Rin☺︎︎

A metallic sweetness lingered in the air, reminding you both of the surreality of the situation. That even what it was showing might not have been real.

Suguru’s fists tightened as he tried to process what was going on, all the while caught in between the panic crawling under his skin and whatever else threatened to consume him then.

His mind raced with all sorts of thoughts like how to get you out of this, or how to fight back against something that he could potentially not counter with ease—only to come up with nothing—which left him internally reeling. If he had his technique, if he could outsource help, then maybe—maybe—maybe. He hadn’t felt this useless since that incident back when he was a teenager. Then again, for that, he was unprepared. This time he was anticipating something terrible but couldn’t do a single thing.

Before the panic could truly settle, though, the creature spoke once more, sounding like a tired version of him that time. Its voice was strained, if not barely there, as if being in the form it currently was had been draining it.

Then it spoke, or rather, asked something:

“Have you ever thought much about the dream realm?”

Suguru couldn’t reply with a single word, his mind still addled with the last thing it said.

About how it would become someone familiar soon enough.

The copy smiled back regardless, its teeth clicking as it tried to move with its unnatural shape.

“It’s the state of existence that lies between reality and the dream world,” it explained calmly. “A glitch, if you will, in our very own world. Where the soul blurs between both, allowing both essence and memory to merge.”

You found your voice first. “So… what’s that got to do with anything? What on earth is this place?”

Suguru’s hand shot out to cover your mouth, sealing it before you could say anything else. “Don’t humour it,” he warned even if he had that same query in mind.

The other him, however, seemed amused.

“Why, it has everything to do with what this place is, of course,” it started, its voice soft, albeit laced with a subtle cruelty. “It’s easier compared to a nightmare. Something similar exists in this world: a pocket where entities can be trapped for extended periods. Ever hear of the prison realm?”

You didn’t answer it that time, but a faint glint of recognition flashed in your eyes. You nodded without realising.

“You could say that this place is similar,” it explained. “I collect cursed objects, you see. All sorts of… unusual phenomena. Things that might test the boundaries of what’s allowed in our world. This little slice of hell, for example, is just among the few curiosities I have stored up my sleeve,” it then tilted its head. “You might have already noticed that it mimics a domain, being a pocket that contains a reality that doesn’t quite feel real, I can assure you that it’s rather different. It has no conditions to dissolve. It exists externally, though, so this is closer to a comatose projection within a concealed space in which you are in a waking hallucination, adapting to the world I have recreated. It can only be controlled by the one who arranges the pieces, though, so no, you can’t counter me. At least not here.”

You gulped. “So… the only way for us to get out of here is if you’re killed from the outside?”

It laughed at your question. “Not even that. If there is an external distraction, then that would be enough. That’s its only catch.”

You let out a noise that sounded like a whine and a scoff, while Suguru didn’t seem to be happy about the explanation at all.

“That’s—that’s not fair,” he cut in.

However, the false copy ignored him, its eyes still focusing on you with an intensity that made his stomach churn. “I need something simple from you, relatively speaking,” it finally revealed. “Try not to feel victimised. It isn’t personal. Everything I do… is simply a means to an end. If people have to suffer for it, then it isn’t something I seek out intentionally, but ultimately, it is unavoidable. Pain brings out all sorts of answers.”

Its hand reached towards you right after, barely giving you a chance to react. It moved like smoke and flesh stretching across the land like a rotten branch.

Suguru understood immediately, understanding that it was after your life. At that, he lunged forward in a heartbeat, desperate to pull you back, but the world bent around the copy, leaving him unable to reach either you or it.

He’d only manage to snag onto your t-shirt at most, inching his fingernails forward until he found enough willpower under the heavy, unseen pressure in the air, to wrap himself almost painfully around you. “No,” he gasped, clinging onto you with all that he had, glaring at the copy of him that seemed to retract momentarily, but not back away, as if only watching in mere curiosity what he would do next. “What do you want?” he demanded again, refusing anything but the truth as the answer.

“I just said,” it replied, “or perhaps… was I not clear enough? Has your own mind clouded your ability to understand simple things by that much?”

“What do you really want?” he tried again, emphasising that he wouldn’t tolerate any more bullshit from the creature.

The copy almost whined, rolling its eyes. “Must I repeat myself so often—”

“—I’ll give you anything you need—anything—anything at all,” Suguru insisted, then added, softer that time, and with his one condition, “anything but her.”

The creature tilted its head once more, blinking at you both, seeming to relax from its initial pursuit.

Unfortunately, this gave Suguru false hope. He ended up repeating himself.

“So tell me, what is it that you want?”

“Familiarity,” it finally disclosed. “I need to accomplish a sense of belonging to get somewhere important,” it calmly explained, sliding through the air to get close to you anyway, making Suguru tense up. “Right now, I need to stage a break-up and have a certain someone,” it said, glancing at you both one at a time, “to drop off the radar for a while and then have someone else, stage something far more dramatic after enough time has passed.”

“So why do you need to involve her in this shit?” Suguru demanded, trying to focus on the details that mattered.

“My cursed technique is something that like you, I cannot help,” the creature revealed bitterly, but also with a hint of fondness. “I have the ability to transfer my brain into… usually unwilling vessels and assimilate into that person. This has, over the millennia, led me on a search where I have kept asking myself if there is more to cursed energy than meets the already gifted eye?”

Suguru’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, so you’re… human? You’re just a curse user?”

It smiled. “Of course I’m human. Why be so quick to believe that I’m truly a monster just because of what I have shown you under the illusion? When a magician drops the curtain over a caged canary, do you truly believe that it’s the same bird that flies out unharmed, after vanishing from thin air?”

Suguru tried to process exactly what he was hearing, but it was starting to make him feel uneasy. He wanted to strangle this thing—or this man—whoever or whatever it was, and leave this awful, dreadful place.

“And also, because she plays an important role,” it revealed before it got too off track even if it did savour his confusion, fixing him with an almost pleased grin. “The tragic tale of the heartbroken girl, taking her life after being ghosted by a long-term partner. How cruel of you, Suguru… to abandon her like that. It would only make sense if she were to…”

Its tone shifted then, turning almost mocking. “You know her quite well, don’t you?” it pondered thoughtfully. “How do you think she would end her life, if she had to choose? Is she a trope who would gulp down a bunch of pills? Or would she jump off somewhere high? Or… would she be the type to seal a pretty noose around her neck?”

Suguru’s eyes flashed with anger. “Don’t you fucking dare talk to her like that.”

The creature remained quiet for a moment, but not out of respect.

It smiled soon after, muttering under its breath, “Something for me to figure out by myself, then.”

“You will not—” Suguru quickly barked out, only for it to talk, choosing to silence him in its world that time. Speaking, after all, acting out, all of that—was only if the creature allowed you both to do so—it was having fun wearing you down.

“Worry not,” it promised. “I’ll come back for you, too.”

It turned back to you, its voice dripping into something sweeter, like honey. It grew back into a human shape again, resembling Suguru, even though it still looked just as uncanny as before. “A small silver lining could be that jujutsu researchers have been getting close towards understanding what exactly happens after death. Perhaps if you’re lucky, then reincarnation will be on the table. You might both reconnect someday, into a better, simpler life without all of this madness.”

However, it turned its head sharply, its eyes glinting with something charged. It appeared to be stifling back a laugh.

Suguru was so close towards demanding what exactly was so funny, but it couldn’t resist sharing even sooner.

“Oh, wait,” it said, wiping back a tear of amusement, “the whole point of this place is to consume the souls trapped within it. I almost forgot—silly me. You won’t be meeting with each other ever again. Pity.”

Suguru’s stomach churned at the weight of its words as another question crept into his mind, his eyes focused on the ground, needing to look away from it for even a second.

“How do you even know about us?” he asked.

He still felt lost in the entire situation; it all happened so quickly that he was left unable to process anything at all that happened.

Beyond that, he kept quiet about his life, even as he started to drift away.

Pushing everyone out of his life just felt easy to do.

He’d only kept you close throughout all of it because the alternative, which meant losing you, made him feel physically sick.

The copy straightened up, adjusting its posture in a deliberate manner. Its voice shifted into something calmer, but its reply sounded rehearsed, as if it had anticipated this question to begin with. “There’s a threat that I need to eliminate,” it began, “a clan that holds the key to jeopardising an even larger prospect—greater than you—grander than myself. Your friend, Satoru Gojo, bears a technique—the six eyes—which serves as a major obstacle towards something extraordinary. Something that would… technically unify the world, although perhaps not in a way that anyone would enjoy.”

Suguru nodded carefully, as if he wasn’t surprised. Satoru being under threat was nothing new.

“Did you know that his birth alone shifted the very balance of the entire world?” it highlighted. “I tried before to eliminate the lineage, but by the time they tried again to produce another heir, that brat was protected from the start. Watched from the moment he clawed his way out of the womb.”

He nodded again, but something else still gnawed at him, figuring that he might as well ask.

“So,” he brought up. “How.. or why… do you look like me? If you transfer bodies in the… waking world, why are you able to look like me… now?”

The copy smiled, adopting an excited look that made you both feel uneasy. Its eyes beamed with anticipation, as if it couldn’t wait to share what was on its mind. “Because this realm only allows me to take on the form that appeals to the most desperate one inside.”

Suguru blinked, not buying that explanation entirely. He loved you and was very much certain that he was just as desperate to lose you as you were him. Therefore, the copy before him must have been bending the truth again just as it had already mocked him before for blindly trusting anything it says. If the entire purpose was to play on their vulnerabilities in this awful place, then maybe it took on his form because you had stumbled upon it first instead.

It—or he—or they—whoever this curse user must have been in reality, had paused, watching the gears turn in his head. “How lucky, it is in a way, that your friend—the very threat that I have been avoiding—so unknowingly isolated you both,” it highlighted. “Do you think that he would even be surprised if you just… took off without saying a word? A brooding guy like you who has always kept to himself. Would he be surprised if such a man’s neglected girlfriend would end her life after? Poor thing has been through it all, hasn’t she? He, and everyone else you left behind, would connect the dots quickly, I’m sure. And then…” it trailed off, lowering its voice to a whisper, “maybe they’d even say that it made sense in the end, as people always do. Especially when the grief settles. People are strange like that; cautious to admit that those around them might be broken, but they’re never quite surprised when a bitter truth finally comes out.”

Suguru swallowed hard, abandoning any hope that meant potentially reasoning with this monster. He leaned in so that he could whisper right in your ear, his words low, soft, but full of urgency all once. “Think you can run? I’ll try and hold them off.”

However, the copy simply let out a short huff of laughter, catching onto every word. “Run? In a place like this? Fight back? Even though your technique is gone? Move? Even though your will is all up to me?” it brought up, pointing out the flaws in Suguru’s improvised plan. “In a place like this? Against someone who can endlessly rewrite the reality of your prison for fun?”

It scoffed after.

“Oh, that’s brave,” it praised. “Or perhaps foolish.”

Suguru didn’t wait, however, shoving you to his side, but just as quickly, the world stiffened around him. You tried your best to steady yourself as something solidified at your feet, but you ended up falling forward instead. Your tumble felt guided, though, as if the world was directing you to land somewhere specifically. In an attempt to hold yourself against whatever that was, however, you ended up fusing the whole front of your body into the ground, pushing yourself face-first over the damp earth.

Your cheeks pressed into the cold mud, sinking into the wet dirt, filling your nostrils after, seeping into your airways and blocking your ability to breathe at all.

Suguru crouched down to pull you up, but he fell with you—landing on top of you—unable to rise again. His body sank lower, his knees catching over the small of your back and crushing you into the ground—something that he couldn’t fight back against, no matter how hard he tried. His weight pressed into you relentlessly, squeezing the last bit of air from your lungs.

You couldn’t even react, too focused on the feeling of pain—of burning—of sheer unbridled terror that settled in your bones instead of the oxygen in your lungs that you were so desperately starved of.

Suguru tried to choke out your name, then, apologetically added, “I-I can’t… move…”

The mud made a sick sound as his chest pushed even further into you, making your vision swim as life was literally pulled out from within you. Your vision swam and reddened around the edges, with little black dots pricking over what you could see. Mud seeped into your eyes—the sensation stinging and bitter—leaving you writhing beneath his weight. The taste of copper and rain filled your mouth as you tried to breathe, but the air was solid, heavy and ultimately, unyielding.

“Please—” Suguru begged, his voice cracking. “I can’t, I can’t—”

But all he could do was endure listening to the agonising way that your muffled gasps turned into trembling, shuddering twitches and feel as your strength gradually faltered. His breath broke apart as every fibre of his being screamed at him to move, to roll away, to give you relief, but fuck, this world—this damned—evil—awful world—refused to obey him.

“Please,” he gasped again, tears spilling from his eyes—his voice raw and broken, sounding close to someone unrecognisable as fear and anticipated grief gripped him all at once.

Until finally, a dreadful silence settled in the air.

The weight lifted, leaving behind coldness in his wake, and then, a sound that finally managed to tear from his throat. It was not quite a scream nor a cry, but something that was caught in between. A noise that was choked out from his lips, laced in pure shock, born from the horror that he had killed you.

He shot upright right after, scrambling to get himself off you, gathering your lifeless form into his arms. He didn’t care how he looked anymore—especially not in front of this thing—not caring that he looked broken, upset or desperate. His composure was shattered, rocking you back and forth apologetically, his entire body shaking as he did.

“Hey, hey, h-hey,” he urged, hoping to will you back into life, “come on,” he pleaded—his fingers clawing into the soft give of your flesh, hoping to wake you, even if you didn’t budge. He couldn’t even swallow as he held you—choking on every word that left his lips—on every breath that he managed.

He tried again and again.

“Come on—”

Muttering hopelessly.

“Don’t do this to me.”

Helplessly.

“Don’t you dare leave me.”

But no matter what, you wouldn’t wake.

Your eyes remained shut, and your chest wouldn’t rise.

It was only after his words had gradually dissolved from his voice, falling apart, that he had finally processed it all.

The thing that wore his skin seemed to be waiting for just that, freezing him in place, ensuring that he couldn’t fight back that time.

“Don’t worry,” it soothed mockingly. “At least you’ll live… for now.”

Suguru managed to scoff, but he could not move.

“How?” he forced himself to ask. His voice was empty, and his eyes were haunted with what he had done. “If you… leave me behind and without her… then what is the fucking point?”

The last couple of words had more volume, too, as if not even the fabricated world around him could stifle his anger.

“Because,” the entity smiled, almost sweetly, almost sympathetically, “this place is all you have left.”

The copy reached into its pocket, holding up a small, lifeless doll that when infused with your blood that it had quickly sampled, seemed to allow a broken copy of you to grow from what was once a strange husk.

Suguru wondered just how limited or just how vast the freedom was to create in a place like this. He resented the creature more than ever for how it chose to kill you. He hated it for making you suffer.

And yet, he remained powerless, more so than he ever did in life.

“A small mercy,” it offered, watching impassively as the doll branched into a lifeless, though animated copy of you. It spawned in ragged, shifting threads, the seams stitching as it grew.

Suguru warily stared at the doll as it shuffled towards him.

(Was this how you felt when you realised that the copy wasn’t him?)

(Did you feel dread similar to his own?)

“Time… moves slowly in here,” it murmured, almost fondly. “This whole operation will take me a couple of years at most, but it will feel like an eternity for you.”

Suguru found his voice then, unable to tear his eyes off the imitation.

“A small mercy?” he echoed. “This is worse than losing her. This is sick. This is wrong. This… this… this is—”

“—This is all you have left,” the copy gently reminded, walking away with the real you dangling limp in their hands, dead and draped over what now looked like a woman with shorter black hair, her forehead adorned in a strange scar that crept across.

He stared again at the soulless copy that moved all wrong, that breathed wrong, but, if he had to admit it, smelled just like you did way back then.

Of sharp citrus that made his head ache just a little bit.

Wearing that dress that he always liked.

And even against all odds, even if his mind rejected the copy, over time—after living with it, being trapped with it, forcing himself to ensure its company—he relented.

Suguru gave in.

And though what felt like a lifetime had passed by in this makeshift world, he hadn’t changed at all.

Yet, when the thing wearing your skin that time came back at last to collect him, it was as if he were on the verge of death, seeing a literal angel before his eyes.

He didn’t even reject it—desperate to reunite with the fleeting remnant of the real you.

The false you smiled as you welcomed him into arms that weren’t yours, comforting him with his name that felt wrong when you said it, coaxing him into a comfort that hadn’t existed for a long time.

(But at least, he thought, he would be free from this nightmare soon, even if he couldn’t be reunited with you again. Even if he couldn’t meet you again, neither in this life nor the next.)

(He found some peace in it all the same, even if bitterly, that both of your souls were lost together, unable to truly pass on, because in that way at least, he could pretend that he had followed after you.)

and you, being the girl who loved everything with her whole sparkly, stupid heart, didn’t see it until it hurt.

it started with him missing your calls, which didn’t make sense because satoru always answered you. always. even during missions. even during meetings. even in the shower, which you scolded him for and he laughed off because he was listening to your voice, not the rules.

but one night your call rang and rang and rang, and your little heart squeezed tight in your chest because the ringtone ended without his voice on the other side. you tried again. then again. then again, until your mascara started to sting your eyes and your lip gloss tasted like salt.

when he finally texted you hours later, it was just one line.

busy. talk later.

no emoji. no heart. no “sweetheart.” no “pretty girl.” just… nothing.

like you were another notification.

you stared at your phone, confused in the way a child gets confused when a toy breaks in their hands. “oh,” you whispered to yourself, voice tiny and wobbling, “maybe he’s mad at me.”

the next day you showed up at the school with a ribbon in your hair that matched the color of his eyes because you thought it would cheer him up, but he barely looked in your direction. he walked past you like he didn’t even see you standing there, smiling too bright and waving too fast, trying so hard to be cute, trying so hard to get his attention the way you always did.

your wave dropped slowly. “toru?” you called after him, soft and hopeful.

he didn’t turn around.

geto noticed. nanami noticed. hell, even the freshmen noticed.

but you, poor, glitter brained, too gentle you, kept whispering excuses to yourself like little bandages that didn’t stick.

maybe he was overwhelmed. maybe he needed space. maybe he’d smile at you tomorrow. maybe you did something wrong and should fix it. maybe, maybe, maybe. you kept stitching maybes together until they became a blanket you hid under.

until the night everything cracked.

he came home late. so late the moon was already low and you were sitting on the couch with your knees pulled to your chest, phone glowing in your palms as you reread your own texts like they were clues to a mystery you weren’t smart enough to solve.

when he walked through the door, you lit up instantly, smile blooming like reflex, voice soft with relief. “toru, you’re back! I missed you so much!”

but he didn’t smile back. he didn’t sit beside you. he didn’t kiss your forehead or pick you up or tease you or call you sweetheart.

he didn’t do anything except sigh.

a tired, heavy exhale that felt like an earthquake in the middle of your chest.

“we need to talk,” he said.

your hands twisted in your skirt. “oh… did i do something dumb again?”

his jaw tensed. “that’s not the point.”

“then… what’s wrong?” your voice trembled without you meaning it to. “i can fix it. i promise. just tell me what you need.”

“i need space,” he said quietly.

the words hit you like cold water. “from… me?”

he didn’t answer fast enough. that silence told you everything.

your throat closed and your heart throbbed like it was too big for your body. “but toru… i love you. a lot. like… a lot-lot. like… probably too much.”

you laughed weakly, hoping that would soften it, hoping he’d laugh too, hoping he’d act like himself for even a second.

he didn’t.

“i know,” he said, “and i’m tired, sweetheart.”

you flinched. you’d never heard him say sweetheart like that. like it hurt him, like you were a problem.

your voice cracked as you whispered, “am i annoying you?”

“no,” he said immediately, but his eyes betrayed him, sliding away from yours, heavy with something like guilt. “it’s not that. i just… need distance. things are getting too much.”

too much.

you stared at him, mind slow, heart loud, every thought dissolving into something small and wounded.

“oh,” you whispered. “i didn’t know i was… too much.”

“that’s not-”

“no, it’s okay.” you forced a smile, glossy and trembling, lips quivering under the shimmer of your lip gloss. “i’ll… i’ll be less. i can be less.”

he shook his head, but you were already shrinking, already pulling your knees to your chest, already curling in on yourself like something trying to disappear.

“i don’t want you to change,” he said softly.

“but you want space from me,” you whispered.

and that broke him more than anything else.

because you weren’t angry. you weren’t yelling. you weren’t jealous or dramatic or demanding. you were just… hurt. sweetly, quietly, devastatingly hurt.

like a petal crushed under a heel.

“i just need time,” he murmured. “that’s all.”

you nodded even though you didn’t understand. “okay… i can wait. i’m good at waiting for you.”

but you weren’t.

you cried when he left the room, you cried again when the door closed, you cried into your pillow until your mascara stained the case and your throat ached from trying to keep every sob silent.

because it wasn’t that he didn’t love you. it was the way he didn’t love you enough.

and the cruelest part?

you still woke up the next morning hoping he’d change his mind.

•●SUGURU GETO●•

you noticed it long before he ever said a word.

that quiet shift in the way suguru began looking at the world, like everything he saw made him a little more tired, a little more angry, a little more convinced that something was deeply wrong and he was the only one brave enough to fix it.

but you didn’t understand it, not really, because you were the kind of girl who loved too easily and believed too gently. you thought the world was fixable if people just talked things out, if kindness was loud enough, if you smiled enough times at strangers who looked sad.

and suguru used to smile at that. used to cup your cheeks and call you his sweet stupid girl, the only person in existence capable of making him believe life still had pockets of softness left in it.

but then the softness stopped being enough.

the first sign was how he stopped reaching for your hand when you walked together.

you tried to lace your fingers through his one afternoon, swinging your arms in that happy, thoughtless way you always did when you were excited about something, but his hand stayed limp, barely curling back around yours, like he was holding onto a memory instead of a person.

you told yourself he was tired. you always did.

and then there were the nights he didn’t come home.

you sat on his couch in one of his shirts, legs tucked under you, lip gloss smudged on the rim of the mug you kept reheating, staring at the door like if you blinked too long you’d miss him coming through it.

when he finally returned, he smelled like incense and blood and exhaustion, and he didn’t kiss you hello, he just walked past with a soft, distracted pat to your shoulder that made your eyes sting for reasons you couldn’t explain.

“sugu? did i… do something wrong?” your voice was quiet, small, too round at the edges for the sharpness in the room.

he didn’t look back when he answered. “no. you didn’t do anything.”

but it didn’t feel like nothing.

the real break came slowly, like threads snapping one by one until the whole thing collapsed.

you found him sitting alone on the engawa one night, staring into the dark like he was waiting for it to talk back. you wrapped your arms around him from behind, cheek pressed to his shoulder, whispering his name in that soft, hopeful way like maybe your voice could pull him back to where you were.

he didn’t lean into you. he didn’t even blink.

“suguru,” you murmured, “i’m worried about you.”

he finally turned then, but the expression he gave you wasn’t the one you knew, it wasn’t the fond, amused, gentle softness he used to carry for you.

it was pity.

it was resignation.

it was someone already halfway gone.

“you don’t understand,” he said quietly.

“then tell me,” you begged, nails curling into the fabric of his sleeves. “please? i can understand if you just tell me.”

he shook his head once, slow. “you can’t. you’re… kind in ways the world doesn’t deserve.”

you smiled, confused and trying to be brave. “but that’s good, right? sugu, being kind is good.”

and he flinched.

“that’s the problem,” he breathed. “you think kindness can fix anything. you think love is enough. you think-” his voice broke, sharp and painful. “you think the monsters in this world can be reasoned with.”

you didn’t know what to say. you never knew the right words in moments like this. your heart was simple and your mouth was worse, and suddenly you were terrified that your softness, the thing he used to adore, was the very thing he was turning away from.

“i love you,” you whispered, because it was the only thing you knew for certain.

he closed his eyes. not in relief, in defeat.

“i know,” he murmured, and your heart lifted for a second, until he added, “and that’s why this is going to hurt.”

your breath hitched. “what do you mean hurt?”

and he finally looked at you, really looked, like he was memorizing the shape of your face, the curve of your lips, the way your eyes always shimmered with emotion you didn’t know how to hide.

“i’m leaving,” he said. no softness. no hesitation. just the truth delivered like a blade.

you shook your head immediately, hair swishing, confusion twisting into panic. “leaving where? for how long? i can come with you, i’ll pack stuff, i’ll-”

“no,” he said firmly, catching your wrists before you could reach for him. “you’re not coming.”

“why not?” your voice cracked, too high, too scared.

because he loved you. because you were good. because you would see the things he planned to do and you would break.

but he didn’t say that.

instead he said, “because where i’m going… you don’t belong.”

your lip trembled. “but i belong with you.”

he exhaled shakily, thumb brushing your cheek one last time, the touch so gentle it almost didn’t feel real.

“sweet girl,” he whispered, “you were the last good thing in my life. but good things don’t survive where i’m going.”

and then he stood. and you stayed kneeling on the floor, heart cracked open, reaching for him as the distance grew.

“sugu wait please don’t go- just tell me what i did, i can fix it! i can try harder i promise-”

but he didn’t look back, not once. not even when your voice broke into pieces behind him.

you sat there long after he was gone, hands pressed to your chest like you were trying to keep your heart from spilling out, whispering his name into the dark like maybe it would bring him back.

it didn’t.

then you heard whispers. ugly, sharp edged rumors about him skipping classes, ignoring missions, acting strange, you didn’t believe any of it. couldn’t.

not your suguru.

not the boy who brushed leaves out of your hair and told you you smelled like summer.

you kept defending him even after everyone else had stopped trying. even after satoru stopped joking about it. even after shoko went quiet every time you asked where he was or when he’d be back.

you still waited.

you still saved half your dessert for him.

you still practiced saying “i missed you” in the mirror because you wanted to get the tone right for when he’d finally walk back in through the doors of jujutsu high like nothing ever changed.

but he didn’t walk back in, someone else did.

a teacher with pity in his mouth and fear in his eyes pulled you aside, voice trembling, hands shaking when he tried to soften the news like softening it could ever make it hurt less.

suguru killed them, he said. killed everyone. a whole village. civilians. his parents.

you blinked at him, head tilted, because the words didn’t fit together. they pressed against your ears like puzzle pieces from a different box, shaped wrong, colored wrong, nothing about it matching the picture you knew.

“that’s… you’re lying,” you whispered, voice tiny and confused, like a child lost in a crowd.

but they weren’t lying and you found out in the worst possible way.

they showed you the report.

cold pages. cold ink. cold truth spelled out in sharp, unforgiving strokes.

you read his name where it didn’t belong. you saw the blood he spilled. you saw the word massacre printed in a neat little font that made your stomach twist.

and something in you broke. quietly, so quietly no one heard it except you.

you stumbled out of the room, vision blurry even though you weren’t crying, because you didn’t understand enough to cry. your brain kind of floated, heavy and light all at once, and your knees didn’t feel like they were attached to your body anymore.

you kept whispering “no” under your breath, like maybe if you said it enough times it would reverse everything, rewind time, bring him back as the boy who bought you melon bread and told you not to walk alone at night.

but he wasn’t that boy anymore.

he chose something else.

someone else, somewhere else.

by stepping into a darkness so deep you couldn’t follow, no matter how much you loved him.

•●KENTO NANAMI●•

nanami had always been gentle with you in that quiet, deliberate way that made you feel like the world wasn’t as loud as you thought it was. whenever you struggled to understand something, he explained it patiently. whenever you forgot things, he picked up the pieces without complaint. whenever you cried, he held you with both arms like you were allowed to be soft.

but even then, even through all that softness, there were signs.

little comments he never meant to be cruel, but landed like tiny cuts anyway.

“you should think before you speak.”

“you need to take things more seriously.”

“you’re an adult now, you can’t act like this forever.”

you’d pout, apologize, promise to try harder, and he’d sigh like he didn’t want to be frustrated but couldn’t help it.

you truly believed you could improve for him. be more responsible, less forgetful, less… you.

but no matter how many planners you bought, how many reminders you set, how many sticky notes you scattered across your apartment, you still mixed up dates, still burned dinner, still cried over small things, still tangled your words when you got overwhelmed.

and nanami noticed.

he always noticed.

the day he broke your heart was so painfully mundane you didn’t realize what was happening until it was already over.

you were sitting across from him in a quiet café he picked, one of those polished places with crisp napkins and clean glass and menus you had to squint at. you were wearing a dress you bought because you thought he’d like the color, holding a little tote bag filled with pastries you had picked out for him. you felt proud because for once you arrived early, breathing deep and hoping he’d notice.

he did notice, just not in the way you wanted.

he sat down across from you, expression unreadable in that neat, controlled nanami way. he wasn’t angry. that would’ve hurt less. he was… resolved.

“thank you for coming,” he said, folding his hands as if this were a meeting and not your relationship.

you giggled nervously, smoothing your skirt. “of course i came, silly. you said it was important.”

he didn’t smile. your stomach dropped.

“i want to talk about us,” he said, voice gentle but firm. “and what we both need moving forward.”

you tried your best to follow the conversation, but every time he said something like “maturity” or “stability” or “different life paths,” your mind scrambled desperately, reaching for excuses, for fixes, for ways to make him stay.

