jasmine's.

he is used to this, he tells himself.

watching pups in the pack play rough never bothered him, as it is a natural part of growth. essential for development. necessary for success. he used to believe that other children would benefit from the way a wolf is raised.

and yet, here he is at the edge of his seat— nails digging into the poor armrests as lucian wavers and wobbles on the beam, threatening the false sense of safety of his twin, who would not speak to him, and most definitely would not appreciate him moving him.

ready to leap and catch, should a wrong step emerge victorious.

even if he were to fall, valko should think not to worry.

as these ones smell different.

milk, blueberries, sweet cereal and cream. but beneath, fire and smoke, a distant field, a buried memory.

surely, they would be like their father. formidable, indestructible. too large to touch, too mythical to fathom.

the twin blinks sleepily at him. still refusing to speak. head lolling forward, out of his control.

surely…

“ah!” lucian’s foot slips. valko lurches.

lucian is snatched from his momentary free fall, and cradled into safe arms.

valko’s tongue knows no cage. “told you.”

lucian’s knows no manners, but sticks his tongue out at him cheekily. “bleh!”

valko tilts his head. amused.

“woosian,” finally, his twin speaks. peeking over the edge of the armrest to look at them. “be nice.”

“am nice!” lucian protests. in support valko grins and tickles his belly.

“he is.”

the little one gasps when he is acknowledged and bends his head back down to hide away.

“come on, little hatchling, i don’t bite.” valko says, placing lucian on his shoulder and leaning over to kyros slowly. “my name is valko.”

he places a finger on the upholstery, an olive branch.

the little one shifts on his knees and stares at the bejeweled hand— big, strong but not unsettling. slowly, he emerges and places his own fingers around it and shakes. “i kee-wo.”

“keewo?” valko’s chest blooms at the first sign of trust. something ancient and instinctive stirring in him that tells him now he must protect.

“no, kee-wo!”

“kee-ro?” valko tries again.

confirmation never comes.

“why have eews?” kyros asks instead. now having broken the wall, he begins to quickly forget he was even shy in the first place. he hovers his hands over his own head, where he sees the faint glow of phantom ears on this stranger’s head. “vakoo, why have eews?”

“you can see them?” he should worry. but he smiles broadly, fangs glimmering in delight. he made sure to use most of his active efforts to hide his true form when in public. and up until this point, he believed that he had a pretty good talent at looking unremarkable.

“ee-yors?” lucian scrambles in his arms, climbing a sturdy shoulder to get a closer look. “where, ee-yors?”

“mhm,” kyros stands on the chair now. he swishes his hips in a cute wiggle to visualize, “and taiw— wish wish.”

“like fox?!” lucian climbs and crawls over his new friend as if he were magnetic.

“hey!” valko yelps when the little ones circle him. one inspecting his tail closely while the other desperately tries to find it. “slow down! careful!”

he pauses his shuffling to watch kyros sniffing him. so… wolf-like and yet not.

intrigued, he asks. “what do you got?”

kyros sniffs the air in small snorts— like he’s congested but taking everything in still. “woofy.”

valko’s eyes widen at the simple conclusion. brows pinching, he thinks: these children are definitely different.

“ah! gotcha!” lucian squeals when he finally spots the faint glimmer of his tail. in an instant, the once hatchling transforms into a kitten, chasing a tail that refuses to be caught.

valko, contrary to the look on his face, revels in the discovery of other creatures that lurk in the dark. and that these very creatures, so different and yet so similar, can also thrive in the light.

he doesn’t know of the little ones’ evols, nor does he understand how they can see him as he truly is.

but the longer lucian lingers and scrambles to catch his tail or pet his ears— the more kyros sinks into the comfort of his presence and beams at the joy of his interactions; glows with a golden mist that brings clarity to illusion— the more certain small horns and wings begin to take form in their silhouettes.

"Sweetheart, you are too slow for this." Your voice is heaven to the blind when it chrips up from behind him. The child in his arms is taken and his hand is wrapped in yours as you tug him forward.

The fresh smell is what gave the place away. Familiar and nostalgic, slightly pungent and salty. And when the air conditioning hits his face, he's certain he's figured the surprise out.

And if he was wrong, Lucian saying "Ooo totopus." would be the very thing that gave it away.

"Papa, up, up." Kyros, now closer, locks his arms around his knee and tries to climb him like a firepole. "Fast-ou!"

The urgency, of course, was for Kyros to climb on his shoulders and pull away the veil from his eyes. It takes a while for his blurry vision to adjust to the dim light and the shifting shades of blue, but when clarity returns nothing is as breathtaking as the sight of his family before a beautiful blue tank of large medusae.

Arms outstretched, and proudly grinning. Atrocious jellyfish hats on their heads (yes, even Lucian!) shimmer and shake when they exclaim. "Happy Father's Day!"

His vision is compromised again when Kyros leans over and covers him with his own jellyfish tentacles on his head as a result of a tender kiss on his forehead. "Ta-da, papa!"

"Thank you." He chuckles, peeling back the curtain like tentacles and catching you in a hug.

"Did you know? Was soo-prised?" Kyros asks, bouncing on his shoulders eagerly.

"No, not at all." Sylus implores him, lifting him and sitting him in the bend of his elbow. "Good surprise, angel."

Before Lucian bellows something about what about me from below— already peeved about the itchy thing on his head— Sylus scoops him up too and blows a raspberry on his cheek. "Very well done, both of you."

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

The rest of the day is spent following Kyros and Lucian around the aquarium, hand in hand with you. He is delighted to see that the nature documentaries he puts on do not dissipate from their minds as soon as they lull them to sleep.

Kyros takes pride in naming at least five fish in the saltwater tanks, while Lucian lists all the kinds of sharks he knows that swim above him in the tunnel.

Your own academic list is more of a concerned mantra, one that goes, "did he lick that?" whenever you catch your kids pressing their faces on the glass to see better.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

Lucian's voice is booming when he retells you all of the robotic dolphin show he just watched— the one you were also all present for— in his own colorful way. "Da doh-fin go sh— sh— ssh—" he wiggles his body and bobs his head in a wave-like motion, then jumps. "spash! flying! so high!"

You're listening intently, smiling and asking him what else the dolphins did.

Meanwhile, Sylus stands in the designated audience-drier beside you after he and Kyros got spashed in their seat, and squints to read Lucian's lips through the turbine's noise.

"Your turn, Lucian." Sylus plucks him from the ground and places him in the drier too, making sure to put his palms over his ears to protect him from the sound.

"How about you, Ro? What part did you like?" you ask, turning to your quiet little baby currently staring down at his shoes... or what you think are his shoes.

He looks up with a bright smile and says, "Wain-cott."

You stifle a giggle.

"Wain-cott!" Kyros says happily, spinning in his yellow nylon raincoat, he made sure to pack it in his dinosaur backpack. The single item, actually, in there, he insisted, was important.

And true enough, he is the only one who didn't step into the warm, loud dryer.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

"Kee-ro, is okay!" Lucian reassures an anxious Kyros when he refuses to put his hand in the petting tide pool. Hiding behind papa's legs while you and Lucian dip your fingers into the water. "Kee-ro, nice fishies!"

"Wanna try?" Sylus inquires, kneeling to meet him where he is and letting small fingers curl around his thumb.

Kyros pouts, his lip trembling at the fact that he does want to, but his heart is racing, and he can't seem to get his legs to move.

"Papa try?" he asks through sniffles that border on a sob. "Then Weewo?"

"Of course," he mutters, lifting him and approaching the tidepool together.

You help Sylus roll his sleeves up. Kyros doesn't look away when he reaches in and traces out a starfish's outline gently.

Sylus aquires a successful giggle from both his sons when his long fingers chase after Lucian's hand underwater like a stingray and catch it with a tender squeeze.

He is relieved when that prompts Kyros to roll up his sleeves and joyfully cry too, "My turn!"

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

"... papa's cousins," Sylus hears you whisper to them in the reptile section's warmth. You yelp when he pokes your side and catches you in a loose embrace.

"We don't talk," he whispers like a conspiracy. "Not since the bearded dragon owed me money."

You laugh and lean against him.

His chest is a familiar pillar of warmth, reminiscent of when you were here years ago. His hands, the same ones that gripped yours when you fought against the pains of the tail end of your pregnancy.

You fought him here then. You're glad to return under more favorable circumstances now.

As if he can read your thoughts, his hands ghost over your stomach. Remembering a similar memory from his own mind's misty eyes.

You lead him to the bench in the middle of the exhibit as your children run around and fawn at the different lizards and frogs under heating lamps and yellow lights.

He rests his chin on your shoulder and kisses your jaw. To spite him in jest, you wipe the kiss away. He clicks his tongue.

"Did you bring me back here to fight with me?" he murmurs, amused. "You miss our quarrels that much?"

You laugh. "Of course not."

"Hm." he smiles, pressing a kiss to your hair. "So, for the poetry."

You fight a smile because he's right. But the day is already his— he can't have everything. "Maybe."

He scoffs because he knows he's right. "Maybe," he says incredulously, shaking his head at your stubbornness.

You sigh. "Look at them."

He follows your gaze to Lucian, who holds Kyros's waist as he balances on a step to look into an enclosure, and then to Kyros chasing his brother to hold hands when Lucian takes off running to another one across the room.

His heart seizes, then melts under the tenderness of what his life has become. His sons— looking so much like him it was uncanny, and yet carving through this cruel world with the hearts that you've given them. The hearts he helped hold, mold and love.

Kindness isn't something he shows himself often. Only when you ask him to do that does he. Now, he is forced to be a model to two little souls that watch his every move and want to be every bit of the person he is.

He cannot say he opposes.

Before you, he knew he needed only one thing to complete all the desires he could ever have in this world. After you, he never would have thought he'd want more— two in fact.

"Thank you," is all he can say when you lace your fingers together— for you, for them, for this life he would not trade for anything in this world or the next one over.

You plant a kiss on his ring finger, telling him you feel just as grateful.

You both watch them for a moment longer. Carve the patterns of their giggles, the outlines of their hair and cheeks against the dim light of each room into the crevices of your memory. Just for a moment longer.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

"Your doctor is going to have a field day about this," Sylus chuckles, handing you and your children each a tall cup of electric blue slushie.

"Don't tell!" Lucain harruphs, already slurrping the sweet drink up before anyone—including Doter Sayne who he fears would pop up from the penguin exhibit— could take it away.

"Aa!" Kyros whines, squeezing his eyes shut after he'd sipped too fast. "Owwie! Ow!"

"Oh, brain freeze." you rub your palm over his hair and bring him close to your chest. "Slowly, baby."

"You know, I thought it was an old wives' tale," you tell Sylus, taking a sip of your own drink. The very same one you asked for during the most inopportune times during your pregnancy. "But maybe pregnancy cravings do affect the babies."

Sylus hums, pinching Lucian's cheek as he stubbornly slurps at a large ice block at the bottom of his straw. Sylus shakes the drink for him and takes a sip. "Or maybe it's poetic."

You roll your eyes at him.

"All done," Kyros tells him, only just halfway done with the drink. Sylus didn't buy himself one for this very reason. Kyros adds so very gallantly, "Happy father's day, papa. Love you. I love you."

"Mm!" Lucian gasps into his straw, but unlike his brother, he is unwilling to give up his drink. "Not done— but, but— love you, papa!"

Sylus laughs, full and rich, as he gathers them both in an embrace. "Thank you. I love you too."

You're too busy snapping photos of them in their little group hug to notice the two other men who walk up behind you. The other two owners of the clownfish all-access pin in your purse.

Startled, you yelp at the sight of them. "Where have you been?"

Then, at a further examination, you frown. "Why are you all wet?"

"Mermaid lessons," Luke offers no other explanation as they approach the group hug and join with zero warning.

Sylus cries out at the sudden weight of two more of his sons, suddenly getting his coat wet, but the big twins make no comment apart from

Happy Father's Day.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

Shoko first—small, silent, blue around the lips. Her mother would later tell her she hadn’t cried, not even once. She just blinked up at the ceiling, like she’d already seen too much of the world. You had come days after—red-faced and furious, shrieking like you’d already been wronged.

Balance, their clanhead called it. One to make, one to unmake.

They grew up in a quiet prefecture, tucked between the mountains, where fog collected on windows in the morning and everything smelled like pine and old rain. Their family was not a traditional jujutsu clan—not in the way the Zenins or the Gojos were—but they still had blood that remembered power, blood that ran strangely cold.

Shoko discovered her technique early—reversed cursed energy, delicate and warm, the ability to stitch together what others could only destroy. It made her quiet, made her thoughtful, made her feel too responsible for things she didn’t understand. You, on the other hand, were all forward motion and fury, manifesting offensive cursed techniques with raw instinct and terrifying precision.

