strangers (ongoing) by @yenayaps ; this fic will hit you hard cos jfc this is a truck of ANGST. i’ve never wanted eternal happiness and peace for two people so badly in my life. geto and reader have grown distant after a miscarriage and are in the process of learning & choosing to love each other again, and it makes me wanna bawllll. their arguments and thoughts are so grounded and feel incredibly real, making this fic all the more immersive and making the angst pack a few extra punches. i think about the diabolical restaurant scene once a month at least 😭

no. one party anthem (ongoing) by @indiewritesxoxo ⁴ ; this rockstar suguru right here is one i would suck right off the bone like hes a box of chicken wings. girl dad? charmer of the year n hes slick wit it too? THE PINING THE CHASING THE GROVELING THE TRYING TO BE BETTER FOR READER??? top tier truly. indie always shows out with her various geto series and this has gottaaaaa be one of the best. the angst and smut here are unparalleled. that hotel sex scene STAYS living in my head (gif of the duck smoking and shaking its head with a satisfied smirk). im forever rooting for geto in this fic IDGAF!!!!

meow or never (complete) on ao3 ; geto’s little shit of a cat (aptly named gojo) gets reader’s cat pregnant and chaos ensues. geto wants reader’s cookie so bad lmfaoooo just like gojo with reader’s cat… this whole fic is genuinely SO hilarious. super domestic, fluffy, and very slice-of-life too!

fwb!suguru (ongoing?) by @eraserbread ² ; elly’s prose is to die for and her word choice is so unique too so her works are always a treat to the soul. the way she writes geto.. mm… truly a five course meal. need geto and reader to communicate and stop trying to win the nonchalant-off (they’re both failing to be nonchalant). i’m shaking them. god i wanna smash these two together like barbie dolls 😢 (😏). let me get my wallet because it must be illegal to read this piece of art for FREEEEE?

lazy sunday morning and whispers in the library (complete) on ao3 ; going from domestic intimacy and first times in the first fic to some freaky exhibition shit in the second fic… yeaaaah this is my bread and butter. geto is SO romantic and sweet in these installments, especially the first part 😪 this geto needs to be in my bed by yesterday or i’m hanging myself by the ears on the nearest tower

smoking with stoner!getou suguru (complete) on ao3 ; been a while since i’ve read this but geto is slick and sexy ass motherfucker in this fic. his dialogue had me cheesinggggg I WANT HIM BAD BRAH! the exposition here is so lively and perfectly immersive, idk how to explain it but its SUCH a vibe. gojo and toji are total clowns in this fic lmfao the shit they were pulling in the background had me ctfuuuu. this fic is a certified fave

the roommate part 1 & part 2 (ongoing?) by @kenzieluvsnanami ; call this puth british with the way roommate geto is innittttt 🇬🇧 the way geto is written in these makes me nut untouched and on the spot… this man is a sexy ass fiend and ykw i like them crazy just like this. ESPECIALLY when it’s geto. love his cheekiness and tomfoolery here lmfaooo he’s entertaining asf

sometimes i peep on the handsome dad next door (complete) on ao3 ; the dilf suguru to beat all sugurus 🙂‍↔️ every time there was so much of a mention of either 1. his gray streaks or 2. how he interacts with nanako and mimiko, i started shaking like a little rabid dog on steroids. reader is such a freak in this LMFAOOJTKWHR just like me fr… i too would wake up at 5am just to watch geto get dressed 🤤 he’s so hot and assured and confident in this fic and it makes me wanna jump his bonessss. his and reader’s relationship and build-up is something you don’t wanna miss out on!

darling (complete) on ao3 ; the second i saw black reader x musician geto i knew this would be toe-curling. AND IT IS! op did such a lovely job of portraying the hard of hearing reader here. i adore how geto and reader use each other as inspiration for music and for writing, and seeing their arrangement develop into a relationship is so worth the read c:

breathe me in on ao3 ; fwb!suguru in this fic… i gotta light a blunt every time i think of him. i was sold the second he asked reader to come over not for sex but to cuddle and to have someone simply there with him. geto is soooo sensual to his core here like every thing he does and says feels like honey… and he’s SO smooth jfc. so fine. my sweetheart AND my little shit :,) the smut here is toe-curling

the ethics of relationships (complete) by @gojonanami ; i typically don’t read prof/students but this fic is just one of those onessss and if you haven’t read it then you’re missing out 🙂‍↔️ that’s how yummy this whole five course meal is. i’ve harassed so many friends with the link to this fic LMFAO i just want everyone to read this BAD… i’m due for a reread because it’s been a WHILE but so many scenes in this fic stand out in my memory. super good overall!!

brat (ongoing) by @kunareads ; producer geto and pop star reader you are so very famous to me! reader is such a vibe in this fic and it makes her relationship with geto all the more fun & enticing. their dynamic feels like snorting a line of coke in the best way possible but also i need these fools to communicate asap 😣 the formatting of this fic is SO fun and feels super interactive/immersive!!

vault boy (ongoing) by @indiewritesxoxo ⁴ ; fallout/apocalypse au!! if u havent gotten into fallout, indie makes the universe easy to understand. geto is such a sweetie pie in this fic and his humanity is devastating… MY POOR BABY :( i wanna hide him away in a bunker. speaking of bunkers, give me one to shack up with him in and we’d repopulate the entire world in just a few years TRRRRUST 🤣✌🏽

oneshots:

#INTRO2MUNCH101 by @satorena ; another situation where i read a fic years ago and became mutuals with the author later on (haiii serena). this fic is comedy fawking golddddd no joke but its also hot as hell. serena is too good at building up the chemistry between geto and reader (#welovemeanreadersbtw) and i love how desperate geto is here, he wants that cookie BAD. his fake nonchalant shit had no one fooled and every time reader called him out i was ctfu. the smut had me writhing brah WRITHING (and giggling profusely for many reasons)

rock you up on ao3 ; TA geto and professor reader is an unmatched dynamic brah YALL DONT EVEN GETTTT HOW MUCH I FUCK WITH THEM ANDDD THIS FIC… submissive geto was a very exciting surprise HEHEHEHEEEE i love seeing my man getting his shit rocked <3 the banter here is too mfing good and is something this writer very much excels at!!

why suguru’s wife is the best cook in the world! by @yunamoona ; a super good take on geto and his relationship with food AND the cutest meet cute to ever meet cute… yeah this is a banger. repeating what i said in the comments but when geto ate reader’s cookies i was smiling at my phone like a freak, because sometimes all it takes is just the act of kindness/love to be able to guide you down a path of healing :,) i love this fic sm. it’s one of a kind

what if you’re just someone i want around (i’m falling again) on ao3 ; post-jjk0 fix it fic where reader is assigned to watch over geto 😣💔 < the sound of my heart shattering. you can feel geto’s jadedness and bitterness radiating through the screen due to how vivid and deeply thoughtful each scene is written out. but despite it all, geto is such a sweetheart and lover to his core 😢

i’m afraid that’s just the way the world works (but i think that it could work for you and me) on ao3 ; an au where geto never defected and years later, reader and geto take in nanako and mimiko. such a heartwarming fic all around. i love my miminana forever and ever and they deserve the world

bed chem by @nanamiskentos ; this is sexy AND fucking hilarious, what MORE could you ask for. suguru had me curling my toessss in this fic jhtjwhrjsi his dialogue has me hot and ready like lil caesars. the descriptions here make me wanna lick my screen and digest every single word. best believe i’m cleaning my plate every time i reread this

it’s true i never write, but i would gladly die with you by @summer-oil ; post-defection fics where geto and reader used to be friends always destroy me in the best way possible :,) and ugh the prose here… no words can describe how beautiful and impactful it is. oh geto you yearner…

the haunting by @starmapz ² ; if you like horror fics this is absolutely the fic for you :3 if geto were my ex… shittttt i would crack him again and take him back too. this fic is a perfect blend of hot smut, angst, and unsettling horror. i can’t say much else cos of spoilers but the ending had me GAGGED

it will come back by @hellowoolf ; ballerina au with instructor geto and ballerina reader!! their push and pull in this fic had me reading with my hands (and puth 😣) clenched… the chemistry is SO buzzy and so loud. the smut is mfing fantasticcccc and the build-up to it is EXCELLENT. dialogue is on point toooooo everything geto says makes me giggle

top of the class on ao3 ; if my TA was as pretty (and pathetic) as geto in this fic, i’d crack tf out of them too 🤭 love the switch-up in the power dynamic here and how reader sooo effortlessly has geto wrapped around her finger

ghostface pussy killer by @saintkaylaa ; one thing about me is i loveeee a good fic where one chases the other and then they fuck nasty 😣 the aphrodisiacs being involved makes the stakes sm more intense (and hotter 😏). i’m obligated to reread this everyyyy october because this fic is peak

the best kind of remedy by @reignpage ; santa can i please get herbalist geto under my tree for christmas 🙏🏽 preferably naked and already oiled up 🙏🏽 stoner geto is absolutely and 100% my kryptonite everyyyy time and he’s extra sexy asl in this fic. DREAMY SIGH. the smut is so buzzyyyyy

a guide to hooking up by @thedivinegeneral ² ; this is a certified hood classic iykwim. every time this fic pops up on my dash or in my memory, i just HAVE to reread it. jade is really and truly the god of managing to make fics perfectly fluffy, hilarious, and smutty like whewwwww… geto and reader here are so special to me I LOVE THEM DEARLY 😣😋

how to baby trap marry your best friend! by @indiewritesxoxo ⁴ ; FUCK MY BABY DAD ALRIGHT!!! i love idiot best friends in love bro like just put the crush in the bag and pop the questionnnnn, the yearning in this kills me in the best way possible! the first time they have sex and take pictures of each other is forever branded in my head cos its tooooo hot 🚬

lessons in love on ao3 ; oh to fall in love with dilf geto and to retire with him… whimsical sigh. such a comforting slice of life fic. if my future partner isn’t this sweet and devoted and understanding, i don’t want em! geto here is really the perfect husband 😋

cry for me by @bunnieeteeth ; coach geto and figure skater reader! really cannot say much about this fic for the sake of spoilers, but also because i genuinely have no words for how this fic makes me feel. just wow. trust me when i say that this fic will have you sitting up in your seat and staring at your phone in shock. i want geto and reader to get together so bad but at what cost 💔

the torture of small talk with someone you used to know by @betterinvienna ; rockstar geto (and your ex) and photographer reader how you’ve both moved me and changed me irreversibly. geto is a first class yearner with a ticket straight to piningville because ohhhh my goddddd he wants reader back so mfing bad . he’s losing the nonchalant war #chalantking and i’m happy about it! such a good angst & hurt/comfort fic. i love exes fics. EVERY SINGLE SONG IS ABOUT YOU… WAH…. 😢😢😢🥺🥺🥺🥺

the practice of kissing by @lovelivision ; we all cheer for kissing practice fics!!! geto is such a mouthwatering tease in this fic ughhtksjrns i have got to fuck him . he’s such a cocky little shit but also sososo sweet with reader and so accommodating… his duality is unmatched!

praisekink4praisekink by @cherrys-wrld ; cherry always excels with writing familiar and cozy domesticity even during intimacy… dreamy sigh. geto is such a romantic WHY ISNT HE REALLLL (edit: i will update the link when this gets reposted!)

golden brown by @sixxels ; princess reader and knight geto you will be my undoing… the forbidden love here really packs a punch because they’re so desperate to be with each other and so in love, but they have to comply with the system :( i teared up while reading this fic. please never hurt me like this again (DO IT.)

ghost of you by @suguruss1ut ³ ; this fic is my 13th reason ☹️ post-defection geto and reader who still love each other despite geto’s actions/ideals is lethal. so lethal. this fic had me rolling around in bed thinking about it for dayssss after finishing it… it’s so heartbreaking UGHHHH 💔

#THE PARTY AND THE AFTER PARTY by @screampied ; lock me in a room with stripper!geto for about an hour (please trap us together longer though.) and he’s walking out pregnant god willing. whole fic had me twirling my hair and checking my wallet for extra cash to toss geto’s way

you & me by @getosurya ; perfect perfect perfect hurt/comfort after an argument between geto and reader. despite everything, they love each other sm and it bleeds through each and every action of theirs… this fic is so tender and reassuring that it makes me melt :,)

geto’s bride by @thedivinegeneral ² ; the effect that this fic has had on me actually needs to be studied because why am i so charmed by chucky doll geto to the point that i’ve sent this fic to multiple friends individually 😭😭 this shit had me CRYINGGGGG cos of how fucking funny it is alllll the way through lmfaooohtkwhrj and imagining certain scenes had me cracking up. i am such a sucker for sub geto in this fic… MAKE HIM WHIMPER!!!!

simply ear-resistible! by @indiewritesxoxo ⁴ ; bunny geto is the cutest fucking thing to ever existtttt 🥺😭 even if he has a massive attitude LMFAO. him retaining a few bunny traits/habits after returning to his original form actually makes me want to chew on his cheek. reader and geto are TOOOO cute here and i want the best for them :]

maw on ao3 ; there are no words to describe this fic or how it makes me feel without my description/thoughts majorly falling flat. i simply cannot do this fic justice… PLEASE READ IT.

ask me to bleed (for you i will) on ao3 ; post-defection geto and non-sorcerer reader who works at a bakery… another fic that is my 13th reason lowkey. this is another fic that i cannot do justice nor summarize my feelings for properly but i am once again urging you all to read this

purrrfect surprise by @suguruss1ut ³ ; do you like men who crawl on all fours while wearing cat ears?? look no further cos this is the fic for YOU!!! i love me some sub geto and this fic is pure peak. need him desperate justttt like this

drabbles:

(i’ve written so many summaries/thoughts already that i won’t be doing so for these fics. titles are all pretty self-explanatory for the most part, and these are all super good short reads!! 🫶🏽)

emo!suguru and his pretty pink princess by @epicderpface

suguru + independent gf by @satoruined

mornings with suguru by @hayajiku

sub!suguru wax play by @bluukive

arcturus beaming by @oporotheca

love, as if it were carved in stone by @go6jo

tutor!geto getting overwhelmed by @eraserbread ²

suguru volunteers to model for your art class and you didn’t expect him to have such a perfect dick by @gojosconsort

afterglow by @feyrinnn

kissing suguru by @sugurusbadhabit

binded bunny by @meowguru

domain expansion: unlimited creampies by @suguruss1ut ³

lost in the sauce (you) by @fushiguho

childhood friend!suguru by @digitalro

every time you sway too far to the side, he yanks you upright by the collar with a gruff “watch it,” as if that’ll actually penetrate your alcohol-soaked brain. you try to explain that you’re fiiine, that the water’s “fixing you,” but it comes out in a slurry mess he doesn’t even bother dignifying with a response.

meanwhile, he’s already got a mental checklist running. carpets? rolled up and shoved into a corner so you don’t trip and break your neck. sharp corners? navigated with one hand gripping the back of your shirt like you’re some troublesome toddler.ORS? already measured out in a glass on the counter, which he shoves into your hands with an unimpressed “drink.”

you complain it tastes gross. he tells you to shut up and swallow.

you do, because at this point you know he’ll tip it down your throat himself if you don’t.

and when he finally drags your sorry ass to bed, the man doesn’t even let you crawl under the blankets yourself — you’re flopped down like a sack of laundry, damp hair fanning over the pillow, shoes somehow already removed because he’s that thorough.

you’re out cold in under two minutes. no “goodnight,” no “thanks,” just blissful unconsciousness.

he still pulls the covers up to your chin, tucks them in tight like you’re a burrito he’s too annoyed to admit he cares about, then drops onto the mattress beside you with a sigh that says “never again.”

the next morning, you won’t remember half the details. not the way he hovered when you swayed in the shower, not the muttered curses as he wrung water from your sleeves, not even the way he checked if you were still breathing before finally shutting his eyes.

but you’ll remember the feeling — that bone-deep certainty that, no matter how bad you screw up, he’ll be there to catch you before you hit the floor.

Nothing sinful, nothing incriminating. Just home décor. He’s already tapping the screen to pay, humming under his breath. Meanwhile, your heart has taken up residence in your throat.

Because here’s the thing: you are no vigilante, no caped crusader skulking around rooftops. Your secret is infinitely less noble and infinitely more profitable.

Politely speaking, you’re an OnlyFans model.

Realistically speaking, your “side hustle” — the kind every female motivational podcast host swears by — leans heavily toward lingerie try-ons and pay-per-view messages that keep your rent covered and your savings account alive.

And he has no idea.

“Can you believe it?” Choso says, hauling one of the flat-packed boxes onto the cart with that quiet, eager determination of a man about to set up his first shared apartment. “We’re really doing this. Moving in together. No more lugging my stuff back and forth. No more pretending I like my roommates’ music taste.”

You force a smile, nodding, because his excitement is contagious in that earnest way of his. His eyes are practically glowing as he talks, even under the unflattering Ikea lighting.

“I already know where I want to put the bookshelf,” he continues, oblivious, “And I was thinking we could get matching mugs? Not corny ones, just… you know. Something nice. Yours and mine.” 

Your inner turmoil could rival a Greek tragedy. He’s standing there, making plans about mugs and shelves, while you’re calculating how long you can keep your side hustle under wraps before it detonates spectacularly.

“Mugs sound good,” you say, because what else are you supposed to say? ‘Sure babe, mugs and maybe I’ll reveal that half the internet has seen me in lace’?

He pushes the cart forward, smiling back at you like you hung the moon. “This is gonna be perfect. Us. Finally living together.”

And you nod again, clutching your receipt like it’s a legal document binding you to silence, thinking that Ikea sells storage solutions for everything except the double life you’ve crammed under your bed.

And yet, you nearly felt like wailing as soon as Choso started reciting Ikea's lighting catalogue on the drive home, the way people narrate recipes on cooking shows — earnest, delighted, unaware of the chaos simmering in the pot behind them. The city blurred past in orange streaks and the car's heater hummed the kind of neutral white noise that made your confession feel impossibly heavy.

“Baby,” he said, fingers drumming the steering wheel the way he always did when he was thinking of color schemes, “We could get those pendant lights for above the table. Imagine us, eating—”

You cut him off before he could get to the ‘imagine us’ part because your mouth had been practicing the script all day and now it tumbled out raw and unedited.

“I need to tell you something.”

The way he jerked the wheel made the car veer an inch; you swore you saw every stray churro of your life tumble in that brief swerve. His eyes went wide, then very, very soft.

“What is it? Is everything okay?” he asked, half-panicked and wholly adorable, like a dog being scolded for knocking over a plant.

Your hands trembled as you imagined walking back into the Ikea kitchen displays and ripping down the ‘lifestyle’ posters — exposing the real you underneath their staged porcelain calm. you exhaled and said it:

“I have an OnlyFans.”

For a long, electric second he was completely still. And then, because this is the universe and also your boyfriend, Choso's face didn’t do scandalized, it did literal confusion.

“Oh — you have a fan? Like… one of those big ones? At home?”

You wanted to scream. You wanted to laugh until your ribs hurt. You wanted to reach over and shake him like a very soft, very bewildered marionette. Instead you explained, because you are a patient person with a knack for diplomacy and also because you couldn't bear the thought of this becoming a sitcom-gag misunderstanding twice in one week.

“No, not a fan,” you said, choosing your words carefully so they’d land like soft bricks. “OnlyFans — it’s a subscription site. People pay to see content I make. It’s… it’s how I make money on the side.”

He blinked like a man trying to reboot. “Oh right, the internet.”

He said it like he was describing a foreign country he’d never visited, which was not far from the truth. Choso had long ago declared the internet an abstract force that either gave you free music or ruined your eyes, depending on the day. He peered at you with an expression somewhere between curiosity and the kind of concern you reserve for small animals found shivering in doorways.

“Are you… happy?” he asked, and God, the way he asked it made everything in you tilt. It wasn’t a question with judgment; it was the kind of question you ask when you mean it — pivoting your entire world to make room if needed.

“I don’t get half the web stuff,” he admitted, fingers finding the edge of the steering wheel like an anchor, “But if you’re happy doing it, I’m happy too.”

And for a beat you were speechless because what you’d feared — fury, betrayal, some grand moral scaffolding falling apart — was replaced by something softer and stupider and infinitely more disorienting: unconditional, baffled support. You pictured all the dramatic reveals in movies and none of them had prepared you for the way his eyes shone with trust, the way his voice softened around the edges.

You told him the logistics because once the dam had burst there was no point in damming the flood. You told him about the paywall and the messages and how you managed boundaries because your privacy mattered to you, because fans were people with bank accounts and expectations and because you had rules — rigid, necessary rules — that kept the work from being your whole life.

You told him about the calm efficiency of packing orders, about the late-night shoots that were mostly lighting and outfit changes and awkward directions you gave yourself in the mirror. You told him the parts that didn’t need lipstick: that it kept your bank account from panicking and gave you the space to breathe when other things got loud.

Choso listened like he was learning a new language. His forehead creased in that way he does when he’s concentrating on something he wants to keep safe. Every now and then he asked a question — practical, small:

“Do people know it’s you?”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Do you want me to help with anything?”

— and you answered because honesty was easier than carrying the worry alone.

Then, when you expected an inevitable cinematic fallout, he did something quietly lethal: he started to make future plans.

“So,” he said, voice practically conspiratorial now, “Maybe we should figure out how to soundproof the living room. Not for me — for the neighbours — but also maybe for you when you film things. Like a little home studio? And hey, we could get separate mugs but they can be matching so you can keep your, uh, professional stuff separate.”

You nearly laughed. Maybe you did — a short, wet sound that felt like relief. Here you were, about to be found out, about to be unmasked, and instead of anger he offered screws and mugs and the entirely domestic solution of isolating sound with Ikea curtains. You let the ridiculousness of it settle around you like a blanket.

“I’m nervous,” you admitted finally, because it was true. “I’m scared you’ll think different of me.”

He reached over, thumb brushing your knuckles like a benediction. “I might,” he said, earnest and honest and alarmingly human, “But I’ll start from the version of you I like best. The one who steals my food and critiques my playlists.”

You wanted to cry then, but this time it was the good kind of crying — the kind that tasted like salt and new beginnings and slightly overwhelming affection. His support didn’t erase the risk of being vulnerable, or the practical worry about what friends or family might think if they stumbled across it accidentally; it simply made the risk something you wouldn’t have to shoulder alone.

For the rest of the ride you talked logistics, like two roommates planning a budget and a move that had already rearranged the contours of your life. You mapped out which cupboard would be yours, which side of the bed you preferred (he laughed when you insisted you didn’t care, then insisted anyway on the left), and where the little fan he’d misheard would go. He asked a million tiny questions about consent and boundaries and how long you needed for shoots, and you answered them all because you suddenly wanted to build a life with someone who could ask questions like those.

By the time you pulled into your building, the confession had shed most of its sharp edges. It was still vulnerable, still something that made your throat tighten when you thought about other people finding out, but it was, improbably, also part of the scaffolding of the future he was already drawing for both of you.

As you climbed the stairs together, bags slung over shoulders, you glanced at him and couldn’t help the thought that maybe Ikea did have a return policy, but it didn’t cover the parts of yourself you decided to share. And maybe that was okay; maybe the return policy you were going to rely on was trust — fragile, honest, and somehow more useful than any receipt.

Poor baby, you thought with a fond, sharp little smile, as he wrestled a flatpack into the elevator with the concentration of a man attempting origami without instructions. He had no idea how complicated you were, but he was ready to be simple, and that — horrifyingly, wonderfully — felt like enough for right now.

𝒾𝒾. NAOYA ZENIN 

Talking to Naoya Zenin on what was, by your rough estimate, the 97th date in a string of dates that had started blurring together, was always an exercise in patience. He looked pristine, as always, perfectly pressed shirt sleeves rolled just enough to show off his watch, hair neat to the point of arrogance. The downtown café you’d picked out wasn’t loud enough to hide the scrape of his silverware against porcelain, wasn’t cozy enough to give you cover, and definitely wasn’t the kind of place where you wanted to unload the weight of your double life.

But here you were, sipping a latte that tasted far too bitter, mentally rehearsing a confession that might implode the engagement your families had been parading like a business deal.

He was talking about budgeting, or at least his version of budgeting — the kind that involved throwing around numbers for wedding venues, imported champagne, and how much your “wardrobe updates” would cost once you were his wife. The way he said it was so matter-of-fact, so clinical, like he was already allocating columns in a spreadsheet.

“You don’t have to worry about rent anymore,” he said smoothly, like it was supposed to be comforting. “And you can stop thinking about little expenses like groceries. My family will handle that. It’s inefficient for you to be stressed about trivial things.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, because wasn’t that the problem? Trivial things were exactly what your OnlyFans income covered.

Trivial things like not having to choose between paying rent and buying decent food. Trivial things like going to the doctor when you needed to without worrying about the bill. It wasn’t millions, but your account was in the top twenty percent, enough to give you independence, enough to make you feel like your choices belonged to you. And yet here he was, with his controlled smile and his precise words, making even the act of eating a croissant sound like an itemized report.

“I like being able to manage my own expenses,” you ventured carefully, knowing how quickly he could turn conversations into quiet little wars. Naoya’s eyes flicked up from his espresso, sharp and unimpressed.

“That’s cute,” he said, and you felt the patronizing lilt slice straight through your attempt. “But after marriage, you won’t need to worry about such things. Independence is overrated when it just means struggling. You’ll have me.”

You inhaled slowly, gripping your cup. Independence is overrated. It almost made you laugh, if only because the irony was so sharp it hurt. Did he have any idea what it felt like to be proud of your own work, to look at yourself on a screen and not shy away from the reflection? To feel powerful in a way that no family name, no handout, no Zenin-funded credit card could buy?

Your mind flickered back to the nights you spent adjusting lighting, arching your body just so, reclaiming your image in a way that was both raw and deliberate. You’d learned to admire yourself there, to stop shrinking from the mirror. The money was good, yes, but it was more than that — it was proof you could stand on your own two feet, no matter how “wonky” the path.

You looked across the table at the man you were supposed to marry, at the way he dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin as if this café — this entire city — were just a backdrop to his performance.

“So, what about things like… personal savings?” you asked lightly, trying to steer the conversation closer to the truth without tearing the veil all at once. He smirked, leaning back in his chair like you’d said something amusing.

“You’ll have access to what you need. Why would you want to keep your own account when mine will cover everything? Besides, it’s better for the husband to manage finances. It avoids… unnecessary complications.”

Your exasperation curled in your chest, tight and hot. Unnecessary complications. As though your work, your secret life, the thing that kept you afloat and whole, was just some messy line item on a budget he could strike out. You imagined saying it — I run an OnlyFans, Naoya, I make money showing myself online, and I’m damn good at it. You imagined the look he’d give you, that smug disdain cloaked as civility, the way he’d twist the words into a lecture about propriety and shame.

You stirred your coffee, trying not to let your sigh slip past your lips. This café, with its marble countertops and delicate chandeliers, was not the place. Probably no place would ever be the place. And yet the weight of it pressed down harder the longer you stayed silent.

“You look distracted,” Naoya observed, tilting his head like a predator cataloguing a weakness. “Are you worried about something?”

Yes, you thought bitterly. I’m worried about the part of me that doesn’t fit into your spreadsheets. I’m worried about what happens when my independence collides with your arrogance. I’m worried that the confidence I clawed my way into will shrivel under your disapproval.

But you smiled instead, that polite, practiced smile that kept the peace. “Just thinking about… all the changes. Moving in, the wedding. It’s a lot.”

He nodded, satisfied with that answer, returning to his coffee as if the conversation had already ended. And you sat there, heartbeat heavy, wondering if marriage was supposed to feel like this: like biting your tongue raw, like hiding the best and worst parts of yourself because the man across from you would never understand.

But you decided to try again. You asked if you could have a conversation about personal finances, and the way Naoya instantly agreed made your stomach knot. Too quick, too sharp, like he was holding the door open only to slam it shut the second you walked through. But you’d already cornered yourself into the moment, and before you could claw your way out, you blurted it.

“I… I have an OnlyFans.”

The silence afterward was deafening. It stretched, brittle and heavy, while Naoya’s expression cracked open and rearranged itself in real time. Disbelief first — his brows lifting so fast you thought he might laugh. Then the scoff, sharp and biting, his lips curling into that familiar sneer. He leaned back, elbows propped on his knees, body turned halfway away from you as if the distance might help him process the sheer absurdity.

What is a Zenin, if not theatrically expressive in their disapproval? Every shift of his body was a performance: the narrowing eyes, the exaggerated exhale through his nose, the slow shake of his head like you’d just told him you’d taken up juggling on street corners for spare change.

You were spiraling. Your pulse hammered so loud it filled your ears, and your mind jumped straight to catastrophe. What if this gets out? What if the Zenins hear? They’d cancel the wedding before you could blink, your family would be ruined, shunned, dragged into whispered scandals over espresso cups. The walls of the café seemed to close in, every polished marble surface suddenly hostile. You wanted to snatch the words back, to rewind time ten seconds, to shut yourself up before you detonated your own life. But then his voice cut through, surprisingly even.

“...why?”

Not furious, not scandalized. Just one syllable, heavy with incredulity, almost like he couldn’t reconcile the idea with the person sitting across from him. Your throat went dry, but you forced the truth out anyway, because lying now would only trap you deeper.

“I had… body image issues,” you mumbled, eyes fixed on your coffee cup. “For a long time. I hated the mirror. I hated myself. And it wasn’t the donations or the gross messages — it was me, finally being able to look at myself, on camera, in the mirror, and not flinch. I blocked the creeps, I kept the rules. But the confidence… it came after.”

His reaction was maddening in its clumsiness. Another scoff, but weaker this time, almost uncertain, his hand dragging over his mouth like he was trying to erase the sound before it finished. His gaze darted to the side, then back to you, then down to his hands. His jaw clenched, released, clenched again.

He wasn’t built for this kind of conversation — this level of rawness. To him, your reasoning was too deep for something he had already labeled trivial. His body betrayed him, though. He leaned forward again, forearms braced on the table now, no longer pulling away. His brows were still furrowed, but there was something restless under his skin, some stubborn attempt to bridge a gap he didn’t know how to close.

“You don’t need strangers to tell you what you’re worth,” he muttered finally, voice stiff, clumsy, almost irritated with itself. His eyes flicked up, locking on yours in something like defiance. “You have me. I’m your husband. That’s all that should matter.”

It wasn’t the sweeping acceptance you might have dreamed of, no sudden enlightenment, no tender epiphany. It was awkward, jagged, begrudging even. But it was what he could give. His own warped way of saying he heard you — even if he didn’t fully understand.

And as you sat there, heart still racing, panic still clawing at your ribs, you watched him fumble through the limits of his pride and ego to offer something resembling reassurance. Clumsy, yes. Imperfect, absolutely. But a thread of acceptance, however strained, was still better than the silence you’d feared.

𝒾𝒾𝒾. SHIU KONG 

It starts, as all brilliant, earth-shattering tragedies do, with you half-bent over your boyfriend Shiu’s nightstand, digging through a mess of receipts, old matchbooks, and one ominously sticky lighter until you finally unearth what you came for: his cigarettes. You were not stealing, you told yourself, only borrowing for the noble cause of fulfilling a very specific, very bizarre OnlyFans request.

Apparently, some guy out there wanted lingerie shots with cigarettes. Not lit, mind you — no, he wanted the whole vibe, the aesthetic, the bad girl who smokes behind the gymnasium type. Easy money, right?

Except for the glaring issue that you knew jack shit about smoking.

Your one ill-fated attempt at vaping in college had ended with you clutching your knees in a bathroom stall, swearing you’d seen God. Not exactly the kind of experience that made you eager to repeat. But here you were, standing in front of Shiu’s mirror in lace that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, holding a cigarette like it was an alien artifact.

You tilted it between your fingers, trying to mimic the casual way Shiu always had it dangling from his lips, smoke curling like he was born with lungs full of sex and mystery. Instead, you looked like a kid pretending with a breadstick.

“Real sexy,” you muttered at your reflection, tilting your wrist so awkwardly it looked like you were about to salute the damn thing.

Lighting it proved to be its own comedy routine. The lighter hissed, flared, died, flared again, singed one acrylic nail, and finally caught. You flinched like you’d just detonated a grenade, then jabbed the tip of the cigarette into the flame with all the grace of someone skewering a marshmallow.

When it finally lit, you leaned in, lips closing around the filter, trying to copy every slow, practiced drag you’d seen Shiu pull a hundred times. Instead of cool and languid, you inhaled like you were taking a last breath on earth.

Smoke burned down your throat and into your lungs so violently that you gagged, eyes watering instantly. The next second you were doubled over, wheezing into your lace bralette like your respiratory system had filed for divorce. Camera still rolling.

Perfect content.

You straightened, still coughing, trying to hold the cigarette in some sexy angle while your lungs waged war, snapping another shaky selfie with your free hand. Because yes — this was what you did for OnlyFans. Choke on carcinogens while looking hot enough that someone, somewhere, would tip you for it.

And then, the doorbell rang.

You froze, cigarette trembling dangerously between your fingers, mascara already smudging from your coughing fit. And of course, it wasn’t a delivery guy or the neighbor — it was your boyfriend Shiu Kong. Handler to assassins, smoker extraordinaire, soon to be man who would 100% know you had just broken into his stash like a lingerie-clad raccoon.

“Oh dear,” you whispered hoarsely, cigarette smoke leaking pitifully out your nose like some tragic dragon.

So, not only did you look like you’d just lost a bar fight with nicotine, but now you had to open the door for your beloved while smelling like his vice and wearing lace that definitely hadn’t been meant for him tonight.

A true professional.

Bless the boyfriend, truly, because when you finally cracked open the door you were already half-buried in shame. Oversized shirt tugged hastily over the evidence of your sins, lace peeking at your thighs if you moved even an inch too much, and that unmistakable smell clinging to you like you’d spent the last two hours rolling around in a gas station ashtray.

Shiu stepped inside, sharp eyes immediately narrowing, nose twitching in faint amusement. He hung back for a second, just enough for you to panic in the silence, before tilting his head.

“...you have company?” he asked casually, voice smooth but edged with curiosity, like he was trying to puzzle out whether he should be jealous or entertained.

You scrambled, stammered, voice cracking in half. “N-no, I just… I, uh, wanted to — try smoking? Surprise you with… my skills.” Your words limped out of your mouth like wounded soldiers, not quite truth, not quite lie. You might as well have admitted you were rehearsing to audition for a Marlboro ad.

He blinked. Then, with the faintest twitch at the corner of his lips, let out a low chuckle that only made the heat rise to your ears.

“Your skills, huh?” he repeated, shrugging off his coat and draping it over the chair like he had all the time in the world.

And then he leaned in to kiss you, not even hiding his smirk as he pressed close, nose brushing yours. His lips caught yours gently, teasingly, but the moment he inhaled, he pulled back just a little, enough to murmur against your skin:

“...you smell like you’ve been chain-smoking for hours.”

You nearly combusted on the spot. “I-it was just one!” you squeaked, throat tight, heart hammering. You tried to hum, to play it off, but your nervousness bled through every sound.

Shiu didn’t look mad — he looked positively entertained, like he’d walked in on the punchline of a joke he hadn’t known was being set up for him. His eyes dragged over you, oversized shirt slipping just enough to hint at the lingerie beneath, and then back up to your flushed face.

And instead of lecturing, instead of mocking, he only tilted his head again, lips quirking. “Mm,” he hummed, slow and thoughtful. “Guess I’ll have to teach you how to smoke properly then.”

Your whole body jolted at that, like he’d suggested handing you a loaded weapon instead of a cigarette. You wanted to catapult yourself through the nearest window, but you were rooted in place, the word teach echoing like a death knell.

Because of course — only you could manage to humiliate yourself by botching a fake bad-girl routine for OnlyFans and end up with your handler boyfriend offering you actual lessons in how to look like a delinquent. And worse? He sounded delighted at the prospect.

You tried every possible diversion in the book — wasn’t he tired from work? Didn’t he want dinner? A bath? Maybe a spiritual retreat? Anything, absolutely anything, that didn’t involve you sitting face-to-face with a cigarette and his full attention.

But Shiu wasn’t having it. His hand had already hooked around your wrist, his low laugh buzzing in your ear as he tugged you toward the sofa.

Before you could even breathe out another excuse, you were already settled across his lap, his palm firm against your waist to keep you there. He moved with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before — drawer pulled open, packet slipped out, lighter ready. The motion was so fluid, you didn’t even have time to process the fact that you were trapped.

He held the cigarette between his lips, about to strike the flame, when his other hand betrayed you completely. Fingers drifting, brushing over the lace clinging to your thighs. He stilled for a moment, then let out a quiet hum of surprise, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he were seconds away from teasing you.

“...You wore this for me?” His voice was amused, soft, like he was already anticipating your embarrassed denial.

Except your mouth moved faster than your brain, blurting the truth before you could reel it back.

“It’s not for you.”

The pause that followed was brutal. His brow furrowed, his confusion plain, head tipping just slightly to the side as he processed. He blinked once, then twice, and you could see him brushing off the comment — because sure, sometimes people wore lace for themselves, for confidence, for comfort. He got it. He wasn’t about to question your autonomy over something like that.

But then you kept talking. And you said the word.

“...It’s for my OnlyFans.”

This time, he froze completely. The lighter in his hand clicked uselessly, forgotten, his eyes locked on you with the kind of sharp focus he usually reserved for reading a room full of enemies. His lips parted, closed, then parted again, but no sound came out right away.

“Your… what?” His tone was deliberate, careful, like he needed to confirm he’d actually heard you correctly.

The cigarette, still resting between his lips, hung crookedly as he slowly removed it, eyes narrowing not in anger but in sheer bafflement. His grip around your waist didn’t loosen, though — it tightened, subtle but certain, as if anchoring himself to the reality of what you’d just admitted.

There was no immediate explosion, no raised voice, no sharp accusation. Just that silence — thick, heavy, charged with a hundred unspoken questions crowding his mind. Shiu wasn’t a man who rattled easily, but you’d clearly just dropped a weight into the calm waters of his composure, and he was watching the ripples spread, trying to understand exactly what kind of revelation he was dealing with.

“I — look, it wasn’t even supposed to be a thing,” you blurted out, your hands waving before you even knew what words were coming out. “Last year of college, okay? Someone dared me. I thought it was funny. I thought it’d be… whatever. And then I got this, like, insane request and — yeah, I know, stupid — but I did it, and then it just—” you broke off, fumbling over your own explanation, “—it just became this thing. Not like, big huge thing. Just… habit. Privacy. Exclusivity. It made sense.”

Shiu was watching you like a hawk, but not in the terrifying way you expected — his head tilted, cigarette dangling loosely between his fingers now, his expression unreadable but not sharp. He let you talk, didn’t cut in, didn’t explode. Just sat there, his hand still warm and steady at your waist.

“And that’s why I was…” you gestured helplessly toward the drawer, toward the discarded lighter. “…with the cigarette. Because apparently that’s someone’s fantasy now.”

Finally, Shiu spoke, voice low and slow, like he was trying to measure how much weight each word carried.

“How much?”

Your throat went dry. “…Five thousand.”

For the first time since your confession, his eyebrows actually rose. He leaned back slightly, not in disbelief but in calculation, as if he were doing the math in his head.

Then, without a word, he reached over, pulled open the drawer again, and rummaged with deliberate calm until he came out with a neat stack of bills — thick, folded, bound with a band. He dropped it in your lap with a soft thud.

“Ten.”

You blinked down at the money like it was radioactive. “…What?”

“Ten,” he repeated, his mouth quirking just barely at the corner. “Smoke for me in lingerie. Skip the middleman.”

Your jaw dropped. “Shiu—”

He cut you off with a small chuckle, pressing the unlit cigarette back against your lips for emphasis. “You’re telling me you’re doing all this for strangers who don’t even know your name, and you’ve got me sitting right here? Hm?”

“I — it’s not like that, I—” your protest collapsed halfway, your face heating as you stumbled over your words. “It was just — I don’t even do crazy stuff, I swear, it’s — it’s so stupid sometimes, like, I got asked once if I could eat dry ramen out of the bag in heels—”

That earned a low laugh from him, rough around the edges, like he couldn’t help himself. “Dry ramen?”

“Yes! And another guy — he wanted me to hum the Pokémon theme while wearing a maid outfit, which like, fine, but he tipped so much and—” you cut yourself off, groaning, burying your face in your hands. “God, why am I telling you this?”

“Because you’re embarrassed,” Shiu said simply, his tone softened with amusement, his fingers prying your hands away from your face with surprising gentleness. “And because you don’t need to be.”

He tilted your chin up until your eyes met his. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re… really not?”

He shook his head slowly, expression calm but firm. “Why would I be mad? You did what you had to. You wanted independence. You got creative. You stayed safe. Can’t fault you for that.” A pause, his thumb brushing your cheekbone. “And besides — pretty sure I earn more than enough to keep you afloat, if you want to stop.”

You melted then, your breath hitching at the casual confidence in his words, at the way he said it like a simple fact rather than a brag. He wasn’t mocking, wasn’t judging — he was just offering. And somehow, that was worse for your flustered brain.

“...You’re ridiculous,” you mumbled, pressing your forehead to his chest, trying to hide the way your shoulders trembled from a mix of laughter and relief.

Shiu leaned back again, still chuckling, eyes softening as he studied you. His thumb brushed your cheek, quieting you. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is — you did what you had to do. And if you’re happy, then I’m happy. But if you’re not?” He nudged the stack of bills closer to you. “I’ll cover the difference. Always.”

Your chest squeezed, the kind of ache that wasn’t painful but overwhelming. You whispered, “You really still love me after all this?”

“‘Still’?” His tone turned incredulous, then gentle. “Baby, I never stopped. Website or no website, lace for me or lace for them — I love you. That’s it.”

And for once, you couldn’t think of a single thing to say back, so you just melted into him, letting his confidence carry what your nerves couldn’t.