“i can be stable,” you swore softly, leaning forward. “i can be more organized. i’ve been practicing. look-” you rummaged through your tote bag, trying to find the small planner with all the stickers and highlighted dates you filled in just for him. “i even wrote down all the times you work late so i don’t forget-”

“that’s not the point,” nanami interrupted, and it wasn’t harsh, but it was enough to make your hands freeze mid motion. “this isn’t about you trying harder. you’re… you. this is who you are. and i don’t want to keep pushing you into a version of yourself that makes you unhappy.”

“but i’m not unhappy,” you whispered, even though your voice trembled enough to betray it.

nanami lowered his eyes.

“i met someone,” he said, quiet, almost clinical. “she and i… align better. we want the same things. we communicate the same way.”

you didn’t understand the rest of what he said. you only heard the word someone echoing like a bell.

someone who wasn’t forgetful.

someone who wasn’t emotional.

someone who didn’t confuse him.

someone who didn’t need explanations three times in a row.

someone who wasn’t you.

your lip trembled, and you tried, really, truly tried not to cry, but tears welled up anyway, clinging to your lashes in fat, embarrassing droplets.

“did i… do something wrong?” you asked in a tiny voice, one hand clutching your tote bag so tightly the fabric wrinkled under your palm. “is it because i’m dumb?”

nanami flinched.

“no,” he said quickly, too quickly. “you’re not dumb. you’re kind. you’re warm. you’re-” he stopped, exhaled, looked older than he should’ve. “you deserve someone who appreciates you as you are.”

“so why isn’t that you?” and the moment the question left your lips, a tear slipped down your cheek.

nanami inhaled deeply, like it hurt him to breathe. “because I’m not the man who can give you the life you want.”

but you did want him. you wanted him.

and he was already letting go.

he reached across the table, wiped a tear gently from your cheek with a thumb that shook far more than you expected. “please don’t think this means you’re lacking,” he murmured. “you’re… you’re wonderful. just not-”

“mature enough,” you finished for him, voice barely a whisper.

he didn’t deny it.

that silence said more than any answer could.

you walked home alone after that, clutching your little tote bag of pastries you bought for him, realizing they were the last thing you would ever give him. you sat on your bed, staring at your planner, the one filled with stickers and hearts and reminders you wrote in pink pen because you thought it would make him smile.

would growing up mean becoming someone he’d choose?

and for the first time in a long time, your chest felt heavy in a way lip gloss couldn’t fix.

•●CHOSO KAMO●•

choso never meant to hurt you.

that was the worst part.

every other man in your life had at least known what they were doing when they broke your heart, but choso? he was so hopelessly gentle with his affection that you never once imagined he could shatter you without meaning to, simply by being himself.

and yet… that was exactly what happened.

it started slowly, the kind of slow that sneaks up on you, soft footed and cruel, showing no signs of danger until it’s already wrapped around you like a storm you can’t get out of. you didn’t even notice it happening. choso drifting, bit by bit, inch by inch, without malice, without intention, without even understanding the way his silence pressed down on you like a weight.

and you kept thinking it was your fault.

because that’s what you always thought when things went wrong.

maybe you were too clingy. maybe you asked too many silly questions. maybe you talked too much or didn’t talk enough or hugged him too tightly or didn’t hug him tightly enough. maybe he got tired of explaining everything to you. maybe he needed someone smarter. maybe he got bored.

you went through every maybe in your head except the right one.

choso didn’t pull away because he stopped caring, he pulled away because he didn’t understand the rules of caring.

he didn’t know that humans needed reassurance. he didn’t know that lovers needed communication. he didn’t know that when you asked quietly, “do you still like me?” you weren’t asking for fun, you were asking him to save you from drowning.

he didn’t know.

and that ignorance hurt you more than cruelty ever could.

the moment everything cracked was a stupid moment, a tiny one, one of those things you wouldn’t even remember if it didn’t end up marking the rest of your life.

you were sitting beside him on the couch, legs curled under you, wearing one of those tiny skirts he always stared at with this soft awe, as though he couldn’t believe something so pretty existed in the same world as him. your fingers were tapping together nervously while he stared at the little charm bracelet he’d gotten you months ago.

you’d been feeling him drift for days. maybe weeks. maybe longer and you couldn’t hold it anymore.

“choso?” you said quietly, voice small, like it had folded in on itself. “are you… mad at me?”

he blinked, turning his head with that slow, patient confusion.

“mad?” he repeated. “at you? why would i be.”

“i dunno,” you whispered, twisting the hem of your skirt. “you just… you don’t talk to me much anymore. or hold my hand as much. and you go quiet a lot. and i don’t wanna be annoying, but i wanna be near you. i like being near you.”

choso stared at you, brow furrowing.

not angry, not cold, just… lost.

“i didn’t know you wanted that.”

your heart twisted painfully. “i’m always wanting that,” you murmured.

he nodded slowly like he was solving a math problem. “i see.”

but he didn’t. he didn’t see at all.

you waited. you hoped. you held your breath like someone praying for rain.

and choso, with all the innocence in the world, all the confusion of a soul learning what love even is, said the words that broke every fragile, glittery piece of you, “maybe it would be better if… you found someone who understands things better than i do.”

your mouth fell open, soft and trembling.

“what?”

“i don’t want to hold you back,” he said simply, like it was obvious, like he wasn’t carving a wound right through your chest. “you are bright. and soft. and alive. you deserve someone who knows how to do this.”

“choso…” your voice cracked, thin and shaking. “i… i wanted you.”

his expression didn’t change.

not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t understand that this was the part where he was supposed to stop you from falling apart.

“i’m sorry,” he said, polite and gentle, as if an apology could sew anything back together. “i just don’t think i’m good for you.”

you felt it then, the break.

quiet. sharp. final.

you swallowed, blinking fast, trying so hard not to cry because you knew if you cried, he wouldn’t know what to do, and it would make everything worse. so you nodded, giving him a tiny smile that was all trembling lip gloss and shaking mascaraed lashes.

“okay,” you whispered. “if… if you think that’s what’s best.”

he did.

you didn’t.

and you left quietly, slipping out the door with your charm bracelet clinking around your wrist, leaving choso sitting there in the stillness, completely unaware of how badly he had hurt you.

completely unaware that he’d just broken your heart because he didn’t understand what hearts needed.

•●TAKUMA INO●•

you always thought takuma liked you.

not in the big obvious way, or even the quietly intense way. takuma’s feelings always looked different. scattered in frantic bursts of attention, the way he lit up when he saw you, the way he buzzed around you like an anxious bee that couldn’t decide whether to land on your hand or hide behind a flower.

and you believed him.

you believed every smile, every blush, every clumsy attempt he made to impress you, every time he told you that you were “so cute it actually made him dizzy, like, medically.” you believed it when he said you made him nervous in a good way, when he tried to teach you things and then forgot the lesson midway because he got distracted by the way your lip gloss glimmered.

you thought it meant something.

until she showed up. his girl best friend. the one he’d “totally forgotten” to mention. the one who “didn’t matter like that.” the one who called him taku and flicked his ear and talked to him like she’d invented him.

you didn’t understand at first. you thought she was just a friend. you even tried to like her, tried to be sweet, tried to be polite even when she gave you that look, the one girls give when they know they’ve already won.

and takuma… didn’t notice.

he didn’t notice the way she slipped her arm through his every chance she got. he didn’t notice the way she scooted closer until her knee touched his. he didn’t notice the way she curled into his side during group meetings like she belonged there. and worst of all, he didn’t notice the way your smile would falter every single time.

you tried to stay bright.

sparkly.

hopeful.

but every time she touched him, something inside you wilted, a soft squeeze around your heart, tight like someone was tying ribbons around it in ways that hurt.

and takuma just kept laughing, kept chasing her attention, kept forgetting you were even in the room.

one day, you watched her pull him aside during training, tugging him by the sleeve like he was hers, and he didn’t look back at you. not even once.

you waited.

you played with the hem of your skirt, twirled your hair, tried to pretend you weren’t watching them talk too closely, too intimately, too… differently.

when he came back, breathless and flushed and smiling in that way he used to smile at you, you felt something inside you crack like thin sugar glass.

“oh!” he said, like he was surprised you were still there, “i gotta go with her, okay? she needs me for something important.”

you blinked. “more important than me?”

your voice wasn’t accusatory. it wasn’t sharp. it wasn’t anything but soft and confused. it sounded like you genuinely didn’t understand, and that made it hurt even more.

takuma laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “don’t pout, angel… it’s not like that. she just… y’know. she gets me. we’ve known each other forever.”

you nodded, even though the words carved themselves straight into you.

“but i get you too…” you whispered, thumb pressing into your lip like you could keep your heart from falling out of your mouth.

he didn’t hear you.

he was already waving at her.

already running toward her.

already choosing her again.

and you stood there, alone, glittery, hopeful, stupid, watching the boy you love reach for someone else with the same hands that held your cheeks two days ago when he told you that you were “the cutest thing he’d ever seen.”

you didn’t cry.

you weren’t even sure you knew how to cry properly, not when your emotions always came out slow and delayed, like your brain needed extra time to catch up.

but later that night, when you saw a photo of them together, her sitting in his lap, smiling like she had been waiting for him to notice her all this time, and him with his arms around her in a way he’d never held you, the tears finally arrived.

soft little drops that rolled down your cheeks before you even understood why you were sad.

because you didn’t understand betrayal. you didn’t understand being replaced. you didn’t understand heartbreak in the way other people do.

you just knew that something warm inside you had gone quiet.

you just knew that when he texted you hours later, saying,

“sorry i forgot to reply, she fell asleep on me lol, talk tomorrow?”

your fingers hovered over your phone for a long, long moment.

and you typed:

“okay :)”

with a glittery heart sticker at the end, because that’s who you were.

soft. hopeful. easy to overlook.

•●HAJIME KASHIMO●•

you always knew hajime kashimo moved through the world differently than everyone else, carrying himself with the quiet, electric confidence of someone who had lived so long that every sunrise felt like a repetition and every connection felt temporary by definition, but you still believed you could be the exception, still believed if you loved him softly enough, brightly enough, sweetly enough, he’d learn how to stay.

he liked you, that much was obvious.

you could see it in the way his eyes softened, barely, whenever you babbled nonsense at him while painting your nails, in the way his head tilted when you called lightning “spicy sky wiggles,” watching you like you were the strangest and most delicate creature he’d ever seen, in the way he let you lean into him when you felt sleepy, his body still and warm and deceptively gentle against yours.

you thought the more he softened around you, the more permanent it meant he intended to be.

but kashimo was never meant to stay.

he warned you once, casually, like he was commenting on the weather.

“i don’t plan for the future.”

you giggled then, assuming he meant he was bad at scheduling, and you promised to help him buy a planner with stickers and reminders and maybe cute little lightning bolt tabs, and he didn’t correct you, he simply watched you with a small, unreadable smile, as if he already knew the ending and didn’t have the heart to tell you.

the heartbreak came on a quiet morning, the kind where the air felt too still for anything bad to happen.

you had made him tea, badly. because you always forgot how long it needed to steep, and he accepted it anyway, fingers brushing yours briefly, a touch you felt all the way down to your knees.

“i need to tell you something,” he said, and you thought maybe he was going to ask if you wanted to spend the evening together, or if you would braid his hair again, or if lightning technically had emotions like you’d been claiming for weeks.

but instead he sat across from you, posture relaxed, eyes steady, voice even.

“i’m leaving.”

you blinked slowly, brain not quite catching up. “leaving like… going out? or like a trip? or like- like leaving leaving?”

he didn’t flinch. “leaving for good.”

the mug slipped from your hands, tea spilling across the table, but you barely noticed because everything inside you felt like it had gone quiet all at once.

“oh,” you whispered, trying to smile, because that’s what you always did, smiling even when you were confused, even when you were scared. “did i… did i do something wrong?”

“no,” he said simply, and somehow that made it worse.

“then why?” your voice cracked, soft and high and trembling. “i thought you liked me.”

“i did.” a pause. “i do.”

your breath hitched, a tiny hopeful sound, and for one painful moment you reached for him, for the familiar warmth of his hand, for the grounding weight of his presence, but he didn’t take it. he kept his hands folded in his lap, unmoving, like touching you might change his mind.

“but i have no interest in settling into a life i won’t keep,” he said, tone gentle in a way that felt crueler than anger. “you want things i can’t give. stability. time. a future.”

you shook your head frantically, lip trembling. “i don’t care about any of that- i just want you.”

and kashimo, the ancient sorcerer who had walked battlefields with blood on his hands and thunder in his chest, closed his eyes like the sound of your voice hurt him.

“that’s exactly why i can’t stay.”

you didn’t understand. you weren’t meant to.

you stood on shaking legs, still trying to chase a logic that wasn’t there, reaching again for him, for his sleeve, for anything, but he stepped back, not harshly, but decisively.

“i’m going to die soon,” he said, almost calmly. “by choice. by design. i have one final battle waiting for me, and i’m not interested in outliving it.”

you froze.

completely.

utterly.

your lips parted, but nothing came out.

he watched your face fall, watched the glitter in your eyes turn wet, watched your pretty, soft expression fold into something fragile and breaking, and for a moment, a single, flickering moment, his expression faltered too, like he regretted ever letting you close enough to make this hurt.

“you deserve someone who stays,” he said softly.

you shook your head again, tears brimming, voice cracking in a way that made him look away. “i only wanted you.”

a long silence followed. heavy, final, electric in the worst way.

and then he bowed his head slightly, respectful, distant, unbearably gentle. “i know.”

he walked out on quiet feet, not looking back, because he knew if he did, he’d falter. because he knew you would follow, even now, even in heartbreak, even in confusion so thick it strangled your thoughts. because he knew you would destroy yourself trying to love someone who had never intended to survive long enough to love you back properly.

the door closed behind him.

and he was gone.

•●HIROMI HIGURUMA●•

you always thought higuruma was the safest kind of man to love, mostly because he never raised his voice, never pushed, never made you feel like your softness was something embarrassing he needed to tuck away when people looked at him. he listened to you ramble about things he didn’t understand, he let you sit on his lap while you painted your nails, he kissed you gently after long days in court as if your sweetness was the one thing that kept the world from cornering him completely.

he was steady. he was safe. he was… reasonable.

and maybe that was the problem.

because the heartbreak didn’t come from anger, or betrayal, or another woman. it didn’t come from some dramatic moment where he chose work over you or pushed you away in frustration.

it came from the absolute worst place possible, logic.

he invited you over one evening, telling you he needed to talk, and you showed up with a container of food you bought on the way because you knew he hadn’t eaten lunch. you were humming, smiling, doing that thing where your heart was so full it made everything feel bright and easy and warm.

but the moment he opened the door, something in his eyes told you the warmth wasn’t going to reach him.

he let you in. he thanked you for the pastries. he poured tea for you in that meticulous way he always did.

and then he sat across from you at his kitchen table, hands folded, shoulders tense, expression composed in a way that made your stomach twist before either of you spoke.

“i’ve been thinking a lot,” he started, voice low and steady, which was always a terrible sign, because higuruma only spoke that way when he’d already made up his mind.

you giggled nervously, poking your straw into your drink. “you always think a lot, hiromi. that’s like… your thing.”

he didn’t smile.

your own smile faltered.

“i don’t think we should continue this,” he said, and he said it like he was announcing the weather, like it was inevitable, like it was sane.

your first instinct was confusion, soft, blinking, misplaced hope. “continue… what?”

“this,” he said gently. “us.”

you stared at him, eyes going wide, lips parting just a little as if you’d forgotten how to close them.

“b-but… why?” your voice sounded like a child asking why the sun wasn’t out today.

and he sighed, slow, pained, like he hated that he had to answer.

“you deserve someone who understands you,” he said, tone steady but face tight, “someone who knows how to love you without overthinking every part of it. someone who doesn’t live with one foot in guilt and the other in responsibility.”

you shook your head quickly. “i don’t- i don’t need someone like that. i just need you.”

his eyes softened in that awful way people’s eyes soften when they’re about to hurt you more.

“but you don’t see it,” he murmured. “you don’t see how much of myself i hold back. how careful i have to be with you. how incompatible our worlds are.”

“i- i can be better,” you said quickly, leaning forward, heart already cracking in your chest even though you didn’t fully understand why. “i can- i’ll try harder. hiromi, i’ll-”

“no.” one word. quiet. final.

you froze.

he reached across the table, taking your trembling hands in his warm, steady ones, and you hated it. hated how gentle he was being as he destroyed you.

“you don’t need to change,” he said softly. “you’re perfect exactly as you are. too perfect for someone like me.”

your breath hitched, and you blinked fast, tears gathering even though you didn’t want them to, because you still didn’t entirely understand what you’d done wrong.

“then why aren’t i enough?” you whispered.

and that, that was the moment he looked away.

“because i’m the one who isn’t enough.”

the room went quiet. completely still.

you sat there, staring at him with wide, glossy eyes that asked all the questions you couldn’t form, while he watched the way your heart broke in real time and forced himself, cruelly, painfully, to stay quiet about how badly he wanted to take every word back.

but he didn’t.

because in his mind, loving you meant stepping aside before he ruined something soft.

you didn’t argue again. you didn’t plead. you didn’t even move.

you just nodded, small and fragile, because that’s what you did when someone you loved talked to you with a voice that sounded like a verdict.

“okay,” you whispered. “if you really want that… okay.”

and he hated himself for the relief and grief that hit him at the same time.

he walked you to the door. you didn’t look back. he watched you go anyway.

a heartbreak so soft you didn’t feel the stab until long after the door had closed behind you.

•●RYOMEN SUKUNA●•

you always thought sukuna’s cruelty had edges you’d learned to live around, like sharp corners in a too small house, things you bumped into but could laugh off because he always looked at you after with that dangerous little smirk like he secretly liked your softness more than he ever admitted.

you thought you understood him, in the silly little way your pink gloss brain handled complicated things. sukuna liked you. sukuna kept you. sukuna didn’t kill you. that meant something.

because, in your mind, if the king of curses let you sit on his lap sometimes while you braided his hair wrong, or let you fall asleep in his robes while he muttered insults that somehow felt like affection, or let you call him “suku” even though it made him twitch every time, then he must have liked you more than he liked anyone.

it wasn’t smart logic. it wasn’t even good logic, but it was yours.

and for a long time, it was true enough.

until suddenly… it wasn’t.

you felt it in the way his eyes no longer followed you when you wandered around his temple humming off key, or in the way he didn’t bother correcting your stupid questions with that deep irritated sigh that secretly meant you amused him. you felt it in the quiet.

sukuna was never quiet.

but lately he watched you with the same expression someone might give a broken trinket they didn’t feel like throwing out yet but no longer wanted to keep.

you tried to fix it in your own way, because that’s what you did, you fixed things with kisses on cheeks and pink lip gloss and wearing the little outfits he once said made you “less unbearable.”

and maybe that was the saddest part. you genuinely thought you could brighten him back up.

so when you approached him that evening, tiny steps, soft smile, your voice sweet as you mumbled his name, you didn’t expect him to look at you the way he did.

like he was bored. like you were nothing. like he’d finally realized he didn’t need you.

“what,” he said, not even glancing fully in your direction.

you paused, smile wavering. “i made dinner… it’s your favorite- well, i think it’s your favorite, you never actually told me which one was your-”

“stop talking.”

the words hit harder than they should have. you froze, hands tightening nervously at your sides.

“did… did i do something wrong?” you asked quietly, voice wobbling. “did i make you mad?”

he lifted his eyes languidly, like the act alone cost him effort.

“you always make me mad,” he said, “but until now, you were at least amusing.”

your breath stuttered.

“amusing?” you repeated.

“mm.” he studied his nails. “you had a novelty. the dumb, pretty act. the way you flinched when i raised my voice. the way you clung like a little pet and thought it meant something.” then he smirked, slow, cutting. “but novelty wears off.”

your heart cracked, you could feel it. you could hear it.

“suku…” you whispered, moving toward him instinctively, and he stood, towering over you, shadows pooling around his feet like a warning.

“don’t call me that.”

you flinched.

“you’re draining,” he continued, voice bored and cruel and heavy with the finality you didn’t want to hear. “tiresome. i’m done entertaining this.”

you blinked rapidly, trying to keep tears from spilling because he hated tears, he always said they made you even more pathetic.

“but… but i love you,” you breathed, soft and desperate and stupid. “i really do, even if i’m not good at saying things the right way, and if i’m annoying, i can try to-”

“god, listen to yourself,” he interrupted, a laugh dripping with venom. “pathetic doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

your shoulders folded inward.

he stepped closer, you didn’t back away.

“you have two options,” he said calmly, as though discussing weather. “you leave, and you never show your face in my presence again…” his smile grew sharp enough to slice bone. “or i kill you and find something new to keep me entertained.”

you swallowed, throat burning.

he waited.

you looked at him, the monster you loved, the monster who once let you braid his hair, the monster who once fell asleep with his hand resting on your waist like he didn’t realize it, and you searched his face for even a flicker of softness.

there was none.

so you nodded, voice small, tiny, broken. “i’ll go.”

he waved a hand dismissively. “good.”

you stepped backward, slow and shaky, heart shattering with each inch you put between you and the only place you thought you belonged. and even when you reached the door, even when the temple air shifted colder, you waited, hoping he’d tell you to stop, to stay, to come back, to not be so dramatic.

he didn’t.

he didn’t even look at you.

and that was somehow worse than the threat.

so you left. quietly, trembling, holding the pieces of your stupid, glittery heart together in your shaking hands and he didn’t follow.

not even once.

•●TOJI FUSHIGURO●•

you always thought toji was the kind of man who lived like the world owed him something, all sharp smirks and lazy touches, big hands that held you like he didn’t care until he suddenly cared too much, that strange mixture of rough affection and half-hearted charm that kept you running in circles around him without ever realizing you were dizzy.

and you were so, so in love with him.

so in love that you ignored every sign.

the lipstick stained mug on his counter that wasn’t yours, even though you always drank from the pink one because it made you feel pretty. the long black hair you found on his bathroom floor, too long to be his, too smooth to be yours. the unfamiliar perfume that clung to his hoodie when he came home late, something sharp and floral, nothing like your sweet vanilla body spray.

you told yourself silly little lies because they were easier.

maybe the hair belonged to the neighbor. maybe the perfume came from a store clerk. maybe the mug was from before you ever met him.

love denial was a warm, fluffy blanket and you wrapped yourself in it until you couldn’t breathe anymore.

but the truth always finds you.

and sometimes it finds you in the worst way possible.

it happened on a rainy thursday, the kind where the sky looked as tired as you felt. you’d gone to toji’s place early, wanting to surprise him with dinner because you knew he hadn’t eaten anything but convenience-store food for three days straight. your purse was full of vegetables you barely knew how to cook because you wanted to try, for him, because he always laughed and kissed your nose and told you you didn’t need to do anything but look pretty.

you used your spare key. you thought he’d be asleep or on the couch or grumpy in the shower.

you didn’t expect the soft, breathy moan drifting through the hallway.

you didn’t expect the thump of a headboard.

you didn’t expect the muffled giggle.

you didn’t expect his voice, low, rough, familiar, murmuring praise that had once been meant for you.

your heart stopped first. your feet followed.

you should have left. but you walked toward the sound, every step heavy with confusion because your brain, your silly, sweet little brain, didn’t fully understand what your body already knew.

you stopped at his bedroom door. it was open and there he was.

toji, bare back gleaming with sweat in the dim light, muscles flexing as he moved over another woman, her legs wrapped around him, her nails digging into skin you had once kissed and memorized like scripture.

your grocery bag slipped from your hand, vegetables rolled across the floor like stupid, colorful reminders that you had tried so hard.

the woman screamed and scrambled for the covers. toji turned, slow, annoyed, ready to yell, and froze when he saw you.

for a moment, he didn’t say anything. he just stared, jaw shifting, eyes unreadable, like he was calculating something instead of regretting it.

“oh,” he said finally, voice flat. “you weren’t supposed to come today.”

you blinked once.

twice.

your throat closed up around something sharp and ugly, something heavy, something that felt like drowning in a shallow pool.

“toji…?” your voice cracked, small and soft, like a child pulling on a sleeve.

he sighed like you were the inconvenience, like you were making things harder than they needed to be.

“don’t look at me like that,” he muttered, grabbing his pants off the floor even though he didn’t bother putting them on yet. “you knew what this was.”

your lip trembled. “i… i didn’t.”

he scoffed, running a hand through his hair. “don’t be stupid.”

you flinched. he noticed but he didn’t apologize.

“look,” he continued, voice brutally calm, “you’re cute. you’re fun. you’re easy to be around. but i’m not built for the whole… relationship thing.”

you felt the room tilt.

“but i- i thought-”

“yeah. that’s the problem.” he shrugged. “you thought.”

the other woman shifted awkwardly on the bed, clutching the blanket to her chest, eyes darting between the two of you like she had wandered into a scene she wasn’t brave enough to exit.

you wished she would disappear.

you wished you would disappear.

you wished you could unsee everything.

“i love you,” you whispered, because you didn’t know what else to say, because your heart was a stupid, delicate thing.

toji’s expression didn’t change.

“that’s on you,” he said.

and somehow those four words hurt more than the entire scene behind him.

you nodded, even though you didn’t understand, even though your eyes were burning, even though your chest felt like it had collapsed inward.

you turned to leave.

he didn’t stop you. he didn’t call after you. he didn’t even look guilty.

and as you stepped out into the rain, mascara running, groceries abandoned, heart shattered into glittery little pieces, you realized he hadn’t broken your heart in one violent moment.

he had been breaking it slowly.

carelessly.

thoughtlessly.

every missed call. every forgotten date. every unexplained scent or object or hollow excuse.

you just hadn’t seen it.

because you loved him too much. because you thought he loved you back. because your heart was big and your brain was soft and toji fushiguro never had the patience for fragile things.

and now you were standing on the street with rain soaking into your socks, and for the first time in your life, you wished you weren’t as sweet as you were.

because sweet things always get eaten alive.

•●SHIU KONG●•

you always knew shiu lived in a world where affection had sharp edges.

he wasn’t soft, not with you, not with anyone. he didn’t promise forever, he didn’t play house, he didn’t look at you like you were a dream he wanted to hold. he looked at you the way a starving man looked at a warm meal, with appreciation, with hunger, with something dangerously close to need, but never with the illusion of permanence.

and because you were you, soft brained and full hearted and stupidly hopeful, you convinced yourself that was enough.

you liked being near him. you liked the way he listened, even when he pretended he wasn’t. you liked the way he brushed lint off your clothes and fixed your hair clips and told you to stop buying cheap perfume because it gave him a headache.

you liked the way he never laughed out loud, but always smirked when you said something ridiculous, like you were the only person on earth who could shake anything genuine out of him.

you liked being wanted by someone who didn’t want anything from the world except money and the good sleep that came after a job well done.

you liked him, too much.

but you never imagined the day would come when you became the job.

the summons came in the form of a sealed envelope, expensive paper, heavier than it should’ve been. you found it on the counter when you came over that morning, humming happily, carrying his favorite tea and a new hair clip shaped like a tiny frog that you wanted to show him because you thought it was cute.

shiu was sitting on the couch, completely still, completely unreadable, eyes fixed on the envelope like it was an omen.

you didn’t think much of it. you plopped down beside him, tucked your legs under you, and leaned close enough that your shoulder brushed his.

“shiu,” you said softly, smiling up at him, “look! froggy clip. ribbit.”

he stared at you longer than normal. not annoyed. not amused. just blank.

“what’s wrong?” you asked, tilting your head, voice light and airy in that way you couldn’t help. “did someone die?”

you were joking.

he wasn’t.

he didn’t answer right away. he didn’t reach for you or look away or change his expression, he simply picked up the envelope, turned it in his hand, and let out a faint exhale that sounded almost like resignation.

“i got a job,” he said finally.

you smiled. “yay! money!”

he didn’t smile back.

if you were smarter, sharper, maybe you would’ve understood the shift in the air. maybe you would’ve felt the way the room seemed heavier, colder, the way his voice sounded like something inside him was already grieving.

but you were you. you didn’t see signs, you saw shiu. and you always assumed shiu would choose you.

you didn’t expect him to place the envelope in your hands.

you didn’t expect to open it and see your name staring back at you, printed in clean, serifed ink above a reward amount that made your chest tighten.

you didn’t expect your breath to catch, or your vision to blur, or the ground to feel like it was slipping away under your feet.

“shiu…” your voice trembled, thin and confused, “someone… someone wants me dead?”

you said it like a child asking why the sky was falling.

he didn’t flinch. he didn’t comfort. he didn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.

he just watched you with eyes that had seen death so many times it barely registered as tragedy anymore.

“yeah,” he said quietly.

it wasn’t the answer that broke your heart, it was the next one.

“are you… gonna take it?” you whispered, voice so small it barely existed.

shiu looked at you, at your frog hair clip, at your lip gloss, at the tiny glitter hearts on your cheeks you’d forgotten to wash off, and something flickered across his face. not guilt. not regret. something colder, something practical, something devastatingly honest.

“it’s good money.”

your breath stuttered.

“but… it’s me.”

“i know.”

your world tilted.

you didn’t cry, not yet, you just stared at him, wide eyed and trembling, trying to understand the shape of this moment, trying to understand how someone you kissed, someone you trusted, someone you let into your softest places could weigh your life against a paycheck and still come up short.

“shiu,” you said, voice cracking for the first time, “i like you.”

he inhaled.