You burned. Shoko cooled. A soldier and a healer.

It wasn't rivalry. It wasn't even contrast, really. It was rhythm—two halves of a heart, orbiting each other, moving through childhood in tandem. You protected her from bullies, from curses, from the dark under the bed. Shoko bandaged your scraped knees, held your hair back with her small hands when you threw up after manifesting your cursed technique for the first time, whispered questions into your shoulder late at night about whether they’d ever be normal.

Neither of you wanted normal. Not really.

So when your mothers had suggested both of you for Jujutsu Tech—you didn’t hesitate. It is the slight chill that Spring of 2005 that Shoko remembers most. Fifteen years old, uniforms they’d taken customized to their liking just a month before—Shoko, with her wide turtleneck and midi skirt. You, in a well-tailored blazer, and much to your mother’s disapproval—a short skirt.

Even after the arguments and bickering, their mothers had cried. Their fathers had barely nodded at them. The train took them away to Tokyo with petals sticking to the window, and their only belongings in duffle bags at their feet. Shoko’s hands were cold where they held yours softly.

She was afraid. You weren’t.

You had always loved the idea of being chosen, and Shoko just didn’t want to be left behind.

And maybe that’s how it all began—not with power, or fate, or bloodlines.

Two girls stepping onto a train together, one chasing strength, the other running away from a world she’d one day have to hold together with her hands.

ii. april, 2005

Jujutsu Tech was nothing like Shoko expected.

She thought it would be colder, older, more like the hospitals she’d passed on the train—tall and sterile and gray. But it was… soft. Vines curling around wooden buildings, laundry strung between windows, the hum of cicadas already testing their voices in the trees. It smelled like dirt and chalk and something faintly sweet, like sakura or summer air caught in the stairwells.

She didn’t talk much those first couple of days. Neither did Suguru Geto.

They met on their first day of class, standing awkwardly apart. Shoko was pressed against the wall, you beside her like a shield, when she noticed him—black hair long just at his shoulder, eyes unreadable, hands folded neatly behind his back like he was waiting for something more important than small talk. He caught her looking, and they didn’t smile, but something passed between them anyway. A kind of shared silence.

Then came Gojo.

She had heard of him before, of course. The honored one, the destined boy of the Gojo Clan. He arrived like a storm—messy white hair, too-tall frame stuffed into the uniform like it didn’t quite belong to him. He talked too much, laughed too loud, tripped over his own shoes, and still managed to radiate something untouchable. He was awkward, undeniably gifted, and absolutely convinced he had nothing to learn from anyone.

Shoko didn’t really like him.

You despised him worse, found him amusing. You would say he was infuriating, sure—but interesting.

“He thinks he’s better than everyone,” you whispered one night, grimacing into your pillow. “But his ears turn red every time I catch him staring.”

Shoko rolled her eyes, gave you a half smile. “He’s insufferable.”

“You're just mad that he said you would look better if you grew out your hair.” you teased.

“That's not true. I like my hair.”

“I like it too.”

“Then why does it matter to me what he thinks?”

But slowly—so slowly it almost escaped her notice—he changed. He started making jokes with them. And regrettably, Shoko would sometimes laugh at something he said. He started sitting with them at lunch. Picked up Suguru’s habit of folding napkins into strange little birds. Borrowed Shoko’s pens and returned them. Awkwardly, with both hands and a muttered thanks.

He began learning them. Their rhythms. Their silences.

It was the end of summer when it started to feel like something real.

Missions were few and far between in those first months. They trained hard, sweat and bruises under the cherry blossoms, sparring on grass that still held morning dew. Shoko hated sparring. She wasn’t built for it—not the way you were, with your reckless cursed technique and even more reckless joy.

But she tried. Because she had to. Because she wouldn’t let herself be the weak link.

And Gojo—he always held back when they fought. Even then, before he understood how to be gentle, he understood that she needed to win sometimes. Needed to prove that she could. He let her land hits, not because she needed help, but because he saw the way she looked at herself compared to the rest of them. She knew that Gojo—the freak of nature he was with those blazing blue eyes—saw her beneath her dry sarcasm and grins and tired eyes.

Suguru, on the other hand, never let her win. But he gave her pointers after. Explained why she slipped, what her stance betrayed. His feedback was quiet, clinical, never cruel. Always gave her a nod and a smile. Shoko trusted him for it.

Those were their blue springs—their youth washed in cloudless skies and laughter and rain-soaked uniforms drying on sun-warmed rocks. Those were the days of early friendships, of discovering who they were becoming.

They took the train into Tokyo for missions, packed into cars half-asleep, heads knocking against windows. You would always take the window seat, with your far too expensive mp3 player and ratty wired earbuds. You’d hum under your breath, fingers tapping a beat on your thigh. Gojo sprawled across two seats, his head inevitably ending up in someone’s lap. Suguru read novels and pretended not to notice you and Gojo’s helpless bickering.

❀

The first storm of the summer comes sudden, like most things that mattered back then. Sheets of water turning the courtyard into a lake, petals plastered to the stones.

Gojo didn’t run for cover. Of course he didn't. He stood in the middle of it all like some idiot, arms outstretched, hair plastered white against his forehead, laughing so loud it made the rain sound shy.

“You'll catch a cold,” Suguru called from the walkway, voice dry as the towel slung around his shoulders.

“Colds are a myth,” Gojo shot back, spinning in a circle, water flying from his sleeves. It wasn't rare back then for Gojo to turn off his infinity, especially for rain storms he used to practically bathe in.

Shoko watched from the step, dry under an awning with a cigarette between her fingers. Smoking was a new habit she’d picked up, in spite of the protests from her friends, in spite of the distaste and the mini interventions and scoldings you’d given her. All these years later, she can’t really remember where it started from.

You had taken the cigarette from her fingers that day and threw it in the rain, leaving her a little frustrated. Then she watched as you tried not to smile, and bolted straight into the storm after Gojo, shoes kicking up water like wings.

The both of you were soaked in seconds—shrieking, colliding, uniforms clinging like second skin. Grinning too bright for the gray sky above them.

❀

They went on their first mission as a full team in late October.

A cursed spirit in a temple in the countryside—nothing particularly dangerous, but big enough to warrant the four of them. The four of you, as it turned out, had garnered somewhat of a reputation in the Jujutsu world by this point, even though it had only been a couple months into your first year. There was Gojo, being who he was, and then there were you and Geto, two special-grade hopefuls, and then Shoko, with her reverse cursed technique. It was hard not to hear the excitement, the chatter from your seniors and teachers and higher-ups and worse, the curses, as they marveled at what potential the four of you possessed.

On their first mission together they took the train, bundled in thin jackets, feet tangled under the seats. You sat next to Gojo this time, your knees knocking occasionally as the train curved through the mountains. You two didn’t talk much, just passed a packet of rice crackers back and forth, you opening them with your teeth and Gojo laughing, soft, like he couldn’t help it.

Suguru fell asleep with his head against the window. Shoko watched the landscape blur, temples and fields dissolving into dusk.

She remembers that October day clearly — because the first time they saw a body together was on a bridge, the river swollen black beneath it, the cold gnawing at their ankles. The mission shouldn’t have had civilian casualties. It wasn’t supposed to be anything. Yet their world didn’t care about supposed to.

Shoko stood back as Suguru exorcised the curse, her hands clenching, heart banging against her ribs like it wanted out. When it was over, the corpse of the victim lay sprawled against the guardrail, mouth full of frozen air. A little girl—her hair so matted in blood Shoko couldn’t tell what color it was anymore.

Gojo tried to crack a joke, to distill the buzzing in the air—something stupid about ghosts haunting bridges—but no one laughed, not even him. You touched Shoko's arm, light as breath, and for the first time Shoko wondered if maybe they weren’t weapons at all. Maybe they were just kids with blood under their nails and no way out.

It's that night she remembers all these years later, coming home from the mission. They stayed up talking until sunrise. They lay on futons in someone’s dorm room, the windows open, moths circling the lights.

“Do you ever think,” you had asked, staring at the ceiling. “That we’re not meant to survive this?”

There's a quiet that fills the room, uncomfortable, like understanding the inevitable.

“Don't say that depressing shit,” Gojo said sharply, but his voice still held a hint of something that could’ve been mistaken for vulnerability.

“I'm serious. We're weapons. Tools. They'll use us until we break.”

“Then we don’t break,” Suguru said quietly.

“Or we break together.”  Shoko said, so softly no one answered.

That first year, they were just kids. Cursed kids, sure. But kids.

And even though Shoko knew better—even though she could already see the shape of blood and bodies and burials in the future—she let herself believe in nights like those. The four of them sprawled on the floor, laughing at someone’s expense, playing cards and cheap candy wrappers littered on the floor.

In the way Gojo looked at you when he thought no one else saw.

In the way Suguru never raised his voice, but always listened.

In the way you gave your heart like the world hadn’t hurt you yet.

In the way they all leaned on each other like scaffolding, like maybe if they held tight enough, they wouldn’t fall.

iii. june, 2006

Summer in Tokyo hit different when you were sixteen and almost certain you’d die before twenty. 

They weren’t supposed to go out—they had curfews, missions stacked like bones at the start of their second year—curses growing restless, schools asking for protection, strange whispers threading through reports about ancient prisons and shifting power balances. Still, they trained. Still, they laughed. Still, they stole naps on rooftops and dared each other to eat expired convenience store pudding.

Still, they were kids.

Gojo whined until Suguru sighed and gave in, and you had tugged Shoko by the wrist before she could protest.

The festival was a crush of lantern light and smoke, sweet batter curling through the air, fireworks cracking open the dark. You darted ahead, yukata swaying, hair pinned up with something glittering like starlight. Gojo stuck by your side, wolfing down skewers two at a time, Suguru following at a distance with his hands tucked in his sleeves, gaze flicking toward the crowd like a man always counting exits, but still roaring in laughter as Gojo almost chokes on his third kebab.

“Try this,” Gojo said, shoving a stick of candied fruit under Shoko's nose.

“I don’t want your leftovers,” she muttered, unimpressed. But after a bit of nagging she took it anyway, quietly unwrapping it and biting through the sugar shell and pretending it wasn’t good—just to spite him.

Fireworks bloomed overhead—white, then red, then a scatter of gold that turned every face strange and beautiful. For a moment, Shoko saw them like strangers: Suguru haloed in crimson, Gojo’s grin carved bright in the dark, and you tilting your head back to watch the sky like it would never fall.

The boom of the next firework swallowed her thoughts, and she let it.

❀

Shoko always thought the end would come like a firework—loud, blinding, impossible to ignore.

But it hadn’t. It came instead like fog. Slow, creeping, impossible to trace where it started.

By the time they noticed it was already over, the fog of it had already filled the room.

She thinks she can trace every lamentable moment of her life back to that August of 2006. 

Gojo, Geto, you and the star plasma vessel mission she hadn’t been a part of. When she thinks back on it, she can’t exactly understand what happened in that week to have changed the course of their entire lives. Was it before Gojo died in a bloody mess? Was it after he came back, blood-stained, eyes dark, buzzing with an energy that she acknowledged—with bated breath—had finally crossed to godhood?

Gojo was stronger. Far stronger. Six eyes sharp as knives, his cursed technique threading into infinity like it had always been waiting for him to catch up. The elders watched him now—not as a student, but as a threat. You noticed it too. Started staying closer to him, stepping between him and the higher-ups during briefings.

“They're grooming him,” you told Shoko once. “Not for leadership. For war.”

Shoko looked at you—at the calluses on your hands, the scar on your jaw you hadn’t let Shoko heal.

“They're grooming all of us.”

You didn’t deny it anymore.

❀

There are softer things that year, where Shoko can’t remember the exact moment things changed.

Only that something had slowed, gone hazy. Like the last layer of frost on a windowpane, melting so gently it almost went unnoticed.

It felt like fall had come early. The leaves on the tech’s old trees went gold and red like they’d been waiting to burn. There were still wounds to be tended to, and there were still things they couldn’t talk about from the end of that summer.

But Gojo had grown taller over the summer, like his body had finally remembered he came from giants. His hair had grown shaggier, uniform didn’t fit right anymore, and he refused to ask for a new one. Shoko watched him adjust his cuffs every morning like it was some kind of ritual, then pretend not to notice when you offered him your spare hair tie for his sleeves. He took it without meeting your eyes, and wore it like armor.

