lalalalala

sensing that you weren’t going to offer a response, his much larger hands find yours and he brings it to his chest. he continues talking, “did you know nanami came back a few days ago?”

that came as quite a surprise. though the blonde man and you weren’t on the best of terms, you still kept in contact occasionally. after all, you worked together during your high school days and he followed your decision to leave. you were the first person he talked to when he decided to leave the sorcerer community to become a salaryman. you were there when he got his first promotion, and the many more that followed. and the nanami you knew? he was extremely firm on his decision to leave, refusing to hear any persuasion from anyone no matter how close they were.

“why?” your eyebrows furrow, subconsciously running your thumb over satoru’s thumb.

he shrugs, “who knows?”

he didn’t voice out his thoughts, but you could see right through him. when are you coming back? do you ever plan on coming back?

satoru never approved of your decision to leave. the two of you were so close to being together–officially together–when you suddenly announced your ‘retirement’, opting to spend your days in normal human society instead of being a jujutsu sorcerer. at the early age of 18, gojo satoru found his world crashing down. the two most important people in his life had left him, and the promises you and suguru made to him were long crushed and forgotten. the image of him showing up on your doorstep in the middle of a starless night was still clear in your mind. 

“didn’t you say that we could be together after you graduate?! you intentionally lied to me, didn’t you?” his fists were tightly clenched. he couldn’t control the poison seeping through his lips, nor the stray tear that slid down his pale cheek graciously hidden by the pouring rain. 

your upbringing was more than humble when compared to satoru’s. you weren’t from a powerful clan; you were born to an ordinary civilian couple who barely got by and happened to be blessed with a curse technique. the promise of a guaranteed job and high salary brought you to the gates of jujutsu high. you didn’t mean to lie when you promised the man that you would accept his confession after you graduated and become a full-fledged sorcerer. it was the only way his clan would acknowledge you, after all.

in no time, the man’s breath evens out as his eyes flutter shut. the crease between his eyebrows that he himself probably didn’t even notice, disappears, and a bit of drool lands on your comforter. he had never looked more at peace but you knew better than to think he was asleep.

“satoru,” you call out. he doesn’t move an inch and you pull your hand out of his vice-like grip.

“i know you’re awake.” you took a deep breath, chest burning with a pain that had become way too familiar for your own liking, “don’t come here anymore.” 

It’s for the best. he could find another lovely person to call his. who he doesn’t have to fight tooth and nail with his clan and all the higher-ups to be with; and you can find someone who can actually make it to all the important events in your life. who you can share every exciting detail to with an enthusiasm that has yet to expire with time. a love that you didn’t have to share with the rest of humanity. and he shifts, his head and body turning away from you. a resounding snore travels through the room.

“please,” you finish, “leave me.”

your eyes trail to your nightstand. a moth landed on the rim of your lighted candle, its appearance casting a shadow in the light that illuminates your dim room.

“and shoko’s too busy with her study to help me,” he whines. he digs his face further into your chest as he lays between your legs, long arms snaking beneath your loose t-shirt as he wraps them around your waist. your arms hang around the nape of his neck loosely. you shift your body so that your back presses comfortably against the wooden headboard of your bed.

“is that so?” your face crinkles in adoration.

satoru turns his head once it gets too hot to breathe comfortably. your eyes, curled into a crescent shape that charmingly accompanied your smile, trail over the messy strands of snowy hair and onto his ears and then onto the outlines of his nose and lips. satoru’s eyelashes were long enough to brush against his cheekbones, you note.

“yeah!” his bottom lips jut out, “how do i polish my technique if she doesn’t help me!”

your fingers find their way into his hair, brushing out the very few tangles, “because you’re the strongest, ‘toru.”

the pout quickly turns into a shy smile, like a kid who just received compliments from their parent. he pulls his head up, leaning closer to your face.

that was his indication for wanting a kiss. you giggled, giving in.

strongest.

in his younger years, as soon as he could piece together sentences, satoru noticed that the words ‘the strongest’ would follow closely behind his name in any given conversation. even as he looked at other children his age burying their faces into their parents’ necks or holding hands with a friend as they engaged in a casual playdate, he would never admit that those two words left a sour aftertaste in his mouth.