“don’t,” he murmured.

“don’t what?” your voice shook. “don’t like you? don’t care about you? don’t think you care about me even just a little?”

he looked away then, the only sign that anything inside him hurt.

“don’t make this harder,” he said, barely above a whisper.

that was when the tears came, warm and clumsy and confused, sliding down your cheeks in uneven streaks. you wiped them with the back of your hand, embarrassed, because you never wanted to cry in front of him, never wanted to be difficult, never wanted to be messy.

“i didn’t know i was a mission,” you choked out.

“you weren’t,” he murmured. “until now.”

“but… but you could say no.”

he didn’t.

he didn’t say anything at all.

and that silence, steady, absolute, final, was the sharpest blade he had ever held to your heart.

you stood slowly, legs unsteady, fingers trembling as you placed the envelope back on the table, as though returning it meant rewinding the moment, undoing the truth.

“i… i should go,” you whispered.

he didn’t stop you. he didn’t reach out. he didn’t tell you to stay.

and that’s what hurt the most.

as you stepped toward the door, he finally spoke, voice low, barely audible, “take the long way home.”

you froze.

your heart cracked in a new place. a deep, jagged line splitting through your ribs, because even now, even choosing the money, even letting you go, he didn’t want the job to be easy.

you didn’t look back.

you couldn’t.

you left his apartment with tears on your cheeks and a frog hair clip still in your hair, clutching the doorknob like the world had tilted under you.

and shiu sat alone on the couch, staring at the envelope, fingers tense around the paper, jaw tight, expression unreadable but his eyes were not.

not this time.

because for the first time in a long, dangerous life, the price of a job didn’t feel simple.

and the weight of choosing money over you sat heavy enough on his chest to feel almost like guilt.

almost.

You plopped down on your creaking bed frame, picking up your phone and skimming through a few unread messages asking if you wanted to go out tonight. You’d just transferred to this university to finish your degree, thankful for the few friends you had that already went here. You’d spent the past few years at a much cheaper one close to home - saving up the scraps you made from working two jobs to be able to afford a crummy one bedroom and the tuition fees the scholarship you somehow managed to snag didn’t cover.

Classes were supposed to start in a couple days, your final weekend of freedom before the monotony and stress of writing papers and exams. Might as well take advantage of it. You shot back a quick reply agreeing as one of them offered to pick you up in a few hours.

Maybe you’d meet a few new people while you were at it.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

You froze at the too-familiar sound of a guy's voice - deeper and manlier than the last time you heard it. The coward in you wanted to tuck tail and run all the way back to your shitty apartment even if your heels made your ankles bleed. But curiosity killed the cat and you too apparently as your head swiveled around to confirm who it belonged to. You almost hoped satisfaction wouldn’t bring you back, not when you already knew what that meant when it came to him.

“Hi, Gojo,” You politely greeted. His smile turned into a smirk at your forced civility.

“I think you of all people can call me Satoru,” He teased. “And you didn't answer me.”

“Just one, okay?”

You watched his hand raise up to wave over the bartender, his tall frame leaning against the bar top and the easy smile on his face.

“Surprised you even remembered me,” You said, not really sure how you felt about the observation even as it left your lips.

“How could I forget a face that pretty?” He flirted, so casual in his delivery you couldn't tell if he meant it or not.

You huffed, rolling your eyes as he rattled off a drink order to the bartender. You watched the latter grab a glass and start mixing a drink, not wanting to let the former know how much he rattled you. Eyes scanning across the bar, you spotted your friends distracted and chatting with a group of guys you didn’t know.

“Sooooo,” He drew the syllable out, waiting for you to look back his way. “Did ya miss me?”

“Nope,” You replied as the bartender slid the drink in front of you.

“You’re gonna hurt my feelings, baby,” He pouted, one of his hands sliding over your hips to hold your waist.

Should you stop him? Sure.

Were you going to? Nope.

“I don’t think you have feelings for me to hurt,” You sighed, taking a long sip of the drink.

“C’mon, what are the chances of running into each other here?” He asked, his knee sliding in between your legs as he leaned in closer.

“I just transferred here,” You forced your lips in a line, composure slipping as his eyes pierced into yours.

He looked simply ecstatic.

“Really?” He asked.

His proximity to you was drawing glances from the other bar patrons. Clearly, he was well-known around here. It didn’t take a genius to guess why he was so happy.

“Guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other,” He grinned.

“Awfully presumptuous of you,” You clicked your tongue, looking away as his knee slipped up higher.

“Don’t tell me you have a boyfriend,” Satoru whined, his thumb rubbing circles on your waist and wrinkling your dress.

“I don’t,” You admitted with an exhale. You used to have one, before a rough breakup a few months ago. Though, you weren’t even sure if he would call himself that back then. Really, it was just a mess you were more than thankful to be out of.

“Could I convince you to come home with me then?” He asked, his nose brushing against yours as he closed the distance.

“No,” You lied.

You still ended up face-down on his mattress an hour later though.

His large hands skimming over the lace of your panties, a finger slipping under the band and lifting it up to let it snap back against the skin with a laugh.

“You’re still a tease,” You pouted, voice muffled into his silk sheets.

“And you’re still pretending that you don’t love it,” He replied, two fingers hooking around the edge and grazing against your hip as he roughly tore them down your thighs.

You didn’t reply to that.

He hummed to himself, pleased as he tossed your panties somewhere behind him before grabbing your hips and pulling your ass into his crotch, only the cotton of his boxers separating the stiff length of him from your skin.

“Been too long,” He mumbled, grinding into you. You were inclined to agree with him there. “Wanted to bend you over the sink in the bathroom back there.”

“Bet it wouldn't be the first time you did that,” You halfheartedly scolded. He chuckled, pulling back so he could flip you over to your front. You groaned, pushing out your bottom lip to pout at him.

Couldn't he just fuck you already?

Your neck was probably half-purple by now, evidence of his affection he insisted on showing from the second you passed through the threshold of his apartment and ended up splayed out for him in his sheets.

“So needy,” He tsk-ed, clicking his tongue as he spread your legs out for him. “Don't worry, baby, I'll take good care of you.”

You wondered just how many girls heard that same line from him since the last time you'd seen him.

“Just you, sweetheart,” He said, embarrassment setting in when you realized you had actually said what you were thinking out loud. “Most of them prefer my roommate.”

You couldn't imagine how ungodly attractive his roommate would have to be for anyone to prefer him over the gorgeous man nestled between your thighs.

“Poor you,” You cooed.

His fingers dug into the pliable flesh, holding you open as his tongue slipped inside. You relaxed into his fluffy pillow, your nails clawing at his sheets when he angled himself so his nose was pressed against your clit with every practiced pattern of his tongue.

“S-shit, Satoru,” You whimpered, your whine only encouraging him to go faster.

He was so enthusiastic - lapping up every moan he tore out of you and each tremble in your thighs as they clamped around his head.

Even if he could be abrasive and annoying at times, he was still a fucking god in the bedroom.

His tongue trailed up to your clit, two long fingers sliding in with ease as he sucked messily on the sensitive bud. You grabbed a fistful of his hair to pull him closer as you climaxed, hips arching up into his mouth.

“Already, baby?” You could feel his smirk as he adjusted to pepper kisses along your inner thigh.

The last time you’d been fucked so good had been the last time you had sex with him. His ego didn’t need to hear that though.

“Whatever,” You whined, biting down on your lower lip and feeling needy as he pushed off the bed to stand up and remove his boxers.

His cock springing up had you swallowing hard, somehow looking even bigger than you remembered. As pale as the rest of him, a thick vein bulging along the length of it as he climbed back on top of you. His lips crashing into yours for the hundredth time tonight, this time tasting like you as his tongue brushed against your teeth. While one hand groped your breast roughly, the other one fumbled blindly for his nightstand, pulling the drawer open and tugging out a condom.

He only separated from you long enough to tear it open with one of his sharp canines, tossing the wrapper on the expensive lacquered wood, carelessly stained with water-rings. Sheathing himself quickly before angling himself at your entrance and inching his way in as his lips found yours again.

You moaned into his mouth as he gave you time to adjust to his size.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Despite the past hour of foreplay, it still almost burned as he pressed in further, walls throbbing around how deliciously slow he was taking his time entering. You wrapped your legs around his waist, ankles crossing as you tried to control your reaction.

“Taking it so good for me, baby,” He murmured into your skin, pressing his sweaty forehead against yours as his tip grazed against your cervix. You couldn’t do anything but whine in reply. “Never gonna get rid of me now.”

He pulled out as slowly as he entered, your nails scratching at his back desperately at the absence of him.

Even though you knew it was probably just as tortuous for him too, he rubbed the tip along the entrance, teasingly pressing it against your clit and watching the way you arched up for him.

“Please fuck me,” You hated that it came out as a mewl. Hated how easily he turned you into putty in his hands. Unable to say no. Unable to even want to say no. “Please, Satoru.”

“Since you asked so sweetly,” He purred, thrusting himself all the way in before you could blink, your yelp turning into a moan as he found a steady rhythm in-and-out, in-and-out.

He was sucking a fresh spot on your neck, pawing at your exposed breasts as his teeth sunk into your collarbone. His own moans muffled into your skin, fucking you like he really did miss you.

Maybe you were needy - but he was clingy. Not allowing so much of an inch between you as he hit a spot that had you breathlessly groaning his name over and over again like a desperate prayer.

You hoped his roommate wasn’t home. Or they were certainly getting an earful.

But then again, Satoru had said he was even more popular with the ladies. So maybe this wasn’t all that uncommon for them.

“Say my name again, baby,” Satoru groaned, his thrusts getting sloppier as a hand slipped down to play with your clit.

“Mm, ah, fuck, Satoru,” You repeated, not even realizing what he had just requested, his words just a buzz in the back of your brain.

“So perfect,” He praised. His breath on your neck and the harsh circles he drew around your clit were too much, stars dotting your vision as you closed your eyes, a strangled gasp torn from your throat as your legs locked tighter around his hips.

He kept going, not that you were listening or he was even fully aware of what he was saying, finishing in the condom with a few more messy pumps before pulling out and laying directly on top of you. Sticky skin and heavy breaths as both of you panted and came back to your senses.

“Fuck,” You murmured, stroking his soft hair absentmindedly.

“Fuck,” He agreed, resting his head in the crook of your neck.

What now? Were you supposed to call a cab in the middle of the night? Ask him for a ride home to avoid doing the walk of shame?

“You wanna stay the night?” Satoru asked, sighing contentedly.

“I guess,” You nodded, readjusting so your chin was on his head. “You've got to drive me back to my place tomorrow though.”

“Sure.”

You were surprised to find the bed empty when you woke up. You didn't actually know anything about what his morning routine looked like - but he definitely seemed the type where you'd have to toss a bucket of water on him if you wanted him to wake up before noon.

Swinging your legs off the side, thighs sore and aching, you rubbed your eyes and looked around the room. He was tidy, especially for a guy still in college. There were a few picture frames on the corner of the dresser across the wall from the bed, and you were about to walk over and take a closer look before the door swung open.

“Look who finally decided to wake up,” He grinned brightly. He was wearing a cheesy apron over his t-shirt and sweatpants, ‘Kiss the Cook' printed across it in big, bold letters. Someone, however, had taken the creative liberties to cross out the second ‘o’ and scrawled a ‘c’ over it instead along with a bright red arrow directed south.

Such a gentleman.

You raised an eyebrow, saying nothing.

He untied the apron, balling it up and tossing it in his full laundry basket.

“I wasn't the one who did that,” He tried to defend himself.

“Uh-huh,” You frowned.

“I swear.”

“Did you at least make breakfast?” You asked, brushing past him in the doorframe and peeking out into the rest of his apartment. You were wearing one of his t-shirts he lent you to sleep in, the hem falling long enough on your thighs to keep you covered in case you happened to bump into his roommate.

“I did,” He proudly proclaimed, skipping back ahead of you to lead you across the living room into the open kitchen area. Ingredients were strewn across the counter, white dust covering every available surface drawing your eyes to the open bag of flour. The only area that was semi-clean was the counter next to the fridge, fluffy pancakes stacked on three plates. One of them was already drowning in syrup, and you didn’t need to guess to know that one was Satoru’s.

You grabbed one of the other ones, looking around for a place to eat it, no dining table in sight before landing on the bartop separating the kitchen and living room. You hopped up on one of the semi-uncomfortable stools, cutting into the pancake and watching Satoru curiously.

“You guys don’t really cook a lot here, do you?”

“Not really,” Satoru admitted, leaning against the counter before picking up an entire pancake with his fork and taking a bite off the edge. He glanced back at the other unclaimed plate.

“I’ll be right back.”

You didn’t ask for an explanation, figuring he was probably just letting his roommate know breakfast was ready before the pancakes got too cold.

Although he had wrecked the kitchen in the process, the food was surprisingly tasty. And sure, your history with him was weird, to say the least, you appreciated the gesture of a homemade breakfast.

You heard his voice mingle with someone else’s down the hall before he laughed. You smiled a little to yourself, wondering what the rest of this year would look like now that he had found his way back into your life.

“Is it good?” He asked, rounding the corner as you took another bite.

“Yeah, it actually is,” You confirmed. He squeezed your shoulder, your face scrunching up when he placed a sticky kiss on your cheek.

“Told you so.”

You were busy trying to wipe the syrup off your cheek, too distracted to notice the footsteps that had stopped a few feet away from you. When you did finally look over, you could feel your heart drop into your stomach at the sight of the familiar stranger.

The same brown eyes that used to wink at you and watch you from across the room now boring into you like you were the last person on the planet he wanted to see. The lips that used to curl up in a smirk and laugh at inside jokes with you pressed into a hard line.

Suguru.

You could still picture it like it was yesterday.

How his breath had smelled like mint. Thinking he must have brushed his teeth before he came over. Wondering if he had planned on bringing this subject up? There was no way, right?

“What do you think?” He had asked, his voice soft, sunlight streaming in to highlight his beautiful features, back when there was still a glimmer in his eyes.

Was he sitting this close a few minutes ago? Your leg kept brushing against his, his fingers grazing against your wrist.

“Um, I mean, if you’re really okay with it,” You looked down, avoiding those dark eyes that seemed to pierce through to your heart every time he fixed them on you.

“It’s just practice,” Suguru used to soothe your nerves, his larger hand encompassing yours and squeezing.

“So, uh, how do we-”

He cut off your stammering, gently pressing his lips against yours.

Soft. Tender.

As quickly as he leaned in, he pulled away, your breath frozen in your throat. You wanted

him to do it again. For the kiss to last just a little longer.

He didn’t need to ask for it. Why would you ask for something that already belonged to you?

For him, you’d gladly hand over your first kiss. First anything.

And now, he was in front of you again, a handful of feet away.

Did he not recognize you? Or was he pretending not to?

Why did both feel equally awful?

He glanced over you like you weren’t there, taking the barstool furthest away from you as Satoru grabbed the spare plate and slid it in front of him, playing the part of the proud chef.

You watched his mouth move, no doubt introducing you to Suguru and completely oblivious to the fact you had known him longer than Satoru had.

Suguru nodded along, not sparing you a single look and eating his breakfast unbothered.

Your blood was boiling. Had he always been such a prick? Or were you just naive?

Forcing yourself to focus back on Satoru, you watched him quickly scarf down the rest of his half-eaten pancake, grabbing his plate to plop down in the seat next to you.

“What are you doing the rest of the day?” He asked, one hand fiddling with the fork and the other sliding up your thigh.

“Unpacking my stuff and building the rest of my furniture, I guess,” You shrugged, his thumb tracing little patterns under the hem of his shirt. You didn’t have that much to begin with - your whole life fitting in barely more than a handful of boxes. It’s not that you were a minimalist or anything - it was just that half of your stuff was still left at your ex’s place.

Although, by now it was probably tossed in a dumpster somewhere. Just one of those messy break-ups that left you cutting all the strings and heading out the door with just the clothes on your back. You had snuck back in when he was at work a week afterwards, packing up what you deemed most important and leaving your key on the kitchen table.

“Need any help?” He smirked.

“You? Volunteering for unpaid labor?” You teased, doing your best to pretend that your former best friend and childhood crush wasn’t just five feet away.

“I can think of a few ways you can pay me,” He flirted, his voice dropping lower as his hand ventured higher.

Suguru choked on his pancake - coughing abruptly as both of you turned to face him.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, he refused to look at either of you as he stood up stiffly and tossed what was left of his breakfast into the open trash can and calmly deposited the plate in the sink.

“You okay?” Satoru asked him, brows drawn together in confusion as his roommate made a beeline out of the room.

“I’m fine,” Suguru dryly replied, disappearing into the hallway before he could hear any protests.

Should you tell Satoru that you actually knew him? Would that make things awkward?

Probably.

You weren’t going to just sit here and let Suguru fuck up your life. You waited for him once before - you wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

If he wanted to pretend that you were nothing, a nobody, then that suited you fine. He could be nobody to you too.

“He’s being weird today,” Satoru commented, eyes on the spot Suguru had just been.

“He’s your roommate, not mine,” You exhaled before changing the subject. “Were you really volunteering to help me unpack though?”

“Sure, I didn’t have much going on today anyway,” He said. You didn’t have any way to know if that was actually true, but you weren’t about to turn down his offer.

“I guess I could use your help,” You admitted, his hand squeezing your upper thigh.

“I’m excellent at building furniture,” He boasted, syrup dripping down the corner of his mouth as he took another bite of his pancakes, the fork clinking against the ceramic when he set it down. You sincerely doubted it was a skill he’d ever had the chance to develop. Not when his place looked like an interior decorator had a field day designing a modern bachelor pad.

“I hope so,” You laughed, wiping your thumb over his lips to get the syrup off. He caught your hand, sticking your thumb in his mouth before you could react and running his tongue along the sides of it. His bright blue eyes burned holes into you as he took his time to suck it clean before letting go. “What, you don’t have paper towels?”

“They’re too far away,” He whined.

“Sure,” You smiled. “Whatever you say, tease.”

You listlessly kicked the vending machine, your dollar gone and drink stuck. Exhausted already, the first day of class half-over after spending the morning stuck in boring lecture halls as the professors preached about the importance of the syllabus and mapping out what the rest of the semester would look like. There was a cold patch digging into your side from your bag, the first can of soda that had been successfully dispensed nestled at the bottom - Satoru’s, unfortunately, not yours. Maybe he’d share though considering you bought it for him in the first place. You were about to give up and walk away before a large fist rattled the plexi-glass, unlodging your drink as it fell to the bottom of the dispenser.

“Thanks,” You mumbled, bending down to pick it up before turning around to see your savior. Shielding your eyes from the glare of the sun, you blinked a few times as it dawned on you who it was. “Oh.”

“Can we talk for a minute?” Suguru asked, eyes narrowed as he glanced around.

Like he didn’t want anyone to notice he was talking to you.

“I guess,” You reluctantly agreed, slipping your drink in your tote bag. It landed with a soft clang against the other soda can as you folded your arms across your chest.

“Not here though,” He frowned, picking up on two girls watching your conversation intently from a bench nearby. He was walking away before you could ask where?

Did he expect you to just follow him? Like some lovesick puppy dog?

Forget it.

You started going in the opposite direction, sneakers quietly thudding on the cracked sidewalk, patches of weeds and wildflowers poking through. Whatever game Suguru was trying to play, you wanted no part in.

“Where are you going?”

He unfortunately, hadn’t gotten that message. Irritation bled through his tone, like he was biting back what he really wanted to say. His heavy footsteps had caught up to you, but he stayed behind you, just matching your pace.

“To the library,” You sighed.

He didn’t say anything - and you didn’t look over to see his reaction, if there was even one.

Did he know that you were supposed to be meeting the very person you guessed he was approaching you over?

“Listen, I don’t want to do whatever this is with you,” You said in a quiet voice. “If you want to pretend you don’t know me, that’s fine. I won’t say anything to Satoru.”

“Satoru?” He softly scoffed, almost under his breath.

“Yes, Geto, I won’t say anything to your roommate.” You packed as much venom into his last name as possible, hoping it hurt him as much as it hurt you to say it. Knowing that no matter what happened, he'd probably always be Suguru to you. It was hard not to look back, especially when his silence was so heavy.

“You should stay away from him,” He finally said, his voice strained. “He’ll throw you away once something new catches his eye.”

“Sounds more like you than him,” You snapped at him. Who the fuck was he to tell you who you should or shouldn't see?

After spending most of the weekend with him, you had done your inquiries into Satoru last night, asking your friends about him and unfortunately uncovering more than you ever wanted to know about Suguru too in the process. A two-man team better known for what they could do in the bedroom than in the classroom.

“I know he’s charming at first-”

“That wasn't the first time I met him,” You cut him off, anger flaring as you turned to face him directly.

His expression betrayed nothing - his carefully collected composure perfectly in place while you glared at him.

“I am well-aware of exactly who he is, and I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” You gritted your teeth, pulling your bag tighter across your shoulder. “If all you wanted was to tell me who I can sleep with, please fuck off.”

He blinked a few times, the corner of his lips twitching down briefly.

“Fine,” He muttered, turning around and walking away without putting up more of a fight.

Some friend he used to be.

You were fuming the rest of the walk to the library, pushing open the heavy glass doors with a scowl and scanning over the library to look for Satoru. Not spotting him at any of the tables, you frowned harder, walking over to stand by the wall so you could comb through your bag for your phone. After being held up by the vending machine and Suguru, you were running late. So where was he?

“Boo!” Two hands clamped down on your shoulders, your phone slipping out of your hand as you whirled around to a very smug Satoru.

“Fuck, you scared me,” You hissed in a hushed whisper, bending down to pick your phone and checking the screen protector for any scratches.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” He wrapped an arm around your shoulder, half-leading, half-dragging you over to an unoccupied study room.

“Don’t you have to reserve these?” You mumbled, glancing around at the half-empty library.

A few eyes were on him, not giving you much more than a single glance-over. Chalking you up to his latest flavor of the week.

He flicked on the light and shut the door behind you, flipping the lock and tossing his bag on the scratched-up and pen-stained table.

“Already did,” He grinned.

“Yeah?” You asked. “For studying purposes, right?”

You both knew the answer.

“Of course,” He still lied, making a show of dragging out a textbook and his top-of-the-line laptop.

“Mhm,” You stood next to him, sitting your bag on the table to dig the drinks out of your bag.

Passing one over to him and pretending not to notice the gleam in his eyes as his long fingers wrapped around it, condensation dripping onto his knuckles.

“For me?” He was already cracking it open and bringing it to his lips, a pretty gleam in his eyes as he watched you.

“Two fell out of the machine,” You lied, sitting down next to him and resting your cheek in your hand to hide your blush.

“It’s okay, you can admit you’re already in love with me whenever you’re ready,” He grabbed your chair and dragged it closer until his hip was digging into yours.

“You wish,” You pouted.

“Do you have more classes this afternoon?” He asked, his hand drifting around your side, apparently only content when your thigh was pressed hard against his.

“Just one. Supposed to start in like, an hour and a half, I think?” You started pulling out your own laptop, opening up the screen to type in your password before the screen switched to the five thousand open tabs in your browser.

Out of the corner of your eyes, you watched him tilt back the soda and quickly drain it, the tendons flexing in his neck as he swallowed. Your eyes drifted up to the fine line of his jaw, his lips perched so nicely on the rim before he pulled the now-empty can away.

“Um, what about you?” You asked, flustered.

“I'm done for the day,” He grinned, putting down the drink to direct his focus entirely on you.

That was worse somehow.

You swallowed nothing, your throat parched as you scanned over the tabs to find the one with the map of the university. He leaned down to rest his chin on your shoulder, glancing between the screen and up to your face.

“Where's your next class?” He asked. You pointed to the vaguely-illustrated building neatly labeled and named after some long-forgotten alumni in the bottom left corner. He hummed, tilting his head to the side. “Want me to walk you there?”

“Would you really?” You asked, a fluttery feeling in your stomach caught somewhere between excitement and anxiety.

“Mhm,” He hummed, the fingers on your side digging in a little deeper, one slipping under the band of your skirt. He angled his head so he could press his lips softly along your collarbone through your shirt, dotting kisses up into your throat. You threw a wary look over to the locked wooden door. There weren't any windows, but the walls in here just looked thin.

“They'll hear,” You warned, not even convincing yourself.

“So?” He murmured, the sweet scent of his cologne only clouding your judgment more.

“You think I really want to be known as some girl you banged in a study room on the first day of class?” You complained, pressing your thighs together as he started to suck softly at the skin exposed over the collar of your shirt.

“You’ll just have to keep quiet,” He kept his voice soft, punctuating each word with another feathered kiss. You leaned into it, your hand drifting over to palm the bulge growing underneath the zipper of his jeans, a low moan leaving his lips.

“You’re louder than me,” You laughed.

He pulled back to pout at you, your hand still rubbing up-and-down through the denim. He looked like he wanted to protest your goading smirk, but you held your hands up defensively, twisting your body to face him fully.

“Just come here,” He whined, grabbing you by the waist with both hands now to pull you on top of his lap. You giggled, the fatigue and frustration you had been feeling earlier melting away with Satoru’s warmth.

You had told Suguru you knew what Satoru was like - that you wouldn’t be the first and wouldn’t be the last one to catch feelings for him. But he was so fun it made you forget about it in the heat of the moment.

Nestling your head into his neck, letting your teeth graze against his skin, maybe hoping he’d let you leave a mark of your own.

“Sweetheart,” He mumbled into your hair, one hand slipping underneath your skirt so he could cup your ass while you pulled down his collar to suck a harsh spot on his smooth, unblemished skin. “What are you doing this Friday?”

“Hm? Study, maybe?” You replied, trailing gentle pecks upwards as your own hand slid underneath his shirt and ran over the ridges of his muscled chest.

“There’s a, ah, party then,” He stifled a moan as you slowly grinded against him. “Do you want to come with me?”

You hummed, pretending to think about it.

“I dunno, I’m pretty busy,” You shrugged, his neatly clipped nails still scraping against your skin as his fingers sank into the soft flesh of your ass. “But I guess I could make an exception for you.”

“What an honor to be your date then,” He teased, catching your lips against his, his teeth tugging on your bottom lip as you returned the kiss with the same fervor.

Who wouldn’t say yes to any kind of date with him?

Suguru was just trying to do you a favor.

Sure, the last time Suguru saw you, it hadn't ended well. Still, that was what? Two years ago by now? Even if you weren’t friends anymore, even if it was his fault, he never could evict you from his mind. He knew he hurt you back then, but he didn’t want to see you get hurt now.

He just didn’t expect it to feel so shitty walking away from you.

Was it the thought that if he hadn’t insisted on staying home a couple nights ago like a jackass, he could’ve been the one to bump into you at the bar? Would an apology have worked? Or would he just be attempting CPR too long on a heart that stopped beating?

Suguru knew he was just as bad as Gojo - maybe even worse. Used to letting his friend shamelessly flirt so he could swoop in to play the act of a gentleman.

Still, Suguru hadn't thought you of all people would let Gojo sweet-talk you into anything. But he guessed he didn't really know you anymore either.

If you noticed him slipping into the seat behind you or even cared that you shared an afternoon class with him, you didn't show it. From his spot, he could see a freshly-blooming hickey peeking out of the collar of your shirt.

There was an unfamiliar sinking feeling twisting his insides, the taste of bile on his tongue as he wondered if you were even aware that it was there.

Every time he tried to direct his attention ahead to the professor, the words faded away to a dull drone in the background, his eyes drifting to the back of your head and the tension in your shoulders.

Maybe he should try again after class, find an apology to patch up the bullet would - see if that would make the ache gnawing at him go away.

But as soon as the class was dismissed, you were shoving your stuff in your bag and hurrying out, slipping between the rest of your classmates and weaving in-and-out of his line of sight.

He picked up the pace, people moving out of the way for him as he walked out of the door after you.

“Hi, um, I'm not sure if you remember me, but-” A pretty brunette approached him, cutting off his path to you. He blinked slowly, vaguely recognizing her face but not her name as someone Gojo brought home last month.

“Sure,” Suguru drawled, nodding politely. “How can I help you?”

“Uh, I've been trying to get in touch with Gojo for the past few days, but I haven't heard anything. Is he alright?” She peered up at him with wide-eyes, a small frown on her lips as she twiddled with her fingers.

“Just been busy lately,” Suguru covered for him, patting her shoulder and stepping past her, scanning the milling bodies for another glance of you. “I'll let him know you asked about him.”

“Thanks so much,” She chirped, relief flooding her face as she waved and slipped back into the crowd.

You were already gone.

At least now he had an excuse to ask Gojo about you, even if it was just indirectly.

His roommate was sprawled out on the couch waiting for him when he got back, a pizza box not closed completely on the coffee table.

“How was your day?” Gojo called out as the front door thudded shut, eyes glued to his phone even as Suguru took the seat across from him.

He couldn't help but notice the faintly-visible splotch of purple left on his throat, mostly concealed by the now slightly-stretched collar of his shirt. Easy to miss if he wasn't looking for it.

The feeling returned - even stronger now. A slick pit tearing itself open in his stomach, a tightness in his chest that made it hard for him to think straight.

“Good,” Suguru cooly replied, keeping the childish comment he was tempted to say to himself. “Ran into that girl you hooked-up with last month after class.”

“Really?” Gojo was indifferent, busy typing something on his screen.

