there are now interruptions. A small litter box tucked discreetly near the laundry area. A ridiculous cat bed in the living room, already abandoned. A tiny scratching post. Two toys under the coffee table. A bowl near the kitchen.

Life has made clutter in Sukuna’s apartment. You try not to stare too fondly at it.

The kitten follows you as if you have passed inspection. She trots behind your feet with serious concentration, occasionally veering slightly sideways because her body is still learning how to kitten efficiently. You sit down on the living room floor because there is no other possible choice. The moment you lower yourself, she climbs one of your knees, slips, scrambles, and then attacks the string toy Sukuna tosses toward you without comment.

You spend the next twenty minutes with your entire world reduced to a loud orange plushie with claws.

She leaps badly. She misses more than she catches. She makes fierce little chirps when the string evades her. Her tail puffs when she gets excited. She skids on the floor, tumbles over one of her own paws, rights herself with offended dignity, then pounces again as if nothing humiliating happened.

You laugh until your cheeks hurt. Somewhere above you, Sukuna sits on the couch.

You know because the cushion shifts and his presence settles near you, but you don't look right away. That is partly because the kitten demands all focus, and partly because you can feel him looking. His forearms rest on his knees, fingers loosely linked, body bent forward slightly. At first, you think he is watching the cat. Then, when you glance up after a particularly dramatic kitten tumble, you realize he is indeed watching both of you.

There is something in his face that makes your laughter catch.

Soft is not the right word for Sukuna. Not because he is incapable of it, as you learned the hard way and the beautiful way, but because softness on him never looks like surrender. It looks like a blade laid carefully on a table. It looks like strength choosing not to press. It looks like restraint, attention, a quiet lowering of whatever brutal machinery usually keeps him moving.

The late afternoon light catches the scar on his face.

It no longer shocks you. The first time you saw the changed shape of him after the accident, your heart broke for the pain he carried, not the loss of his old face. Now the scar is simply part of the man sitting on the couch in front of you, large and too still, trying to let something soft happen in his living room without taking it apart to see how it works.

His eye is on you. On the way your hands move with the kitten. On your smile. On your skirt gathered under your thighs. On your hair falling forward when you lean down to encourage the small orange menace to catch the toy. He doesn't look hungry in the old reckless way. Not like he plans to take. He looks full of wanting anyway, and the restraint around it makes the air feel warmer.

You look away first. Not because you don’t like it, it’s because you do. Because your body remembers too many things and your mind is still trying to keep pace with your better judgment.

The kitten saves you by launching herself at the string and rolling directly into your lap.

“Oh, excellent attack,” you praise. “Terrible form, but brave!”

Sukuna huffs.

“Don’t encourage her. She already thinks she can fight furniture. And me.”

“She can.”

“She weighs nothing.”

“Emotionally, she’s huge.”

“She screamed at my foot this morning.”

“Maybe it deserved it.”

“I wasn’t even moving it.”

“Threatening aura. Maybe it was stinky.”

“Yeah, maybe it was. Yuuji used the same excuse for her violence.”

His laugh is short and low, gone almost as soon as it arrives, but it settles under your skin.

“Former champion defeated by younger brother and baby cat. Tragic outcome.”

His mouth curves, not quite a full grin, but enough to make heat move through you.

“You getting bold again?”

“Again?”

“You were never shy about disrespect.”

“I was extremely respectful. You just deserved a lot of correction.”

“Still do, apparently.”

The words touch the air lightly, but the memory of his birthday-night answer flickers beneath them.

Or I’ll deserve it.

You feel it, and you know he does too, because his expression shifts almost imperceptibly. Not regret as much as it's awareness. He doesn't snatch the mood back with a joke. He lets the echo exist, then lets it pass when the kitten flops dramatically onto her side and kicks the string with both hind legs.

Eventually, the kitten gets tired in the sudden way kittens do, as if an invisible switch turns off every bone in her body. One moment she is biting the string. The next she is wobbling toward you, climbing onto your lap with determined little paws. She kneads once on your skirt, purring so loudly you feel the vibration through the fabric, then decides your lap is not enough.

She climbs your shirt. You gasp, then laugh as tiny claws catch carefully, not deep enough to hurt but enough to make you help her.

“Oh, okay, ambitious girl.”

Sukuna shifts forward.

“She does that.”

“I can see that.”

“She likes sleeping here.” He taps the side of his neck with two fingers, almost absentmindedly. Then he seems to realize what he revealed and drops his hand.

Your smile becomes unbearable. The kitten reaches your collarbone and tries to tuck herself into the space between your neck and shoulder, apparently disappointed by the fact that you are not built like a six-foot-plus motocross champion with shoulders broad enough to host small wildlife. You lend her a hand, cupping her tiny body so she can settle. Her fur tickles your skin. Her paws press against the neckline of your blouse. She turns twice, bumps her head against your jaw, then melts into a warm, purring heap.

“Oh,” you say quietly.

Sukuna watches from the couch. His expression does something complicated.

You stroke the kitten with one finger along her spine. She is so small that one careful movement covers most of her back. Her purr deepens, absurdly loud near your ear.

“You can just toss her on the couch. She’ll sleep.”

Your head lifts with immediate offense.

“I would never do that to a baby.”

“She’s really manipulating you.”

“I hope she knows I’m very easy to manipulate.”

“She figured it out faster than most.”

You glare. He looks pleased.

For a while, you sit there like that — you on the floor, the kitten asleep against your shoulder, Sukuna on the couch pretending not to be affected by the sight. The apartment settles around you in a way that feels too good to trust easily because it's too familiar.

You ask, partly to make yourself look at something other than his mouth,

“How have you been?”

His eye sharpens with amusement.

“You asked me that three days ago.”

“And things can happen in three days.”

“Nothing much.” He glances at the kitten tucked against you. “Except the pest sleeping on your shoulder.”

Your nose wrinkles.

“Don't talk ill of the baby.”

“She eats better than I do and screams when doors close. She’s fine.”

“You’re lucky she’s asleep and can't hear your slander.”

“She hears everything. Chooses violence anyway.”

You bite back a smile. He stands after a moment, and your body tracks him before you can stop it. The height of him, the controlled weight of his movements, the scar pulling faintly when he turns his head. He moves toward the kitchen, then looks back.

“Tea?”

You shouldn't feel as much as you do from one word.

“What kind?”

He opens a cabinet.

“That one you used to buy. Earl grey créme or something.”

Your gaze holds on his back. The brand comes into view when he takes the box out, and your heart gives an odd, warm twist. You used to keep that tea in his apartment because he claimed not to care what you drank and then somehow never ran out of it. He used to say it smelled like flowers and citrus trying too hard. He used to accept mugs of it at one in the morning after events and drink every drop with the expression of a man doing manual labor.

You smirk because softness without teasing would choke you.

“I accept. I’m glad you developed a bit of good taste.”

He turns his head just enough for you to see the line of his mouth.

“I’ve matured.”

“Have you?”

He pauses as if genuinely considering whether to make a joke or let the word stand.

“Trying.” The kettle begins to heat. Then he adds. “Don’t get too smug. It was in the cabinet.”

“From when?”

“A while.”

“Sukuna.”

“It’s not expired.”

“That’s not the same as an answer?”

“You want tea or an investigation?”

“Both, preferably. And no food poisoning.”

“Greedy. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

You smile down at the kitten and whisper,

“Your father is impossible.”

From the kitchen, he says,

“Don’t teach her that word.”

“Father?”

“Impossible.”

The afternoon bleeds into evening so quietly that you almost don't notice the shift.

The sky outside his windows changes from harsh pale blue to a softer gold, then to the faintly bruised color of early night. The tea is good. Of course it is. You hold the mug carefully because the kitten wakes up once, stretches against your neck, then slides down into your lap like liquid fluff. She eats again, an impressive amount for something so small, making tiny satisfied sounds over the dish while Sukuna watches with the vigilance of someone pretending he is only ensuring she doesn’t choke.

You talk about little things because little things are safer and, somehow, more dangerous.