𝒾𝓋. GOJO SATORU 

The night had started easy — pizza boxes on the counter, a half-empty bag of chips spilling across your coffee table, and two mismatched glasses of cheap alcohol that Gojo insisted was “classy because it burns less.” Your apartment smelled faintly of takeout and that vanilla candle you’d lit to cover up the scent of your laundry basket.

Gojo sat cross-legged on the rug, hair a wild mess that refused to be tamed even indoors, blue eyes glittering under the dim lamplight. Every time he leaned forward to set down his drink, his socks brushed against your leg where you sat curled on the couch, and it was both infuriating and comforting.

“Okay, okay — your turn.” He wagged his glass at you, grin already stretching wide, too proud of the last round where you had to drink after admitting you once cried during a Marvel movie.

You narrowed your eyes. “Never have I ever… dyed my hair white.”

“Boo.” He groaned dramatically, but tipped his glass anyway. “Can’t help genetics, baby.”

“Genetics my ass. You look like you bleached it with holy water.”

“Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful,” he shot back, tilting his head with a flourish like he was in a shampoo ad.

The questions rolled on: dumb ones about crushes, pointed ones about bad exes, and sly ones that had you laughing so hard you spilled on the carpet. The room was warm, lighthearted, filled with his voice bouncing off your walls. And then—

“Never have I ever…” Gojo leaned back, his grin devilish, eyes narrowing in faux-seriousness as he thought. “Had an OnlyFans.”

You froze. The drink in your hand turned heavier, colder, poison against your skin.

Gojo snorted at his own joke, downing the rest of his glass. “Ha! Imagine me — posing in lingerie, charging, what, twenty bucks a month?” He was already laughing, sprawled half against your coffee table, hair falling in his eyes.

But you didn’t laugh. You didn’t move. The silence stretched like elastic pulled too far. He blinked, mid-chuckle.

“...Huh?”

You shifted, fingers tightening around your glass. “What?”

“Hey,” he said softly, smile faltering just enough to betray his curiosity. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, gaze zeroing in like a spotlight. “Why so quiet, hm?”

You forced a laugh, thin and awkward, shaking your head. “Nothing. Just — dumb question.”

But Gojo wasn’t buying it. His grin returned, slower this time, curling with a kind of playfulness that was far more dangerous. “Aw, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me my sweet little girlfriend just failed to drink when she was supposed to.”

Your throat tightened. The glass sat heavy in your hand. And Gojo’s gaze — piercing, amused, waiting — made it impossible to breathe.

The silence stretched too long, too brittle, and Gojo was quick to break it — not with more teasing, but by shuffling across the carpet, drink forgotten on the table. He nudged your knee with his own, his usual grin softened into something smaller, gentler.

“Did I… overstep? Was that a bad question?” His voice dropped low, like he was afraid of scaring you further. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, you know. I didn’t mean to—”

You cut him off, words tumbling out in a messy rush. “I — no, it’s not that. I just… I have one. An OnlyFans.”

He blinked, blue eyes widening, then narrowing as if his brain was trying to rerun the sentence to make sure he heard it right.

“You… what?”

“I do. I have an account,” you confessed, staring at the bottle instead of him. “It’s not — it’s not something I’m proud of. And I swear I was gonna delete it the second you asked me out. I even meant it, but then… I didn’t. I just… kept it. And now it’s — ugh, I don’t even know how to explain this without sounding pathetic.”

Gojo tilted his head, gaze flicking across your face like he was trying to piece together a puzzle. “Pathetic?”

“Yes!” Your voice cracked, hands flailing before you pressed your palms to your thighs to keep them still. “I don’t even need the money anymore, Satoru. I just — don’t know what else to do with my time. It’s like this stupid… habit. Like checking your phone first thing in the morning or staying up too late on purpose. I tell myself I’ll stop, and then I don’t. It makes me feel busy, like I’m not just sitting around wasting my life.”

For a moment, he didn’t speak. His lips parted like he had something to say, then he just exhaled — loud, heavy, like the sound of an air conditioner kicking on in a dead quiet room.

Then he leaned in, wrapping his arms around you without ceremony, pulling you against his chest until your forehead pressed to his collarbone.

“You’re such an idiot sometimes,” he muttered into your hair, his voice muffled but firm. “You think I’d care about something like that more than I care about you?”

“I thought—” You swallowed, voice shaky. “I thought you’d see me as… I don’t know. Bored. Desperate. Gross.”

“Gross?” He pulled back just enough to give you a flat look, brows arched high. “Sweetheart, the only gross thing here is you thinking so little of yourself. Do you really think sitting in front of a camera is the worst way to kill time? Please. You should see what I do when I’m bored. Half the time it involves trying to see how many marshmallows I can fit in my mouth at once.”

You huffed out a weak laugh. He tightened his hold, chin resting on the crown of your head now. “But listen… seriously. Doing this just to keep yourself occupied? To trick yourself into not being lonely or restless? That’s not healthy, baby. That’s not gonna fix what you’re trying to fill. And I can’t stand the thought of you pushing yourself into something that makes you feel empty after. You deserve better.”

You whispered, barely audible, “I don’t even know what else I’d do.”

“That’s where I come in.” He gave you a squeeze, voice warming again. “We’ll find something better. Something that makes you feel good without draining you. Hell, I’ll sign us up for pottery classes, start a terrible band, whatever it takes. You’re not doing this alone, not when I’m around.”

You finally let yourself breathe — deep, shaky, but freer than you’d felt in months. The weight in your chest, the guilt pressing against your ribs, all of it loosened as you melted into him.

“…You’d really go to pottery classes with me?” you murmured.

He grinned, tilting your chin up so you’d look him in the eyes. “Baby, I’d make you the ugliest vase you’ve ever seen in your life. And you’d have to keep it on display forever. That’s true love.”

And for the first time in what felt like forever, you laughed without guilt weighing it down.

𝓋. GETO SUGURU  

The café was warm that late afternoon, buzzing with soft chatter and the clinking of cutlery, autumn light filtering through the glass windows in streaks of gold. Your hands cupped the ceramic mug in front of you, the steam rising faintly, carrying the faint bitterness of your tea. Across the table sat Suguru — older now, sharper around the edges, but still carrying the same quiet composure you remembered from years ago.

Five years of silence. Five years of wondering if the tether of childhood friendship could hold under the weight of time. And yet, here you were, both roped into an arranged marriage that would tie your names together for the rest of your lives.

“So,” you finally said, breaking the comfortable lull, “you actually have a ten-step haircare routine?”

His lips curved, the faintest hint of pride glimmering in his dark eyes. “Don’t sound so surprised. Good hair takes effort. But, since we’re getting married, I figured it’s fair — five steps for me, five steps for you.”

You raised a brow, pausing mid-bite into your panini. “What, like… you’ll split it with me?”

He leaned back, arms crossing casually, his smirk widening. “Marriage is about compromise, isn’t it? I’ll do the oiling and shampooing, you can handle the masks and treatments. Efficient teamwork.”

A laugh slipped out of you, one you hadn’t realized you were holding back. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re still the same,” he countered smoothly, “teasing me for things that clearly work. You can’t deny it — my hair looks great.”

You shook your head, but you couldn’t deny it either. It was comforting, how easily the rhythm returned, like the years apart were only weeks.

Conversation tumbled on, flowing naturally. He told you about college — how he’d moved between majors, how he’d taken odd jobs to keep himself busy.

“One time,” he said, sipping his coffee like it was nothing, “I took this assignment off a poster in one of the campus halls. Paid eight grand to take photos of women for lingerie shoots.”

You nearly inhaled your tea the wrong way, choking mid-swallow. “Excuse me?!”

His brow shot up as he leaned forward quickly, hand brushing instinctively against your arm. “Hey, don’t die on me now — what, that shocked you?”

“Shocked?!” you coughed out, eyes wide. “Suguru, that’s insane! You — you actually did it?”

He nodded, unbothered. “It was legit enough. Paid in cash, no scams. The models were professionals too. I was nervous as hell at first, though — had no idea how to direct them. But it ended up being… weirdly educational?”

You pressed your lips together, stifling a laugh, though your face felt hot for an entirely different reason. “Educational, huh?”

“What?” his smirk returned, lazy and amused. “Don’t tell me you’re scandalized.”

“Not scandalized,” you muttered, suddenly very focused on picking at the crumbs of your bread. “Just… familiar, that’s all.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, curiosity sparking. “Familiar?”

Your tongue tripped, heart racing. You weren’t ready to spill that part of your life — not yet, not when things between you two were still fragile, still rebuilding. So you dodged.

“Just, y’know, familiar in the sense that I’ve… read about those things before. Nothing more.”

He studied you for a long beat, eyes sharp but not pressing, before shrugging lightly. “Hm, fair enough.”

You exhaled slowly, grateful for his restraint.

The conversation drifted back into safer waters — mutual friends from school, memories of old teachers, stupid inside jokes that somehow hadn’t lost their humor. Every smile that crossed his face reminded you of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become, the gap between those versions bridging inch by inch as you talked.

And in between the warmth of the tea, the hum of the café, and the familiarity of his laughter, something fragile and tentative bloomed in your chest. Not love, not yet. But the slow, careful weaving of it — the kind that could make an arrangement like this feel less like obligation and more like possibility.

“It’s strange,” you admitted softly, almost to yourself, “how easy this feels again. Like nothing changed.”

Suguru tilted his head, his gaze warm, steady. “A lot changed. But maybe… not the important parts.”

And for the first time since your families had announced the arrangement, you didn’t feel the weight of it pressing down on you. Instead, you felt the quiet beginning of something being rebuilt — trust, friendship, and maybe, one day, love.

The café had quieted down as the sun dipped, warm amber spilling across Suguru’s face as he leaned back with his coffee. He’d let you talk and laugh, let the nostalgia of shared memories fill the space, but eventually his expression sobered into something you knew all too well: the look of a man pivoting into business.

“So,” he began, lacing his fingers together on the table, “let’s talk finances. I don’t like walking into things blind, and if we’re doing this marriage, we should at least know where we stand.”

Your heart dropped. “Finances? Right now?”

“Better sooner than later,” he replied easily. “I’ve been working with a mid-tier finance agency. Commissions are steady. Between that and some consulting, I’m pulling in about seventy-five thousand annually. Enough to cover expenses and still invest. I’ve got a decent emergency fund too — six months’ worth of living costs. You?”

You froze, your fingers tightening around your mug. “Uh… freelancing.”

He raised a brow. “Freelancing what?”

“Photography,” you blurted, voice too quick, “and, um, modeling sometimes. Y’know, when people… need it.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, clearly unconvinced but not pushing. “What’s your revenue stream look like? Monthly averages?”

You scrambled. “I mean, it really, really depends. Not consistent, but, like, enough?”

“Enough,” he echoed, his tone amused. “Do you track your expenses against your income? Like, do you have a budgeting system — 50/30/20 rule, zero-based budgeting, envelopes? Anything?”

Your palms went clammy. “I… I kinda just… keep it in my head? I mean, I know what’s going in and out, generally.”

“Generally,” he repeated, sipping his coffee, clearly biting back a laugh. “Do you have savings goals? Retirement account? High-yield savings, brokerage account?”

You wanted to throw your panini at him. “Who — who talks about retirement during coffee?”

“Someone who plans ahead,” he said smoothly. “You’re twenty-something, right? Compound interest is your friend. A Roth IRA, an index fund — hell, even a mutual fund if you want to be conservative. Do you at least have an emergency fund?”

You swallowed hard. “I… might.”

“Might?”

“It’s… small. Like, tiny. Okay, microscopic.”

He tilted his head, studying you, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous!” you insisted, voice a pitch too high. “Just — it’s weird! Money talk this early? Super weird!”

“It’s not weird,” he said gently, tone softening. “It’s smart. But…” he let his gaze linger on you, watching your fidgeting fingers, your refusal to meet his eyes. “I get it. You don’t have to give me details right now. Money is… a vulnerable thing. Especially at the beginning.”

Your chest tightened, relief and guilt clashing. “Thank you,” you muttered, fiddling with the rim of your cup.

“But,” he added, leaning forward slightly, his smirk returning, “I will ask again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but eventually. Because I’m marrying you, and I wanna know how you’re living, what keeps you afloat.”

You tried to laugh it off, though your heart pounded like a drum. “Yeah, yeah, Mr. budget spreadsheet. You’ll get your numbers someday.”

“Good,” he said simply, sitting back again. “Just know — I’m not here to judge. I just need to understand. That’s all.”

You nodded, forcing a small smile while your brain spun in frantic circles, rehearsing half-truths and scrambling for plausible numbers. Suguru wasn’t mad, wasn’t prying — yet — but his suspicion had already flickered, and you knew this conversation wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

—

You almost hit him — literally.

The moment you saw Geto stepping out into the street, coat slung over one shoulder, you pushed through the café door like a woman on fire. Your CHANEL bag thudded against your hip, your heart was a hummingbird trying to escape your ribs, and the words “I need to tell you something” looped in your mouth like a broken record. You were half-running, half-skirting around pedestrians, cheeks hot enough to toast bread, and then you nearly collided with him.

He caught you by the forearms before you could yank the whole scene into pratfall territory. His hands were steady and warm, those long fingers wrapped just under your elbows so you couldn’t wriggle free if you tried.

For a second you could only stare — at his face, the slight stubble that shadowed his jaw, the way his coat looked impossibly expensive even when bunched in the crook of his arm. He blinked, a slow, easy blink, and you could see confusion ripple through him like a small wave.

“Hey — slow down,” he said, voice amused, not worried. He wasn’t complaining. He never complained when you were frantic; he’d learned your panic looked better in motion than folded into silence. “What’s up?”

You opened your mouth, shut it, opened it again. “I—” You tried for the dramatic pause.

What came out instead was the frantic, burbling preface you’d been rehearsing for ten minutes: “I need to tell you something — no, wait — no, it’s stupid — no, it’s not—” Your breath shuddered on the last word, and behind you the faint hiss of an approaching Uber grew louder.

Geto’s smile softened; his thumb pressed a little into your wrist, steadying you. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Breathe. You’re scaring the birds. Out with it.”

You inhaled, as if that could gather courage in your lungs, and the words spilled: “I have an OnlyFans.”

There’s a thousand ways people imagine reactions to that sentence. Loud, dramatic explosions. Cold, moralizing silence. Fainting. What you’d imagined never landed squarely anywhere near what happened.

Geto’s shoulders did this tiny, almost imperceptible droop — like someone deflating a balloon very slowly. The change was so small that a stranger wouldn’t notice, but it stole the air from you all the same. For one ridiculous second you thought you’d ruined everything.

Then he huffed. Not an angry sound — more like a puff of laughter you can’t hold in. He smushed both your cheeks with exaggerated affection, his palms warm against your skin, and you squeaked at the contact, utterly unable to form a coherent protest.

“Your timing is terrible,” he said, voice a wheeze of amusement. He squinted down the street; the Uber’s headlights cut a pale path toward the curb. “Of all the moments to spring confessions, you pick ‘Geto runs to an Uber and my driver is five seconds away.’ Classic you.”

You tried to explain, words tumbling out in that breathless jumble you used whenever your brain outran your mouth. “I — no, it’s not what you think — I started it back in college as a dare, it was one thing and then it kind of stuck, it helps with—”

You stumbled, looked at your hands, and felt absurdly small.

“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you — God, I’d tell you anything.”

Geto’s expression shifted slowly, like a sky clouding over then clearing. He tugged at the ends of his coat, eyes flicking to your face, cataloguing the tiny betrayals of your confession: the flush that wouldn’t go away, the way your fingers worried at the strap of your purse, the honest, ridiculous panic in your gaze.

He was quiet for a beat or three — long enough for the Uber to pull up and the driver to call out, “Mr. Geto?”

He let out another small laugh, softer now, and squeezed your forearms once — light, reassuring. “I’m not mad,” he said, and though his words were calm, there was an amused heat at the edges. “God, you look like you expected thunderbolts and pitchforks. I’m not going to cancel a marriage over a website.”

You exhaled a sound that was probably a sob and probably a giggle. “You really mean that?” you said, voice little and ragged.

He leaned forward and smooshed your cheeks again, ridiculously domestic. “I mean that I will never be the sort of man who storms off because of… this.” He tapped your temple with a knuckle. “Timing’s terrible, yes. Content choice? Debatable. But you — are not a scandal. You’re a human being who does stuff. We’ll talk about it. Tonight. Tomorrow. On our next date. I’ll even call you while I’m in the car if you want me to.” His tone slid easily into the role of practical comforter, the one who says, “We’ll discuss later,” and you automatically trusted him.

The Uber door swung open; headlights painted your faces in harsh, car-park light. Geto shifted his grip, clasped one hand around yours in a quick, possessive squeeze that was equal parts promise and domesticity.

“Also,” he added, a half-smile coming back, “if anyone asks, I am very much still your husband. Don’t let them have any fun with the line-up. Got it?”

You nodded, tiny and grateful and stunned all at once. You waved at him on autopilot as the car idled forward, your hand fluttering because your muscles had stopped taking orders from your brain. Geto climbed in, shot you a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation, and mouthed, “Call me,” before the car merged into traffic.

You watched his silhouette pull away, felt your cheeks ache from smiling, and then, finally, you let the breath you’d been holding since the café fall out of you in a long, shuddering exhale. The city noise folded back around you — horns, distant laughter, the hum of life — and in the middle of it you felt, absurdly and wholly, at home.

𝓋𝒾. NANAMI KENTO 

It had been exactly one week since Nanami Kento, the office’s most reliable man and your most embarrassing crush, decided to move from polite nods across spreadsheets to slipping his hand into yours on the way out of the elevator.

A week of hushed lunches, stolen glances, and his uncanny ability to look like he was about to scold someone even while pouring cream into your coffee. A week of you trying not to dissolve into a puddle every time he did something as simple as brush his thumb over your knuckles.

And now here you were, on what was technically your first proper date, sitting at a quiet corner table of a café he picked precisely because the blinds were drawn and the clientele consisted mainly of retirees who could barely squint at their soup, much less gossip to HR. Nanami, ever the professional, kept his back straight and his eyes flicking to the door every few minutes, like a bodyguard expecting a hit. To anyone else, it looked like paranoia. To you, it looked like tenderness disguised as alertness — his way of protecting you both from the storm that was office rumor mills.

“You keep looking around,” you muttered, stirring your tea, eyes narrowed in faint amusement. “Do you think HR has a spy tailing us with binoculars?”

Nanami’s lips twitched. “You would be surprised how little it takes for someone in HR to draw the worst conclusions. Two people caught in the lobby together, apparently, means a conspiracy to violate workplace ethics.”

You sipped your tea slowly, trying to hide your grin. “Scandalous. Imagine the reports: Nanami Kento, known for his tragic lack of humor, exposed for kissing his coworker by the water cooler.”

His gaze softened at you, and he shook his head. “You are hardly just a coworker.”

Cue to the moment of your heart cartwheeling into your throat, as you had to look down at the sugar packet you were nervously shredding.

Nanami, oblivious to your inner collapse, leaned back in his chair. “Speaking of which, I was thinking about side hustles today. You know — second incomes, hobbies. During college, I used to bake banana bread and sell it at expos.”

You blinked. “Banana bread.”

“Yes,” he said, with the same tone one might use for taxes are due in March. “I perfected the recipe. It was moist without being dense, flavorful without excess sugar. Surprisingly lucrative, though not exactly sustainable.”

You bit back a laugh, watching him as he stirred his coffee with unnecessary precision. “You’re telling me the same Nanami Kento who terrifies interns with one glance used to… stand behind a booth and sell banana bread?”

His brow furrowed. “Everyone needs income. And banana bread is versatile.”

“Versatile, huh?” you teased, leaning forward. “Did you give free samples with cute smiles too? Because I can’t imagine you charming people into buying baked goods.”

He gave you a dry look, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him, tilting upward ever so slightly. “I managed.”

You wanted to laugh again, but his segue into side hustles made your stomach twist. Because unlike his wholesome banana bread empire, your “side hustle” involved lingerie, ring lights, and the internet’s willingness to throw large sums of money at you for doing what Nanami would probably classify as “not very sustainable either.”

“So,” he asked, tone even, “what about you? Any side hustles? Hobbies outside of work?”

Your spoon clinked too loudly against your cup. “Uh — hobbies. Yeah, freelancing. You know. Photography. Modeling. That kind of… stuff.”

Nanami raised an eyebrow, the same way he does when a junior submits a half-baked report. “Photography?”

“Mmhm,” you hummed, your voice pitched higher than normal. “Just, you know, small gigs. For… creative… outlets.”

There was a pause. The kind where you could hear the air conditioner hum. Nanami studied you like you were one of those convoluted spreadsheets he dissected in record time. His eyes narrowed, but not cruelly — more like he was making notes in his head.

“Interesting,” he said finally. “And… profitable?”

You nearly choked on your tea. “Profitable? Well, I mean — not like banana bread at expos profitable, but… enough. Definitely enough.”

He tilted his head. “Enough to cover rent? Savings? Diversify investments? Or enough for coffee money?”

You wanted to strangle the finance bro in him and kiss the man at the same time. “Why are you grilling me like a tax auditor?” you blurted.

“Because,” Nanami said dryly, “financial transparency is important in a partnership. And you seem… evasive.”

You laughed nervously, waving your hand. “I’m not evasive. I’m just… private. About, uh, the details.”

Nanami didn’t press further. He simply sighed, stirred his coffee again, and gave you a patient look. “That’s fair. Money is not an easy topic so early on. But — when you’re ready to be more specific, I’d like to hear it. Not for judgment,” he added, his voice softening in a way that made you look up despite yourself. “Just so I understand.”

And just like that, your heart pulled another somersault. Because here was Nanami, wary of HR, weary of gossip, yet steady in his quiet insistence that he wasn’t going anywhere — not even if you stumbled, not even if you weren’t ready to spill everything right away.

You poked at the shredded sugar packet, lips twitching. “Fine. But only if you make me banana bread someday.”

His eyes glinted with quiet amusement. “Deal.”

—

The night had the sort of glow that made everything feel a little more unreal than it should’ve been. You and Nanami had left the café arm in arm, both of you a shade too tipsy for anyone to trust with responsible decisions, and somehow ended up sprawled in the grass of a small city park.

It wasn’t the quiet kind of park — it pulsed faintly with the hum of traffic, the laughter of strangers walking past the gate, and the orange wash of streetlamps breaking through tree branches. But right here, lying flat against the cool lawn with Nanami beside you, the rest of the city blurred into background noise.

The two of you had been talking nonsense for a while — complaints about coworkers, your shared annoyance at the price of decent coffee, him teasing you about your dramatic storytelling — until, almost without realizing it, you slipped into honesty. The kind that hangs heavy in the air and doesn’t quite fit the playful tone of a tipsy evening.

“So, that’s how I make money on the side,” you admitted, staring at the starless sky, voice small but steady. “Not exactly the most… respectable way, I guess. But it pays better than doing nothing.”

There was a pause, and then the faint shift of movement. Nanami slowly propped himself up on one arm, his shadow blotting out the nearest streetlight as he looked down at you. His expression wasn’t sharp, not the stern one you saw in office meetings, but thoughtful.

“You do realize this is in violation of HR rules,” he said finally, his voice calm and low.

You snorted softly. “Yeah, I already know that.”

“And you realize if word gets out, it could cost you your job.”

Your laugh was short, a little bitter around the edges. “I already know that too.”

The silence stretched between you, and for a second you braced yourself for disappointment, for the inevitable lecture about professionalism and consequences. But instead, Nanami just exhaled slowly, shoulders loosening as he studied you.

“I’m not angry,” he murmured.

That caught you off guard. You turned your head to meet his gaze, searching for the hidden reprimand. “You’re… not?”

Nanami shook his head. “People have to work in this economy. The company barely pays enough for rent, let alone stability. Most of us are overworked and underpaid. I can’t fault you for doing what you must.”

The weight of his words pressed into you differently than the grass beneath your back. There was no judgment in his voice, only recognition, maybe even solidarity. Nanami knew more than most what it meant to live in a system that wrung people dry and handed them scraps in return.

His eyes softened just slightly, catching the glow of the city lights. “Though,” he added, a ghost of humor tugging at his mouth, “I would appreciate it if next time you considered earning your side money by helping me bake banana bread instead.”

The absurdity of it cracked the tension. You let out a shriek of laughter, the kind that startled a couple walking by the park fence, and rolled over to throw yourself against him.

“Banana bread?” you giggled, half-tackling him in the grass. “You can’t be serious.”

Nanami grunted as you knocked him onto his back, but his arm instinctively looped around you, steady even in the mess of your laughter. “I’m always serious,” he said, dry as ever, though the faintest chuckle escaped him.

Pressed against him, cheek to his shoulder, you could still hear the hum of traffic, the distant clatter of the city. But wrapped in his words, in the quiet acceptance of your messy reality, it felt almost like safety. Like for once, there was no need to defend yourself. Not here, not with him.

The night was imperfect — the grass damp, the air thick, the city lights too bright — but it was yours, and he didn’t mind. And that made it perfect enough.

𝓋𝒾𝒾. RYOMEN SUKUNA 

Sparking the conversation of having an OnlyFans with Sukuna wasn’t really sparking anything at all — you never even lit the match.

He did.

It came at you sideways, the kind of ambush that made your stomach drop, the words slipping from his mouth in that deceptively calm tone of his.

“Your heart rate spikes every evening at the same time without fail. And your door is always shut under the excuse of… what was it? Studying.”

You nearly choked on your own breath, because the way he said studying dripped with disdain, like he’d already filed the word away as an outright lie. You scrambled for composure, clutching your pen as if it might anchor you, forcing a laugh that came out too high, too quick.

“Yeah, well, I mean — studying’s stressful. Maybe I just get too into it, you know? I… I was actually watching a trailer earlier, so maybe that’s what you noticed. Or I was gaming. Yeah, game trailers. Anime. There’s a lot of reasons for, uh… giddiness.”

He tilted his head, those sharp eyes narrowing like blades being honed. His voice dipped lower, modulated with something that made the hair on your neck rise. “No game excites you so consistently. Nor does any anime trailer make you… flustered. Not in that rhythm. Not with that heat.”

Your skin prickled as you gripped the edge of your desk, body turning half-away from him as though an extra inch of distance might dull the weight of his presence. Your mouth kept moving, desperate to fill the silence with anything other than the truth.

“You’re overanalyzing. You always do that,” you said too fast, trying to match his steady tone with a casualness that rang false even in your own ears. “Maybe i just… get distracted easily, okay? Maybe I like closing my door, maybe I like — privacy. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Sukuna stepped closer, and your pulse jumped again, traitorous in its betrayal. His lips pulled back, not quite a smile, not quite a snarl — something between amusement and frustration.

“Privacy, you say,” he murmured, voice sharp enough to slice through your flimsy excuses. “You hide behind it, but you are not hiding well. Your body betrays you. Your voice wavers, your gaze shifts, your hands fidget.” His eyes flicked down briefly to your knuckles whitening against the desk. “You avoid me instead of answering. Why?”

You laughed again, a nervous sound that cracked halfway through. “I’m not avoiding you. You’re just… intense. It’s weird being interrogated over — over nothing.”

“Nothing,” he repeated, the word curling with disbelief. His tone sharpened, like a frustrated hound scenting prey it couldn’t quite see. “Do you think me a fool? You shut yourself away, you emerge flushed, unsettled, and you cannot even meet my eyes. I know you are concealing something.”

You swallowed hard, your throat tight, eyes darting everywhere but his face. The wall, the corner of your laptop screen, the pen rolling off your notebook. Anywhere. “I’m not hiding anything,” you insisted weakly, the denial sounding thinner each time.

Sukuna’s exhale was slow, deliberate, like he was weighing patience against irritation. “You are lying,” he said simply, as if stating the weather, and the certainty in his voice made your stomach twist.

You flailed with words, babbling, trying to smother his precision with noise. “I’m not lying, I was literally just — like I said, watching something. Maybe I’m a little jumpy, but that’s normal, right? People get excited about things. Maybe I’m reading something funny, or — or chatting with someone, or—”

“Rambling.” he cut you off, the single word slicing through everything you’d piled up. His eyes pinned you in place, cold and sharp but glinting with a predator’s curiosity. “You are cornered and you ramble.”

You stiffened, breath caught in your chest, fingers wringing themselves in your lap. The embarrassment burned hotter than the fear, because the way he saw through you felt like being stripped bare, your flimsy lies crumbling under the weight of his analysis.

And he didn’t even need you to say it. He knew. Or at least, he knew enough.

“So,” he said finally, straightening, his tone still steady but carrying that edge of exasperation, “What is it you are so desperate to shield from me? What truth makes your body sing and your tongue stumble?”

You pressed your lips together, avoiding his gaze, praying for an escape hatch to open up under your chair. Anything but this. Anything but him peeling the secret out of you with nothing but his voice, his eyes, and the suffocating weight of knowing you were caught.

He slumps like someone deflating a cushion — slow, ridiculous, the way a mountain might sigh if it realised it’d been asked to care about tiny, modern problems. For a beat the world narrows to the space between you: his shoulders dropping, his jaw unclenching as if he’s trying to put a thought back together that’s just fallen apart. You can see the calculation beginning; his face, usually an unreadable mask, rearranges into something oddly vulnerable and furious at once.

“I do not… understand these boundaries,” he says finally, voice low and brittle. His fingers drum once on the table, then stop, mid-gesture, the tiny motion betraying the storm under his skin. “I will not tolerate lies. Secrets are teeth that bite the hand. If you wish to hide, then I will hide. We will be even.”

And then the word slips out of your mouth — small, terrible, definitive. 

“OnlyFans.”

He freezes as if you’ve thrown a stone through a window. For a second he looks at you like you’ve spoken in a foreign ritual tongue. His brow knots, as the tiny scowl that forms is half confusion, half something older, like someone remembering a memory misplaced across centuries. The yapper inside him — that millennia-old, possessive neuron that snaps at anything unfamiliar — twitches awake.

“What is this… OnlyFans?” he asks, and you realise you have to be the translator of your own life. You sit him down because explaining it properly now feels like diffusing a small bomb: subscription site, paywall, creators making content, control over who sees what, you set boundaries, you block abusers, you moderate messages, you schedule shoots, you manage taxes. You talk about consensual exchange and the blunt, boring logistics of invoices and savings.

He absorbs your words like a man tasting a strange fruit for the first time — cautious, then suspicious. His face bobs through stages: bewilderment, disbelief, a rising flare of protective anger. Words tumble out of him, not directed at you but at the thing itself, a long, clumsy rant that feels like it’s trying to stitch together ancient fury and contemporary outrage.

“So women put themselves on display,” he says, voice taut, “And strangers pay? They trade coin for sight?” His hands curl into fists on the table.

“This… commerce of lust. It is a market. Women’s bodies become product. Men trade their hunger like merchants. Do you not see how it resembles the old streets — the markets where a body’s worth was haggled?”

You open your mouth to explain agency, to say that this is your choice, that you set the rules, that the power also lives in your hands when you call the shots — but his words come faster, a tide you can’t quite interrupt.

“In my time,” he says, voice thick with a scholar’s disdain, “women were given positions where their worth was defined by others: concubines arranged behind screens, dancers in courts performing for nobles, offerings at temples that were not offerings of piety but of possession. The form changes, the architecture changes, but the scaffold remains: men’s desire constructs value, and then claims it as moral high ground.”

He draws parallels with a patient’s precision, fingers sketching invisible diagrams in the air. “We idolised and we traded. We praised beauty and then sold it as spectacle. I have watched empires rise on trade routes and men’s appetites. I thought those patterns dead. Yet here you are, and the same machinery hums — commerce, appetite, power.”

His nostrils flare as his eyes narrow into slits of wounded pride and fierce, protective rage, neither of which fit neatly into the modern lexicon. “You must have been forced,” he snaps suddenly, not at you but at the concept. “Or betrayed into it. Who convinced you? Who took advantage?”

You blink, baffled, because here is the crux of the collision: his reading of everything is as victimhood first, agency second. His brain cannot immediately hold the paradox of a woman choosing an option he recognises only as coercion.

You try again, carefully: you chose, you set boundaries, you blocked abusive accounts, you negotiate pricing, you keep your private life private, you do it because you needed autonomy, because it paid for medicine and rice and rent and didn’t ask for permission from awkward relatives. You tell him about the late-night shoots that are mostly light tests and coffee, the spreadsheets, the legal forms, the moments you flinch and then decide to continue anyway. You speak of confidence — the strange glow that came when you stopped averting your eyes.

But Sukuna’s anger swells into a monologue, not cruel but incandescently righteous. He rails against the institution itself: capitalism making loneliness into commerce, lust industrialised into subscription tiers, the way desire gets monetised into an endless mill that feeds off insecurity. He likens it to a scam, to a capitalist engine that profits off both women’s need and men’s entitlement. His hands move like a conductor’s — precise, theatrical — as he dismantles the idea piece by piece with historical analogies and moral certainty.

“They package loneliness and sell it in portions,” he says, voice rising. “They give you approval for a price and then call it empowerment. They make autonomy sound like consumption. It is commodified validation.”

You’re halfway between wanting to shout and wanting to laugh at the ferocity of his old-soul critique. Part of you appreciates the heat of his defense — the fact that his first reaction is not to shame you (at least not bluntly) but to obliterate whatever structure allowed such a site to exist. Another part of you is furious: furious that he assumes your hands are not on the wheel.

He looks at you then, and the fire moderates into something rawer. His jaw tightens; there’s a softening in the eyes — not understanding yet, but willingness to process. “I am angry you did not tell me,” he admits, each word heavy. “Not because of the act, but because of secrecy. You could have told me. We promised no secrets.”

There’s a ridiculous, intimate moment where he leans forward and, with all the solemnity of a man performing an ancient rite, asks: “Do you enjoy it? Or do you endure it?”

You blink, because the question hurts in a place you didn’t know was tender. You try to answer — yes and no, sometimes both — and he listens, but not like someone digesting nuance. He listens like someone cataloguing evidence for his moral argument.

By the time you finish, Sukuna has mapped a dozen analogies in his head: marketplaces, temple offerings, courtly trades, ancient patronage systems. His face is a landscape of fury, affection, betrayal and protectiveness.

Finally, after a long breath that seems to pull something ancient into the present, he says, slower now, “If this is your choice, then explain it to me plainly. Do not let me be the last to know.”

His voice has dropped from indictment to request — clumsy, imperfect, and startlingly human. You feel your panic ebb just a little, because he has opened a crack: not full acceptance, not even comprehension, but the willingness to be told the truth.

You are left both exasperated and oddly relieved; he has not converted, he has not capitulated. He has, however, promised to hold the space to understand, in his own jagged way. You bite the inside of your cheek, preparing to walk him through the ordinary, bureaucratic, boring parts of your life that somehow carry so much shame in other people’s mouths.

And while he mutters about the corruption of modern love and the resilience of old patterns, you realise this will not be a quick fix. Sukuna will learn, if he chooses to, by listening and stumbling and re-forging his ancient certainties. For now he paces between outrage and tender protectiveness, his long shadow falling over your confession like an ancient thing trying — beautifully, horribly — to adapt to the now.

𝓋𝒾𝒾𝒾. TOJI FUSHIGURO

“What’s the weirdest way you’ve seen someone earn money?”

He didn’t even look up from Paladins. His thumbs kept dancing across the controller like it was a ritual. He gave you that dead, flat stare of his — the one that makes you feel like a question is more irritation than curiosity.

“I’m a literal assassin,” he said without sarcasm, like it was the most obvious answer. “Things don’t get weirder than that.”

You laughed, because of course he’d say that. Toji’s life reads like a series of what-are-you-even-doing chapters. You two orbit each other in that comfortable grey area — stolen mornings, nights that end on the couch with his shoulder under your head, fights that dissipate faster than smoke. Everything romantic without the label; everything messy and easy where labels would make it complicated.

But lately the ease has been tight at the edges. The way his jaw clenches on calls to the hospital. The extra shift he takes and then hides the paycheck in a drawer. The silence when you mention groceries or a dentist appointment like it’s a word that might explode between you. So you tried to keep it light, tried to bait him into admitting the obvious with a ridiculous question about incomes.

He paused the game finally, let the menu linger on screen. The pause felt like someone holding their breath too long. He rubbed the back of his neck — the habitual gesture he does when something important lurks behind a simple sentence. “I’m fine,” he said, and you heard the way the words stuck to each other.

You watched him, the man who once threw himself between you and a stranger for no reason now looked small in the glow of your living room. Pride is a heavy muscle on him; it flexes at the dumbest moments. Asking for help would be an admission of weakness, and Toji’s definition of weakness has always been tangled with wanting to protect you. He’d rather bend himself into something broke and noble than hand over a problem for you to fix.

“You don’t have to be,” you said, softer. “You don’t have to pretend. We cover each other.”

He shrugged like it was easy, but his eyes betrayed him. “I’m not asking you for—” he cut himself off, voice roughening. “I don’t wanna be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden,” you said. “You ever think I cover stuff because I like power trips?” you teased, trying to push light back into the room. “I’m not your mom, idiot. I just — I like doing it.”

He let out a humorless snort. “You always come through.” The accusation sat there, not loud but full of everything: pride, gratitude, a confusing kind of jealousy. “How do you always come through?”

That was the question you’d been avoiding. How do you explain the steady bank transfers, the nights you hand over cash without flinching, the way you pull notes from your wallet like they sprout there? How do you explain the thin, secret architecture of your life that keeps his world from caving in without telling him the whole, messy truth?

You measured your words. The moment felt private, dangerous in that tender way things always feel between you two. Toji’s masculinity wasn’t fragile exactly — he was blunt, unfiltered, wired with a kind of survivalist pride — but it kept him from admitting he needed you. And because he valued you, because he loved you in that battered, back-alley way, asking for help felt like offering you the chance to carry him. That made him flinch.

“I’ve been picking up extra shifts,” you lied smoothly, because sometimes the truth is too sharp to hand over like a knife. “Freelance, odd jobs. You know, things. And some savings.” Your fingers toyed with the hem of your shirt, because there are small tells you’ve learned to employ when you fear you’ll be easy to read.

Toji watched you with a slow, suspicious gaze. The suspicion wasn’t mean — more like a radar trying to triangulate a pattern. He knows you. Knows your habits, the way you fuss with old t-shirts, how you hide receipts in books. He noticed the way your eyes flicked to the bank app sometimes, the way you closed tabs when he walked into the room. Not enough to be accusatory, but enough to make him wonder.

“You always say that,” he muttered. “You always have the money when I’ve got nothing.” His voice held a cracked edge, like something was fraying inside him. “You’d cover for me if I asked.”

“I would,” you said, truthfully. “But it’s not always about me wanting to help. You don’t have to be proud when it costs you.” You reached out and nudged his knee with your foot, a small, domestic touch. It was the kind of contact that usually melted him. Tonight it made him look away.

“I hate being the one who has nothing to offer,” he admitted in a sound that could’ve been a confession in quieter times. “I hate that you pull everything together like it’s nothing.”

You watched the shame work across his features — reddening the throat, the quick avoidance of your eyes. Masculinity had a way of bundling itself into unexpected knots. Him not asking wasn’t strength so much as stubbornness and pride and the need to be whole alone.

“You don’t have to offer a thing,” you said, softer. “You offer me midnight coffee, and you offer me your stupid car, and you offer me that ridiculous insistence on carrying heavy things. that’s enough.”

His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “I’m not your car,” he grumbled, but the heat left his shoulders. Vulnerability is a rare currency with Toji. When he spends it, it matters.

There was a beat where the two of you sat like that: small domesticity braced against something raw. The city hummed outside, indifferent. Your silence finally broke because of the way his jaw tightened, like he was bracing for a truth he hated even imagining.

“You always come through,” he repeated, but this time with less suspicion and more wonder. “I just… i wanna know you don’t drown.”

You wanted to tell him, to let him see the ledger behind your smile — the awkward late-night shoots, the polite but predatory messages you blocked, the spreadsheets you kept so you wouldn’t panic when a bill arrived. You wanted to tell him how the work made you feel complicated: powerful sometimes, ashamed other times, whole in ways nobody else understood.

You wanted him to know that the reason you could keep him afloat was because you’d fought to keep yourself afloat first.

But the grey area between you made it complicated.

Opening that door would change the gravitational pull of both your lives. Labels would feel like a hand pressing a name onto something that had learned to move without them.

And he — he might not be ready to hold the version of you that earns in ways he’d never imagine.

So you stayed small for now, nudging his knee, letting the lie weave around the truth with all the tenderness you could muster. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready to hear it,” you said, and it was equal parts promise and threat. Not a threat to leave, but the kind that meant something would shift when revealed.

Toji’s eyes met yours then, honest and messy, and he let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Don’t make it dramatic,” he said, though his voice softened. “I’ll help if you want. If you need it.”

And you believed him, because of the way he said it — clumsy, hurt, proud — and because love in your grey area looked a lot like sharing burdens without naming the ledger. For tonight, that was enough. Tomorrow maybe you’d be braver. Or maybe you’d keep doing what you do: holding his silence with your secret, keeping the bridges standing until he could cross them himself.

The doorbell rang, the smell of melted cheese already ghosting through the narrow crack as Toji swung the door open with that easy swagger he wore for strangers. The delivery guy stood there, extra large pizza box balanced on his forearm, receipt folded neatly against the lid.

Toji dug into his wallet, pulling out notes with the casualness of someone who thought they had enough. But then came the pause, the subtle falter in his brow as he flipped through the bills once, twice, the edges growing damper against his fingertips. His shoulders stiffened.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, low enough that only you, lingering a step behind, caught it.

The delivery boy shifted on his feet, already weary from too many doorsteps and hungry faces. “It’s thirty-two seventy-five,” he recited flatly, not rude, but the kind of tone that comes from repetition.