“She asked about you since you won't text her back,” Suguru felt stupid even repeating the words, trying discreetly pry the information out of him instead of just being straightforward.

“Not interested,” Gojo shrugged, raking his fingers through his hair. “Told her so much myself.”

“Why?” Suguru hid his curiosity, hoping he sounded bored instead of bothered.

“I’m thinking about giving the whole relationship thing a try,” Gojo vaguely said, readjusting the pillow behind his head.

Suguru wasn’t a complete moron. He was obviously talking about you.

“You’re serious?”

“I’m not sharing this one with you,” Gojo jested, unaware of the discomfort brewing in Suguru’s entire body.

Logically, rationally, Suguru knew he should be grateful, shouldn’t he? He was only trying to save you the heartache of getting your heart shattered or rejected after a one-night-stand with his playboy roommate. But the thought of you coming over all the time, listening to Gojo fuck you through the wall and hear you saying his name after getting demoted back to Geto made him nauseous.

“You just met her,” Suguru pragmatically pointed out. Even though you indicated otherwise, there was no way Gojo would’ve kept his mouth shut about someone he was this interested in.

“Not true,” Gojo sat up with a yawn, stretching his long limbs and tossing the pillow over for Suguru to catch before it smacked him in the face.

What the hell?

“How come I haven’t heard about this?” Suguru pressed.

Gojo's smile was annoyingly smug when his eyes flitted up to meet his, clearly intent on playing coy.

“Wouldn't you like to know?”

But lately, you’d started to notice where his gaze lingered. Not on you, not really. His eyes were always somewhere else—on the finish line, on the next fight, on someone who wasn’t you.

It hit you during lunch, of all times.

The cafeteria was loud with chatter, the usual noise of the class among the other students bouncing off the walls. You sat across from him, your trays between you, and he was eating with that familiar single-minded focus that made everything else fade into background noise. You’d been saying something about the new internship placements—you couldn’t even remember what anymore—when he cut you off without even realizing it.

“I need to shave two seconds off my time before the next mock battle,” he muttered, more to himself than to you, his chopsticks paused mid-air.

You blinked, your food halfway to your mouth. “Oh. Yeah, I guess that’d be good.”

He didn’t hear you.

He was already gone, already somewhere in his head, running through strategies, calculating outcomes.

And you knew.

You knew that no matter how many late-night talks you shared after training, no matter how many times you tried to peel back his layers and understand him, you would never be the center of his world.

You would always be orbiting him, watching him chase something bigger, something brighter than anything you could offer.

You had asked him dozens of questions before—about his favorite food, about his childhood dreams—about what kind of hero he wanted to be. He’d answer most of them, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes with a smirk like you were being nosy, sometimes with that rare, unguarded honesty that made your chest ache—because, wow, it’s always different whenever Bakugou answers them.

But he never asked you anything back.

Not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t think to.

And maybe that was worse.

Because how could you hold it against someone when their heart simply wasn’t pointed in your direction?

You excused yourself after lunch, your smile tight, and no one noticed when you slipped out early. Not even him.

Thank UA’s school administration for cutting class early for preparation for another irrelevant school event.

Your feet carried you to the courtyard behind the dorms, the one where the grass grew uneven and the noise of the common room couldn’t quite reach. You sat on the bench, tucking your knees to your chest, and let yourself breathe.

It hurt.

Way to point out the obvious.

Not in the way you thought heartbreak would hurt—devastating and dramatic and impossible to ignore. It was much quieter than you imagined, almost polite. A dull ache that settled in your chest and made everything feel a little heavier.

Because you had loved him. You really had.

You spent a good two and a half years learning more about him to determine whether your feelings for him are actual feelings and not just some fleeting, cruel limerence. Because you don’t deserve limerence; he doesn’t deserve that.

You had memorized the cadence of his voice, the way it softened when he was tired, the way it sharpened when he was excited. You had paid attention to the way his hands moved when he talked, the way his shoulders tensed right before he lost his temper, the way his smile looked when he thought no one was watching.

You had cared enough to know all those things.

And he—he had never asked you what you loved, what you feared, or what you wanted from the world beyond all of this.

Not because he was cruel.

But because you simply weren’t where his heart lived.

It lived in his goals, in his future, in some version of himself that he was still clawing his way toward. And maybe—maybe in someone who could run beside him without slowing him down. Someone who burned just as fiercely as he did.

Not you.

Or maybe he thought that there was no point in simply asking.

You closed your eyes, pressing your forehead against your knees, and let yourself feel it. The sting of it, the loss of a fantasy future you’d built in your head, the quiet grief of realizing you had always been loving him alone.

You thought about all the times you’d waited for him after class, all the conversations where you’d tried to draw him out, all the little moments you’d saved like treasures.

And you let them go.

Well, not all in one go.

More like piecemeal. In fragments. Like shards of a broken mirror.

Not because you wanted to, but because you had to.

Bakugou would never change for you. He didn’t need to, and you shouldn’t—couldn’t ask him to.

Because you loved him as he is.

That’s the type of person you are.

And maybe, someday, you will stop caring.

Someday, you will wake up and realize you didn’t look for him first thing in the morning. Someday, you will hear his voice across the battlefield and it won’t make your heart jump. Someday, you would stop waiting for him to notice the things about you that you had been offering open arms all along.

But today wasn’t that day.

Today, you just sat there, breathing through the ache, letting it wash over you until it dulled enough that you could stand.

When you finally went inside the dorms, your face was calm again. No one would notice anything had changed. Not even him. You made sure.

And maybe that was okay.

Because loving Bakugou Katsuki had taught you something, even if it never became what you wanted.

It taught you that your heart was big enough to hold someone who might never hold you back.

And maybe, when you were ready, it would be big enough to let someone else in. Someone with an even bigger heart to hold yours.

You shut the door fast, leaning on the counter to steady your hands. Breathe, you tried to tell yourself, trying to force your heart to stop hammering against your chest like a fucking machine gun.

The last few months had been hell. Being in a band with your boyfriend, you always knew there was a possibility that something could go wrong. But the band was there before you, and it would be there after, you both told yourselves.

And it was. You two were doing your best to keep it civil, to change roles from lovers to colaborators. Showing up for practice was hard enough, having to sing a new song you wrote about him and listen to him work on one about you. Having to listen to his version of the story and give notes as if it wasn’t your fucking heartbreak he was singing about.

But the hardest part was having to lie to everyone.

The band had been steadily picking up momentum back then, but when you two got together it practically exploded. Suddenly everyone was paying attention - the stunning, white-haired lead guitarist and the already popular lead vocalist hooking up was news gold. Suddenly everyone was talking about it, making fan pages and showing up to your gigs with shirts that had your initials in them.

You were worried back then. Worried about having to uphold some sort of fantasy for the media and fans, to have to come across like this perfect couple at the heart of the band, when in reality you two had issues just like any normal relationship.

But your manager loved it. Your band mates pretended to love it, but they were happy the band was doing well. Suddenly it was you two on the cover of every magazine, every album, sitting side by side in interviews and holding hands while some stupid reporter asked about baby names and marriage.

And you two would laugh about it, late night when you got home. In between the making out and the jokes and your bodies tangled together, you would talk about how lucky you are to be in a band with the love of your life. How lucky you were that the band brought you together.

You were so happy. For a little over 3 years, it was fine. Because as silly and dumb as this whole media circus was, you weren’t pretending. It wasn’t so hard to sing love ballads when you meant every word. You could turn it up for the cameras, sure. Could be the perfect couple. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a lie.

At the end of the day, you both did it together.

But now... you were alone. Alone and still having to perform, to lie, to be perfect in every goddamn interview while pretending your heart wasn’t still breaking.

Tears were already threatening to spill when you heard a familiar knock at the door.

“It’s me” Choso said from the other side.

You smiled your first real smile in hours. Quickly wiping at your eyes and double checking your make up was intact, you went over to open the door.

Your other guitarrist was there, hair in his usual ponytails and that signature tattoo above his nose. He was standing tentatively by the entrance, not sure if he should reach out or not, but when he noticed your eyes every part of him tensed.

“Hey” he said, voice much softer than you expected. He reached over, hand cupping your face as his eyebrows furrowed in concern.

You quickly closed the door behind you before anyone could see.

“I’m sorry, I-” Choso started to say, but you were quickly melting into him, burying your face against his chest, the only place where you felt safe in weeks. His arms wrapped tight around you, his lips pressing the softest of kisses to the top of your head before he replaced them for his cheek. “I’m sorry about what happened out there” he completed.

He didn’t have to say anymore. You knew what he meant by that, so you just nodded against him, closing your eyes for once and breathing with the help of his gentle strokes across your back.

You and Choso had known eachother for years, since you moved to a new town as a teenager and him and his brother lived next door. You heard them practicing the guitar and the drums all the time and, while it drove your parents mad, it was actually what inspired you to finally take your singing seriously.

And one day you just walked up to their house, knocked, and asked if they needed a vocalist. They were the first people to ever hear you sing, something they’d sometimes bring up affectionately nowadays when you were gearing up to serenade whole sold out arenas.

The band was just the three of you for years before Gojo and Geto came along. At first you were just looking for a bass player, but those two came as a packaged deal, they said. Choso wasn’t thrilled about a second guitarist but you could barely hide how Satoru Gojo made your heart beat faster the first time you saw him.

Choso’s arms held you tighter, snapping your mind back to the present. Back to him. You tilted your head up to meet him, the sight of his kind face enough to make you exhale for what felt like the first time all night.

“Was I ok out there?” you asked, biting your lip anxiously and already imagining all the comments that interview would be getting online. You hated all of that.

“You were perfect” Choso replied, voice firm enough to ground you, thumb brushing your cheek again.

He moved his calloused fingers to tilt your chin up at him, and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips. You allowed yourself to lean into it, to the one person who actually seemed worried about you more than whatever image you had to uphold for the public.

You always knew your best friend was handsome, of course. But years ago you worked hard to suppress that teenage crush, focusing on creating music together instead.

Because my god, the music you two created was out of this world. Choso was an incredible lyricist, and when you two paired up to write it felt like every word spilled out of you like a messsage from the universe. His brother Yuuji, who was happier just helping with the harmonies and adding in the drums, jokingly called you two musical soulmates.

The art you created together felt more important than anything else. And it still was, even if the lines were a little blurred now.

Choso deepened the kiss, holding your waist tightly and pulling you into him like he had been aching for it the whole day. It still felt so new, so exciting, to have him touch you like that, sliding his hands across your body, kissing you like he had to claim you.

He pulled your left hand to his lips, kissing your palm, your knuckles, only pausing when he reached your ring finger. His face dropped instantly.

“I hate that they make you wear it” he said, refering to the big jewel Gojo had given you only 6 months ago.

You sighed, taking a step away from Choso and moving to place the ring on the table top. Those little moments that brought you back to reality were always crushing.

Choso wrapped his arms protectively around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder. “I’m sorry, it’s not my place” he said, but you shook your head, leaning into him even though your chest still felt so tight.

“I hate it too” you just said.

As safe and exciting this newfound dynamic with Choso was, you couldn’t help the anxiety that came with having to hide yet another part of your life. You wondered when you would be able to stop worrying about how every single decision you made impacted the people around you, and would be able to just choose your own happiness instead.

How your life could have changed so much in only a couple months, you didn’t know. But you were finally starting to feel just a little bit better about it, starting to be able to picture a future that didn’t involve Satoru, and it didn’t feel as hopeless as before.

As if summoned by your thoughts, you heard a knock at the door. A familiar voice calling your name, more timidly than you would expect from him.

Choso visibly stiffened, eyes locking on yours as you looked surprised at the door.

“Can we talk?” said Satoru.

thank you so much for reading! it's my first long fic so very excited about this one :)

you look stunning. but then again—perhaps a bit too extravagant to your liking. the make-up is heavy, the red powder stands out immediately around the shape of your eyes. the hairpins dangle and make faint clinking noises as you move your head.

“beautifully done. thank you,” you answer with a hum. the jūnihitoe you’re wearing consists of the colors red and gold—something fitting of a high-ranking concubine.

and not just a high-ranking concubine. you’re the ryomen sukuna’s favored concubine.

you grab your folding fan in hand and move out of your chambers when your ladies-in-waiting are prepared for your departure. you’re a bit nervous even though sukuna has held these gatherings many times before (well, against his will; he only does so when he’s certain he’ll gain a satisfying amount of profit).

“you will be the most beautiful woman out there, my lady. i’m sure of it,” the soft voice of your head lady-in-waiting snaps you out of your anxious trance. you tilt your head to the side and flash her a grateful smile. her comment did certainly soothe your fraying nerves.

before you can respond, another one of your attendants speaks up. “those other concubines will be seething with jealousy, my lady,” she giggles quietly, hiding her grin behind her hand.

“i can assure you that they’ll look nowhere as beautiful as you do, as usual,” she adds in a whisper. the three other ladies-in-waiting snicker at the snarky remark.

you have a small itch to scold them for their reckless behavior. shaming another concubine behind her back is strictly forbidden and severely unladylike, though you stay silent. no one is around to reprimand them or you for not teaching your attendants better, so you let them have their little moment.

not like you actually care whether they badmouth the other concubines.

you eventually reach the end of the spacious hallway and come to stand at the top of the grand staircase. you take in a deep breath before looking down at the entrance to the courtyard, where the other concubines are standing.

there at the front is the one and only; sukuna.

the hushed murmurs in the hall fade away as all eyes turn to look up at you. although the only gaze you care about are that of the cursed one.

all four of sukuna’s red eyes are on you. they’re scanning, cold and calculating, like he’s appraising his finest asset. his stoic facial expression doesn’t change as you carefully walk your way down the wooden steps. his eyes, however, never leave your face and body.

the air is heavy with anticipation and as thick as incense smoke. the concubines that are gathered around the king of curses, seeming to have been trying hard to get his attention before you arrived, freeze in place. some can't help but glance your way with poorly veiled disdain or masked envy. you're the last one to arrive and it's clear why: the arrangement of your attire that is almost obviously better in quality than theirs, the coiling in your hair and faint scent of sakura and amber that follows you.

your ladies-in-waiting have been given the finest materials to work with, to prepare you thoroughly for this gathering. the rumors that sukuna had specifically given them everything needed to make sure you're looking your best are proven to be true.

once again, the other women are made aware of the painfully blatant favoritism.

but none of that matters to you. not the whispers, not the glares, not even the sharp inhale of one of the other women at your audacity when you don't even acknowledge their existence. because he is watching.

sukuna, draped in muted reds and dark silks, stands at the forefront like a carving from a fevered dream. towering and immutable. his expression is still unreadable, although his eyes follow you with ruthless precision. those terrible yet beautiful eyes.

they rake over you not like a man admiring beauty, but like a king measuring worth. you feel it in your skin, your throat and your spine. that ancient and oppressive pressure that both threatens to crush you and pull you forward. that push and pull between you two never gets old.

the others notice the palpable tension between king and concubine as well and they're clearly not happy with it. however they have little power to stop it--to speak up against this unfairness.

sukuna's gaze does not falter even once. not as you reach the bottom step, not as you finally meet his stare with one of your own as you stand nearby. it's pure silence for a good five seconds before he speaks up.

“took you a while, woman,” sukuna comments, his voice low and rough. it's not mean, but also not kind or anything close to it. you didn’t expect a compliment from him so the only thing you can do is bow your head in apology.

“my apologies, my lord,” you reply with a steady voice. you ignore the hateful stares from the concubines standing nearby, your eyes on the wooden floors.

sukuna is silent for a moment before a slight and low hum escapes his lips. it’s not much of an acknowledgment to your apology, but it’s enough. he walks past you without much of a word.

except your gaze follows him quietly, and there on his face, only you can notice the slightest curl of his lips. the ghost of that damned satisfied and amused smirk.

you fall in line and slowly walk behind sukuna, on his right side. a brown-haired concubine walks on his left—the other two following. you’re walking down the spacious hallway with elegance, just as is expected of a court lady.

the courtyard is just ahead of you now, the two ornate sliding doors closed and ready to be opened once sukuna gives a sign.

you breathe in slowly through your nose and close your eyes for a good second. you hope nothing goes wrong today, that no one tries to sabotage another.

despite your silent prayers, you’re sure at least on of those women surrounding you will try to embarrass you.

the doors to the courtyard open, revealing the familiar sight of the gardens. you keep your eyes low and fall into pace with the others. however, you can’t help but sneak glances at sukuna’s back.

you know he isn’t fond of having any humans around his estate. they’re usually food for him, or entertainment, before he kills them. you wonder what is going on through his head. if he doesn’t reach a satisfying deal with the fujiwara clan head today, he might just get rid of him. or take out his annoyance on one of the poor servants.

well, the only thing you can do is hope all goes well.

the gardens are as beautiful as ever. the only thing that has been changed to it is the raised lacquered platform with a long low wooden table on it. multiple tatami mats are placed in two rows on each side of the table. one side for the fujiwara clan and the other for sukuna and his concubines.

you’re not surprised to see that the fujiwara clan head is accompanied by his own concubines. even if it’s not spoken out loud, you know it’s a show of power by both sides. the more concubines or courtesans, the more authority and prestige someone holds.

you shiver as you feel a pair of eyes on you. four eyes, staring right at your soul. you immediately lower your gaze once you sense that flicker of dominance, coming from none other than the king of curses. he doesn’t have to directly look at you to be able to scare the soul out of you.

the unspoken threat that passes between sukuna and you is clear; look at that man for a second longer and he dies.

the pink-haired man doesn’t even greet the guests, simply walking to the elevated platform and sitting down on the mat laid out at the head of the table. he doesn’t care—doesn’t bother to talk about anything that isn’t business. he wants those humans gone as soon as possible.

you and the other concubines follow wordlessly. none of you dare to speak up without permission. not that you have any say in the matter. this is a deal between two powerful men and your opinion as a consort isn’t going to be valued much.

you sit on your knees, the cushion comfortable enough to keep you in that position for some time. you fold your hands over your silky robes and keep your head bowed slightly.

“speak,” sukuna grumbles. he’s bored already, not even giving the other man a chance to introduce himself properly. he wants to get straight to the point to prevent losing time on nonsense.

“and make it quick,” he adds as his red eyes bore onto the clan head.

the noble man is taken aback from the coldness and intimidation, clearly swearing a bit already. he’s heard the rumors—of others who’ve sought just a friction of sukuna’s power to help them, only to end up six feet under without getting a chance.

eventually, he clears his throat and speaks. “i humbly thank you for—“

“i said speak.”

a loud crash is heard and it startles nearly everyone around. you flinch but don’t lift your gaze to investigate. you could hear it—the sound of glass scattering down on the floor. a nearby vase scattered. one that was right behind the clan head. it’s a clear threat. a warning to not piss sukuna off even more.

to tread carefully.

you’re used to sukuna’s little outbursts. he’s an impatient man after all. small talk and too much ‘fake’ gratitude irks him. it wastes his time.

the noble man and his consorts squirm in discomfort in their seats, but try to not cause any more ruckus. the vase is already being cleaned up by uraume—their face expressionless as they wordlessly clean up after their master.

and so the actual deal starts to be negotiated. this time with absolute zero small talk.

sukuna isn’t interested and it’s clear. his answers are curt and straightforward, while the clan head does most of the talking and bargaining, mainly getting rejected for his offers.

the tension is heavy in the air. you and the others are basically decoration at this point. pretty dolls with not a say in the matter. no one dares to look around or move.

only when the king of curses finally and reluctantly accepts a single offer, do you breathe. the clan head would grant him full authority over a big area while also sending him sacrifices (which includes humans) every month. in exchange, sukuna would take care of a small problem.

that being assassinating the clan head’s competition, the man’s own brother.

you didn’t even realise how much you’re sweating until the noble man excuses himself to talk to one of his consorts. you look to the side, at sukuna, who’s eyes are already on you.

you’re about to glance back down at your lap when one of his calloused fingers tugs your chin back up. your mouth parts lightly as his rough thumb tugs your bottom lip down, watching it bob back into place once he lets go.

the red lipstick stains his skin, though he doesn’t seem to care.

“are you satisfied with the deal i accepted?” sukuna asks. it’s a trick question, his eyes cold and calculating as he awaits your response.

you swallow thickly before answering, “whatever satisfies you, satisfies me in return, my lord.”

the king of curses smirks. for the first time since you’ve seen him today, he shows an ounce of amusement. he lets go of your chin with a soft shove. “clever,” he comments gruffly.

though it doesn’t seem like it, he’s in a better mood. so much so he orders uraume to prepare a meal. not for the guests—they’re expected to leave immediately. he has no use for them anymore.

uraume bows politely before disappearing into the main building. a few attendants follow them to the kitchen area.

the noble man and his concubines take their leave. neither did they want to linger in the presence of such a cruel monster, who’d kill them with a single flick if they didn’t watch themselves.

the other concubines seem less on edge as well once the guests leave and sukuna seems to be in a somewhat better mood. they know it’s because of you, have seen and heard your little interaction from the sidelines. it irritates and angers them, though they know better than to let it be visible.

the brown-haired concubine whispers to the one next to her. that same woman relies the message to the other and the cycle continues for a few seconds. except for those hushed murmurs, the gardens are comfortably silent.

sukuna doesn’t seem to care much. his focus is on the delicious meal that uraume is preparing him, his fingers drumming against the table as he waits. almost impatiently.

his hard gaze flickers to you again, as it does many times. he did well ordering your attendants to dress you in the finest silk.

“keep that on tonight,” sukuna says shamelessly, his words dripping with innuendo. in other words; he’ll visit your chambers again tonight.

not the others, but you. again.

the concubines fall silent and their faces are masks of polite smiles, but they’re fuming internally. all the while you’re trying not to look embarrassed by sukuna’s bold comment.

“understood,” you answer with a short nod. your heart is beating faster as you try not to show your nervosity. his eyes are clearly undressing you, imagining what you’d taste like. both figuratively and literally.

while you wait for your meal, you look around idly. one of the concubines had called over her attendant and whispers something in her ear. you can’t catch what it is, but the young girl seems to be a bit taken aback. her eyes flicker to sukuna for a split second.

perhaps with concern.

but just as quickly, she’s gone, back inside the building with a hurry in her steps. you shake the feeling off. it’s probably nothing.

you take a deep breath to calm yourself. you’re overthinking everything again—the anxiety becoming worse as the concubines flash you smiles when you glance their way. those same fake smiles they give you whenever sukuna is around. despite the fact that you’re used to it, they seemed more sinister than usual.

perhaps it’s just your imagination.

your palms start to get sweaty when you don’t even know why you’re getting so worked up about something so subtle. that look that attendant gave sukuna, even if it was for a split second, was your first sign. and then the smiles, the muffled laughs they hide behind their fans. behind the disguise of inaudible jokes between fellow concubines . . .

what are they planning this time? are they going to try something foolish to mess with you again? or perhaps they’ll try something else this time.

. . . surely they won’t be foolish enough to try and do something to sukuna? no, of course not. they don’t have that much power or the abilities to cause any damage to someone of his status. plus, they’d be signing their own deaths with that. but if something happens to him, you won’t be save either.

it’s too much. you’re overthinking too much.

without hesitation, you stand up. you need to go somewhere to calm down, because at this rate you’re going to embarrass yourself with the concern and fear etched onto your face. all the while you try your best to keep that elegance in your form, the polite smile on your lips.

“please excuse me,” you murmur, trying to keep your voice steady. you bow your head at sukuna, who’s watching you intensely with a raised brow. he didn’t expect you to excuse yourself without permission.

before he can say a thing, you’re walking down the main gravel path to the building. all eyes are on you until you disappear behind those doors. the concubines hide their victorious grins behind their folding fans, eyes downcast.

sukuna however, doesn’t show much emotion on his face at your sudden departure. the thrumming of his fingers stop soon after and he clicks his tongue.

he doesn’t know what you’re up to and it’s annoying him. he’s got this urge to keep you beside him at all times so he can keep an eye on you. just like you’re expected to do as his concubine.

what you did just now was an act of defiance. he should’ve ordered you to stay, but something inside him just let you go. to give you the illusion that you had a choice.

sooner or later you’ll return and grovel before him, apologising for your actions and explaining what the hell that was for. when that time comes, he’ll be even more ruthless with his punishment. will show you that defying him has its consequences, even for someone he tolerates. favors.

but when the minutes pass by and you’re still not back, his anger flares up. he tells himself it’s because you disobeyed him by leaving without a word. but a tiny part inside him, the one he loathes and never shows, hates the fact that you left his side more. the fact that he has this ugly possessive need to drag you back outside just so he can keep an eye on what you’re up to.

you belong to him—you’re a part of him. therefore you cannot ever leave him. even if it’s for a second or five minutes.

“damned woman.”

sukuna curses under his breath and slams his palm against the table loudly. he stands up, his large and intimidating frame unfolding to his full 7”’ height. he’s greatly displeased. displeased at the fact you defied him, that he allowed you to actually step foot inside the building and away from him.

but also angry that he has to chase after you. because he has this urge to find out what has gotten into you—the usually obedient, though fiery, concubine that wouldn’t just leave him behind like this.

the pink-haired man storms off, his crimson eyes flaring with anger that scares the concubines left behind into silence. the look in their eyes turns from fear to pure hatred once sukuna disappears behind those doors to go after you.

to have the ryomen sukuna basically chase after someone - not with the intention to kill them or actually harm them - never happens. they cannot believe it. that blatant favoritism never stops, no matter how much they try to gain his attention.

why does he keep them around, like prisoners, when he doesn’t even as much as look at them?

it pisses them off. it fuels their hatred, not only for you, but for him.

however, they calm down as they think of what they have planned amongst themselves;

if all goes well, it’ll be the first and last time sukuna seeks you out - or anyone else for that matter.

You were there from the beginning. Not as shining, iconic, or universally adored as Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, but you never minded. Let them be the faces of the League, the gods walking among mortals. Your place had always been steadier, quieter. And with that came something they rarely had: time.

It started with Robin. The first one. Richard Grayson.

The League needed to fly off-world to face whatever galactic tyrant was threatening Earth that week, and Bruce couldn’t exactly bring a thirteen-year-old into deep space. You volunteered without hesitation. “I’ll take him. He’ll be fine with me.”

That was how you ended up driving Richard Grayson—Robin, in all his excitable glory—to school in your little blue car, the radio cranked up and both of you butchering whatever pop song was popular that month. He sang off-key, you exaggerated the harmony, and by the time you dropped him off, he was grinning ear to ear. The karaoke tradition was born that morning, entirely by accident.

Sleepovers followed. At first, because Bruce needed someone to watch the kid when missions ran long, then simply because Dick liked it that way. Alfred would set up the guest room for you without asking, and by dawn, you were in the kitchen, apron tied, teaching Dick how to flip pancakes without dropping the batter all over the stove.

Unlike Bruce, you let music play. Loudly. You sang into a spatula, spun Dick across the tiles, and even coaxed Alfred into joining the chorus when he thought no one was watching. The manor felt alive in those mornings, full of laughter and dancing instead of the usual sharp silence. And one morning, Bruce walked in on it.

You didn’t hear the faint hum of the Batcave’s boomtube as he returned, nor did you notice him shedding the cowl at the cave’s edge before stepping into the hall. What you did notice was the figure leaning against the doorway, arms folded, exhaustion written into the corners of his mouth as he watched. But in his eyes was a spark of joy that didn’t appear often, yet made Bruce look younger every time it did. 

He hadn’t expected to see his son doubled over with laughter, flour dusting his hair. Or Alfred, straight-backed and dignified as always, holding a mixing bowl like it was a microphone. Or you, spatula in hand, hips swaying with the beat on the radio like the kitchen was a stage. Upon completing your circle, you looked up to see the man of the hour stoic, just enjoying the scene.

You froze for only a second when you saw him, then grinned. “Don’t just stand there, Bruce. Come on.”

And you danced your way toward him, extending a hand. Dick immediately perked up, cheering: “C’mon, Bruce! Just once!”

Bruce started shaking his head, “No, I’m too tired. Just wanted to see what all the noise was when I came in.”

But you didn’t let him get away with it, and started dancing around him, slowly herding him into the kitchen, into the positive energy there. Excited by the turn of events, Dick eagerly starts teasing Bruce and showing him some sample moves he could “borrow if he didn’t have any”. And wasn’t that embarrassing? He’s Bruce Wayne, of course he knew how to dance. 

Even Alfred arched a brow, lips twitching. “Master Wayne. It wouldn’t kill you.”

“Couldn’t possibly deny you, Alfred.” Bruce said smoothly before rolling his sleeves.

“We both know that’s not true at all, Master Wayne.” Alfred calmly replied, pulling Dick to the side with him as Bruce approached you.

You tilted your head with a small smile, and it made him pause slightly to admire you. Even in the morning, with your slight bed head and pajamas that are well-loved, you were a sight to behold. He extended his hand towards you, waiting for you to place your hand in his, before leading you through a waltz. Yes, Bruce Wayne knew how to dance, just not the dancing you or Dick expected this morning. A loud, joyous laugh ripped from you while Bruce led you through a turn, his eyes lighter than you’ve seen from him in a while. 

Dick whooped. Alfred allowed himself the smallest chuckle. For one fleeting second, the walls of Wayne Manor held something softer than duty and shadow.

That was the morning the sleepover breakfast ritual began.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

It wasn’t long before the table grew larger.