You talk about your classes, about one student’s wildly creative excuse for missing homework, about Yuuji’s insistence that the kitten needs a name with prestige and dramatic theme music. Sukuna tells you the vet said orange girls are rare, and he says it in a tone that implies the cat has become even more troublesome through genetics. You tell him she is a limited edition. He says she is defective. You tell him all the best creatures are.

His eye flickers to you when you say that. You look into your tea.

It's strange to sit in his living room after everything, drinking tea. Strange and tender and quietly terrifying. You missed this more than you let yourself know — not the grand gestures, not the events, not the rush of being close to him when he was untouchable to everyone else, but this. The ordinary geography of him. The way he occupies a room. The rhythm of his responses. The sight of his hand around a mug. The little noises he makes instead of laughing fully when you catch him amused.

You missed being near him when neither of you had to perform.

The kitten wakes again with sudden purpose and decides the string toy must die properly this time. You drag it across the rug while she chases, pounces, misses, retreats, attacks from behind the leg of the coffee table, then climbs onto Sukuna’s boot and bites the lace.

He looks down at her.

“No.”

She bites harder. You laugh into your mug.

“She respects you so much,” you say.

“She’s alive because of me. God wanted her dead and now I’m learning why.”

“And now she has rights. Don’t be cryptic about the baby.”

“I should’ve left her at the gas station.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

You don’t say it softly. You say it simply, because it's true.

His gaze moves to you. For a second, something passes between you that has nothing to do with the kitten and everything to do with the man sitting across from you, the man who stopped at a gas station after driving you home and heard a tiny cry and chose not to walk away. He could pretend indifference all he wanted. You know what doing nothing looks like. This is not that.

He looks away first, jaw shifting.

“She was too loud to ignore.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t use that tone.”

“What tone?”

“The one where you pretend not to know I’m full of shit.”

You smile.

“I missed using that tone.”

The confession slips out before you can measure it. It's small. Not I missed you. But the air changes anyway, and you feel his attention settle on you fully. Your fingers pause around the mug. The kitten saves you again by attacking the string with such ferocity that she rolls onto her back and kicks at it with both hind legs.

Sukuna lets the moment pass.

He could press, yet he doesn’t. He reaches down instead and rescues the string from being swallowed.

“She fights like Yuuji did when he was five.”

“Badly?”

“With a lot of misplaced confidence.”

You laugh, and the tension softens instead of disappearing.

That becomes the shape of the evening — closeness offered in pieces, restraint holding the edges, humor stitched through places that would otherwise be too tender to touch. It surprises you how much you have missed this too. Not only the ache, not only the heat, not only the dramatic gravity Sukuna drags into every room by existing. You missed the little things. His dry commentary. The way he watches you understand something before reacting to it. The quiet between sentences. The fact that he doesn't need constant noise to believe your company is real.

When the room darkens enough that the lamps come on, you check the time and feel reality tug at you.

It's a weekday. You have work tomorrow.

The responsible part of your brain raises a hand. The rest of you tries to pretend you can't see it. Still, you set your empty mug down.

“I need to go home.”

Sukuna’s face doesn't fall. He is too controlled for that. But something in him stills.

“Right.”

The kitten, as if she understands abandonment in the most dramatic possible terms, meows when you stand.

“Oh, baby.”

“Traitor.” Sukuna mutters.

You crouch to scratch behind her ear. The purr starts so quickly you almost dissolve. The scratch becomes two fingers under her chin. Then she leans into your hand, eyes closing, and you lose the last of your discipline. You lift her gently, supporting her tiny body, and she curls into a fuzzy ball against your chest with such trust that you press a kiss to the top of her head. She smells faintly like kitten shampoo, food, and warm fur.

Sukuna’s eye narrows.

You see it.

You absolutely see it.

It's quick, almost hidden, but you have known this man through enough moods to recognize the way jealousy looks when he wants to call it something else. Not dangerous. Not possessive in the way that would make you retreat. More like a disgruntled disbelief that the tiny orange freeloader has received a kiss with no effort while he stands nearby behaving himself like restraint is a physically demanding sport.

Something hot and wicked twists through your stomach. You keep your face innocent.

“She’s so precious,” you say, and kiss the kitten again just because you can.

His jaw shifts. The kitten purrs, smug without knowing it.

He wants.

You know he wants.

And this time he is not taking.

That knowledge does something terrible to you.

You walk toward him and hold her out.

“Here. Hold the baby.”

His mouth opens. You know what he is about to say before he says it. Something like put her down, or she has legs, or she’s not made of glass. You cut him off with a look.

“Hold the baby, Sukuna.”

He stares at you. You stare back.

His exhale is long and deeply burdened. He takes the kitten with more care than his sigh suggests. His hands close around her small body, broad palms adjusting instinctively to support her chest and hind legs. She doesn't protest. In fact, she settles immediately against him as if returning to her rightful throne.

“I’m already dealing with a yelling girl every day,” he says. “Might as well obey.”

You make a soft amused sound that comes too close to tenderness.

He looks down at the kitten to avoid looking at you.

You look at them too long.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“That expression is not nothing.”

“You look like a cat dad.”

His face goes flat.

“Get out.”

You laugh and head toward the door.

He takes you to the door with her cradled in one arm. The sight does damage. It shouldn't. He is still enormous. Still scarred. Still sharp at every edge. Still the man who hurt you, the man who apologized, the man standing in an apartment changed by a creature he insists on calling pest while holding her like the world might be rude enough to drop her.

At the door, while you put your shoes on, he asks,

“What name are you giving the little pest?”

You pause. Because, honestly, you forgot.

You came here for the stated purpose of meeting and naming the kitten, and then you spent the entire afternoon being devoured by her cuteness and the dangerous comfort of Sukuna’s living room. Now she is staring at you from his arm, round and fuzzy and authoritarian, one paw hooked lightly over his wrist.

“Oh.”

His brow rises.

“You forgot?”

“I was busy experiencing her cuteness.”

You look at the kitten properly. She is round and fuzzy in that strange kitten way, her whole body still not proportioned correctly. Her ears point outward. Her eyes are fierce and a little sleepy. She has the air of a tiny monarch who will accept worship, snacks, and violence in any order.

Orange. Small. Sweet. Loud. Impossible not to love.

“Ponkan,” you decide.

Sukuna glances down.

“Ponkan like the tangerine?”

“Yes.” You reach out and gently touch one fingertip between the kitten’s ears. “She’s a very cute kind of mandarin.”

He looks at the cat for a moment longer than necessary. Then his eye lifts to you.

“You’re a strange woman.”

The tone is the same.

It reaches back through time so sharply that, for half a breath, you are in another year. In another doorway. With a clean shirt in your bag and his hand at your waist and no knowledge yet of how badly things could break. He used to say it with annoyance pretending not to be affection. He says it now with the same warmth tucked under the words, but there is caution around it too, a careful distance that makes it hurt more and matter more.

Something twirls inside you. You are not proud of how quickly your body remembers him.

You lift your chin.

“You’re a strange man with a tangerine daughter.”

“She’s not my daughter.”

Ponkan meows.

He glances at her, then back at you, defeated in ways he will never admit.

“She’s freeloading.”

You roll your eyes because your alternative is looking too affected. The elevator dings softly somewhere below. You press the button.

“Send me pictures of her,” you say. “Whenever you can.”

His gaze holds yours. You realize, too late, how domestic that sounds. But he only tilts his head a little and says,

“If you want to co-parent the cat, you’re paying child support.”

A laugh breaks out of you before you can stop it. It fills the hallway, bright and startled, and his mouth shifts as he watches you.

“I can bring toys and snacks. She deserves them.”

“She has enough toys.”

“That’s not how having a cat works.”

“You’ve had a cat?”

“No.”

“Then why do you sound sure?”

“Because I have common sense.”

The elevator doors open. You step inside, still smiling, and turn to face them — Sukuna standing in his doorway with a tiny orange kitten in his arms, looking like the universe has played an elaborate joke on him and he has decided to tolerate it only because the joke purrs.

You lift your hand.