Toji glanced down at the limp notes in his hand — twenty-eight dollars, maybe twenty-nine if he counted the coin pressed into the leather crease of his wallet. The corner of his mouth twitched, his jaw working. You saw the moment shame cracked through his calm, and before you could say a word, he growled something about “hold on” and stalked back inside.

His footsteps were heavy, almost petulant, thudding across the hardwood. Drawers rattled, closet doors creaked, the muffled sound of a box scraping against the floor. He was searching — hunting, really — for whatever scraps of cash he might’ve shoved into corners weeks ago.

You stood frozen for a beat, the delivery boy now looking directly at you, brow cocked, pizza steam seeping out from the cardboard. His patience was thinning.

“We take online too,” he offered, voice dry.

The words hit you like a sting. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, but they made something in your chest collapse anyway. You fumbled for your phone, your fingers moving too fast against the screen, desperate to end this scene before it carved itself too deep. You pulled up the payment app, scanning the code, punching in numbers until the confirmation dinged.

“Paid,” you said quickly, holding the phone up like proof, like a shield. He nodded, handed over the pizza box, and muttered a thanks before disappearing down the hallway.

The silence afterward rang louder than the doorbell had.

You turned, extra large pizza heavy in your arms, just in time to see Toji coming back down the hall, one fist clutching a few crumpled bills, the other holding a handful of coins that clinked with every step. His chest rose and fell a little too hard for something as small as this, and when his eyes landed on the empty doorway, on the pizza already in your hands, his whole body stopped.

He looked at you. At the phone still glowing faintly in your grip. At the pizza box. At the money in his hand that suddenly meant nothing.

For a long second, neither of you spoke. You almost wished he’d drop the money on the table, make some joke, brush it off. But Toji’s pride doesn’t dissolve like that — it implodes.

“Why the fuck do you always do this?” he snapped, voice rough, jagged, too loud for the small space of your living room. The coins slipped between his fingers, pinging against the floor as if to punctuate the anger. “Huh? Why do you always manage to cover for me, like you’re fucking invincible?”

You blinked, mouth opening, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“Can’t even pay for a goddamn pizza anymore,” he spat, pacing two steps and dragging a hand down his face like it might ground him.

“Every time — every fucking time — you’re just there, pulling out money like it’s nothing. Like you’re covering my ass is normal.” His voice cracked halfway through, bitterness bleeding into something more raw, more jagged.

You set the pizza down on the table, your arms aching, your stomach sinking as you watched him. His chest heaved, his eyes glossy with frustration he refused to name, and when he finally sank down onto the couch, it wasn’t graceful. It was a collapse.

Toji leaned forward, elbows on his knees, both hands dragging through his hair. His shoulders hunched, his head bowed, like the weight of being unable to provide had snapped something invisible inside him.

“I hate it,” he said finally, voice hoarse, quieter but cutting deeper for it. “I hate that you always push through and I’m left standing there with nothing. Like I’m fucking useless.”

Toji was still slumped on the couch, head in his hands, but then his jaw set tight and he straightened up like a man who’d finally had enough of choking down his own shame. His voice came out low, sharp, heavy with something ugly.

“How the fuck do you do it, huh? Don’t give me that freelancing bullshit — you think I’m stupid?” his lip curled, and for once his eyes didn’t soften when they found you. “What is it? You got some sugar daddy out there? Some old bastard paying your bills while I’m here scraping for change?”

The word hit like a slap — sugar daddy, spit out with so much spite it felt less like a question and more like an accusation. Your chest burned, your grip on the pizza box tightening until the cardboard bent inwards.

“You don’t get to say that,” you snapped, louder than you meant to, because it wasn’t fair. The two of you weren’t official — no promises, no labels — yet somehow he’d drawn blood anyway, and it stung in all the wrong ways.

“Don’t give me that shit,” he cut in, pacing, one hand dragging down his face. “It adds up, you know? You always saving me when I’m short, always breezing through like it doesn’t hurt. What the fuck else am I supposed to think?”

“I have an OnlyFans.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

His face — fuck, his face. The disbelief cut sharper than anger, his brows drawing together like he didn’t even understand the language you just spoke. Then it hit him, and the look shifted, twisted.

“You — you’re serious?” his voice cracked, a half-scoff as he pushed himself up off the couch. “You mean to tell me… I’m so fucking useless, so broke, you had to — what? Sell yourself online just to keep shit afloat?”

“No, Toji—” you tried, but he wasn’t hearing you.

He dragged a hand down his face, pacing across the room, his steps erratic, like he wanted to punch a wall but couldn’t decide which one. his laugh was short, humorless. “Jesus Christ. I knew I was shit with money, but this? You really… you really had to stoop this low? For me?”

You slammed the pizza down on the table, voice cracking under the weight of everything. “I started this long before I met you! It’s not about you — it was never about you!” your hands flew up, desperate. “You’re great at what you do Toji, but you’re careless with the money. We can figure that out. This isn’t some pity project, this is my choice. I was doing it already.”

He stopped pacing, his body frozen like the words pinned him there. But his fists were clenched tight, knuckles white, and when he looked at you again, it was like he was seeing something he couldn’t swallow down.

“Choice?” his voice rasped. “You call that a choice? A site built on men jerking off to women for pocket change? You — you call that financial independence?” He dragged in a sharp breath, the muscles in his jaw twitching, his chest rising too fast.

You opened your mouth, but he cut you off, voice louder, angrier, but with that wobble of desperation beneath. “No. No, fuck that. You don’t get it — you can’t keep doing this, not while I’m around. I don’t care if we’re not official, I don’t care what the fuck this is between us—” he gestured harshly between the two of you, hand trembling, “—the day I land my next big job, my next kill, you’re done with that shit. You hear me? Done. I can’t watch you do this and pretend it’s for yourself when i know it’s because I’m a fucking deadbeat.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and suddenly the anger collapsed into something heavier — shame, self-loathing, frustration that shook through his body. He turned away, shoulders heaving, one hand pressed against the wall like he needed it to stay upright.

You stood there, chest tight, throat raw, watching a man who could carve through bodies in an alley but couldn’t stomach the thought of you carrying him, of you choosing something he saw as beneath you.

And you realized — he wasn’t just angry at you. He was angry at himself, furious that his own failures had convinced him you’d only ever do this because of him.

Nothing sinful, nothing incriminating. Just home décor. He’s already tapping the screen to pay, humming under his breath. Meanwhile, your heart has taken up residence in your throat.

Because here’s the thing: you are no vigilante, no caped crusader skulking around rooftops. Your secret is infinitely less noble and infinitely more profitable.

Politely speaking, you’re an OnlyFans model.

Realistically speaking, your “side hustle” — the kind every female motivational podcast host swears by — leans heavily toward lingerie try-ons and pay-per-view messages that keep your rent covered and your savings account alive.

And he has no idea.

“Can you believe it?” Choso says, hauling one of the flat-packed boxes onto the cart with that quiet, eager determination of a man about to set up his first shared apartment. “We’re really doing this. Moving in together. No more lugging my stuff back and forth. No more pretending I like my roommates’ music taste.”

You force a smile, nodding, because his excitement is contagious in that earnest way of his. His eyes are practically glowing as he talks, even under the unflattering Ikea lighting.

“I already know where I want to put the bookshelf,” he continues, oblivious, “And I was thinking we could get matching mugs? Not corny ones, just… you know. Something nice. Yours and mine.” 

Your inner turmoil could rival a Greek tragedy. He’s standing there, making plans about mugs and shelves, while you’re calculating how long you can keep your side hustle under wraps before it detonates spectacularly.

“Mugs sound good,” you say, because what else are you supposed to say? ‘Sure babe, mugs and maybe I’ll reveal that half the internet has seen me in lace’?

He pushes the cart forward, smiling back at you like you hung the moon. “This is gonna be perfect. Us. Finally living together.”

And you nod again, clutching your receipt like it’s a legal document binding you to silence, thinking that Ikea sells storage solutions for everything except the double life you’ve crammed under your bed.

And yet, you nearly felt like wailing as soon as Choso started reciting Ikea's lighting catalogue on the drive home, the way people narrate recipes on cooking shows — earnest, delighted, unaware of the chaos simmering in the pot behind them. The city blurred past in orange streaks and the car's heater hummed the kind of neutral white noise that made your confession feel impossibly heavy.

“Baby,” he said, fingers drumming the steering wheel the way he always did when he was thinking of color schemes, “We could get those pendant lights for above the table. Imagine us, eating—”

You cut him off before he could get to the ‘imagine us’ part because your mouth had been practicing the script all day and now it tumbled out raw and unedited.

“I need to tell you something.”

The way he jerked the wheel made the car veer an inch; you swore you saw every stray churro of your life tumble in that brief swerve. His eyes went wide, then very, very soft.

“What is it? Is everything okay?” he asked, half-panicked and wholly adorable, like a dog being scolded for knocking over a plant.

Your hands trembled as you imagined walking back into the Ikea kitchen displays and ripping down the ‘lifestyle’ posters — exposing the real you underneath their staged porcelain calm. you exhaled and said it:

“I have an OnlyFans.”

For a long, electric second he was completely still. And then, because this is the universe and also your boyfriend, Choso's face didn’t do scandalized, it did literal confusion.

“Oh — you have a fan? Like… one of those big ones? At home?”

You wanted to scream. You wanted to laugh until your ribs hurt. You wanted to reach over and shake him like a very soft, very bewildered marionette. Instead you explained, because you are a patient person with a knack for diplomacy and also because you couldn't bear the thought of this becoming a sitcom-gag misunderstanding twice in one week.

“No, not a fan,” you said, choosing your words carefully so they’d land like soft bricks. “OnlyFans — it’s a subscription site. People pay to see content I make. It’s… it’s how I make money on the side.”

He blinked like a man trying to reboot. “Oh right, the internet.”

He said it like he was describing a foreign country he’d never visited, which was not far from the truth. Choso had long ago declared the internet an abstract force that either gave you free music or ruined your eyes, depending on the day. He peered at you with an expression somewhere between curiosity and the kind of concern you reserve for small animals found shivering in doorways.

“Are you… happy?” he asked, and God, the way he asked it made everything in you tilt. It wasn’t a question with judgment; it was the kind of question you ask when you mean it — pivoting your entire world to make room if needed.

“I don’t get half the web stuff,” he admitted, fingers finding the edge of the steering wheel like an anchor, “But if you’re happy doing it, I’m happy too.”

And for a beat you were speechless because what you’d feared — fury, betrayal, some grand moral scaffolding falling apart — was replaced by something softer and stupider and infinitely more disorienting: unconditional, baffled support. You pictured all the dramatic reveals in movies and none of them had prepared you for the way his eyes shone with trust, the way his voice softened around the edges.

You told him the logistics because once the dam had burst there was no point in damming the flood. You told him about the paywall and the messages and how you managed boundaries because your privacy mattered to you, because fans were people with bank accounts and expectations and because you had rules — rigid, necessary rules — that kept the work from being your whole life.

You told him about the calm efficiency of packing orders, about the late-night shoots that were mostly lighting and outfit changes and awkward directions you gave yourself in the mirror. You told him the parts that didn’t need lipstick: that it kept your bank account from panicking and gave you the space to breathe when other things got loud.

Choso listened like he was learning a new language. His forehead creased in that way he does when he’s concentrating on something he wants to keep safe. Every now and then he asked a question — practical, small:

“Do people know it’s you?”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Do you want me to help with anything?”

— and you answered because honesty was easier than carrying the worry alone.

Then, when you expected an inevitable cinematic fallout, he did something quietly lethal: he started to make future plans.

“So,” he said, voice practically conspiratorial now, “Maybe we should figure out how to soundproof the living room. Not for me — for the neighbours — but also maybe for you when you film things. Like a little home studio? And hey, we could get separate mugs but they can be matching so you can keep your, uh, professional stuff separate.”

You nearly laughed. Maybe you did — a short, wet sound that felt like relief. Here you were, about to be found out, about to be unmasked, and instead of anger he offered screws and mugs and the entirely domestic solution of isolating sound with Ikea curtains. You let the ridiculousness of it settle around you like a blanket.

“I’m nervous,” you admitted finally, because it was true. “I’m scared you’ll think different of me.”

He reached over, thumb brushing your knuckles like a benediction. “I might,” he said, earnest and honest and alarmingly human, “But I’ll start from the version of you I like best. The one who steals my food and critiques my playlists.”

You wanted to cry then, but this time it was the good kind of crying — the kind that tasted like salt and new beginnings and slightly overwhelming affection. His support didn’t erase the risk of being vulnerable, or the practical worry about what friends or family might think if they stumbled across it accidentally; it simply made the risk something you wouldn’t have to shoulder alone.

For the rest of the ride you talked logistics, like two roommates planning a budget and a move that had already rearranged the contours of your life. You mapped out which cupboard would be yours, which side of the bed you preferred (he laughed when you insisted you didn’t care, then insisted anyway on the left), and where the little fan he’d misheard would go. He asked a million tiny questions about consent and boundaries and how long you needed for shoots, and you answered them all because you suddenly wanted to build a life with someone who could ask questions like those.

By the time you pulled into your building, the confession had shed most of its sharp edges. It was still vulnerable, still something that made your throat tighten when you thought about other people finding out, but it was, improbably, also part of the scaffolding of the future he was already drawing for both of you.

As you climbed the stairs together, bags slung over shoulders, you glanced at him and couldn’t help the thought that maybe Ikea did have a return policy, but it didn’t cover the parts of yourself you decided to share. And maybe that was okay; maybe the return policy you were going to rely on was trust — fragile, honest, and somehow more useful than any receipt.

Poor baby, you thought with a fond, sharp little smile, as he wrestled a flatpack into the elevator with the concentration of a man attempting origami without instructions. He had no idea how complicated you were, but he was ready to be simple, and that — horrifyingly, wonderfully — felt like enough for right now.

𝒾𝒾. NAOYA ZENIN 

Talking to Naoya Zenin on what was, by your rough estimate, the 97th date in a string of dates that had started blurring together, was always an exercise in patience. He looked pristine, as always, perfectly pressed shirt sleeves rolled just enough to show off his watch, hair neat to the point of arrogance. The downtown café you’d picked out wasn’t loud enough to hide the scrape of his silverware against porcelain, wasn’t cozy enough to give you cover, and definitely wasn’t the kind of place where you wanted to unload the weight of your double life.

But here you were, sipping a latte that tasted far too bitter, mentally rehearsing a confession that might implode the engagement your families had been parading like a business deal.

He was talking about budgeting, or at least his version of budgeting — the kind that involved throwing around numbers for wedding venues, imported champagne, and how much your “wardrobe updates” would cost once you were his wife. The way he said it was so matter-of-fact, so clinical, like he was already allocating columns in a spreadsheet.

“You don’t have to worry about rent anymore,” he said smoothly, like it was supposed to be comforting. “And you can stop thinking about little expenses like groceries. My family will handle that. It’s inefficient for you to be stressed about trivial things.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, because wasn’t that the problem? Trivial things were exactly what your OnlyFans income covered.

Trivial things like not having to choose between paying rent and buying decent food. Trivial things like going to the doctor when you needed to without worrying about the bill. It wasn’t millions, but your account was in the top twenty percent, enough to give you independence, enough to make you feel like your choices belonged to you. And yet here he was, with his controlled smile and his precise words, making even the act of eating a croissant sound like an itemized report.

“I like being able to manage my own expenses,” you ventured carefully, knowing how quickly he could turn conversations into quiet little wars. Naoya’s eyes flicked up from his espresso, sharp and unimpressed.

“That’s cute,” he said, and you felt the patronizing lilt slice straight through your attempt. “But after marriage, you won’t need to worry about such things. Independence is overrated when it just means struggling. You’ll have me.”

You inhaled slowly, gripping your cup. Independence is overrated. It almost made you laugh, if only because the irony was so sharp it hurt. Did he have any idea what it felt like to be proud of your own work, to look at yourself on a screen and not shy away from the reflection? To feel powerful in a way that no family name, no handout, no Zenin-funded credit card could buy?

Your mind flickered back to the nights you spent adjusting lighting, arching your body just so, reclaiming your image in a way that was both raw and deliberate. You’d learned to admire yourself there, to stop shrinking from the mirror. The money was good, yes, but it was more than that — it was proof you could stand on your own two feet, no matter how “wonky” the path.

You looked across the table at the man you were supposed to marry, at the way he dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin as if this café — this entire city — were just a backdrop to his performance.

“So, what about things like… personal savings?” you asked lightly, trying to steer the conversation closer to the truth without tearing the veil all at once. He smirked, leaning back in his chair like you’d said something amusing.

“You’ll have access to what you need. Why would you want to keep your own account when mine will cover everything? Besides, it’s better for the husband to manage finances. It avoids… unnecessary complications.”

Your exasperation curled in your chest, tight and hot. Unnecessary complications. As though your work, your secret life, the thing that kept you afloat and whole, was just some messy line item on a budget he could strike out. You imagined saying it — I run an OnlyFans, Naoya, I make money showing myself online, and I’m damn good at it. You imagined the look he’d give you, that smug disdain cloaked as civility, the way he’d twist the words into a lecture about propriety and shame.

You stirred your coffee, trying not to let your sigh slip past your lips. This café, with its marble countertops and delicate chandeliers, was not the place. Probably no place would ever be the place. And yet the weight of it pressed down harder the longer you stayed silent.

“You look distracted,” Naoya observed, tilting his head like a predator cataloguing a weakness. “Are you worried about something?”

Yes, you thought bitterly. I’m worried about the part of me that doesn’t fit into your spreadsheets. I’m worried about what happens when my independence collides with your arrogance. I’m worried that the confidence I clawed my way into will shrivel under your disapproval.

But you smiled instead, that polite, practiced smile that kept the peace. “Just thinking about… all the changes. Moving in, the wedding. It’s a lot.”

He nodded, satisfied with that answer, returning to his coffee as if the conversation had already ended. And you sat there, heartbeat heavy, wondering if marriage was supposed to feel like this: like biting your tongue raw, like hiding the best and worst parts of yourself because the man across from you would never understand.

But you decided to try again. You asked if you could have a conversation about personal finances, and the way Naoya instantly agreed made your stomach knot. Too quick, too sharp, like he was holding the door open only to slam it shut the second you walked through. But you’d already cornered yourself into the moment, and before you could claw your way out, you blurted it.

“I… I have an OnlyFans.”

The silence afterward was deafening. It stretched, brittle and heavy, while Naoya’s expression cracked open and rearranged itself in real time. Disbelief first — his brows lifting so fast you thought he might laugh. Then the scoff, sharp and biting, his lips curling into that familiar sneer. He leaned back, elbows propped on his knees, body turned halfway away from you as if the distance might help him process the sheer absurdity.

What is a Zenin, if not theatrically expressive in their disapproval? Every shift of his body was a performance: the narrowing eyes, the exaggerated exhale through his nose, the slow shake of his head like you’d just told him you’d taken up juggling on street corners for spare change.

You were spiraling. Your pulse hammered so loud it filled your ears, and your mind jumped straight to catastrophe. What if this gets out? What if the Zenins hear? They’d cancel the wedding before you could blink, your family would be ruined, shunned, dragged into whispered scandals over espresso cups. The walls of the café seemed to close in, every polished marble surface suddenly hostile. You wanted to snatch the words back, to rewind time ten seconds, to shut yourself up before you detonated your own life. But then his voice cut through, surprisingly even.

“...why?”

Not furious, not scandalized. Just one syllable, heavy with incredulity, almost like he couldn’t reconcile the idea with the person sitting across from him. Your throat went dry, but you forced the truth out anyway, because lying now would only trap you deeper.

“I had… body image issues,” you mumbled, eyes fixed on your coffee cup. “For a long time. I hated the mirror. I hated myself. And it wasn’t the donations or the gross messages — it was me, finally being able to look at myself, on camera, in the mirror, and not flinch. I blocked the creeps, I kept the rules. But the confidence… it came after.”

His reaction was maddening in its clumsiness. Another scoff, but weaker this time, almost uncertain, his hand dragging over his mouth like he was trying to erase the sound before it finished. His gaze darted to the side, then back to you, then down to his hands. His jaw clenched, released, clenched again.

He wasn’t built for this kind of conversation — this level of rawness. To him, your reasoning was too deep for something he had already labeled trivial. His body betrayed him, though. He leaned forward again, forearms braced on the table now, no longer pulling away. His brows were still furrowed, but there was something restless under his skin, some stubborn attempt to bridge a gap he didn’t know how to close.

“You don’t need strangers to tell you what you’re worth,” he muttered finally, voice stiff, clumsy, almost irritated with itself. His eyes flicked up, locking on yours in something like defiance. “You have me. I’m your husband. That’s all that should matter.”

It wasn’t the sweeping acceptance you might have dreamed of, no sudden enlightenment, no tender epiphany. It was awkward, jagged, begrudging even. But it was what he could give. His own warped way of saying he heard you — even if he didn’t fully understand.

And as you sat there, heart still racing, panic still clawing at your ribs, you watched him fumble through the limits of his pride and ego to offer something resembling reassurance. Clumsy, yes. Imperfect, absolutely. But a thread of acceptance, however strained, was still better than the silence you’d feared.

𝒾𝒾𝒾. SHIU KONG 

It starts, as all brilliant, earth-shattering tragedies do, with you half-bent over your boyfriend Shiu’s nightstand, digging through a mess of receipts, old matchbooks, and one ominously sticky lighter until you finally unearth what you came for: his cigarettes. You were not stealing, you told yourself, only borrowing for the noble cause of fulfilling a very specific, very bizarre OnlyFans request.

Apparently, some guy out there wanted lingerie shots with cigarettes. Not lit, mind you — no, he wanted the whole vibe, the aesthetic, the bad girl who smokes behind the gymnasium type. Easy money, right?

Except for the glaring issue that you knew jack shit about smoking.

Your one ill-fated attempt at vaping in college had ended with you clutching your knees in a bathroom stall, swearing you’d seen God. Not exactly the kind of experience that made you eager to repeat. But here you were, standing in front of Shiu’s mirror in lace that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, holding a cigarette like it was an alien artifact.

You tilted it between your fingers, trying to mimic the casual way Shiu always had it dangling from his lips, smoke curling like he was born with lungs full of sex and mystery. Instead, you looked like a kid pretending with a breadstick.

“Real sexy,” you muttered at your reflection, tilting your wrist so awkwardly it looked like you were about to salute the damn thing.

Lighting it proved to be its own comedy routine. The lighter hissed, flared, died, flared again, singed one acrylic nail, and finally caught. You flinched like you’d just detonated a grenade, then jabbed the tip of the cigarette into the flame with all the grace of someone skewering a marshmallow.

When it finally lit, you leaned in, lips closing around the filter, trying to copy every slow, practiced drag you’d seen Shiu pull a hundred times. Instead of cool and languid, you inhaled like you were taking a last breath on earth.

Smoke burned down your throat and into your lungs so violently that you gagged, eyes watering instantly. The next second you were doubled over, wheezing into your lace bralette like your respiratory system had filed for divorce. Camera still rolling.

Perfect content.

You straightened, still coughing, trying to hold the cigarette in some sexy angle while your lungs waged war, snapping another shaky selfie with your free hand. Because yes — this was what you did for OnlyFans. Choke on carcinogens while looking hot enough that someone, somewhere, would tip you for it.

And then, the doorbell rang.

You froze, cigarette trembling dangerously between your fingers, mascara already smudging from your coughing fit. And of course, it wasn’t a delivery guy or the neighbor — it was your boyfriend Shiu Kong. Handler to assassins, smoker extraordinaire, soon to be man who would 100% know you had just broken into his stash like a lingerie-clad raccoon.

“Oh dear,” you whispered hoarsely, cigarette smoke leaking pitifully out your nose like some tragic dragon.

So, not only did you look like you’d just lost a bar fight with nicotine, but now you had to open the door for your beloved while smelling like his vice and wearing lace that definitely hadn’t been meant for him tonight.

A true professional.

Bless the boyfriend, truly, because when you finally cracked open the door you were already half-buried in shame. Oversized shirt tugged hastily over the evidence of your sins, lace peeking at your thighs if you moved even an inch too much, and that unmistakable smell clinging to you like you’d spent the last two hours rolling around in a gas station ashtray.

Shiu stepped inside, sharp eyes immediately narrowing, nose twitching in faint amusement. He hung back for a second, just enough for you to panic in the silence, before tilting his head.

“...you have company?” he asked casually, voice smooth but edged with curiosity, like he was trying to puzzle out whether he should be jealous or entertained.

You scrambled, stammered, voice cracking in half. “N-no, I just… I, uh, wanted to — try smoking? Surprise you with… my skills.” Your words limped out of your mouth like wounded soldiers, not quite truth, not quite lie. You might as well have admitted you were rehearsing to audition for a Marlboro ad.

He blinked. Then, with the faintest twitch at the corner of his lips, let out a low chuckle that only made the heat rise to your ears.

“Your skills, huh?” he repeated, shrugging off his coat and draping it over the chair like he had all the time in the world.

And then he leaned in to kiss you, not even hiding his smirk as he pressed close, nose brushing yours. His lips caught yours gently, teasingly, but the moment he inhaled, he pulled back just a little, enough to murmur against your skin:

“...you smell like you’ve been chain-smoking for hours.”

You nearly combusted on the spot. “I-it was just one!” you squeaked, throat tight, heart hammering. You tried to hum, to play it off, but your nervousness bled through every sound.

Shiu didn’t look mad — he looked positively entertained, like he’d walked in on the punchline of a joke he hadn’t known was being set up for him. His eyes dragged over you, oversized shirt slipping just enough to hint at the lingerie beneath, and then back up to your flushed face.

And instead of lecturing, instead of mocking, he only tilted his head again, lips quirking. “Mm,” he hummed, slow and thoughtful. “Guess I’ll have to teach you how to smoke properly then.”

Your whole body jolted at that, like he’d suggested handing you a loaded weapon instead of a cigarette. You wanted to catapult yourself through the nearest window, but you were rooted in place, the word teach echoing like a death knell.

Because of course — only you could manage to humiliate yourself by botching a fake bad-girl routine for OnlyFans and end up with your handler boyfriend offering you actual lessons in how to look like a delinquent. And worse? He sounded delighted at the prospect.

You tried every possible diversion in the book — wasn’t he tired from work? Didn’t he want dinner? A bath? Maybe a spiritual retreat? Anything, absolutely anything, that didn’t involve you sitting face-to-face with a cigarette and his full attention.

But Shiu wasn’t having it. His hand had already hooked around your wrist, his low laugh buzzing in your ear as he tugged you toward the sofa.

Before you could even breathe out another excuse, you were already settled across his lap, his palm firm against your waist to keep you there. He moved with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before — drawer pulled open, packet slipped out, lighter ready. The motion was so fluid, you didn’t even have time to process the fact that you were trapped.

He held the cigarette between his lips, about to strike the flame, when his other hand betrayed you completely. Fingers drifting, brushing over the lace clinging to your thighs. He stilled for a moment, then let out a quiet hum of surprise, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he were seconds away from teasing you.

“...You wore this for me?” His voice was amused, soft, like he was already anticipating your embarrassed denial.

Except your mouth moved faster than your brain, blurting the truth before you could reel it back.

“It’s not for you.”

The pause that followed was brutal. His brow furrowed, his confusion plain, head tipping just slightly to the side as he processed. He blinked once, then twice, and you could see him brushing off the comment — because sure, sometimes people wore lace for themselves, for confidence, for comfort. He got it. He wasn’t about to question your autonomy over something like that.

But then you kept talking. And you said the word.

“...It’s for my OnlyFans.”

This time, he froze completely. The lighter in his hand clicked uselessly, forgotten, his eyes locked on you with the kind of sharp focus he usually reserved for reading a room full of enemies. His lips parted, closed, then parted again, but no sound came out right away.

“Your… what?” His tone was deliberate, careful, like he needed to confirm he’d actually heard you correctly.

The cigarette, still resting between his lips, hung crookedly as he slowly removed it, eyes narrowing not in anger but in sheer bafflement. His grip around your waist didn’t loosen, though — it tightened, subtle but certain, as if anchoring himself to the reality of what you’d just admitted.

There was no immediate explosion, no raised voice, no sharp accusation. Just that silence — thick, heavy, charged with a hundred unspoken questions crowding his mind. Shiu wasn’t a man who rattled easily, but you’d clearly just dropped a weight into the calm waters of his composure, and he was watching the ripples spread, trying to understand exactly what kind of revelation he was dealing with.

“I — look, it wasn’t even supposed to be a thing,” you blurted out, your hands waving before you even knew what words were coming out. “Last year of college, okay? Someone dared me. I thought it was funny. I thought it’d be… whatever. And then I got this, like, insane request and — yeah, I know, stupid — but I did it, and then it just—” you broke off, fumbling over your own explanation, “—it just became this thing. Not like, big huge thing. Just… habit. Privacy. Exclusivity. It made sense.”

Shiu was watching you like a hawk, but not in the terrifying way you expected — his head tilted, cigarette dangling loosely between his fingers now, his expression unreadable but not sharp. He let you talk, didn’t cut in, didn’t explode. Just sat there, his hand still warm and steady at your waist.

“And that’s why I was…” you gestured helplessly toward the drawer, toward the discarded lighter. “…with the cigarette. Because apparently that’s someone’s fantasy now.”

Finally, Shiu spoke, voice low and slow, like he was trying to measure how much weight each word carried.

“How much?”

Your throat went dry. “…Five thousand.”

For the first time since your confession, his eyebrows actually rose. He leaned back slightly, not in disbelief but in calculation, as if he were doing the math in his head.

Then, without a word, he reached over, pulled open the drawer again, and rummaged with deliberate calm until he came out with a neat stack of bills — thick, folded, bound with a band. He dropped it in your lap with a soft thud.

“Ten.”

You blinked down at the money like it was radioactive. “…What?”

“Ten,” he repeated, his mouth quirking just barely at the corner. “Smoke for me in lingerie. Skip the middleman.”

Your jaw dropped. “Shiu—”

He cut you off with a small chuckle, pressing the unlit cigarette back against your lips for emphasis. “You’re telling me you’re doing all this for strangers who don’t even know your name, and you’ve got me sitting right here? Hm?”

“I — it’s not like that, I—” your protest collapsed halfway, your face heating as you stumbled over your words. “It was just — I don’t even do crazy stuff, I swear, it’s — it’s so stupid sometimes, like, I got asked once if I could eat dry ramen out of the bag in heels—”

That earned a low laugh from him, rough around the edges, like he couldn’t help himself. “Dry ramen?”

“Yes! And another guy — he wanted me to hum the Pokémon theme while wearing a maid outfit, which like, fine, but he tipped so much and—” you cut yourself off, groaning, burying your face in your hands. “God, why am I telling you this?”

“Because you’re embarrassed,” Shiu said simply, his tone softened with amusement, his fingers prying your hands away from your face with surprising gentleness. “And because you don’t need to be.”

He tilted your chin up until your eyes met his. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re… really not?”

He shook his head slowly, expression calm but firm. “Why would I be mad? You did what you had to. You wanted independence. You got creative. You stayed safe. Can’t fault you for that.” A pause, his thumb brushing your cheekbone. “And besides — pretty sure I earn more than enough to keep you afloat, if you want to stop.”

You melted then, your breath hitching at the casual confidence in his words, at the way he said it like a simple fact rather than a brag. He wasn’t mocking, wasn’t judging — he was just offering. And somehow, that was worse for your flustered brain.

“...You’re ridiculous,” you mumbled, pressing your forehead to his chest, trying to hide the way your shoulders trembled from a mix of laughter and relief.

Shiu leaned back again, still chuckling, eyes softening as he studied you. His thumb brushed your cheek, quieting you. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is — you did what you had to do. And if you’re happy, then I’m happy. But if you’re not?” He nudged the stack of bills closer to you. “I’ll cover the difference. Always.”

Your chest squeezed, the kind of ache that wasn’t painful but overwhelming. You whispered, “You really still love me after all this?”

“‘Still’?” His tone turned incredulous, then gentle. “Baby, I never stopped. Website or no website, lace for me or lace for them — I love you. That’s it.”

And for once, you couldn’t think of a single thing to say back, so you just melted into him, letting his confidence carry what your nerves couldn’t.

𝒾𝓋. GOJO SATORU 

The night had started easy — pizza boxes on the counter, a half-empty bag of chips spilling across your coffee table, and two mismatched glasses of cheap alcohol that Gojo insisted was “classy because it burns less.” Your apartment smelled faintly of takeout and that vanilla candle you’d lit to cover up the scent of your laundry basket.

Gojo sat cross-legged on the rug, hair a wild mess that refused to be tamed even indoors, blue eyes glittering under the dim lamplight. Every time he leaned forward to set down his drink, his socks brushed against your leg where you sat curled on the couch, and it was both infuriating and comforting.

“Okay, okay — your turn.” He wagged his glass at you, grin already stretching wide, too proud of the last round where you had to drink after admitting you once cried during a Marvel movie.

You narrowed your eyes. “Never have I ever… dyed my hair white.”

“Boo.” He groaned dramatically, but tipped his glass anyway. “Can’t help genetics, baby.”

“Genetics my ass. You look like you bleached it with holy water.”

“Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful,” he shot back, tilting his head with a flourish like he was in a shampoo ad.

The questions rolled on: dumb ones about crushes, pointed ones about bad exes, and sly ones that had you laughing so hard you spilled on the carpet. The room was warm, lighthearted, filled with his voice bouncing off your walls. And then—

“Never have I ever…” Gojo leaned back, his grin devilish, eyes narrowing in faux-seriousness as he thought. “Had an OnlyFans.”

You froze. The drink in your hand turned heavier, colder, poison against your skin.

Gojo snorted at his own joke, downing the rest of his glass. “Ha! Imagine me — posing in lingerie, charging, what, twenty bucks a month?” He was already laughing, sprawled half against your coffee table, hair falling in his eyes.

But you didn’t laugh. You didn’t move. The silence stretched like elastic pulled too far. He blinked, mid-chuckle.

“...Huh?”

You shifted, fingers tightening around your glass. “What?”

“Hey,” he said softly, smile faltering just enough to betray his curiosity. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, gaze zeroing in like a spotlight. “Why so quiet, hm?”

You forced a laugh, thin and awkward, shaking your head. “Nothing. Just — dumb question.”

But Gojo wasn’t buying it. His grin returned, slower this time, curling with a kind of playfulness that was far more dangerous. “Aw, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me my sweet little girlfriend just failed to drink when she was supposed to.”

Your throat tightened. The glass sat heavy in your hand. And Gojo’s gaze — piercing, amused, waiting — made it impossible to breathe.

The silence stretched too long, too brittle, and Gojo was quick to break it — not with more teasing, but by shuffling across the carpet, drink forgotten on the table. He nudged your knee with his own, his usual grin softened into something smaller, gentler.

“Did I… overstep? Was that a bad question?” His voice dropped low, like he was afraid of scaring you further. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, you know. I didn’t mean to—”

You cut him off, words tumbling out in a messy rush. “I — no, it’s not that. I just… I have one. An OnlyFans.”

He blinked, blue eyes widening, then narrowing as if his brain was trying to rerun the sentence to make sure he heard it right.

“You… what?”

“I do. I have an account,” you confessed, staring at the bottle instead of him. “It’s not — it’s not something I’m proud of. And I swear I was gonna delete it the second you asked me out. I even meant it, but then… I didn’t. I just… kept it. And now it’s — ugh, I don’t even know how to explain this without sounding pathetic.”

Gojo tilted his head, gaze flicking across your face like he was trying to piece together a puzzle. “Pathetic?”

“Yes!” Your voice cracked, hands flailing before you pressed your palms to your thighs to keep them still. “I don’t even need the money anymore, Satoru. I just — don’t know what else to do with my time. It’s like this stupid… habit. Like checking your phone first thing in the morning or staying up too late on purpose. I tell myself I’ll stop, and then I don’t. It makes me feel busy, like I’m not just sitting around wasting my life.”

For a moment, he didn’t speak. His lips parted like he had something to say, then he just exhaled — loud, heavy, like the sound of an air conditioner kicking on in a dead quiet room.

Then he leaned in, wrapping his arms around you without ceremony, pulling you against his chest until your forehead pressed to his collarbone.

“You’re such an idiot sometimes,” he muttered into your hair, his voice muffled but firm. “You think I’d care about something like that more than I care about you?”

“I thought—” You swallowed, voice shaky. “I thought you’d see me as… I don’t know. Bored. Desperate. Gross.”

“Gross?” He pulled back just enough to give you a flat look, brows arched high. “Sweetheart, the only gross thing here is you thinking so little of yourself. Do you really think sitting in front of a camera is the worst way to kill time? Please. You should see what I do when I’m bored. Half the time it involves trying to see how many marshmallows I can fit in my mouth at once.”

You huffed out a weak laugh. He tightened his hold, chin resting on the crown of your head now. “But listen… seriously. Doing this just to keep yourself occupied? To trick yourself into not being lonely or restless? That’s not healthy, baby. That’s not gonna fix what you’re trying to fill. And I can’t stand the thought of you pushing yourself into something that makes you feel empty after. You deserve better.”

You whispered, barely audible, “I don’t even know what else I’d do.”

“That’s where I come in.” He gave you a squeeze, voice warming again. “We’ll find something better. Something that makes you feel good without draining you. Hell, I’ll sign us up for pottery classes, start a terrible band, whatever it takes. You’re not doing this alone, not when I’m around.”

You finally let yourself breathe — deep, shaky, but freer than you’d felt in months. The weight in your chest, the guilt pressing against your ribs, all of it loosened as you melted into him.

“…You’d really go to pottery classes with me?” you murmured.

He grinned, tilting your chin up so you’d look him in the eyes. “Baby, I’d make you the ugliest vase you’ve ever seen in your life. And you’d have to keep it on display forever. That’s true love.”

And for the first time in what felt like forever, you laughed without guilt weighing it down.

𝓋. GETO SUGURU  

The café was warm that late afternoon, buzzing with soft chatter and the clinking of cutlery, autumn light filtering through the glass windows in streaks of gold. Your hands cupped the ceramic mug in front of you, the steam rising faintly, carrying the faint bitterness of your tea. Across the table sat Suguru — older now, sharper around the edges, but still carrying the same quiet composure you remembered from years ago.

Five years of silence. Five years of wondering if the tether of childhood friendship could hold under the weight of time. And yet, here you were, both roped into an arranged marriage that would tie your names together for the rest of your lives.

“So,” you finally said, breaking the comfortable lull, “you actually have a ten-step haircare routine?”

His lips curved, the faintest hint of pride glimmering in his dark eyes. “Don’t sound so surprised. Good hair takes effort. But, since we’re getting married, I figured it’s fair — five steps for me, five steps for you.”

You raised a brow, pausing mid-bite into your panini. “What, like… you’ll split it with me?”

He leaned back, arms crossing casually, his smirk widening. “Marriage is about compromise, isn’t it? I’ll do the oiling and shampooing, you can handle the masks and treatments. Efficient teamwork.”

A laugh slipped out of you, one you hadn’t realized you were holding back. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re still the same,” he countered smoothly, “teasing me for things that clearly work. You can’t deny it — my hair looks great.”

You shook your head, but you couldn’t deny it either. It was comforting, how easily the rhythm returned, like the years apart were only weeks.

Conversation tumbled on, flowing naturally. He told you about college — how he’d moved between majors, how he’d taken odd jobs to keep himself busy.

“One time,” he said, sipping his coffee like it was nothing, “I took this assignment off a poster in one of the campus halls. Paid eight grand to take photos of women for lingerie shoots.”

You nearly inhaled your tea the wrong way, choking mid-swallow. “Excuse me?!”

His brow shot up as he leaned forward quickly, hand brushing instinctively against your arm. “Hey, don’t die on me now — what, that shocked you?”

“Shocked?!” you coughed out, eyes wide. “Suguru, that’s insane! You — you actually did it?”

He nodded, unbothered. “It was legit enough. Paid in cash, no scams. The models were professionals too. I was nervous as hell at first, though — had no idea how to direct them. But it ended up being… weirdly educational?”

You pressed your lips together, stifling a laugh, though your face felt hot for an entirely different reason. “Educational, huh?”

“What?” his smirk returned, lazy and amused. “Don’t tell me you’re scandalized.”

“Not scandalized,” you muttered, suddenly very focused on picking at the crumbs of your bread. “Just… familiar, that’s all.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, curiosity sparking. “Familiar?”

Your tongue tripped, heart racing. You weren’t ready to spill that part of your life — not yet, not when things between you two were still fragile, still rebuilding. So you dodged.

“Just, y’know, familiar in the sense that I’ve… read about those things before. Nothing more.”

He studied you for a long beat, eyes sharp but not pressing, before shrugging lightly. “Hm, fair enough.”

You exhaled slowly, grateful for his restraint.

The conversation drifted back into safer waters — mutual friends from school, memories of old teachers, stupid inside jokes that somehow hadn’t lost their humor. Every smile that crossed his face reminded you of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become, the gap between those versions bridging inch by inch as you talked.

And in between the warmth of the tea, the hum of the café, and the familiarity of his laughter, something fragile and tentative bloomed in your chest. Not love, not yet. But the slow, careful weaving of it — the kind that could make an arrangement like this feel less like obligation and more like possibility.

“It’s strange,” you admitted softly, almost to yourself, “how easy this feels again. Like nothing changed.”

Suguru tilted his head, his gaze warm, steady. “A lot changed. But maybe… not the important parts.”

And for the first time since your families had announced the arrangement, you didn’t feel the weight of it pressing down on you. Instead, you felt the quiet beginning of something being rebuilt — trust, friendship, and maybe, one day, love.

The café had quieted down as the sun dipped, warm amber spilling across Suguru’s face as he leaned back with his coffee. He’d let you talk and laugh, let the nostalgia of shared memories fill the space, but eventually his expression sobered into something you knew all too well: the look of a man pivoting into business.

“So,” he began, lacing his fingers together on the table, “let’s talk finances. I don’t like walking into things blind, and if we’re doing this marriage, we should at least know where we stand.”