Conner was one of the first additions. In those early, uncertain days, Lois Lane wasn’t ready to meet the boy who carried half of Clark’s DNA, and Clark himself… he was still learning what it meant to be responsible for someone who looked at him like a father. It was you who stepped forward again, without hesitation.

Conner joined the sleepovers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A little rough around the edges, unsure of where he fit, but you saw the goodness in him immediately. You paired him with Dick, nudging them into friendship until they found their own rhythm, trading secrets about capes and fathers over late-night snacks in the Manor kitchen.

Sometimes those breakfasts included Bruce, still in the corner pretending he wasn’t watching, and sometimes Clark, who would arrive bleary-eyed from Metropolis with his cape shoved hastily under a jacket. He always looked a little disheveled, tie half-done, hair mussed by wind instead of gel, and once, memorably, with powdered sugar stuck to his sleeve because he’d grabbed donuts in a rush.

You’d laughed so hard you nearly dropped the spatula. “God, you look like a dad who overslept carpool duty.”

Clark froze for a beat, then laughed too, the sound soft and sheepish. “You’re not wrong. I’m still… figuring this whole thing out.” His gaze drifted to Conner at the table, head bent as Dick showed him how to draw a smiley face in pancake batter. Something uncertain flickered in Clark’s expression — guilt, wonder, fear, love, all tangled together.

You nudged him lightly with your elbow as you flipped a pancake. “That’s all anyone’s doing, Clark. Figuring it out as we go.”

His shoulders eased a little at that, the weight lifting if only for a moment. He reached out, ruffling Conner’s hair, and the boy wrinkled his nose but didn’t pull away.

“See?” you teased, sliding another pancake onto the stack. “You’ve already got the embarrassing dad move down. Give it a year, and you’ll be threatening to wear socks with sandals.”

Clark rolled his eyes, chuckling as he pulled up a chair. “Lois would never let me live it down.” Then, quieter, almost to himself: “But… thank you. For doing this. For giving him… something normal.”

You met his gaze across the counter, spatula in hand. “He’s not the only one who needs normal, Clark.”

And for just a second, it wasn’t Clark but Superman who looked at you like you were holding up the sky for him.

For a time, the mornings belonged to all of you: pancakes, off-key singing, two boys finding their place together, Bruce lurking in the corner until you dragged him into the dance, Clark slowly learning what it meant to be more than just a symbol.

And you. Always you, steady at the stove, making sure they were fed and laughing and cared for.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Not every memory was bright.

Jason came next, loud and brash and secretly the one who craved the sleepovers the most. He swaggered into the Manor like he owned the place, quick to mouth off and quicker to fight for his spot at the table. He claimed he was too cool for karaoke but always stole the microphone halfway through and belted the loudest, voice cracking but proud.

Dick and Conner never let the age gap keep them apart from him. If they were heading out for pizza or training in the yard, Jason was right there with them. They slowed their pace when he tried to keep up, pulled him into their circle with a brotherly arm around his neck, and made sure he knew he belonged. Sometimes it was chaotic, three boys bouncing off the walls, but it was good chaos — the kind the Manor had needed for years.

And Jason loved routines. Especially the ones that were just between the two of you. Saturday mornings, when the others were busy, you’d drive him to the library. He’d wander the aisles for hours, losing himself between shelves, asking you a million questions about every cover that caught his eye. Afterward, you’d stop by the used bookstore downtown, and you made it a point — every single time — to buy him whichever book he wanted. No conditions, no questions. His eyes would light up, and he’d hold it like treasure all the way home.

Those were your moments. Jason and you, arms full of paperbacks, laughing as you both tried to juggle too many books and cups of coffee. It was a small tradition, but it was yours. And he always, always, hugged you before racing upstairs to show Alfred his newest find.

You adored him. You adored them all.

And then he was gone.

The night Jason died shattered you in ways you didn’t think possible. You held Dick as he sobbed and raged, you held Conner as he tried to process death in a way no one should have had to. You held yourself together just enough to be strong for them. But when the nights stretched too long, when the bed stayed empty, grief turned sharp and ugly inside you.

You became reckless in the field. Violent. Too violent. You went for the kill more than once, your fury a wildfire you couldn’t always leash. The League benched you after one close call — after Martian Manhunter caught the intent in your mind, caught the image of you driving your weapon into Joker’s chest. He told Bruce. He told Clark. And you never forgave him for it.

You and Bruce clashed constantly during those months. He needed someone steady, someone who could share his silence — but you couldn’t sit still in grief the way he could. You wanted blood. You wanted justice that would never come. Sometimes you thought you hated him for being able to pull back when you couldn’t. Sometimes you thought you hated yourself more.

The only thing that anchored you was your weekly visits to Jason’s grave. You’d bring fresh flowers, sweep away the leaves, and read a new poem each week like he was sitting there listening. It was routine, ritual. A way of keeping him close when the world felt so hollow. That’s where he found you.

The night Jason returned to Gotham, older and angrier and wearing scars you didn’t understand yet, he went to his grave first. And there you were, kneeling in the dirt, brushing soil from the headstone with gentle hands. When you turned and saw him standing there, your knees nearly gave out.

“Jay?” Your voice cracked, fragile as glass.

He didn’t let you touch him, not then. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t sure if he ever could be. But you knew him well enough to see what was left unspoken: he had come back, and he had come to you first.

It was hard after that. He wanted nothing to do with the Manor, especially when he saw Tim wearing his costume, his mantle. He spat venom and pain in every direction, and you caught most of it without flinching. You didn’t push, but you didn’t let go either.

It took time. Months. But eventually, he came back to one of the sleepovers. He hovered in the kitchen doorway, arms folded, pretending he didn’t care about the smell of pancakes or the sound of music drifting from the radio. Dick raised an eyebrow, Conner waved him in, Tim froze, and you… you simply handed him the microphone.

Jason scowled, muttered a curse under his breath — and sang anyway. Loud. Angry. Alive.

You cried quietly into the spatula you pretended was your mic.

And just like that, the tradition lived again.

Through every change, every new child, every heartbreak and return, the tradition lived on. The tradition kept evolving, the kitchen table growing fuller as the years went by.

Tim arrived while Jason was gone, sharp-eyed and shy, carrying the weight of knowing too much and trusting too little. You caught him lingering in doorways, hovering like he wasn’t sure if he belonged, until one morning you pressed a whisk into his hand and told him to beat the eggs. He did it silently, but you caught the ghost of a smile when the radio kicked on and Dick dragged him into an off-key duet. By the end of the week, Tim had stopped lingering and started sitting at the table.

Then came Cass. She didn’t need words to tell you how much the tradition mattered. She just slipped into the kitchen one morning, silent as shadow, stole the spatula from your hand, and twirled in place. You laughed, joining her, and she smiled — bright, unguarded, rare. From then on, she danced every chance she got, the radio her favorite language.

Jon arrived like a storm that broke the world.

Lois had died in childbirth, and Clark unraveled. He was a man who could move mountains, stop aliens, hold the Earth itself in orbit… but he couldn’t save her. For weeks, he drifted, hollow-eyed and guilty, clutching the baby like he was made of glass. He didn’t know how to keep going. It was then that the three of you became something more than teammates.

Bruce opened the Manor without hesitation. You moved into the guest wing, with Clark and Jon in the room next door. Suddenly, the vast, quiet house was alive with the sounds of an infant's cries at 3 a.m., soft lullabies, and little fists pounding against anyone who held him too tightly. 

Alfred adapted instantly, setting bottles beside his tea service. It reminded him of days long past of doing the same for a younger Bruce, and it brought him much joy to see Bruce be able to experience some of the same joy.

The three of you found a rhythm so quickly it felt preordained. You took the late-night feedings, humming along with the radio as Jon curled against your chest, soothed more by your heartbeat than anything else. Clark would stumble in a few hours later, bleary-eyed, sheepish, offering to take over. Half the time, he fell asleep in the rocking chair with Jon sprawled across his chest, cape draped over both of them like a blanket.

Bruce claimed he wasn’t good with babies — “I don’t do small talk, let alone small children” — but Jon had other plans. By six months old, Jon would gurgle and reach for him the moment Bruce entered the room. You’d find them in the study sometimes, Bruce working at his desk with Jon in his lap, little hands tugging at his tie while Bruce signed League reports one-handed.

And when Clark’s grief threatened to consume him, it was you and Bruce who steadied him. Bruce gave Clark structure. “Routine,” he said flatly, and forced Clark into it. Early runs at dawn, sparring sessions in the cave, and scheduled check-ins with Alfred. It anchored Clark when he might have otherwise drifted away entirely.

You gave Clark grace. You told him it was okay when he cried. That grief wasn’t weakness. That Lois would have wanted him to keep going, not drown in guilt. You slipped photos into his hands, reminded him of Jon’s smile when he doubted himself, and pressed warm coffee into his palms when words weren’t enough.

Together, the three of you carried each other. And the kids carried you, too.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Whenever missions took Bruce or Clark away, Dick, Jason, or Tim would step up. You’d walk into the kitchen to find Dick or Conner trying to feed Jon from a bottle while Alfred supervised like a hawk. Jason would read him stories in dramatic voices, turning Goodnight Moon into a Broadway performance. Tim was the calmest of the bunch, cradling Jon against his hoodie while researching League files with one hand. Even Cass — silent, graceful Cass — would sit on the floor, letting Jon tug her hair without complaint.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was seamless. Every revolving door of Wayne Manor only added more hands to hold the baby, more laughter to soften the nights. For a while, you didn’t just survive grief — you lived through it, together.

There were nights Clark would look at you and Bruce, Jon asleep in his arms, and whisper, “I don’t know what I’d do without you both.”

And you believed him. Because back then, you weren’t just teammates. You were family.

Jon was four in the summer Alfred finally bullied you into taking a holiday. “You’ll blink and he’ll be grown,” he’d said, packing enough sandwiches for an army.

So you went. A day at the beach: Bruce chasing Jon down the shoreline, his sleeves rolled up, sand clinging to his calves; you laughing as you splashed after them, scooping Jon into your arms as he shrieked with delight. Clark stood back with a camera, trying to capture everything at once, grinning so wide it softened even the grief that still haunted the corners of his eyes.

By the time the sun dipped low, Jon was worn out, asleep before his head even settled on Bruce’s chest. The three of you stretched out on the blanket, the ocean hissing against the sand, the world held still.

Bruce sat to your right, a steady weight against your shoulder. Clark lay on your left, arm stretched behind you, his fingers brushing yours in the sand. Jon’s tiny fists curled into Bruce’s shirt, anchoring you all together. It was perfect. Too perfect.

You turned your head, found Bruce already watching you, his eyes darker than the dusk around you. He didn’t look away.

Clark’s thumb began tracing soft circles over your knuckles. Slow, deliberate, tender. His gaze shifted from Jon to you, lingering, heat simmering low in his chest.

Your heart raced. The air was heavy, humming with something you’d all been dancing around for years.

Bruce’s hand slid down, brushing against yours from the other side. Two points of contact, two anchors pinning you in place — Clark warm and open, Bruce steady and intense.

No one spoke, but everything was said in the silence. Clark finally broke it, voice low, husky with something that wasn’t grief anymore: “We don’t have to keep pretending… that this isn’t what it feels like.”

Your lips parted. You wanted to say yes. You wanted to tell them both you’d been theirs for years. Bruce’s eyes softened, his hand tightening slightly on yours, a silent agreement that he felt it too.

And then the comms went off.

First Bruce’s, then Clark’s. A League emergency.

The sound shattered the moment like glass. Clark cursed under his breath — rare, raw. Bruce’s jaw clenched, the mask of Batman sliding back over his features. You tried to smile, tried to pretend it didn’t ache, but the weight in your chest was crushing.

They stood, brushing sand from their clothes, already slipping into soldier mode. Clark pressed a kiss to Jon’s forehead, lingering a second too long, and Bruce tucked the boy gently into your arms before straightening to his full height. Neither man looked back as they focused on the mission.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

They came back different. Not obvious. Subtle. They stood closer. Their words overlapped like a practiced duet. When Clark laughed, it was often at something only Bruce had said. When Bruce allowed himself to soften, it was often when Clark was at his side.

It didn’t take long for you to piece it together. Maybe you wouldn’t have been able to if not for all the time spent in each other’s company. You knew them too well and could see the truth hidden within their body language. They had each other.

And if they had each other, why would they ever need you?

The loneliness crept in like a tide. You smiled at them, smiled at Jon, kept the breakfast and sleepovers alive — but you began to pull back. Not because you stopped caring, but because it was the only way to protect your heart. Buried your feelings under duty and routines. They noticed, of course. They misread it, assumed you weren’t interested, and let you slip further from the space you’d once shared. 

The next outer space mission, you volunteered. You needed time. Time to heal. Time to grieve what could have been.

When you returned months later, you didn’t go home to Wayne Manor. You went to a small, modest apartment in Metropolis. Modest on the outside, anyway. Magic had its perks — you expanded the space to fit what you needed. A proper kitchen for the kids’ sleepovers, bookshelves for Jason, extra beds tucked away for whichever Robin or Super wandered through on any given night.

Because the kids still needed you. And you would always be there for them.

The first night back, you slipped into the Manor while Bruce and Clark were out at dinner. Alfred knew — of course, he knew — and didn’t stop you. He only gave you that soft, sympathetic look as you moved through the halls, quietly packing the things you’d left behind.

It didn’t take long. Magic made sure of that. Books floated from shelves into boxes, clothes folded themselves, framed photos wrapped in protective charm paper. By the time the boom tube hummed with the men’s return, you were gone, your room empty save for the lingering warmth of what once was.

The Manor was quiet when Bruce and Clark returned that night, their dinner still lingering as small talk in their heads. Jon was already asleep, tucked in by Alfred, who waited for them at the foot of the stairs with a single sentence that froze the blood in their veins:

“She’s gone.”

Clark was the first to move. He stormed down the hall to your room, Bruce close behind. The door opened to stillness, to shelves stripped bare, drawers empty, walls missing the small touches of you that had made them warmer. The air smelled faintly of your magic — lavender and smoke — the last traces of you fading into nothing.

Clark’s voice cracked as he gripped the doorframe. “She came back… and we missed her. We missed her, Bruce.” His fists clenched at his sides, eyes wild with guilt. “We’ve gotta go get her. Right now. We’ll explain. We’ll fix this—”

Bruce’s hand landed heavy on his shoulder, grounding him. “Clark.”

“She thinks we don’t want her. She thinks—”

“I know.” Bruce’s voice was low, even, but softer than Clark expected. He turned toward the empty room, jaw tight, eyes shadowed. “But if she made this choice… we can’t force her back. If we push too hard, we’ll lose her completely.”

Clark’s breath hitched, the weight of it settling like lead in his chest. “But she belongs with us.”

“She belongs in our lives,” Bruce corrected gently. “One way or another. It’s better to have her in some capacity than not at all.”

Clark’s shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him. He leaned against the doorframe, staring at the space where your books used to be. “That month she was gone… it was hell. I never realized how much I needed her. How much I—” He broke off, voice rough. “She makes everything turn, Bruce. She makes the world make sense.”

Bruce didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the bare shelves, the hollow quiet of the room. For once, the walls of Wayne Manor felt too large, too empty. “I know,” he said finally. “She makes my earth turn, too.”

They stood there in silence, two men who could fight gods but couldn’t fight the absence you’d left behind.

And in your modest Metropolis apartment — stretched wide by magic, humming with laughter from the kids who refused to let go of you — you told yourself you were healing.  It was better this way, you told yourself. They needed space to grow together. And you needed to remember how to stand on your own feet again.

Even if a part of you still ached for the life you almost had. The loneliness followed you into your new apartment. Into the quiet nights when Jon asked if you’d still sing him to sleep. Into the mornings when you woke, reaching for a hand that wasn’t there.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

The sleepovers and breakfasts never stopped. They just moved. The kitchen was slighter, the ceilings lower, but the laughter was the same. Pancakes tasted just as sweet when eaten in a cramped apartment. The kids still sang, still fought over who got to flip the next batch. The tradition lived on.

But the trio? The three of you? That had been left at the beach, half-buried in the sand, drowned out by the sound of a League comm.

But you never left the kids. You never could.

Especially when Damian arrived, he wasn’t a result of violence, no matter what the uglier rumors whispered. He was a weapon born in a lab, Bruce’s worst nightmare made flesh — his DNA spliced with Talia’s, an attempt to craft the perfect heir. Damian entered the Manor fierce, arrogant, and prickly with mistrust. A boy engineered for war but given a family instead.

Damian entered the tradition like a cat into water: claws out, hissing, refusing to admit he wanted in. He sneered at the karaoke, insulted the pancakes, folded his arms at the table, and declared he didn’t need any of it.

And yet, you made him a plate anyway, slid it in front of him without comment. You corrected his posture when he chopped vegetables, guided his hands when he learned how to whisk. You told him stories about Jason and Dick, about how Conner used to sulk through sleepovers until he realized the fun in them. You let Jon drag him into the chaos, refusing to give him the luxury of staying on the sidelines.

It took time. Months. But the first time he sang under his breath, soft and unwilling but audible, you pretended not to notice. Jon noticed. Jon whooped, dragged him to the center of the kitchen, and you caught the tiniest flicker of a smile from Damian before he masked it with another scowl.

From then on, he was yours too.

Your relationship with Bruce and Clark shifted in those years, too. The wound of the beach and the space between you never fully healed — but it scabbed. 

Bruce was patient, quieter with you. Clark was soft, gentle, careful not to push. They never stopped loving you. If anything, their love only deepened, year after year, as they watched you guide their children with a steadiness neither of them could muster. As they watched you throw birthday parties, show up at recitals, and even parent-teacher meetings when you could. 

They never forgot how it had felt on that blanket. How close they’d come to making it real. The warmth of your bodies close together, the heat within each look. The want never left — it lingered in every look, every brush of fingers, every moment you laughed too hard at something one of them said.

At first, you couldn’t bear to stay. After dropping off one of the kids, you’d leave the Manor immediately, unable to linger in halls that echoed with memories of what almost was. Bruce and Clark never stopped you, though the way their eyes followed you to the door was its own kind of ache.

But when Damian arrived, something shifted. He was young, sharp-edged, in desperate need of patience, and you couldn’t just drop him off and walk away. So you stayed. At first, it was only for tea — a cup in Alfred’s study before heading home. Then it was breakfast, Damian stiff-backed in his chair until Jon made him snort orange juice out of his nose.

A year later, you found yourself staying for entire afternoons. Letting Jon drag you out into the garden, while Bruce lingered nearby under the guise of trimming roses. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, helping Damian with homework, while Clark “happened” to return early from Metropolis, setting his jacket neatly on the couch before joining you both.

And little by little, the walls you’d built began to crack.

You started laughing at their jokes again — Clark’s terrible puns that had Jon in stitches, Bruce’s dry one-liners that made Jason wheeze. You let Clark’s hand brush your shoulder when he leaned over you, and you didn’t flinch when Bruce’s palm steadied you by the elbow. Once, Clark smoothed an errant curl from your cheek, thumb lingering a moment longer than it should have. Once, Bruce’s hand brushed yours over a coffee mug, and you didn’t pull away, but gifted him a smile. 

It wasn’t everything. But it was something. And that something was enough to remind you how dangerous hope could be.

Bruce and Clark noticed. They talked about it — often, quietly, usually on the Watchtower between missions. 

“Now might be the time,” Clark murmured once, watching you from across the hangar as you comforted Cass after a brutal debrief. “She’s letting us in again.”

Bruce only hummed, low, but didn’t disagree. “We go slow. She has to trust this isn’t temporary. We can’t let her down again.”

They began to plan — nothing elaborate, nothing rushed. Just… chances. Dinners, quiet moments, gentle confessions, waiting for the right time.

So, of course, when they thought they had a handle on things, everything gets flipped around. 

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

The knock at your apartment door was insistent, a chorus of voices arguing outside.

You pulled it open to find them all there: Dick at the front with a bright grin, Jason juggling takeout bags, Tim holding a stack of board games, Cass tucked in quietly behind them, Conner hovering like he’d been dragged along, Jon beaming, and Damian scowling like someone owed him money.

“Surprise!” Dick announced, holding up soda bottles like a prize. “Sleepover night!”

You blinked, stunned — then laughed, ushering them in one by one, kissing Jon’s temple, hugging Cass tight, ruffling Tim’s hair, letting Jason nearly knock you over with a bear hug. “All of you? At once? My poor neighbors.”

Jason smirked. “Please, you love it.” The kids were scattered around your apartment, settling in for the night. Some were setting up the living room, while others were organizing the food. Looking around, it made your heart happy and full to have all the kids here with you. It’s been months since you’ve been able to hang out with them outside of League business. 

You understood, they were young, growing into the heroes they want to be, and having fun while being young. But the loneliness crept back again, the same that lingered after Bruce and Clark. You decided it was time to put your big girl panties on and date outside the hero world, just in case you had better luck. And it’s been going great, a little over a month since you started seeing Jackson, and tonight was another hopefully successful date. Now, to break the news to your overprotective kids. 

“I do, and of course you’re always welcome,” you admitted, smiling. “But… kids, I actually have plans tonight.”

That stopped them in their tracks. Like deer in headlights, they all turn their heads to look at you. Jon’s brows furrowed. “Plans? Like… with people?”

“Like… with a date? You’re dressed nicer than usual.” Dick guessed, eyes narrowing.

You hesitated — and that was all the confirmation they needed.

“A date?!” Jon blurted, jaw dropping. “You can date?!”

Jason smacked him upside the head. “Of course she can date, idiot.”

Tim groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How are you surprised by this?”

Conner crossed his arms, suspicious. “Who is he? Do we know him?”

Cass said nothing, just watched you with sharp eyes and a knowing smile.

You chuckled, shaking your head as you slipped into your bedroom to keep getting ready. “I don’t owe you an interrogation, detectives. When it's time, I'll introduce you all.”

That didn’t stop them from trailing after you, peppering you with questions while you pulled on earrings and fixed your lipstick.

Jason leaned against the doorframe. “Is he taller than me?”

“Yes.”

“Does he make more money than Bruce?”

“No one makes more money than Bruce.”

Jon frowned. “Does he have powers?”

“That’s none of your business, sweetheart.”

Tim sighed. “Where did you meet him?”

“Out,” you said vaguely, slipping your feet into heels. “Now — black jacket or red?”

They all paused. “Black,” Dick and Cass said at the same time.

“Red,” Jason argued immediately.

“Black is more mysterious,” Tim muttered.

“Red shows power,” Damian countered.

You laughed, trying on both, twirling for them like it was a runway show. They shouted over one another until finally you picked the black, smoothing it over your dress as you moved toward the door.

That was when Jason spotted the small overnight bag tucked beside it.

His eyes went wide. “Wait a damn minute— is that an overnight bag?”

Chaos.

“You’re staying the night at his?!” Conner shouted, horrified.

“You cannot be serious,” Damian hissed.

Dick threw his hands up. “We’ve lost her!”

Jon looked like you’d just told him Santa wasn’t real, which is slightly alarming since you had the conversation with him last year when Damian told him so. Maybe you’ll have to have the conversation with him again. Maybe have Clark take him to the North Pole to show him how he’s not there.

You raised your hands, firm but gentle. “Enough. I love you all, you know that. But I am an adult, and I am allowed to have my own life.”

“But—” Jon started.

“No buts. I’ll be back in the morning, and we’ll have pancakes together. Just like always.”

They quieted at that, grumbling but placated. Jason muttered something under his breath about “being replaced by some guy,” but you kissed his cheek and handed Cass the spare key.

“Be good,” you warned as you grabbed your bag. “Don’t burn the place down.”

They chorused their goodbyes as you slipped out, waving. But the second the door shut, they bolted to the window, watching you climb into a sleek car none of them recognized.

The silence was heavy until Damian sniffed disdainfully. “Disrespectful. What kind of gentleman doesn’t open his date’s door?”

That earned a round of muttered agreements as they slumped back inside, half-heartedly unpacking food and setting up Mario Kart on the TV.

Normally, sleepover Mario Kart was a blood sport. Tonight, the game sputtered — no one yelling, no one throwing controllers, everyone oddly subdued.

Finally, Tim broke. “So we’re just… not gonna acknowledge that we all thought she’d end up with Dad and Clark anyway?”

The silence cracked like glass.

Jason threw his controller. “Thank you! Exactly!”

Conner groaned. “Oh my god, finally someone said it.”

Jon looked around frantically. “Wait— wait— is that allowed?”

Dick buried his face in his hands. “Unbelievable. We’re having this conversation now?”

Voices rose, overlapping, chaos spiraling again until Cass quietly stood, walked to the bookshelf, and pulled down the glittery, bedazzled tube that you had made years ago. She held up the Sparkle Talking Stick.

It was needed when you had so many... passionate loved ones in your life. So, for a bit more order and maybe 1% less chaos than normal, you created the Sparkle Talking Stick that each kid signed as an agreement to listen when someone held it.

Immediately, everyone shut up.

Cass placed it on the table. Jason reached for it first, glaring at the others. “She’s obviously happier when she’s with them. She should just say it.”

Conner took the stick next. “Then why the hell is she sneaking out on overnight dates with randos?”

Dick grabbed it after. “Because maybe she thinks they don’t want her anymore! And whose fault is that?”

The Sparkle Stick made its way around, each kid venting in turn, until Damian finally snatched it, glowering. “Enough. The conclusion is obvious: Father and Kent are cowards. Their attempts at wooing are laughable. If they had done their jobs properly, she wouldn’t be entertaining other men.”

He pulled out his phone without hesitation. “Father,” Damian said crisply when Bruce answered. “Due to your and Kent’s lukewarm efforts, she is now pursuing other men. Do with this information what you will. Goodbye.”

He hung up before anyone could stop him.

The kids stared at one another for a couple of minutes.

Jason leaned back, smirking. “Well. Guess we’ll see what they do about it.”

The word should have stung, but the moment Sukuna’s presence pressed in, the panic that had you spiraling shifted into something else. Anger, defiance, anything that wasn’t grief clawing at your throat. He crouched before you, two sets of crimson eyes narrowing as if daring you to drown in front of him.

“You think I’ll let you fall apart?” His hand caught your chin, rough and unyielding, dragging your gaze up to his. “Breathe.”

“I—I can’t—”

“You can.” The growl was sharp enough to cut through the haze, but then his thumb brushed the corner of your mouth—not gentle, not quite, but steady. “In through your nose. Now.”

And somehow, you did. Air seared down your lungs, broken and jagged, but it was there. His hand didn’t leave your face.

“Good,” Sukuna muttered, almost like the word was foreign to him. His other arm slid around you, pulling your body flush against his bare chest. His heat was suffocating, overwhelming—but grounding in a way nothing else was.

“You don’t need to be strong for anyone else. Just for me.” The words rumbled low against your temple, his claws resting against your back but never piercing. “Fall apart if you must. I’ll keep the world from touching you while you do.”

It wasn’t tenderness—it was possession, domination turned into protection. But in the crushing storm of your grief, Sukuna’s unshakable grip felt like the only thing that could hold you together.

⸻

★ ITADORI YUJI

The walls closed in before you even realized you’d stopped breathing. Panic, grief, despair—it all swelled at once until the world blurred at the edges. You sank to your knees, nails digging into your palms so hard you wondered if you’d bleed.

“Hey—hey, no—” Yuji’s voice cracked the moment he saw you. He was at your side in seconds, sliding down to the floor like it hurt him to even see you crumble.

“Yuji—” Your throat tore around his name, breaking in half.

“Don’t—don’t apologize. Don’t even try,” he whispered, grabbing your wrists when you tried to hide your face. His touch was warm, too warm, grounding in its own desperate way. “Look at me. Just look at me, okay?”

You tried, but your vision was smeared with tears, your chest seizing.

“Please.” His voice shook, but his hands didn’t. He pressed your palms flat against his chest, right over the frantic thrum of his heartbeat. “Feel that? I’m here. I’m alive. You’re not alone. Just breathe with me.”

The steadiness of his pulse seeped through your trembling hands, louder, more insistent than your racing thoughts.

“Good—yeah, just like that. In and out.” He tried to smile, but it faltered, his eyes wet, raw with the pain of seeing you shatter. “You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to hide this from me. I’ll hold every broken piece if you let me.”

And then his arms wrapped around you, almost crushing, like if he held you tighter, the world couldn’t touch you. His face buried in your shoulder, his words muffled but trembling with conviction:

“I can’t fix everything, but I swear I’ll never let you face it alone.”

⸻

★ FUSHIGURO MEGUMI

Your chest tightened until it felt like your lungs had collapsed. Each breath came ragged, shallow, tears hot and unrelenting. The room spun, and you gripped the edge of the table like it was the only thing tethering you to earth.

But then a hand closed over yours—cool, steady, unshakable.

“Hey.” Megumi’s voice was low, almost too calm against the chaos inside you. His dark eyes didn’t flinch, didn’t widen at your unraveling. He just…stayed. Right there.

“I can’t—” Your words broke off, strangled in your throat.

“You can.” His reply was quiet but absolute, no space for argument. He crouched until he was level with you, his hand still covering yours, thumb moving once—just once—like a subtle reminder that he was there.

Your body trembled, nails digging into the wood beneath your fingers. Megumi didn’t try to pull you away, didn’t tell you to stop crying. He leaned closer, his forehead brushing yours until his hair fell between you.