“Good night, Sukuna. Good night, Ponkan.”

The kitten meows.

“She heard you.”

“I hope so.”

The doors slide closed on the sight of his face softened by lamplight and reluctant affection, and you stand alone in the elevator with your hand pressed around the strap of your bag, still smiling like an idiot.

It feels light. That surprises you.

It makes you happy. That scares you a little.

By the time you get home, your phone is full of Ponkan pictures, so you send them to Maki because not doing so would be a crime against friendship and because you need someone to witness the severity of the situation.

Maki replies after three minutes.

You have been won by the evil man and his evil adorable minion again.

I have not yet.

The answer is a mistake. You know it the moment you send it. Maki replies with a photo she has clearly edited in under thirty seconds — a white background, one giant bold word in all caps.

YET.

Then another message:

Interesting word choice.

You stare at it. Your face heats.

Shut up and go to sleep.

You throw your phone onto the bed and then pick it up again because you are weak and because the pictures are there. Ponkan in your lap. Ponkan mid-pounce, blurred into orange chaos. Ponkan in Sukuna’s hand. Ponkan asleep against your shoulder.

You scroll through them slowly.

Maki is not wrong.

You hate that she is not wrong.

You have not been won, not fully, not blindly, not in the way some foolish part of you might have allowed if Sukuna had come back with the old force and your heart had mistaken being overwhelmed for being chosen. You are not going to pretend one apology, one gift, one soft afternoon with a kitten, fixes the break in the foundation. Trust doesn't repair itself because longing wants a shortcut. You know that. You know it so clearly it hurts.

But you are struggling. Internally, quietly, constantly.

Because you do see it.

You see it in every act of restraint. In the fact that he didn’t contact you after your birthday, even though you know him well enough to know silence must have cost him. In the way he answered your cat message without turning it into an immediate demand. In the open invitation with no pressure attached. In the way he didn’t touch you even when you stood close in his doorway with his kitten in your hands and your mouth still warm from kissing the little orange head.

You see it when he lets you decide the pace before either of you has even named the road.

You wish you could go back.

The thought comes as you wash your face, brush your teeth, change into sleep clothes, and set your work bag near the door for morning. You wish, in a stupid, aching, impossible way, that you could step backward into the version of the story where you still had a drawer at his place and a key in your bag. Where you could go to his apartment after work without your chest tightening first. Where his hand on your thigh in the car did not have to be a question with an answer. Where loving him did not come with evidence stacked beside it.

But going back is not possible. Maybe it shouldn't be. The old version had beautiful things in it. It also had rot under the floorboards you did not know how to see until it broke under you. A bet. An omission. People knowing what you did not. His self-loathing waiting to become a weapon. Your own willingness to understand him almost faster than he understood himself.

No. You can't go back.

You can only build something new, if you choose to, and only if he chooses it too. New foundation. Stronger because it can't pretend history is smooth. Stronger because the worst thing is not hidden in a room full of people waiting for Naoya’s mouth to turn cruel. Stronger because maybe this time Sukuna knows love can't be treated like a trophy for surviving enough damage.

Right before sleep, your phone lights up.

Sukuna sent an image.

You open it and immediately regret having a functioning heart.

He is lying down. The picture is angled from below his jaw, probably taken with one hand from bed. Ponkan is curled in the crook of his neck, a tiny orange comma pressed against his throat. His black shirt collar is visible. The edge of his scar cuts along his face, softened by shadow. You can see the chain of the dog tag disappearing near his collarbone. Ponkan’s eyes are closed. One paw rests against his neck like she has found the safest possible place in the world and intends to colonize it.

You are not prepared for that view. You are really, really not prepared.

There’s something obscene about it in the emotional sense. Not sexual. Worse. Domestic. Vulnerable. Sukuna, the champion, the reckless menace, the man who once survived a crash that rearranged your life, lying still because a kitten trusts him enough to sleep on his pulse.

Your throat tightens. You react with a heart because words feel dangerous.

Then, because you are still you, you type:

Don’t crush her in your sleep.

His response comes a minute later.

She’s the one sleeping on top of me. Your worries are on the wrong body.

You smile into the dark.

Good night, Sukuna.

Night.

A second later:

Ponkan says nothing. Useless.

You laugh softly, alone in bed, and the warmth in your chest stays there even after the phone screen dims. You sleep with it.

The pictures keep coming.

Not too many. That’s part of what gets you. He doesn't flood your phone. He doesn't use Ponkan as a constant excuse to keep himself on your screen. He sends one in the morning, sometimes with no caption. One at night, maybe. Occasionally one in the middle of the day when she has done something especially absurd.

Ponkan inside his boot, peering out like a soldier in a trench. Ponkan sitting inside his helmet, tiny body dwarfed by the padding, one paw on the visor opening. Ponkan on Yuuji’s lap, biting the drawstring of his hoodie while Yuuji’s face is blurred from laughing. Ponkan in the pocket of Sukuna’s jacket, her head sticking out like she is being smuggled across borders. Ponkan asleep on a folded towel. Ponkan standing in her food bowl with wet food on one paw, captioned: Your princess is an idiot.

She’s exploring texture.

She is standing in dinner like a moron.

You save all of them. You don't tell him that.

The week becomes strangely gentle because of it. You wake up wondering whether there will be a picture. You don't always get one immediately, but when you do, it shifts the day. The teaching remains teaching — noise, questions, grading, administrative nonsense, small victories when a student understands something, small defeats when another forgets they own a notebook. But between all of that is orange fur and Sukuna’s dry captions, and your own replies, and the careful revival of something that used to be ordinary.

The texts are not only about Ponkan by the end of the week.

You tell him the pen has made grading emotionally dangerous because now you feel disappointed by every other pen you own. He replies that your standards are finally improving. You send him a picture of a comment you wrote on a paper — “This argument has potential, but right now it's mostly vibes” — with the student’s name hidden. He says the kid should respect the precision. You tell him not to encourage teacher cruelty. He says he learned from the best.

You ask if Ponkan has destroyed anything important. He sends a picture of a scratched box and writes, Define important.

You ask if he is still listening to Shoko. He says yes, unfortunately. Then adds, Before you ask, no riding stupid. You stare at that message for a long time because he anticipated the fear without making you say it.

The weekend arrives before you fully understand how much you have been waiting for it.

Yuuji somehow turns the second visit into a social event.

You don’t know if he does it intentionally or if his personality simply expands until other people are involved. He says he wants to see Ponkan again. You mention you might go over. He asks if he can come too, then adds that Maki should probably be invited so she doesn’t think Sukuna is luring you with a baby animal like a villain with marketing skills. You tell him that phrasing will not help anyone. He says honesty is important.

You ask Maki. She agrees too quickly. Which means she has been waiting for you to ask.

Choso ends up included after Sukuna apparently tells him, or Yuuji does, or perhaps Ponkan sends invitations through sheer gravitational force. By Saturday evening, Sukuna’s apartment contains you, Maki, Yuuji, Choso, Sukuna, and one very tiny cat who behaves as if she arranged the whole thing.

Everyone falls in love with her — this is not at all surprising.

Even Maki, who enters the apartment with the expression of someone prepared to commit inspection and violence in equal measure, lasts exactly forty seconds before crouching down to let Ponkan sniff her fingers. Ponkan, brave and politically astute, immediately climbs onto her knee.

Maki looks down, and although her face doesn't soften, her hand does.

You notice. So does Sukuna.

He stands near the kitchen island, arms crossed, watching Maki scratch Ponkan under the chin with a suspicious level of gentleness.

“Didn’t think you liked small things,” he says.

Maki doesn't look up.

“I like plenty of small things. Knives. Bullets. The amount of patience I have for you.”

Yuuji wheezes. Choso makes a soft choking sound that might be an attempt not to laugh. Sukuna’s mouth curves.

“Thanks for not trying to kill me in my own kitchen.”

“The night is young.”

You glance at her.

“Maki.”

“What? I’m being social.”