Shoko noticed the shift in the air. Maybe it was the way that you had started lingering after training, towel around your neck, laughter caught in your throat like a secret. Or the way Gojo stood straighter when you walked into a room, blinking too slow, like he hadn’t meant to look. Maybe it was how the two of you had stopped fighting in that way you used to—loud, fast, like lightning cracking open the sky—and started teasing instead. Light, easy, ridiculous. Like you didn’t know how else to be near each other.

Shoko noticed it in the quiet, in the pauses between conversations, and in the way you touched your own wrist absentmindedly whenever Gojo spoke, like grounding yourself. She noticed how Gojo—always so proud of his attention span—started forgetting what he was saying mid-sentence if you laughed too loud.

“You're obvious,” Shoko told you one evening, as you stood in front of her dorm mirror brushing your teeth. It was practically your dorm now, too.

You spat into the sink. “He’s worse.”

“You're both insufferable.”

“He’s insufferable. I'm charming.”

“He told Nanami you punched him in the throat during training.”

“I did, so what? He totally deserved it.”

“I just can’t believe he let you in the first place.” Shoko shook her head, and thought of the infinity around Gojo, the invisible barrier between him and humanity. The thing that put him closer to godliness. A smile curling at her lips despite herself, understanding the implications of Gojo turning it off around you. “And yet you still gave him your last Milkis at lunch.”

“It was strawberry-flavored.” a shrug. “I don't like strawberry.”

Shoko didn’t say anything else. Didn’t point out the way you lingered when Gojo wasn’t around, or how your voice got quieter when you talked about him. Didn’t say that she’d seen Gojo staring out windows when he thought no one was watching, fingers tapping the rhythm of your laugh on his thigh.

There was something sacred about their closeness. Something fragile and half-formed, still soft at the edges. Shoko didn’t want to break it by naming it too soon.

She just watched. Just remembered.

Suguru was the only one who never commented.

He saw it too—of course he did—but he never overtly teased, only gave a knowing smile quietly to Gojo who would glare back, but never really poked at the obvious tension between the two. Maybe because he understood it, or maybe because he was the kind of person who noticed things and let them be.

He grew quieter that fall, but not in a way that worried her yet. It was more like he was watching, gathering. She felt like something was shifting behind his eyes, too slow and too early to name yet. He still joked with Gojo, still helped Haibara with his footwork, still spent long evenings reading next to Shoko in the common room without saying a word.

But he didn’t smile as easily. And sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, he would close his eyes like the world was too loud.

Shoko didn’t ask. She didn’t know how.

Maybe she should have.

❀

It's late November and the mission went fine.

They exorcised the spirit, cleansed the space, burned the remains. But it was what happened after that stuck.

They stayed overnight in a small inn at the base of the mountain, just two rooms—boys in one, girls in the other. The floors were tatami, and the air smelled like cedar and sulfur from the hot springs nearby. it should’ve been peaceful.

But Shoko couldn’t sleep.

You lay on your side, back to Shoko, eyes open in the dark. She listened to the wind outside, the drip of water from a leaky faucet, the quiet hum of something that felt like change.

And then, sometime past midnight, you slipped out of bed.

Shoko didn’t move, just watched the shadow cross the room, slide the door open, and vanish into the hallway.

It wasn't long before Gojo left too.

You weren’t subtle. Maybe you didn’t want to be.

Shoko waited a full minute before getting up. Her feet were cold on the floor. She didn’t know what she expected—to interrupt them, to tease them. She heard echoes in the hallway, but couldn’t make out a word. Just the shuffling of feet, and the wind blowing against the door.

But when she found the two of you — you weren’t touching.

You were standing in the snow-dusted garden outside the inn, facing each other, breathing visible in the cold. Your arms were folded tight across your chest. Gojo's hands were shoved deep into his coat pockets.

You weren’t saying anything, but she felt this air around you two. In your distance, in the heavy breathing and puffs of smoke between your lips, like you had run out of words to say.

Now, you were just looking.

And maybe that was worse. More intimate, somehow.

Shoko didn’t move. She stayed hidden by the shadows, her breath caught somewhere in her throat.

Then you reached forward.

Your hands touching Gojo’s cheek, just barely.

He flinched.

Not away. Not exactly. Just — startled. Like he hadn’t expected you to be real.

Shoko could see it then—how scared he was. Not of you, but of what it meant to want something in a world like theirs.

“You don’t have to say anything,” you said quietly.

Gojo looked at you. “I should.”

“You never say anything you don’t mean.”

“I don’t know how to mean this.”

A pause. Your breath hitched.

“Just don’t look away.”

He didn’t.

And she watched as you leaned in, closing your eyes for your first kiss. How his lashes had brushed against your cheek as he let you pull him in, his hand finding its way to gently hold your waist. 

Shoko had left after that — witnessing a moment so intimate she felt shivers just watching it, intruding in it. Or maybe it was the cold that got her. But, she waited to sleep until you went back inside. Waited until you crawled into bed beside her again, colder than before, but smiling softly into the dark.

Neither of you said a word.

Shoko stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about how everything had already started to change.

❀

The next few weeks felt warmer, somehow. Like something had opened in their group that wasn’t there before. Not just between Gojo and you—but all of them.

They trained harder. Laughed more. She wanted to believe they were healing the cracks from that August, that the feeling of finality sinking into her wasn’t real.

Even Suguru seemed lighter again. He stopped frowning at the radio when the news came on. Started humming again while he read. He taught Haibara about a complicated binding technique in the training yard one afternoon and let out a laugh when their junior tried it himself. There was a moment—a brief, impossible moment—where Shoko almost believed in forever.

They sat on the school rooftop one evening, all four of them, sky streaked violet and pink and gold. Someone had brought a speaker, and someone else had brought a bottles of various soda. Music played low. She noticed that you had rested your head on Gojo's shoulder, and he didn’t move, just leaned into it like gravity.

Suguru was telling a story about a curse he saw shaped like a crab. Shoko laughed. The wind was cool and sweet. The world didn’t feel like it was ending yet.

“You ever think we’ll get out of this?” Suguru asked, voice low, cigarette between his lip.

“Out of what?” you asked.

“This. Jujutsu. Destruction and death and chaos—whatever it is.”

Gojo stared at the sky. “No.”

“Maybe,” Shoko took the cigarette from Geto’s lips, and took a puff. “but not whole.”

They sat in silence for a long time after that.

The sun set, and Shoko watched the light disappear behind Gojo’s glasses, behind your smile, behind the quiet curve of Suguru's mouth.

It felt like a beginning.

But all she could think about was how beautiful things always seemed, right before they broke.

iv. march, 2007

It’s cruel to her, how the missions only seemed to get worse after that.

Higher-ranked, more volatile, more death. More nights in strange towns with blood on their hands. They started seeing each other less and less. After last August, in the aftermath of Riko Amani’s death, Gojo had been assigned onto more missions alone—acknowledged for the first time in finality as the strongest. Started carrying all the mission files himself, memorizing them down to the street corners. Shoko started collecting more tools, more supplies, more sutures for the clinic at the tech, where she stayed more often than not now. She stopped wearing earrings because they got in the way of her face mask. You had learned how to kill without hesitation.

And she swore Suguru never complained about the missions he went on alone. But now he flinched when they passed playgrounds. Tensed when civilians asked for help. The curses he swallowed grew sharper, crueler. nastier, he had once told her late one night, the word leaving his tongue like he had coughed up bile.

“Don't let them suffer,” he said once, without blinking. “Fast is better.”

Shoko nodded.

She didn’t ask what he meant.

❀

The last mission they took together was in the early spring of 2007, before the start of their third year. 

A cult in Hiraizumi—dark rituals, civilian disappearances, cursed users hiding behind holy symbols and incense. They traveled light, only the four of them. It felt like the early days again, for a moment—suitcases and jokes and Gojo making dumb puns as they checked into a cheap ryokan.

But the mission itself was ugly.

Children locked in closets. Blood on the temple floors. Curses formed from fear and starvation, clinging to walls like rot.

Suguru lost control halfway through.

Not of his technique. Not of his mind. But of his restraint.

He killed too quickly. Didn’t wait for surrender, and didn’t leave the last cursed user breathing long enough to answer questions.

Gojo grabbed him by the collar after.

“What the hell was that?”

“They were killing kids.”

“They were running away.”

“And they would’ve kept going.” 

Gojo's hand tightened. his voice dropped. “We follow orders.”

“Do we?”

Suguru's eyes burned—hotter than Shoko had ever seen. “Whose orders, Satoru?”

Shoko watched you step between them. A hand on Gojo's chest. Your voice low. “Not here.”

Gojo dropped his hand, and Suguru had turned and walked away, scoffing.

The two of them didn’t speak again the rest of the trip.

❀

Haibara died not long after.

He had been bright—sun-bright, laughter-bright, too-young-to-fall-bright. He said “good morning” like it mattered. He addressed them all formally even when they told him to stop. He sparred with you like he was dancing, ate lunch with his mouth full, had dreams about being a sorcerer who saved people and meant it.

The mission was supposed to be simple.

Shoko remembers the call. A cursed womb, grade 3, nothing extraordinary. She remembers you saying, “they’re strong. Nanami'll be with him. they’ll be fine.”

They weren’t.

What came back wasn’t a body, not really. It was a mess of limbs and red and something too silent to be the Haibara she had known.

Nanami carried him. Wouldn’t let go, even as his uniform soaked a darker shade from the blood.

Shoko stitched Haibara's body together with shaking hands—not to save him. Just so his mother could recognize his face.

You threw up in the courtyard after the funeral. Gojo didn’t speak. Suguru didn’t cry.

Grief had finally split the group like glass under pressure—fracture lines running between them, invisible until the light hit just right.

Gojo got louder. More obnoxious, more ridiculous. He made jokes during meetings, fell asleep in class, tripped over his own feet just to make you laugh.

And you did laugh. Loud and real and reckless. But there was something sharp underneath it. A glint in your voice. A kind of defiance.

Suguru got even quieter.

Not the peaceful kind of quiet, the kind that meant calm or ease.

This was the kind that clung to him. That narrowed his eyes when he passed civilians on the street. That curled his lip when they reported to elders who hadn’t lifted a hand in battle in years. That made him look at Haibara’s photo like it was a question that would never be answered.

Shoko felt it most at night.

Suguru used to accidentally fall asleep reading in the common room, head tilted back, glasses slipping. Now, he sat up long after everyone else had gone to bed, staring at nothing, fingers curled like he was still gripping a weapon.

She said something once. Tried to, at least.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, as they stood in the hall one night. She can’t recall why, or where, but she remembers this moment because there has never been a part of her that hadn’t wished she had pushed back harder.

Suguru looked at her.

His smile was soft, fake. “Yeah.”

By then she knew he was gone.

❀

A couple weeks later, in the midst of an August heatwave — Suguru Geto disappears.

He left a note on the dorm kitchen table and a photo of the four of them.

Just one sentence: I can't do this anymore.

The rest was silence.

Shoko found it first. She read it twice, then sat down at the table and stared at the handwriting until you walked in and asked where everyone was.

Gojo didn’t say anything after meeting with Yaga. Didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the morning.

Though it’s the last time she sees Suguru, she understands this is it.

She had heard, just a little after reading his final note, what he’d done. A town massacred, burned to the ground and cursed residuals that couldn’t have been anyone’s but the man next to her — his own mother and father killed by their only son’s hands. 

Yet here he was, lighting her cigarette for her and laughing. At least she could pretend for a moment that this didn’t have to be over.

She gives Gojo a call and waits with Suguru for his best friend to arrive and she wonders if Gojo could change the outcome of this. If Gojo Satoru could save Suguru Geto from himself. But another glance up at him, long hair disheveled, the purpled skin under his eyes deeper than she’s ever seen, and the emptiness behind his smile, that she realizes she doesn’t know the man next to her. Not anymore. Maybe not at all.

So he waves goodbye, and she nods and lets the smoke cloud her lungs.

And she never spoke to him again.

❀

That winter, the sky felt heavier. The air full of ghosts.

You stopped wearing bright colors. Started sleeping in your uniform, like you expected to be called into battle at any second. Gojo trained until his hands bled, and didn’t let Shoko bandage them.

“What if he’s right?” he asked her once. His voice barely audible. “What if we’re just killing things to delay the inevitable?”

Shoko didn’t answer, because she didn’t know. (Because something in her still wanted to believe.)

But by the end of that year she had found herself alone more often.

In the morgue. On the roof. In the silence between patrols. She smoked less, not because she wanted to live longer. Just because it didn’t feel worth the taste anymore.

You had stopped talking about the future.

Gojo stopped calling himself the strongest.

They were eighteen then. Too young to have seen so much. Too old to unsee any of it.

v. 2008

The years felt blurry after.