“Listen to me,” he murmured, breath steady where yours faltered. “Right now, all you need to do is breathe. Nothing else matters.”

Your chest hitched, but the cadence of his words slipped into the spaces where air wouldn’t go. His own inhale was slow, deliberate, pulling you into its rhythm.

“Follow me. In…out. That’s it.”

Your hands shook harder, but when your grip slipped, his caught you—firm, grounding, as if he’d let the weight of your whole body crush him before he let you fall.

“I’ll hold you here until it passes,” Megumi said, almost too soft, but certain. “You don’t have to speak. You don’t have to explain. Just let me carry this with you.”

And in the quiet that stretched after, with his hand locked around yours and his breath steady against your cheek, the storm inside you finally had something to cling to.

⸻

★ GOJO SATORU

The world felt like it was collapsing, the noise inside your head deafening. You sank to the floor, hands covering your face, trying to shut out the grief that pressed from all sides.

“Hey—hey, hey, stop!” Gojo’s voice cut through, sharp and frantic, even as he grabbed your shoulders and shook you gently—but firmly. “You are not doing this alone, got it?”

You barely managed a choked sound, the panic clawing through your chest.

“Look at me!” His hands cupped your face, thumbs brushing your tear-streaked cheeks. His blindfold was off, revealing the bright, impossible blue of his eyes—every bit as intense as the storm you felt inside. “You’re alive. You’re here. And I’m not letting you disappear into this.”

Your sobs broke free, uncontrolled, and he didn’t flinch. He let you lean against him, arms wrapping around you in a crushing, grounding hold. His chest was a wall, steady despite the frantic rhythm of his own heartbeat, almost daring you to fall apart.

“You can cry. Scream. Hit me, kick me, anything,” he muttered against your hair, voice rough and desperate. “Just don’t you dare face this alone. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

And somehow, as the tremors shook your body, the chaos in his energy became an anchor. He whispered your name over and over, letting you bleed out all the grief in him, forcing the storm inside you to collide with the storm in him until it had nowhere else to go.

“Breathe with me,” he said finally, voice almost ragged, but insistent. “In… out… you’re not alone, okay? Not for a second.”

And for the first time in hours, the panic thinned just a little, because Gojo refused to let it take you—not now, not ever.

⸻

★ GETO SUGURU

You were trembling on the edge of the floor, grief squeezing your lungs until it felt impossible to inhale. The room spun, shadows dancing along the walls, each one a reflection of the panic threatening to swallow you whole.

A soft sigh came behind you, and then a hand—warm, steady, almost possessive—rested lightly on your shoulder. “You’re letting it consume you,” Geto murmured, his voice low and smooth, but with an undeniable weight that made you pause.

“I… I can’t—” your voice cracked.

“You can,” he interrupted, and it wasn’t sharp, it wasn’t impatient—it was absolute. He crouched beside you, his knees brushing yours, his gaze holding yours with unshakable intensity. “And you will. Because I won’t let you fall apart alone.”

He didn’t try to speak you into calm. He didn’t beg or shout. He simply extended his presence, each heartbeat syncing subtly with yours until your tremors had something solid to cling to. His hand slid from your shoulder to your wrist, then up to cradle your face, tilting your chin until your eyes met his.

“Feel me,” he whispered, voice almost a velvet purr. “Right here. Everything else—the grief, the chaos, the world—they don’t matter. Not while I’m here.”

And somehow, in that gravity, that dark, irresistible pull of his presence, the panic eased. You leaned into him, shivering, but steadying. His other hand came around your back, pulling you flush against him.

“I’ll hold this with you,” he murmured, a vow wrapped in shadows and warmth. “Every ounce, every tear. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

You closed your eyes, letting the ache settle against him, letting his calm, commanding, intimate energy be the anchor your stormed mind so desperately needed.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

They lounge in your halls like they built them. Their boots scuff the mosaic tiles your husband had laid. Their laughter fills the chambers where your son once slept. They eat more than the kitchen can replenish and boast about battles they’ve never fought. They drink your wine as if it was made for their indulgence.

You know their names. You know their fathers’ names. You keep a tally in the back of your mind—not out of interest, but because you must. A queen who forgets is a queen who falls.

At dusk, you sit among them, still and quiet, the embroidery in your lap forgotten. Your needle lies idle, and no one notices. They’re too busy toasting to their own futures, all of which end with your hand in theirs and a sword at your son’s back.

You endure. That is all you can do.

The worst of them, you have found, is Antinous.

He sits at the center of them all, draped over your husband’s seat; he is a man who has never earned power but has always expected it. His voice is the loudest, always the first to speak and the last to fall silent. He speaks of strategy and succession as though he is already king, and when he speaks to you, it is with the inflection of someone already convinced of victory.

Tonight, he is drinking the red wine that was made using straw mats and raisins. It is your favourite, and he knows this. That is the point.

When your gaze flickers to the goblet in his hand, he smirks like he’s caught you admiring him. “Come now, my lady,” he drawls, loud enough for the others to hear. “Do we please you yet? Or must we slay a lion and bring its pelt to your feet for your favour?”

Laughter rings out around the room, coarse and raucous. One of the younger men raises his cup in toast. Another whistles. Eurymachus mutters something under his breath that earns him a shove and a snicker.

You do not respond. You haven’t in months. That, too, they find amusing.

Antinous leans forward, elbow propped on the armrest that does not belong to him. “You will have to choose, my lady,” he says, lower now. “For the boy’s sake, if nothing else. Ithaca needs a king. And you need a man.”

Your jaw tightens, just slightly. That is all the reaction they will get from you.

You rise from your chair with the same quiet grace you’ve perfected over the years, ignoring the way his eyes follow your every movement. Your hands are steady, your spine straight. Your dignity is the only armour you have left.

As you step out the hall, past the tapestry of ships and storm gods, past the murmurs and the clinking of goblets, your mind, inevitably, wanders to your husband.

You remember him as he was: quiet, precise, impossibly steady. A man who spoke little but whose presence never had to beg to be known. He was not soft, not always kind, but he was good. Good in the way a harbour is—safe and constant, even when the storms rage. You remember his hands most of all. Not the way they touched you, though you have not forgotten that either, but the way they held the kingdom upright. Steady hands. Sure hands. A warrior’s hands that still knew how to cradle a child.

Your son remembers less. He was too young. But you see the fragments of Kento in him—flashes of that same quiet rage, that same sharpness, that same refusal to bow. He is no king, not yet, but he is his father’s son.

You reach the end of the corridor where the light begins to fade. You pause by the window, breath fogging faintly against the cool stone frame, and you stare out at the dark horizon. Somewhere, the sea still churns. Somehow, you once believed he would return.

But hope has a half-life, and yours has been decaying for years.

You close your eyes, just for a moment, and whisper a name you haven’t said aloud in longer than you can bear: “Kento.”

You hear a creak behind you, followed by the distant thud of the great doors opening. You don’t turn this time. You don’t need to. It’s just another suitor arriving late, another voice to add to the chorus of greed. But your hands clench into the folds of your robe, and your thoughts—sharp, honed like flint over years of silence—snap into focus. This cannot continue. You cannot continue.

The law binds your hands, but your wit has never needed permission to move.

You breathe in—and then you think of his bow: taller than you, carved from ash wood. No one but Kento could ever string it. Not even your most arrogant suitor has dared to try. It hangs still, untouched, in the weapons room behind the hearth, more symbol than tool. A relic of a man half the room no longer believes in.

You turn and begin walking back to your bedchambers. Purpose blooms in your chest like spring after a long, bitter winter.

Let them mock. Let them boast. Let them believe your grief has made you weak and your patience has made you docile.

You will give them a game. A challenge only one man can win—and when they lose, they will have no one but themselves to blame for what comes after.

Let them line up like fools. When they fail—when they all fail—you will be free.

At night, you are plagued with thoughts of your husband.

Sleep slips through your fingers like water, no matter how tightly you try to hold it. The sheets are cool beside you—always cool, always empty. The dark makes it worse. When the torches go out and the halls fall quiet, when even the suitors sleep in their wine-stained stupor, it is just you and memory. And memory is never kind.

So, you lie awake beneath the canopy of your marriage bed, the one no man has touched since he left. It was built by his own hands, carved from the roots of an olive tree that still grows through the floor. It cannot be moved. Neither can you.

You remember how you met. He had come to court your cousin, sharp-tongued and always the brightest in the room, while you were only there to pour wine and not to be seen. But Kento noticed you, quiet and watchful, and when he asked your cousin about war tactics, you answered instead—too quick, too bold. His eyes met yours, then, curious.

The next day, he returned with flowers—your cousin’s favourites. But he handed them to you.

Kento never asked for permission; not from your family, not from the gods. He simply looked at you one morning in the orchard and said, “If I’m to fight for something, let it be you.”

You married in the spring. Your hands smelled of fig and lemon blossom. He laughed, a rare sound, when you nearly tripped walking towards him because you were so focused on his face.

He was always so careful with you, always so patient. You remember long walks by the cliff, fingers brushing until he finally had the courage to take your hand. You remember lazy mornings with bread and honey, and the way he’d rest his chin on your shoulder while you read, just to be near.

You remember the first time he laid beside you—nervous and reverent, as if you might vanish if he moved too quickly. He hadn’t said much, but his hands had trembled, and his mouth had found yours like it had always belonged there. That night had been slow, sweet, full of promises he only whispered against your skin. Kento was careful. And then he wasn’t.

By morning, you could barely walk. He’d only laughed when you hit him with a pillow, his voice still hoarse from the things he’d begged for the night before.

You found out you were carrying a child only a few weeks later. He was still there then—busy, yes, pulled in ten different directions by the court and the kingdom—but he never missed a night in your bed. You waited to tell him, wanting to find the perfect moment. He found out before you could.

He had come back late, with dust on his sandals and his hair messy. You were asleep, or pretending to be. Kento pressed his lips to your forehead, then to your belly. “I know,” he’d murmured. “I know, my love.”

You’d blinked up at him, startled. “How?”

“I overheard Eurycleia and the others in the kitchens. They aren’t being very subtle about it.”

You both laughed, then. He’d gathered you close, hands spreading over your stomach. “Thank you,” he whispered, like a prayer.

For a while, it was good. The best it had ever been. Kento carved toys from olivewood with the same hands that had once carved your wedding bed. He kissed your growing belly each night. He spoke to the child before it was born and promised them the sea and the stars, and a world that would greet them with open arms.

When your son came into the world, Kento cried—quietly, of course. He always cried quietly. You saw the way his shoulders shook as he cradled the boy in his arms for the first time. The baby had your eyes and his father’s brow. His father’s frown, too, when he slept.

“He’s perfect,” Kento said, over and over. “He’s perfect, he’s perfect, he’s perfect.”

Then the war came; a war for someone else’s pride, someone else’s honour. Kento didn’t want to go. You knew it in the way he held you that night, tighter than ever, like he was already grieving what he’d lose. He went because honour is a god that does not take no for an answer, and the Trojan War was its altar. 

“I’ll be back before the baby walks,” he promised, voice low in the crook of your neck.

Your son had learnt to run before you received his first letter.

You remember watching other men return. You remember standing by the docks until your knees gave out. You remember the pity in their eyes. 

Years passed. Your son forgot the sound of his father’s voice, babe as he was when he left. You had to teach him what Kento looked like from paintings and stories. You forgot the feeling of being held.

You hate it. Not Kento—never Kento—but the war, and the state it has left you in. You hate the war for stretching one year into ten; for stealing your husband from your bed, from your son, from your arms. You hate the gods for not letting him come home to you for ten more, and now, you do not know if he ever will.

Now—now, you’re expected to smile politely at men who spit in the name of the house he built. Men who whisper that you should move on; that you’re selfish; that Ithaca needs a king, not a memory. They never saw the way he knelt to speak to children, or how he never raised his voice unless he was scared. They didn’t see the man who kissed you like it was a vow, who brushed his lips across the back of your knuckles and pinched your side to see you giggle. The man who chose you, again and again, even when everyone else expected otherwise.

You press a hand to your chest, as if that can soothe the ache. It doesn’t.

Your son is not in Ithaca when you announce the contest. Perhaps, you think, it’s better that way, because he would not approve.

He is his father’s son—sharp-eyed and proud, always quick to speak when he senses injustice—but still too young to understand the quiet violence of strategy. He does not yet know that survival sometimes demands cruelty; that a queen must trade dignity for time, over and over again, and pray she can reclaim it in the end.

You stand at the head of the hall with the bow placed beside you, the same bow Kento carried to war, the one he strung with ease before riding out to defend a kingdom that now forgets his name. It looks heavier than you remember.

A hush spreads, then breaks. Laughter first—low and dismissive. Then a chorus of jeers.

“The widow’s gone mad,” one says.

“At this rate, she might as well ask the gods to descend and marry her,” Eurymachus crows.

“She’s stalling,” Antinous calls out, grinning wolfishly. “She is afraid to choose, so she hides behind toys and tales.”

“This bow,” you say, “belongs to my husband.” 

Husband. Not dead king. Not memory. Husband.

“No man but him has ever strung it,” you continue. “Not in battle. Not in sport. Not in ceremony.”

A few of the men shift, uneasily now. The laughter falters.

You rest your hand on the bow—not to provoke, but to remember. Your fingers trace the smooth curve of it, worn by time and use and love. He had carried it across the Aegean. He had strung it by firelight while your son slept beside him. He had left it behind only because you asked him to.

“Twelve axes will be placed in this hall, in a line.” You lift your chin. “Whosoever can string this bow, and shoot clean through all twelve, may take my hand.”

Silence, this time. Not out of respect, but disbelief. 

“String it?” a voice says, incredulous. “That bow’s half stone!”

“Do you want a king or a circus act?” another cries out.

“She means to humiliate us,” Eurymachus spits, rising. “A trick. A delay. While her brat of a prince runs to Sparta to gather allies.”

Your eyes flick to him. “You are welcome to leave.”

He sneers but says no more.

Antinous steps forward instead, not angry but amused. “Very well,” he says. “Let us dance for her. Let us parade like fools in a hall that no longer belongs to us.” He bows mockingly. “Though it’s hardly fair, my lady, to mourn a man and dangle his ghost before us.”

You say nothing, only signal to the servants. The axes are brought in, iron mouths agape. One by one, they’re planted down the hall. You watch them with the stillness of a woman who has waited twenty years, and will wait twenty more if she must.

You take your seat again, and fold your hands, waiting for the first man to try. Not a single one of them moves.

A beggar enters your hall at twilight.

Dust clings to his shoulders like ash from some distant pyre, and his beard is streaked grey with age or travel—you cannot tell which. He leans heavily on a staff, feet dragging, and still the guards do not stop him. Perhaps they think him harmless. Perhaps they are tired of keeping count of the men who come and go.

Only one creature sees him for what he is.

Argos—your husband’s old hound—lifts his head from where he lies slumped in the shadow of the threshold. No one tends to him now. He is too old to be useful, too loyal to be loved by anyone but you. But at the sight of the beggar, his ears twitch. Then his whole body trembles.

The beggar stops. He looks down, and kneels, slowly, painfully.

Argos, who has not stood in days, tries to rise.

His limbs fail him, but still he whines—high and soft and aching, the sound of twenty years in a single breath. The beggar’s hand moves to the dog’s neck, just below the ear. Argos goes still. His chest does not rise again. The beggar lowers his head and says nothing.

Then the laughter begins.

“Look at him!” Antinous sneers from his seat, wine dripping from his lip. “Dragging fleas into our court like gifts! Shall we feed him, my lady? Or toss him back into the sea?”

Another suitor—a lean man with too many rings—adds, “I say we test his spine. Perhaps he’ll dance if we strike him hard enough.”

The beggar does not speak. He does not even flinch.

Eurymachus tosses a crust of bread at his feet. “Come, old man! Tell us a tale worth hearing. Or did you lose your tongue along the road?”

Still, the beggar remains silent.

Your voice cuts through the hall: “Bring him to me. Prepare some bread and water for this man, and give him a place to rest if he so desires.”

The beggar inclines his head, eyes low, and only then, speaks. “Thank you, my queen.”

You lead him to the side chamber—the one where you used to spin wool at night, when your boy was smaller and the house quieter. Now it serves as nothing but a place of hiding. When you are alone, you speak first.

“Who are you?”

The beggar bows. “No one of import, my queen. A man who has seen many harbours and lost more years than he can count.”

“Yet you have found your way to my hall,” you say. “To Ithaca.”

He does not deny it. “I met your husband once,” he says. “Long ago, in Crete.”

You inhale sharply. “Crete?”

“Aye.” He nods, eyes distant. “He came with spoils from Troy. Wounded, but still boasting. We shared a fire for one night only. He ate little, and drank less.”

“And what did he say?” you ask, throat tightening. “Of Ithaca? Of… me?”

The beggar’s mouth twitches—somewhere between a smile and a wound. “He spoke of home like it was a person, not a place.”

You don’t dare blink.

“He spoke of a woman with eyes like storms,” the beggar says, voice threading towards something gentle. “Who ruled her house with both hands. Who wove lies as well as she wove thread. Who could outwait the gods themselves if it meant saving what she loved. He said that no one would believe him when he spoke of your mind. That beauty they could imagine, but not your sharpness. He said you could gut a man with your silence.

“He told me about your garden, and your love for oranges. He told me that you preferred thyme over roses; that you once caught him stealing figs before dinner and made him eat them all before the sun went down. He said you made him laugh until he was sick.

“He said your son had your eyes but his stubbornness, that he liked to sleep curled up beside the hearth while you sang to him, and your husband held both of you in his arms. He missed the boy most at night.”

You swallow hard. Something in your chest splinters.

“He said,” the man continues, eyes downcast, “that he dreamed of your bed. He did not say why, but he worried that if he returned and it had been moved, he would know the gods had lied and you were gone.”

“And where did he go, then?” you whisper. “Where is he now?”

“I do not know. But I was in Thesprotia recently. There, I heard word of him again.”

“What word?”

“That he is alive. He has wandered long, but not without purpose. He comes home, slowly.”

You close your eyes. The ache that floods your chest is old and familiar—but tonight, it stings sharper than it has in years. You want to believe. You want to fall to your feet and ask this stranger if he’s seen the scar on your husband’s thigh, or the streak of gold in his hair that only shows in summer, or the way his voice goes rough when he says your name. You want to ask if he still dreams of you.

But you’ve lived too long on hope. It is not a kind thing. It gnaws at the soul. It leaves you hollow.

So you open your eyes and steady your voice. “Thank you, traveler, for your stories.”

He bows, slow. You rise to leave, your hand hovering near the door. Then you turn, just enough to glance back. “Your eyes,” you say, “remind me of him.”

The beggar does not answer.

Often, you have dreamt of what your life would have looked like if Kento had not left for war.

Tonight, after the beggar has been granted a bed and rest in your home, you stand by the window and let the sea wind carry you into that life where Kento never sails.

He wakes beside you every morning, body solid and warm beneath the sheets of your shared bed. You would grumble when he takes the covers, and he’d kiss your shoulder in apology, already half-laughing. You’d eat breakfast together at the sun-warmed table by the window—simple things: bread, still warm from the oven, figs and olives from the orchards he helped plant. Your son would run into the room with scraped knees and stories of birds and battles, and Kento would scoop him up with ease, toss him into the air just to hear his laughter ring like a bell.

You’d watch him be a father. You’d watch him teach your son how to hold a bow—gently at first, guiding his small hands, whispering patient praise. You’d watch them argue, in the way children and their fathers do, about where the stars go when the sun rises. Kento would lose on purpose, feigning deep consideration before letting your son convince him that the stars must sleep behind the moon.

You’d sit in the garden while your husband reads out loud, his voice low, your son half-asleep on your lap while the olive branches murmur above your heads. Some days you’d fight, but it would never be over war. It would be about fruits left out too long; mud tracked on clean floors; your son’s cat left loose to steal fish from the kitchens once again.

At night, when the house is quiet and the wine is sweet, Kento would press kisses along your jaw, your neck, your fingers, as if to count the years he got to stay.

Your son would grow in front of both of you. You would argue about whether to cut his hair, and whether he should learn the sword before numbers. Kento would lift him high on his shoulders during the harvest festival, and you’d catch both of them stealing honey cakes from the tray.

You imagine watching him age; the way his shoulders would broaden, the lines by his eyes deepen with laughter and not grief and bloodshed. You’d grow old with him, and sit beside him on the same bench every dusk, tracing his palm, not searching for calluses left by war, but the ones left by work in the orchard, in the stone of your shared home.

Maybe—maybe—you would have had more children.

Maybe your halls would ring with more voices and more tiny feet. Maybe he would have taught your daughters to string a bow, just as gently as he taught your son. Maybe he’d have read to them, holding them in his lap, one hand still tangled in your own. Maybe on stormy nights, when the winds howled like gods against your windows, all of you would sleep in a tangle—limbs and breath and heartbeat; Kento curled beside you, one hand wrapped around your waist, another resting on your daughter’s foot.

Maybe.

But dreams are dreams, and dawn comes cruel.

You stand at the window until the stars blur through tears you refuse to wipe away. You press a hand to your belly, as if to call back that life. It isn’t real. You know this. Yet, when you finally turn from the window, crawl into the empty half of the bed carved from the olive tree, and curl around the hollow he once filled, you think:

I miss you. Come back to me.

The fire in your chamber is burning low, little more than a memory of warmth now. Its light flickers across the tiled floor, casting long, shapeless shadows against the stone walls. You sit at the edge of the bed, robes drawn tight around your frame, though the night is not very cold. Your fingers are idle, twisted in your lap. 

The shawl you’ve pulled over your shoulders is soft but not warm, but it is dyed Kento’s favourite colour, and so, you plucked it out of your closet and draped it over yourself. Beneath the hush of the night and the distant echo of laughter from the great hall, you can hear the ocean.

The door creaks open. You do not have to look up to know it’s Kento’s nurse from the time he was a young boy. Eurycleia’s steps are familiar—uneven, a little heavier on the left, her sandals dragging ever-so slightly with each step. She has always walked like that, ever since she took a blade to the leg in some scuffle you do not know of.

She carries a basin in her hands, steam rising gently from it. The scent of crushed myrtle and olive oil follows her into the room.

“Leave it by the stand,” you say listlessly, eyes still on the fire.

But she doesn’t set it down.

“My queen,” she says, and her voice is not the voice she uses when she brings you wine or folds your linens. It is strained and urgent.

You turn slightly towards her. “What is it?”

Eurycleia moves closer, the basin shaking in her hands. A droplet of water splashes over the edge and lands on the stone with a soft pat.

“I saw it,” the old lady breathes. “I saw the scar.”

Your brow furrows.

“The scar,” she repeats, quieter now. “Just above his knee. The one from his boar hunt. The only one he carries.”

You freeze. For a moment, you cannot speak. You see it in your mind’s eye: the pale ridge of old flesh from years past, the way it curved slightly, a mark carved into him when he was still just a boy, too proud to stay down, too stubborn to yield.

“Eurycleia,” you whisper, but she is already moving forward, her voice trembling with emotion.

“It is him. I knew it the moment I touched him. I was washing his feet—just as I’ve done a thousand times before, for a thousand other guests—but when my hands reached that scar, I knew.” Her voice cracks. “My fingers remembered before my mind did.”

You swallow hard.

“He said nothing,” she goes on, “but his shoulders were the same, as were the weight of his hands, though worn. I wept, child—I fell to my knees and kissed his knuckles.”

“Don’t,” you say suddenly, too sharply. “Don’t say that.”

Eurycleia stops short.

You rise from the bed slowly, the shawl slipping down your arms. Your heart beats too loudly in your ears. You remember the beggar’s voice; the way he spoke of your marriage bed; the way he looked at you like he had seen your face before time had turned it older. You almost—almost—believed.

“He asked me not to tell you,” Eurycleia says, her voice catching on unshed tears. “But how could I keep it? Not when you’ve waited so long. Not when he is finally here—”

“I did not hear you.”

Eurycleia stares at you. You blink. A strange fog has descended behind your eyes. You can see her lips move, her mouth forming the words again. But they don’t reach you.

“Say it again,” you demand.

She tries. You see her throat work. You see the desperation rise in her eyes, the way her hands shake as she grips the basin tighter. Her lips part, but the sound dies before it reaches your ears.

You frown. “Eurycleia?”

The old maid gasps softly, as if something invisible has brushed against her throat. Her mouth opens again, but she cannot speak—or if she does, you cannot hear it. Only the fire crackles now. Only the sea murmurs beyond the walls.

“I… I must’ve been mistaken,” she whispers finally, though her eyes are wet. “Forgive me, my queen.”

You stare at her. Something is wrong. Something curls at the edge of your senses like mist. It presses against your skin, prickling like gooseflesh. But you cannot name it, or hold it.

Eurycleia bows her head. Her hands are trembling so hard she nearly spills the basin. She sets it down by the stand as you originally asked, but her eyes do not once leave your face. 

“I’ll return come morning,” she murmurs.

You nod slowly, unsettled, your arms folded across your chest. The door closes behind her. You don’t know that a goddess stands silent in the shadows near the hearth, her hands still warm from weaving silence over your ears. Athena watches you with something like sorrow and something like pride. She does not smile. She does not move, either.

She knows your husband requires just one day more, and so, she must make you wait.

One by one, the suitors try.

First is Leiodes—the youngest, the most eager, his face still untouched by war or wear. He steps forward with forced confidence, brushing back his hair and muttering something about strength inherited. He kneels beside the bow and lifts it with reverence, though it’s clear he’s underestimated its weight. His arms tremble as he fits the string against the horn, teeth bared. He pulls—once, twice—but the string does not yield. The bow doesn’t even bend.

By the third attempt, his knuckles are white and the sweat on his brow betrays him. He looks towards you, perhaps hoping for mercy, perhaps hoping your gaze will soften. It does not. He drops the bow with a heavy thud and steps back, his pride folded beneath him like a damp cloth.

Next comes Eurymachus, chest puffed up with wine and mockery. He swaggered through the morning, but now, his laugh rings hollow. “She must have tricked the bow,” he says with a wink to the others. “Soaked it in oil, or warped the wood. Anything to keep from marrying any of us.” 

The hall chuckles obligingly, but when he crouches down to try, the jest leaves his eyes.

Eurymachus is broad in the shoulders, used to wrestling, to hunting, to boasting—but not to being humbled. The bow creaks under his grip, but the string doesn’t budge. He braces it against his knee, then against the arch of his foot, hissing under his breath. His face flushes red. He snarls and digs in again, now angry, now reckless. The bow groans. The string twitches. But it does not yield.

He lets out a curse, harsh and guttural, and throws the bow down so hard, the sound echoes through the stone.

“It is cursed,” he mutters viciously. “Rotten with her dead husband’s shadow.”

Then Antinous approaches. The hall quiets at once.

He says nothing. Sharp-featured and sallow-eyed, he walks like a man already wronged. His jaw is clenched, the muscles in his neck drawn taut like bow strings themselves. He does not bow; he does not ask. He grips the bow with both hands, as if it had insulted him just by existing. His knuckles bleach to white. His fingers find the grooves carved by your husband’s hands—the marks left by years of war and duty. You think you see hesitation cross Antinous’ face, but pride burns hotter than sense.

He plants his feet, straightens his back, breathes out through flared nostrils. The wood groans. The string resists.

The tendons in his arms strain and quiver. Veins bloom down his forearms like vines under his skin. His shoulders lift, tense with effort, and still the bow refuses him. Antinous bites down hard—hard enough that blood beads at the edge of his lip. His face is blotched with rage now, mottled red and pink. The sweat on his brow trickles past his temple and into the collar of his tunic, soaking it dark. 

The string moves, but only a breath.

You wonder briefly if he will break it, not out of anger, but out of fear. You wonder if he will destroy the thing that will not obey him, rather than admit his hands are not worthy. But in the end, he does not. With a growl low in his throat, like a cornered animal, he hurls the bow away. It strikes the stone floor with a sickening sound—a crack and rattle like bone hitting marble, brittle but final. Several of the suitors flinch.

Antinous turns away from the bow as if it has burned him. His hands are shaking. His mouth works soundlessly, and then he spits at your feet, full of fury, like the failure is yours to carry, like the bow was made to humiliate him and you were the one who strung it. It is an insult, yes, but when you look at him, you see not a man, but a child dressed in silk and silver, furious that the world does not bend at his command.

None of them—not Leiodes with his trembling hands, not Eurymachus with his curse-tainted tongue, not Antinous with his flame-fed fury—can meet your eyes, for the bow has bested them all.

Still—quiet, still, and watching—stands the beggar. You did not see him enter the hall; he slipped in quick as a minnow and twice as quiet. He has said nothing, and moved not an inch. 

You watch him. Your hands are clasped too tightly before you, but you do not loosen them. Your heart, traitor as it is, pounds against your ribs.

He steps forward. 

A hush falls, sharp and sudden—then breaks just as quickly as a wave against rock. Gasps flutter through the hall like startled birds, chased swiftly with laughter—loud, cruel, and incredulous.

Antinous barks it first, loudest, the sound brittle from the strain of failure still clinging to his limbs. His face, red from exertion and shame, twists into something venomous. “You, old man?” he jeers, spit flying out of his mouth. “You think you can do what princes cannot?”

More laughter follows, mocking and disbelieving. Eurymachus leans back, a goblet in hand, wine sloshing over the rim. “Let him try,” he drawls. “Maybe the gods will pity him and give him strength to match that stench.”