Your heart dropped. “Finances? Right now?”

“Better sooner than later,” he replied easily. “I’ve been working with a mid-tier finance agency. Commissions are steady. Between that and some consulting, I’m pulling in about seventy-five thousand annually. Enough to cover expenses and still invest. I’ve got a decent emergency fund too — six months’ worth of living costs. You?”

You froze, your fingers tightening around your mug. “Uh… freelancing.”

He raised a brow. “Freelancing what?”

“Photography,” you blurted, voice too quick, “and, um, modeling sometimes. Y’know, when people… need it.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, clearly unconvinced but not pushing. “What’s your revenue stream look like? Monthly averages?”

You scrambled. “I mean, it really, really depends. Not consistent, but, like, enough?”

“Enough,” he echoed, his tone amused. “Do you track your expenses against your income? Like, do you have a budgeting system — 50/30/20 rule, zero-based budgeting, envelopes? Anything?”

Your palms went clammy. “I… I kinda just… keep it in my head? I mean, I know what’s going in and out, generally.”

“Generally,” he repeated, sipping his coffee, clearly biting back a laugh. “Do you have savings goals? Retirement account? High-yield savings, brokerage account?”

You wanted to throw your panini at him. “Who — who talks about retirement during coffee?”

“Someone who plans ahead,” he said smoothly. “You’re twenty-something, right? Compound interest is your friend. A Roth IRA, an index fund — hell, even a mutual fund if you want to be conservative. Do you at least have an emergency fund?”

You swallowed hard. “I… might.”

“Might?”

“It’s… small. Like, tiny. Okay, microscopic.”

He tilted his head, studying you, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous!” you insisted, voice a pitch too high. “Just — it’s weird! Money talk this early? Super weird!”

“It’s not weird,” he said gently, tone softening. “It’s smart. But…” he let his gaze linger on you, watching your fidgeting fingers, your refusal to meet his eyes. “I get it. You don’t have to give me details right now. Money is… a vulnerable thing. Especially at the beginning.”

Your chest tightened, relief and guilt clashing. “Thank you,” you muttered, fiddling with the rim of your cup.

“But,” he added, leaning forward slightly, his smirk returning, “I will ask again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but eventually. Because I’m marrying you, and I wanna know how you’re living, what keeps you afloat.”

You tried to laugh it off, though your heart pounded like a drum. “Yeah, yeah, Mr. budget spreadsheet. You’ll get your numbers someday.”

“Good,” he said simply, sitting back again. “Just know — I’m not here to judge. I just need to understand. That’s all.”

You nodded, forcing a small smile while your brain spun in frantic circles, rehearsing half-truths and scrambling for plausible numbers. Suguru wasn’t mad, wasn’t prying — yet — but his suspicion had already flickered, and you knew this conversation wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

—

You almost hit him — literally.

The moment you saw Geto stepping out into the street, coat slung over one shoulder, you pushed through the café door like a woman on fire. Your CHANEL bag thudded against your hip, your heart was a hummingbird trying to escape your ribs, and the words “I need to tell you something” looped in your mouth like a broken record. You were half-running, half-skirting around pedestrians, cheeks hot enough to toast bread, and then you nearly collided with him.

He caught you by the forearms before you could yank the whole scene into pratfall territory. His hands were steady and warm, those long fingers wrapped just under your elbows so you couldn’t wriggle free if you tried.

For a second you could only stare — at his face, the slight stubble that shadowed his jaw, the way his coat looked impossibly expensive even when bunched in the crook of his arm. He blinked, a slow, easy blink, and you could see confusion ripple through him like a small wave.

“Hey — slow down,” he said, voice amused, not worried. He wasn’t complaining. He never complained when you were frantic; he’d learned your panic looked better in motion than folded into silence. “What’s up?”

You opened your mouth, shut it, opened it again. “I—” You tried for the dramatic pause.

What came out instead was the frantic, burbling preface you’d been rehearsing for ten minutes: “I need to tell you something — no, wait — no, it’s stupid — no, it’s not—” Your breath shuddered on the last word, and behind you the faint hiss of an approaching Uber grew louder.

Geto’s smile softened; his thumb pressed a little into your wrist, steadying you. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Breathe. You’re scaring the birds. Out with it.”

You inhaled, as if that could gather courage in your lungs, and the words spilled: “I have an OnlyFans.”

There’s a thousand ways people imagine reactions to that sentence. Loud, dramatic explosions. Cold, moralizing silence. Fainting. What you’d imagined never landed squarely anywhere near what happened.

Geto’s shoulders did this tiny, almost imperceptible droop — like someone deflating a balloon very slowly. The change was so small that a stranger wouldn’t notice, but it stole the air from you all the same. For one ridiculous second you thought you’d ruined everything.

Then he huffed. Not an angry sound — more like a puff of laughter you can’t hold in. He smushed both your cheeks with exaggerated affection, his palms warm against your skin, and you squeaked at the contact, utterly unable to form a coherent protest.

“Your timing is terrible,” he said, voice a wheeze of amusement. He squinted down the street; the Uber’s headlights cut a pale path toward the curb. “Of all the moments to spring confessions, you pick ‘Geto runs to an Uber and my driver is five seconds away.’ Classic you.”

You tried to explain, words tumbling out in that breathless jumble you used whenever your brain outran your mouth. “I — no, it’s not what you think — I started it back in college as a dare, it was one thing and then it kind of stuck, it helps with—”

You stumbled, looked at your hands, and felt absurdly small.

“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you — God, I’d tell you anything.”

Geto’s expression shifted slowly, like a sky clouding over then clearing. He tugged at the ends of his coat, eyes flicking to your face, cataloguing the tiny betrayals of your confession: the flush that wouldn’t go away, the way your fingers worried at the strap of your purse, the honest, ridiculous panic in your gaze.

He was quiet for a beat or three — long enough for the Uber to pull up and the driver to call out, “Mr. Geto?”

He let out another small laugh, softer now, and squeezed your forearms once — light, reassuring. “I’m not mad,” he said, and though his words were calm, there was an amused heat at the edges. “God, you look like you expected thunderbolts and pitchforks. I’m not going to cancel a marriage over a website.”

You exhaled a sound that was probably a sob and probably a giggle. “You really mean that?” you said, voice little and ragged.

He leaned forward and smooshed your cheeks again, ridiculously domestic. “I mean that I will never be the sort of man who storms off because of… this.” He tapped your temple with a knuckle. “Timing’s terrible, yes. Content choice? Debatable. But you — are not a scandal. You’re a human being who does stuff. We’ll talk about it. Tonight. Tomorrow. On our next date. I’ll even call you while I’m in the car if you want me to.” His tone slid easily into the role of practical comforter, the one who says, “We’ll discuss later,” and you automatically trusted him.

The Uber door swung open; headlights painted your faces in harsh, car-park light. Geto shifted his grip, clasped one hand around yours in a quick, possessive squeeze that was equal parts promise and domesticity.

“Also,” he added, a half-smile coming back, “if anyone asks, I am very much still your husband. Don’t let them have any fun with the line-up. Got it?”

You nodded, tiny and grateful and stunned all at once. You waved at him on autopilot as the car idled forward, your hand fluttering because your muscles had stopped taking orders from your brain. Geto climbed in, shot you a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation, and mouthed, “Call me,” before the car merged into traffic.

You watched his silhouette pull away, felt your cheeks ache from smiling, and then, finally, you let the breath you’d been holding since the café fall out of you in a long, shuddering exhale. The city noise folded back around you — horns, distant laughter, the hum of life — and in the middle of it you felt, absurdly and wholly, at home.

𝓋𝒾. NANAMI KENTO 

It had been exactly one week since Nanami Kento, the office’s most reliable man and your most embarrassing crush, decided to move from polite nods across spreadsheets to slipping his hand into yours on the way out of the elevator.

A week of hushed lunches, stolen glances, and his uncanny ability to look like he was about to scold someone even while pouring cream into your coffee. A week of you trying not to dissolve into a puddle every time he did something as simple as brush his thumb over your knuckles.

And now here you were, on what was technically your first proper date, sitting at a quiet corner table of a café he picked precisely because the blinds were drawn and the clientele consisted mainly of retirees who could barely squint at their soup, much less gossip to HR. Nanami, ever the professional, kept his back straight and his eyes flicking to the door every few minutes, like a bodyguard expecting a hit. To anyone else, it looked like paranoia. To you, it looked like tenderness disguised as alertness — his way of protecting you both from the storm that was office rumor mills.

“You keep looking around,” you muttered, stirring your tea, eyes narrowed in faint amusement. “Do you think HR has a spy tailing us with binoculars?”

Nanami’s lips twitched. “You would be surprised how little it takes for someone in HR to draw the worst conclusions. Two people caught in the lobby together, apparently, means a conspiracy to violate workplace ethics.”

You sipped your tea slowly, trying to hide your grin. “Scandalous. Imagine the reports: Nanami Kento, known for his tragic lack of humor, exposed for kissing his coworker by the water cooler.”

His gaze softened at you, and he shook his head. “You are hardly just a coworker.”

Cue to the moment of your heart cartwheeling into your throat, as you had to look down at the sugar packet you were nervously shredding.

Nanami, oblivious to your inner collapse, leaned back in his chair. “Speaking of which, I was thinking about side hustles today. You know — second incomes, hobbies. During college, I used to bake banana bread and sell it at expos.”

You blinked. “Banana bread.”

“Yes,” he said, with the same tone one might use for taxes are due in March. “I perfected the recipe. It was moist without being dense, flavorful without excess sugar. Surprisingly lucrative, though not exactly sustainable.”

You bit back a laugh, watching him as he stirred his coffee with unnecessary precision. “You’re telling me the same Nanami Kento who terrifies interns with one glance used to… stand behind a booth and sell banana bread?”

His brow furrowed. “Everyone needs income. And banana bread is versatile.”

“Versatile, huh?” you teased, leaning forward. “Did you give free samples with cute smiles too? Because I can’t imagine you charming people into buying baked goods.”

He gave you a dry look, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him, tilting upward ever so slightly. “I managed.”

You wanted to laugh again, but his segue into side hustles made your stomach twist. Because unlike his wholesome banana bread empire, your “side hustle” involved lingerie, ring lights, and the internet’s willingness to throw large sums of money at you for doing what Nanami would probably classify as “not very sustainable either.”

“So,” he asked, tone even, “what about you? Any side hustles? Hobbies outside of work?”

Your spoon clinked too loudly against your cup. “Uh — hobbies. Yeah, freelancing. You know. Photography. Modeling. That kind of… stuff.”

Nanami raised an eyebrow, the same way he does when a junior submits a half-baked report. “Photography?”

“Mmhm,” you hummed, your voice pitched higher than normal. “Just, you know, small gigs. For… creative… outlets.”

There was a pause. The kind where you could hear the air conditioner hum. Nanami studied you like you were one of those convoluted spreadsheets he dissected in record time. His eyes narrowed, but not cruelly — more like he was making notes in his head.

“Interesting,” he said finally. “And… profitable?”

You nearly choked on your tea. “Profitable? Well, I mean — not like banana bread at expos profitable, but… enough. Definitely enough.”

He tilted his head. “Enough to cover rent? Savings? Diversify investments? Or enough for coffee money?”

You wanted to strangle the finance bro in him and kiss the man at the same time. “Why are you grilling me like a tax auditor?” you blurted.

“Because,” Nanami said dryly, “financial transparency is important in a partnership. And you seem… evasive.”

You laughed nervously, waving your hand. “I’m not evasive. I’m just… private. About, uh, the details.”

Nanami didn’t press further. He simply sighed, stirred his coffee again, and gave you a patient look. “That’s fair. Money is not an easy topic so early on. But — when you’re ready to be more specific, I’d like to hear it. Not for judgment,” he added, his voice softening in a way that made you look up despite yourself. “Just so I understand.”

And just like that, your heart pulled another somersault. Because here was Nanami, wary of HR, weary of gossip, yet steady in his quiet insistence that he wasn’t going anywhere — not even if you stumbled, not even if you weren’t ready to spill everything right away.

You poked at the shredded sugar packet, lips twitching. “Fine. But only if you make me banana bread someday.”

His eyes glinted with quiet amusement. “Deal.”

—

The night had the sort of glow that made everything feel a little more unreal than it should’ve been. You and Nanami had left the café arm in arm, both of you a shade too tipsy for anyone to trust with responsible decisions, and somehow ended up sprawled in the grass of a small city park.

It wasn’t the quiet kind of park — it pulsed faintly with the hum of traffic, the laughter of strangers walking past the gate, and the orange wash of streetlamps breaking through tree branches. But right here, lying flat against the cool lawn with Nanami beside you, the rest of the city blurred into background noise.

The two of you had been talking nonsense for a while — complaints about coworkers, your shared annoyance at the price of decent coffee, him teasing you about your dramatic storytelling — until, almost without realizing it, you slipped into honesty. The kind that hangs heavy in the air and doesn’t quite fit the playful tone of a tipsy evening.

“So, that’s how I make money on the side,” you admitted, staring at the starless sky, voice small but steady. “Not exactly the most… respectable way, I guess. But it pays better than doing nothing.”

There was a pause, and then the faint shift of movement. Nanami slowly propped himself up on one arm, his shadow blotting out the nearest streetlight as he looked down at you. His expression wasn’t sharp, not the stern one you saw in office meetings, but thoughtful.

“You do realize this is in violation of HR rules,” he said finally, his voice calm and low.

You snorted softly. “Yeah, I already know that.”

“And you realize if word gets out, it could cost you your job.”

Your laugh was short, a little bitter around the edges. “I already know that too.”

The silence stretched between you, and for a second you braced yourself for disappointment, for the inevitable lecture about professionalism and consequences. But instead, Nanami just exhaled slowly, shoulders loosening as he studied you.

“I’m not angry,” he murmured.

That caught you off guard. You turned your head to meet his gaze, searching for the hidden reprimand. “You’re… not?”

Nanami shook his head. “People have to work in this economy. The company barely pays enough for rent, let alone stability. Most of us are overworked and underpaid. I can’t fault you for doing what you must.”

The weight of his words pressed into you differently than the grass beneath your back. There was no judgment in his voice, only recognition, maybe even solidarity. Nanami knew more than most what it meant to live in a system that wrung people dry and handed them scraps in return.

His eyes softened just slightly, catching the glow of the city lights. “Though,” he added, a ghost of humor tugging at his mouth, “I would appreciate it if next time you considered earning your side money by helping me bake banana bread instead.”

The absurdity of it cracked the tension. You let out a shriek of laughter, the kind that startled a couple walking by the park fence, and rolled over to throw yourself against him.

“Banana bread?” you giggled, half-tackling him in the grass. “You can’t be serious.”

Nanami grunted as you knocked him onto his back, but his arm instinctively looped around you, steady even in the mess of your laughter. “I’m always serious,” he said, dry as ever, though the faintest chuckle escaped him.

Pressed against him, cheek to his shoulder, you could still hear the hum of traffic, the distant clatter of the city. But wrapped in his words, in the quiet acceptance of your messy reality, it felt almost like safety. Like for once, there was no need to defend yourself. Not here, not with him.

The night was imperfect — the grass damp, the air thick, the city lights too bright — but it was yours, and he didn’t mind. And that made it perfect enough.

𝓋𝒾𝒾. RYOMEN SUKUNA 

Sparking the conversation of having an OnlyFans with Sukuna wasn’t really sparking anything at all — you never even lit the match.

He did.

It came at you sideways, the kind of ambush that made your stomach drop, the words slipping from his mouth in that deceptively calm tone of his.

“Your heart rate spikes every evening at the same time without fail. And your door is always shut under the excuse of… what was it? Studying.”

You nearly choked on your own breath, because the way he said studying dripped with disdain, like he’d already filed the word away as an outright lie. You scrambled for composure, clutching your pen as if it might anchor you, forcing a laugh that came out too high, too quick.

“Yeah, well, I mean — studying’s stressful. Maybe I just get too into it, you know? I… I was actually watching a trailer earlier, so maybe that’s what you noticed. Or I was gaming. Yeah, game trailers. Anime. There’s a lot of reasons for, uh… giddiness.”

He tilted his head, those sharp eyes narrowing like blades being honed. His voice dipped lower, modulated with something that made the hair on your neck rise. “No game excites you so consistently. Nor does any anime trailer make you… flustered. Not in that rhythm. Not with that heat.”

Your skin prickled as you gripped the edge of your desk, body turning half-away from him as though an extra inch of distance might dull the weight of his presence. Your mouth kept moving, desperate to fill the silence with anything other than the truth.

“You’re overanalyzing. You always do that,” you said too fast, trying to match his steady tone with a casualness that rang false even in your own ears. “Maybe i just… get distracted easily, okay? Maybe I like closing my door, maybe I like — privacy. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Sukuna stepped closer, and your pulse jumped again, traitorous in its betrayal. His lips pulled back, not quite a smile, not quite a snarl — something between amusement and frustration.

“Privacy, you say,” he murmured, voice sharp enough to slice through your flimsy excuses. “You hide behind it, but you are not hiding well. Your body betrays you. Your voice wavers, your gaze shifts, your hands fidget.” His eyes flicked down briefly to your knuckles whitening against the desk. “You avoid me instead of answering. Why?”

You laughed again, a nervous sound that cracked halfway through. “I’m not avoiding you. You’re just… intense. It’s weird being interrogated over — over nothing.”

“Nothing,” he repeated, the word curling with disbelief. His tone sharpened, like a frustrated hound scenting prey it couldn’t quite see. “Do you think me a fool? You shut yourself away, you emerge flushed, unsettled, and you cannot even meet my eyes. I know you are concealing something.”

You swallowed hard, your throat tight, eyes darting everywhere but his face. The wall, the corner of your laptop screen, the pen rolling off your notebook. Anywhere. “I’m not hiding anything,” you insisted weakly, the denial sounding thinner each time.

Sukuna’s exhale was slow, deliberate, like he was weighing patience against irritation. “You are lying,” he said simply, as if stating the weather, and the certainty in his voice made your stomach twist.

You flailed with words, babbling, trying to smother his precision with noise. “I’m not lying, I was literally just — like I said, watching something. Maybe I’m a little jumpy, but that’s normal, right? People get excited about things. Maybe I’m reading something funny, or — or chatting with someone, or—”

“Rambling.” he cut you off, the single word slicing through everything you’d piled up. His eyes pinned you in place, cold and sharp but glinting with a predator’s curiosity. “You are cornered and you ramble.”

You stiffened, breath caught in your chest, fingers wringing themselves in your lap. The embarrassment burned hotter than the fear, because the way he saw through you felt like being stripped bare, your flimsy lies crumbling under the weight of his analysis.

And he didn’t even need you to say it. He knew. Or at least, he knew enough.

“So,” he said finally, straightening, his tone still steady but carrying that edge of exasperation, “What is it you are so desperate to shield from me? What truth makes your body sing and your tongue stumble?”

You pressed your lips together, avoiding his gaze, praying for an escape hatch to open up under your chair. Anything but this. Anything but him peeling the secret out of you with nothing but his voice, his eyes, and the suffocating weight of knowing you were caught.

He slumps like someone deflating a cushion — slow, ridiculous, the way a mountain might sigh if it realised it’d been asked to care about tiny, modern problems. For a beat the world narrows to the space between you: his shoulders dropping, his jaw unclenching as if he’s trying to put a thought back together that’s just fallen apart. You can see the calculation beginning; his face, usually an unreadable mask, rearranges into something oddly vulnerable and furious at once.

“I do not… understand these boundaries,” he says finally, voice low and brittle. His fingers drum once on the table, then stop, mid-gesture, the tiny motion betraying the storm under his skin. “I will not tolerate lies. Secrets are teeth that bite the hand. If you wish to hide, then I will hide. We will be even.”

And then the word slips out of your mouth — small, terrible, definitive. 

“OnlyFans.”

He freezes as if you’ve thrown a stone through a window. For a second he looks at you like you’ve spoken in a foreign ritual tongue. His brow knots, as the tiny scowl that forms is half confusion, half something older, like someone remembering a memory misplaced across centuries. The yapper inside him — that millennia-old, possessive neuron that snaps at anything unfamiliar — twitches awake.

“What is this… OnlyFans?” he asks, and you realise you have to be the translator of your own life. You sit him down because explaining it properly now feels like diffusing a small bomb: subscription site, paywall, creators making content, control over who sees what, you set boundaries, you block abusers, you moderate messages, you schedule shoots, you manage taxes. You talk about consensual exchange and the blunt, boring logistics of invoices and savings.

He absorbs your words like a man tasting a strange fruit for the first time — cautious, then suspicious. His face bobs through stages: bewilderment, disbelief, a rising flare of protective anger. Words tumble out of him, not directed at you but at the thing itself, a long, clumsy rant that feels like it’s trying to stitch together ancient fury and contemporary outrage.

“So women put themselves on display,” he says, voice taut, “And strangers pay? They trade coin for sight?” His hands curl into fists on the table.

“This… commerce of lust. It is a market. Women’s bodies become product. Men trade their hunger like merchants. Do you not see how it resembles the old streets — the markets where a body’s worth was haggled?”

You open your mouth to explain agency, to say that this is your choice, that you set the rules, that the power also lives in your hands when you call the shots — but his words come faster, a tide you can’t quite interrupt.

“In my time,” he says, voice thick with a scholar’s disdain, “women were given positions where their worth was defined by others: concubines arranged behind screens, dancers in courts performing for nobles, offerings at temples that were not offerings of piety but of possession. The form changes, the architecture changes, but the scaffold remains: men’s desire constructs value, and then claims it as moral high ground.”

He draws parallels with a patient’s precision, fingers sketching invisible diagrams in the air. “We idolised and we traded. We praised beauty and then sold it as spectacle. I have watched empires rise on trade routes and men’s appetites. I thought those patterns dead. Yet here you are, and the same machinery hums — commerce, appetite, power.”

His nostrils flare as his eyes narrow into slits of wounded pride and fierce, protective rage, neither of which fit neatly into the modern lexicon. “You must have been forced,” he snaps suddenly, not at you but at the concept. “Or betrayed into it. Who convinced you? Who took advantage?”

You blink, baffled, because here is the crux of the collision: his reading of everything is as victimhood first, agency second. His brain cannot immediately hold the paradox of a woman choosing an option he recognises only as coercion.

You try again, carefully: you chose, you set boundaries, you blocked abusive accounts, you negotiate pricing, you keep your private life private, you do it because you needed autonomy, because it paid for medicine and rice and rent and didn’t ask for permission from awkward relatives. You tell him about the late-night shoots that are mostly light tests and coffee, the spreadsheets, the legal forms, the moments you flinch and then decide to continue anyway. You speak of confidence — the strange glow that came when you stopped averting your eyes.

But Sukuna’s anger swells into a monologue, not cruel but incandescently righteous. He rails against the institution itself: capitalism making loneliness into commerce, lust industrialised into subscription tiers, the way desire gets monetised into an endless mill that feeds off insecurity. He likens it to a scam, to a capitalist engine that profits off both women’s need and men’s entitlement. His hands move like a conductor’s — precise, theatrical — as he dismantles the idea piece by piece with historical analogies and moral certainty.

“They package loneliness and sell it in portions,” he says, voice rising. “They give you approval for a price and then call it empowerment. They make autonomy sound like consumption. It is commodified validation.”

You’re halfway between wanting to shout and wanting to laugh at the ferocity of his old-soul critique. Part of you appreciates the heat of his defense — the fact that his first reaction is not to shame you (at least not bluntly) but to obliterate whatever structure allowed such a site to exist. Another part of you is furious: furious that he assumes your hands are not on the wheel.

He looks at you then, and the fire moderates into something rawer. His jaw tightens; there’s a softening in the eyes — not understanding yet, but willingness to process. “I am angry you did not tell me,” he admits, each word heavy. “Not because of the act, but because of secrecy. You could have told me. We promised no secrets.”

There’s a ridiculous, intimate moment where he leans forward and, with all the solemnity of a man performing an ancient rite, asks: “Do you enjoy it? Or do you endure it?”

You blink, because the question hurts in a place you didn’t know was tender. You try to answer — yes and no, sometimes both — and he listens, but not like someone digesting nuance. He listens like someone cataloguing evidence for his moral argument.

By the time you finish, Sukuna has mapped a dozen analogies in his head: marketplaces, temple offerings, courtly trades, ancient patronage systems. His face is a landscape of fury, affection, betrayal and protectiveness.

Finally, after a long breath that seems to pull something ancient into the present, he says, slower now, “If this is your choice, then explain it to me plainly. Do not let me be the last to know.”

His voice has dropped from indictment to request — clumsy, imperfect, and startlingly human. You feel your panic ebb just a little, because he has opened a crack: not full acceptance, not even comprehension, but the willingness to be told the truth.

You are left both exasperated and oddly relieved; he has not converted, he has not capitulated. He has, however, promised to hold the space to understand, in his own jagged way. You bite the inside of your cheek, preparing to walk him through the ordinary, bureaucratic, boring parts of your life that somehow carry so much shame in other people’s mouths.

And while he mutters about the corruption of modern love and the resilience of old patterns, you realise this will not be a quick fix. Sukuna will learn, if he chooses to, by listening and stumbling and re-forging his ancient certainties. For now he paces between outrage and tender protectiveness, his long shadow falling over your confession like an ancient thing trying — beautifully, horribly — to adapt to the now.

𝓋𝒾𝒾𝒾. TOJI FUSHIGURO

“What’s the weirdest way you’ve seen someone earn money?”

He didn’t even look up from Paladins. His thumbs kept dancing across the controller like it was a ritual. He gave you that dead, flat stare of his — the one that makes you feel like a question is more irritation than curiosity.

“I’m a literal assassin,” he said without sarcasm, like it was the most obvious answer. “Things don’t get weirder than that.”

You laughed, because of course he’d say that. Toji’s life reads like a series of what-are-you-even-doing chapters. You two orbit each other in that comfortable grey area — stolen mornings, nights that end on the couch with his shoulder under your head, fights that dissipate faster than smoke. Everything romantic without the label; everything messy and easy where labels would make it complicated.

But lately the ease has been tight at the edges. The way his jaw clenches on calls to the hospital. The extra shift he takes and then hides the paycheck in a drawer. The silence when you mention groceries or a dentist appointment like it’s a word that might explode between you. So you tried to keep it light, tried to bait him into admitting the obvious with a ridiculous question about incomes.

He paused the game finally, let the menu linger on screen. The pause felt like someone holding their breath too long. He rubbed the back of his neck — the habitual gesture he does when something important lurks behind a simple sentence. “I’m fine,” he said, and you heard the way the words stuck to each other.

You watched him, the man who once threw himself between you and a stranger for no reason now looked small in the glow of your living room. Pride is a heavy muscle on him; it flexes at the dumbest moments. Asking for help would be an admission of weakness, and Toji’s definition of weakness has always been tangled with wanting to protect you. He’d rather bend himself into something broke and noble than hand over a problem for you to fix.

“You don’t have to be,” you said, softer. “You don’t have to pretend. We cover each other.”

He shrugged like it was easy, but his eyes betrayed him. “I’m not asking you for—” he cut himself off, voice roughening. “I don’t wanna be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden,” you said. “You ever think I cover stuff because I like power trips?” you teased, trying to push light back into the room. “I’m not your mom, idiot. I just — I like doing it.”

He let out a humorless snort. “You always come through.” The accusation sat there, not loud but full of everything: pride, gratitude, a confusing kind of jealousy. “How do you always come through?”

That was the question you’d been avoiding. How do you explain the steady bank transfers, the nights you hand over cash without flinching, the way you pull notes from your wallet like they sprout there? How do you explain the thin, secret architecture of your life that keeps his world from caving in without telling him the whole, messy truth?

You measured your words. The moment felt private, dangerous in that tender way things always feel between you two. Toji’s masculinity wasn’t fragile exactly — he was blunt, unfiltered, wired with a kind of survivalist pride — but it kept him from admitting he needed you. And because he valued you, because he loved you in that battered, back-alley way, asking for help felt like offering you the chance to carry him. That made him flinch.

“I’ve been picking up extra shifts,” you lied smoothly, because sometimes the truth is too sharp to hand over like a knife. “Freelance, odd jobs. You know, things. And some savings.” Your fingers toyed with the hem of your shirt, because there are small tells you’ve learned to employ when you fear you’ll be easy to read.

Toji watched you with a slow, suspicious gaze. The suspicion wasn’t mean — more like a radar trying to triangulate a pattern. He knows you. Knows your habits, the way you fuss with old t-shirts, how you hide receipts in books. He noticed the way your eyes flicked to the bank app sometimes, the way you closed tabs when he walked into the room. Not enough to be accusatory, but enough to make him wonder.

“You always say that,” he muttered. “You always have the money when I’ve got nothing.” His voice held a cracked edge, like something was fraying inside him. “You’d cover for me if I asked.”

“I would,” you said, truthfully. “But it’s not always about me wanting to help. You don’t have to be proud when it costs you.” You reached out and nudged his knee with your foot, a small, domestic touch. It was the kind of contact that usually melted him. Tonight it made him look away.

“I hate being the one who has nothing to offer,” he admitted in a sound that could’ve been a confession in quieter times. “I hate that you pull everything together like it’s nothing.”

You watched the shame work across his features — reddening the throat, the quick avoidance of your eyes. Masculinity had a way of bundling itself into unexpected knots. Him not asking wasn’t strength so much as stubbornness and pride and the need to be whole alone.

“You don’t have to offer a thing,” you said, softer. “You offer me midnight coffee, and you offer me your stupid car, and you offer me that ridiculous insistence on carrying heavy things. that’s enough.”

His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “I’m not your car,” he grumbled, but the heat left his shoulders. Vulnerability is a rare currency with Toji. When he spends it, it matters.

There was a beat where the two of you sat like that: small domesticity braced against something raw. The city hummed outside, indifferent. Your silence finally broke because of the way his jaw tightened, like he was bracing for a truth he hated even imagining.

“You always come through,” he repeated, but this time with less suspicion and more wonder. “I just… i wanna know you don’t drown.”

You wanted to tell him, to let him see the ledger behind your smile — the awkward late-night shoots, the polite but predatory messages you blocked, the spreadsheets you kept so you wouldn’t panic when a bill arrived. You wanted to tell him how the work made you feel complicated: powerful sometimes, ashamed other times, whole in ways nobody else understood.

You wanted him to know that the reason you could keep him afloat was because you’d fought to keep yourself afloat first.

But the grey area between you made it complicated.

Opening that door would change the gravitational pull of both your lives. Labels would feel like a hand pressing a name onto something that had learned to move without them.

And he — he might not be ready to hold the version of you that earns in ways he’d never imagine.

So you stayed small for now, nudging his knee, letting the lie weave around the truth with all the tenderness you could muster. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready to hear it,” you said, and it was equal parts promise and threat. Not a threat to leave, but the kind that meant something would shift when revealed.

Toji’s eyes met yours then, honest and messy, and he let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Don’t make it dramatic,” he said, though his voice softened. “I’ll help if you want. If you need it.”

And you believed him, because of the way he said it — clumsy, hurt, proud — and because love in your grey area looked a lot like sharing burdens without naming the ledger. For tonight, that was enough. Tomorrow maybe you’d be braver. Or maybe you’d keep doing what you do: holding his silence with your secret, keeping the bridges standing until he could cross them himself.

The doorbell rang, the smell of melted cheese already ghosting through the narrow crack as Toji swung the door open with that easy swagger he wore for strangers. The delivery guy stood there, extra large pizza box balanced on his forearm, receipt folded neatly against the lid.

Toji dug into his wallet, pulling out notes with the casualness of someone who thought they had enough. But then came the pause, the subtle falter in his brow as he flipped through the bills once, twice, the edges growing damper against his fingertips. His shoulders stiffened.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, low enough that only you, lingering a step behind, caught it.

The delivery boy shifted on his feet, already weary from too many doorsteps and hungry faces. “It’s thirty-two seventy-five,” he recited flatly, not rude, but the kind of tone that comes from repetition.

Toji glanced down at the limp notes in his hand — twenty-eight dollars, maybe twenty-nine if he counted the coin pressed into the leather crease of his wallet. The corner of his mouth twitched, his jaw working. You saw the moment shame cracked through his calm, and before you could say a word, he growled something about “hold on” and stalked back inside.

His footsteps were heavy, almost petulant, thudding across the hardwood. Drawers rattled, closet doors creaked, the muffled sound of a box scraping against the floor. He was searching — hunting, really — for whatever scraps of cash he might’ve shoved into corners weeks ago.

You stood frozen for a beat, the delivery boy now looking directly at you, brow cocked, pizza steam seeping out from the cardboard. His patience was thinning.

“We take online too,” he offered, voice dry.

The words hit you like a sting. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, but they made something in your chest collapse anyway. You fumbled for your phone, your fingers moving too fast against the screen, desperate to end this scene before it carved itself too deep. You pulled up the payment app, scanning the code, punching in numbers until the confirmation dinged.

“Paid,” you said quickly, holding the phone up like proof, like a shield. He nodded, handed over the pizza box, and muttered a thanks before disappearing down the hallway.

The silence afterward rang louder than the doorbell had.

You turned, extra large pizza heavy in your arms, just in time to see Toji coming back down the hall, one fist clutching a few crumpled bills, the other holding a handful of coins that clinked with every step. His chest rose and fell a little too hard for something as small as this, and when his eyes landed on the empty doorway, on the pizza already in your hands, his whole body stopped.

He looked at you. At the phone still glowing faintly in your grip. At the pizza box. At the money in his hand that suddenly meant nothing.

For a long second, neither of you spoke. You almost wished he’d drop the money on the table, make some joke, brush it off. But Toji’s pride doesn’t dissolve like that — it implodes.

“Why the fuck do you always do this?” he snapped, voice rough, jagged, too loud for the small space of your living room. The coins slipped between his fingers, pinging against the floor as if to punctuate the anger. “Huh? Why do you always manage to cover for me, like you’re fucking invincible?”

You blinked, mouth opening, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“Can’t even pay for a goddamn pizza anymore,” he spat, pacing two steps and dragging a hand down his face like it might ground him.

“Every time — every fucking time — you’re just there, pulling out money like it’s nothing. Like you’re covering my ass is normal.” His voice cracked halfway through, bitterness bleeding into something more raw, more jagged.

You set the pizza down on the table, your arms aching, your stomach sinking as you watched him. His chest heaved, his eyes glossy with frustration he refused to name, and when he finally sank down onto the couch, it wasn’t graceful. It was a collapse.

Toji leaned forward, elbows on his knees, both hands dragging through his hair. His shoulders hunched, his head bowed, like the weight of being unable to provide had snapped something invisible inside him.

“I hate it,” he said finally, voice hoarse, quieter but cutting deeper for it. “I hate that you always push through and I’m left standing there with nothing. Like I’m fucking useless.”

Toji was still slumped on the couch, head in his hands, but then his jaw set tight and he straightened up like a man who’d finally had enough of choking down his own shame. His voice came out low, sharp, heavy with something ugly.

“How the fuck do you do it, huh? Don’t give me that freelancing bullshit — you think I’m stupid?” his lip curled, and for once his eyes didn’t soften when they found you. “What is it? You got some sugar daddy out there? Some old bastard paying your bills while I’m here scraping for change?”

The word hit like a slap — sugar daddy, spit out with so much spite it felt less like a question and more like an accusation. Your chest burned, your grip on the pizza box tightening until the cardboard bent inwards.

“You don’t get to say that,” you snapped, louder than you meant to, because it wasn’t fair. The two of you weren’t official — no promises, no labels — yet somehow he’d drawn blood anyway, and it stung in all the wrong ways.

“Don’t give me that shit,” he cut in, pacing, one hand dragging down his face. “It adds up, you know? You always saving me when I’m short, always breezing through like it doesn’t hurt. What the fuck else am I supposed to think?”

“I have an OnlyFans.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

His face — fuck, his face. The disbelief cut sharper than anger, his brows drawing together like he didn’t even understand the language you just spoke. Then it hit him, and the look shifted, twisted.

“You — you’re serious?” his voice cracked, a half-scoff as he pushed himself up off the couch. “You mean to tell me… I’m so fucking useless, so broke, you had to — what? Sell yourself online just to keep shit afloat?”

“No, Toji—” you tried, but he wasn’t hearing you.

He dragged a hand down his face, pacing across the room, his steps erratic, like he wanted to punch a wall but couldn’t decide which one. his laugh was short, humorless. “Jesus Christ. I knew I was shit with money, but this? You really… you really had to stoop this low? For me?”

You slammed the pizza down on the table, voice cracking under the weight of everything. “I started this long before I met you! It’s not about you — it was never about you!” your hands flew up, desperate. “You’re great at what you do Toji, but you’re careless with the money. We can figure that out. This isn’t some pity project, this is my choice. I was doing it already.”

He stopped pacing, his body frozen like the words pinned him there. But his fists were clenched tight, knuckles white, and when he looked at you again, it was like he was seeing something he couldn’t swallow down.

“Choice?” his voice rasped. “You call that a choice? A site built on men jerking off to women for pocket change? You — you call that financial independence?” He dragged in a sharp breath, the muscles in his jaw twitching, his chest rising too fast.

You opened your mouth, but he cut you off, voice louder, angrier, but with that wobble of desperation beneath. “No. No, fuck that. You don’t get it — you can’t keep doing this, not while I’m around. I don’t care if we’re not official, I don’t care what the fuck this is between us—” he gestured harshly between the two of you, hand trembling, “—the day I land my next big job, my next kill, you’re done with that shit. You hear me? Done. I can’t watch you do this and pretend it’s for yourself when i know it’s because I’m a fucking deadbeat.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and suddenly the anger collapsed into something heavier — shame, self-loathing, frustration that shook through his body. He turned away, shoulders heaving, one hand pressed against the wall like he needed it to stay upright.

You stood there, chest tight, throat raw, watching a man who could carve through bodies in an alley but couldn’t stomach the thought of you carrying him, of you choosing something he saw as beneath you.

And you realized — he wasn’t just angry at you. He was angry at himself, furious that his own failures had convinced him you’d only ever do this because of him.

Now, with his hood pulled so low it practically sheltered him from divine judgment, he looked like any other hungover college student trying not to spontaneously combust in the sunlight. His throat tasted like regret. His brain felt like someone had conducted a drumline rehearsal in it. And the worst part? Every second person he passed carried a coffee cup, which felt like a personal attack. Survival wasn’t a want anymore; it was an urgent necessity, a mission.

And if anyone asked him to run drills today, he would simply perish on the spot.

At first, everything was going according to your very normal, very chaotic morning routine: spot your friend Haru, stride over with the confidence of someone who believes in physical comedy as a love language, and greet him with a well-aimed smack to the ass.

Nothing unusual. Just collegiate affection at its finest. Your hand even tingled in anticipation, already picturing the way Haru would yelp like a distressed puppy and spin around to call you a menace.

Except fate, destiny, and poor spatial awareness had other plans for you, because the person walking ahead of you — hood up, shoulders hunched, aura radiating hangover misery — was not Haru. But you didn’t know that. Not until your hand connected with a strangely firm, sculpted, downright Olympian ass.

And not just any Olympian ass. No, of course not. It had to be Gojo Satoru’s.

The smack! echoed enough for a couple of pigeons to reconsider their life choices. Your palm met muscle that basketball players would write poetry about. And instead of Haru’s offended squawk, there was the kind of stillness that could make gods nervous. A silence so grave your soul performed a perfect front-flip out of your body and onto the pavement.

Slowly, painfully, as though every molecule in the universe had turned to molasses, you lifted your gaze. And there he was.

Gojo Satoru. Star player. Campus legend. Living hangover.

Hoodie criminal.

Staring at you with wide, groggy, ice-blue eyes that were really trying to process what the hell had just happened.

He blinked. You gulped. The quad kept moving like none of this was happening. You tried to speak, but your tongue had turned into a dead USB cable.

“I — I thought— that was Haru — I swear I don’t usually— I mean I don’t— that wasn’t— that was— oh god.”

He just kept staring. Not angry. Not offended. Mostly just… buffering. Like the hangover had delayed his ability to respond to assaults on his rear.

Finally, in a voice so raspy it sounded illegal, he muttered, “That… was you?”

You nodded so fast your neck nearly snapped.

He scrunched his nose, trying to wake up. “And you just… went for it? At eight in the morning?”

You wanted the earth to swallow you whole. “I thought you were my friend!”

Gojo blinked again, slower this time, like your words were sinking through layers of headache. Then — and this was somehow worse — his mouth curled into the faintest, sleepiest, most dangerously amused smirk.

“Damn,” he mumbled, half a compliment, half a dazed observation, “You’ve got a killer grip.”

Your soul left for the afterlife. Your knees nearly followed. And Gojo, still hungover, still in that stupid hoodie, shrugged like someone who had accepted all forms of chaos as part of his morning.

“Next time,” he added, rubbing his lower back with a grimace, “Give me a warning. Or a coffee first.”

You made a noise that wasn’t even human. He raised an eyebrow. “Unless you just… go around slapping asses before breakfast?”

“No!” you squeaked, horrified, “I — it was— you weren’t— Haru—”

“Hey,” he murmured, tugging the hood lower as if shielding his headache from your panic, “Relax. I’m too hungover to be mad. Also too hungover to understand what’s happening.”

You covered your face with both hands, wishing for immediate reincarnation.

Gojo didn’t even look fully conscious. He stood there blinking at you like someone had unplugged him mid-sentence, blue eyes squinting as if you were a particularly difficult math problem. Then his head tilted, the gears in his hungover brain grinding painfully into motion, and he leaned in just a little, studying your face with this unfocused curiosity that almost made you feel bad for him. Almost.

“Wait… have we met before?” he murmured, voice low and gravelly, like he’d been chewing sandpaper.