Like the sky after a firework show, after the beauty of it wears and you are left with the remains. Of the sky billowed in smoke, and the ground covered in ash. Shoko remembers the firework show during the summer festival in their second year, how she had watched the lights change your faces. How when she thinks of Suguru, she remembers him back then, hair in a half bun, wearing a yukata, his profile cast under the red glow of fireworks.

Mission after mission. Report after report. Half-empty dorm rooms. Birthdays that passed unnoticed. Names that became numbers. More curses. More blood. Fewer friends.

By then she had stopped smoking entirely, not because she wanted to live. But because you had always hated the smell.

And for a long time after Suguru left, Shoko couldn’t sleep without dreaming of the morgue.

The lights were always too bright. The steel trays too cold. Her gloves slick with blood that would never dry. In the dream, you always walked in first—whole, alive, laughing. And Shoko would reach for you. Call your name. But you would just smile, step onto the autopsy table, and lie down.

“You're early,” Shoko would whisper.

“I know.” you would say.

Then the door would swing open, and Suguru would walk in next. But his face would be hollowed out, eyes dark like tunnels. He'd sit beside your body, light a cigarette, and say nothing at all.

Shoko always woke up with her hands clenched tight around the sheets, fingers aching.

❀

Gojo never talked about Suguru.

Not once.

Not even on that day all those years ago when he came back from the confrontation in Shinjuku with blood in his nails and grief in his eyes.

He got stronger. Faster. Untouchable.

The elders stopped looking at him like a student and started looking at him like their greatest tool. He didn’t flinch, just started smiling bigger, make louder jokes, wore sunglasses indoors, and flirted and teased and deflected.

Shoko could see it, thought. In the slump of his shoulders, or the way his laugh caught wrong in his throat.

He was grieving like a dam breaking. Slowly and inevitably.

But never where anyone could see.

You stayed close to him after that. Stopped being fire and became gravity. Quiet and steady. The only thing that could bring him back when he started spinning too fast. You were the one who waited outside meetings. The one who kicked open his door and pulled him out of bed on the days he refused to get up, muttering, “If you don’t move, I'll set your curtains on fire.”

He always moved. Shoko thinks that it’s less because he believed in your vague threats, and more because he just believed in you.

Shoko watched it all from the edge.

The way you stopped waiting for him to say how he felt. The way you just stood there—open, unwavering—until he stopped running.

The two of you never made it official. Not with labels. Not with grand declarations or anything, But Gojo started showing up late to meetings because he walked you home.

Shoko didn’t know if it was healing, but for a while, it was peace.

vi. april, 2009

Around this time, the Fushiguro’s arrived.

Megumi. Six years old. Too serious. Too quiet. walked around everyone like he was ready to hit, or be hit. His older sister, Tsumiki. Not older by much, just eight years old, but she was sunshine, warm and motherly beyond her years. Shoko saw that you took to her instantly, buying her hair clips and braiding her hair — showing her how to throw a punch if she ever needed to.

Gojo brought them to the school with a box of takeout and a stubborn glint in his eye. "Don't say anything weird,” he told you and shook. “He already thinks I’m an idiot.”

“He's not wrong,” you smiled, and Gojo pouted at you.

Shoko bent down to meet the boy’s eyes, unsure of what to say. “Hmm. What’s something you like?”

He shrugged, and gave her an unimpressed look. “I like dogs.”

“Me too,” she said. “They’re honest.”

That night, they all sat in the common room eating cold noodles. Gojo told a story about a cursed tanuki that stole his left shoe. Megumi didn’t laugh, but he leaned into his sister when she did. Shoko watched as he leaned by Gojo's side as the lights went out.

You and Gojo had opened your arms and made space for the two of them.

Or maybe you had filled in the spaces left behind.

❀

Gojo cooked more, and wasn't great on his first try, surprisingly. Shoko had to supervise so he didn’t poison anyone, and you would’ve eaten anything Gojo cooked, regardless.

Shoko watched as the four of them fell into something like a rhythm. Not a family. Not quite.

But something softer than she had become used to.

The kids brought color back to the halls when they came to visit. Laughter that didn’t feel borrowed. It wasn't like before—but nothing ever was.

Gojo had bought an apartment for Megumi and Tsumiki, and the two of you stopped by almost everyday that year. You and Gojo made bento boxes. You went on grocery runs. You argued over what show to watch on Saturday nights. When Shoko would come over, Tsumiki would beg to paint Shoko’s nails, and once she had given in with her nails painted badly in rainbow and glitter, and you and Gojo had made fun of her for weeks when Shoko didn’t wipe it off.

You stopped wearing your uniform outside missions. Started wearing sweaters with loose sleeves, earrings again, mismatched socks.

You started reading books and magazines and things that weren’t just mission reports. Bought a plant for their windowsill. Put post-it notes on the fridge.

Shoko found one once that said, “Satoru, if you forget to buy me dorayaki again, I swear to God.”

He forgot anyway, but he came back late that night with flowers.

Shoko watched from the couch as you opened the door, just to see you blinking down at the bouquet like it had grown a second head.

“They didn’t have dorayaki,” he said, sheepish. “But they had these.”

You didn’t speak—just grabbed the collar of his coat and stepped into the apartment hallway with him, shutting the door without looking.

Shoko looked away, and gave them the evening. She hung out with the kids, because they were cooler, and let them sleep on the couch watching movies.

It’s after they had fallen asleep, and you and Gojo were nowhere to be seen, that she sat on the balcony and watched the city lights flicker, listening to the hum of traffic into the night.

For the first time in months, she felt… full.

Not happy. Not yet healed.

But full, like maybe all her pieces had stopped rattling.

Just for now.

❀

She still worked long hours, because the clinic never slept.

New students. New injuries. New names she tried not to memorize.

She stitched and cut and stabilized and cleaned. Practiced her technique until it no longer felt like a gift but a reflex.

She stopped praying, though she had never been good at it anyway.

But every time a body came in, not yet cold, not yet gone, she held her breath.

Please, not them.

❀

They didn’t talk about the past. At least not often.

But sometimes, when you had already fallen asleep and the wind whistled through the hallways, Gojo would sit next to her on the balcony and say things in a tone older than his twenty years.

“He liked soba more than ramen. I never knew that.”

And Shoko would nod.

“He read faster than anyone,” she’d add. “even me.”

“He believed in this more than we did.”

“Yeah.”

Then silence.

Then the night.

Then the world turning, regardless.

❀

Shoko isn’t sure what time it is now, but it feels like a bit past midnight. In here, it’s just the two of you on the couch with the weight of exhaustion like a second blanket. The balcony door is half-open, and the September chill is blowing in softly. There’s a glass of wine balanced precariously on the edge of the coffee table, that she keeps forgetting to drink, and you’ve got your legs tucked underneath you, hair damp from a shower, wearing one of those shirts that’s probably his — though neither of you ever acknowledges it out loud.

Shoko tips her head against the back of the couch, eyes tracing the ceiling like it’ll tell her the future, and mutters, “I feel so old.”

You laugh, soft, incredulous. “We’re twenty-one.”

“Exactly. And yet my back feels like I’m fifty.” You give her a side glance, smiling.

“My back feels perfectly fine, granny.”

“That’s because you have two little minions who give you back massages whenever you ask. And they can’t say no because you house and feed them.”

You nudge her knee with your own, half-amused, half-affectionate. “They’d starve if it wasn’t for us.”

“They’d at least learn how to cook instant ramen properly,” she fires back, though her tone is fond. She knows it as well as you do—how Megumi sometimes falls asleep at the kitchen table with his homework still out, how Tsumiki always insists on washing the dishes even when her fingers are pruned from her bath. How the apartment has begun to feel not just like a place to sleep, but like the kind of home you were never supposed to have.

It makes her chest ache.

She glances at you again, more carefully this time. “You’re happy, right?”

You blink at her, then tilt your head like you don’t quite understand the weight of the question. “Happy?”

“You know what I mean.” Shoko shrugs, too casual. “With all this — and with him.”

There it is. Not accusatory, just curious, like she’s been holding this thought in her mouth for months, letting it turn over until it smoothed into something she could say without breaking it.

You’re quiet for a moment, your gaze lowering to the glass of wine you still haven’t touched. “It’s not simple.”

“Nothing ever is with him.” She huffs a small laugh, but she doesn’t look away from you.

“Sometimes,” you admit, your voice softer, “it feels like we’re still kids, sneaking out after curfew, daring each other to jump rooftops. And then sometimes I look at him and I feel like—” You break off, shaking your head as though it’s too fragile to name.

“Like what?”

You exhale slowly. “Like he already belongs to the world, and I’m just borrowing him for a while.”

That hits Shoko harder than she expects. She shifts on the couch, watching the way your fingers worry at the hem of your sleeve. There’s something unguarded in the way you say it, something that makes her throat tighten.

Shoko leans her head against the couch cushion, her glass dangling loosely from her fingers. “You talk like he’s a library book or something. Checked out, due back in three weeks.”

You laugh, though it’s small and tired. “Maybe that’s all love really is. Borrowing someone for as long as they’ll let you keep them.”

“Morbid.”

“Honest.” You glance at her, and your smile is crooked, fond. “You know him. He’s… a hurricane in human form. Everyone wants a piece of him, and half the time I feel like I’m just holding on, hoping he doesn’t blow past me.”

Shoko hums, noncommittal, but her eyes are sharp. “And yet you’ve been holding on for who knows how long. Most people can’t even last five minutes with him in a room.”

“Don’t remind me,” you mutter, though your lips curve. “He still leaves his socks everywhere. Still eats candy for breakfast if I don’t stop him. And he—” You pause, and the softness of your voice betrays you. “He still looks at me the same way he did when we were sixteen. Like he can’t believe I’m real.”

Shoko conceals her smile, and masks it with a sip of wine. “He’d be an idiot not to.”

“I think about it sometimes,” you admit. “If we hadn’t met so young. If we hadn’t been thrown together in that pressure cooker of a school — would it have still been him? Would he have still found me?”

Shoko stretches her legs out, her gaze slipping toward the ceiling. “I think he was always going to be yours, you know. Some things just… fix themselves in place before you even notice.”

You fall quiet, staring at the wine in your glass, watching the way the light fractures against it. When you speak again, it’s hushed. “I’m scared, Shoko. I– I think I’m scared of losing him. Of the day the world asks for more than he can give, and I have to watch him walk toward it anyway.”

Shoko doesn’t answer right away. She looks at you — really looks — the girl who grew up at her side, who always chose kindness even when it cost you. You, who Gojo has loved since he was growing into his height, awkward and half-feral with grief and brilliance. You, who still look at him like he’s worth the trouble.

Finally, she says, “You know, when we were teenagers, I used to wonder if you’d grow tired of him. If one day you’d realize it was too much.”

You blink at her, startled. “And now?”

Shoko shrugs, her expression softening. “Now I think — if anyone was ever built to love him, it was you. Stubborn, patient, stupidly brave. He’s impossible, but you’ve always made the impossible look easy.”

Your laugh catches in your throat, trembling somewhere between joy and sorrow. “Don’t make me cry, Shoko.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She lifts her glass in a lazy toast. “To you and him. To sixteen and twenty-one, and however long you can keep borrowing each other.”

You tap your glass gently against hers, the sound ringing low and warm. “To growing older.”

Shoko watches the way your face lights up at the thought, and takes a long sip from her glass. She tries for levity, though it comes out a little rough. “Well, if he breaks your heart, I get to kill him. That’s the rule.”

You laugh—really laugh this time, the kind that crinkles your eyes and warms the air between you. “You’d have to fight him first.”

“Please,” she scoffs. “He’s all bark. I’d win.”

“You’re funny, Shoko.” You smile a little sleepily, and lean your head against her shoulder, the way you used to when you were girls hiding from the elders in the back hallways of the clan compound. She doesn’t move, just lets you settle there, the weight of you a reminder that some things never change.

There’s a long stretch of silence, broken only by the city hum outside. Then, almost shyly, Shoko says, “Well, I hope he loves growing old with you as much as I loved growing up with you.”

You still against her, then let out a breath that sounds dangerously close to a sob. She doesn’t look at you, doesn’t push. That’s never been your language. Instead, she reaches for her wine, takes another sip, and adds, almost casually, “And if he doesn’t, then screw him. You’ll still have me.”

You laugh again, watery this time, and lean closer. “Always.”

❀

In the mornings, she drank coffee alone.

In the evenings, she liked to come to your apartment to the sound of laughter, and nonsense on the TV. To the smell of your cooking, which had gotten better than Gojo’s after a couple months. To Tsumiki and her hands that grabbed Shoko’s wrists and led her to the dining table. To Megumi, who Gojo tried so hard to make smile at his awful jokes.