Leiodes winces as if in apology, but says nothing. Others lean forward, eager now, hoping for the final humiliation of the evening: a beggar trembling beneath a weapon meant for kings. But the beggar does not flinch.

“I ask only to try,” he says. There is no boast in his voice; only request. He steps fully into the light and bows low. 

Your eyes meet his. You do not speak. You do not smile. You feel every gaze in the hall prickling your skin, waiting to see if you will laugh too, if you will dismiss him like the rest. 

You nod.

They laugh harder when he lifts the bow, like hounds yipping at a wounded stag. You see it clearly in their faces, the slight upward curl of Eurymachus’ lip as he drinks in what he thinks will be a humiliation, the smug glint in Leiodes’ eyes as he leans forward like a spectator at some stageplay, and Antinous—Antinous, still bristling from his own failure, his hands bruised and red from trying to force the bow into obedience—stands with a sneer stretched tight across his face, certain that this will end in a joke.

It doesn’t.

The beggar turns the bow in his hands, slowly, reverently, and there is something in the motion—not practiced, but remembered—as though his fingers have not forgotten the shape of it, the weight of it, the grain of wood carved by a man who loved you. He lifts it to his knee, not rushing, not fumbling, and with a strength honed in absence, war, and silence, he strings it one smooth, effortless motion.

The sound it makes is sharp and sudden, a clean, taut hum that slices through the noise of the hall like a blade through silk.

Just like that, the laughter dies.

It dies in the back of their throats, in their chests, where the mockery was swelling and ready to burst. Eurymachus lowers his cup. Antinous blinks. Leiodes stiffens. All the noise in the hall collapses into silence, thick and stunned. Still they watch—thinking maybe, maybe, it was luck. Maybe he cannot draw it.

But he reaches for an arrow with a steady hand and fits it to the string like he was born to do it. He does not boast. He simply raises the bow and draws, arms steady, posture perfect, his breath shallow and even.

Then, he releases.

The arrow sings—a high, keening whistle—and you do not breathe as it sails through the hall, so fast and clean that the air seems to part around it. It hits its mark, perfectly. It slices through the twelve axe heads in a single breath, threading the impossible path with such elegance that it is almost unreal.

The silence that follows is absolute. It is the kind of silence that weighs on your shoulders, that hollows out your ribs, that makes the hair on your neck stand on end. Someone drops a goblet. It rolls against the floor and clinks softly against the stone.

He reaches for another arrow. He does not lower the bow, and when he speaks, his voice is steel and storm and grief.

“You thought I was gone,” he says, voice cutting like the winter wind. “You thought you could bleed my house dry. You courted my wife and slept in my halls. You dishonoured my name.”

Antinous opens his mouth, his face pale and drawn, some protest or insult already on the tip of his tongue—but he will never get to finish it.

The arrow finds his throat before the words can escape.

It drives straight through, sinking deep into the soft hollow above his collarbone. His eyes bulge with shock, blood blooming from his mouth like some vile flower. He stumbles back, choking, grabbing at the shaft with trembling hands before he collapses in a wet heap of limbs and cloth, twitching once before falling still.

The beggar—no, not the beggar, not anymore—shrugs off his rags.

He stands tall now, no longer stooped, no longer disguised by age or ash or dust. His shoulders are broad, his chest scarred, his hands steady. The torchlight catches on the jagged lines that mar his skin—scars you once kissed, and new ones that streak across his skin—and his eyes, when they meet yours from across the hall, are unmistakably his.

Kento.

You whisper the name, but no sound leaves your lips.

The hall erupts into chaos.

Chairs scrape across stone. Men leap to their feet, some cursing, some crying out in terror. A few rush for the door but none make it far. Kento is already moving, already shooting another arrow, this one through Eurymachus’ eye. Another man falls, screaming. A third tries to wrest a weapon from a pillar, but Kento is faster.

Your son bursts through the archway, breathless and wild-eyed, sword drawn but not yet stained. His voice is young and sharp, panic laced beneath the edge of command. “Mother!” he cries, cutting through the screams and the sobs and the clamour of war reborn in a dining hall.

You turn to him. He looks so much like Kento once did, and you can see the fear in his face—not for himself, but for you.

“You have to go!” he shouts, reaching for your arm. “Please—back to your chambers, now! It isn’t safe—he’ll protect us, but you have to move—go!”

Your feet feel rooted, your gaze still locked on the man with the bow—your husband, your fury, your grief—but then another arrow flies past, so close you feel the wind of it against your cheek, and instinct finally seizes you. You let your son pull you, let one of the guards posted outside the doors guide you away. 

The sounds of vengeance rise behind you, as your husband’s war cry echoes off the walls like thunder, and all the men who dared defile his home begin to fall like wheat before the blade.

“I do not wish to see him.”

The shroud lies folded at the foot of your bed. You haven’t touched it since the day they scrubbed the blood from the dining hall. Three years it took you to weave, and now it lies finished—useless. Pale linen, soft as mist, with silver thread glinting faintly in the low morning light. Each stitch was a stall, a prayer, a plea for one more day. A ruse to delay the suitors, yes, but more than that: a map of grief, of waiting, of memory. You had woven your sorrow into the weft, hidden your hope in the thread. Every night, you unwove what you had crafted in daylight, as if the act could rewind time itself.

Your chambers are quiet. There is only the crackle of the hearth, and your son standing just past the threshold, shadowed by torchlight.

He does not speak at first. His hair is mussed, his tunic stained—not with blood, thank the gods, but ash, soot, dust. His sword is gone. His voice, when it comes, is too steady for someone so young.

“He asked for you,” he says, and then, hesitant: “I do not understand.”

You do not look at him. You trace a knot in the wood grain with your thumb. 

“I do not wish to see him,” you say once more, as if saying it twice might make it true.

“You don’t mean that, mother.”

You turn then, just enough to catch his expression. His jaw is set—not in defiance, but in hurt and confusion. 

“My father is alive,” your son says, as though you might have forgotten. “He is alive, and he came back, and he fought for us—for you—and you haven’t said a single word to him.”

You close your eyes. The crackle of the hearth, the soft whisper of linen shifting as you curl your fingers into the hem of your robe—these are the only sounds you let yourself hear. Your son waits patiently for you to speak.

“I know he’s alive,” you say, voice barely more than a breath. “I know he fought. I know he won. I know he stood in that hall and killed the men who made a mockery of this house, of our name, of me. I know all of it.”

Your son crosses the room slowly, crouching beside you like he did as a child, when storms shook the windows and he wanted only to be near your warmth. He reaches for your hand, and you let him take it. You open your eyes and study his face—your boy’s face, a striking image of his father’s, only unlined and unwrinkled.

“And yet I cannot—” You swallow hard. “I cannot make my feet move toward him.”

“Why?” you son asks, his voice cracking now, no matter how hard he tries to steel it. “Why, mother? He is your husband returned after twenty years, and yet, last night, he slept on the cold, hard stone outside your door.”

You flinch.

“I saw him,” your son adds. “I went to find him. He hadn’t moved. He just sat there with his back against the wall, as if that was all he deserved.”

You press your lips together. “He left me,” you say. “He left us. And when he came back… he didn’t even say my name.”

Your son looks stricken, but he doesn’t argue. You go on. “He was kind and patient. But he spoke to me like I was a queen, not a wife. And I—I don’t know what to say to a man who carries so many ghosts in his silence.”

“He is trying,” your son says quietly. “He came back to find you. He sat in his own house like a beggar and bore every insult. He saw your face and did not cry out, did not ask for your love—he only waited.”

“I have been patient.” Your breath is slow and shallow. “He has changed.”

“Then so have you,” the prince says, and his face solemn when he says it. “You waited all these years. I saw you every night by the loom. I saw you unpick all the stitches of that wretched shroud by firelight, as if time could be rewritten with thread. You did not forget him, mother.”

Your hands twitch in his hold.

“And now he is here. And you are afraid.”

“I do not know what to say to him,” you whisper.

Your son smiles. “Say anything. Say nothing. Just look at him—I think that will be enough.”

You look toward the folded shroud, the linen pale against the bedcovers. Three years of weaving and unweaving; it was your lie, your shield, and your promise. Slowly, you rise.

“Have him brought to me,” you say. “And tell him he may sleep in warmth tonight.”

The king of Ithaca looks out-of-place in his own home.

He stands just past the threshold of your chambers, shoulders stiff, hands empty at his sides. In the firelight, he looks both older and younger than you remembered: lined with grief yet carved with something terribly familiar. His tunic is clean, but the scars along his arms, his throat, his cheekbones—those are worn like old jewellery, too many to hide. His hair is longer, and his eyes are dimmer but no less sharp. He looks at you like a man drowning.

You do not move from where you stand near the hearth. You do not rush to him. You watch him as you might watch a stranger, hands twisted into the folds of your robes.

At last, he speaks.

“I have no right to ask it,” he says, voice low and hoarse, “but I will fall to my knees here if I must. I have wronged you beyond measure. I left you to fend off wolves with no promise I would ever return. I broke every vow I made the day we were wed and I became your husband.”

You stay silent.

Kento’s mouth twists into something pained. “If you can find it in your heart… after all the wars I fought, the years I spent trying to escape the will of the gods, the blood that stains my hands—” He swallows thickly. “If there is even a sliver of love left in you for the man I once was, or the man I am now… I beg you, let me earn it again.”

The fire crackles between you, filling the room with an uneven, wavering glow. You lift your chin, your throat tight.

“Move our bed from this room,” you say.

For a moment, he only stares at you, his expression blank—then confused. His mouth opens, then closes again; and then his face crumples, not with sorrow, but with a sudden, furious kind of grief. He steps forward, one hand trembling at his side. His voice is rough, shaking with force when he speaks.

“You may curse my name,” he says. “Lock me out of my house. Disown me as your husband, deny me as father to our son. You can ask anything of me—anything—and I will give it to you without protest.”

His hands clench into fists.

“But please, my love,” he chokes out, “do not ask me to move our bed, for that would mean cutting it from the very roots of the olive tree where we first met.”

The silence that falls afterwards is a living thing, pulsing in the hollow spaces between your ribs. You are afraid to breathe.

Because you had not told a soul about the secret of your bed—how it was carved into the very roots of your house, how it could never be moved without tearing the room apart stone by stone. Only the two of you had known. Only the two of you would ever know.

Now you know it is truly him. Your hands fall to your sides. Your knees weaken. Your lips part before the sound comes. It escapes you like something long-buried, torn from the chest, raw with disbelief and aching and everything you have swallowed down for the last twenty years.

“...Kento,” you whisper. Then again, as your chest caves and your knees begin to give, the sob breaking loose from somewhere deep, “Kento.”

He’s at your side before you fall.

Strong arms catch you mid-collapse, wrapping around you with the kind of ferocity only born from long, painful absence. You feel the tremble in his limbs, the way his breath stutters against your temple. He holds you like something precious and already half-lost; his grip is sure and his embrace is unwavering. And you—gods, you cannot stop shaking. He doesn’t speak. He only pulls you closer.

You bury your face into Kento’s shoulder, into the torn fabric of the cloak he hasn’t removed, into the scent of dust and salt and smoke that clings to him. Your fingers twist into the fabric at his back, knuckles tightening from the force of it, as though you’re terrified he might disappear if you don’t hold him tightly enough.

Still, Kento tries.

Even as his own tears fall, as they track silently down his war-worn cheeks and drop into your hair, he tries to wipe yours first, with the heel of his palm and the trembling sweep of his thumb. It is foolish and futile. He can’t keep up. You’re both crying too hard, and still he tries—frantic and tender all at once, like he’s trying to undo the years with nothing but the press of his fingers to your skin. He kisses the salt from your cheeks and calls you by the name only he ever used: soft, low, sacred.

His hands are not the same. They are rough now, harder than they once were, palms callused and weathered from bowstring and blade. Faint scars web the skin—new ones, ones you do not know, gathered in battles far from home. They smell of blood and brine, of war. 

But they are his hands, and they are still gentle.

So gentle as they cradle your face, as though the thought of hurting you is unthinkable. So warm that, for a moment, you forget the winters you endured without him. So familiar that your soul sings with the reminder that they had once held your son, your waist, your heart.

He leans down, forehead pressing to yours, your tears mixing now on skin that’s been too long apart. “I came home,” he breathes shakily. “I came home to you.”

When he kisses you, you let the years collapse around you. You let the time shrink to nothing between the press of your lips and his, and the memories of what’s passed pour into the space where his mouth meets yours. 

His lips taste like longing, like salt and breath and yearning. The kiss tastes like two decades of grief—then joy, and disbelief. His mouth parts against yours and you breathe each other in like lifelines. Your hands move without thought, up his chest, over his shoulders, into the gold of his hair now dulled by dust and time.

Kento lifts you in one smooth motion, arms firm beneath your thighs, and you gasp—not from surprise, but from the sheer, crushing rightness of it. Of him. The world narrows to the span of his chest, the warmth of his body, the echo of his heart against his ribs.

He lays you on the bed like you are sacred. You still his hands, not because you want him to stop but because you want to look at him. His brow is furrowed, his eyes red. There’s blood beneath his nails, soot still clinging to his skin. But when your eyes meet his, there is nothing but tenderness there.

You reach for the hem of his tunic. He lets you strip him slowly, lovingly. He does the same for you.

It is not the rush of youthful hands anymore. He touches you like he’s learning a language he once knew but forgot. He kisses your shoulder, your ribs, the dip of your hip. You trace your fingers down the planes of his back. He trembles when you touch the scar on his side, and you lean forward to kiss it, too.

When you are both bare, Kento studies you, as though making sure you are real and not another trick played upon him by the gods. You kiss him again, and pull him down with you onto the bed you once swore you’d never share again.

The room is quiet, but for your breath; the creak of wood beneath you; and the soft, gasping litany of his name from your lips.

Kento is careful. Then he is not. Then he is careful again.

After, when the fire has burned low and the residual light spills across the sheets, you lie tangled in each other’s limbs, spent but warm. His arms are around your waist. Your leg is hooked over his hip. His chest rises and falls, steady beneath your cheek.

You touch his body like a scripture, relearning him through fingertips and memory. His breath hitches when your palm brushes over his ribs. Your name falls from his lips like a prayer. He turns towards you, eyes open now, lashes still damp with the tears you both shed, and he watches you as if you’re something made of starlight and all he has ever known is shadow.

You trail your fingers along his chest, over old wounds and new ones, mapping out every change like cartography; like if you trace every inch, you’ll understand what the years have done to him. His skin tells stories now: the long scar across his side, the faded one behind his shoulder, the cuts on his knuckles that weren’t there before. Each mark feels like a sentence in a book you never got to read until now.

“Here?” you whisper, brushing your thumb over a rough patch beneath his collarbone. Kento nods once.

“A blade, from the seventh year of the Trojan War.”

You kiss it. “And here?” You drag your finger down a line along his forearm.

“A javelin. It didn’t take, thank the gods.”

You hum, soft and sad, and keep going.

He touches you too—slowly, worshipfully—as though he is afraid you might shatter under his hands. His palms drift over your stomach, your arms, the curve of your breasts. He murmurs something about your hair being longer, about your voice sounding the same. About your heart still beating the same against his.

“It’s still you,” Kento says, and he kisses your throat like it might prove it.

In return, you run your hand through his hair—softer at the crown, streaked with silver at the temples now—and say, “I thought I had forgotten what your voice sounded like. But I hadn’t. It was always there, in the back of my mind.”

He presses his forehead to yours, and you lie like that for a long time, breathing each other in. You curl closer, your legs tangled with his, your hands pressed to the pulse at his throat. For the first time in twenty years, you both sleep without fear.

When morning comes, light spills pale and golden across the stone floors, soft and unthreatening, a blessing. You are still sleeping, a faint furrow between your brows, curled close to Kento’s side, one hand resting over his heart.

He does not wake you. Instead, he rises silently, wraps a cloak around his bare shoulders, and steps into the hall where Eurycleia waits with a basin of fresh water  and a careful, tearful smile.

“My lord,” she whispers, bowing low.

Kento’s voice is quiet but steady. “Come,” he says. “Walk with me. There is much I must know.”

They walk slowly through the palace corridors, past the scattered wreckage of the battle that has not yet been fully cleaned away—the broken tables, the bloodstained curtains, the gouges in the marble where swords clashed and humans fell. The air still smells faintly of blood and iron.

Kento listens as Eurycleia tells him everything: how long you waited, how fiercely you fought to preserve your home and your honour. How you stalled the suitors with cleverness and grace. How you sat weaving that cursed shroud by day and unraveling it by night, a thousand little acts of defiance stitched into linen.

But when she speaks of the maids, her voice lowers, thick with shame.

“There were… some,” Eurycleia says carefully, her hands wringing into her robes, “who did not remain faithful to your lady, my lord.”

Kento’s mouth tightens but he says nothing yet.

“They—” Eurycleia swallows, as if the words taste bitter. “They aligned themselves with the suitors. Openly, and secretly, both. They mocked your house and betrayed their duties. They slept in the suitors’ beds and carried messages and plotted against your son and your wife.”

“How many?”

“Twelve, my lord. Twelve who forgot themselves. Twelve who forgot the kindness and shelter you and yours once gave them.”

They walk a few more paces before Kento stops, turning his face slightly towards the east windows where the sun is beginning to climb. 

“And the rest?” he asks. “The ones who stayed loyal?”

Eurycleia’s eyes shine with tears. “Most did, my lord. Most remained true. They wept for your absence and prayed every night for your return.”

Kento nods slowly. His hands curl into fists at his sides—not out of anger alone, but out of something deeper: betrayal, yes, but also grief. Grief for the loss of innocence in a home he had worked so hard to reclaim.

“They will be spared,” he says. His voice brooks no argument. “The loyal ones shall be honoured for what they endured.”

“And the others?” the old maid asks quietly.

Kento does not answer right away. He looks back down the hall, toward the heavy doors of your chamber where you still sleep, exhausted after years of waiting and grieving. He thinks of the scars you bear—not just on your skin, but deeper, hidden in the quiet places of your heart. 

“They will answer for what they have done,” he says finally, as cold and steady as the sea. “But not today, and not—”

There is a thud of quick footsteps—the half-clumsy, half-careful sound of youth—and his son rounds the corner, his hair mussed from sleep, his tunic crooked. His eyes are the same colour as yours, and that was how Kento had identified him in the first place, and hatched the plan to get rid of all the suitors plaguing his home. His face is bright with something that is almost wonder. 

Kento straightens instinctively, and the boy—no, not a boy, a man now, taller even than Kento—halts awkwardly before him. He shifts his weight from foot to foot like a child caught sneaking sweets from the kitchens. 

He stares, not at Kento’s sword or his scars or his face, but at him, drinking him in like a man starved for memory.

“My lord,” your son says at last. 

Then, without waiting for permission, he steps forward and clasps Kento’s arm in both of his, in a grip that is too tight and too eager to be anything but a son’s love. Kento lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and clasps him back, their foreheads almost brushing as they stand there, caught between strangers and family.

“I dreamed,” your son says in a rush, the words tripping over each other, “of what you would be like. When I was small, mother would tell me stories—of how you carved, and sailed, and were cleverer than the gods themselves—but she never said your hands would be so big—” he laughs a little, boyish despite his years—“or your voice so quiet.”

Kento smiles faintly, something wry and aching tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You grew taller than I ever expected,” he says.

“And you came home,” your son says, breathless. “You came back.”

Kento lays a hand on the back of his son’s head, fingers threading through golden, sleep-ruffled hair. It is a touch both unfamiliar and natural, as though some old instinct, long-buried, has risen back to the surface without thought.

Behind them, Eurycleia dabs at her eyes, sniffling quietly.

“Come, mother must hear this,” your son says, tugging at Kento’s hand like he is still a boy of five and not a man grown and blooded in battle.

Before Kento can refuse, he is already being pulled down the hall, back to your chamber door, which he gazes upon with something like dread and longing all at once. The door creaks open under your son’s hand. Inside, you still sleep, curled in the tangled sheets. The hearth fire has burned low, embers breathing faint orange against the stone. Outside, doves coo softly from high eaves.

“Mother,” your son calls gently, stepping inside and dragging his father in with him. “Wake up. There is someone here who owes us a great many stories.”

You stir at the sound of their voices, slow and reluctant, lashes fluttering against your cheeks. You shift beneath the linen, the cool air whispering across your bare shoulders, and then you blink up at the sight of them—your son’s bright face, and behind him, Kento, standing stiffly, as though he fears he will frighten you.

It is almost too much, the sight of them together—the boy you raised and the man you mourned—and for a moment, you simply lie there, drinking in the sight of them.

“Stories?” you rasp, your voice rough with sleep.

Your son grins. “He must tell us of his journeys. Of how he outwitted monsters and gods. I won’t let him leave this room until he does.

Kento lets out soft, breathless chuckle, something rusty with disuse, as if he has forgotten the sound of his own laughter.

“If your mother wishes it,” he says, “then I will tell you everything.”

You sit up slowly, gathering the sheets to your chest, your heart pounding strangely in your ribs. Your husband’s eyes find yours, and there is a hesitation there: a silent asking. You nod, and he comes forward at last, sinking to sit beside you at the edge of the bed.

“Start from the beginning,” your son insists eagerly, flinging himself onto a nearby stool like a boy half his age.

Kento glances at you once more, seeking permission. And you, who have waited a lifetime, who have unraveled your days into threadbare hope, reach out and rest your fingers against his knee. 

It is enough.

He draws in a breath, long and steady. He speaks slowly at first, as if the words are heavy on his tongue after so many years of silence.

“I left,” Kento says, his hand resting lightly over yours where it rests on his knee, “with little more than my sword, a handful of men, and the blessing of the gods—though I am not sure, now, if it was a blessing at all.

“The war dragged on longer than we ever dreamed. Ten years of siege. Ten years of watching good men fall. Friends… brothers-in-arms… And then there was the journey home. Worse, in some ways. The gods are not kind to men who outlive their victories.”

He speaks of lotus-eaters and Cyclopes; of cannibals and sun-cattle; of shipwrecks and sirens; of men turned into beasts by the whims of witches, and of endless, hungry seas that swallowed the unwary whole. He speaks of betrayals and broken oaths; of false harbours and cruel storms; and of besting the sea god with his own trident.

At times, he falters. His voice catches on certain words, and though your son urges him on with eager questions, Kento’s gaze always returns to you, as if anchoring himself with the sight of you, alive and breathing.

At last, he whispers, “There were nights when I thought… perhaps it would be easier not to return. Perhaps it would be a mercy to let the sea claim me, as it claimed so many others.”

You reach for him then, instinctive and sure, your fingers brushing the back of his knuckles. His hand turns at once, catching yours, threading his rough fingers between yours with a gentleness that breaks your heart all over again.

“But then, I would remember the stories I had promised to tell. The ones you would be waiting to hear. And here I am,” Kento finishes, a little hoarsely, “with nothing but scars and memories to offer.”

There is a long silence. The morning light has grown brighter, casting warm bars across the stone floor. Your son shifts, glancing between you both with a frown of sudden seriousness.

“You are wrong,” he says, surprising you. His voice has changed—no longer the eager boy but the man he has become. “You brought yourself back to us. That is enough.”

Kento turns to look at him fully, and something flickers in his eyes—something you think might be pride, sharp and swift and fierce.

“And you are more than enough to make the years worth it,” he says.

Your son flushes, ducking his head, embarrassed. But you catch the smile he tries to hide, and give him one of your own. Kento turns back to you. His hand still cradles yours carefully, as if he fears you might slip away if he lets go. You search his face—the new lines, the quiet grief carved into them—and find only the man you never stopped waiting for.

“I have more stories,” he says, a little shyly.

You smile, the first true smile you have allowed yourself in years. “Then you must tell them all.”

So he does.

Kento stays, sitting at the edge of your wedding bed, your son sprawled on the floor like a boy again, and you curled among the tangled sheets, listening as your husband speaks the years back into existence—until the sun climbs high and the day outside the palace walls is no longer new.

Later, when the sun hangs high and the world beyond your chamber calls for duty and rebuilding, you stay hidden away in the quiet.

Kento sits behind you, his knees bracketing your hips, a simple wooden comb in his hand. Slowly, carefully, he works through the tangles of your hair. The comb drags gently from crown to end. His hand follows after, smoothing the strands, his touch so light it barely stirs the air. 

Your robe slips lower with each movement, baring your shoulders to the firelight. The hearth crackles quietly, the smoke sweet with cedar. 

“I should have come sooner,” Kento says, after a long while. His voice is low, close to your ear. “I tried. Gods know I tried.”

You say nothing, only tilt your head forward, offering more of yourself to his hands.

“There is one story I did not tell you, because I was ashamed to say it in front of our son,” he says, and the comb stills for a moment against your scalp. He drags in a slow breath before continuing. “There was a goddess on an island far from here.”

You hum, noncommittal.

“She found me after the shipwreck. I had nothing.” He huffs a bitter, humourless breath against your temple. “No crew, no ship, no hope left in me. She said she would save me, and she did.” His hands return to your hair, combing through steadily now.

“She gave me food and a bed. She healed my wounds. And when I could stand again, she told me I would stay. That I was hers.” He pauses, slowing as the comb catches on a stubborn knot. Gently, carefully, he works it loose with his fingers.

You say nothing, your breath shallow in your chest.

“She offered me immortality; a life without pain or fear. She said she would make me forget everything. Forget Ithaca. Forget you.” Kento’s voice cracks slightly, like a blade drawn too tightly across a whetstone. “I refused her. I told her no. Again, and again—but it did not matter.”

The fire pops in the hearth, unnervingly loud in the silence.

“She… she did not need my permission.” His hand trembles against your hair. “I fought her. For years, I fought her. I counted every sunset, every turn of the seasons. Seven years. Seven years of dreaming of your face and waking up to hers.”

You turn your head slightly, enough to catch the sight of his face over your shoulder. His eyes are glassy with unshed tears, his mouth drawn tight with sorrow.

“If I had found a way to escape sooner,” he whispers, “our son would have been only three-and-ten. Still young enough to need a father. Still soft enough not to know how to raise a sword.” 

He drops the comb, letting it fall with a soft thud to the furs beside you. His hands find your shoulders, pulling you back against his chest. He wraps himself around you like armour, burying his face into the curve of your neck.

“I am sorry. For every year I was not here; for every tear you wept while I was lying in a false paradise,” he says, breath hot against your skin. “If you ask me to atone for it until my dying day, I will.” 

His voice drops lower still, thick and desperate. “I only beg you—do not doubt that I was yours, even then. Every breath I took belonged to you. Every one.”

You turn in his arms. His hair is tousled, coarse between your fingers. He is trembling—this strong, steady man you have loved since youth—and he looks so, so tired.

You kiss him once, soft and chaste.

And again, your hand cradling the side of his face, feeling the stubble scrape against your palm. And again, more fiercely, pouring into him all the words you cannot yet speak aloud.

You kiss him until he shudders and breaks, a low, desperate sound escaping from deep within his chest. You kiss him until the sadness spills from him like a wound finally allowed to bleed clean. You kiss him until he believes you are real beneath his hands, until the guilt begins to crumble from his shoulders.

You kiss him, over, and over again.

and all seems well enough when you return back to the daily planet. you find clark still hunched in the same position you left him in, head buried into the glare of the computer screen. and when he feels your fingers run through his hair, tugging at the sensitive spots he loves, he lifts his head upwards and shoots you a look of pure adoration and it melts right through you.

"hey baby," he murmurs fondly, and from where you're perched up on the side of his desk, he drags you straight into his lap. you've never been big on pda but something about clark kent- your 6'4, 200lb hot nerd of a boyfriend has you doing a lot of things you usually wouldn't do. you lean into his embrace for a second before placing your hands on his chest, patting him gently.

"come on, munch time- you need to get something in you or you'll crash out," and you make work of unwrapping his sandwich. and when he sends you that lazy smirk, like he's biting back his laughter at his own joke, your eyes widen and clamp his mouth shut with a hand over it swiftly.

"do not," you whisper, blushing a violent red, "say what i think you're about to say," and he muffles an innuendo against the back of your fingertips before pressing a kiss to the hand smothering him. you let go when it looks like he's going to behave himself and make a move to stand.

"eat," you pat his shoulders gently, "i'll swing by when you're done," and he furrows his brows, gripping your waist and drawing you to him.

"stay," he mumbles into your stomach, hugging you as he's still seated in his chair. you slide your fingers through the soft curls of his hair again and he leans back, sighing in bliss.

your sweet sweet moment is cut in half- literally sliced when the voice of jimmy olsen grates at your ears and you wince as you feel your boyfriend tense below you.

"hey kent! you should join us next time, enjoy the sandwiches- my treat!" he hollers as he strolls past clark's desk, sending you the biggest grin you've ever seen stretched on his small face and you groan. when he disappears from view, you open your eyes at clark, hoping to find a teasing grin but there's nothing there. literally nothing, just a glare of pure steel focused on the mark where jimmy has left, scorching the spot with a burning disdain.

"clark," you start slowly, grabbing his chin to face you upwards again. he looks away begrudgingly and into your nervous eyes. "we've been over this, jimmy is a friend- our friend!" and part of you feels annoyed that this isn't the first time you've had to remind him.