Sukuna huffs like he respects the effort and the apartment feels fuller than it used to, but not in the suffocating way you feared. There is some tension, yes. How could there not be? You don't put people who love you, people who hurt you, and people who failed you in the same room and expect the air to behave like nothing happened. But Ponkan is there, walking across the floor with the swagger of a creature carrying diplomatic immunity, and somehow that helps. She becomes the tiny orange center of gravity around which everyone can orbit without staring too directly at the past.

Yuuji lies on the floor almost immediately, arms stretched above his head while Ponkan attacks the cords of his hoodie. He lets her. He narrates her violence as a heroic battle.

Choso sits quietly at first, hands folded, watching the kitten with grave tenderness. When Ponkan toddles toward him, he offers one finger. She bites it. He looks honored.

Sukuna orders everyone to stop letting her think biting is acceptable.

No one listens.

Maki sends a picture to Nobara and receives a string of messages so fast her phone buzzes like an insect. She reads one aloud.

“Tell the evil man I am emotionally conflicted because the kitten is perfect but he is still on probation.”

“Tell her I don’t care.” Sukuna says.

Maki types, then says,

“I told her you cried.”

“You’re all irritating.”

The early part of the evening finds an awkward rhythm and then, slowly, a real one. Maki doesn't threaten Sukuna too much. Only a little. Mostly with her eyes. Choso greets you with visible nerves and a softness that makes you immediately want to ease him even though part of you knows you do not owe him ease. Yuuji fills gaps with noise, talking about Ponkan’s crimes, Sukuna’s terrible naming instincts, and how he personally feels Sukuling remains a strong option even if everyone else is committed to citrus.

“She is not called Sukuling,” Sukuna says from the kitchen.

“Her full legal name can be Ponkan Sukuling Itadori-Ryomen,” Yuuji says.

“No.”

Maki, to your horror, looks thoughtful.

“Ponkan Sukuling has character.”

“Don’t help him,” Sukuna snaps.

You cradle Ponkan against your chest and whisper,

“Your father is so sensitive.”

Sukuna’s eye cuts to you. Heat flickers low in your stomach. The fact that he says nothing makes it worse.

You sit on the floor with Ponkan eventually, dragging a toy in slow circles while she stalks it from behind the coffee table. Sukuna, Maki, and Yuuji drift into the kitchen to discuss food with the seriousness of diplomats negotiating a treaty. Choso remains in the living room.

He comes closer to where you are sitting on the floor with Ponkan and the string toy.

He stands beside you for a second too long. You look up.

He has the expression of a kicked dog trying very hard to look like a serious adult man. His shoulders are set, hands at his sides, eyes lowered with such concentrated guilt that you feel your own chest soften despite yourself.

“Sit,” you say gently, “before I feel the need to pull a chair out for you and hand it over.”

His eyes widen a fraction, then soften with something like gratitude. He lowers himself onto the floor at your side, careful to leave space. Ponkan abandons the toy and runs at his knee, then changes her mind halfway and flops onto her side.

The kitchen voices continue behind you. Maki arguing for something spicy. Yuuji saying he can handle spice, which everyone knows is a lie. Sukuna telling him he once cried because of convenience store curry. Yuuji protesting the historical accuracy.

Choso takes a deep breath. You keep your fingers moving along the string toy, but your attention turns quiet.

“I want to apologize.”

You knew it was coming. Still, the words alter the air. He looks at you directly, though it seems to cost him. The words are simple. No preamble. No attempt to make them look less heavy.

Ponkan catches your finger instead of the toy and begins nibbling with soft little teeth. You let her because it gives your hand something to do. Choso looks down.

“It wasn’t fair of me not to tell you something I knew. I thought it wasn’t my place. I told myself it happened before I knew you properly, and then when I saw he actually liked you, and that you liked him despite everything, I thought bringing it up would only hurt you for no reason.” His voice stays even, but you can hear the strain beneath it. “That was cowardice. The moment you offered me friendship, I should have been honest. Instead I omitted it and let you stand around people who knew something about the beginning of your own relationship that you didn’t. I’m sorry.”

You listen. That’s harder than people think. Anger wants to interrupt. Hurt wants to protect itself by speaking too quickly. But Choso deserves the dignity of being heard through the apology, and you deserve the clarity of knowing whether he understands what he did. So you sit there with Ponkan nibbling on your finger, the apartment warm around you, Sukuna’s voice low in the kitchen, and you let Choso say the whole thing.

“When you were kind to me, when you talked to me and trusted me and treated me like your friend, I should have understood that meant I owed you honesty too. Not only loyalty to him. I omitted it because it was easier and because I didn’t want to hurt you. But I helped create the situation where you got hurt worse.” His mouth tightens. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

The kitchen has gone slightly quieter. Not silent, but aware. You let Choso’s apology sit between you long enough for it to be real.

Broken trust is not repaired by immediate warmth. You know that now with a clarity that feels almost physical. But apology matters when it doesn't ask you to pretend nothing happened. Choso is not making excuses. He is not saying Sukuna changed as if that erases what you didn’t know. He is not begging you to make him feel better.

So you nod slowly. When he finishes, his hands are curled loosely over his knees. You look at him.

“Yeah,” you say. “That sucked.”

He flinches slightly, then nods.

“And I don’t think you had bad intentions. That doesn’t make it harmless, but it matters. I was hurt because I trusted you too, not in the same way I trusted Sukuna, but enough that knowing you knew made me feel really stupid for a while. Especially because I liked you. I trusted you in a different way from the team, I think. You felt safe.” You look down at Ponkan, who is now chewing your finger like she has found the meaning of life. “Broken trust is never fun.”

His expression twists. You soften your voice, not to absolve him, but because truth doesn't always need a blade.

“But I accept your apology.”

His dark eyes gleam. He blinks hard, once.

Oh.

The poor man.

You almost laugh, not because it's funny, but because Choso is fighting for his life to look stern and composed while clearly being a breath away from crying from relief. He was sorry. Really sorry. From the bottom of his heart, in that deeply Choso way that makes guilt look like an illness he has been carrying under his ribs. His nostrils flare slightly.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

Ponkan releases your finger and attacks his shoelace. He swallows and looks down at her like she has saved him from eye contact.

“Can I ask something?”

“You can ask.”

“If you’re around…” He pauses, then tries again. “Would it be okay to talk about motocross with you again? The technical parts. Races. Bikes. If you would rather not have me around, I understand. Both options are okay, really, I won’t treat you different—”

There is such earnest anxiety in him that your answer comes softer than planned.

“Choso.”

He stops. You smile.

“I’d love to go back into the technicalities with you. I missed our talks.”

His attempt to hide happiness is terrible. It's truly awful. His mouth presses into a line that trembles at the edges. His eyes brighten again. He nods very seriously, as if you have just reinstated him into a sacred order.

“I missed them too,” he says.

You lift Ponkan carefully and place her in his lap like a sacred offering.

His hands come up immediately, gentle and uncertain. She sniffs him, then climbs onto his thigh, purring because apparently Ponkan has decided every person in this room exists to adore her. Choso looks down at her with wet eyes and says, very unconvincingly,

“It’s allergies.”

“Of course.”

“From the fur,” he tries badly.

“She’s very furry,” you indulge the lie.

“Yeah.”

You smile at him, warm and forgiving enough for now. From the kitchen, Sukuna calls,

“Is he crying?”

Choso straightens with Ponkan halfway up his chest.

“No.”

Maki appears in the kitchen doorway.

“He is.”

“I’m not.”

Yuuji leans around Maki’s shoulder.

“Aww, Choso.”

“I have allergies,” Choso insists, sounding genuinely distressed at the possibility of being perceived. Sukuna looks over Maki’s head, catches your eye, and the warmth in his gaze makes the entire exchange land somewhere deeper.

Dinner becomes Chinese takeout because the kitchen council decides on it after too much negotiation and one brief argument about whether ordering more dumplings counts as wisdom or gluttony. Sukuna pays before anyone else can protest. Maki tells him buying food doesn't grant moral superiority. He tells her he wasn’t under that delusion. Yuuji asks if they can at least pretend dinner has healed society. Choso, still holding Ponkan, says dumplings help most situations. By the time it arrives, the apartment has settled into something almost normal.