Your panic flared again because of course he didn’t remember you — not that there was anything to remember. You weren’t the girl who danced on tables at his parties. You weren’t the girl who got front-row seats to his games. You were simply the girl who had just slapped his ass with enough enthusiasm to leave a lasting impression on the school timeline. So you cleared your throat, fighting the urge to evaporate.

“Uh, no,” you said quickly, “I mean— not really. But you might know my sister? Aisha?”

It was like you’d uttered a forbidden incantation. Gojo went visibly still, processing the name, and then a flicker of recognition drifted across his features — the kind that said oh no, that one. Aisha, captain of the cheerleading squad. Aisha, campus sweetheart with claws. Aisha, who had made it her life’s ambition to hop on Gojo Satoru’s… yeah. You cut the thought off before your brain screamed loud enough for him to hear it.

“Aisha,” he repeated slowly. “Cheer captain Aisha?”

You nodded, grimacing. “Yep. That one.”

He let out a soft, tortured groan — the kind of sound only someone being aggressively chased by your sister for two semesters straight would make. “Oh god,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead, “Does she know you’re out here assaulting people?”

Your soul tried to flee your body again. “I wasn’t— it wasn’t— I swear I wasn’t assaulting anyone!”

He smirked. “My ass says otherwise.”

You wanted death by lightning immediately.

Trying to regain an ounce of dignity, you exhaled and muttered under your breath, “You look like shit, by the way.”

There were many possible outcomes. He could’ve rolled his eyes. He could’ve snapped. He could’ve sent you straight into social exile.

Instead, Gojo Satoru — hungover, hoodie-clad, campus icon — threw his head back and laughed. Loud, bright, uncomplicated, and so sudden people walking past turned to look.

“Okay,” he said between laughs, “you’re honest. I needed that.”

Your brain short-circuited. You made the campus star laugh. The one who once told a reporter he didn’t even laugh at brain-rot because he was “built different.” This was not reality. Reality had left the building ten minutes ago.

As he stepped back, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket, he gave you a once-over that wasn’t flirty so much as intrigued — the way someone looks at a puzzle piece that definitely belongs somewhere but not where they expected.

“Alright,” he said casually, turning to leave, “here’s the deal.”

Your heart stopped. Deals were rarely good.

He glanced over his shoulder at you, a lazy grin pulling at his lips. “Next time you wanna smack my ass? You buy me dinner first.”

You blinked. “What—”

“Tonight,” he added, walking backwards with that same unfair smirk, “Seven. I’ll send you the place.”

Your soul screamed.

“It’s a date, then?”

You opened your mouth. Nothing came out. He winked — actual wink, as if he hadn’t been a walking corpse five minutes ago — and then turned around, strolling off like you hadn’t just accidentally secured a date with the most sought-after man on campus.

Haru jogged up behind you with all the subtlety of a golden retriever on sugar, completely oblivious to the emotional earthquake you were still recovering from. You were frozen in place, staring into the void, replaying the last five minutes like your brain was stuck on a cursed highlight reel. Your heart was in your throat, your dignity was in the gutter, and your soul was still packing its bags, preparing to relocate permanently.

Haru skidded to a stop beside you. “Yo! Why’re you standing like you just saw the ghost of midterms past? Also—” he turned around dramatically, hands on his hips, “no ass smack today? You good? My butt is right here. Available. Un-slapped. This is discrimination.”

You blinked at him, mouth opening, closing, opening again like a fish trying to explain taxes. “No. Absolutely not. The quota is done,” you mumbled, rubbing your forehead like you had seen horrors.

Haru squinted. “Quota? What quota? Since when do you have a limit on violence?”

“Since today,” you said quickly, maybe too quickly, definitely too traumatically. “It’s… a new policy.”

“Huh. Weird,” he shrugged, then leaned in suspiciously. “Wait, did you slap the wrong ass again? Is that what this is? Who’d you hit? Was it that one guy from the robotics club? The one built like a toothpick? Please tell me—”

“Nope!” you cut him off so fast he physically jumped. “No questions. No answers. No discussion.”

Haru stared at you, baffled. “You’re acting shady as hell.”

You nodded solemnly. “I am shady as hell.”

Because there was no universe — none — where you were going to admit that you had slapped Gojo Satoru’s absurdly sculpted ass, survived it, got complimented for your grip strength, roasted him to his face, made him laugh, and accidentally landed a date with him at seven tonight. You were taking that to the grave until further notice. Let the world wonder. Let the timeline remain untainted. Let your pride stay intact for at least one more hour.

Haru opened his mouth again. “So really… no ass smack?”

You refused to answer — because between Gojo’s stupid hoodie, his stupid wink, and the stupid date looming over your head like a falling piano, you needed at least one secret to yourself before your entire life collapsed into rom-com chaos.

𝒾𝒾. CHOSO KAMO

It starts, as all good things do, with a studious friend like Utahime — the kind of girl who color-codes her notes, highlights her highlights, and somehow hears academic gossip before the professors themselves do.

In some manner, in God’s holy land, she has learned that Modern Day Japanese History 101, her pride, her passion, her personal battleground, is getting an assistant lecturer. And, naturally, as the modern saying goes: can’t get into the lecturer’s good books? Try the assistant instead. Utahime had said it with a straight face, too — as if networking her way into intellectual heaven was simply part of her daily schedule.

Punctual as ever, she announced she would meet him at 2 p.m., win him over with her wit and enthusiasm by 2:20, and then swing by to submit her thesis and meet you at 2:30 like the academic machine she claims to be.

You didn’t question it; this is the same girl who once finished a three-day assignment in five hours because “the stars were aligned.”

But now it’s 2:35. The sun has shifted. The hallway is quiet.

And there is no Utahime in sight.

You check your phone, refresh your messages, even glance around for the faint scent of lavender spray she bathes in during exam season. Nothing. Not a shadow, not a whine, not even her signature irritated huff carried through the air.

That’s when your stomach drops with the kind of anxious thud reserved for forgotten deadlines and suspiciously long silences from friends known for punctuality.

So what do you do? Obviously, you sprint — or something between a sprint and the chaotic half-run of someone pretending they’re not panicking — straight to the aforementioned classroom. You don’t even knock; you slide through the doorframe like a rodent on a mission, breath uneven, heart pounding, mind already conjuring images of Utahime debating a man twice her age about the socio-political structure of post-Edo Japan.

Instead, you find someone leaning casually against the desk. Back facing you. Posture relaxed. Completely absorbed in whatever they’re reading. The soft rustle of paper fills the room, and the afternoon light cuts a halo around their silhouette. You freeze in the doorway for barely half a second — because that’s honestly all the time it takes for your brain to make a very confident, very stupid assumption.

Your first instinct?

Smack their ass.

Perhaps it’s the stress. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline. Perhaps it’s the fact that you and Utahime communicate through physical violence more often than through words. But whatever the reason, your hand is already in motion before your rational mind can scream at you to stop.

The contact is loud. Sharper than intended. Echoing off the classroom walls with the sort of crisp finality that splits your soul into fragments.

And your last sight before your spirit attempts to leave your body entirely? The person turning around — slowly, deliberately — and absolutely, one-hundred-percent NOT being Utahime.

Your breath stutters. Your hands go clammy. Every ancestor you’ve ever had collectively groans. Because the man facing you now is not only unfamiliar, but stupidly, devastatingly handsome in that “should not be allowed near undergrads” kind of way. His expression shifts from confusion to mild offense to something dangerously close to amusement, like he’s debating whether to scold you or laugh.

And in that suspended, horrifying, eternal moment, you experience true enlightenment — the realization that Utahime’s absence was not the problem. Your actions were.

And now you must face the consequences.

Before you can even beat the man in front of you to an explanation — because yes, he is devastatingly handsome up close, with chocolate-brown eyes and hair just long enough to violate every written and unwritten men’s hairstyle code — he beats you to speaking. He looks at you not with anger, but with the calm certainty of a man who has already accepted that life is absurd.

“You,” he says, tone flat and factual, “are not Miss Iori.”

You blink. “And YOU are not Utahime!”

He pauses, squints at you just slightly, like he’s examining a peculiar species of bird that’s flown indoors. “Pray tell,” he asks dryly, “in what world do you confuse me with an undergraduate female student?”

You can feel tears threatening — not of sadness, but of pure humiliation. “What did you do to her?” you demand, voice cracking like you’re in a badly acted crime drama. “Where is Utahime? She was supposed to meet the assistant lecturer!”

The man straightens, sets his papers down with a quiet, horrifically professional tap, and then clears his throat like he’s about to begin a speech — an actual speech. And then he does.

“Choso Kamo,” he says. “PhD. Assistant Lecturer for Modern Day Japanese History 101. Former visiting researcher at Kyoto University. Thesis focus on post-Meiji societal transitions, specifically the intersection between family structure and political identity — published, peer-reviewed, and referenced in three undergraduate textbooks, although only one of them has the correct page citation.”

You stare. He continues.

“Prior academic affiliations include guest lectureships, mentorship roles, departmental student advisory boards, and a short-lived position as campus safety marshal that I relinquished after an unfortunate incident with a fire extinguisher.” He gestures vaguely. “Not my fault. Miscommunication.”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. He continues anyway.

“I am also” —he lifts a finger like he’s marking bullet points in the air — “certified in workplace conflict resolution, despite never having witnessed a functional resolution in my department. I am punctual, approachable, and generally kind, although my family disagrees. I grade fairly. I do not tolerate plagiarism. And I have never, at any point in my life or career, been confused for an undergraduate female student."

You stare at him. Your brain has stopped, rebooted, and is now running on emergency lighting. He tilts his head, genuinely puzzled.

“Although,” he adds, “this is not the first time someone has introduced themselves to me with… physical enthusiasm?”

“Physical—” You nearly choke on air. “I DIDN’T INTRODUCE ANYTHING — I THOUGHT YOU WERE UTAHIME!”

“Ah,” he says, nodding slowly, as if that explains everything. “Does Miss Iori often greet you with… that level of force?”

You slap a hand over your face, muffling a noise that is somewhere between a groan and a prayer for death. “She— I — we— that’s not the POINT—”

“If it helps,” he offers, thoughtfully, “I have sustained no permanent damage.”

“That does not help!”

He hums mildly, like he’s checking off items on a clipboard only he can see. “I suppose I should ask what, precisely, made you believe she was in danger?”

“I don’t know!” you half-yell. “She was supposed to be here at 2:20! It’s 2:35! She NEVER misses her own deadlines! Something had to have gone wrong!”

Choso considers this seriously. “Hmm. Unlikely she has been kidnapped between the main hall and this classroom.”

“You don’t KNOW that!”

“I do,” he says calmly. “I walked past her five minutes ago. She was arguing with a vending machine.”

Your soul re-enters your body violently.

He continues, completely unfazed: “She appeared unharmed. Very determined. In fact, she threatened the machine with legal action.”

You drop your face into your hands again.

And then, with the same tone one might use to announce the weather, he adds, “Also, for future reference, if you intend to greet me physically, please allow me enough time to turn around.”

You nearly scream as he looks at you expectantly. Not judgmentally. Not impatiently. Just… expectantly. As though this is the natural rhythm of all human interaction: he gives a TED Talk, you give yours.

“So,” he says, folding his arms lightly, “may I have your introduction as well?”

You blink. “My… what?”

“Your introduction,” he repeats, nodding. “Academic background, relevant qualifications, notable publications, institutional affiliations. Or,” he adds after a thoughtful pause, “whatever form of self-presentation you prefer.”

You stare at him. His résumé had been so long it practically summoned an audience, and now he wants yours? The only published document you’ve ever produced is a fanfic comment thread and a two-page lab report you still don’t understand.

“Well,” you say, clearing your throat. “I don’t really have— you know— anything like that.”

Choso tilts his head. “Like what?”

“Like… a dissertation. Or a fellowship. Or a fire-extinguisher incident.”

He waits.

You panic.

“So,” you blurt, “I like reading romance novels, making midnight cookies even when I swear I won’t, going on spontaneous shopping trips, and— uh— I’m Utahime’s best friend. That’s my most important job.”

Silence. A very heavy silence. Then Choso nods, once, as if processing the data packet you’ve just thrown at his brain.

“That is…” he begins.

You brace yourself.

“…remarkably straightforward.”

“Is that good?” you ask.

He considers this. “It is… different.”

You have no idea what that means, but his mouth twitches — just slightly, just enough to betray that he’s amused. Or impressed. Or both. It’s hard to tell when his default expression looks like he’s perpetually grading someone’s essay.

“Anyway,” he says, smoothing the paper on his desk and returning to that maddeningly calm tone, “I recommend you go look for Miss Iori. She was extremely committed to acquiring a bottle of green tea from the vending machine. I fear the battle may have escalated.”

“Oh my God,” you mutter, already backing toward the door. “Right. Yes. I should— I should definitely go do that.”

“Indeed.”

“And— and thank you! And sorry! I mean— both! But also—”

“You may simply say ‘thank you,’” he says gently. “And you may also stop calling me ‘sir.’ I am not the president.”

You splutter. “I didn’t call you sir!”

“You said it with your tone,” he replies dryly.

“No I didn’t!”

“It was implied.”

You gape at him, because unfortunately, he is right. His résumé had been so intimidating that your soul had instinctively saluted him.

“I— okay, well— thank you. Professor. Doctor? Assistant Lecturer? Uh—”

“Choso is fine,” he says.

“Right. Choso. Welcome to campus!”

And then you flee. You’re halfway down the hall before you realize you forgot to call him sir. And honestly? After hearing that résumé, calling him anything less than sir feels like a political crime.

Behind you, just barely out of earshot, Choso lets out a small, startled laugh — light, boyish, completely at odds with the stiff academic persona he’d been wearing like a pressed suit. It escapes him before he can stop it.

Then he clears his throat, straightens his papers, and mutters to himself, “Professional. You are a professional. Stop laughing.”

By the time Utahime drags you home ranting about the vending machine’s “disrespect,” Choso Kamo, PhD, Assistant Lecturer, Campus Legend In The Making, has already slipped back into full lecturer mode — calm, severe, and misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t witness the crack in that façade you accidentally smacked into existence.

But he’s still smiling faintly, just enough for someone walking in five seconds too early to catch it and wonder why the new assistant lecturer looks like someone just tapped him on the shoulder and handed him joy.

𝒾𝒾𝒾. RYOMEN SUKUNA

It starts, as all your most rational financial decisions do, with you storming into the only game store in a ten-kilometer radius that hasn’t yet banned you for verbal assault.

You had texted the wiry-looking bisexual employee — the only man on earth you acknowledged as a functional human being — with strict instructions to keep aside your newly released CD of The Time I Got Reincarnated As The Princess Of This World But My Brother Also Reincarnated And Is My Husband. It was the kind of title that weeded out the weak, the straight, and the insecure, so naturally it was your magnum opus.

You didn’t even look up from your screen as you shoved the glass door open with enough force to trigger lawsuits. Your peripheral vision caught a shape loitering by the new releases shelf.

Tall. Broad. Definitely male, which meant definitely useless. But if he was smacking his ass like that, he had to be your bisexual. That was his mating call for your attention — one smack for hello bestie, two smacks for your game is here, three smacks for this straight man just asked me where the Pokémon cards are and I want to die.

So, naturally, you walked right up behind him and slapped his ass.

Not tapped. Slapped. A full-palmed, god-bless-the-callouses-on-your-hand whack meant for the only tolerable man alive.

Except the man who whirled around wasn’t him.

Nope. Absolutely not. This one had a nametag. A shiny, recently laminated one.

Ryomen Sukuna.

And worse: he was gorgeous.

Not in the normal way, where men think being over six feet is a personality. More like… the kind of gorgeous that made you recoil because it meant he probably expected social interaction. Or eye contact. Or for you to be a real human being. Your spine locked up like Windows XP facing its seventh malware pop-up of the morning.

He stared at you. You stared at the exit. Your soul left your body to go start a new life somewhere with fewer men.

His expression didn’t even change. He just waited. Completely silent. Like a badly coded NPC waiting for the dialogue prompt to load.

Your mouth went dry with pure, distilled femcel fury.

“Why aren’t you bisexual?” you blurted.

His eyebrow twitched. Not raised — twitched. The first sign that there was, in fact, a living creature behind the pretty face fogging up your day.

You crossed your arms defensively, shoulders hunched, chin dipped the way you did when surrounded by testosterone. “You’re not supposed to be here. Where’s the other guy? The — the one that looks like he drinks iced Americanos to forget his dating history?”

Sukuna blinked once. Again, no talking. Just watching you meltdown in real time like you were his morning entertainment.

God, even his silence felt misogynistic.

“I asked him to keep something aside for me,” you snapped, scrunching your nose like existing near him was giving you hives. “So unless you know where he put my game, don’t just stand there.”

His jaw flexed — annoyed, maybe. Or confused. Hard to tell with men; they only have three emotions, and all of them are inconvenient.

Finally, finally, he spoke. His voice was low, unenthusiastic, like he’d been asked to read SAT passages aloud.

“What game.”

Not even a question mark at the end. Just full deadpan resignation.

“The Time I Got Reincarnated As The Princess—”

He cut you off with a look so flat you felt your browser crash internally. You glared back, arms tightening. “Don’t judge me. At least I have interests that aren’t protein shakes and refusing therapy.”

His lip curled in something too unimpressed to be a smile. “Didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” you muttered, shifting your weight like you were about to curl into yourself like a potato bug.

He held out a hand — presumably to take the name or go check. But you recoiled like he’d tried to hand you a raw fish.

“Don’t touch me. I don’t like men.”

“You just slapped my ass.”

“That doesn’t count,” you hissed. “That was meant for a bisexual.”

He stared again. Long. Tortured. Regretting every life choice that led him to this job, this shelf, this moment with you. And yet, under the stiff annoyance, something about him screamed begrudging loser too. The way he stood slightly hunched like he hoped people wouldn’t talk to him. The way he looked like he’d rather fight a tax audit than maintain small talk. The way his eyes kept darting away like he, too, wanted to pretend social interaction was optional DLC.

A social disaster. A beauty wasted on a man who didn’t want to be perceived.

Your natural enemy.

Your natural equal.

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll check the back.”

You muttered under your breath, “Finally, a man doing something useful.”

He definitely heard it. And he definitely paused, shoulders tightening for half a second. But he didn’t turn. Or snap. Or quit on the spot.

Which was, objectively, the most attractive thing a man had ever done in your presence.

Sukuna returned exactly the way you assumed he lived his entire life: walking like an inconvenienced NPC forced to complete a side quest he never asked for, holding your game CD like it was both fragile and personally offensive. The pristine packaging glinted under the fluorescent lights — no dents, no scratches, not a single fingerprint.

Honestly? It was the cleanest object a man had ever handed you. You hated how impressive that was.

He set it on the counter gently, like he was wary you’d bite if he made a sudden movement. You grabbed it with both hands, clutching it to your chest like the holy scriptures. “Finally. God. Took you long enough.”

“It was right in front,” he said flatly.

“Well maybe it was hiding from you,” you snapped, already rummaging through your bag for your wallet — or rather, the wallet containing your father’s card. Not that you would ever acknowledge such a thing. You swiped open the worn leather like it personally disgusted you. “Just ring it up.”

He tapped something into the system with meticulous precision, fingers long, movements calm, posture still radiating that energy of a man who regularly unplugged his router to avoid talking to his roommates. Then — mid-transaction — he halted.

“There’s extra merch.”

“…What.”

“With this edition,” he clarified, not looking up. “There’s a standee. And a bonus soundtrack disc.”

You stared at him, expression flattening into pure femcel betrayal. “Since when do CDs come with extra merch? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why am I finding out like this? Do I look like someone who enjoys being humiliated publicly?”

He blinked, slowly, as though rebooting.

“…Do you want it or not.”

“Obviously I want it,” you snapped, crossing your arms so aggressively your elbows cracked. “Go get it. Why would you even ask? Go. Fetch.”

He gave you a look. Not annoyed — just deeply tired. A man who had lived thirty lifetimes in the last seven minutes. But he turned around anyway, trudging to the back room like someone being led to the gallows.

You waited at the counter, foot tapping, scowling at nothing in particular except all men ever born.

He returned with a neatly packed bundle: the standee still wrapped in thin plastic, the bonus disc in its own shiny case, a folded promotional booklet you didn’t even know existed. He set them down with the delicacy of someone aware women like you were capable of biting.

You lifted the standee with awe you would never show on your face. “They made a standee of the brother? That’s so camp.”

“It came with it,” he muttered, already pulling out wrapping paper — actual wrapping paper — like this was an Apple store and you were the Queen of England.

You narrowed your eyes. “Why are you wrapping it.”

“You’re buying it.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

He paused, a tiny flicker of irritation crossing his face before dying instantly under the weight of his social awkwardness.

“…Because people complain when we don’t.”

“People complain because you’re men,” you shot back automatically.

He didn’t even argue. Just wrapped your items with slow, careful precision, creasing the edges neatly, tucking the corners in with the concentration of a man defusing a bomb. You watched, arms crossed but gaze suspiciously softening.

“You’re weirdly good at that,” you said.

“Okay.”

“No, like — for a guy? That’s abnormal. Are you hiding a girlfriend in the back or something? Some domesticated creature training you?”

He looked genuinely offended. “No.”

“You sound defensive.”

“I’m just wrapping something.”

“Well you’re doing it like someone who has… I don’t know… skill.”

He huffed, faintly. “I’ve worked here two weeks.”

“Two weeks is enough to learn how to disappoint women,” you muttered.

He froze before resuming to wrap it faster.

When he finished, he placed the bundle in a branded bag and slid it across the counter. You made sure not to touch his fingers — not because you were scared, of course, but because men had cooties and emotional negligence.

As the receipt printed, Sukuna handed it to you. “Here.”

You took it without looking, too busy staring at him now that you could do it without him noticing. The stupid pufferfish cheeks. The stupid pretty face. The stupid social loser aura vibrating off him like gamer funk but emotionally.

Maybe it was because he’d been patient with you — something most men failed at within seconds. Maybe it was because he hadn’t spoken over you, or laughed, or tried to correct you, or called security.

Maybe it was because he wrapped your merch like he actually cared about a job paying $12 an hour.

Your stomach swirled. Disgusting.

You grimaced. “Ugh. I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He blinked, alarmed for the first time. “What did I do.”

“Nothing,” you said quickly, clutching your bag too tightly. “Just — indigestion. Or emotions. I don’t know. Both are bad.”

He stared at you, confusion pinching the corners of his mouth. “Are you always like this.”

“Are you always shaped like a violent goldfish?” you shot back, because vulnerability was illegal.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, then looked away like making eye contact might summon a demon. You grabbed your bag, chin up, pride intact, voice trembling only a little. “Thanks for… doing your job or whatever.”

He nodded once, awkward, stiff, like a man bowing in a cutscene for the first time. “Yeah.”

You stepped back toward the door, refusing to admit you were walking slower on purpose. “See you… never.”

“You’ll probably come back,” he muttered.

You froze. He fiddled with a pen, refusing to look at you. “People like you always do.”

Your mouth opened, closed, then opened again in outrage — and something else.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You slapped my ass before saying hello.”

You nearly combusted.

Without another word, you spun on your heel, burst through the door like a Victorian woman fainting, and stomped down the street with your wrapped merch like a trophy of battle.

Unfortunately, your stomach kept swirling.

Even more unfortunately… it did not feel like indigestion.

𝒾𝓋. NAOYA ZENIN

You were lucky.

Covering Shoko Ieiri’s runway was something half the industry would’ve killed for, and here you were, weaving through racks of silk and satin because being her college friend still paid off in ways you frankly did not deserve.

Backstage was chaos in a way only fashion week could be — stylists sprinting with hairdryers, makeup artists swearing under their breath, models teetering by in impossible shoes, and you, clutching your camera bag like a lifeline while trying to remember if Shoko said she’d be near the chequered skirt or the chequered jacket.

Both existed. Both were currently moving.

You spotted the skirt first. A clean black-and-white check, sharp pleats, very Shoko-coded. You hurried over, relief ready to spill out of your mouth, greeting already forming on your palm as you reached out and smacked her ass — sound and contact, a full, confident hello.

Except the skirt turned around and it wasn’t Shoko.

It wasn’t even a woman.

Your breath collapsed in your chest as your gaze carried upward — first the narrow hips, then the cinched waist, the crisp fall of the fabric, and then the man towering over you.

A model. A very beautiful, very tall, very pissed off male model.

His brown eyes sharpened into a glare the second your brain decided to keep staring instead of apologizing. Dyed blonde hair, the soft pale kind that looked expensive, framed his face but did nothing to hide the dark green roots that screamed grown-out rebellion. His jawline was a weapon. His cheekbones could cut glass. His expression said you should already be praying.

“Excuse me,” he snapped, voice cool, clipped, and far too offended for someone who had literally just existed in your way. “Do you often greet strangers by smacking their clothes?”

You jolted back, hands up, already choking on your own mortification. “I thought — you weren’t — It’s just — Shoko!”

His eyes dragged over you in one slow, unimpressed sweep, landing on your jeans like they were a personal insult. “And why,” he said, tone flattening into something smug, “are you wearing pants?”

You blinked. “Because… they’re pants?”

“They’re unflattering,” he said simply, as if this were objective truth carved into stone. “On women especially.”

Your brain stuttered. “Excuse m—?!”

“Yes,” he cut in, already bored. “You touched my kilt without permission and I’m the rude one? Unbelievable.” He adjusted the garment with a flick of his wrist, movements precise, elegant, borderline theatrical. “It’s custom, by the way. Handmade. Probably worth more than your entire outfit.”

“Your… kilt?” you echoed, because your ears had stopped functioning from the moment he said women should not wear pants.

“Kilt,” he repeated, nodding once. “K-I-L-T. Not whatever you were about to call it.”

And you nearly gasped, because yes, you were absolutely about to call it a clit and honestly, the shame might kill you before he could.

He cocked his head, studying you again with that disdain only the highest-paid, hottest man in the room could muster. “You’re new.”

“I’m not new,” you muttered. “I just didn’t expect to see… you.”

“Most people don’t.” His chin lifted smugly. “Naoya Zenin.”

The name hit you like a bucket of ice water. Because of course. Of course this had to be him.

The highest-paying male model in the country. The notoriously difficult one. The one critics called elegant but insufferable. The one designers bent over backwards for because his face sold out collections before the clothes even hit the floor. And apparently, the one who thought women in pants were a mistake.

You stared at him, flustered, indignant, still slightly enchanted because unfortunately he was disgustingly pretty. He stared back, fully aware of it.

“So?” he said. “Are you going to apologize, or are you going to stand there thinking about my legs?”

Your mouth fell open in fresh horror. “I wasn’t—!”

“You were,” he said, already turning, already dismissing you with a flick of those perfectly dyed strands. “At least know my name before you start groping my wardrobe.”

You spluttered, but he didn’t look back. He didn't need to. Men like Naoya Zenin never did.

And somewhere behind him, you finally heard Shoko’s voice calling your name — far too late to save you from the disaster that had already happened.

You bolted back toward the main stage before your humiliation could settle into your bones, camera already in hand, lungs tight with the leftover sting of Naoya Zenin’s arrogance. The runway lights washed everything in white-gold, the crowd humming like an electric current as models filed out in Shoko’s signature silhouettes. You focused on the rhythm, the shapes, the fabrics — anything but the memory of smacking a stranger’s kilt and being told you shouldn’t be wearing pants.

But then the hum changed.

It sharpened, brightened, swelled into something undeniably attentive, and you didn’t even need to look up to know why. The audience always reacted like this for him — that model, the one whose name sold tickets before designers even announced their collections. You forced yourself to raise your camera and there he was.

Naoya Zenin. Gliding out in Shoko’s piece like he owned the runway, the kilt swaying just enough to mock your lingering embarrassment.

Your traitor hands snapped picture after picture — clean angles, close-ups, detail shots, full-body frames. You’d tell yourself it was guilt. Professionalism. Artistic obligation. Anything except fascination.

Anything except that strange coil of tension you felt when the light hit the pleats of his kilt and you remembered exactly how it felt to slap your hand against it.

And then the show ended. Applause. Flashbulbs. Shoko grabbing you by the shoulders and shrieking about how half the editors loved your shots already. Relief pooled in your chest, shaky and warm — right up until the afterparty, where alcohol became courage and courage became stupidity.

The venue pulsed with music, glassware chiming, and soft laughter from every direction. You were three drinks in — maybe four, depending on if the bartender was being generous — when Naoya appeared out of nowhere, sliding into your peripheral vision like he was stepping onto another stage. His hair was brushed back now, the green roots more evident, his eyes still sharp enough to slice you open.

“So,” he said, voice silk-lined and arrogant, “you’re Shoko’s photographer.”

You stiffened, trying to look composed. “For tonight. I’m… helping.”

“Helping,” he echoed, swirling the drink in his hand before giving you a slow once-over. “Interesting word choice. You captured the detailing of my kilt surprisingly well for someone who didn’t even know what it was.”

Your face heated instantly. “I was distracted.”

“I noticed.” His lips curved into the faintest, most condescending half-smirk imaginable. “Most people get distracted by my walk, but you? You went straight for the fabric. Very thorough. Very hands-on.”

You choked on air. “That was an accident.”

“Was it?” he murmured, leaning closer, studying you like one of Shoko’s garments under inspection. “You kept photographing me like you were trying to make up for it. Guilt? Attraction? Don’t worry — I won’t judge. I’m used to admirers.”

“I wasn’t admiring—”

“Of course you were,” he cut in smoothly. “You have eyes.”

His confidence was infuriating. Worse, it was correct. But before you could tell him to take his ego elsewhere, your brain — glazed with alcohol and the humiliation of the whole night—made the catastrophic decision to let your thoughts slip out.

“Well,” you muttered, half a slur, “if I captured the intricacies of your kilt, can you capture the intricacies of my—”

Your mouth shut too late.

Too. Late.

The word clit hung between you both like a chandelier about to crush your entire budding career.

Naoya froze.

Then he laughed.

At first it was a sharp, mocking bark of disbelief — like he couldn’t fathom the audacity. Then it melted into something real, rich, and startlingly warm as he held his stomach and actually doubled over.

“You—” he wheezed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You did not just say that.”

Your brain short-circuited. “I didn’t mean— I wasn’t— I’m drunk—”

“That’s not drunk,” he said, still laughing. “That’s bold. Or suicidal. Hard to tell with you.”

You looked around for the nearest exit, convinced security would drag you out and blacklist you forever, but Naoya straightened, brushing imaginary lint off his perfectly tailored suit jacket. His eyes gleamed with something new — interest.

“Relax. If I fired everyone who flirted badly, the industry would collapse.” He leaned in again, voice dropping into a low, taunting purr. “And besides… I like your work.”

You blinked. “My work?”

“Yes. The photos. The eye for detail. The restraint.” He paused, smirking. “Well. Not total restraint, clearly.”

Your face burned hotter.

“I want you on-board,” Naoya continued, tone shifting to something dangerously close to professional — but still dipped in arrogance. “Personal photographer for all my shoots. Starting tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” you echoed, stunned. “You want me?”

“Oh, absolutely.” His gaze drifted deliberately downward, slow, suggestive. “You notice everything. Even what you shouldn’t. That’s valuable.”

Before you could respond, he stepped closer — impossibly close — and with a single smooth motion, slid something behind you.

A card.

Into your back pocket.

Of your pants.

Right against your ass.

“You—!” you jumped, spinning around as he withdrew his hand with infuriating calm.

“You’re wearing pants,” he said with a shrug, turning to leave. “I thought you wanted reasons to defend the choice.”

Your jaw dropped. “That’s not a reason!”

“It is,” he called over his shoulder, raising a hand in lazy farewell. “Karma. Or whatever poetic nonsense you believe in.”

He glanced back once more, eyes amused, condescending, and unmistakably flirtatious.

“Don’t be late tomorrow,” he said. “I’d hate for your career to end before I enjoy ruining it myself.”

And then he was gone — leaving you breathless, furious, mortified, and undeniably employed.

Karma, you realized, was not only real — it was wearing a kilt and had your career in the palm of his smug, perfectly manicured hand.

𝓋. SUGURU GETO

When your girlfriend suggested meeting up in the library for a quick makeout session, you didn’t even blink twice; in fact, you practically teleported there.

Nearly one full week of radio silence and she suddenly pops out of the blue with a “Come to the reference section ;)”? Please. Who are you kidding? You’re like a dog being enticed with a bone — tail wagging, ears perked, pride abandoned at the automatic doors.

Never mind the fact that your girlfriend is actually your situationship, who is also a bicurious cheerleader with an attention span shorter than your will to resist her.

But your queer love struggles are an issue for another day. Preferably one where you’re emotionally stable and well-rested.

Right now, all your focus is on the reference textbook section. You weave through the rows like you’re in a stealth mission, dodging stressed students and the occasional rustle of pages. And then you see her — or who you assume is her — back turned to you, long hair flowing down her spine. T

hat was new. She never mentioned extensions. Or maybe she did and you just weren’t listening because she said it right in the middle of a rant about her roommate stealing her lip gloss again.

Whatever. Point is: hair down, hips out, stance familiar. That’s her. That’s totally her. Your brain registers the silhouette with the enthusiasm of a lab rat finding the cheese in the maze.

You do not think. You do not evaluate. You do not consider consequences. You simply act. Because that is who you are in this deeply unfortunate romantic chapter of your life.

You stride up, confidence inflated by delusion, and you greet her the way any self-respecting, touch-starved situationship soldier would: you raise your hand and deliver a swift, enthusiastic, absolutely devastating smack! to her ass.

The sound echoes. Echoes. Somewhere, a librarian winces.

You grin, already forming some smug line about how much you missed her. You’re ready for her usual gasp-laugh combo, the flirty shove, the whispered “You’re crazy” that makes your knees weak.

Except. Except.

When the person turns around, it is not her. It is not her in any universe, timeline, or parallel dimension.

You are staring directly into the wide, horrified eyes of a man.

A man.

A man with cheekbones that could cut glass, forearms that suggest he lifts more than emotional baggage, and — this is the real kicker — luscious, flowy hair identical to your situationship’s. The kind of hair that makes you question why the universe is punishing you specifically.

He is frozen. You are frozen. Time itself takes a smoke break.

You feel the blood drain from your soul first, then your face. Your brain sprints through every possible explanation, landing on nothing except the overwhelming urge to self-destruct.

He opens his mouth. You open yours too, but only a squeak escapes. You are, in real time, discovering the physical embodiment of regret.

You start calculating how fast you can run if you drop to all fours. Maybe if you bolt down the aisle, leap over the cart full of overdue textbooks, and dive behind the encyclopedias, you can start a new life under an alias.

Something simple. Something quiet. Something belonging to someone who doesn’t assault strangers in academic institutions.

He keeps staring at you like you just slapped the taxes out of him, which, frankly, you might have.

And all you can think is: your situationship better appreciate this. Because you just smacked a grown man’s ass in public. A man with better hair than both of you combined. A man who is probably going to tell security.

A man whose shampoo you kind of want to ask about but now you can never show your face again, so that opportunity is gone forever.

In the distance, a chair squeaks. Someone whispers. You swear the overhead lights grow brighter, spotlighting your shame like you’re the main character in a tragic musical number.

You manage to croak out something resembling, “I thought you were — someone else,” but it comes out more like a dying animal sound layered with humiliation.

You stand there, hand still halfway suspended in the air like the world’s worst criminal caught mid–crime, as ditzy lil’ miss situation-girlfriend-ship happily skips off to aisle 3, blissfully unaware that you have just assaulted a man with the same hair as her.

Of course she didn’t wait for you. Of course she wandered off. Cheerleaders don’t walk; they skip. They flounce. They cause chaos without ever having to witness it.

You, on the other hand, are standing in the smoldering crater of your own choices.

He’s still blinking at you like he’s trying to reboot. You don’t know whether to pretend you’re a phantom, apologize before a harassment case is filed on the spot, or run so fast your sneakers melt.

You open your mouth, ready to attempt the apology route.

“I—LOOK, I’M REALLY SOR—”

But he holds up a hand, calm, polite, putting a stop to your spiral before it combusts.

“You are not Gojo.”

You freeze. “Who the hell is Gojo?”

“My boyfriend,” he replies, completely unfazed, like this is a normal thing he clarifies for people who smack his ass in public.

“Well, he isn’t my girlfriend either!” you blurt out, panic mashed into defensiveness. “Why am I even — ugh, sorry for smacking your ass.”

He gives a small laugh, brushing his hair behind his ear with an elegance that offends you. “It’s not my first time. Just mildly surprised it was a stranger instead of, you know… familiar man hands.”

“Wow,” you snort. “Lesbophobic much?”

He raises an eyebrow. “How is that lesbophobic?”

“You’re assuming I don’t have familiar hands to smack! Aren’t we basically on the same gayness level here?”

He pauses, considering this. “Fair enough.”

A moment of silence passes. It is impressively awkward. Someone coughs in the distance. He shifts his weight, offers a hand like this is a networking event and not the aftermath of you slapping his very bisexual ass.

“I’m Geto.”

You shake it, because manners persist even in humiliation. “I’m… the idiot. And bisexual. Not that it matters.”

“It always matters,” he replies with the wisdom of a man who has clearly endured multiple chaotic relationships. “Nice to meet you.”

Another beat of silence. Somewhere in aisle 3, your situationship giggles. You and Geto both glance in that direction, both wearing the expression of people who really did not ask to be here.

“So,” he asks, “why’d you slap me?”

“My girlfriend—ish—told me to meet her here, and I saw your hair and…” You trail off, waving a hand over his head. “This is disrespectfully identical.”

He nods solemnly. “I understand. Gojo has nearly caused fights because people think he’s me from behind. I tell him to keep his hair up, he says it ‘blocks his beauty.’”

Sounds about right.

“And you?” you ask. “Why are you… here?”

“Gojo said he wanted to ‘study together.’ Which means he’s probably lost in the children’s section right now, bothering toddlers with his riddles.”

You sigh. He sighs back. Solidarity is born.

“So,” you say slowly, “we’re both side pieces to rich bicurious kids with superiority complexes?”

He thinks. “Yes. Essentially.”

“Does that mean we’ve trauma-bonded?”

“Absolutely.”

You hear another giggle from aisle 3 — your situationship's unmistakable laugh — and Geto hears a loud, dramatic sneeze echo from somewhere beyond the encyclopedias. You both sigh in perfect unison.

“Well,” he says, straightening his shirt, “should we go meet our individual disasters?”

“Yeah,” you mutter, rubbing your face. “Side piece solidarity.”

You and Geto share one last, deeply exhausted glance before splitting off — he goes left, you go right — both of you walking toward your own respective chaotic, rich, impossibly attractive bisexual nightmares.

You’ve known him for three minutes and somehow this is the only man who has ever truly understood you.

𝓋𝒾. SHIU KONG

The thing about growing up on the Upper East Side, (besides developing an allergy to public transport and an inexplicable fondness for overpriced iced matcha), is that you are expected — no, groomed — to participate in extracurriculars that make you look like an upstanding Gen-Z heir.

Charity galas. Fencing. Golf classes. The whole well-rounded, well-mannered, vaguely insufferable package.

And because you’ve never understood the joy of swinging metal sticks at tiny white balls, you and your best friend Gojo invented your own twist: whoever managed to aim a shot at the other’s ass and land it first won the day.

Prestige, bragging rights, and a free iced latte on the loser’s tab.

Simple enough, or so you told yourself.

Gojo always won. Always. He had this annoyingly natural talent for everything that required hand-eye coordination, balance, charm, or general showmanship. You suspected this was because his body was crafted by malevolent angels tasked with making your life difficult.

He got you every time — on the green, in the driving range, once even while he was texting.

But today, you were determined. You woke up with purpose, brushed your hair with determination, and marched into the country club like the Hilton heir you were absolutely not but behaved like anyway.

The sun shimmered over the manicured lawn as the two of you zoomed in the buggy, Gojo sitting with that smug posture you hated, white polo slightly undone because he insisted it helped with his swing, sunglasses perched on his head even though he didn’t intend to use them. He looked like he belonged on a recruitment poster for nepotism.

Meanwhile, you clutched your club like it was a sniper rifle, fully prepared to win the stupidest battle of your privileged little life.

The buggy slowed near the next tee, and Gojo hopped off to grab a different club, leaving Shiu — his assigned caddy for the season — standing nearby with an expression that hovered somewhere between tired resignation and soul death. Poor man had long since accepted his role in the chaotic ecosystem that was you and Gojo Satoru. You flashed him a polite smile, thinking he probably deserved a raise.

This was your chance. Gojo was standing beside the buggy, back turned, stretching like an overdressed flamingo. You positioned your feet the way the instructor had taught you, even though you were ninety percent sure the form didn’t matter if you were committing premeditated ass-targeting.

You inhaled. You focused.

You locked onto Gojo like a heat-seeking missile fueled by entitlement and petty vengeance.

You swung. The ball sailed.

You felt triumph bloom in your chest—

too soon.

SMACK!

A sharp, echoing sound cut across the quiet golf course. Not the sound of ball meeting Gojo’s annoyingly perfect derrière, no. This was different. This had weight. This had consequence. This had…an audible groan?

You blinked.

Gojo turned.

You turned.

Shiu Kong — the caddy whose greatest aspiration in life was probably a quiet afternoon and a job without aristocratic hazards — was hunched over, hands cupped very protectively between his legs, face contorted in a way that would’ve made marble statues weep.

You had hit him directly in the nuts.

The world fell silent except for the distant thwack! of someone else being far better at golf than you.

Gojo stared at you like you’d just committed a war crime. “You hit my caddy in the balls.”

Your jaw dropped. “I thought they were your balls — WAIT, NOT LIKE THAT—”

Shiu wheezed. Gojo ran a hand over his face, half horrified, half amused, and a tiny little bit proud because only you could turn a simple golf lesson into a social scandal. “You assaulted an innocent man. Do you know what that means?”

“It means,” you said, cheeks heating, “that I missed.”