Sometimes, she let herself believe it could last.

Sometimes, she let herself want more.

That was enough.

vii. 1997

When they were seven, you and Shoko built a grave for a bird.

They’d found it after a storm — a small thing, all bones and feathers, collapsed in the mud beneath a persimmon tree in the compound’s garden. You crouched beside it, poked it with a stick. “Is it sleeping?”

“No,” shoko said. “It's dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Its chest isn’t moving.”

“How do you know?”

Shoko didn’t answer. Just knelt down, tiny hands damp with soil, and began to dig.

They buried it beneath a square stone, lined the edges with pebbles. You picked wildflowers and bundled it with twine from the kitchen. Shoko pressed her fingers to the earth and whispered something she didn’t really understand — a wish, maybe, or a prayer.

They sat there until the wind died down, until your mother called them in, until the sky turned the color of ash.

“We should’ve saved it,” you whispered, wiping your nose with your sleeve.

Shoko didn’t say it, but she knew it then: sometimes you’re too late.

❀

january, 2014

The call comes at 2:19 in the afternoon, a higher-up’s voice, clipped and formal.

“She’s been recovered. We’re bringing you the body now.”

The world doesn’t spin, it just stills. Though Shoko sits at her desk for a long time after, the phone silent in her lap, her hands empty.

Shoko doesn’t ask whose, because there’s only one person left.

She's already standing.

Her coat’s already on.

Her tea’s gone cold. The light in the infirmary has gone muddled and slanted, painting long shadows over everything like a warning.

Her hands move automatically. Clipboard.Pen. Gloves.

The air starts to feel static.

The mission was supposed to be easy. “A clean-up.” A second sweep.She repeats, and repeats. Yet how many other times has she thought this?

You weren’t supposed to go alone, but someone backed out last minute, and you were never one to wait around.

Grade one curse. Warehouse District.

Shoko remembers the briefing because she was in the room. Because you had smiled — tilted your head, chewing gum, loose-limbed and tired. “I’ll be home quick.”

❀

Shoko gets a morbid sense of déjà vu when she sees you laid out on the table, covered with a sheet pulled too high. 

But when she sees the body, it doesn’t feel like you.

Not you. Born five days apart. The soldier to her healer. Balance, the clanheads had once called them. One to make and unmake.

Not the same girl who used to share her shampoo, or talk in her sleep. Not the girl who burned bright and reckless and kissed Gojo Satoru like it was the only truth left in the world.

The word balance keeps running through her head as she stares at your face. So still.

No, it wasn’t you. This body is cold, and broken in ways Shoko doesn’t have the words for.

Her gloves are on. Her cursed energy thrums at her fingertips.

But it’s all useless.

The wounds are clean. Carved into you like declarations. Chest collapsed, Ribs fractured inward. Shoko's already cataloging the report in her head. Trachea crushed. Internal hemorrhaging. Cursed lacerations across the sternum.

Then she moves.

Like a surgeon. like a healer with something to prove, even if there’s no one left to prove it to.

She doesn’t try to bring you back. Not really. She's seen too many bodies to believe in resurrection.

She stitches muscle back together like it’ll matter. Seals split skin. Brushes blood from your scalp. A ritual, maybe. or penance. And as she runs her fingers through the ends of your hair, she thinks of being five years old when you had taught her how to braid it.

When she feels her vision blur she whispers, “don’t be stupid,” just like you used to.

Her voice doesn’t tremble until the end.

Too late, she thinks, and she sees a dead bird cupped in your small hands. Wildflowers wrapped in twine.

Too late, too late, too late.

She writes the report with mechanical precision.

Her handwriting doesn’t shake.

She signs it, and place it on top of the clipboard.

Then folds your arms across your chest, straightens your uniform collar, uses a towel to wipe a smudge from your chin, and the drawer of the morgue clicks shut with a hollow finality.

And she finally lets herself cry.

Just once.

Quietly.

Like a confession.

❀

Shoko takes the train without really knowing why she’s chosen this route over the school car. After she explained what she was doing, Ijichi had told her he could drive her with a solemn look in his eyes, always so insistent. She had declined, so now she sits by the window, forehead pressed to the cold glass, the tunnel lights strobing against her reflection until her own face starts to look like a stranger’s.

She's still in her work clothes, still smells faintly of antiseptic and smoke, and the folder in her lap feels heavier than it should. She keeps one hand pressed flat to its cover like she’s holding a wound closed.

People filter in and out of the train at each stop, their chatter muted, just faint shapes moving through her periphery.

She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. The only thing she lets herself look at is the glass, and the snow on the other side of it—each flake blurring against the motion of the city, small and perfect and already gone.

Yaga had told her, after, that Satoru wasn’t told yet, but she wonders if he already knows. If some part of him—whatever raw, uncanny instinct makes him the strongest—registered it the moment your heart stopped. Maybe he felt it like an earthquake deep in his bones, the sudden, wrong absence in the air. Maybe he was sitting on their couch, turning toward the door without knowing why.

Her mind drifts, unspooling memory:

Summer afternoons, the four of them sitting on the roof with drinks to cool the sweat on them. Your hair tangled from the wind. Gojo leaning back on his palms, his sunglasses pushed to the top of his head so she could clearly see the way his gaze snagged on you like he didn’t even notice he was staring. The quiet shift over months from banter to something slower, gentler, like they’d started speaking a language that Shoko didn’t know but could still recognize in the spaces between words.

A late night after a mission, all of them exhausted, half asleep in the common room. Shoko had woken to see them leaning together on the couch, your head on his shoulder, his hand resting loosely on yours. The kind of touch that wasn’t accidental.

There had been other moments—quieter, private ones she hadn’t meant to see—that told her this was the thing that had changed him. He'd always been brilliant, unbearable, untouchable. but with you, his edges softened. He laughed differently. He listened.

Now she wonders how much of that she’s about to take from him in a single sentence.

The train slows into her stop, brakes screeching. She rises, folder in hand. She doesn’t know why she carries the hardcopy—maybe it makes it feel more real, more final, more like evidence of something she already failed to prevent.

She had stopped by a gas station and bought a pack of cigarettes and a small black lighter for the first time in almost six years. There’s now a cigarette clamped between her teeth, though she hasn’t lit it.

Snow is falling.

It catches in her hair, her sleeves, her lashes.

When she reaches their apartment building, she stops at the bottom of the stairs and thinks about turning around. But she doesn’t. She climbs each step like she’s approaching a grave.

The light’s on under the door.

She raises her hand.

And knocks.

❀

The door opens almost immediately.

And for a second — just one, flickering, incandescent second — Shoko sees the look on his face.

Gojo Satoru opens the door like he expects you to be behind it. Not Shoko. Not grief incarnate. But you. The woman he loves. The only thing in the world that could quiet his mind and hold his entire future in her palms.

He opens the door like someone in love. Like someone relieved. Like someone who still dares to hope.

And then he sees Shoko.

And everything stops.

His face doesn’t fall.

It freezes.

She watches the hope die in his expression. It doesn’t vanish — it dies. Like something physically collapsing inside of him. A structure caving in, silently, under its own weight.

His shoulders lock, and she watches his jaw tense. He doesn’t move aside to let her in, doesn’t say a word.

Just stares.

He looks at her like he had known this would be how it ended all along, but still — still, deep down, some piece of him had been holding on. Had left the light on. Had made her side of the bed. Had waited.

Shoko clears her throat.

The words don’t want to come.

"I’m sorry—she’s gone.”

That's all it takes.

Gojo doesn’t flinch.

But she sees it in the way his hand clenches around the edge of the door. The way his breath leaves him — sharp, shallow, wrong. The way he looks past her, like he’s trying to reframe the hallway, the scene, the moment.

Like maybe he can rewind it.

Undo it.

See you behind her, scolding her for delivering bad news so bluntly.

But Shoko is alone, and the silence is loud.

He steps back, and turns.

Walks into the apartment like everything inside was knocked over.

Shoko follows and shuts the door behind her.

The apartment is dim. Bathed in soft warm light. The heater hums gently in the corner, and there are two mugs on the table, one empty and one half-drunk. Your sweater is still hanging over the back of the couch, sleeves inside out. Your boots are by the door. The windows are covered by sheer white curtains, but the shade of blue that appears just after sunset peeks through, framing the room the same color as melancholy.

Shoko wants to scream.

Instead, she places the folder on the table.

Neither of them look at it.

She taps the folder once, not to push him, but to make its presence undeniable.

“Are you going to read it?”

His back is still to her. She can see the angle of his spine through the thin cotton of his shirt, every muscle tight, like he’s bracing for impact.

With no hesitation, “No.”

Shoko expected that answer, but she still feels something drop in her chest.

“You sure? It’s not… it’s not just medical jargon. I kept it clean. No gore.”

He turns his head just enough for her to see one sharp eye over his shoulder.

“You want me to read the autopsy for the love of my life?”

She pauses, feeling herself hold her breath.

“I want you to know what happened,” she says, voice level. “Exactly what happened. Without the stories you’ll tell yourself later.”

He scoffs—a sound halfway between disbelief and exhaustion—and shakes his head.

“The story I want is that you’re lying.”

Silence.

He pushes away from the counter, crosses to the table. His height makes the space between them smaller without him even trying. He puts a hand on the folder like he might open it—thumb brushing the edge, fingers curling.

And then he just… freezes.

Shoko watches him, and for the first time she sees it—not the usual walls, the sarcasm, the easy dismissal. This is different. This is a man standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down, knowing there’s nothing but rocks and cold water below.

“I can't,” he says finally, and it’s not defiance. It's quiet. almost gentle.

“Why?”

he swallows, eyes still on the folder.

“Because the second I read it, it’s over. She's gone in ink. In numbers. In your handwriting.” he glances up at her, and there’s no shield in his expression now. “If I don't read it, she’s just… late coming home.”

Shoko's throat tightens.

For a moment, she wants to tell him she understands. That she’s done the same—taken certain pages out because the words make her feel sick. But she doesn’t. She just nods, takes the folder back, tucks it under her arm again.

He exhales like he’s been holding his breath the whole time.

He’s not moving.

Not breathing, maybe.

His hand rests on the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him upright and she watches his shoulders shake.

Once.

Then still again.

His face is unreadable.

But his eyes — god, his eyes.

Shoko has known him for more than a decade, has seen him bloodied and laughing and blind with pain and victory. But she has never seen him like this.

Not even after Suguru.

Not even after Toji.

This isn’t rage.

This isn’t despair.

This is something else.

Something jagged. Something bottomless.

He looks at her like she’s the executioner. Like she didn’t just bring the news — but she made it true. But maybe, in some way, he’s right to feel that way.

“You’re sure that she’s—?” he asks, voice quiet. She could’ve mistaken his tone for desperation.

Shoko nods.

That's when it happens.

He laughs.

Short, ugly, and bitter.

An instinct, like flinching.

He runs a hand through his hair. Leans back against the counter.

The quiet settles like dust.

Shoko sits down on the couch. something crackles beneath her — one of your notebooks. She picks it up, flips it open without thinking.

The last page is filled with sketches. a little cartoon version of Gojo, grinning, speech bubble saying “have you seen my honey?”

Her throat tightens.

She doesn’t speak.

“I thought I had more time,” he says. Shoko doesn’t have it in her to speak.

“I wanted to take her to Okinawa again. Not for a mission this time. Just because.”

He closes his eyes.

“She never got to see it in winter. She would’ve liked the cold.”

And she stays the night on their couch. Like old times, except there is no wine and no laughter and your warmth isn’t beside her. Shoko never really registered that she’ll never see you again. Even now, it feels like you’ll call her at any moment and ask her if she wants a drink.

But that first night without you, she doesn’t think she could really fall asleep.

And he doesn’t really cry.

But in the morning, he makes coffee with hands that won’t stop shaking.

She drinks hers cold, and so does he. But she watches him press your mug to his lips and set it down again, like it burned him.

❀

august, 2014

Gojo is twenty four, and he’s older than he was meant to be. More tired than he lets on, and somehow still waiting for something that already ended.

Sometimes, when it’s late, and the city is loud, and the stars don’t show themselves—Shoko catches him leaning against the doorway of his apartment balcony, looking at the buildings and cars and passerbys like he’s trying to remember the shape of your face.

And that, she thinks, is love.

Not flowers.

Not vows.

Not even the waiting.

But the remembering.

The carrying.

The way his world stopped. The way he never quite leaves the doorway, just in case you might still come home to him.

viii. 2015

Grief, when it lingers long enough, becomes routine.