Almost.

You don't miss the careful glances. Maki watching Sukuna when she thinks you are not looking. Sukuna noticing and allowing it. Choso quieter after the apology but lighter. Yuuji filling silence before it can become too jagged. You, aware of all of them, aware of yourself, aware of Ponkan marching across takeout menus like a tiny inspector.

You eat from cartons, pass sauces, rescue Ponkan from trying to put her paw in rice, and argue about race clips Yuuji pulls up on the TV because he wants to understand the sport better and keeps asking questions that make Sukuna look pained. Choso answers most of them before Sukuna can insult him too badly. You find yourself adding explanations, correcting Yuuji’s assumptions, pointing out where a rider’s line choice changes the turn, how body position shifts before a jump, why the whoops punish rhythm errors faster than people expect.

Choso and you end up discussing suspension settings because he mentions a rider who changed setup mid-season and you immediately ask whether the issue was corner entry or landing stability. His whole face comes alive. He explains with his hands, careful not to knock over sauce, describing how different track surfaces affect what riders need from the bike. You ask questions because you still know more than a casual spectator and less than someone who lives in a garage, which is exactly where the conversation is fun.

Sukuna watches from the couch, one ankle planted over his thigh near the knee, posture lazy in a way you don't trust. He inserts corrections when Choso gets too diplomatic about a bad technical decision. You argue once because you think he is being too harsh about a rider who probably had limited setup time. He tells you limited setup time doesn't excuse riding like he has never met physics. You tell him physics probably didn’t like him either. His grin flashes.

The words feel strange at first.

Then good.

You missed talking about it. That truth comes with sadness attached, because liking motocross after everything sometimes felt like loving a place haunted by an accident. But the technical language still lives in you. The fascination did not die just because pain moved into the stadium seats. When Choso lights up at one of your observations, when Sukuna glances down with that sharp, pleased flicker he used to get when you noticed something most casual viewers missed, the old joy rises carefully through the fear.

At some point, the seating rearranges itself without discussion.

Sukuna and Choso end up on the couch. Yuuji lies on the floor with Ponkan on top of him, letting her attack his hoodie cords with saintly patience. Maki takes the armchair across from the couch, one leg crossed over the other, a carton balanced in her hand. You sit on the floor with your back against the couch, right in front of Sukuna’s spot, because Ponkan had been chasing a toy near your feet and you stayed there after she abandoned it.

Sukuna’s legs are spread around you, not touching at first.

Then, as the evening loosens, your shoulders brush the inside of his knees whenever either of you shifts. Light contact. Almost nothing. Enough to make your body aware of him in quiet, repeated pulses. If you tilt your head back, you would see him upside down. You know this because the thought keeps occurring and you keep not doing it. Then you do, and he is already looking down.

Maki goes quiet. You know that quiet. That quiet is not peace. It's loading.

She sets her food down, wipes her fingers, and looks directly at Sukuna.

“So,” she says, calm in a way that makes Yuuji stop mid-sentence on the floor. “Before we all try socializing like normal adults again, do you have any other disgusting thing you used to do, say, hide, or whatever that we should know about?”

Yuuji’s head whips toward her so fast Ponkan startles, does a little jump, and then immediately climbs onto his hair like it's a safe platform.

“Ow— Ponkan, no, that’s my scalp.” Yuuji says, frozen under kitten claws.

Choso goes so still on the couch you think he might have stopped breathing.

You crane your neck back slightly to look at Sukuna.

He doesn't look offended.

That surprises you a bit, not even because he has no reason to accept the question, but because Sukuna has never enjoyed being challenged in his own space, in front of people, with you sitting at his feet and his brother on the floor. The old him might have sharpened instantly. Might have turned it into dominance. Might have asked Maki who the hell she thought she was.

He does none of that. His gaze stays on Maki, steady and serious, and the contact of his knees near your shoulders becomes more noticeable because he doesn't move away. The room feels abruptly like territory, but not in a simple masculine way. It feels like sitting between a tiger and a black leopard while they decide whether respect is possible without bloodshed.

Sukuna’s knees bracket your shoulders. Maki sits across from him, still as a blade. She is not physically bigger than him, not even close, but she has never needed size to be dangerous. Sukuna, for once, doesn't meet threat with threat. He meets it like he knew it was coming.

“I never apologized to you for that bullshit either,” he says. “So I’m doing it now.”

Serious. Direct. Unflinching.

Your body goes strange, it feels too alert. Choso remains beside Sukuna like a witness trying not to vanish. Yuuji lies on the floor, eyes wide, Ponkan now chewing his hair as if the emotional stakes of adult conversation are none of her concern.

Sukuna continues, voice level.

“I used to find someone in the crowd when events started. Tell the crew I’d get the person to fuck me by the end of the night. That’s about it. It became more of a stupid ritual than a bet after a while, but that doesn’t make it less disgusting.”

Your stomach twists, not as sharply as it did the first time, but enough, because hearing it plainly still hurts. Because this is the truth without Naoya’s cruelty wrapped around it. Because he is saying it with you sitting between his knees and your best friend across from him, and he is not trying to make it sound better than it was.

Maki’s jaw works once.

“Good. At least you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You were disgusting for doing that.”

“Yes.”

“And you,” she says, eyes cutting to Choso, who unfreezes so fast it is almost painful. He bows his head immediately.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you too. I failed her as a friend, and I understand why that made you angry.”

Maki studies him for a long moment.

“Don’t make me regret tolerating you.”

“I won’t.”

Maki looks at him for a long second, then nods once. Not forgiveness. Acknowledgment. Choso accepts it like more than he expected.

Yuuji is still lying on the floor, one hand carefully trying to detach Ponkan from his hair without hurting her.

“This is the most stressful dinner with a kitten I’ve ever attended.”

“You attend many?” Sukuna asks dryly.

“First one. Still wins.”

Maki ignores them and looks at you, which makes your throat tighten. Her eyes are not hard when they land on you. Protective, always. Tired, maybe. But there is something else there too. Trust, given reluctantly and with both hands ready to catch you if it breaks.

“I can’t allow or forbid anything regarding your choices,” she says. “You’re an adult and you know what you do. So if you trust Sukuna won’t hurt you again, I trust your judgment.”

The silence after that is full. You don't know what to do with it.

There was a time when Maki would have turned the whole world into a weapon if you asked. There is still that version of her in the room. You can feel it. But she is giving you something better than control. She is giving you faith in your own choice, even if she hates the risk.

You look down at your hands. Then you feel Sukuna shift behind you.

His knees brush your shoulders more deliberately this time, not pressing, not claiming, but present. His torso leans forward enough that he blocks a little of the ceiling light above you, casting you in his shadow. It would have felt different once. Possessive. A public placement. Now it feels like he is there and forcing himself to stay silent because Maki is not speaking to him.

You think he probably doesn't appreciate being talked about like a dangerous animal whose handling has to be evaluated. You also think he knows he earned it.

He says nothing. That makes your chest hurt more than any defensive speech would have.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

Maki shrugs, as if the entire conversation has not cost her anything.

“Don’t make me be reasonable too often. It’s bad for my brand.”

Yuuji exhales dramatically from the floor.

“Okay. Wow. That was intense. I think Ponkan bit my face as emotional support.”

Ponkan meows.

The pressure in the room eases slightly. Maki picks up her food again.

“That’s all.”

It's not all.

Because Yuuji finds his voice.

He finally frees his hair from Ponkan, rolls to his side, and sets the kitten on the rug. She immediately begins roaming for her next victim, tiny tail up. Yuuji props himself on one elbow and looks between you and Sukuna with the expression of someone about to do something he knows may get him murdered but has decided his conscience requires it.

“Actually,” he says.

Sukuna’s head turns slowly.

“No.”

“I didn’t even ask yet.”

“You started with actually. Nothing good follows.”

Yuuji ignores him, though his face suggests he is bracing for impact. He looks at you first, apologetic and determined, then at Sukuna.