“It means you're paying his medical bill.”

But you couldn’t hear him anymore. Your brain was spiraling, narrating your downfall in real time like the Gossip Girl episode your life had suddenly become. Oh, Upper East Side girl assaults caddy in broad daylight! Parents mortified! Trust fund threatened! Rumors swirl faster than Gojo can swing a nine-iron!

Meanwhile, Shiu straightened slowly, giving you the exhausted, mildly judgmental look of a man who had seen the downfall of empires and now yours.

“I'm so sorry,” you squeaked, stepping forward, then back, then forward again because you had no idea how apology etiquette worked when it came to nut-related injuries. “Do you need ice? Do you need water? Do you need me to leave the country?”

Shiu sighed, voice low and gravelly. “Just…maybe aim somewhere else next time.”

Gojo burst into laughter so loud it nearly scared off the swans by the pond.

It wasn’t your proudest moment, but in a twisted, ridiculous way, it was the most Upper East Side thing you’d ever done. After all, nothing screams generational privilege like accidentally assaulting your friend’s caddy during a golf match you rigged yourself.

In what was, in your mind, the most gracious gesture any civilized Upper East Side debutante could extend, you scrambled to offer Shiu an olive branch of peace so large it could’ve been framed as modern art. The moment he managed to stand upright again — albeit with the stiff posture of a man reassessing every choice that brought him to this country — you leaned forward, clasped your hands together, and unleashed the full force of your well-meaning, catastrophically class-insulated brain.

“Do you want a latte? I can buy you one! Or — I mean — your medical bill? Should I cover that? Or I can order you a car home? Do you need new shoes? You can have mine! They're Prada.”

Shiu stared at you, the way one might stare at a chandelier that suddenly started speaking. His face didn’t show anger — no, that would’ve required energy he no longer had — but rather a patient, exhausted neutrality that only men who worked service jobs for rich teenagers ever truly mastered. He adjusted the strap of his caddy bag on his shoulder, wincing subtly, then offered you a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he said, voice low, a little raspy, and so painfully dry it could’ve been used to season seaweed. “Just…good luck with your aiming skills.”

You gasped, taking it as encouragement instead of sarcasm. “Thank you! I'll practice, I promise. And if you ever want better shoes just tell me, I can—”

He held up a hand, slow and weary, as though you were a golden retriever he needed to gently hush. “I really just...need a break.”

A break. Not a latte. Not Prada. Not a chauffeur. Not a diamond-studded apology card. He needed a break.

Maybe a vacation. Maybe a teleportation device home.

“A break!” you repeated cheerfully, as if this was a problem money could fix. “From work? Oh, Gojo can give you time off! Maybe you want a vacation? I can book a flight! Do you want a return ticket to, um —where did you say you're from again?”

Shiu tensed, jaw ticking. “South Korea.”

“Right! Right, Korea. I can book it now if you want! Or at least upgrade your seat? Do you like hotels? I can get you a suite.”

Gojo snorted behind you, muttering something like, “She's trying to buy back God's favor,” but you waved him off.

Shiu looked away so quickly you almost missed the micro-expression — a flash of longing, of someone who definitely couldn’t do that, of someone who probably missed Korean convenience store ramen more than he missed sunlight. But he shook his head, sighing softly. “Not necessary. I don't need a vacation. Just...some air. Maybe a cigarette.”

“A cigarette?” you echoed, blinking. “Do you need a lighter? Do you want the expensive ones they sell in Paris? My dad has a few—”

He exhaled through his nose, the universal sign of a man acknowledging your sheltered upbringing without saying it outright. Then, with a tiny bow of the head — because Shiu was raised with manners far older and sturdier than anything money could buy — he muttered, “Have a good day,” and limped off toward the staff area, where presumably no golf balls would be assaulting him for the rest of the afternoon.

You watched him go, clutching your club to your chest like a heroine in a Regency novel who had just accidentally traumatized the help. Gojo strolled up behind you, sipping his iced latte with the lazy swagger of someone who’d never known shame.

“Wooowwww,” he drawled. “I think he likes you.”

“Satoru, I hit him in the crotch.”

“That's a very intimate area,” he said, shrugging. “Could be a sign.”

You elbowed him, scowling, but your mind was already spinning. You were stubborn. Determined. A menace in designer sneakers. You weren’t about to let this go unresolved. You turned to Gojo with that familiar spark in your eyes — the one that meant someone, somewhere, was about to suffer the consequences of your enthusiasm.

“Set up a meeting with him.”

Gojo choked on his drink. “What, like a business meeting?”

“A lunch,” you clarified, chin high. “At one of dad's restaurants. A proper apology. He deserves that.”

Gojo smirked. “You just wanna feed him so he doesn't sue you.”

“And show him I'm sorry!”

“And maybe buy him shoes.”

“If he wants shoes I'll buy him shoes, Satoru.”

He burst out laughing again, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe you were real. And maybe you were clueless, maybe you were ditzy, maybe you were so class-unconscious you offered Prada as an apology for blunt-force trauma — but your heart was in the right place.

Even if your swing definitely wasn’t.

Somewhere near the staff exit, Shiu lit his cigarette with a shaky sigh, probably praying you wouldn’t follow him.

Spoiler alert: Gojo was absolutely going to make that lunch happen. And Shiu? Poor, unsuspecting Shiu would learn that apologies from girls like you came with appetizers, overcompensation, and enough unintended chaos to last him a lifetime.

𝓋𝒾𝒾. NANAMI KENTO

Every marketing student you know keeps a silent prayer lodged beneath their tongue, a hopeful little chant that someday they’ll land an internship that doesn’t force them into the digital equivalent of dancing for scraps. Nobody wants to be remembered as the one who tried to convince a 48-year-old construction worker with three slipped discs and a pension crisis to do a Sabrina Carpenter hip-snap twirl because “the algorithm likes dancing.” The algorithm doesn’t like movement; the algorithm is a fickle forest deity that requires blood, sweat, and the occasional trending audio sacrifice, and even then, it might spit on you.

So when you found out you’d secured an internship at a newly opened campus-adjacent bakery, you nearly dissolved into a puddle of bliss right there on the quad. Pastries, pastel décor, forgiving lighting, and content that wouldn’t make you question your career choices? Your soul briefly left your body, floated over the campus gates, and whispered thank you to whatever cosmic scheduler finally aligned your timetable with destiny.

You felt chosen. Blessed. Reborn. A marketing phoenix rising from the ashes of “Okay guys, one boomerang for the brand?”

The bakery itself was the kind of place that smelled like childhood, adulthood, and whatever era of your life you wished you were living.

Buttered air. Cinnamon gossip. The low hum of ovens exhaling warmth like tired dragons. The owners wore matching aprons and matching delusions that “keeping things minimalistic” meant painting everything a color that looked like beige having an existential crisis. But it was cute. It was earnest. It was yours to brand.

Best part? A handful of classmates and acquaintances worked here part-time. That meant familiar faces, semi-cooperative labor, and the possibility of bribing them with leftover croissants to appear in your videos.

You pictured it already: day-in-the-life reels, “POV: you walk into your new fave bakery,” moodboard shots of flaky pastries sparkling under natural light. Pure content heaven.

And because you knew them, the filming process would be smooth. Comfortable. Maybe even fun.

Except… tell that to the algo.

Because the moment you whipped out your phone and attempted your first test clip, the algorithm emerged from the shadows like a rat who hadn’t seen the sun in four fiscal quarters.

Your lighting betrayed you. Your framing betrayed you.

The pastry you filmed developed stage fright and deflated like it was auditioning for a tragedy. The latte art heart looked more like a kidney.

Meanwhile, your classmates, who you thought would beam with enthusiasm, stared into the camera like Victorian orphans being photographed for the first time. One of them blinked so slowly you wondered if they were asleep.

Another kept asking where to look, despite you telling them seventeen times. A third spontaneously developed the posture of a confused shrimp.

You tried switching angles. The algo cackled.

You tried using trending audio. The algo yawned.

You tried writing a caption so poetic it could make a grown influencer cry. The algo responded by giving you six likes, two of which were your own accounts, one from your mother, and three from bots selling crypto.

Still, you persisted. You dragged in a coworker to slice bread in slow motion. You filmed a cinnamon roll getting iced like it was the main character in a bakery-themed biopic. You arranged pastries into geometric formations so precise a math professor would’ve wept. You even made one of your classmates pretend to take a bite, only for them to inhale powdered sugar and cough violently across the mise-en-scène. The footage looked like a low-budget winter wonderland.

But somewhere in this swirling chaos, this sugar-dusted battlefield, something shifted. Your content slowly took shape. The bakery began to glow under your lens. Your classmates loosened up, laughing and breaking character in ways that looked effortlessly real.

And the algorithm, the mercurial god of engagement, finally blinked at you. Maybe even winked. One post edged past a thousand views. Then a few thousand more. The comments trickled in: students wanting to visit, professors tagging colleagues, locals asking about the new brownie flavors.

You weren’t just documenting a bakery anymore. You were animating it, breathing life into it, stitching it into the campus ecosystem. Your phone became a wand, the cinnamon rolls your familiars, and every time the algo decided to grace one of your posts with visibility, it felt like a small celestial nod.

Not approval. Just... acknowledgment.

The work was still chaotic, of course. Your classmates still forgot their cues. Pastries still collapsed. And the algorithm still behaved like an emotionally unavailable situationship.

But for the first time, you felt like you weren’t just chasing virality. You were crafting something with pulse and charm, something that fed people before they ever tasted a single thing. And that alone made every powdered-sugar sneeze and lighting malfunction worth it.

You arrived after class with a backpack full of half-baked campaign ideas, each one scribbled during bathroom breaks while doomscrolling past other people’s perfectly moisturized lives. The back door of the bakery welcomed you with its usual whoosh of warm air, that buttery exhale that felt like a pat on the head from the universe. You stepped in with the energy of someone who’d convinced themselves this would finally be the day the algorithm bowed before them in gratitude.

Inside, one of the part-timers stood at the industrial oven, sliding in fresh loaves with the rhythm of someone who had survived a STEM lab practical that morning. From the cropped hoodie, the hunched posture, and the playlist murmuring faintly from a single AirPod, you assumed biology major. They always worked like the bread depended on their GPA.

Without thinking, without checking, without even letting a single neuron confirm the identity of this individual, you strolled forward with the breezy confidence of a marketing student who believes camaraderie can be expressed in the universal language of harmless chaos.

In one smooth, misguided gesture, you gave them a friendly slap! on the ass and chirped something about being ready for another day of content magic.

You expected a muffled gasp, maybe a scandalized giggle, or at least the offended squeak of someone who understood workplace affection only in the form of overpriced lattes.

Instead, the universe clicked into slow motion. Your heartbeat thundered in your ears, drumming an urgent funeral march as the person froze. Straightened. Turned.

And it was not a biology major. It was not even a student. It was your manager.

Nanami Kento.

The bakery’s rare cryptid. The man who appears only during moments of bliss or disaster, like some beige-swathed omen. His expression, carved with the precision of someone who alphabetizes spreadsheets for fun, carried none of the bliss.

Very, very much the disaster.

He stared at you with the quiet intensity of a man reconsidering every hiring decision that led him to this exact millisecond. His posture was perfect. His sleeves were rolled just enough to suggest responsibility but not enough to imply friendliness. His jaw tightened in a way that made you aware of your own mortality. Even the oven behind him seemed to dim out of respect.

You stood there, a marketing intern with the blood draining from your face in real time, feeling the atmosphere congeal like week-old custard.

Nanami finally spoke, voice low and smooth, carrying the weight of a thousand unapproved PTO requests.

“Can’t keep your hands to yourself?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a headline. A thesis. A prophecy of impending HR paperwork.

You opened your mouth to explain that it was a misunderstanding, that you are a creature guided by aura instead of vision, that you seriously thought he was Jun from microbiology who did laugh when you smacked him last Tuesday.

But your throat had calcified. Your words evaporated. Even your internal monologue packed a suitcase and left.

Nanami didn’t move closer, but it felt like he did. His gaze alone stepped into your personal space. The kind of gaze that sorted out truth from nonsense and found you lacking in both.

You watched his gloved hands finish sliding the loaf trays into the oven with calm precision, as if he hadn’t just been assaulted by the world’s most incompetent intern. He shut the door gently.

Too gently. The kind of gentleness that suggested he was restraining himself from hurling the nearest baguette in your direction.

He finally sighed, a long, weary sound that stretched across the tiled floor like spilled flour.

“If this is your idea of workplace morale,” he said, “we have a very long day ahead of us.”

Your soul hovered somewhere near the ceiling tiles, watching your body malfunction. The algorithm suddenly felt like the least dangerous force in your life. Even the pastries cooled their crusts in reverent silence.

And you? You simply stood there, a cautionary tale with student debt.

This was not the content you had planned to film today.

You contemplated faking your own death by the time you reached the bakery’s back door. Mentally, you had drafted at least three escape plans involving remote mountain villages, minimal Wi-Fi, and a new identity where no one knew you had once slapped your manager’s ass with the confidence of a frat boy greeting his teammates.

Yet the bakery greeted you with a betrayal of the highest order: everyone had decided to clock in early. At the same time. Together. Like a coordinated flash mob of optimism.

Your part-timers swarmed you with bright greetings and eager enthusiasm, their eyes shining with dreams of micro-influencer fame. You wanted to pat their heads and tell them not to waste their youth on reels, but instead you held your clipboard like a shield. Each “Good morning!” hit you like an emotional dodgeball.

Meanwhile, the ghost of Nanami’s disappointed silence floated somewhere behind you like an air-conditioned draft.

You shepherded your little flock into the meeting room, heart pounding like it was trying to tunnel out of your chest. Today’s monthly content planning had never felt heavier. You clicked through slides, voice wobbling at every innocuous motion Nanami made in your peripheral vision. A shift of weight. A blink. A subtle adjustment of his glasses. Each small gesture struck you with terrifying precision, like he knew the exact sound frequency at which your nervous system collapsed.

Your ideas spilled out in a rush of self-preservation. Cupcake decorating time-lapses. Barista POV mornings. A “flavor of the week” skit you prayed the algorithm would latch onto like a needy koala. The team nodded along, scribbling notes, whispering excitedly about how this might finally get them discovered by someone other than their mothers and a few dedicated Reddit lurkers.

Nanami stayed silent, arms crossed, expression unreadable in a way that made you want to jump into a vat of batter and let the sourdough starter take you.

When the meeting finally ended, everyone filed out chattering happily, clutching aprons and half-formed dreams. You exhaled shakily and turned around, ready to collapse into the nearest chair.

Instead, you collided into a solid chest that smelled faintly of clean linen and responsible decision-making.

Nanami Kento.

Again.

You made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a dying kettle. He steadied you with one hand, the gesture minimal but firm, as if preventing your complete physical disintegration was just part of his job description.

You stepped back so fast you nearly tripped over the tripod, words spilling like scrambled eggs. You apologized. Then apologized for the apology.

Then apologized for existing, for breathing, for contributing to global carbon emissions.

Nanami looked at you with a patience that felt older than civilization.

“I understand it was a mistake,” he said quietly.

The kindness in his tone almost killed you on the spot.

Your throat tightened. Your eyes warmed. Your tear ducts prepared to betray you spectacularly. Because here stood the man you had accidentally assaulted via friendly fire, and he was offering you reasonable reassurance instead of firing you into the sun.

But then, with the gentle precision of someone handling a priceless artifact, he lifted a hand slightly and said:

“If you cry, please avoid doing it on the apron. It’s new.”

That did it. The tears backtracked instantly, terrified of staining corporate property. You hiccuped out a strangled laugh-sob hybrid, nodding violently, wiping your eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie like a chastened toddler.

Nanami gave you a small, almost imperceptible nod, the bakery equivalent of a papal blessing, then stepped past you to arrange something on the counter.

You stood there, heartbeat thundering, knees trembling, soul vibrating, wondering how a man could be both your boss and your emotional DEFCON-1.

And as the staff’s voices carried in from the front room, ready to begin filming, you realized with crushing clarity: you would survive today.

Barely. But you would.

𝓋𝒾𝒾𝒾. TOJI FUSHIGURO

Life had always liked to toss you the strangest fruit from its cosmic orchard, but marrying your best friend had felt less like a curveball and more like winning a prize you didn’t remember entering a raffle for.

Domesticity with him in your late 20s had been an oddly cozy chapter, the kind where two people orbit each other like planets politely avoiding collision. And when he finally sat you down one evening, hands folded like he was about to confess to eating the last cookie, you braced for the apocalypse.

Instead, he whispered that he was gay, closeted and terrified, but also deeply grateful for you.

It unfolded with the tender neatness of origami; no shouting, no tears, just a quiet reconfiguration of your shared life into something that still had warmth but no longer required matching rings.

He asked you twice, then thrice, then a bonus encore that felt like he was trying to win an award for Most Concerned Soon-To-Be-Ex-Husband. Were you sure? Would you be alright? Did you want to try living separately but still married? You had to put a hand on his shoulder the way you would calm an overexcited dog and tell him that yes, you were sure. The man deserved to fall in love without a tangle of legal obligations holding him hostage. And you deserved to stop pretending your marriage was anything other than two best friends accidentally LARPing domestic bliss.

Which is how you ended up spending your recent weekends in that courthouse, the one that smelled faintly of disinfectant and older bureaucracy, sitting on a wooden bench that had the ergonomic grace of a medieval punishment device.

This had become your routine: shuffle in, greet the receptionist who never blinked, and settle onto your assigned plank, waiting for the familiar sound of his hurried footsteps.

Your monologue, however, had become its own weekend ritual. The sort of internal soliloquy that unfurled whenever you were surrounded by peeling paint and laminated notices reminding you not to shout at the staff.

You’d kick your feet and think, Look at us, two emotionally stable adults dissolving our marriage like we’re returning a badly chosen sweater.

Then you’d look around at the couples on either side of you, radiating enough resentment to power a small town. And you’d think, At least we’re not throwing accusations like confetti. Perhaps divorce court should give us a loyalty discount.

Sometimes you’d imagine the judge calling your names and you both walking up with the serene air of two monks delivering tea. Divorce granted, and may the universe guide you to better sex and people who don’t shrink from honesty. Your husband would probably gift the judge a thank-you card.

And then there were the tiny absurdities that stitched themselves into your weekends. The vending machine that swallowed your coins like a spiteful beast. The security guard who had decided your face was the highlight of his shift and kept asking how your “journey” was going. The way your ex-husband always burst through the door in the same pattern: out of breath, apologizing, holding something ridiculous. Once it was a bouquet of chrysanthemums. Once it was bubble tea.

Once it was a tote bag that said Emotional Support Wife in pastel lettering, which he did not buy for himself but insisted suited you. Really, the whole situation felt like life had turned your divorce into a sitcom with a strangely wholesome tone.

Today, you settled onto your usual bench, hands folded, heartbeat steady, the air humming with the faint electricity of endings that are also beginnings. The court clock ticked above you like a metronome for your thoughts. Outside the window, a pigeon strutted as though on official business.

Patience had never been your most loyal companion, and in the courthouse it abandoned you entirely. The clock above your head ticked with the theatrical menace of a villain monologuing before the hero escapes, and you refused to be held hostage by anticipation.

So you rose from your wooden plank of despair, straightened your clothes with the determination of someone about to perform a minor social crime, and padded toward your assigned courtroom.

The door creaked when you pushed it open, the inside washed in that sterile fluorescent glow that bleaches everything into equal parts boredom and dread. And there he was — hunched over the desk, signing what you assumed were the final documents of your shared, lovingly chaotic marriage.

The curve of his back, the familiar slope of his shoulders, the way his hair always curled near his collar when he was stressed — you didn’t even question it. You marched forward with the casual confidence of a woman whose divorce is so amicable she can still smack her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s ass as punctuation.

The sound ricocheted in the room like a firecracker.

Nice form, you thought proudly, hand still warm. A little farewell punctuation mark to a marriage that never truly required fireworks. You muttered, mostly to yourself, “Finally. End of an era. Now what do we eat for lunch? Tacos? Sushi? Something carby as a reward for surviving bureaucracy—”

Silence.

Too much silence. The particular kind that begins to glow ominously, like a neon sign spelling out: You Have Made A Very Grave Mistake.

You hummed. The man didn’t respond. No startled jump, no offended gasp, not even a quiet, dry “Really?” which your ex had perfected over the years. This figure stayed utterly still, pen frozen mid-stroke, as if reconsidering every life choice that had led him to this exact millisecond.

“Hellllooooo?” you ventured, voice pitching upward. “Did you hear me? Are you—”

He turned.

Not your ex-husband.

Not even close.

The man who now faced you had raven-black hair, ruffled just enough to suggest he had run a hand through it one too many times, and a scar slicing artfully through his lower lip. That scar twitched when he smiled. And he was smiling now. Slowly. As though savoring the comedy unfolding in front of him.

His eyes dropped deliberately to your hand, the guilty one, still hanging in the air like incriminating evidence. Your stomach plummeted.

Behind you erupted a sound that might as well have been a teakettle discovering its own voice. A screech. High, sharp, furious.

You turned just in time to see a redheaded woman in immaculate Valentino heels, her expression pulsing with betrayal, horror, and the type of indignation usually reserved for reality TV finales.

She pointed at you as if summoning divine judgement. “DID YOU JUST— DID YOU JUST SPANK MY EX-HUSBAND?”

Your brain scrambled for a coherent explanation but found only static. “I— well— I thought he was— he wasn’t— this is—”

The raven-haired man leaned an elbow on the desk, utterly amused. “Bold move for a stranger,” he murmured, voice slipping through the air with lazy confidence. “You always greet people this way, or am I just lucky today?”

Your soul attempted to exit your body.

“No! No, absolutely not, I— my ex-husband looks— from the back he— your posture— I’m so sorry— I didn’t mean to commit battery— or adultery-adjacent battery— I swear—”

The woman screeched again, her heel tapping the tile with the tremor of imminent chaos. “THIS is why he’s divorcing me. Spirits above, I knew it. I KNEW women were throwing themselves at him in court.”

“Technically,” the man drawled, “I was the one thrown at.”

You felt your entire existence compress into a single bead of mortification. “I’m going to walk into traffic after this,” you whispered.

“No need,” he offered lightly. “You’re already a hazard.”

You considered the nearest fire escape.

He slid the pen across the desk with one elegant movement, eyes still locked on you, something curious simmering behind the amusement. “If it helps,” he added, “that was the most interesting thing to happen to me in weeks.”

“I’m thrilled,” you deadpanned, “to have contributed to your enrichment.”

Footsteps echoed down the hall. Your real ex-husband. Of course. Now the universe wanted to be timely.

And there you were, standing in the middle of the courtroom, hand still tingling, facing the wrong man, the wrong marriage, the wrong everything, and the dangerously right smirk of someone who looked like trouble wrapped in courtroom lighting.

You swallowed hard. Your original bench, the one with medieval ergonomics, suddenly felt like a sanctuary compared to this.

You backed away a step, then two, murmuring, “I… need to go wait outside.”

He gave you a nod, the kind that made your spine hum with the knowledge you had absolutely walked onto a live landmine.

And so you retreated, cheeks burning, heart skipping, returning to your seat in the hallway to wait for your ex-husband like the universe’s most confused criminal, praying no one else in this building needed their ass smacked today.

Valentino Heels was still verbally fencing with the scar-lipped man inside the courtroom, her voice sharp enough to shear wallpaper. You watched through the open door as she stabbed the air with her manicure, berating him while he signed the last of the documents with the calm of a man who has endured chaos long enough to develop immunity. The whole exchange unfolded like a tragic opera scored by someone with a personal vendetta against your eardrums.

Meanwhile, you stood beside your own soon-to-be-ex-husband in the hallway, both of you waiting to be called in. He didn’t pry, didn’t side-eye you, didn’t even offer one of his gentle eyebrow raises that usually meant I sense nonsense brewing. He simply stood with his hands tucked into his pockets, offering you the silence of someone who knew you would explain if there were anything to explain.

Except in this case there wasn’t. Not in any universe. Because you were not going to confess to anyone — least of all your best friend — that you had smacked a random man’s ass in a court of law.

Some things deserved to be sealed inside an emotional lead box and launched into the sun.

Eventually the redhead stormed out, hair bouncing like furious flames, and the man followed at a slower, cooler pace. You refused to look at him. Not even a sideways glance. Not even a nano-second of acknowledgment.

But you could feel his attention brush against you as he walked past, a grazing flicker of recognition.

You suddenly became very interested in the wall.

Your turn came, and within minutes, signatures dried, stamps thudded, witnesses nodded. Just like that, the quiet, gentle marriage you had once stitched together with your best friend became something preserved in memory rather than law.

Outside the courtroom, you and your ex-husband stood in the wide hallway’s soft echo, both of you exhaling something bittersweet. Then he pulled you into a hug, warm and tight, like he was making sure you understood that while the labels were gone, the bond wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m proud of us,” he murmured into your hair. “We handled everything like actual adults. Who knew we had it in us?”

You snorted against his chest. “Speak for yourself. I nearly had a crisis over the stamp ink.”

He chuckled, the sound vibrating through your ribs. “You’re going to be fine. And I’m still not convinced you won’t end up texting me for help assembling your bookshelf later.”

“Of course I will,” you said, pulling back to look at him. “You know you’re still my go-to for manual labor.”

“Use me,” he said dramatically, hand over his heart. “I live to serve.”

The two of you laughed, the kind of laugh that carried history, comfort, the soft ache of transition. He squeezed your arm one last time.

“Do you want a ride home?” he asked, eyes gentle. “We can grab coffee on the way. Or something sweet. You always want something sweet after you’re stressed.”

The offer tugged at your heart, familiar and warm, but from the corner of your eye, movement caught your attention. At the far end of the hall, near the courthouse stairs, stood the man — the one whose ass your hand still remembered in vivid, humiliating detail. His posture was deceptively relaxed, lean shoulder against the railing, papers tucked under one arm.

But his gaze was elsewhere, scanning, waiting. For someone. Hopefully not for his ex-wife. Hopefully also not for you. Hopefully for… a taxi? A bird? A sudden revelation about the meaning of life?

Your pulse fluttered like a trapped moth.

You pressed your palm softly to your husband’s shoulder. “You should go ahead,” you said with a little smile. “I want to walk today. Clear my head. And I’ll text you as soon as I reach home.”

He studied you for a moment, concern flickering gently in his expression. “You sure?”

“Completely sure.”

He pulled you into a final quick hug. “Text me,” he repeated with the seriousness of a man delegating a life-or-death mission.

“I will,” you promised, waving as he walked toward the exit, turning back twice just to make sure you were alright. You gave him thumbs-ups both times to reassure him you hadn’t suddenly combusted.

Once he disappeared, you inhaled, squared your shoulders, and stared at the man by the stairs.

You could pretend you hadn’t noticed him. You could walk away, erase this day from your emotional archives, and survive.

But no. You stepped toward him instead, each footfall a tiny surrender to fate, curiosity, or possibly stupidity. Probably all three.

As you approached, the scar-lipped man shifted, raising his eyes to you with a slow awareness, a quiet “there you are” that felt like stepping too close to a bonfire.

You told yourself this wasn’t another mistake. Even though it absolutely might be.

You took the last step forward, standing in front of what could easily be your second-most catastrophic decision of the day.

He didn’t even give you a chance to properly arrange your face into something dignified before the corner of his mouth curved, that scar pulling with it like punctuation on a very rude sentence. He tilted his head, eyes dragging over your expression with a laziness that felt intentional, almost indulgent, and said, “Couldn’t say hi first?” He let the words settle, savoring them. “Most people use their voice before they use their hands.”

You felt the heat climb up your neck like someone had replaced your bloodstream with boiling embarrassment. The memory of your palm meeting the wrong ass returned with full cinematic clarity. You groaned, quietly, into the air between you. “Please don’t remind me.”

“Why not?” he murmured, a low hum of amusement threading through each syllable. “It was memorable. Not every day someone greets me like that. Might set a new standard.”

You sputtered, pointing a finger at him as if that would restore some cosmic balance. “That was a mistake.”

“Sure,” he agreed too easily, hands slipping into his pockets in a way that should have been illegal. “If that’s your story, stick to it.”

You almost choked. “What, you think I just go around smacking strangers?”

He offered a casual shrug. “I dunno. Maybe that’s your thing. Everyone’s got a thing.”

“It’s not my thing.”

“Could be,” he said, eyes glinting. “If the introduction was a little more persuasive, I might’ve filed different paperwork today.”

You blinked, stunned for a beat, then managed, “Are you always like this with people you meet mid-divorce, or am I just incredibly unlucky?”

“Unlucky?” He leaned in just enough for you to catch the faintest scent of clean cologne and trouble. “No. Special.”

Your chest fizzed like someone had cracked open a carbonated drink under your ribs. You wanted to scoff, roll your eyes, smack him again out of sheer self-defense, anything to ground yourself, because who flirts with a stranger twenty-five minutes after legally separating from their spouse?

Apparently this man. This audacious, raven-haired, scar-lipped man whose presence felt like leaning too close to an open flame.

“You don’t waste any time,” you muttered.

He nodded solemnly as if discussing weather patterns. “Fastest divorce I’ve had so far.”

“So far?” you echoed, caught between horror and laughter. “You say that like it’s a sport.”

“Might as well be,” he said with a smirk. “Wanna help me break my record?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Didn’t sound like a no.”

You stared at him in disbelief. “It literally was a no!”

“Eh.” He made a vague gesture. “Tone was flexible.”

You exhaled a laugh despite yourself, fingers brushing your forehead. “You’re insane.”

“I get that a lot.” He looked entirely too pleased with himself. “What’s your name?”

You told him. He repeated it quietly, the syllables rolling off his tongue like he was testing their weight. “Nice. Suits you. Better than ‘ass smacker.’”

“Stop bringing that up,” you whined under your breath.

“Never,” he said, far too satisfied. “It’s our origin story. Very touching.”

“That’s not what touching means—”

“Isn’t it?” He cut in again, smooth as water over stone. “Anyway,” he continued before you could throttle him, “give me your number.”

You blinked. “Why?”

“So we can recover from our divorces together,” he said as if it were the most logical conclusion in the world. “Support group. Mutual healing. All that.”

“You are not someone who does mutual healing.”

“You don’t know that yet,” he teased. “And I don’t bite unless asked.”

Your jaw dropped halfway before you recovered, straightened, and exhaled a disbelieving laugh. “You’re really weird.”

“Probably. But I’m fun.” He lifted a brow. “Number?”

You should have walked away. You absolutely should have walked away. Instead, you typed your number into his phone with a shake of your head, saying, “This is a terrible idea.”

“Most good things are,” he replied. You handed the phone back, already retreating a step, because something about him made your pulse skitter in a way you were not equipped to handle today.

“Goodbye, Toji,” you said, testing the name you had wrung out of him earlier. It fit him like a well-worn leather jacket.

“Bye?” he echoed with a lazy drawl. “Pretty optimistic. You’ll hear from me before you even get home.”

You let out a strangled laugh, turned, and walked away with the kind of giddy, buoyant feeling that only danger disguised as charm could summon. Because somehow, against all logic and every warning bell your brain possessed, you knew this wasn’t the last time you’d see Toji Fushiguro.

Maybe you hadn’t stepped on a landmine. Maybe you’d stepped on the beginning of something you weren’t ready to name yet.

But when the lights dimmed and laughter thinned and he found himself alone, the shift was brutal. He’d sit on the edge of the bed, fingers trembling as if someone had snipped his puppet strings. His breath hitched before he could stop it.

The room felt too big. His heart felt too small. He’d curl forward, elbows on knees, head bowed like he was praying to a god he’d long since stopped believing in.

“Stay with me,” he whispered into the dark, voice cracking into shards. “Please. Just… stay.”

He wasn’t speaking to memory. He was speaking to the fear that your existence was tethered to his own. That your story, your warmth, your terrible jokes that cracked him open in the best way, would be erased the moment his heart stopped.

The strongest sorcerer reduced to a trembling man bent over grief so deep it swallowed sound. The great Satoru Gojo pressing his palms to his face as tears slid through the gaps of his fingers.

If someone saw him like this, they wouldn’t recognize him. He hid nothing in battle but hid everything in grief. His shoulders rocked — not violently, but in a quiet, rhythmic surrender, like tides he could no longer command. Sometimes he pressed his forehead to the mattress because the world felt too sharp at the edges.

Sometimes he swore he smelled you beside him, faint as the memory of autumn.

“I have to live,” he choked out once, desperation turning his voice raw. “If I die… who’s left to remember you the way you deserved? Who’s left to tell them how bright you were? They’ll get it wrong. They always get it wrong.” His fists tightened like he was holding onto a rope fraying at both ends. “I can’t let you disappear.”

He lifted his head slowly, like rising through water, eyes rimmed red but burning. That was always the moment resolve slotted back into him: the vow he made quietly every night, the vow that stitched him together again.

“For you,” he murmured, wiping his face with the heel of his palm. “I’ll keep going. Even when it hurts. Even when I’m tired. I’ll outlive every damn thing that tries to take me down. Because if I’m here, then you’re here.”

He breathed in sharply, steadying. The tears didn’t vanish; they glimmered, but they no longer drowned him. He stood, straightened his shoulders, exhaled like a man preparing to step into war again.

The world outside waited for the legend of Gojo Satoru. But inside, in the quiet that only truth could survive, he lived for something smaller, fiercer, infinitely more human.

He lived for you.

𝒾𝒾. CHOSO KAMO

Choso yearned in a way that curled through his ribs like a stubborn vine, gripping tighter every time he tried to breathe without you.

The world had become a gallery of quiet reminders, each object a tiny shrine to the life you’d taught him to live.

Even toast. The cursed thing would pop from the toaster and he would still twitch, shoulders jumping as if ambushed by a trap, before his brain whispered the echo of your laugh, warm and unguarded and entirely his favorite sound.

He would stare at the slice with the kind of reverence people saved for relics, thumb brushing the golden surface while muttering, almost under his breath, “You really thought it was hilarious, didn’t you…”

And then the silence would answer him exactly the way you once had, bright and teasing in the corners.

The washing machine was worse. That whirling, hypnotic drum had called to him again and again like some forbidden portal, and every time he walked past it now he could feel your hand around his wrist, tugging it away with wide eyes and a voice pitched halfway between panic and frustration.

“Choso, do not put your hand in there while it’s running. Are you trying to lose fingers?”

You’d sounded exasperated, but he remembered the way your thumb smoothed over his knuckles afterward, the way you sighed when he apologized, the way you said, “Just… don’t scare me like that.”

The memory hit him so sharply he found himself stepping back from the machine as if it might snatch the ghost of your touch away.

Being kind. That was your lesson he failed at most often, not for lack of trying but because kindness still sat strangely on his tongue.

Yet he heard your voice each time he hesitated.

Like that boy at the bus stop last week, shoulders curled inward as two teens shoved him back and forth while people pretended not to see. Choso had stood stiffly, fists tight, mind full of the version of you who would’ve nudged him forward and whispered, “Help him. You’ll feel better for it.”

He didn’t feel better. He felt a roaring, protective heat he didn’t know how to name as he stepped between them and growled a low, “Leave him alone.” They fled quickly; people always did when Choso used that voice. The boy had managed a tiny, breathless “Thank you.”

Choso didn’t know what to do with that, so he only nodded, the word vibrating through him hours later: thank you. It sounded like something you would’ve wanted him to hear.

And the bus ride home. He’d been exhausted and half-slumped in the seat when an elderly woman stepped on, looked around, and sighed at the lack of space. Automatically, he felt the phantom nudge of your elbow against his ribs. Your voice, soft but insistent, drifted through him again.

“Get up. Let her sit. That’s basic humanity.”

He’d risen without thinking and gestured for her to take his place. She’d smiled in a way that softened the edges of the day. Choso stood for the rest of the ride, hands curled around the overhead bar, heart aching in that dull, quiet way your absence had carved into him.

How could he forget? The world wouldn’t let him. You were stitched into every habit, every instinct, every unexpected softness he had learned to practice. He found himself speaking into empty rooms as if you might answer, murmuring confessions that evaporated into the air.

“I’m trying,” he’d whisper while folding laundry because you’d taught him that too. “I’m still doing everything you told me. Even if you’re not here.”

There were nights he sat at the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands as though they might hold the imprint of your guidance. You’d shaped him. You’d steadied him. You’d asked him to live gently, and he had tried to mold himself into the shape of the human you believed he could be.

How could he forget you? He couldn’t. His life had become one long, trembling repetition of your lessons, your warmth, your voice echoing through each decision he made. You lived in him the way breath lived in lungs: unseen, constant, impossible to remove without destroying the whole structure.

Some memories fade. This one never would.

𝒾𝒾𝒾. RYOMEN SUKUNA

Sukuna learned long ago that eternity is not a gift but a slow, grinding erosion. It carves away meaning with patient teeth, steals names, softens faces into fog. Yet he still made the catastrophic choice to let you close, let the warmth of your fleeting life press against the cold sprawl of centuries inside him.

Now he sits with the consequences like a blade under his tongue, tasting metal every time your name gets stuck in his throat.

Nights are when it hits him hardest. The world outside has gone dark, but his chambers burn with dim lanternlight that casts uneven shadows across his skin. He sits on the edge of the futon as if afraid he’ll sink through it, elbows braced on his knees, palms pressed against his eyes.

He tries to gather the fragments of you like a man scooping water with bare hands, only to watch it spill through his fingers. The shape of your face drifts, losing definition. The texture of your laugh thins. Even your scent, once etched into him like a brand, wavers at the edges.

“Pathetic,” he mutters into the silence, though his voice carries no heat. The word curls in the air like smoke, accusing him more than anything else. “Can’t even hold on to a single mortal.”

He drags a breath in, sharp and cold. Your voice slips through him then, sudden and unbidden, so clear it cracks him open.

Ryo.

Not screamed. Not whispered. Just you calling for him, the way you did when you wanted something only he could give. That sound never fades. Everything else frays, but that? That clings like a curse he didn’t cast.

He clenches his jaw. The lantern beside him flickers, responding to the tension coiling in his chest, a small storm looking for somewhere to break. He remembers your hand at his wrist, guiding him toward your cheek; remembers his own hesitation, an odd stutter in a man who could split mountains without blinking. But your face in that memory is starting to blur, losing its edges the way snow melts from a sculpture.

He growls. “No. No, damn it, I’m not losing that.”

His fist slams down beside him, rattling the wooden floorboards. The vibration jolts something loose in him, a bitter, restless energy. He rises, pacing the length of the room as if movement will anchor something in place. Each step is heavy, deliberate, like he’s walking through the graveyard of his own memories.

“Why did I let you in?” he asks the empty air, though he already knows the answer. Because you were bold enough to look at him as if he were not a monster. Because you spoke to him like a man and not a disaster. Because you touched him without flinching.

Because you called his name as if it belonged to you.

He stops pacing. His breath leaves him in a long, controlled exhale, but it trembles right at the end, the way a cracked cup trembles before it breaks.

“Say it again,” he whispers, voice stripped down to bone. “Just once more.”

Silence pools around him, slow and merciless. But memory obeys. It always obeys. Through the hollow ache, your voice unfurls, soft and steady.

Ryo… come here.

His eyes close. His throat tightens.

He stands motionless in the middle of the room, every part of him dragged backward into that echo, into the warmth of a moment he can’t fully see anymore but can still feel like a pulse under his skin. The yearning moves through him with the heavy insistence of a tide, eroding, reshaping, refusing to leave him untouched.

He knows he will forget again. Soon, maybe. The world will keep turning, and centuries will keep sanding you down until even your shadow dissolves.

But the way you called for him remains. A quiet, merciless truth carved into the immortal who never thought he could be left wanting.

He breathes your echo in and lets it hurt.

𝒾𝓋. SUGURU GETO

Suguru moved through grief like a storm trapped in a man’s body, each step a low-throated curse stitched into the air as if language alone could keep him from collapsing.

His hands were never still. They dragged through his hair, gripped the edge of a desk until the wood groaned, twisted the prayer beads he no longer believed in. The world around him felt brittle, like a temple left half-burned, its ashes drifting over his shoulders whenever he exhaled.

He muttered your name again, not tenderly but like it was a blade he insisted on running across his tongue. “If you had just listened…” His voice broke, unfurling into a laugh too sharp to be sane. “If you had just come with me.”

The laugh dissolved. His eyes snapped shut as if sight itself betrayed him. The emptiness that followed your absence echoed with its own heartbeat.

He paced, circling the room as though retracing the moment he lost you would conjure you back. Shadows stretched with him, long and thin, cradling the weight of a man who had learned too late that righteousness could be both beautiful and devastating. You were stubborn and upright, carved from the kind of conviction he used to admire when the world still felt salvageable.

He loved you for it. That love hollowed him now.

He dragged a hand across his face. “Why couldn’t you just choose me…?” The question slipped out, raw and trembling.

He didn’t expect an answer. The echo bounced back at him anyway, cruel in its silence.

Memories flashed like lanterns along a dark road.

You, standing in front of him with your jaw set.

You, refusing to step over the line that would have bound you to him.

You, turning away even though your hands shook.

He remembered wanting to grab your wrist, to pull you back, to say something reckless and selfish and unforgivable. But all he did was watch his future walk away on legs steadier than his own.

Now the waiting crawled into his bones. He sat. He stood. He walked again. Something in him kept reaching toward a horizon that refused to grow closer.

Maybe he was waiting for the world to change. Maybe for you to return. Maybe for the version of himself who hadn’t yet been ruined by hope.

He rested his forehead against the cold wall, eyes half-lidded, breath fogging against stone. “What am I waiting for…?” he whispered into the quiet. The words felt heavier than curses, heavier than regret. His pulse throbbed at his temples, slow and insistent, like a distant drum asking him to move forward even as he remained shackled to the past.

He didn’t know anymore. The truth sat in his chest, stagnant and aching.