Shoko wakes the same way every morning: early, cold. the city a dull hum outside her window. The kettle clicks on. She measures out coffee. Drinks it black, because that’s how you liked it, and then cooks konnyaku because you hated it.

The irony keeps her company.

The mornings are always quiet now. The kind of quiet that settles into your bones and stays.

And Nanami leaves the Jujutsu world around that time.

Quietly. Respectfully. Without fuss.

He came to her clinic on a Tuesday, knocked once, sat down across from her, and said, "I'm leaving.”

She didn’t ask why, because she felt like she already knew.

He was twenty three and already looked like he’d seen the end of the world twice.

“You'll be good,” she said softly. “Too good for this place.”

Nanami looked away. “I just want to live like a person.”

She envied him for thinking it was still possible.

Before he left, he placed a small paper-wrapped gift on her desk.

Inside was a lighter, clean, silver, unused.

She held it in her palm for a long time that night.

But she didn’t smoke.

Not yet.

❀

She sees Gojo more often these days.

Not because they talk more, and not because they seek each other out. Just because there’s no one else left.

They don’t need to make plans anymore. They just end up in the same places. The clinic. The faculty room. The convenience store on that street with the broken traffic light.

Sometimes he brings her canned coffee. Never says anything when he hands it to her.

She drinks it anyway.

It’s the only thing he offers that she can still take.

And he laughs a little more now, but it’s not the same.

When he does, it’s wrong. Jagged. Like something trying to escape from under his skin. It reminds her that he’s still grieving, even when he tells her “he’s over it.”

The students adore him. Still think he’s invincible, and think the blindfolds and wit and charm are who he really is.

 But Shoko knows better.

❀

december, 2017

Suguru's death didn’t come like she expected, though to her, Suguru Geto had died the August they were seventeen.

From the outside, he went out in flame and fury.

But then again, it feels like he went out quietly. Gently. By Gojo’s own hands.

Because, in the end, that was the only way it could’ve happened.

Not in hatred or vengeance, but in recognition of what they’d been. Of what they’d lost. Of the thin line between who you are and who you become when the world stops making sense.

“It was quick,” Gojo told her afterward, his voice steady, eyes blown wide with something far beyond pain.

Shoko believed him. Not because she trusted the words, but because she trusted the silence between them.

❀

She thinks of Suguru now more than she admits.

Remembers how he used to hum under his breath while taking notes. How he’d hand her highlighters during meetings without looking. How he used to let them braid his hair on missions just to make them smile.

Remembers the way he stood the last time she saw him, on the night of the cursed parade—back straight, curses curling around him like smoke, eyes tired in a way that made her want to scream. 

He broke long before he died.

Shoko knows this.

She also knows he would’ve been a wonderful teacher.

If the world had been kinder, and if someone had stopped to tell him that softness wasn’t weakness. That wanting to save people didn’t make him naïve.

That watching them die wasn’t his fault.

❀

Gojo comes to dinner sometimes.

Not often or predictably. Sometimes he just knocks, steps inside, doesn’t take his shoes off properly, and drops onto her couch like he owns the place.

She used to yell at him for that, but now she just lets him.

He eats whatever she makes. Doesn’t complain, even when it’s instant ramen or cold rice or nothing at all.

They don’t talk much during those nights.

But sometimes, he falls asleep.

And sometimes, she covers him with the old blanket you used to use when you were over — just because. Just to remember what it felt like to care for someone who was still breathing.

There's one night that she remembers, after a long day of treating a couple injured sorcerers in the midst of a mission, that she finds him already waiting.

In the kitchen, cutting vegetables.

“What are you doing?” she asks, flatly.

“Trying to give you a break,” he says.

“By mutilating my carrots?”

“They fought back.”

She puffs a breath from her nose and smiles.

It’s the closest she’s come to laughing in days.

He makes curry. It's too spicy. The rice is slightly undercooked — but it’s not half bad.

She eats every bite, and doesn’t thank him for showing up.

They’re not close, not in the way people imagine. They don’t tell each other secrets. They don’t hug. They don’t reminisce out loud. Their bond lies in the memory of what it meant to be sixteen and still whole. Of how it felt watching the strongest boy in the room slowly learn how to be gentle. Of seeing him break and build and break again.

Of surviving the wreckage together.

He keeps her from vanishing. She keeps him from shattering.

They exist near each other.

Orbiting.

Keeping each other tethered.

❀

Shoko's the only one who doesn’t have a grave.

Not really.

Haibara's is now marked in a clean Kyoto cemetery. Suguru's ashes were never recovered, but there’s a stone for him outside his old temple. You have a simple plaque under the oak tree they used to study beneath.

Shoko visits them all, but she doesn’t linger.

Because it’s not the places that hold them.

It’s the way she still turns her head when someone says “Geto” in a briefing. It’s the way she keeps chopsticks in her drawer for four, not one. It's the way she wakes from a dream, disoriented and reaching for an image of herself, of when her hair was cut to her chin and she is surrounded by people who were once her home — before she remembers that no one’s coming.

Though, there's a new photo on her desk now.

Four teenagers. Uniforms on and grins wide.

Gojo has his eyes closed. Suguru is pretending to look annoyed. You’re flipping off the camera. Shoko is mid-laugh, mouth open, eyes crinkled.

She doesn’t remember who took it.

Doesn’t remember what they were laughing at.

But she leaves it there.

Next to the medical files and the pills and the list of new students.

It’s a reminder — not of who they were, but that they were. That at one point in time, the four of them had existed together. That at some point, that was all that mattered.

ix. december 24, 2018

The first snow falls unceremoniously. No warning and no wind to carry it.

Just flakes, slow and fat, drifting sideways over the rooftops of Shinjuku like ash from something that’s already burned.

Shoko watches it from the roof.

She doesn’t move.

Not yet.

It's the holidays, and she hates this time of year. There’s too much pretending, too many bright windows, too many mouths grinning like the world hasn’t ended five times already.

This year, the snow comes early.

And with it—him.

She thinks the city is strange under snow. Not soft. Not pretty. Just muffled, hollowed out. Sirens echo longer. Footsteps vanish quicker. The skyline dissolves behind a white veil, lights blurring like bruises.

She walks through it alone. Past vending machines glazed in frost and power lines sagging beneath the weight. There are paper lanterns swaying over shuttered storefronts, their glow smudged and dim.

Her boots crunch the snow like something brittle and alive. She isn’t wearing gloves. She likes the cold biting at her skin. It feels honest.

She finds him in the square.

Tall. Unmovable. Eyes like winter distilled into glass.

He's facing Sukuna, and there’s no backup. No panic. No speeches or horns sounding in the dark. Just two gods standing where no man should be.

She doesn’t call his name or break the silence. Only stands at the edge of it all, smoke slipping from her mouth, her eyes dry as bone.

He knows she’s there.

He doesn’t turn.

But he tilts his chin, barely, like a gesture carved out of stone.

And she understands, like she did all those years ago in August, when Suguru Geto had lit her cigarette. When he smiled and waved and she had turned away, for the last time.

That this is the end.

Not just of him. Not just of this fight.

But of everything that tethered them to a time when living felt possible.

Springtime in Jujutsu Tech. Sunlight tangled in white hair. You, singing too loudly, Suguru sighing like the world rested in his lungs. Sandos split in half. Train cars rattling at dusk. Leaves falling as soft as promises they never kept.

All of it.

Ending here.

Under a sky in a city stripped down to bone.

He burns too bright, even now. Bends space like a god, cuts air like a blade, shoulders the infinite and makes it look like art. And still—Sukuna is cruel. patient. inevitable.

Shoko watches as it begins: sharp, merciless, a brilliance that blinds and dies just as quickly.

She sees him hold and hold and hold—until he doesn’t.

He doesn’t scream.

He just folds.

Quietly.

Finally.

And the moment he hits the ground, the world doesn’t shatter.

But something in her does.

Everything slows.

The air thickens. Her breath fogs in front of her. Her hands are shaking, not from fear, but because she’s remembering. Nostalgia has always had its way of killing her, of creeping up on her and leaving her feeling sick. There is nothing left to reminisce now, as the last remaining part of her youth lies split in half in the show.

❀

The lab smells like steel and antiseptic, like every failure she’s ever catalogued. Fluorescent lights hum above her, sickly and bright, making her want to tear them out of the ceiling. She doesn’t. She just sets the instruments in place, lines up scalpels with the precision of someone who cannot afford to think.

Yuta lies unconscious on the table, his chest rising shallow, his pulse steady under her fingers. Now, she moves over to the drawer, where she placed Satoru’s body after stitching it back together. When she pulls back the sheets, she touches his hair once, brushes it off his forehead the way she remembers you used to when he was too stubborn to sleep.

Now she stands over him, and for the first time in years, her hands shake.

Not from inexperience. Not from fear of failure.

But from knowing that if she succeeds, it won’t really be him. And if she fails, she will have killed the last piece of her friend’s legacy with her own two hands.

Her cursed technique hums, steady, inexorable. Flesh unravels, rewrites. Neurons glimmer under her touch like constellations in a dark sky. She threads them carefully, patient as a weaver, until she feels something spark. Until she feels him.

Not Yuta, not exactly.

But not Satoru either.

Something between.

A gasp, sharp and wet, tears through the air. fingers twitch. The body arches against restraints she swore she wouldn’t use, but had to.

And then—eyes.

Too blue. Too familiar.

Her knees nearly buckle.

Because for an instant it feels like the dorms again and being a teenager. Then for an instant, she is twenty two again, and she watches Gojo lean down to talk to Tsumiki and Megumi, to give them reassurance, to protect their youth.

But then the boy blinks, coughs, chokes on his first words, staring at his hands. and Yuta is suddenly speaking to her, from Satoru Gojo’s lips.

And it’s not him.

It’s not him.

She forces her hands steady, swallows down the tremor in her throat. “Well, it worked.” She says, clinical, detached. Like she didn’t just carve open time and stitch it into something monstrous.

The snow keeps falling outside.

❀

Later, they ask her what happened. after transferring Yuta back to his own body, after dismantling Satoru, pieces lying on a table in her clinic — while Yuta walks, unscathed.

She gives them the facts. stripped bare, like bone. No softness. No poetry.

“Gojo fought. He fell. He's dead.”

Nothing more, because she refuses to let them dress it in glory, refuses to let them write a hymn where there was only silence.

He was tired.

He died.

And there’s nothing beautiful about that.

❀

She cremates him herself. In the same furnace that once took you. Her gloves are soaked by the end of it, dark and slick, but she doesn’t take them off. Doesn’t cry either. Not this time.

x. 青春

Tokyo feels different after. Like the city is holding its breath, waiting for something that will never come.

That evening, she stops beneath a streetlamp outside the school. Cigarette trembling faintly between gloved fingers. Snow catching in her hair, turning her into something ghostlike. Embers glow like memories in the dark.

For the first time in forever, she speaks. Not to anyone. Just to the cold, to the shadows that linger in her bones.

“You win.” she whispers.

The lamp above her flickers once, then dies.

And Shoko stands alone in the dark. Utterly. Finally. Completely.

Yet that night, she finds herself dreaming in color that she thought had left her vision over a decade ago now.

Dreams not of blood. Not of battle, or of bodies in a morgue, or the harsh December air.

But of summer. The old apartment bathed in sunlight. Then, you’re next to her, seated cross-legged, fingers deftly braiding Tsumiki’s hair. Gojo at the table, laughing, trying to pry the cap off a bottle of soda with his teeth while Suguru shakes his head, pretending not to smile at him. Somewhere on your balcony, Haibara’s voice rings out, bright with Nanami’s deeper murmur tucked inside it.

Shoko feels a weight in her hands, and forces herself to look down for just a moment just to see that she is holding a camera. She lifts it. Frames them in her viewfinder — her whole heart in one room. Click.

A still life. A stolen moment that no one else notices.

They’re too busy being alive.

(終わり) END.

When August comes, I don’t count the days Transitory views from the subway train How strange, when life unfolds this way In the drift less zone, sky’s prone to stay off-gray Clouds are omens too, fading at the rate That most pleasant memories do

mae's note. first chapter of "of love & lesson plans" out tomorrow, and i pinky promise it won't be this sad </3 likes + reposts are appreciated, thank you soso much for reading

You weren’t initially planning on keeping the cat. When you brought him home, you thought at most he would’ve stayed the night before you dropped him off at the local shelter. One night turned into two. Two nights turned into a week. Before you knew it, Snowbell became the second member of your household.

You tried to do the right thing, at first. You knew Snowbell probably had an owner who was worried sick looking for him. There was no way that wasn’t true. Despite the grim, sooty conditions you found the cat in, it was clear he was well-cared for and domesticated. His sweet blue eyes and long white fur were clear indicators that he wasn’t the average streetcat. As much as you tried to look for his original owner, nothing came of it. For the time being, Snowbell was stuck with you.