“Have you two discussed anything about what you want from now on? Like, aside from apologies?”

Your entire body goes still.

Oh.

No.

Maki’s eyebrows lift with immediate, delighted shock. She looks like she did not expect Yuuji to throw a live grenade but deeply respects the form. Choso looks like he regrets having a physical form. Sukuna’s body goes quiet behind you.

Yuuji pushes on, brave or foolish or both.

“I know it’s not my business. It’s definitely not my business. But I think my big brother should stop being so emotionally clogged and tell you what he feels. Properly. Or at least not hover around it like a malfunctioning robot making everyone decode him like a broken radio.”

“Yuuji,” you say, because anxiety needs a target.

“Sorry. I’m just saying.”

You don't dare look up at Sukuna. You can't be sure what exactly Yuuji means by tell you what he feels. Your heart is already trying to supply answers it has no right to demand. You stare at Ponkan instead as she trots toward Choso’s abandoned takeout container and gets gently redirected by his hand.

The room waits. Then Sukuna shifts.

“I told her how I feel,” he says.

His voice is low, controlled, but there is something under it that makes your skin prickle. You keep looking at the rug.

“I told her I missed her,” he continues. “And I still do. That’s my problem to deal with, not hers. Not anyone else’s.”

Maki’s eyes widen just a fraction, and then her face does something unholy. Shock first. Then enjoyment. Not cruel enjoyment. Worse. Sister enjoyment. The kind that says she has just witnessed Yuuji drop a bomb and Sukuna answer it without exploding, and she plans to replay this later while making you suffer.

The brief silence is broken by Ponkan meowing again at Choso, who murmurs something to her like she is a small unstable client.

“No stealing food,” he tells her softly. You finally tilt your head back.

Sukuna is already looking down at you.

Of course he is.

The angle makes him look almost unreal, face upside down from your position, red eye steady, scar cutting through the lamplight. He leans further, and your heart stops for one stupid second because his face is closer now, because the couch behind you becomes too small, because his warmth is at your back, his knees near your shoulders, his voice about to touch the side of your head.

But all he does is bend near your ear and murmur,

“I’m not letting Maki and Yuuji come back here at the same time. I promised Shoko I’d keep my cortisol levels low. They’re sabotaging my treatment.”

You cackle.

It bursts out of you so suddenly that Ponkan startles in Choso’s lap. You slap Sukuna’s leg lightly, more instinct than decision, your palm contacting firm muscle through his pants for one brief second before you pull back. He goes still under the touch.

The evening softens again after that.

Not because the conversation meant nothing, but because it meant enough and didn’t destroy the room. Maybe that’s what normal adults do. Not avoid every hard thing, not turn each one into a battlefield, but ask, answer, breathe, order food, let a kitten bite someone’s hoodie, and keep going.

You find yourself relaxing back against the couch without intending to. The back of your shoulder brushes Sukuna’s shin. He doesn't move away. Neither do you.

The takeout containers empty. The TV plays more motocross clips. Yuuji asks fewer terrible questions and more useful ones. Choso gradually relaxes enough to talk setup and traction with you, his voice gaining life when you ask about how one rider handled a deep rut in a muddy outdoor race. Sukuna interrupts to say the rider nearly lost the rear because he came in greedy. You argue that calculated greed is part of racing. Sukuna tells you not when the calculation is bad. Maki says all of this looks like men trying very hard to die in interesting shapes.

Then you admit, quietly,

“I miss the races a bit. And the stadium.”

The room notices. Maki’s gaze cuts to you.

“Last time you went, you almost fainted.”

Sukuna’s head turns.

“What?”

It comes out sharp, immediate and worried before restraint catches it.

“Because she saw you riding, dumbass.” Maki deadpans.

You close your eyes briefly.

“What? He asked!”

Sukuna’s face hardens, not at you. At himself.

“When?”

“The same day you approached me,” Maki says. “Outside.”

Sukuna clicks his tongue, the sound low and irritated. Maki’s eyes narrow.

“What? You hoped I’d tell you she wasn’t feeling well so you could pull the dumb hero act and go ruin things a little more?”

“I wouldn’t have.”

Yuuji and Choso make doubting noises at the same time.

You turn your head to stare at them. Yuuji looks away. Choso suddenly becomes fascinated by Ponkan’s ears. Sukuna glares at both of them, then reaches over and plucks Ponkan from Choso’s lap with one hand. She dangles for half a second before he settles her on his shoulder like a tiny orange parrot.

“She’s the only one who respects me in my own house,” he says.

Ponkan immediately bites his earlobe.

You laugh so hard your stomach hurts.

Sukuna closes his eye for a second while Yuuji collapses onto his back in hysterics and Maki looks satisfied in a way that suggests cosmic justice has briefly visited. Choso, poor Choso, tries not to laugh too obviously and fails when Ponkan clings to Sukuna’s shoulder with tiny paws and continues her campaign against his ear.

It's the weekend, so people stay later than they should.

Not too late, but late enough for the sky outside to deepen fully and the city lights to sharpen beyond the windows. Takeout containers are cleared, slowly, with more arguing than cleaning requires. Ponkan falls asleep, wakes up, attacks a paper bag, falls asleep again. Yuuji declares himself her favorite uncle. Maki says there is no competition because the other uncle is Choso and he looks ready to write Ponkan into his will. Choso says nothing, which is incriminating.

By the time people start leaving, the apartment is warm from bodies, food, laughter, and the small chaos of a kitten who has explored every lap in the room and judged all of them useful.

Choso leaves first, saying he is spending the night with his girlfriend. Maki offers him a ride automatically, and he says he is fine because he came with his bike. Something about that small exchange makes you smile. The worlds are crossing carefully, not seamlessly, but without shattering.

Yuuji stretches, arms over his head, and looks around Sukuna’s living room with theatrical consideration.

“I’m wondering if I should just sleep over.”

Sukuna is on him instantly.

Not violently, but with the efficiency of an older brother who has manhandled this specific younger brother for most of their lives. He catches Yuuji by the back of his hoodie and steers him toward the door while Yuuji laughs and drags his feet.

“Out.”

“Wow. Kicked out in front of guests.”

“Out.”

“I love you too.”

“Go home.”

“You’re afraid I’ll bond with Ponkan more than you.”

“You’re trying so hard to make me revoke your access on the front gate.”

Yuuji grins at you over his shoulder while Sukuna pushes him toward the entryway.

“Tell Ponkan I love her.”

“She doesn’t know you.”

Maki stands, amused, gathering her things.

“Come on, sentimental brat. I’ll make sure you get downstairs without being thrown through a wall.”

You take the chance to rise too, even though Ponkan is asleep in your arms, purring so comfortably that the idea of setting her down feels morally wrong. You look at her little face tucked against your sleeve and hesitate. Sukuna notices that.

“You can stay a little while if you want,” he says.

Your eyes lift. He is standing near the door after successfully ejecting Yuuji, one hand still on the handle, his body angled like the offer costs him something but he is determined not to make it sound like a demand.

“I’m not kicking anyone out,” he adds. “Except Yuuji. I can do that. He’s family.”

Yuuji, from the hall, calls,

“I heard that!”

“You were meant to.”

You should leave. You know that. Staying alone with Sukuna after a warm evening, while the apartment still holds everyone’s laughter and your body is already too aware of him, is probably not the cautious choice. Slow means slow. Boundaries mean boundaries. You told yourself you would not let softness make you stupid.

But the invitation is open, not pressed into your hands. He doesn't step closer. He doesn't lower his voice. He leaves the door literally open as Maki and Yuuji wait in the hallway.

A little while.

You glance down at Ponkan. She is fully asleep, one paw tucked near her face.

“Sure,” you say. “A little while.”

Maki’s gaze snaps to you. You give her a look that says you know. She lifts both hands slightly, not surrendering, just acknowledging the adult-choice territory she promised to respect.

“I have my phone. If I need to come back and make him suffer, I will.”

Sukuna looks at her.

“You say that like you’re waiting for a coupon.”

“I don’t need discounts.”