Maybe he was waiting for the universe to give him a miracle. Maybe he was waiting for you to stop being right. Maybe he was waiting for someone to blame other than himself.

But the reality pressed into him, cold and familiar: he was waiting because it hurt less than accepting that you were gone. Waiting let him pretend there was still a path leading back to you.

He straightened, shoulders taut, breaths steady but thin. His voice emerged once more, softer, stripped of anger like rain carving dust from stone.

“If there’s another life… find me first.”

Then the room swallowed his stillness again, leaving him alone with the sound of his own heartbeat and the quiet, relentless ache of a man who keeps waiting because he cannot bear to stop.

𝓋. NANAMI KENTO

Nanami yearned quietly, in that way a house yearns for footsteps after too many empty evenings.

Nothing loud. Nothing cinematic. Just the soft ache of a man who once built a routine around someone and hasn’t figured out how to disassemble it without dismantling himself in the process.

The oddest part was how natural it still felt to move through his home as if you occupied it. As if time had politely paused on your behalf.

He didn’t fight the instinct. He couldn’t. Some mornings his body simply carried him before his mind arrived, and he’d catch himself smoothing the wrinkles on your side of the bed. He’d pinch the edge of your pillow and fluff it once, twice, as though you were in the bathroom brushing your teeth and would come out any moment complaining that he’d made it uneven again.

Quietly he’d murmur into the empty air, sounding almost embarrassed at himself. “You always liked it softer.” His knuckles would still, hovering a millimeter above the fabric, as if touching it too harshly might erase the last place your head had rested.

In the kitchen he behaved like a man on autopilot. Two plates down on the table, not one. Forks placed side by side, then pushed a little to the left because you always said he set them too straight and it looked like a formal dinner instead of breakfast. The chair across from him remained pulled out at that exact angle you used to leave it in, crooked like a grin.

Once he sat, he’d stare at your empty plate longer than the food cooling in front of him. Sometimes he’d whisper, low as a confession, “I’m not forgetting. Don’t worry.”

The chips were the cruelest ritual. That oily brand you insisted was the peak of culinary innovation despite being, in his words, “an insult to potatoes everywhere.” He’d restock it automatically, bag after bag stacked in the pantry, the corner of each one pressed down the way you liked so they wouldn’t puff and fall.

He used to tease you for it. Now he mimicked it without thinking, fingers precise, almost reverent.

The day he opened one was the day he cracked. He’d torn the plastic with a clean snap of his thumb, intending only to tidy the shelves, but the smell hit him. That artificial spice, the cheap salt, the faint sting that clung to your fingertips whenever you’d steal some and smudge the dust on his cheek just to annoy him.

He froze. Then he laughed, short and breathless, the kind of sound that collapses in on itself. “It really does taste awful,” he muttered, voice wobbling as he chewed mechanically. And then he realized he wasn’t tasting chips. He was tasting memory.

Looking around, he found the house crowded with you. Your favorite flowers in the vase, still replaced every week because he couldn’t stand watching them wilt. Your mug by the dish rack, its chipped handle stubbornly refusing to break just like you always joked. The jacket you left by the door, which he couldn’t bring himself to move because its weight looked right there. You were everywhere, woven into the fabric of his routines so thoroughly that removing any one thread felt like it would unravel the whole man.

The grief wasn’t a storm anymore. It didn’t drown him. It lived beside him, quiet as a roommate who knew where all the creaky floorboards were. And maybe that was why, when he stood in the dim light of the hallway before bed, his hand brushing the switch, he paused and spoke aloud. Not loudly. Not hoping for a reply. Just offering a truth into the space you once shared.

“I’m learning,” he said. “I’m still here. And… it’s okay if I miss you.”

He slid into bed, turned toward your untouched pillow, and let the ache settle where you used to sleep. It wasn’t letting go. It was letting grief sit long enough to soften into something bearable. Something human. Something that allowed him, finally, to breathe without feeling disloyal.

Maybe it was okay to grieve. And maybe, in the quiet of his small nightly rituals, he finally understood that grief wasn’t a failure to move on. It was proof that he had loved deeply, and that love still lived in the spaces you left behind.

𝓋𝒾. TOJI FUSHIGURO

Toji moved through the world like a storm that had forgotten what peace felt like.

He didn’t name the ache in his chest because acknowledging it would have meant admitting you had mattered, and Toji Fushiguro didn’t do tender things like mattering. Yet there he was, strangling the ghost of your memory every night, only to find it curled around his ribs again each morning, stubborn as ivy.

Your absence rewired him. It bent his instincts, carved new rituals into his bones. He’d slit a curse across the jaw and mutter your name under his breath, as if dedicating the violence could summon you back. He’d win a stacked hand at the gambling table, chips clattering into his palm like tiny trophies, and whisper something only he could hear.

The dealer once asked what he said. Toji didn’t bother looking up. “A prayer,” he answered, tone flat, eyes dead. “For someone who ain’t here to hear it.”

But that strange devotion never softened him. It weaponized him. Losing you didn’t slow him down; it sharpened him to a blade that cut everything it touched, including whatever was left of his heart.

Tonight was one of those nights the ache rose like a tide. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was the rain. You used to complain about it, calling it moody background music that never asked permission. Toji had laughed at you once, saying rain wasn’t capable of mood. Now he walked through it like it was punishing him for mocking you.

He stalked a curse through a half-collapsed warehouse, jaw tight, fingers twitching toward his weapon. Every drip of rain through the ceiling felt like the world tapping at his shoulder, reminding him he was alone.

He didn’t like reminders.

The curse lunged. Toji welcomed it. Violence was the only language he had left that didn’t lie.

Steel flashed. Flesh tore. The creature shrieked something guttural that bounced against the concrete walls like breaking glass. Toji pinned it with his boot, leaned down, voice low and terrifyingly calm.

“This one’s for her,” he said, and tore through its throat. He didn’t need to say your name. It lived in the hollow of his chest anyway.

Warm blood hit his forearm, yet he didn’t flinch. He rolled his shoulders, breathing hard, face tightening with something too raw to be anger but too vicious to be grief. The curse dissolved into dust at his feet.

He stood there, chest rising and falling, letting the silence press against him.

No applause. No warmth. No you.

And the ache — persistent, diseased, hungry — gnawed again.

“To hell with this,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “Why’s it still hurt? You ain’t here. You're not comin’ back.” His voice cracked halfway through, rough and unfamiliar. Emotion was a thing he hunted, not something that ambushed him.

But the ache didn’t care.

He kicked aside a piece of debris and strode out of the warehouse, rain slicing across his skin like cold confessions. The world felt colder without you. The kills didn’t warm him. The wins didn’t thrill him. Nothing soothed that strange, festering devotion except the brief second where something died beneath his hand and he could lie to himself that it was enough.

“That one was for you,” he murmured again into the night, knowing the sky wasn’t listening.

And still he kept walking, kept hunting, kept killing — because every time he whispered your name, even drenched in blood and rage, it was the closest he could get to feeling like you hadn’t slipped out of his life and left him hollow.

Everything he did was still in your name. It always would be.

Now, with his hood pulled so low it practically sheltered him from divine judgment, he looked like any other hungover college student trying not to spontaneously combust in the sunlight. His throat tasted like regret. His brain felt like someone had conducted a drumline rehearsal in it. And the worst part? Every second person he passed carried a coffee cup, which felt like a personal attack. Survival wasn’t a want anymore; it was an urgent necessity, a mission.

And if anyone asked him to run drills today, he would simply perish on the spot.

At first, everything was going according to your very normal, very chaotic morning routine: spot your friend Haru, stride over with the confidence of someone who believes in physical comedy as a love language, and greet him with a well-aimed smack to the ass.

Nothing unusual. Just collegiate affection at its finest. Your hand even tingled in anticipation, already picturing the way Haru would yelp like a distressed puppy and spin around to call you a menace.

Except fate, destiny, and poor spatial awareness had other plans for you, because the person walking ahead of you — hood up, shoulders hunched, aura radiating hangover misery — was not Haru. But you didn’t know that. Not until your hand connected with a strangely firm, sculpted, downright Olympian ass.

And not just any Olympian ass. No, of course not. It had to be Gojo Satoru’s.

The smack! echoed enough for a couple of pigeons to reconsider their life choices. Your palm met muscle that basketball players would write poetry about. And instead of Haru’s offended squawk, there was the kind of stillness that could make gods nervous. A silence so grave your soul performed a perfect front-flip out of your body and onto the pavement.

Slowly, painfully, as though every molecule in the universe had turned to molasses, you lifted your gaze. And there he was.

Gojo Satoru. Star player. Campus legend. Living hangover.

Hoodie criminal.

Staring at you with wide, groggy, ice-blue eyes that were really trying to process what the hell had just happened.

He blinked. You gulped. The quad kept moving like none of this was happening. You tried to speak, but your tongue had turned into a dead USB cable.

“I — I thought— that was Haru — I swear I don’t usually— I mean I don’t— that wasn’t— that was— oh god.”

He just kept staring. Not angry. Not offended. Mostly just… buffering. Like the hangover had delayed his ability to respond to assaults on his rear.

Finally, in a voice so raspy it sounded illegal, he muttered, “That… was you?”

You nodded so fast your neck nearly snapped.

He scrunched his nose, trying to wake up. “And you just… went for it? At eight in the morning?”

You wanted the earth to swallow you whole. “I thought you were my friend!”

Gojo blinked again, slower this time, like your words were sinking through layers of headache. Then — and this was somehow worse — his mouth curled into the faintest, sleepiest, most dangerously amused smirk.

“Damn,” he mumbled, half a compliment, half a dazed observation, “You’ve got a killer grip.”

Your soul left for the afterlife. Your knees nearly followed. And Gojo, still hungover, still in that stupid hoodie, shrugged like someone who had accepted all forms of chaos as part of his morning.

“Next time,” he added, rubbing his lower back with a grimace, “Give me a warning. Or a coffee first.”

You made a noise that wasn’t even human. He raised an eyebrow. “Unless you just… go around slapping asses before breakfast?”

“No!” you squeaked, horrified, “I — it was— you weren’t— Haru—”

“Hey,” he murmured, tugging the hood lower as if shielding his headache from your panic, “Relax. I’m too hungover to be mad. Also too hungover to understand what’s happening.”

You covered your face with both hands, wishing for immediate reincarnation.

Gojo didn’t even look fully conscious. He stood there blinking at you like someone had unplugged him mid-sentence, blue eyes squinting as if you were a particularly difficult math problem. Then his head tilted, the gears in his hungover brain grinding painfully into motion, and he leaned in just a little, studying your face with this unfocused curiosity that almost made you feel bad for him. Almost.

“Wait… have we met before?” he murmured, voice low and gravelly, like he’d been chewing sandpaper.

Your panic flared again because of course he didn’t remember you — not that there was anything to remember. You weren’t the girl who danced on tables at his parties. You weren’t the girl who got front-row seats to his games. You were simply the girl who had just slapped his ass with enough enthusiasm to leave a lasting impression on the school timeline. So you cleared your throat, fighting the urge to evaporate.

“Uh, no,” you said quickly, “I mean— not really. But you might know my sister? Aisha?”

It was like you’d uttered a forbidden incantation. Gojo went visibly still, processing the name, and then a flicker of recognition drifted across his features — the kind that said oh no, that one. Aisha, captain of the cheerleading squad. Aisha, campus sweetheart with claws. Aisha, who had made it her life’s ambition to hop on Gojo Satoru’s… yeah. You cut the thought off before your brain screamed loud enough for him to hear it.

“Aisha,” he repeated slowly. “Cheer captain Aisha?”

You nodded, grimacing. “Yep. That one.”

He let out a soft, tortured groan — the kind of sound only someone being aggressively chased by your sister for two semesters straight would make. “Oh god,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead, “Does she know you’re out here assaulting people?”

Your soul tried to flee your body again. “I wasn’t— it wasn’t— I swear I wasn’t assaulting anyone!”

He smirked. “My ass says otherwise.”

You wanted death by lightning immediately.

Trying to regain an ounce of dignity, you exhaled and muttered under your breath, “You look like shit, by the way.”

There were many possible outcomes. He could’ve rolled his eyes. He could’ve snapped. He could’ve sent you straight into social exile.

Instead, Gojo Satoru — hungover, hoodie-clad, campus icon — threw his head back and laughed. Loud, bright, uncomplicated, and so sudden people walking past turned to look.

“Okay,” he said between laughs, “you’re honest. I needed that.”

Your brain short-circuited. You made the campus star laugh. The one who once told a reporter he didn’t even laugh at brain-rot because he was “built different.” This was not reality. Reality had left the building ten minutes ago.

As he stepped back, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket, he gave you a once-over that wasn’t flirty so much as intrigued — the way someone looks at a puzzle piece that definitely belongs somewhere but not where they expected.

“Alright,” he said casually, turning to leave, “here’s the deal.”

Your heart stopped. Deals were rarely good.

He glanced over his shoulder at you, a lazy grin pulling at his lips. “Next time you wanna smack my ass? You buy me dinner first.”

You blinked. “What—”

“Tonight,” he added, walking backwards with that same unfair smirk, “Seven. I’ll send you the place.”

Your soul screamed.

“It’s a date, then?”

You opened your mouth. Nothing came out. He winked — actual wink, as if he hadn’t been a walking corpse five minutes ago — and then turned around, strolling off like you hadn’t just accidentally secured a date with the most sought-after man on campus.

Haru jogged up behind you with all the subtlety of a golden retriever on sugar, completely oblivious to the emotional earthquake you were still recovering from. You were frozen in place, staring into the void, replaying the last five minutes like your brain was stuck on a cursed highlight reel. Your heart was in your throat, your dignity was in the gutter, and your soul was still packing its bags, preparing to relocate permanently.

Haru skidded to a stop beside you. “Yo! Why’re you standing like you just saw the ghost of midterms past? Also—” he turned around dramatically, hands on his hips, “no ass smack today? You good? My butt is right here. Available. Un-slapped. This is discrimination.”

You blinked at him, mouth opening, closing, opening again like a fish trying to explain taxes. “No. Absolutely not. The quota is done,” you mumbled, rubbing your forehead like you had seen horrors.

Haru squinted. “Quota? What quota? Since when do you have a limit on violence?”

“Since today,” you said quickly, maybe too quickly, definitely too traumatically. “It’s… a new policy.”

“Huh. Weird,” he shrugged, then leaned in suspiciously. “Wait, did you slap the wrong ass again? Is that what this is? Who’d you hit? Was it that one guy from the robotics club? The one built like a toothpick? Please tell me—”

“Nope!” you cut him off so fast he physically jumped. “No questions. No answers. No discussion.”

Haru stared at you, baffled. “You’re acting shady as hell.”

You nodded solemnly. “I am shady as hell.”

Because there was no universe — none — where you were going to admit that you had slapped Gojo Satoru’s absurdly sculpted ass, survived it, got complimented for your grip strength, roasted him to his face, made him laugh, and accidentally landed a date with him at seven tonight. You were taking that to the grave until further notice. Let the world wonder. Let the timeline remain untainted. Let your pride stay intact for at least one more hour.

Haru opened his mouth again. “So really… no ass smack?”

You refused to answer — because between Gojo’s stupid hoodie, his stupid wink, and the stupid date looming over your head like a falling piano, you needed at least one secret to yourself before your entire life collapsed into rom-com chaos.

𝒾𝒾. CHOSO KAMO

It starts, as all good things do, with a studious friend like Utahime — the kind of girl who color-codes her notes, highlights her highlights, and somehow hears academic gossip before the professors themselves do.

In some manner, in God’s holy land, she has learned that Modern Day Japanese History 101, her pride, her passion, her personal battleground, is getting an assistant lecturer. And, naturally, as the modern saying goes: can’t get into the lecturer’s good books? Try the assistant instead. Utahime had said it with a straight face, too — as if networking her way into intellectual heaven was simply part of her daily schedule.

Punctual as ever, she announced she would meet him at 2 p.m., win him over with her wit and enthusiasm by 2:20, and then swing by to submit her thesis and meet you at 2:30 like the academic machine she claims to be.

You didn’t question it; this is the same girl who once finished a three-day assignment in five hours because “the stars were aligned.”

But now it’s 2:35. The sun has shifted. The hallway is quiet.

And there is no Utahime in sight.

You check your phone, refresh your messages, even glance around for the faint scent of lavender spray she bathes in during exam season. Nothing. Not a shadow, not a whine, not even her signature irritated huff carried through the air.

That’s when your stomach drops with the kind of anxious thud reserved for forgotten deadlines and suspiciously long silences from friends known for punctuality.

So what do you do? Obviously, you sprint — or something between a sprint and the chaotic half-run of someone pretending they’re not panicking — straight to the aforementioned classroom. You don’t even knock; you slide through the doorframe like a rodent on a mission, breath uneven, heart pounding, mind already conjuring images of Utahime debating a man twice her age about the socio-political structure of post-Edo Japan.

Instead, you find someone leaning casually against the desk. Back facing you. Posture relaxed. Completely absorbed in whatever they’re reading. The soft rustle of paper fills the room, and the afternoon light cuts a halo around their silhouette. You freeze in the doorway for barely half a second — because that’s honestly all the time it takes for your brain to make a very confident, very stupid assumption.

Your first instinct?

Smack their ass.

Perhaps it’s the stress. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline. Perhaps it’s the fact that you and Utahime communicate through physical violence more often than through words. But whatever the reason, your hand is already in motion before your rational mind can scream at you to stop.

The contact is loud. Sharper than intended. Echoing off the classroom walls with the sort of crisp finality that splits your soul into fragments.

And your last sight before your spirit attempts to leave your body entirely? The person turning around — slowly, deliberately — and absolutely, one-hundred-percent NOT being Utahime.

Your breath stutters. Your hands go clammy. Every ancestor you’ve ever had collectively groans. Because the man facing you now is not only unfamiliar, but stupidly, devastatingly handsome in that “should not be allowed near undergrads” kind of way. His expression shifts from confusion to mild offense to something dangerously close to amusement, like he’s debating whether to scold you or laugh.

And in that suspended, horrifying, eternal moment, you experience true enlightenment — the realization that Utahime’s absence was not the problem. Your actions were.

And now you must face the consequences.

Before you can even beat the man in front of you to an explanation — because yes, he is devastatingly handsome up close, with chocolate-brown eyes and hair just long enough to violate every written and unwritten men’s hairstyle code — he beats you to speaking. He looks at you not with anger, but with the calm certainty of a man who has already accepted that life is absurd.

“You,” he says, tone flat and factual, “are not Miss Iori.”

You blink. “And YOU are not Utahime!”

He pauses, squints at you just slightly, like he’s examining a peculiar species of bird that’s flown indoors. “Pray tell,” he asks dryly, “in what world do you confuse me with an undergraduate female student?”

You can feel tears threatening — not of sadness, but of pure humiliation. “What did you do to her?” you demand, voice cracking like you’re in a badly acted crime drama. “Where is Utahime? She was supposed to meet the assistant lecturer!”

The man straightens, sets his papers down with a quiet, horrifically professional tap, and then clears his throat like he’s about to begin a speech — an actual speech. And then he does.

“Choso Kamo,” he says. “PhD. Assistant Lecturer for Modern Day Japanese History 101. Former visiting researcher at Kyoto University. Thesis focus on post-Meiji societal transitions, specifically the intersection between family structure and political identity — published, peer-reviewed, and referenced in three undergraduate textbooks, although only one of them has the correct page citation.”

You stare. He continues.

“Prior academic affiliations include guest lectureships, mentorship roles, departmental student advisory boards, and a short-lived position as campus safety marshal that I relinquished after an unfortunate incident with a fire extinguisher.” He gestures vaguely. “Not my fault. Miscommunication.”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. He continues anyway.

“I am also” —he lifts a finger like he’s marking bullet points in the air — “certified in workplace conflict resolution, despite never having witnessed a functional resolution in my department. I am punctual, approachable, and generally kind, although my family disagrees. I grade fairly. I do not tolerate plagiarism. And I have never, at any point in my life or career, been confused for an undergraduate female student."

You stare at him. Your brain has stopped, rebooted, and is now running on emergency lighting. He tilts his head, genuinely puzzled.

“Although,” he adds, “this is not the first time someone has introduced themselves to me with… physical enthusiasm?”

“Physical—” You nearly choke on air. “I DIDN’T INTRODUCE ANYTHING — I THOUGHT YOU WERE UTAHIME!”

“Ah,” he says, nodding slowly, as if that explains everything. “Does Miss Iori often greet you with… that level of force?”

You slap a hand over your face, muffling a noise that is somewhere between a groan and a prayer for death. “She— I — we— that’s not the POINT—”

“If it helps,” he offers, thoughtfully, “I have sustained no permanent damage.”

“That does not help!”

He hums mildly, like he’s checking off items on a clipboard only he can see. “I suppose I should ask what, precisely, made you believe she was in danger?”

“I don’t know!” you half-yell. “She was supposed to be here at 2:20! It’s 2:35! She NEVER misses her own deadlines! Something had to have gone wrong!”

Choso considers this seriously. “Hmm. Unlikely she has been kidnapped between the main hall and this classroom.”

“You don’t KNOW that!”

“I do,” he says calmly. “I walked past her five minutes ago. She was arguing with a vending machine.”

Your soul re-enters your body violently.

He continues, completely unfazed: “She appeared unharmed. Very determined. In fact, she threatened the machine with legal action.”

You drop your face into your hands again.

And then, with the same tone one might use to announce the weather, he adds, “Also, for future reference, if you intend to greet me physically, please allow me enough time to turn around.”

You nearly scream as he looks at you expectantly. Not judgmentally. Not impatiently. Just… expectantly. As though this is the natural rhythm of all human interaction: he gives a TED Talk, you give yours.

“So,” he says, folding his arms lightly, “may I have your introduction as well?”

You blink. “My… what?”

“Your introduction,” he repeats, nodding. “Academic background, relevant qualifications, notable publications, institutional affiliations. Or,” he adds after a thoughtful pause, “whatever form of self-presentation you prefer.”

You stare at him. His résumé had been so long it practically summoned an audience, and now he wants yours? The only published document you’ve ever produced is a fanfic comment thread and a two-page lab report you still don’t understand.

“Well,” you say, clearing your throat. “I don’t really have— you know— anything like that.”

Choso tilts his head. “Like what?”

“Like… a dissertation. Or a fellowship. Or a fire-extinguisher incident.”

He waits.

You panic.

“So,” you blurt, “I like reading romance novels, making midnight cookies even when I swear I won’t, going on spontaneous shopping trips, and— uh— I’m Utahime’s best friend. That’s my most important job.”

Silence. A very heavy silence. Then Choso nods, once, as if processing the data packet you’ve just thrown at his brain.

“That is…” he begins.

You brace yourself.

“…remarkably straightforward.”

“Is that good?” you ask.

He considers this. “It is… different.”

You have no idea what that means, but his mouth twitches — just slightly, just enough to betray that he’s amused. Or impressed. Or both. It’s hard to tell when his default expression looks like he’s perpetually grading someone’s essay.

“Anyway,” he says, smoothing the paper on his desk and returning to that maddeningly calm tone, “I recommend you go look for Miss Iori. She was extremely committed to acquiring a bottle of green tea from the vending machine. I fear the battle may have escalated.”

“Oh my God,” you mutter, already backing toward the door. “Right. Yes. I should— I should definitely go do that.”

“Indeed.”

“And— and thank you! And sorry! I mean— both! But also—”

“You may simply say ‘thank you,’” he says gently. “And you may also stop calling me ‘sir.’ I am not the president.”

You splutter. “I didn’t call you sir!”

“You said it with your tone,” he replies dryly.

“No I didn’t!”

“It was implied.”

You gape at him, because unfortunately, he is right. His résumé had been so intimidating that your soul had instinctively saluted him.

“I— okay, well— thank you. Professor. Doctor? Assistant Lecturer? Uh—”

“Choso is fine,” he says.

“Right. Choso. Welcome to campus!”

And then you flee. You’re halfway down the hall before you realize you forgot to call him sir. And honestly? After hearing that résumé, calling him anything less than sir feels like a political crime.

Behind you, just barely out of earshot, Choso lets out a small, startled laugh — light, boyish, completely at odds with the stiff academic persona he’d been wearing like a pressed suit. It escapes him before he can stop it.

Then he clears his throat, straightens his papers, and mutters to himself, “Professional. You are a professional. Stop laughing.”

By the time Utahime drags you home ranting about the vending machine’s “disrespect,” Choso Kamo, PhD, Assistant Lecturer, Campus Legend In The Making, has already slipped back into full lecturer mode — calm, severe, and misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t witness the crack in that façade you accidentally smacked into existence.

But he’s still smiling faintly, just enough for someone walking in five seconds too early to catch it and wonder why the new assistant lecturer looks like someone just tapped him on the shoulder and handed him joy.

𝒾𝒾𝒾. RYOMEN SUKUNA

It starts, as all your most rational financial decisions do, with you storming into the only game store in a ten-kilometer radius that hasn’t yet banned you for verbal assault.

You had texted the wiry-looking bisexual employee — the only man on earth you acknowledged as a functional human being — with strict instructions to keep aside your newly released CD of The Time I Got Reincarnated As The Princess Of This World But My Brother Also Reincarnated And Is My Husband. It was the kind of title that weeded out the weak, the straight, and the insecure, so naturally it was your magnum opus.

You didn’t even look up from your screen as you shoved the glass door open with enough force to trigger lawsuits. Your peripheral vision caught a shape loitering by the new releases shelf.

Tall. Broad. Definitely male, which meant definitely useless. But if he was smacking his ass like that, he had to be your bisexual. That was his mating call for your attention — one smack for hello bestie, two smacks for your game is here, three smacks for this straight man just asked me where the Pokémon cards are and I want to die.

So, naturally, you walked right up behind him and slapped his ass.

Not tapped. Slapped. A full-palmed, god-bless-the-callouses-on-your-hand whack meant for the only tolerable man alive.

Except the man who whirled around wasn’t him.

Nope. Absolutely not. This one had a nametag. A shiny, recently laminated one.

Ryomen Sukuna.

And worse: he was gorgeous.

Not in the normal way, where men think being over six feet is a personality. More like… the kind of gorgeous that made you recoil because it meant he probably expected social interaction. Or eye contact. Or for you to be a real human being. Your spine locked up like Windows XP facing its seventh malware pop-up of the morning.

He stared at you. You stared at the exit. Your soul left your body to go start a new life somewhere with fewer men.

His expression didn’t even change. He just waited. Completely silent. Like a badly coded NPC waiting for the dialogue prompt to load.

Your mouth went dry with pure, distilled femcel fury.

“Why aren’t you bisexual?” you blurted.

His eyebrow twitched. Not raised — twitched. The first sign that there was, in fact, a living creature behind the pretty face fogging up your day.

You crossed your arms defensively, shoulders hunched, chin dipped the way you did when surrounded by testosterone. “You’re not supposed to be here. Where’s the other guy? The — the one that looks like he drinks iced Americanos to forget his dating history?”

Sukuna blinked once. Again, no talking. Just watching you meltdown in real time like you were his morning entertainment.

God, even his silence felt misogynistic.

“I asked him to keep something aside for me,” you snapped, scrunching your nose like existing near him was giving you hives. “So unless you know where he put my game, don’t just stand there.”

His jaw flexed — annoyed, maybe. Or confused. Hard to tell with men; they only have three emotions, and all of them are inconvenient.

Finally, finally, he spoke. His voice was low, unenthusiastic, like he’d been asked to read SAT passages aloud.

“What game.”

Not even a question mark at the end. Just full deadpan resignation.

“The Time I Got Reincarnated As The Princess—”

He cut you off with a look so flat you felt your browser crash internally. You glared back, arms tightening. “Don’t judge me. At least I have interests that aren’t protein shakes and refusing therapy.”

His lip curled in something too unimpressed to be a smile. “Didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” you muttered, shifting your weight like you were about to curl into yourself like a potato bug.

He held out a hand — presumably to take the name or go check. But you recoiled like he’d tried to hand you a raw fish.

“Don’t touch me. I don’t like men.”

“You just slapped my ass.”

“That doesn’t count,” you hissed. “That was meant for a bisexual.”

He stared again. Long. Tortured. Regretting every life choice that led him to this job, this shelf, this moment with you. And yet, under the stiff annoyance, something about him screamed begrudging loser too. The way he stood slightly hunched like he hoped people wouldn’t talk to him. The way he looked like he’d rather fight a tax audit than maintain small talk. The way his eyes kept darting away like he, too, wanted to pretend social interaction was optional DLC.

A social disaster. A beauty wasted on a man who didn’t want to be perceived.

Your natural enemy.

Your natural equal.

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll check the back.”

You muttered under your breath, “Finally, a man doing something useful.”

He definitely heard it. And he definitely paused, shoulders tightening for half a second. But he didn’t turn. Or snap. Or quit on the spot.

Which was, objectively, the most attractive thing a man had ever done in your presence.

Sukuna returned exactly the way you assumed he lived his entire life: walking like an inconvenienced NPC forced to complete a side quest he never asked for, holding your game CD like it was both fragile and personally offensive. The pristine packaging glinted under the fluorescent lights — no dents, no scratches, not a single fingerprint.

Honestly? It was the cleanest object a man had ever handed you. You hated how impressive that was.

He set it on the counter gently, like he was wary you’d bite if he made a sudden movement. You grabbed it with both hands, clutching it to your chest like the holy scriptures. “Finally. God. Took you long enough.”

“It was right in front,” he said flatly.

“Well maybe it was hiding from you,” you snapped, already rummaging through your bag for your wallet — or rather, the wallet containing your father’s card. Not that you would ever acknowledge such a thing. You swiped open the worn leather like it personally disgusted you. “Just ring it up.”

He tapped something into the system with meticulous precision, fingers long, movements calm, posture still radiating that energy of a man who regularly unplugged his router to avoid talking to his roommates. Then — mid-transaction — he halted.

“There’s extra merch.”

“…What.”

“With this edition,” he clarified, not looking up. “There’s a standee. And a bonus soundtrack disc.”

You stared at him, expression flattening into pure femcel betrayal. “Since when do CDs come with extra merch? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why am I finding out like this? Do I look like someone who enjoys being humiliated publicly?”

He blinked, slowly, as though rebooting.

“…Do you want it or not.”

“Obviously I want it,” you snapped, crossing your arms so aggressively your elbows cracked. “Go get it. Why would you even ask? Go. Fetch.”

He gave you a look. Not annoyed — just deeply tired. A man who had lived thirty lifetimes in the last seven minutes. But he turned around anyway, trudging to the back room like someone being led to the gallows.

You waited at the counter, foot tapping, scowling at nothing in particular except all men ever born.

He returned with a neatly packed bundle: the standee still wrapped in thin plastic, the bonus disc in its own shiny case, a folded promotional booklet you didn’t even know existed. He set them down with the delicacy of someone aware women like you were capable of biting.

You lifted the standee with awe you would never show on your face. “They made a standee of the brother? That’s so camp.”

“It came with it,” he muttered, already pulling out wrapping paper — actual wrapping paper — like this was an Apple store and you were the Queen of England.

You narrowed your eyes. “Why are you wrapping it.”

“You’re buying it.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

He paused, a tiny flicker of irritation crossing his face before dying instantly under the weight of his social awkwardness.

“…Because people complain when we don’t.”

“People complain because you’re men,” you shot back automatically.

He didn’t even argue. Just wrapped your items with slow, careful precision, creasing the edges neatly, tucking the corners in with the concentration of a man defusing a bomb. You watched, arms crossed but gaze suspiciously softening.

“You’re weirdly good at that,” you said.

“Okay.”

“No, like — for a guy? That’s abnormal. Are you hiding a girlfriend in the back or something? Some domesticated creature training you?”

He looked genuinely offended. “No.”

“You sound defensive.”

“I’m just wrapping something.”

“Well you’re doing it like someone who has… I don’t know… skill.”

He huffed, faintly. “I’ve worked here two weeks.”

“Two weeks is enough to learn how to disappoint women,” you muttered.

He froze before resuming to wrap it faster.

When he finished, he placed the bundle in a branded bag and slid it across the counter. You made sure not to touch his fingers — not because you were scared, of course, but because men had cooties and emotional negligence.

As the receipt printed, Sukuna handed it to you. “Here.”

You took it without looking, too busy staring at him now that you could do it without him noticing. The stupid pufferfish cheeks. The stupid pretty face. The stupid social loser aura vibrating off him like gamer funk but emotionally.

Maybe it was because he’d been patient with you — something most men failed at within seconds. Maybe it was because he hadn’t spoken over you, or laughed, or tried to correct you, or called security.

Maybe it was because he wrapped your merch like he actually cared about a job paying $12 an hour.

Your stomach swirled. Disgusting.

You grimaced. “Ugh. I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He blinked, alarmed for the first time. “What did I do.”

“Nothing,” you said quickly, clutching your bag too tightly. “Just — indigestion. Or emotions. I don’t know. Both are bad.”

He stared at you, confusion pinching the corners of his mouth. “Are you always like this.”

“Are you always shaped like a violent goldfish?” you shot back, because vulnerability was illegal.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, then looked away like making eye contact might summon a demon. You grabbed your bag, chin up, pride intact, voice trembling only a little. “Thanks for… doing your job or whatever.”

He nodded once, awkward, stiff, like a man bowing in a cutscene for the first time. “Yeah.”

You stepped back toward the door, refusing to admit you were walking slower on purpose. “See you… never.”

“You’ll probably come back,” he muttered.

You froze. He fiddled with a pen, refusing to look at you. “People like you always do.”

Your mouth opened, closed, then opened again in outrage — and something else.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You slapped my ass before saying hello.”

You nearly combusted.

Without another word, you spun on your heel, burst through the door like a Victorian woman fainting, and stomped down the street with your wrapped merch like a trophy of battle.

Unfortunately, your stomach kept swirling.

Even more unfortunately… it did not feel like indigestion.

𝒾𝓋. NAOYA ZENIN

You were lucky.

Covering Shoko Ieiri’s runway was something half the industry would’ve killed for, and here you were, weaving through racks of silk and satin because being her college friend still paid off in ways you frankly did not deserve.

Backstage was chaos in a way only fashion week could be — stylists sprinting with hairdryers, makeup artists swearing under their breath, models teetering by in impossible shoes, and you, clutching your camera bag like a lifeline while trying to remember if Shoko said she’d be near the chequered skirt or the chequered jacket.

Both existed. Both were currently moving.

You spotted the skirt first. A clean black-and-white check, sharp pleats, very Shoko-coded. You hurried over, relief ready to spill out of your mouth, greeting already forming on your palm as you reached out and smacked her ass — sound and contact, a full, confident hello.

Except the skirt turned around and it wasn’t Shoko.

It wasn’t even a woman.

Your breath collapsed in your chest as your gaze carried upward — first the narrow hips, then the cinched waist, the crisp fall of the fabric, and then the man towering over you.

A model. A very beautiful, very tall, very pissed off male model.

His brown eyes sharpened into a glare the second your brain decided to keep staring instead of apologizing. Dyed blonde hair, the soft pale kind that looked expensive, framed his face but did nothing to hide the dark green roots that screamed grown-out rebellion. His jawline was a weapon. His cheekbones could cut glass. His expression said you should already be praying.

“Excuse me,” he snapped, voice cool, clipped, and far too offended for someone who had literally just existed in your way. “Do you often greet strangers by smacking their clothes?”

You jolted back, hands up, already choking on your own mortification. “I thought — you weren’t — It’s just — Shoko!”

His eyes dragged over you in one slow, unimpressed sweep, landing on your jeans like they were a personal insult. “And why,” he said, tone flattening into something smug, “are you wearing pants?”

You blinked. “Because… they’re pants?”

“They’re unflattering,” he said simply, as if this were objective truth carved into stone. “On women especially.”

Your brain stuttered. “Excuse m—?!”

“Yes,” he cut in, already bored. “You touched my kilt without permission and I’m the rude one? Unbelievable.” He adjusted the garment with a flick of his wrist, movements precise, elegant, borderline theatrical. “It’s custom, by the way. Handmade. Probably worth more than your entire outfit.”

“Your… kilt?” you echoed, because your ears had stopped functioning from the moment he said women should not wear pants.

“Kilt,” he repeated, nodding once. “K-I-L-T. Not whatever you were about to call it.”

And you nearly gasped, because yes, you were absolutely about to call it a clit and honestly, the shame might kill you before he could.

He cocked his head, studying you again with that disdain only the highest-paid, hottest man in the room could muster. “You’re new.”

“I’m not new,” you muttered. “I just didn’t expect to see… you.”

“Most people don’t.” His chin lifted smugly. “Naoya Zenin.”

The name hit you like a bucket of ice water. Because of course. Of course this had to be him.

The highest-paying male model in the country. The notoriously difficult one. The one critics called elegant but insufferable. The one designers bent over backwards for because his face sold out collections before the clothes even hit the floor. And apparently, the one who thought women in pants were a mistake.

You stared at him, flustered, indignant, still slightly enchanted because unfortunately he was disgustingly pretty. He stared back, fully aware of it.

“So?” he said. “Are you going to apologize, or are you going to stand there thinking about my legs?”

Your mouth fell open in fresh horror. “I wasn’t—!”

“You were,” he said, already turning, already dismissing you with a flick of those perfectly dyed strands. “At least know my name before you start groping my wardrobe.”

You spluttered, but he didn’t look back. He didn't need to. Men like Naoya Zenin never did.

And somewhere behind him, you finally heard Shoko’s voice calling your name — far too late to save you from the disaster that had already happened.

You bolted back toward the main stage before your humiliation could settle into your bones, camera already in hand, lungs tight with the leftover sting of Naoya Zenin’s arrogance. The runway lights washed everything in white-gold, the crowd humming like an electric current as models filed out in Shoko’s signature silhouettes. You focused on the rhythm, the shapes, the fabrics — anything but the memory of smacking a stranger’s kilt and being told you shouldn’t be wearing pants.

But then the hum changed.

It sharpened, brightened, swelled into something undeniably attentive, and you didn’t even need to look up to know why. The audience always reacted like this for him — that model, the one whose name sold tickets before designers even announced their collections. You forced yourself to raise your camera and there he was.

Naoya Zenin. Gliding out in Shoko’s piece like he owned the runway, the kilt swaying just enough to mock your lingering embarrassment.

Your traitor hands snapped picture after picture — clean angles, close-ups, detail shots, full-body frames. You’d tell yourself it was guilt. Professionalism. Artistic obligation. Anything except fascination.

Anything except that strange coil of tension you felt when the light hit the pleats of his kilt and you remembered exactly how it felt to slap your hand against it.

And then the show ended. Applause. Flashbulbs. Shoko grabbing you by the shoulders and shrieking about how half the editors loved your shots already. Relief pooled in your chest, shaky and warm — right up until the afterparty, where alcohol became courage and courage became stupidity.

The venue pulsed with music, glassware chiming, and soft laughter from every direction. You were three drinks in — maybe four, depending on if the bartender was being generous — when Naoya appeared out of nowhere, sliding into your peripheral vision like he was stepping onto another stage. His hair was brushed back now, the green roots more evident, his eyes still sharp enough to slice you open.

“So,” he said, voice silk-lined and arrogant, “you’re Shoko’s photographer.”

You stiffened, trying to look composed. “For tonight. I’m… helping.”

“Helping,” he echoed, swirling the drink in his hand before giving you a slow once-over. “Interesting word choice. You captured the detailing of my kilt surprisingly well for someone who didn’t even know what it was.”

Your face heated instantly. “I was distracted.”

“I noticed.” His lips curved into the faintest, most condescending half-smirk imaginable. “Most people get distracted by my walk, but you? You went straight for the fabric. Very thorough. Very hands-on.”

You choked on air. “That was an accident.”

“Was it?” he murmured, leaning closer, studying you like one of Shoko’s garments under inspection. “You kept photographing me like you were trying to make up for it. Guilt? Attraction? Don’t worry — I won’t judge. I’m used to admirers.”

“I wasn’t admiring—”

“Of course you were,” he cut in smoothly. “You have eyes.”

His confidence was infuriating. Worse, it was correct. But before you could tell him to take his ego elsewhere, your brain — glazed with alcohol and the humiliation of the whole night—made the catastrophic decision to let your thoughts slip out.

“Well,” you muttered, half a slur, “if I captured the intricacies of your kilt, can you capture the intricacies of my—”

Your mouth shut too late.

Too. Late.

The word clit hung between you both like a chandelier about to crush your entire budding career.

Naoya froze.

Then he laughed.

At first it was a sharp, mocking bark of disbelief — like he couldn’t fathom the audacity. Then it melted into something real, rich, and startlingly warm as he held his stomach and actually doubled over.

“You—” he wheezed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You did not just say that.”

Your brain short-circuited. “I didn’t mean— I wasn’t— I’m drunk—”

“That’s not drunk,” he said, still laughing. “That’s bold. Or suicidal. Hard to tell with you.”

You looked around for the nearest exit, convinced security would drag you out and blacklist you forever, but Naoya straightened, brushing imaginary lint off his perfectly tailored suit jacket. His eyes gleamed with something new — interest.

“Relax. If I fired everyone who flirted badly, the industry would collapse.” He leaned in again, voice dropping into a low, taunting purr. “And besides… I like your work.”

You blinked. “My work?”

“Yes. The photos. The eye for detail. The restraint.” He paused, smirking. “Well. Not total restraint, clearly.”

Your face burned hotter.

“I want you on-board,” Naoya continued, tone shifting to something dangerously close to professional — but still dipped in arrogance. “Personal photographer for all my shoots. Starting tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” you echoed, stunned. “You want me?”

“Oh, absolutely.” His gaze drifted deliberately downward, slow, suggestive. “You notice everything. Even what you shouldn’t. That’s valuable.”

Before you could respond, he stepped closer — impossibly close — and with a single smooth motion, slid something behind you.

A card.

Into your back pocket.

Of your pants.

Right against your ass.