He never once hissed or scratched at you. He was such a sweet kitten, perfectly happy to lounge around on your bed or your sofa, dutifully waiting for you to come back home. You never had any problems other cat owners had with their cats scratching up their wooden furniture or making litter accidents. Life with him was peaceful and domestic. Idyllic, even.

Still, there was something strangely off-putting about Snowbell. You could never fully explain it. As pretty as his crystal-blue eyes were, you felt like there was something more underneath. Sometimes, it really felt like Snowbell was laughing at you. There were times he did things that were too human and less animalistic. Pet owners often overestimated how smart their animals were, but you were sure there was something about Snowbell you could never put your finger on.

Maybe that was the issue. You personified him too much–humanized him.

Snowbell disappeared through an open window one sunny day, just like any other cat would have.

You had been an emotional wreck that night. You cried all throughout the night and barely got any sleep. Pathetically, you cuddled the spot of the bed Snowbell used to lie on, as though his lingering warmth would be nestled in the pillows. You almost called in sick for work the next morning before inevitably deciding to sludge your way through the day. You hadn’t even remembered opening that window, but it wasn’t like Snowbell sprouted human hands and pushed it open himself. Guilt for being a shitty pet owner clung to you like dirt.

Snowbell disappeared on Monday. That night, you called every shelter you could think of in search of him. The volunteers on the other end assured you they’d call you if they saw anything, but you doubted anything would come of it. On Tuesday, you and some of your friends went out on a failed search. On Wednesday, you left out food and your shirt outside your apartment in a feeble attempt to lure him back. On Thursday, you went out to search for him again, but alone.

Snowbell disappeared on Monday. By Friday, you were starting to lose hope of ever finding him.

The door rattled as you shut it behind you. You were supposed to call the landlord about it ages ago, but you never got around to it. Non-urgent, but extremely annoying. Yet another thing tacked onto this terrible day.

Tomorrow was the weekend. You knew you wouldn’t spend it lounging around your apartment, catching up on that show you put off. You would be outdoors, continuing your search for hidden corners and pockets.

On the way out, you ran into your neighbor. Tachibana smiled at you–those pitiful little smiles you’d give to someone who got drenched by a speeding car careening over a puddle. Perhaps, in her eyes, there wasn’t much of a difference between the current you and someone like that.

Her daughter lingered just behind her. She was a sweet girl. Last you remembered, she was about to enter elementary school. She wore her hair in a trimmed bob with a bright blue headband. It reminded you of Snowbell’s bright eyes, the way he would track your movement across the apartment with such intelligence.

You were close enough with Tachibana and her daughter to exchange greetings. Some type of small talk. Tachibana gracefully danced around the glaring topic because she had lived in society for quite some time now.

Dani was less perceptive towards social norms. She peered up at you with big softened eyes.

“Have you found him yet?” She asked before her mother could hush her.

Despite the ache in your heart, you smiled down at her.

“Not yet,” you said, “but I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.”

You weren’t the only one dealing with the loss of Snowbell. The few times you had to leave for a last-minute trip, you often left your cat in the care of the Tachibanas. Dani adored that cat, snuggling him every time she saw him. Snowbell mostly tolerated it. He got along well with most of your friends and neighbors.

Dani frowned, clearly not convinced, but she said nothing more about it. She gave a wave as she and her mother brushed by you and back into their apartment. You smiled until their door shut and locked behind them.

The act was exhausting. You were glad you didn’t pass by anyone else as you wandered out the glass doors, onto the busy streets of the city. People brushed by you, completely oblivious to your misery. You didn’t fault them. Why would anyone pay attention to a stranger? You certainly wouldn’t.

You glanced down at your phone. There was nothing. No alerts, no beeps, no missed calls from someone having found your pet. You expected it. It still sank your heart.

You tucked your phone in your pocket, shuffling around with the missing cat posters under your arm. It was your last batch. Once you put these up, you promised yourself you wouldn’t make any more.

You didn’t want to spend Friday night like this. Not many people would. Your friends tried to talk you out of it, encouraging you to go out with them like you were grieving a break-up. Maybe to them, that’s what you were doing. Maybe they thought you needed a break from your misery.

But the thought of Snowbell being out there, alone, lost, and cold. Completely helpless. Injured–maybe even dead. It was all too much for you to think about abandoning the search for even one night.

By the time you stapled the last poster, the sun had already sunk well below the horizon. Oranges and reds streaked across the sky. In a few hours, it would be well into the night, limiting your vision.

If that wasn’t enough, it started to drizzle. The smell of rain hit your nose. The air started to mist ever so slightly, causing the area around you to take on a faint-blue hue. Apparently, everyone was smarter than you. The streets were empty, with the few people left carrying umbrellas or coats. Cold drops hit your hands, your face, your clothes. It wasn’t enough to soak you, but the dark marks on your clothes got more and more prevalent as the seconds passed. For lack of better words, this severely dampened your mood. You knew all those hours of you putting up missing cat posters would turn into soggy, unreadable scraps by the end of this storm, whisking away into the drain to never be seen again.

It was as though the universe itself was telling you to give up.

You’d try again tomorrow. Hopefully, by then, the rain would clear up. You pulled out your phone to check the time when you stumbled. Your fingers slipped, and you lost your grip on your phone, lips pulling up in a cringe when it crashed onto the ground and slid away from you.

You cursed to yourself as you made your way towards it. You really hoped it hadn’t cracked in the fall.

Pale, lithe fingers reached down and plucked it off the pavement.

It’s like he stepped off a runway. His clothes were expensive just from the look of the fabric itself. Despite the drizzle, he remained perfectly dry. His white hair framed his face perfectly. You couldn’t see his eyes, covered by black sunglasses. He might have been the most beautiful man you ever saw.

He silently offered your phone. You accepted it with grateful hands.

“Thank you.” You told him. Where had he even come from? You thought you were alone on this side of the road.

Pink lips curved into an easy-going smile as he towered over you. The stranger hadn’t stepped back once he handed your phone back. Instead, he leaned forward ever so slightly.

“Cute wallpaper.” He commented.

You glanced down at your phone. Your lock screen showed Snowbell in mid-stretch, baby-pink paws reaching towards the sky as he lounged on your bedsheets. You’d had many pictures of Snowbell, but you thought that was your favorite snapshot.

It was one of the few things you had left of him now.

You feigned a smile.

“Oh, thank you.”

The stranger didn’t register your clipped tone. “How long have you had him?”

“Barely a few weeks.” You honestly said before wincing. “I…I’m actually looking for him so–”

When people comment on your cat’s disappearance, there’s often a twinge of pity somewhere in their eyes. It made you feel small–pathetic. You steeled yourself, readying for that same look before he finally left you alone.

There’s none of that.

“I was about to ask.” The stranger hummed. “I thought he looked familiar. I think I’ve seen him before.”

Your eyes snapped up to his face.

“You’ve seen him?” What followed was a barrage of questions: Where was he? What did he look like? Was he injured? How long ago was it?

The stranger barely even flinched at your demands for answers. Even as you leaned into his space, he barely backed up. His smile grew wider as he opened his mouth to speak.

You jumped at the clap of thunder. The already darkened sky swirled with angry gray-blue clouds. The drizzle threatened to intensify.

He glanced up and clicked his tongue.

“How about we talk somewhere indoors?”

🐾

As soon as you stepped into the restaurant, the weather got ugly.

Rain thumped against the window, spraying water onto the soaked concrete sidewalks and roads. Puddles grew across the ground. Thunder rumbled as lightning streaked across the sky every so often. The wind aggressively blew past your shelter, changing direction every few minutes. You’d hate to be stuck out there at that very moment.

Compared to the storm's harshness, the restaurant was a haven. The warmth heated your cheeks as you shrugged off your coat. It looked a bit on the expensive side. Warm candlelight illuminated each table. You sat in a comfortable chair with a red plush seat, watching the waitress happily fill your cup with fresh water.

He was already glancing at the menu as you awkwardly sat across from him.

“What are you thinking of getting?” He asked as he flipped through the laminated pages. “Oh! The eel here is to die for. You’ll love it, promise.” He assured you.

You pursed your lips. “I’m not actually–”

“This also seems good.” He shoved the menu in front of your face, and you reflexively flinched back. “Wanna try it?”

You forgot how you even got to this point. When he suggested talking indoors, you thought he meant a brief shelter from the rain.

“Are you ready to order?” the waitress cheerfully asked.

“Yes!” He said before rattling off a long list of various foods and treats. He then turned to you with a questioning hum.

“Just the water is fine.” You told her, and she happily gathered your menus before she hurried off.

“Isn’t this place adorable?” He asked you. “I found it a while ago. I think a nice, quiet dinner with rain right outside sets the perfect tone.” He leaned back in his chair.

You stared at him and tried to figure out what he was even talking about.

“You said you saw my cat, right?” You changed topics. “Where did you see him?”

“I definitely saw him!” He told you. “A couple of times, actually. Trust me—would never forget that face. He’s really easy on the eyes, huh?”

Your eyes flitted down as you thought of pretty white fur and sparkling blue eyes. You spent hours a week grooming him, fluffing out his soft fur, and making him the best version of himself he could be. He was the prettiest kitten you’ve ever laid your eyes on, and you couldn’t help but make him even prettier.

“He is,” you agreed. You found yourself smiling just thinking about him.

“Really?” He leaned forward. A mischievous smile spread across his lips. “He’s handsome, right? Really handsome?”

Your eyes narrowed as you continued to eye him. Why was he trying to goad you into complimenting your cat?

“Of course he is,” you responded. It felt more and more like he was making fun of you. Were you wasting your time here?

He leaned back, looking oddly satisfied.

“I’m sure he’d be happy hearing you say that,” he told you. “Cats are really good about these things, y’know. Emotions and all that.”

“Right,” you said, hoping to ease him along into the conversation you really wanted to have. “So, again, you said you–”

“Oh, food’s here!” He cut you off and pointed excitedly to somewhere behind you. “I’m starved.”

Sure enough, the waitress stepped into your vision with a friendly smile pressed on painted lips. You watched as she set down pretty porcelain plates and bowls, most crowded in his direction. The smell of steaming veggies and heaps of rice drifted into your nose. Your lips twitched into a frown as the plates continued to pile up before the waitress set something right in front of you.

You moved, quick to correct her blunder. “Oh, I never ordered anything–”

Your words caught in your throat when you realized it was your favorite dish.

“You should try it!” The man urged. “They make it really well here.”

You watched him for a minute. He paid you no mind, continuing to chow down on his meal. How did he know this was your favorite meal?

When you asked him, he stopped eating, looking amused.

“No way, I was right?” He laughed, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. “You seemed like the type of person who would like this type of stuff. I guess I’m good at reading people.”

So it truly was a coincidence. You glanced down at the meal. Compared to how you made it at home, the restaurant’s version was immaculate. You weren’t too upset. After all, you weren’t a chef. The scent of the food reminded you of all those times you had to fight off Snowbell. He’d go wild anytime you made it. He would constantly appear in the kitchen, eager for a tasty swipe. You’d feed him scraps, letting him enjoy your hard labour every once in a while. You didn’t do it too often, afraid he might get sick, but you secretly appreciated how much he liked it.

In those times, he felt more human than cat.

“What are you waiting for?” A voice snapped you out of your thoughts. The man gestured to your plate. He was halfway done with his own meal. “The food won’t eat itself.”

It wasn’t like you could refuse, right? He’d already ordered it. You felt it was rude to reject his offering, no matter how strange this man was.

You took a bite.

“It’s good,” you said. You took another one.

He nodded along. “I told you!”

His voice quietened a bit after.

“Still, I think it’s better homemade.”

You agreed with him.

You took another bite. Then, you took another. After your tenth bite, you suddenly realized how little you’d been eating lately. Your free time was spent thinking about Snowbell and worrying about him. You barely had time to sleep, let alone eat a hearty meal.

Sometime after that, your belly was full, the plates were cleared of food, and it was still raining. You found yourself perched right at the doors, hearing the murmurs of the other restaurant’s patrons behind you. You watched as the rain lightly tapped at the crystal glass. The more you thought about the way this night ended, the more humour you found.

Earlier, you had been stuck out in the rain before being picked up by a strange man. It almost paralleled the night you found Snowbell.

(You stumbled onto him one random evening after work. You were hurrying home, eager to get out of the rain. The umbrella you held kept most of the moisture off your clothes, but you could feel water drip through your shoes and up the cuffs of your pants. You could almost imagine chucking them off and enjoying a nice warm shower.