“Goodnight, Maki,” you say before this can become another duel. She hugs you quickly at the door, one arm around your shoulders, careful of Ponkan.

“Text me.”

“I will.”

Yuuji gives you a softer smile behind her.

“Goodnight. Bye, Ponkan.” Ponkan sleeps through his farewell. “Bye! Don’t be emotionally clogged!”

Sukuna closes the door before the sentence finishes. The click of it shutting changes the apartment.

The quiet after company has a texture. You feel it settle over the living room, over the abandoned takeout containers, over the toys on the floor, over the space between you and him. Sukuna stands by the door for a moment with his hand still near the lock, then turns back.

You return to the living room and sit on the floor again because Ponkan shifts when you consider the couch, and you don't want to wake her. You cradle her in your lap, stroking one finger over her soft head.

Sukuna doesn't take his previous spot on the couch. He sits in the armchair across from you. Facing you, and the choice is so deliberate you feel it. Separate enough to be respectful. Close enough to talk. You stroke Ponkan’s back with one finger and watch Sukuna try to organize himself. It’s almost painfully obvious now that you know what to look for. The faint set of his jaw. The way his gaze drops once, then returns. The stillness of his hands. He looks less like a man at ease in his own apartment and more like he did in the car on your birthday — braced, determined, not sure where to put all the things he wants without making them too large for you. He looks at you, looks at Ponkan, looks at the window, then back at you.

You give him mercy because you are beginning to understand that mercy, used carefully, is not the same as letting someone off the hook.

“Did Yuuji and Maki get into your head?”

He scoffs. That means yes. Then a beat passes.

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

Your mouth curves.

“That was almost honest.”

“Don’t start grading me with that pen.”

“I could. It writes beautifully.”

“I know.”

“You sound proud of yourself.”

“I chose well.”

“You did.”

His face changes at the quiet sincerity. Only slightly. A tightening around the eye, a shift in his breathing, like praise still enters him with too much force when it's not about racing. Then he looks down at his hands.

“They’re annoying.”

“They love us.”

The us slips out before you can inspect it. Sukuna notices and his eye sharpens, but he doesn't pounce on it.

“They’re still annoying,” he says instead. “But maybe we should talk about something else.”

The statement is too open to be casual.

You shift slightly, legs folded to one side, Ponkan warm in your lap now. The kitten sighs in her sleep, slumbering through the complications of being an adult human being with an adult life and adult relationships, entirely unconcerned with the way your heart has begun making poor structural decisions behind your ribs.

You look at her because she is easier to look at than the man in front of you. Adult life is cruel, you think, in the most absurdly calm way. A kitten can sleep through emotional tension. She can be loved by everyone in the room and worry only about food, warmth, and whether hoodie strings can be defeated. Meanwhile, you are sitting on the floor of your ex-not-ex’s apartment trying to understand what shape love can have after betrayal.

Your pulse answers before you do.

“Okay,” you say, “What something else do you want to discuss?”

Your tone is lighter than the anxiety gathering beneath your ribs. Curious, almost gentle. You want to see what he thinks matters. You want to know whether Yuuji’s grenade left shrapnel in him. You want, dangerously, to hear him say something that makes the waiting inside you less shapeless.

He looks at you for a long second. Then, as if the armchair is suddenly too much distance for what he means to say, he slides forward and lowers himself onto the floor.

The movement steals your breath a little.

He’s to the floor across from you, not too close, but closer than before. Eye level, or as close as possible considering he is still taller and broader even seated. The choice lands softly. He could loom from the chair, but he puts himself on the floor with you, knees bent, forearms resting loosely, gaze steady.

He meets your eyes.

“I should probably ask if you ever think you can see yourself back with me.”

You stop breathing and your heart trips, but he continues before you can answer, voice low but very clear.

“Not like before, not the same way. But with me.”

“Oh shit,” you let it escape too honestly, a little too shocked, before any dignity can intervene.

His face goes flat.

“At least this time you didn’t choke and almost die. Progress.”

You let out a stunned laugh, one hand pressing carefully around Ponkan so you don’t jostle her.

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually be this pointed and direct like this.”

“I’ve been working on being less terrible at shit like this.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m not asking for an answer because I think I’m owed one,” he says, and the words come slower now, shaped with care. “I want to align my expectations accordingly.”

Your eyebrow rises. He grimaces faintly, as if hearing himself.

“That sounded like Nanami.”

“A little.”

“What I mean is—” He stops, exhales, then looks at you more directly. “I’ll wait or stop waiting depending on what you tell me. I’m not saying I’ll go away if the answer isn’t what I want. I’m not cutting contact unless you want that. I like you. Your company. Your presence. Everything you bring into a room.” His jaw works once. “You. As a person. It doesn’t matter if you’re with me as a friend or something else. I just need to know, and I know how hypocritical that sounds, if I should have any kind of hope in that. Or if I should see you as my friend and co-parent to this small orange little pest.”

You look down at Ponkan. She is completely gone to the world, purring faintly in her sleep, tiny stomach rising and falling. It's so unfair that something this small gets to be simple. Hungry, eat. Tired, sleep. Lonely, scream at Sukuna’s bedroom door until he gives in. No history. No old wounds requiring language. No careful negotiation of love, hope, trust, desire, friendship, fear.

You stroke her paw with your thumb.

You imagine saying no. You imagine saying friendship only. You test it privately, in the space behind your ribs. Could you do that? Could you keep him in your life, visit Ponkan, talk about races with Choso, sit in rooms with Yuuji and Maki and Sukuna and not reach for anything more? If you told him no, would he keep respecting it? Would he keep treating you with this careful steadiness? Would he continue as a friend, genuinely, or would want curdle into pressure eventually?

The only way to know would be to choose that road and watch his actions over time.

But there is another truth sitting under all the caution.

You love him.

A year was not long enough to dim it. Heartbreak did not do the clean, merciful damage people sometimes claim it does. You loved Kashimo too, in a different way, a real way, kind and grateful and tender, and that is part of why you let him go properly instead of using him as proof you had moved on. But Sukuna remains lodged in a place that has never stopped recognizing him. Not as the champion. Not as the danger. Not as the man on posters or the man beside a bike. Him. The unbearable, difficult, infuriating man who learned to let a kitten sleep on his neck and bought you a pen because he remembered a five-second glance from two years ago.

You really, really love him.

After everything. After the parking lot. After the silence. After Kashimo’s gentleness, after your careful attempt to build another life, after months of refusing to watch races, after seeing him beside Kenny in photographs and feeling something tear quietly inside you. The love did not leave. It changed color. It learned caution. It lost some innocence. But it is there, stubborn and breathing, looking at him from across a living room floor while a kitten sleeps between you.

You lift your eyes.

His focus on you is almost painful.

You can see how much effort it takes for him to remain still. It's in his shoulders, in the hands loosely clasped between his knees, in the way his jaw stays tight as if he is physically holding himself in place. He asked for the answer. Now he has to survive waiting for it.

“I like you,” you say. His eye flickers. You swallow and continue. “Hell, I love you. That didn’t change.”

The effect on him is immediate and contained only by force.

His whole body seems to seize around the words. His eye sharpens with such intensity that heat rushes through you. His body leans forward a fraction before he stops himself, like instinct tried to cross the room and restraint caught it by the throat. His hands flex once against his knees. The focus on his face becomes almost frightening, not because you fear him, but because you understand what it costs him not to lunge at the sentence. Not to grab, claim, kiss, demand, turn your confession into proof that everything can be restored by wanting hard enough.

He stays where he is.

You continue before either of you can drown in that one sentence.

“I thought about taking things slow... which is probably hard for someone who loves velocity, but that’s what I can offer for now. Slow. Not pretending nothing happened, or jumping back into what we were because what we were had things inside it that hurt me. I don’t want to rebuild the same house with fresh paint.”

His gaze doesn't leave yours. You breathe carefully.

“I’m willing to try a restart,” you say. “If you think you can endure slow.”

His shoulders lower. It's subtle, but the relief moves through him like a physical thing. His breathing deepens. Some locked part of his chest releases enough that his posture shifts, not collapsing, just no longer braced against impact. His eye remains intense, but the edge of dread retreats from it.