"friend is a stretch, i hate the way he looks at you," he grumbles, swiftly moving the sandwich with his pen- not even his finger as though it would kill him to touch it- and straight into the bin. a startled gasp leaves you as your eyes widen in shock at the outright revenge and you tap his chest lightly.

"clark!"

"what?" he stares at you and you cross your arms in a protective stance.

"jimmy is just a friend- we've been over this!" you whisper exasperated, aware that you're still at work and in public.

"he's a boy," clark rolls his eyes, "and he looks at you like i look at you," he growls with a pointed glare. you scoff, it's just a crush! a silly crush jimmy olsen has that you liken to a puppy love, knowing damn well that no one on planet earth would dare make a move on you with your absolute hulk of a boyfriend by your side.

"i don't get this way about lois and you spend a lot of your time with her," you counteract, you've abandoned that bit of jealousy long ago but in this moment, right here and now it feels only right to throw something back in his face- give you some bit of stance to face clark on with.

"that's different- you love lois!" you do, she's one of your best friends and an incredible journalist.

"and you like jimmy-"

"no i don't- i tolerate him and he's a fucking loser if he thinks he's got a shot with you, so no."

"clark," you moan, this all feels really childish and a waste of your short unpaid lunch break that could spend just eating a sandwich and kissing your boyfriend silly, "are you really jealous right now?"

"no," and he's stubborn with it, "i just think he's disrespectful like i'm right fucking here," he rolls his eyes, and when you take a step back out of his hold, he doesn't exactly reach for you- which hurts even more.

"clark, we've been over this and i'm getting real sick of repeating myself, there's nothing between us," you complain, "do you not trust me?" it's a light-hearted remark, sarcastic as it leaves your lips but you wish you could take it back once you see your boyfriend's reaction- or lack of thereof

he stills, frozen in his seat. it takes him a beat longer to reply but that beat is all you need to scoff, you detach yourself from him completely, mouth gaping open. "you really don't fucking trust me?" and it's a little louder than you'd like as the betrayal drums along your chest, matching the erratic beat on your heat and pounding in your head. there's just too much going on, too much to feel.

you're sure you've caught a few stares because clark is up in a second, gripping your wrist as he leads you to the privacy of the stairwell. you snatch your wrist back when the door slams and face him with a quiet fury, "oh my god, you've got some fucking nerve, huh?" you spit back, the anger at not being trusted pound in your veins.

"what?" he raises his voice back, he's tried to contain himself but it's too late- the stress of this article, the slimy look jimmy olsen sends your way and the betrayed glare you slice him with is overstimulating, he's loosing control.

"you don't trust me, i fucking knew it," you heave a heavy breath to yourself and his nostrils flare out air in annoyance. you've not let him speak this entire time but maybe that's the problem- he's not exactly composed himself to reassure you that this has all just spiralled out of control. but the fire you spit carries a heavier heat and clark detects this immediately.

"that sounds like you've got something to get off your chest, go on," he pushes, "lay it on me huh?" and you scoff at how big of a delusional idiot he's being, careless of your feelings and how he makes you feel so small, like you're the one with the problem. and the thing is, you can meet his fire immediately, if clark kent wants a problem- oh boy, you'll give him a problem.

you take the steps to close the distance, your fury fighting in the air as it wraps around him whole. you don't mean to increase the intensity but you need to make sure that this next sentence hits his ears and his ears alone,

"then why'd you tell lois about superman before me?" and its thundering how his heart roars in a panic.

"what?" he breathes, and you nod in fierce determination.

"you heard me," you return without skipping a beat, "you can accuse me of cosying up to jimmy- a baseless accusation by the way- for a good journalist that you are, you are a fucking idiot," you roll your eyes, "but lets talk about trust huh, why did lois know before me?"

"because she was smart enough to figure it out! we've been over this!" his restrained shout is met with a click of your tongue as you take a step back, sizing him up with a look. its also an echo of your earlier defense- you've been over the jimmy crush saga plenty and clark still worms it back up

"are you saying i'm not smart enough?" you drawl, annoyance bubbling in you and burning you whole. "first i give some loser the time of the day and now i'm too dumb, you're really winning boyfriend of the year, kent," and it should stop him at how you've addressed him by his surname. he's never been kent, he's always been clark- your clark.

but he's stubborn as he is tall and pushes back, cornering you into the wall, "you are twisting my words," he hisses, "and it's not like i wasn't going to tell you eventually."

you place a hand on his chest, not lovingly like you usually do but to stop him. you're not about to be backed up against the wall for a fight you did not start.

"and how was i supposed to know that?" you speak, "am i supposed to just what-" and the glint in your eyes is murderous, "trust you?" you squint and clark knows there's no way out of this for now.

he stands, feet apart holding his head high, and you scoff knowing you're the one who's going to have to break, to level this or you won't come out of this alive.

"look," you breathe but he still hasn't looked at you, "we're going to go back inside, we're going to carry on our day like the professional working colleagues that we are, then we are going to go home and you're going to tell me what the fuck is really going on, because this has spiralled out of control," you wait to hear clark's stoic murmur of approval, like he usually does when you reach the height of an arguement but it doesn't come.

"clark?" you pull him out of his thoughts and force him to look at you. "look honey, i'm sorry, i've said some nasty things in the moment and i know we've been over the lois drama- i shouldn't have brought it up again," and it's true, part of you is over it- you argued over it back months ago where you didn't take clark back after weeks of grovelling. it was petty you know, but you just needed some ammunition with all the jimmy nonsense he was gunning at you.

your phone lights up with an alarm, signalling the end of your lunch break and your stomach cries at the wasted time which you've not even had the chance to eat yet. "listen baby, we'll talk about this at home, yeah?" when you realise he's not going to give you a reply other than a singular nod, you plant a kiss on his cheek, heading back onto the floor and straight to your desk.

you don't miss the small smile lois lane sends your way and you return it back. this isn't her fault in the slightest and she's been nothing but the best of friends to both you and clark. you almost hate yourself the tiniest for dragging her into that ugly arguement in the stairwell, but being accused by your boyfriend after dating him for an entire year for being untruthful wasn't exactly on the board for your tuesday lunch time plans.

the rest of the day ends in a blur, you focus on your article and at how your grumpy lover sits a few desks away, hardly looking in your direction. five o'clock hits and you get ready to pack up all your things in your bag, the still packaged sandwich from earlier sits there like a painful reminder and you stick it in the small fridge under your desk for tomorrow's lunch. in this economy, you're not about to lose your boyfriend and your lunch, god what a wreck.

and when you walk past your boyfriend's desk you're met with pure emptiness. your tote slouches in a growing fatigue on your shoulder, already carrying the weight of tonight and then your eyes settle on a yellow post it, blinding in your vision.

"needed some space. you take the car, drive safe."

and you scoff, crumple it up between your fists and dump it in his bin alongside the pesto and mozzerella sandwich from earlier. the keys are hidden in his top drawer and you snatch them in a wave of annoyance- less anger than before and make your way to the parking lot.

the drive home feels a lot slower without your boyfriend humming along to the songs, interlocking your hands across the control panel and telling you off handed comments about his day. you sit in silence, unbothered to connect your phone to the bluetooth mode and just drive and drive and drive.

you don't go home immediately, choosing to clear your head and his fuel tank before you land at your apartment door.

it's seven pm and the house is untouched, you got off work two hours ago and there's still no sign of clark. as soon as you've set foot through the door you drop your tote to the floor and shrug off your coat, letting it land wherever next to your bag before dragging yourself to the sofa.

there's no messages on your phone, no inkling of where your other half is and it hurts you. this is classic clark behaviour, clark who runs away when things get hard and he doesn't know what to do- the only difference is, and you feel it with every tick of the clock hands that warn your ears, he's never not come home like this.

seven pm turns to eight pm and then to nine, and somewhere along the lines where you try to sit up and wait for him, sleep decides to take you in an easier feat and when you close your eyes, clark is still the one you see and call home.

. . .

you don't hear the turn of locks, or even the soft sound of shoes shuffling at the door. sleep has been kind on you and taken the exhausation out of your system, gently lulling you to a clearer conscious and its only when your airborne you begin to stir.

"clark?" you murmur, the sleep heavy in your voice it kind of comes out as a grunt.

"hi, honey," he whispers, careful not to be too loud. his body is warm against yours, he carries you like a baby, your head is up against his chest as your legs have wrapped around his waist. one of his arms comes across your back and the other just at the back of your thighs. your body could remember every single sensation he's ever sent you by heart, that you relax into his touch, melt into the warmth because in his arms you've never felt safer.

he takes you into your bedroom and lies you on top of the bed, onto your side before he leaves to change and joins you on the other side. the lights are off, and there's something unresolved in the air- clark hoped to apologise tonight for being the biggest idiot on the planet but seeing you asleep on the sofa? waiting for him? god he deserves longer to wallow in his regret and pity.

"clark?" you call out for him in a mumble and he softens, guilt filling his blood in every vessel, pumping like its trying to break free.

"babydoll, i'm sorry," he breathes, the apology lingers in the air before you speak again, slightly more awake but still tired.

"you didn't come home," you whisper, rolling over to face him, "you've never done that before," and the silence that follows is thick. he reaches out to brush a rogue tendril of hair out from your face and behind your ear. your mouth parts open at the touch, a look of sadness wavering over your features and he closes his eyes, wincing.

"i needed some space," he starts and you interrupt him.

"you couldn't have called? or texted? or passed by my desk and just let me know? i'm your girlfriend clark, if you need space you can just trust me to respect it," and its that damn finnicky word all over again. trust. clark does trust you more than anything, than anyone, he was just a gigantic jealous idiot who let his mouth run quicker than his brain could catch up and reprimand him.

" you're right," he speaks low, "you're right. i should've let you known but a large part of me was fucking embarrassed of how i acted. i'm ashamed i even implied the worst of you," he closes his eyes, hiding from his earlier regret, "i do trust you, with my whole life i just- oh god, i'm just a dick and i'm sorry, i'm sorry for even raising my voice at you earlier god, who does that? and the jimmy thing was immature, i know you'd never be dishonest with me i just got wrapped up in it and unfairly took it out on you," somewhere during his spiel, you've lifted a hand to his cheek, cupping it softly.

"thank you for being honest with me now," you mumble and he takes the cue to move closer to you, bodies almost touching.

"and you have every right to still bring up lois- if it bothers you still, we can talk through it again and again if that's what you need then that's something i'll keep being sorry for," his reply is earnest, he mustve practised it on the way home, you think and you nod slowly, sleep creeping in on you.

"clark honey, couples fight-"

"i don't want to," he counteracts immediately and you just start groaning until he gets the hint to stop speaking and let you finish.

"i said couples fight," you repeat yourself firmly, "i said some mean things to, like i didn't mean to call you an idiot but i did, so i'm sorry-"

"i believe you called me a fucking idiot," he teases and you level him with a stony look.

"okay wise guy, you also tried to call me a cheater,"

"which i apologise profusely for, it was incredibly disgusting of me to even insinuate that-"

"and then i forgive you," you lazily return, "we'll talk more on this tomorrow i'm tired, clark."

"okay," he surrenders, he can wait for the morning to come and make it up to you properly, apologise and grovel when you're alert enough to understand the weight he's trying to lift from you. "you know that i do trust you though right? i didn't mean-"

"clark," you whine, throwing your leg over his and borderline climbing on him, using him as your pillow and trying to find a good spot for you to fall back asleep. "i know that and i said we'll talk about this tomorrow, go to sleep," you beg.

he lands a kiss to your temple and murmurs a goodnight and you pause with a frown.

"kiss me goodnight properly," you moan and he does, letting his lips press to yours a moment longer than usual, melting in all the words he doesn't know to formulate but hopes you can feel it burn through him and you hum in approval.

you nestle into his hold, he wraps you up tighter, putting you in your favourite position which is having your ear pressed up against his heartbeat as your body rises and falls with the soft breaths of his chest. he thinks you've finally fallen back asleep again before he lets out a final sigh, but then you're mumbling- to yourself more likely and clark tries to bite back the laugh this time.

"jimmy olsen, you know," and it comes out as a sleep filled, drooling mumbling scoff, "couldn't have at least given me more credit and said bruce wayne." the chuckles escape him and he knows you're not even going to remember that you believe you could've bagged batman tomorrow- but hey, you managed to get superman on his knees so there's real strong potential.

tomorrow comes and clark is going to do everything he can to make it up to you, and that includes secretly killing jimmy olsen before breakfast.

riya saying hi: hii 🥺 my sole purpose in life feels like its to provide clark angst and when its requested- i fear i may have to step up and prove myself LOL anyways, i hope you enjoyed this, it was based off a request i linked at the top if you want a little more context. to op, i hope this is similar to how you expected it- again, i don't really take requests i get nervous and overthink everything and think im a piece of shit, but i did like this idea so didn't mind it. hope you liked & as always please let me know what you think! if you ever wanna say hi, come say hi- my inbox is always open! except to those loser anons who correct my grammar and try and remind me to include "x reader" as a tag; here's your reminder to actually check my tags because i do!!! get off my page!!! ugh sorry for the rant, enjoy the clark! because i dont actually have anything planned for him next so who knows where the wind will take me, love ya!!! xxx

Megumi’s voice is tight and controlled—but you know him well enough to recognize the underlying fear he refuses to show.

Despite the pain tearing through your leg, you glare at him and keep moving, leaning on his support as you limp forward. Every step sends a jolt of agony through your body, but you can’t let him see how weak you feel.

Today’s mission had gone completely sideways. What Gojo had promised as an “easy peasy, grade-four clearance” had become a test of endurance and survival. You had cleared the grade 4 curses without issue, your techniques flowing smoothly, confidence high.

Then the grade 1 curse appeared—a writhing shadow, its movements sharp, far faster and more vicious than you anticipated. It struck, slashing at your legs and torso, leaving you bruised, bleeding, and gasping for air. Each strike sent a jolt of pain through your body.

By the time you stumble into the infirmary, knees weak, you let out a shaky sigh, fingers trembling as you brush a strand of hair from your face.

“That was close, huh?”

Megumi doesn’t even spare you a glance as he lowers you onto the cot. His expression is unreadable, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the walls, as if acknowledging your existence is dangerous.

“Too soon?” you ask, your voice quieter now, uncertain.

He doesn’t respond. His silence makes you anxious, making the pain in your leg almost bearable in comparison.

“You okay? Does Shoko need to check you out too?”

“I’m fine,” he mutters, eyes fixed on the floor. The words are short, almost dismissive, leaving you unsure if they’re meant to end the conversation or avoid it entirely.

“Okay…” Your frown deepens, confusion mixing with worry. Before you can ask more, Shoko rushes in, urgency etched on her face.

“I heard what happened. Are you okay?” As she begins working on you, Megumi slips out without a word, disappearing before you can stop him.

The next day, you spot him in the courtyard with Yuji and Nobara. The morning sunlight hits their faces, laughter spilling through the air, but something about the sight makes your stomach churn.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” you call out, trying to sound casual, forcing a smile onto your face.

Yuji and Nobara greet you with their usual enthusiasm. Yuji’s grin is wide, and he wraps you in a quick hug, asking if you’re okay, while Nobara’s laughter cuts through the tension, peppered with questions about your leg and how you’re feeling. Their energy is warm and comforting, filling the space around you with a sense of normalcy you hadn’t realized you were craving.

Megumi, however, barely acknowledges you. His gaze is fixed ahead, lips pressed into a thin line, expression unreadable. It’s as if your presence is an inconvenience. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak, doesn’t meet your eyes—a silent barrier keeping you at arm’s length.

The group, (mostly Yuji and Nobara), decide to head out for ice cream. You automatically fall into step beside Megumi, hoping that he’ll say something, look at you, give a sign that the bond you’ve always shared isn’t completely gone.

But he doesn’t.

You steal glances at him, noticing the faint furrow of his brow, the way his shoulders are slightly hunched, and the subtle tension in his hands. He keeps his distance—just enough to remind you he’s there, but far enough that it stings. Every step beside him is a quiet battle between wanting to reach out and knowing he’ll pull back.

You tell yourself he’s just shaken from yesterday’s mission. Maybe he’s processing, maybe he’s exhausted, maybe he doesn’t know how to deal with his own fear and worry. It makes sense, logically. But your heart refuses to accept logic.

A laugh from Yuji snaps you back. You push the worry aside, joining their conversation, letting the teasing and chatter draw you in. But even as you smile, a part of you can’t stop looking at Megumi, noting every small movement, every tiny flicker of attention that isn’t directed at you. The distance between you is both physical and emotional, and it leaves a feeling of emptiness that you can’t shake.

Every laugh, every shared joke between the others, underscores the silence between you and him. And even though you force yourself to keep the happy facade going, a part of you is quietly mourning the closeness you used to have—the way he made you feel safe, seen, and important, without ever having to say a word. By the time the ice cream is finished and the group disperses, you’re left with the gnawing realization that Megumi is still present, but unreachable, and that ache in your chest is only growing stronger.

During next week’s training is when you let yourself be concerned.

The first-years rotate through partner groups, and when you’re paired with Megumi, he barely looks at you before moving into position. The tight line of his jaw and the way his shoulders stiffen make your stomach twist. 

Something is off.

“Ready?” you ask, trying to break the silence, your voice a little too loud in the empty training room.

He nods sharply, barely acknowledging you. His eyes flick to yours for a fraction of a second before darting away, and that small gesture makes your heart twinge. You’ve fought with him countless times, and this—the distance, the restraint, the unspoken worry—is new.

He summons his serpent shikigami. It lunges with precision, but something feels off. You dodge easily, almost instinctively, noticing the lack of force behind his strikes. His movements are measured yet restrained, as if he’s testing you without actually trying to win.

With every swing, every calculated deflection, your concern grows. This isn’t a fair match—there's a wall between you, invisible but noticeable. The thought gnaws at you: Why is he holding back?

You counter, and your strikes land easily. It’s supposed to feel good, the satisfaction of victory, but it tastes bitter. Pride doesn’t come; only confusion and a tightness in your chest as you realize he’s making it too easy for you.

Yuji’s laughter breaks the moment. “Dang, Megumi, you just let her beat your ass!” Nobara cackles beside him. You force a small smile, but your eyes are still on Megumi.

After they leave, you approach him, anger and worry tangled together.

“What the hell was that?” you demand.

He doesn’t look at you, jaw tightening. After a long, quiet beat, he grunts, almost dismissively, “Focus on your own moves,” and walks away. You stand there, heart pounding, replaying every hesitation, every pause, every moment where he seemed to deliberately give you the upper hand. His predictability, usually comforting, now feels suffocating. Every unspoken reason behind his actions presses on you, leaving you frustrated, worried, and painfully aware of the distance he’s placing between you two.

“Megumi, watch out!” you shout. He barely dodges the cursed attack hurls toward him with sharp speed.

Once again, Gojo had called this mission “easy, peasy, lemon squeezy,” but after your last near-disaster, you didn’t trust his judgement. You’ve learned the hard way that nothing with Gojo’s seal of approval is ever as simple as it seems.

Megumi’s focus seems scattered, his head flicking toward you more often than toward the cursed spirit in front of him. Every stumble, every careful step you take, he notices. It’s almost as if he’s afraid to let you out of his sight, even if it puts him at risk. He moves with precision, but there’s a tension in his shoulders, a slight stiffening every time you falter.

Nue’s form sparks and crackles as it lashes out with a burst of electricity, paralyzing the curse just long enough for you to strike. You channel your technique and finish it off cleanly, breath coming in ragged gasps. Your knees hit the ground as the adrenaline fades, vision swimming from the effort.

Megumi is instantly at your side, crouching, just enough to help, but he keeps distance. There’s a tension in the way he hovers, like he wants to close the gap but fears what that might mean.

“Are you okay?” he asks, eyes flicking to yours but never holding your gaze. His jaw tightens, and his fingers shift faintly near his shikigami.

“I’m fine,” you wheeze, forcing a small, shaky smile. “Just… tired.”

He doesn’t answer, only watches you with that unreadable gaze, letting silence settle between you, charged with all the unspoken thoughts and feelings he refuses to voice.

Even now, when he’s crouched beside you, every slight movement—adjusting his stance, shifting his hands—carries purpose. He stays close, watches your every move, and moves as if ready for anything, but he doesn’t speak or reach out.

The corridor echoes with your heavy breathing and the faint crackle of Nue’s energy. He moves with precision, his focus unshakable… but something feels different, as if he’s holding himself back. When the mission ends, you’re both drained. Your legs shake, sweat and grime cover your skin, and every muscle protests with fatigue. Megumi stands beside you, posture stiff, gaze averted, yet still lingering just a fraction too close. He doesn’t say a word about the fight, doesn’t offer congratulations or comment on your technique. He just watches, silently, his attention never fully leaving you.

You want to reach out, to say something, but the words stick in your throat. He would never respond the way you hope. Not with words. Not with softness.

Still, the pull between you is too strong to ignore. Every small glance, every subtle movement he makes—holding himself apart, watching you, just out of reach—makes it impossible not to try.

Once you get back to the dorms, you catch him alone and fall into step beside him. Maybe it’s foolish, maybe it won’t change anything—but you need to say it.

“Thanks for looking out for me… I don’t know what I’d do without you,” you murmur, glancing at him for any flicker of acknowledgment.

Megumi stiffens. His eyes flick to the floor, jaw tightening, and he shifts his weight, silent.

After a long pause, you press on. “You’re acting weird. Is everything okay?”

For a moment, he freezes. When he finally meets your eyes, it’s brief—a flash of something unreadable—before he turns away again.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, voice flat and clipped, leaving your question hanging. You take a hesitant step back, frustration and worry twisting in your chest. He’s right there, so close, yet unreachable.

The following morning, you run into him in the hallway. The distant chatter of the other students echoes off the walls, but it feels muffled, like you’re the only two people in the world.

“Hey… can we talk?” Your voice is quieter than expected, almost swallowed by the space between you.

He meets your eyes for a brief second, something like surprise flickering there before he looks away and nods. That nod twists your stomach, but at least he isn’t leaving entirely.

You pull him aside into a quiet corner. The chill of the hallway presses around you, and for a second, you hesitate. But the tight knot of unanswered questions in your chest pushes you forward.

“Megumi… what’s going on with you?” you demand, voice trembling just enough to betray how much this hurts.

He doesn’t answer. His gaze drops immediately to the floor, shoulders stiff, posture rigid. A faint clench of his hands at his sides makes you wonder if he’s frozen or just avoiding you.

“I mean it,” you continue, stepping a little closer. “You’ve been so distant lately. During training, yesterday’s mission… You wouldn’t even look at me. Did I do something wrong?”

Finally, he glances up. Just for a second. His dark, unreadable eyes meet yours, and there’s a flicker—guarded, heavy, impossible to read—before he looks away again.

“I’m not distant,” he says quietly, clipped. “You’re reading too much into things.”

“You call this not distant?” you snap, hurt spilling out. “You barely talk to me, you don’t look at me, and every time I try to—”

He flinches at your words, jaw tightening, a sharp inhale escaping him. “Stop,” he interrupts, voice low but firm. “Don’t make this about feelings. Just focus on training.”

You inhale sharply, disbelief twisting in your chest. “Is that really all this is? Just training?”

He says nothing. His hands twitch at his sides, fingers brushing against each other as if the movement itself might anchor him. He wants to respond, but he doesn’t.

You stare, every unspoken word pressing against you. The hallway stretches on, quiet and heavy. For the first time, you realize the distance is intentional—but whether he’s upset, indifferent, or simply keeping you at arm’s length, you can’t tell.

Megumi steps back, putting space between you, eyes flicking away. “We’re done here,” he mutters, and walks off. You remain rooted in place, chest tight, mind swirling with longing and confusion, wondering if you’ll ever breach that wall.

Three weeks crawl by, and Megumi keeps his distance. Every glance in the hall, every passing shadow that could be him makes your chest tighten. You feel sick to your stomach, a knot of longing and frustration twisting tighter with each day.

You miss the mornings he used to hand you coffee, the quiet brush of his hand against yours as you walked back to the dorm. You miss the way he let you hold his hand during the scary parts of movies, just tight enough to make you feel safe. Those small, careful gestures—so easily overlooked, so hard for him to give—are gone now, and the absence leaves your chest aching.

He hovers nearby, notices when something goes wrong, yet never lingers. Conversations are clipped, his attention quick and fleeting, like he’s afraid to stay too long. Every careful glance, every subtle pause near you, reminds you that he’s present—but behind a wall you can’t reach. The little rituals where his guard slipped just enough to show affection are gone, leaving only the quiet ache of what’s missing.

Every time his name comes up, it feels like a twist of the knife. You imagine what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, whether he’s thinking of you at all. And the worst part? You know him well enough to understand that he probably is, but he won’t show it, he won’t say it, and that knowledge only makes the emptiness heavier. At night, when you’re alone, the silence is deafening. You replay every memory: the brush of his hand, the way his dark hair fell across his forehead when he focused on something, the quiet moments where his guard slipped just enough for you to see him. And you ache for him like a wound that won’t close, the slow burn of longing stretching longer and longer, every day heavier than the last.

“You’re up! Your first solo mission, yay!” Gojo grins at you, making exaggerated jazz hands.

You roll your eyes but still focus as he lays out the details: a grade 2 curse haunting an abandoned school on the edge of town.

It sounds intimidating, but you’ve grown stronger these past couple of weeks. You trust they wouldn’t send you if they didn’t think you could handle it.

Ijichi pushes his glasses higher on his nose. “You’re ready to go?”

You nod and follow him to the car.

On the ride, you scroll through the mission report—locals claiming the place is cursed, groups of thrill-seekers sneaking in, only to vanish without a trace.

Weird, you think, though the unease curls tight in your stomach.

You arrive and step out, stretching your legs.

“Thanks, Ijichi.”

“No problem. I’ll put up the curtain. Good luck.”

You glance back and watch the veil shimmer into place, the outside world fading from view.

Okay… I got this.

The front doors groan as you push them open. The air inside is thick, stale, carrying the faint stench of mold and rot. Dust drifts from the high ceiling, coating your hair and lashes until your eyes burn and water. You sneeze, the sound echoing in the hollow hall.

Something wet plops onto your head, heavy enough to make you flinch.

What the hell—?!

You tilt your gaze upward—and freeze.

It’s clinging to the rafters like some grotesque insect, skin slick and gray, a row of sharp teeth visible even at this distance. Four bulbous, crimson eyes bore into you, unblinking, the cursed energy radiating from it so heavy it makes your pulse stutter.

It drops into the hallway in a fluid motion, the thud reverberating through the floor. Then it lunges.

You throw yourself sideways, your shoulder slamming into the wall. You recover fast, countering with a strike that momentarily locks its limbs in place.

For a heartbeat, you think you have the advantage—until its chest heaves and it lets out a guttural, rattling cough.

A spray of thick, gluey substance explodes from its mouth, splattering across your torso and arms.

The burn is immediate—acid-hot, sinking beneath your skin like fire laced into your veins. You scream, stumbling forward, hands clawing at the sticky film.

Your heart pounds too fast, then slows. You cough out blood, gasping for air. Each breath feels thinner than the last, your chest tightening as if your lungs were shrinking.

Your weapon slips from your grasp, clattering to the floor.

It slashes your stomach, blood pouring out. You grip your torso to stop the bleeding.

The hallway tilts. Your vision blurs, tunneling until the curse is just a smear of shadow in front of you.

Then… nothing. Everything goes black.

Megumi arrives moments later, summoned by Ijichi’s frantic call. He bursts into the building, cursed energy flaring, heart hammering like it might rip out of his chest.

And then he sees you.

Your body is crumpled on the floor, motionless. Blood matted your hair, your skin covered with dust and grime. A shockwave hits him—stomach lurching, chest constricting, breath catching in a strangled gasp.

“No… no, no, no!” His voice cracks, sharp and raw, breaking the rigid walls he’s built around himself. He drops to his knees beside you, fingers trembling as they hover above your still form, afraid to touch you because if he does, the world might shatter entirely.

He shakes you, desperately, heart clawing its way out of his chest. “Wake up! Please, wake up!” His hands press against your arms, your chest, searching for even the smallest sign of life.

The silence hits him like a hammer. The nothingness—the absence of your voice, your warmth, your stubborn determination—rips through him. Every breath feels too loud, too hollow, too much. Megumi doesn’t cry—he can’t—but the tightness in his throat and the heat of his panic burn worse than any wound ever could.

His shikigami’s warning growls are meaningless now; the Demon Dogs materialize with snarls and snapping jaws, leaping toward the curse, but he barely registers them. His attention is entirely on you, crumpled on the floor, unmoving. The growls, the snapping, even the impact of their attacks—all fade into the background, replaced by the deafening silence of your absence. The one person he’s always wanted to protect, the one person he could never let get hurt… and he couldn’t even do that.

He presses his forehead to your shoulder, stiff hands trembling against your limp body. “I’m so sorry… I should’ve—” His voice breaks again, swallowed by the cavernous quiet of the abandoned school. “I failed you…”

Megumi’s world narrows to the impossible ache in his chest, the empty space where your presence used to be, and the stark, cruel reality that you’re gone. No excuses, no missions, no explanations—just the raw, suffocating truth.

For the first time, the controlled, impenetrable Megumi Fushiguro shatters, and all that remains is a boy who can’t protect the one person he loves, kneeling in the dust, broken and silent, his grief so heavy it carves a hole through the world itself.