“You—!” you jumped, spinning around as he withdrew his hand with infuriating calm.

“You’re wearing pants,” he said with a shrug, turning to leave. “I thought you wanted reasons to defend the choice.”

Your jaw dropped. “That’s not a reason!”

“It is,” he called over his shoulder, raising a hand in lazy farewell. “Karma. Or whatever poetic nonsense you believe in.”

He glanced back once more, eyes amused, condescending, and unmistakably flirtatious.

“Don’t be late tomorrow,” he said. “I’d hate for your career to end before I enjoy ruining it myself.”

And then he was gone — leaving you breathless, furious, mortified, and undeniably employed.

Karma, you realized, was not only real — it was wearing a kilt and had your career in the palm of his smug, perfectly manicured hand.

𝓋. SUGURU GETO

When your girlfriend suggested meeting up in the library for a quick makeout session, you didn’t even blink twice; in fact, you practically teleported there.

Nearly one full week of radio silence and she suddenly pops out of the blue with a “Come to the reference section ;)”? Please. Who are you kidding? You’re like a dog being enticed with a bone — tail wagging, ears perked, pride abandoned at the automatic doors.

Never mind the fact that your girlfriend is actually your situationship, who is also a bicurious cheerleader with an attention span shorter than your will to resist her.

But your queer love struggles are an issue for another day. Preferably one where you’re emotionally stable and well-rested.

Right now, all your focus is on the reference textbook section. You weave through the rows like you’re in a stealth mission, dodging stressed students and the occasional rustle of pages. And then you see her — or who you assume is her — back turned to you, long hair flowing down her spine. T

hat was new. She never mentioned extensions. Or maybe she did and you just weren’t listening because she said it right in the middle of a rant about her roommate stealing her lip gloss again.

Whatever. Point is: hair down, hips out, stance familiar. That’s her. That’s totally her. Your brain registers the silhouette with the enthusiasm of a lab rat finding the cheese in the maze.

You do not think. You do not evaluate. You do not consider consequences. You simply act. Because that is who you are in this deeply unfortunate romantic chapter of your life.

You stride up, confidence inflated by delusion, and you greet her the way any self-respecting, touch-starved situationship soldier would: you raise your hand and deliver a swift, enthusiastic, absolutely devastating smack! to her ass.

The sound echoes. Echoes. Somewhere, a librarian winces.

You grin, already forming some smug line about how much you missed her. You’re ready for her usual gasp-laugh combo, the flirty shove, the whispered “You’re crazy” that makes your knees weak.

Except. Except.

When the person turns around, it is not her. It is not her in any universe, timeline, or parallel dimension.

You are staring directly into the wide, horrified eyes of a man.

A man.

A man with cheekbones that could cut glass, forearms that suggest he lifts more than emotional baggage, and — this is the real kicker — luscious, flowy hair identical to your situationship’s. The kind of hair that makes you question why the universe is punishing you specifically.

He is frozen. You are frozen. Time itself takes a smoke break.

You feel the blood drain from your soul first, then your face. Your brain sprints through every possible explanation, landing on nothing except the overwhelming urge to self-destruct.

He opens his mouth. You open yours too, but only a squeak escapes. You are, in real time, discovering the physical embodiment of regret.

You start calculating how fast you can run if you drop to all fours. Maybe if you bolt down the aisle, leap over the cart full of overdue textbooks, and dive behind the encyclopedias, you can start a new life under an alias.

Something simple. Something quiet. Something belonging to someone who doesn’t assault strangers in academic institutions.

He keeps staring at you like you just slapped the taxes out of him, which, frankly, you might have.

And all you can think is: your situationship better appreciate this. Because you just smacked a grown man’s ass in public. A man with better hair than both of you combined. A man who is probably going to tell security.

A man whose shampoo you kind of want to ask about but now you can never show your face again, so that opportunity is gone forever.

In the distance, a chair squeaks. Someone whispers. You swear the overhead lights grow brighter, spotlighting your shame like you’re the main character in a tragic musical number.

You manage to croak out something resembling, “I thought you were — someone else,” but it comes out more like a dying animal sound layered with humiliation.

You stand there, hand still halfway suspended in the air like the world’s worst criminal caught mid–crime, as ditzy lil’ miss situation-girlfriend-ship happily skips off to aisle 3, blissfully unaware that you have just assaulted a man with the same hair as her.

Of course she didn’t wait for you. Of course she wandered off. Cheerleaders don’t walk; they skip. They flounce. They cause chaos without ever having to witness it.

You, on the other hand, are standing in the smoldering crater of your own choices.

He’s still blinking at you like he’s trying to reboot. You don’t know whether to pretend you’re a phantom, apologize before a harassment case is filed on the spot, or run so fast your sneakers melt.

You open your mouth, ready to attempt the apology route.

“I—LOOK, I’M REALLY SOR—”

But he holds up a hand, calm, polite, putting a stop to your spiral before it combusts.

“You are not Gojo.”

You freeze. “Who the hell is Gojo?”

“My boyfriend,” he replies, completely unfazed, like this is a normal thing he clarifies for people who smack his ass in public.

“Well, he isn’t my girlfriend either!” you blurt out, panic mashed into defensiveness. “Why am I even — ugh, sorry for smacking your ass.”

He gives a small laugh, brushing his hair behind his ear with an elegance that offends you. “It’s not my first time. Just mildly surprised it was a stranger instead of, you know… familiar man hands.”

“Wow,” you snort. “Lesbophobic much?”

He raises an eyebrow. “How is that lesbophobic?”

“You’re assuming I don’t have familiar hands to smack! Aren’t we basically on the same gayness level here?”

He pauses, considering this. “Fair enough.”

A moment of silence passes. It is impressively awkward. Someone coughs in the distance. He shifts his weight, offers a hand like this is a networking event and not the aftermath of you slapping his very bisexual ass.

“I’m Geto.”

You shake it, because manners persist even in humiliation. “I’m… the idiot. And bisexual. Not that it matters.”

“It always matters,” he replies with the wisdom of a man who has clearly endured multiple chaotic relationships. “Nice to meet you.”

Another beat of silence. Somewhere in aisle 3, your situationship giggles. You and Geto both glance in that direction, both wearing the expression of people who really did not ask to be here.

“So,” he asks, “why’d you slap me?”

“My girlfriend—ish—told me to meet her here, and I saw your hair and…” You trail off, waving a hand over his head. “This is disrespectfully identical.”

He nods solemnly. “I understand. Gojo has nearly caused fights because people think he’s me from behind. I tell him to keep his hair up, he says it ‘blocks his beauty.’”

Sounds about right.

“And you?” you ask. “Why are you… here?”

“Gojo said he wanted to ‘study together.’ Which means he’s probably lost in the children’s section right now, bothering toddlers with his riddles.”

You sigh. He sighs back. Solidarity is born.

“So,” you say slowly, “we’re both side pieces to rich bicurious kids with superiority complexes?”

He thinks. “Yes. Essentially.”

“Does that mean we’ve trauma-bonded?”

“Absolutely.”

You hear another giggle from aisle 3 — your situationship's unmistakable laugh — and Geto hears a loud, dramatic sneeze echo from somewhere beyond the encyclopedias. You both sigh in perfect unison.

“Well,” he says, straightening his shirt, “should we go meet our individual disasters?”

“Yeah,” you mutter, rubbing your face. “Side piece solidarity.”

You and Geto share one last, deeply exhausted glance before splitting off — he goes left, you go right — both of you walking toward your own respective chaotic, rich, impossibly attractive bisexual nightmares.

You’ve known him for three minutes and somehow this is the only man who has ever truly understood you.

𝓋𝒾. SHIU KONG

The thing about growing up on the Upper East Side, (besides developing an allergy to public transport and an inexplicable fondness for overpriced iced matcha), is that you are expected — no, groomed — to participate in extracurriculars that make you look like an upstanding Gen-Z heir.

Charity galas. Fencing. Golf classes. The whole well-rounded, well-mannered, vaguely insufferable package.

And because you’ve never understood the joy of swinging metal sticks at tiny white balls, you and your best friend Gojo invented your own twist: whoever managed to aim a shot at the other’s ass and land it first won the day.

Prestige, bragging rights, and a free iced latte on the loser’s tab.

Simple enough, or so you told yourself.

Gojo always won. Always. He had this annoyingly natural talent for everything that required hand-eye coordination, balance, charm, or general showmanship. You suspected this was because his body was crafted by malevolent angels tasked with making your life difficult.

He got you every time — on the green, in the driving range, once even while he was texting.

But today, you were determined. You woke up with purpose, brushed your hair with determination, and marched into the country club like the Hilton heir you were absolutely not but behaved like anyway.

The sun shimmered over the manicured lawn as the two of you zoomed in the buggy, Gojo sitting with that smug posture you hated, white polo slightly undone because he insisted it helped with his swing, sunglasses perched on his head even though he didn’t intend to use them. He looked like he belonged on a recruitment poster for nepotism.

Meanwhile, you clutched your club like it was a sniper rifle, fully prepared to win the stupidest battle of your privileged little life.

The buggy slowed near the next tee, and Gojo hopped off to grab a different club, leaving Shiu — his assigned caddy for the season — standing nearby with an expression that hovered somewhere between tired resignation and soul death. Poor man had long since accepted his role in the chaotic ecosystem that was you and Gojo Satoru. You flashed him a polite smile, thinking he probably deserved a raise.

This was your chance. Gojo was standing beside the buggy, back turned, stretching like an overdressed flamingo. You positioned your feet the way the instructor had taught you, even though you were ninety percent sure the form didn’t matter if you were committing premeditated ass-targeting.

You inhaled. You focused.

You locked onto Gojo like a heat-seeking missile fueled by entitlement and petty vengeance.

You swung. The ball sailed.

You felt triumph bloom in your chest—

too soon.

SMACK!

A sharp, echoing sound cut across the quiet golf course. Not the sound of ball meeting Gojo’s annoyingly perfect derrière, no. This was different. This had weight. This had consequence. This had…an audible groan?

You blinked.

Gojo turned.

You turned.

Shiu Kong — the caddy whose greatest aspiration in life was probably a quiet afternoon and a job without aristocratic hazards — was hunched over, hands cupped very protectively between his legs, face contorted in a way that would’ve made marble statues weep.

You had hit him directly in the nuts.

The world fell silent except for the distant thwack! of someone else being far better at golf than you.

Gojo stared at you like you’d just committed a war crime. “You hit my caddy in the balls.”

Your jaw dropped. “I thought they were your balls — WAIT, NOT LIKE THAT—”

Shiu wheezed. Gojo ran a hand over his face, half horrified, half amused, and a tiny little bit proud because only you could turn a simple golf lesson into a social scandal. “You assaulted an innocent man. Do you know what that means?”

“It means,” you said, cheeks heating, “that I missed.”

“It means you're paying his medical bill.”

But you couldn’t hear him anymore. Your brain was spiraling, narrating your downfall in real time like the Gossip Girl episode your life had suddenly become. Oh, Upper East Side girl assaults caddy in broad daylight! Parents mortified! Trust fund threatened! Rumors swirl faster than Gojo can swing a nine-iron!

Meanwhile, Shiu straightened slowly, giving you the exhausted, mildly judgmental look of a man who had seen the downfall of empires and now yours.

“I'm so sorry,” you squeaked, stepping forward, then back, then forward again because you had no idea how apology etiquette worked when it came to nut-related injuries. “Do you need ice? Do you need water? Do you need me to leave the country?”

Shiu sighed, voice low and gravelly. “Just…maybe aim somewhere else next time.”

Gojo burst into laughter so loud it nearly scared off the swans by the pond.

It wasn’t your proudest moment, but in a twisted, ridiculous way, it was the most Upper East Side thing you’d ever done. After all, nothing screams generational privilege like accidentally assaulting your friend’s caddy during a golf match you rigged yourself.

In what was, in your mind, the most gracious gesture any civilized Upper East Side debutante could extend, you scrambled to offer Shiu an olive branch of peace so large it could’ve been framed as modern art. The moment he managed to stand upright again — albeit with the stiff posture of a man reassessing every choice that brought him to this country — you leaned forward, clasped your hands together, and unleashed the full force of your well-meaning, catastrophically class-insulated brain.

“Do you want a latte? I can buy you one! Or — I mean — your medical bill? Should I cover that? Or I can order you a car home? Do you need new shoes? You can have mine! They're Prada.”

Shiu stared at you, the way one might stare at a chandelier that suddenly started speaking. His face didn’t show anger — no, that would’ve required energy he no longer had — but rather a patient, exhausted neutrality that only men who worked service jobs for rich teenagers ever truly mastered. He adjusted the strap of his caddy bag on his shoulder, wincing subtly, then offered you a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he said, voice low, a little raspy, and so painfully dry it could’ve been used to season seaweed. “Just…good luck with your aiming skills.”

You gasped, taking it as encouragement instead of sarcasm. “Thank you! I'll practice, I promise. And if you ever want better shoes just tell me, I can—”

He held up a hand, slow and weary, as though you were a golden retriever he needed to gently hush. “I really just...need a break.”

A break. Not a latte. Not Prada. Not a chauffeur. Not a diamond-studded apology card. He needed a break.

Maybe a vacation. Maybe a teleportation device home.

“A break!” you repeated cheerfully, as if this was a problem money could fix. “From work? Oh, Gojo can give you time off! Maybe you want a vacation? I can book a flight! Do you want a return ticket to, um —where did you say you're from again?”

Shiu tensed, jaw ticking. “South Korea.”

“Right! Right, Korea. I can book it now if you want! Or at least upgrade your seat? Do you like hotels? I can get you a suite.”

Gojo snorted behind you, muttering something like, “She's trying to buy back God's favor,” but you waved him off.

Shiu looked away so quickly you almost missed the micro-expression — a flash of longing, of someone who definitely couldn’t do that, of someone who probably missed Korean convenience store ramen more than he missed sunlight. But he shook his head, sighing softly. “Not necessary. I don't need a vacation. Just...some air. Maybe a cigarette.”

“A cigarette?” you echoed, blinking. “Do you need a lighter? Do you want the expensive ones they sell in Paris? My dad has a few—”

He exhaled through his nose, the universal sign of a man acknowledging your sheltered upbringing without saying it outright. Then, with a tiny bow of the head — because Shiu was raised with manners far older and sturdier than anything money could buy — he muttered, “Have a good day,” and limped off toward the staff area, where presumably no golf balls would be assaulting him for the rest of the afternoon.

You watched him go, clutching your club to your chest like a heroine in a Regency novel who had just accidentally traumatized the help. Gojo strolled up behind you, sipping his iced latte with the lazy swagger of someone who’d never known shame.

“Wooowwww,” he drawled. “I think he likes you.”

“Satoru, I hit him in the crotch.”

“That's a very intimate area,” he said, shrugging. “Could be a sign.”

You elbowed him, scowling, but your mind was already spinning. You were stubborn. Determined. A menace in designer sneakers. You weren’t about to let this go unresolved. You turned to Gojo with that familiar spark in your eyes — the one that meant someone, somewhere, was about to suffer the consequences of your enthusiasm.

“Set up a meeting with him.”

Gojo choked on his drink. “What, like a business meeting?”

“A lunch,” you clarified, chin high. “At one of dad's restaurants. A proper apology. He deserves that.”

Gojo smirked. “You just wanna feed him so he doesn't sue you.”

“And show him I'm sorry!”

“And maybe buy him shoes.”

“If he wants shoes I'll buy him shoes, Satoru.”

He burst out laughing again, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe you were real. And maybe you were clueless, maybe you were ditzy, maybe you were so class-unconscious you offered Prada as an apology for blunt-force trauma — but your heart was in the right place.

Even if your swing definitely wasn’t.

Somewhere near the staff exit, Shiu lit his cigarette with a shaky sigh, probably praying you wouldn’t follow him.

Spoiler alert: Gojo was absolutely going to make that lunch happen. And Shiu? Poor, unsuspecting Shiu would learn that apologies from girls like you came with appetizers, overcompensation, and enough unintended chaos to last him a lifetime.

𝓋𝒾𝒾. NANAMI KENTO

Every marketing student you know keeps a silent prayer lodged beneath their tongue, a hopeful little chant that someday they’ll land an internship that doesn’t force them into the digital equivalent of dancing for scraps. Nobody wants to be remembered as the one who tried to convince a 48-year-old construction worker with three slipped discs and a pension crisis to do a Sabrina Carpenter hip-snap twirl because “the algorithm likes dancing.” The algorithm doesn’t like movement; the algorithm is a fickle forest deity that requires blood, sweat, and the occasional trending audio sacrifice, and even then, it might spit on you.

So when you found out you’d secured an internship at a newly opened campus-adjacent bakery, you nearly dissolved into a puddle of bliss right there on the quad. Pastries, pastel décor, forgiving lighting, and content that wouldn’t make you question your career choices? Your soul briefly left your body, floated over the campus gates, and whispered thank you to whatever cosmic scheduler finally aligned your timetable with destiny.

You felt chosen. Blessed. Reborn. A marketing phoenix rising from the ashes of “Okay guys, one boomerang for the brand?”

The bakery itself was the kind of place that smelled like childhood, adulthood, and whatever era of your life you wished you were living.

Buttered air. Cinnamon gossip. The low hum of ovens exhaling warmth like tired dragons. The owners wore matching aprons and matching delusions that “keeping things minimalistic” meant painting everything a color that looked like beige having an existential crisis. But it was cute. It was earnest. It was yours to brand.

Best part? A handful of classmates and acquaintances worked here part-time. That meant familiar faces, semi-cooperative labor, and the possibility of bribing them with leftover croissants to appear in your videos.

You pictured it already: day-in-the-life reels, “POV: you walk into your new fave bakery,” moodboard shots of flaky pastries sparkling under natural light. Pure content heaven.

And because you knew them, the filming process would be smooth. Comfortable. Maybe even fun.

Except… tell that to the algo.

Because the moment you whipped out your phone and attempted your first test clip, the algorithm emerged from the shadows like a rat who hadn’t seen the sun in four fiscal quarters.

Your lighting betrayed you. Your framing betrayed you.

The pastry you filmed developed stage fright and deflated like it was auditioning for a tragedy. The latte art heart looked more like a kidney.

Meanwhile, your classmates, who you thought would beam with enthusiasm, stared into the camera like Victorian orphans being photographed for the first time. One of them blinked so slowly you wondered if they were asleep.

Another kept asking where to look, despite you telling them seventeen times. A third spontaneously developed the posture of a confused shrimp.

You tried switching angles. The algo cackled.

You tried using trending audio. The algo yawned.

You tried writing a caption so poetic it could make a grown influencer cry. The algo responded by giving you six likes, two of which were your own accounts, one from your mother, and three from bots selling crypto.

Still, you persisted. You dragged in a coworker to slice bread in slow motion. You filmed a cinnamon roll getting iced like it was the main character in a bakery-themed biopic. You arranged pastries into geometric formations so precise a math professor would’ve wept. You even made one of your classmates pretend to take a bite, only for them to inhale powdered sugar and cough violently across the mise-en-scène. The footage looked like a low-budget winter wonderland.

But somewhere in this swirling chaos, this sugar-dusted battlefield, something shifted. Your content slowly took shape. The bakery began to glow under your lens. Your classmates loosened up, laughing and breaking character in ways that looked effortlessly real.

And the algorithm, the mercurial god of engagement, finally blinked at you. Maybe even winked. One post edged past a thousand views. Then a few thousand more. The comments trickled in: students wanting to visit, professors tagging colleagues, locals asking about the new brownie flavors.

You weren’t just documenting a bakery anymore. You were animating it, breathing life into it, stitching it into the campus ecosystem. Your phone became a wand, the cinnamon rolls your familiars, and every time the algo decided to grace one of your posts with visibility, it felt like a small celestial nod.

Not approval. Just... acknowledgment.

The work was still chaotic, of course. Your classmates still forgot their cues. Pastries still collapsed. And the algorithm still behaved like an emotionally unavailable situationship.

But for the first time, you felt like you weren’t just chasing virality. You were crafting something with pulse and charm, something that fed people before they ever tasted a single thing. And that alone made every powdered-sugar sneeze and lighting malfunction worth it.

You arrived after class with a backpack full of half-baked campaign ideas, each one scribbled during bathroom breaks while doomscrolling past other people’s perfectly moisturized lives. The back door of the bakery welcomed you with its usual whoosh of warm air, that buttery exhale that felt like a pat on the head from the universe. You stepped in with the energy of someone who’d convinced themselves this would finally be the day the algorithm bowed before them in gratitude.

Inside, one of the part-timers stood at the industrial oven, sliding in fresh loaves with the rhythm of someone who had survived a STEM lab practical that morning. From the cropped hoodie, the hunched posture, and the playlist murmuring faintly from a single AirPod, you assumed biology major. They always worked like the bread depended on their GPA.

Without thinking, without checking, without even letting a single neuron confirm the identity of this individual, you strolled forward with the breezy confidence of a marketing student who believes camaraderie can be expressed in the universal language of harmless chaos.

In one smooth, misguided gesture, you gave them a friendly slap! on the ass and chirped something about being ready for another day of content magic.

You expected a muffled gasp, maybe a scandalized giggle, or at least the offended squeak of someone who understood workplace affection only in the form of overpriced lattes.

Instead, the universe clicked into slow motion. Your heartbeat thundered in your ears, drumming an urgent funeral march as the person froze. Straightened. Turned.

And it was not a biology major. It was not even a student. It was your manager.

Nanami Kento.

The bakery’s rare cryptid. The man who appears only during moments of bliss or disaster, like some beige-swathed omen. His expression, carved with the precision of someone who alphabetizes spreadsheets for fun, carried none of the bliss.

Very, very much the disaster.

He stared at you with the quiet intensity of a man reconsidering every hiring decision that led him to this exact millisecond. His posture was perfect. His sleeves were rolled just enough to suggest responsibility but not enough to imply friendliness. His jaw tightened in a way that made you aware of your own mortality. Even the oven behind him seemed to dim out of respect.

You stood there, a marketing intern with the blood draining from your face in real time, feeling the atmosphere congeal like week-old custard.

Nanami finally spoke, voice low and smooth, carrying the weight of a thousand unapproved PTO requests.

“Can’t keep your hands to yourself?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a headline. A thesis. A prophecy of impending HR paperwork.

You opened your mouth to explain that it was a misunderstanding, that you are a creature guided by aura instead of vision, that you seriously thought he was Jun from microbiology who did laugh when you smacked him last Tuesday.

But your throat had calcified. Your words evaporated. Even your internal monologue packed a suitcase and left.

Nanami didn’t move closer, but it felt like he did. His gaze alone stepped into your personal space. The kind of gaze that sorted out truth from nonsense and found you lacking in both.

You watched his gloved hands finish sliding the loaf trays into the oven with calm precision, as if he hadn’t just been assaulted by the world’s most incompetent intern. He shut the door gently.

Too gently. The kind of gentleness that suggested he was restraining himself from hurling the nearest baguette in your direction.

He finally sighed, a long, weary sound that stretched across the tiled floor like spilled flour.

“If this is your idea of workplace morale,” he said, “we have a very long day ahead of us.”

Your soul hovered somewhere near the ceiling tiles, watching your body malfunction. The algorithm suddenly felt like the least dangerous force in your life. Even the pastries cooled their crusts in reverent silence.

And you? You simply stood there, a cautionary tale with student debt.

This was not the content you had planned to film today.

You contemplated faking your own death by the time you reached the bakery’s back door. Mentally, you had drafted at least three escape plans involving remote mountain villages, minimal Wi-Fi, and a new identity where no one knew you had once slapped your manager’s ass with the confidence of a frat boy greeting his teammates.

Yet the bakery greeted you with a betrayal of the highest order: everyone had decided to clock in early. At the same time. Together. Like a coordinated flash mob of optimism.

Your part-timers swarmed you with bright greetings and eager enthusiasm, their eyes shining with dreams of micro-influencer fame. You wanted to pat their heads and tell them not to waste their youth on reels, but instead you held your clipboard like a shield. Each “Good morning!” hit you like an emotional dodgeball.

Meanwhile, the ghost of Nanami’s disappointed silence floated somewhere behind you like an air-conditioned draft.

You shepherded your little flock into the meeting room, heart pounding like it was trying to tunnel out of your chest. Today’s monthly content planning had never felt heavier. You clicked through slides, voice wobbling at every innocuous motion Nanami made in your peripheral vision. A shift of weight. A blink. A subtle adjustment of his glasses. Each small gesture struck you with terrifying precision, like he knew the exact sound frequency at which your nervous system collapsed.

Your ideas spilled out in a rush of self-preservation. Cupcake decorating time-lapses. Barista POV mornings. A “flavor of the week” skit you prayed the algorithm would latch onto like a needy koala. The team nodded along, scribbling notes, whispering excitedly about how this might finally get them discovered by someone other than their mothers and a few dedicated Reddit lurkers.

Nanami stayed silent, arms crossed, expression unreadable in a way that made you want to jump into a vat of batter and let the sourdough starter take you.

When the meeting finally ended, everyone filed out chattering happily, clutching aprons and half-formed dreams. You exhaled shakily and turned around, ready to collapse into the nearest chair.

Instead, you collided into a solid chest that smelled faintly of clean linen and responsible decision-making.

Nanami Kento.

Again.

You made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a dying kettle. He steadied you with one hand, the gesture minimal but firm, as if preventing your complete physical disintegration was just part of his job description.

You stepped back so fast you nearly tripped over the tripod, words spilling like scrambled eggs. You apologized. Then apologized for the apology.

Then apologized for existing, for breathing, for contributing to global carbon emissions.

Nanami looked at you with a patience that felt older than civilization.

“I understand it was a mistake,” he said quietly.

The kindness in his tone almost killed you on the spot.

Your throat tightened. Your eyes warmed. Your tear ducts prepared to betray you spectacularly. Because here stood the man you had accidentally assaulted via friendly fire, and he was offering you reasonable reassurance instead of firing you into the sun.

But then, with the gentle precision of someone handling a priceless artifact, he lifted a hand slightly and said:

“If you cry, please avoid doing it on the apron. It’s new.”

That did it. The tears backtracked instantly, terrified of staining corporate property. You hiccuped out a strangled laugh-sob hybrid, nodding violently, wiping your eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie like a chastened toddler.

Nanami gave you a small, almost imperceptible nod, the bakery equivalent of a papal blessing, then stepped past you to arrange something on the counter.

You stood there, heartbeat thundering, knees trembling, soul vibrating, wondering how a man could be both your boss and your emotional DEFCON-1.

And as the staff’s voices carried in from the front room, ready to begin filming, you realized with crushing clarity: you would survive today.

Barely. But you would.

𝓋𝒾𝒾𝒾. TOJI FUSHIGURO

Life had always liked to toss you the strangest fruit from its cosmic orchard, but marrying your best friend had felt less like a curveball and more like winning a prize you didn’t remember entering a raffle for.

Domesticity with him in your late 20s had been an oddly cozy chapter, the kind where two people orbit each other like planets politely avoiding collision. And when he finally sat you down one evening, hands folded like he was about to confess to eating the last cookie, you braced for the apocalypse.

Instead, he whispered that he was gay, closeted and terrified, but also deeply grateful for you.

It unfolded with the tender neatness of origami; no shouting, no tears, just a quiet reconfiguration of your shared life into something that still had warmth but no longer required matching rings.

He asked you twice, then thrice, then a bonus encore that felt like he was trying to win an award for Most Concerned Soon-To-Be-Ex-Husband. Were you sure? Would you be alright? Did you want to try living separately but still married? You had to put a hand on his shoulder the way you would calm an overexcited dog and tell him that yes, you were sure. The man deserved to fall in love without a tangle of legal obligations holding him hostage. And you deserved to stop pretending your marriage was anything other than two best friends accidentally LARPing domestic bliss.

Which is how you ended up spending your recent weekends in that courthouse, the one that smelled faintly of disinfectant and older bureaucracy, sitting on a wooden bench that had the ergonomic grace of a medieval punishment device.

This had become your routine: shuffle in, greet the receptionist who never blinked, and settle onto your assigned plank, waiting for the familiar sound of his hurried footsteps.

Your monologue, however, had become its own weekend ritual. The sort of internal soliloquy that unfurled whenever you were surrounded by peeling paint and laminated notices reminding you not to shout at the staff.

You’d kick your feet and think, Look at us, two emotionally stable adults dissolving our marriage like we’re returning a badly chosen sweater.

Then you’d look around at the couples on either side of you, radiating enough resentment to power a small town. And you’d think, At least we’re not throwing accusations like confetti. Perhaps divorce court should give us a loyalty discount.

Sometimes you’d imagine the judge calling your names and you both walking up with the serene air of two monks delivering tea. Divorce granted, and may the universe guide you to better sex and people who don’t shrink from honesty. Your husband would probably gift the judge a thank-you card.

And then there were the tiny absurdities that stitched themselves into your weekends. The vending machine that swallowed your coins like a spiteful beast. The security guard who had decided your face was the highlight of his shift and kept asking how your “journey” was going. The way your ex-husband always burst through the door in the same pattern: out of breath, apologizing, holding something ridiculous. Once it was a bouquet of chrysanthemums. Once it was bubble tea.

Once it was a tote bag that said Emotional Support Wife in pastel lettering, which he did not buy for himself but insisted suited you. Really, the whole situation felt like life had turned your divorce into a sitcom with a strangely wholesome tone.

Today, you settled onto your usual bench, hands folded, heartbeat steady, the air humming with the faint electricity of endings that are also beginnings. The court clock ticked above you like a metronome for your thoughts. Outside the window, a pigeon strutted as though on official business.

Patience had never been your most loyal companion, and in the courthouse it abandoned you entirely. The clock above your head ticked with the theatrical menace of a villain monologuing before the hero escapes, and you refused to be held hostage by anticipation.

So you rose from your wooden plank of despair, straightened your clothes with the determination of someone about to perform a minor social crime, and padded toward your assigned courtroom.

The door creaked when you pushed it open, the inside washed in that sterile fluorescent glow that bleaches everything into equal parts boredom and dread. And there he was — hunched over the desk, signing what you assumed were the final documents of your shared, lovingly chaotic marriage.

The curve of his back, the familiar slope of his shoulders, the way his hair always curled near his collar when he was stressed — you didn’t even question it. You marched forward with the casual confidence of a woman whose divorce is so amicable she can still smack her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s ass as punctuation.

The sound ricocheted in the room like a firecracker.

Nice form, you thought proudly, hand still warm. A little farewell punctuation mark to a marriage that never truly required fireworks. You muttered, mostly to yourself, “Finally. End of an era. Now what do we eat for lunch? Tacos? Sushi? Something carby as a reward for surviving bureaucracy—”

Silence.

Too much silence. The particular kind that begins to glow ominously, like a neon sign spelling out: You Have Made A Very Grave Mistake.

You hummed. The man didn’t respond. No startled jump, no offended gasp, not even a quiet, dry “Really?” which your ex had perfected over the years. This figure stayed utterly still, pen frozen mid-stroke, as if reconsidering every life choice that had led him to this exact millisecond.

“Hellllooooo?” you ventured, voice pitching upward. “Did you hear me? Are you—”

He turned.

Not your ex-husband.

Not even close.

The man who now faced you had raven-black hair, ruffled just enough to suggest he had run a hand through it one too many times, and a scar slicing artfully through his lower lip. That scar twitched when he smiled. And he was smiling now. Slowly. As though savoring the comedy unfolding in front of him.

His eyes dropped deliberately to your hand, the guilty one, still hanging in the air like incriminating evidence. Your stomach plummeted.

Behind you erupted a sound that might as well have been a teakettle discovering its own voice. A screech. High, sharp, furious.

You turned just in time to see a redheaded woman in immaculate Valentino heels, her expression pulsing with betrayal, horror, and the type of indignation usually reserved for reality TV finales.

She pointed at you as if summoning divine judgement. “DID YOU JUST— DID YOU JUST SPANK MY EX-HUSBAND?”

Your brain scrambled for a coherent explanation but found only static. “I— well— I thought he was— he wasn’t— this is—”

The raven-haired man leaned an elbow on the desk, utterly amused. “Bold move for a stranger,” he murmured, voice slipping through the air with lazy confidence. “You always greet people this way, or am I just lucky today?”

Your soul attempted to exit your body.

“No! No, absolutely not, I— my ex-husband looks— from the back he— your posture— I’m so sorry— I didn’t mean to commit battery— or adultery-adjacent battery— I swear—”

The woman screeched again, her heel tapping the tile with the tremor of imminent chaos. “THIS is why he’s divorcing me. Spirits above, I knew it. I KNEW women were throwing themselves at him in court.”

“Technically,” the man drawled, “I was the one thrown at.”

You felt your entire existence compress into a single bead of mortification. “I’m going to walk into traffic after this,” you whispered.

“No need,” he offered lightly. “You’re already a hazard.”

You considered the nearest fire escape.

He slid the pen across the desk with one elegant movement, eyes still locked on you, something curious simmering behind the amusement. “If it helps,” he added, “that was the most interesting thing to happen to me in weeks.”

“I’m thrilled,” you deadpanned, “to have contributed to your enrichment.”

Footsteps echoed down the hall. Your real ex-husband. Of course. Now the universe wanted to be timely.

And there you were, standing in the middle of the courtroom, hand still tingling, facing the wrong man, the wrong marriage, the wrong everything, and the dangerously right smirk of someone who looked like trouble wrapped in courtroom lighting.

You swallowed hard. Your original bench, the one with medieval ergonomics, suddenly felt like a sanctuary compared to this.

You backed away a step, then two, murmuring, “I… need to go wait outside.”

He gave you a nod, the kind that made your spine hum with the knowledge you had absolutely walked onto a live landmine.

And so you retreated, cheeks burning, heart skipping, returning to your seat in the hallway to wait for your ex-husband like the universe’s most confused criminal, praying no one else in this building needed their ass smacked today.

Valentino Heels was still verbally fencing with the scar-lipped man inside the courtroom, her voice sharp enough to shear wallpaper. You watched through the open door as she stabbed the air with her manicure, berating him while he signed the last of the documents with the calm of a man who has endured chaos long enough to develop immunity. The whole exchange unfolded like a tragic opera scored by someone with a personal vendetta against your eardrums.

Meanwhile, you stood beside your own soon-to-be-ex-husband in the hallway, both of you waiting to be called in. He didn’t pry, didn’t side-eye you, didn’t even offer one of his gentle eyebrow raises that usually meant I sense nonsense brewing. He simply stood with his hands tucked into his pockets, offering you the silence of someone who knew you would explain if there were anything to explain.

Except in this case there wasn’t. Not in any universe. Because you were not going to confess to anyone — least of all your best friend — that you had smacked a random man’s ass in a court of law.

Some things deserved to be sealed inside an emotional lead box and launched into the sun.

Eventually the redhead stormed out, hair bouncing like furious flames, and the man followed at a slower, cooler pace. You refused to look at him. Not even a sideways glance. Not even a nano-second of acknowledgment.

But you could feel his attention brush against you as he walked past, a grazing flicker of recognition.

You suddenly became very interested in the wall.

Your turn came, and within minutes, signatures dried, stamps thudded, witnesses nodded. Just like that, the quiet, gentle marriage you had once stitched together with your best friend became something preserved in memory rather than law.

Outside the courtroom, you and your ex-husband stood in the wide hallway’s soft echo, both of you exhaling something bittersweet. Then he pulled you into a hug, warm and tight, like he was making sure you understood that while the labels were gone, the bond wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m proud of us,” he murmured into your hair. “We handled everything like actual adults. Who knew we had it in us?”

You snorted against his chest. “Speak for yourself. I nearly had a crisis over the stamp ink.”

He chuckled, the sound vibrating through your ribs. “You’re going to be fine. And I’m still not convinced you won’t end up texting me for help assembling your bookshelf later.”

“Of course I will,” you said, pulling back to look at him. “You know you’re still my go-to for manual labor.”

“Use me,” he said dramatically, hand over his heart. “I live to serve.”

The two of you laughed, the kind of laugh that carried history, comfort, the soft ache of transition. He squeezed your arm one last time.

“Do you want a ride home?” he asked, eyes gentle. “We can grab coffee on the way. Or something sweet. You always want something sweet after you’re stressed.”

The offer tugged at your heart, familiar and warm, but from the corner of your eye, movement caught your attention. At the far end of the hall, near the courthouse stairs, stood the man — the one whose ass your hand still remembered in vivid, humiliating detail. His posture was deceptively relaxed, lean shoulder against the railing, papers tucked under one arm.

But his gaze was elsewhere, scanning, waiting. For someone. Hopefully not for his ex-wife. Hopefully also not for you. Hopefully for… a taxi? A bird? A sudden revelation about the meaning of life?

Your pulse fluttered like a trapped moth.

You pressed your palm softly to your husband’s shoulder. “You should go ahead,” you said with a little smile. “I want to walk today. Clear my head. And I’ll text you as soon as I reach home.”

He studied you for a moment, concern flickering gently in his expression. “You sure?”

“Completely sure.”

He pulled you into a final quick hug. “Text me,” he repeated with the seriousness of a man delegating a life-or-death mission.

“I will,” you promised, waving as he walked toward the exit, turning back twice just to make sure you were alright. You gave him thumbs-ups both times to reassure him you hadn’t suddenly combusted.

Once he disappeared, you inhaled, squared your shoulders, and stared at the man by the stairs.

You could pretend you hadn’t noticed him. You could walk away, erase this day from your emotional archives, and survive.

But no. You stepped toward him instead, each footfall a tiny surrender to fate, curiosity, or possibly stupidity. Probably all three.

As you approached, the scar-lipped man shifted, raising his eyes to you with a slow awareness, a quiet “there you are” that felt like stepping too close to a bonfire.

You told yourself this wasn’t another mistake. Even though it absolutely might be.

You took the last step forward, standing in front of what could easily be your second-most catastrophic decision of the day.

He didn’t even give you a chance to properly arrange your face into something dignified before the corner of his mouth curved, that scar pulling with it like punctuation on a very rude sentence. He tilted his head, eyes dragging over your expression with a laziness that felt intentional, almost indulgent, and said, “Couldn’t say hi first?” He let the words settle, savoring them. “Most people use their voice before they use their hands.”

You felt the heat climb up your neck like someone had replaced your bloodstream with boiling embarrassment. The memory of your palm meeting the wrong ass returned with full cinematic clarity. You groaned, quietly, into the air between you. “Please don’t remind me.”

“Why not?” he murmured, a low hum of amusement threading through each syllable. “It was memorable. Not every day someone greets me like that. Might set a new standard.”

You sputtered, pointing a finger at him as if that would restore some cosmic balance. “That was a mistake.”

“Sure,” he agreed too easily, hands slipping into his pockets in a way that should have been illegal. “If that’s your story, stick to it.”

You almost choked. “What, you think I just go around smacking strangers?”

He offered a casual shrug. “I dunno. Maybe that’s your thing. Everyone’s got a thing.”

“It’s not my thing.”

“Could be,” he said, eyes glinting. “If the introduction was a little more persuasive, I might’ve filed different paperwork today.”

You blinked, stunned for a beat, then managed, “Are you always like this with people you meet mid-divorce, or am I just incredibly unlucky?”

“Unlucky?” He leaned in just enough for you to catch the faintest scent of clean cologne and trouble. “No. Special.”

Your chest fizzed like someone had cracked open a carbonated drink under your ribs. You wanted to scoff, roll your eyes, smack him again out of sheer self-defense, anything to ground yourself, because who flirts with a stranger twenty-five minutes after legally separating from their spouse?

Apparently this man. This audacious, raven-haired, scar-lipped man whose presence felt like leaning too close to an open flame.

“You don’t waste any time,” you muttered.

He nodded solemnly as if discussing weather patterns. “Fastest divorce I’ve had so far.”

“So far?” you echoed, caught between horror and laughter. “You say that like it’s a sport.”

“Might as well be,” he said with a smirk. “Wanna help me break my record?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Didn’t sound like a no.”

You stared at him in disbelief. “It literally was a no!”

“Eh.” He made a vague gesture. “Tone was flexible.”

You exhaled a laugh despite yourself, fingers brushing your forehead. “You’re insane.”

“I get that a lot.” He looked entirely too pleased with himself. “What’s your name?”

You told him. He repeated it quietly, the syllables rolling off his tongue like he was testing their weight. “Nice. Suits you. Better than ‘ass smacker.’”

“Stop bringing that up,” you whined under your breath.

“Never,” he said, far too satisfied. “It’s our origin story. Very touching.”

“That’s not what touching means—”

“Isn’t it?” He cut in again, smooth as water over stone. “Anyway,” he continued before you could throttle him, “give me your number.”

You blinked. “Why?”

“So we can recover from our divorces together,” he said as if it were the most logical conclusion in the world. “Support group. Mutual healing. All that.”

“You are not someone who does mutual healing.”

“You don’t know that yet,” he teased. “And I don’t bite unless asked.”

Your jaw dropped halfway before you recovered, straightened, and exhaled a disbelieving laugh. “You’re really weird.”

“Probably. But I’m fun.” He lifted a brow. “Number?”

You should have walked away. You absolutely should have walked away. Instead, you typed your number into his phone with a shake of your head, saying, “This is a terrible idea.”

“Most good things are,” he replied. You handed the phone back, already retreating a step, because something about him made your pulse skitter in a way you were not equipped to handle today.

“Goodbye, Toji,” you said, testing the name you had wrung out of him earlier. It fit him like a well-worn leather jacket.

“Bye?” he echoed with a lazy drawl. “Pretty optimistic. You’ll hear from me before you even get home.”

You let out a strangled laugh, turned, and walked away with the kind of giddy, buoyant feeling that only danger disguised as charm could summon. Because somehow, against all logic and every warning bell your brain possessed, you knew this wasn’t the last time you’d see Toji Fushiguro.

Maybe you hadn’t stepped on a landmine. Maybe you’d stepped on the beginning of something you weren’t ready to name yet.