“I can do slow,” he says.

You tilt your head slightly and wait.

“I’m great at it,”his mouth curves as he says, dangerous and familiar.

You give him a look. He holds it for one full second. Then, because he is still Sukuna and apparently incapable of leaving tenderness unsinged, he asks,

“So, wanna spend the night?”

Your eyes widen. His hands lift immediately.

“It’s a joke.”

“Sukuna.”

“Humor, if you will.”

You stare at him. He looks unapologetic and slightly too pleased with himself.

“I won’t hit you,” you say, “out of respect for Ponkan, who is too young to witness that level of violence.”

“Merciful.”

“She deserves a peaceful childhood.”

“With Yuuji as an uncle? Impossible.”

You laugh, shaking your head, and the intensity loosens just enough to let both of you breathe.

He leans back on one hand, and the change in his body makes the air shift. Not threatening. Not quite flirtatious. But something warmer slides back into the space, old rhythm finding new footing.

“You can teach me, then.”

“How generous of me, after all, I’m a teacher.”

“I’m aware. It’s one of your flaws.”

You smile despite yourself. Ponkan, still asleep, makes a tiny sound. Both of you look down at her and the tenderness that follows is quiet and unavoidable.

Sukuna’s gaze rests on the kitten, then lifts to you.

“Did you come by car or app?”

“App.”

“Can I take you home?”

You look at him for a moment.

The question is simple. The asking is not.

He is giving you room to refuse. Again. No assumption. No grabbing keys and expecting you to follow. No making the decision through momentum. You nod.

“It’s fine. You can.”

He stands first, then reaches down, but not for you. For Ponkan.

You pass her carefully into his hands, and she wakes just enough to blink at him, deeply betrayed by movement. He murmurs something too low for you to catch. It sounds insulting, probably. It also makes her settle instantly against his chest. You try not to melt through the floor.

He puts Ponkan in her bed, waits half a second to ensure she doesn't immediately escape, and grabs his keys. She does escape. He looks down at her, then at you.

“You see?”

“She loves you.”

“She has poor judgment.”

“Don’t project.”

He gives you a look. You smile sweetly.

It takes five more minutes to leave because Ponkan follows both of you to the door and cries like you are abandoning her to war. Sukuna sighs, picks her up, carries her back to the living room, distracts her with a toy, and returns before she can realize she has been deceived.

By the time you reach the car, the night air has cooled enough to feel good against your face.

His car smells familiar. Clean leather. A trace of him. Something faint from the gas station maybe, or maybe you imagine it because you know the story now. The passenger seat accepts you again. He waits until you buckle your seatbelt before pulling out, which you notice and say nothing about.

The car ride begins with his usual command.

“Connect the Bluetooth and play something.”

You do. He complains before the first song reaches the chorus. You smile out the window.

It is the same old drill, the same familiar ritual, but not identical. That is the distinction you keep feeling all night. The shape resembles what you knew, but the weight is new. He grumbles about your music taste, but he doesn't use the teasing as a way to avoid the charged quiet completely. He keeps his hands on the wheel. When the streetlights pass over his face, you see him thinking between insults, measuring the road and the silence and whatever slow means now.

He wants hope. You gave him some. Now both of you have to learn how not to mishandle it.

As the car approaches your building, he speaks without looking away from the road.

“I’ll need you to tell me what taking things slow means.”

You turn your head.

“I thought you said you were great at it?”

His glare is immediate.

You smirk.

The car pulls up by the entrance. For a moment, neither of you moves. The engine hums. Your seatbelt rests against your chest. His hand is on the wheel, fingers relaxed but not fully. You see the old impulse in him again, and the new restraint around it. You feel your own want answer, warm and low and complicated.

Slow, you think. Slow doesn't mean nothing.

You unbuckle.

Then, before caution can take too much credit for keeping you intact, you lean across the space between you. Not towards his mouth. That would be too fast, maybe. Too much for the fragile new rules neither of you has written yet. You press a kiss to his face, on the scarred skin.

The scar is warm beneath your lips. Slightly different in texture, but not something separate from him. The contact is brief. Soft. Devastating. Deliberate enough that it cannot be mistaken for accident. When you pull back, he has turned his face toward you, his eye fixed on yours with an expression that strips the air out of your lungs.

Want is there.

So is shock.

So is something almost fragile, buried under the intensity of being seen exactly where he once thought he had become least lovable.

You open the door before either of you can turn the moment into something too large.

“Thank you for the ride,” you say, stepping out.

His voice comes lower.

“You’re just leaving after that?”

You smile, hand on the door.

“I’m willing to teach you how to take things slow. Like the hare and the turtle.”

His eye narrows.

“Did you just call me a bunny?”

You grin.

“Good night, Sukuna.”

You close the door gently and walk toward the gate, still smiling so hard it almost hurts. Behind you, his car remains idling. You do not turn around right away because you know he is watching, and because letting him watch you leave without calling you back feels like part of the lesson too.

At the gate, you glance over your shoulder.

He is still there. One hand on the wheel, face angled toward you, scar touched by streetlight, expression unreadable to anyone who has not loved him long enough to know when silence is crowded.

You lift your hand in a small wave. He doesn't wave back, only watches.

But his mouth moves, barely, like the beginning of a smile he refuses to let become too obvious.

You go inside with warmth under your skin, not simple, not safe in the careless way, but real. You know there will be difficult conversations ahead. Definitions. Boundaries. Trust rebuilt through repetition, not declarations. There will be Maki’s questions, Yuuji’s badly timed honesty, Shoko’s sharp little assessments, Choso’s careful attempts to be normal, and Sukuna learning, painfully, that slow doesn't mean standing still. It means choosing not to run just because want has always felt like speed to him.

But tonight, there’s enough for you to let yourself take a deep breath of relief. There’s a kitten named Ponkan. A week of pictures. An apartment that no longer feels only haunted. A man who asks what hope is allowed to look like instead of taking it. A kiss placed on scarred skin, gentle enough to be a beginning and heated enough to be a warning.

And when you reach your door, your phone buzzes. A text from Sukuna.

The turtle wins, doesn’t it?

You laugh softly in the hallway, forehead nearly dropping against your apartment door.

Yes.

A pause.

Annoying story.

Educational story.

I hate rabbits now.

You are the rabbit.

Sleep before I regret asking you for lessons.

You smile, unlocking your door.

Goodnight, bunny.

His reply takes longer. Long enough that you imagine him staring at the screen, offended and helplessly pleased in equal measure.

Goodnight, strange woman.

You step into your apartment and close the door behind you, still smiling.

For the first time in a long while, hope doesn't feel like something reckless dragging you forward too fast. It feels like something small and warm placed carefully in your hands, asking you to hold it properly this time.

And you want to.

God, you want to.

I love everything about you that hurts So let me see your moves, let me see your moves Lips pressed close to mine, true blue

But the prince of any failing empire knows that Everybody wants, everybody wants To drive on through the night, if it's the drive back home

Things aren't the same anymore Some nights it gets so bad I almost pick up the phone

Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns I sleep with your old shirts And walk through this house in your shoes I know it's strange It's a strange way of saying That I know I'm supposed to love you I'm supposed to love you

I've already given up on myself twice Third time is the charm, third time is the charm (Threw) caution to the wind, but I've got a lousy arm

And I've traced your shadows on the wall, now I kiss them Whenever I'm down, whenever I'm down Figured on not figuring myself out

Things aren't the same anymore Some nights it get so bad I almost pick up the phone

Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns I sleep with your old shirts And walk through this house in your shoes I know it's strange It's a strange way of saying That I know I'm supposed to love you I'm supposed to love you

I was born under a bad sign, you saved my life That night on the roof of your hotel Cross my heart and hope to die Splinter from the headboard in my eye Photo-proofed kisses I remember so well

Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns I sleep with your old shirts And walk through this house in your shoes I know it's strange It's a strange way of saying That I know I'm supposed to love you I'm supposed to love you