he spends much of his childhood either behind the walls of his clan’s compound or engaging in fights against curses. servants and clan members alike would bow their heads down and walk the other way around if they sensed the presence of the prodigy.

gojo satoru is the strongest, but he is human before that. and loneliness creeps up on him like a ghost, always trailing a few steps behind. it was like a stain in a shirt that was impossible to get rid of even if the epidermis of your fingertips had broken away while scrubbing it with your hands. those two words were branded onto him with an invisible scalding iron the moment he was born, haunting him like a curse. a curse that even the strongest could not rid himself of.

it wasn’t until his enrollment into jujutsu high and meeting you, shoko, and suguru, that it all changed.

he remembers his first mission with you. you, gifted with a powerful cursed technique. you, fully capable of defending yourself against a semi-grade 1 curse but rendered immobile as fear shocks your nerves. the neurotransmitter in your body seem to be malfunctioning as you chant ‘move! move!’ internally but still unable to make any physical movement.

satoru rolled his eyes, looking down on you. a powerful technique wasted, he thought at the time.

it barely took a flick of his finger before the curse was exorcised.

pushing his pride aside, he walks up to you and offers you a hand. your legs had given out on you. dust and dirt collect on the jujutsu high uniform skirt while you sat on the ground, still not recovered.

“i’m the strongest,” he proclaimed, “you won’t die on a mission with me.”

since then, you followed behind him like a lost puppy, replacing the ghost known as loneliness that previously loomed over every second of his life.

“yeah,” he smirked, pulling away from the kiss, “i’m the strongest.”

if someone were to ask when was the moment satoru fell in love with you, it would be the moment you first met his eyes. at first, you were like another one of those gutless weaklings in his clan, always keeping your head down and never looking him, or anyone matter of fact, in the eyes.

a few months after being acquainted with you, shoko and suguru came up to him to ask about what gifts you would like.

“gifts?” a slender eyebrow perked up.

“yeah,” suguru shrugged, “it’s her birthday next week. you spend the most time with her, so you probably know what she likes best, right?”

he pursed his lips. the concept of friends celebrating birthdays was still one that was foreign to him. though he sometimes thought of you as pesky by the way you always trailed after him, it was undeniable that you were possibly the closest person he could consider a “friend.” memories about daifuku, specifically strawberry daifuku’s, came to his head. every few weeks, you would bring him boxes of dessert, most of the time being daifuku, carefully wrapped before being placed in a white paper bag and handed to him.

“she likes desserts.”

he assumed you liked daifuku because it was the thing that you most often gifted him. you thought he liked daifuku because you caught him staring at it once when the two of you passed by a bakery.

shortly after the conversation, he embarked on a journey to buy “the best daifuku in japan!” gojo satoru put more effort into planning your birthday than he had for any other event in his life. balloon, confetti, banner, birthday hats, and a customized two-level cake.

his heart beats fast as he drums his finger against the wooden surface of the teacher’s podium while waiting for shoko and you. he felt sick, like he was about to throw up. suguru threw a knowing smirk at him when gojo voiced those feelings out loud.

the white-haired man’s head snapped towards the door as he hears footsteps–shoko stomping particularly loud just in case the two ended up bickering and missing your footsteps. he adjust the pointy birthday hat on his head and whispers at suguru to do the same.

utterly, helplessly in love and he didn’t even know it.

“happy birthday!” he gleams, twisting a confetti popper as the door slides open.

after months, you finally raised your head, meeting his piercing eyes with your shaky orbs as tears line your bottom lid.

“h-hey! don’t cry!” satoru panics, a rosy pink painting his cheeks and the tips of his ears as he rushes to your side. he digs in his pockets for a handkerchief, only to pull out a slightly moist piece of cloth.

he sweated more than usual today.

“sorry,” your future lover muttered, stuffing the cloth back into his pockets, “got kinda dirty.”

“no-! thank you, gojo-san,” a grin blooms on your face. to this day, he still swears that the world stopped right then for cupid to shoot an arrow through his heart.

from beside the two of you, shoko and suguru share a look.

it doesn’t take long before your boyfriend’s breaths even out as he gets lulled to sleep in the same position, ears pressed against your chest as he listens to the rhythmic beating of your heart.

fatigue was evident through your dark bags and droopy eyes but sleep did not come to you as easily as it did for him. you stayed awake, running your fingers through his hair until it felt like you could remember the placement of every strand of his silky hair. your eyes stayed on the side of his face and the smile never left your face, though at some point it turned from adoration to somewhat melancholic.

suguru’s question repeats over and over again like a mantra.

earlier in the day, you met up with him in the laboratory, forced to make up an experiment that you two missed whilst attending a mission. attending jujutsu high does not equate to being able to skip core classes you would attend in a normal high school.

“should be easy enough,” you shrugged as you skimmed over the instructions, “simple titration.”

“not as simple as it seems,” suguru busies himself with prepping all the materials, “you have to be very meticulous. one drop too little and the color disappears. one drop too much and the solution’s overly titrated, meaning the experiment failed.”

you and suguru have gotten closer. satoru has been hell-bent on becoming the strongest and shoko was never sent off on dangerous missions in the first place, meaning the two of you would embark on missions together.

and you two were rather similar. gifted with powerful techniques that come at the expense of burdening your own body.

a sigh escapes your lips as you rub your temple. migraines have become a frequent visitor in your life now. you wanted nothing more than to go home; instead, you had to spend more time in this lab and then go and wait for your lovely boyfriend.

it doesn’t take a genius to tell that you’re burned out. dark circles were visible even with the layer of foundation and concealer on. you run your tongue over your pale, dry lips as you dig in your bag for a tube of lip gloss. your friend would’ve made a comment about your lethargy if it wasn’t for the fact that he was almost in the same state as you–fatigued and exhausted.

he doesn’t say much at all, only carefully adding the standard solution drop by drop. you don’t say much either, hands clasped on the neck of the flask and you swirled the glassware carefully.

it was almost magical. when the liquids made contact, a bright pink color was produced, only to disappear seconds later. drop by drop, suguru adds the standard solution until the liquid in the flask finally turns light pink. almost perfect.

“hey, (y/n),” he starts off, “may i ask you a question?”

you nodded.

“do you think you can keep going as a jujutsu sorcerer? it’s not too hard for you?”

the world stops. the birds outside the windows stop chirping and the air suddenly feels suffocating.

if it was up to you, you would’ve never become a jujutsu sorcerer.

you were tired. tired of burdening and tormenting your body for non-sorcerers who gratefully thanked you one second and went on to curse someone else the next. it was a never-ending cycle, as long as humans were to exist, so would curses. and you would have to spend the rest of your limited days battling curses to the point of exhaustion until maybe one day you would come across a curse strong enough to kill you.

you never voiced your distaste for non-sorcerers out loud. there are one too many that walk away with their noses stuck up to the sky as they grunt about how you just made them late and ruined their day, right after you had just saved their lives. how could one blame them for their ignorance towards the existence of curses? but how could anyone blame you for wanting to leave all this?

but your parents, and satoru–most importantly satoru–, would want this.

and you love satoru so much that whatever souls are made up of, his and yours are the same. his miseries are yours, and so are his desires.

your eyes stayed glued on the flask, the surface of the light pink liquid still swirling in a spiral. accidentally, another drop of the standard solution falls in. in the span of a millisecond, the solution turns hot pink. a saturated color that was unpleasant to look at.

suguru sighed, standing up straight, “bleh. let’s just copy off of shoko.”

you bit your lips, “yeah.”

the first ray of sunshine peaks through your window when the sun meets with the ocean once again. you’re pulled back to reality.

perhaps you knew that the moment suguru uttered those words and planted the seed, your character would sway. perhaps that was why you spent your last moment remembering every curvature of his face, every freckle on his cheek as you offered your final farewell in silence.

right, suguru. you had a mission with suguru today.

112 residents of the village were killed, after which a fire…

(by the time jujutsu high investigated on september 21…

investigations confirmed that all 112 were…

residuals revealed to be the work suguru geto’s curse manipulation..

suspected accomplice, (y/n) (l/n)...

false.