Just then, you saw a streak of white.

Barely a glimpse. At first, you thought it was a plastic bag hurtling into an alleyway. You should have pressed on and ignored it. For whatever reason, you followed the gut feeling nestled deep inside of you.

It was a filthy alley. Trash littered the walls and splattered across the ground. The rain made the smell of garbage even more pungent. You scrunched your nose as you peered around.

Something rattled right behind a garbage can. You crouched down as you tried to steal a peek behind the dumpster.

“Come out here.” You clicked your tongue, trying to be as enticing as you could. You thought it was a small dog, at first.

A shadow peeked out of the dumpster.

The prettiest kitten you’d ever seen blinked at you.

Despite the rain that soaked it to the bone, you could make out pure white fur that was tarnished by mud and water. Flattened ears and a pink nose.

The most notable feature of the animal was its eyes.

The brightest blue you’d ever seen.

Like the cloudless sky on a summer day. The color of a calm, peaceful lake, with barely a ripple of disturbance. There was so much life packed within those eyes. They almost put you in a trance, and momentarily made you forget the rain and the harshness of the wind. The warmth and peace that lingered beneath those irises was enough to push away the cold.

A smile spread across your face as you crouched even lower, hoping you’d make yourself seem less threatening.

“Hi there.” You cooed at the cat, who only stared right back. “Are you lost?”

When you reached out, the creature barely flinched. It appeared more confused than anything as you stroked the top of its head before dropping down to scratch its cheek.

Eventually, your affections seemed to win the cat over to your side. Before long, it leaned into your touch, as if enjoying your petting. Happy at the progress you made in such a short time, you attempt to lift it from the grimy ground. Thankfully, the cat allowed you without much fuss. You tucked it under your arms, keeping it in the shelter of your umbrella. Considering how well it did with strangers, it was clear the cat was domesticated. Did it slip away from its owner when they weren’t looking?

“Poor thing.” You were awed by the sweet little kitten. “Where’s your owner?”

You continued to observe it. No collar. No distinct marking of a claim. You debated going online on missing pet forums. Maybe someone reported the poor guy.

How long had the poor thing been outside? It couldn’t have been any more than a day. The cat was practically a white beacon begging to be noticed. There’s no way this cat wouldn’t have been snatched up by a predator if you hadn’t stumbled upon it. In the harsh city environment, it was utterly helpless.

You hummed, glancing up at the sky.

“Looks like we’re both caught in this weather.” You talked out loud. “It’s a good thing we found each other, right?”

The cat continued to stare at you with large blue eyes. You smiled before tucking it into the warmth of your coat.

“You’re okay now.” You told it. “I’ll keep you safe.”

You knew you were just seeing things, but you swore the cat understood you, somehow.)

“Does it look like it’s going down?” A voice asked.

The man stood by your side, peering out the same window you were. You watched as his sunglasses crept over his nose, close to dropping down, before you glanced away.

“No.” You told him. “I don’t think the rain will stop for a long while.”

He hummed in agreement. “If we waited for it to stop, we’d probably be stuck here for hours.” He didn’t sound too upset at that, you couldn’t help but note to yourself.

You nodded along. Just like the rest of the week, tonight had ended in a bust. No Snowbell. No cat. You were stuck in a warm building after eating a delicious meal, while your cat was probably out in the cold somewhere, waiting for you.

Something stung in the back of your eyes.

You were a shitty pet owner.

“I saw him yesterday.”

Your eyes snapped up to meet his. He stared right at the glass. You waited for him to say something more, but he remained silent.

“Was he–” You swallowed. Your mouth felt dry. “Was he okay?”

“Yeah.” He told you. “He looked great. You took great care of him. I can tell.”

Relief snagged at your heart, weighing your shoulders down with a type of pain you’d never felt before.

“I tried to catch him, but he was a bit too slippery for me.” He clicked his tongue.

You failed to muffle your laugh. Snowbell had easily coaxed himself into your arms the first night you found him. You shouldn’t have been proud of this, but you felt something oddly like pride to know you were the only person he cuddled up to.

“Thank you.” You told him. “For the meal and for letting me know you saw him. It was really nice of you to do all of that.”

Outside, the rain dwindled ever so slightly. In the morning, a light fog would drift over the city, suffocating the streetlamps and the roads. The potholes in the streets would be filled with soot and water far into the afternoon with the sun blaring overhead. A bare heat would fill the city, gentle from the rain, but still warm.

“You really miss the guy, don’t you?” He asked.

You didn’t bother to answer. It’s not like you ever tried to hide your desperation. Everyone in your life thought you were crazy for losing it over a pet as you had in the past days. No one told it to your face, but you knew that’s what they thought. To others, you were some cat-crazed person who wandered the streets. You did miss him. You missed him more than anything.

“I don’t think the rain will stop anytime soon,” you said, “I'd better go before it gets too late.”

“I could drive you back,” he suggested.

You shook your head, insisting you’d be fine. You expected him to push back at your refusal. He seemed to take your rejection in stride, reaching out with something in his lithe fingers.

“Take this, then.” He settled the bundled-up umbrella into your limp hand. You recognized what it was after you instinctively grabbed it.

“No, it’s fine—“ You tried to insist, but he waved you off.

“Just take it. I’d hate for you to walk out in this weather without one. You should’ve had an umbrella in the first place.” He berated you, but there’s no real heat in his voice.

“Just give it back when we search for your kitty.”

You blinked up at him.

“We?” You repeated his words.

He nodded eagerly. “You planned on searching for him tomorrow, right?”

Of course you were, and the day after that, too.

“I’ll come with you.” He declared. “Two heads are better than one, right?”

What was so appealing about skulking outside, searching for the slightest hint of white fur? This man was such an enigma; you didn’t understand him. You knew you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The more eyes you have, the better. Yet, you couldn’t help the feeling that rested in your stomach.

“Why?” You asked, but it sounded more like a demand. “Why do you want to help me?”

The man tilted his head downward. The softest laugh left his lips at the same moment his sunglasses slipped down his nose.

His eyes.

The brightest blue you’d ever seen.

Like the cloudless sky on a summer day. The color of a calm, peaceful lake, with barely a ripple of disturbance. There was so much life packed within those eyes. They almost put you in a trance, and momentarily made you forget the rain and the harshness of the wind. The warmth and peace that lingered beneath those irises was enough to push away the cold.

They looked familiar.

“I knew somebody who lost their pet, once,” He told you as his lips quirked up. “It’s a sad thing. No one should go through that.”

Everything he said sounded like a joke, but you saw the sincerity in his eyes.

“This person.” You glanced outside when the sear of his gaze got too much. “Did they ever end up finding their pet?”

He nodded. You didn’t know why that gave you so much relief.

“If you have time tomorrow, then yes,” you said, “I’d really appreciate the help. Thank you.”

“Great!” He clapped his hands together before pulling out his phone. “Let’s exchange numbers, so we can meet up tomorrow.”

You agreed, wordlessly handing him your phone before you realized something.

“I don’t even know your name.” You said out loud.

He laughed again.

“Gojo Satoru.” He introduced before raising a finger in the air to point at you. “But you should call me Satoru.”

You hesitantly received your phone from his hands. The contact name ‘Satoru :3’ stared back at you.

“We should speak more comfortably with each other. After all, we’re gonna be kitty hunting buddies, right? ”

🐾

(The best thing about Snowbell was how sweet he was.

Not just to you (but mostly to you). He was loved by everyone on your floor. Children like Dani adored him, and often asked about him whenever you ran into her. You’ve read that cats were often aloof and hated strangers, but Snowbell wasn’t like that at all. He was liked by everyone and everyone loved him.

And then, Hatori came along.

You’d known Hatori for a while, actually. You two weren’t friends–barely a step up from acquaintances. He was a nice guy and you two were similar in age. Whenever you passed him by in the halls, you made small talk but you never went out of your way to do anything more.

So when you briefly mentioned having a plumbing issue and Hatori offered to take a look at it, you accepted immediately.

“Thanks again.” You told him as you led him into your apartment. “Seriously, it’s been driving me up the wall. All that noise.”

“I get it.” He assured you. “The one in your kitchen, right?”

You nodded. A fluff of white caught your attention. You were about to point your cat out to Hatori when all Hell broke loose.

Snowbell made a sound that was almost demonic before he rushed at Hatori. You barely stopped him before he could get to Hatori’s foot, holding him up by the scruff as he thrashed around in your hold. You kept him to your chest as your cat continued his onslaught. If looks could kill, Hatori would’ve been dead ten times over by now.

“I’m sorry.” You told Hatori as Snowbell continued to thrash and struggle. It was getting harder and harder to keep a hold on him. “He–he’s usually not like this.”

Hatori stepped closer to the door.

“I should go.” He concluded.

“I’m sorry.” You told him again.

Snowbell didn’t stop until Hatori was long gone. His fit was bad. At one point, he’d even hacked something up because of how stressed he was. You coddled him the best you could, apologizing to him over and over. He settled in your arms hours later and peacefully purred into your chest as you stroked his head.

You’d never seen him act like that before, but maybe you were wrong about him liking everyone. Maybe he had a bad experience with men and that’s why he acted like that? You should probably bring it up to your vet the next time you go to the clinic.

Either way, this was the last time you’d ever bring Hatori over.

You kissed the top of Snowbell’s head. His pretty blue eyes blinked up at you.

“Don’t worry,” you cooed, “you’re the only man for me.)

Twenty minutes later, Satoru still hadn’t arrived.

You crossed your arms as you lingered near the streetlight. People meandered their way through the busy street all around you. As the minutes ticked on, you grew more and more frustrated. You should have expected this. From the short while you’d known Satoru, he was not the most punctual guy in the world.

He turned up eventually, practically skipping up to you with a smile on his face.

“Didn’t have to make you wait too long, right?” He grinned, completely ignoring the frown on your face.

“I was about to leave.” You chastised. “You need to be more respectful of people’s time.”

He raised his arms up in a semblance of an apology.

“Whoops, my bad,” he said, “I swear I’m not doing it on purpose. I’ve been swamped at school. Lots of stuff to catch up on ‘cuz I took an unprompted vacation a few weeks ago.”

He mentioned being a teacher a couple of times, but you can’t imagine him doing that. Sitting around and grading papers doesn’t seem like the type of job Satoru excelled at, but maybe that was just because you saw this side of him rather than anything professional.

“Okay!” He clasped his hands together. “So far, we’ve checked the area around your apartment. Maybe we should broaden the search a little.”

“What do you mean?” You asked, your initial frustration waning.

“Maybe we should stop thinking like humans and start thinking like cats.” He told you with the utmost seriousness. “Places like underneath bridges and dark places scared little kitties might crawl into for shelter.”

That was a pretty good point, actually. There was a chance Snowbell wandered off somewhere, maybe in a crevasse you wouldn’t think to look for him in.

With a plan secured, the two of you set off. You and Satoru checked wherever you could think of: underneath bridges, in the park, and on the outskirts of a clump of trees. Each time, you came up empty. Any cat you did see never resembled Snowbell in the tiniest bit. They were often so skittish and wary of humans, shrinking away when you came close.

You still left a bit of wet food for them when you turned away. Maybe it had to do with your lost pet, but any stray cat chipped away at your heart.

Satoru passed the time as he often did, talking and yammering about anything he could. So far, the two of you had gone ‘hunting’ five or so times–each trip ending in nothing. Despite how disappointed you were after every failure, Satoru was more chipper than ever. Most would find how talkative he was absolutely annoying, but you didn’t mind one bit. His upbeat attitude felt comforting, like it was his own way of assuring you everything would be okay.

You often felt like you knew him forever. However, it was more realistic to assume you’d known him for three weeks at most. Maybe even less. He was just that type of person. That personality of his reminded you of Snowbell. He was a little like that too, yowling like he was trying to start a conversation with you even though you didn’t understand his language.

Lots of little things Satoru did reminded you of Snowbell, actually.

A couple hours into the search, Satoru suggested taking a break. You didn’t argue.

“There’s a cafe a little ways from here.” Satoru suggested. “I love their coffee.”

You’d seen the surgery contraptions he calls ‘coffee’ and you’d rather not relive that experience. Also, everytime Satoru brought you to a restaurant, he always insisted on paying, leaving you more and more guilty for taking advantage of him. These outings were starting to feel less like searches and more like dates.

You almost laughed, but you held your tongue. Ridiculous. He was just being a nice guy.

“My place isn’t that far from here,” you said as you turned to him. “Let’s just stop there and I can make us something to eat.”

For the first time, Satoru genuinely looked lost for words. He blinked at you behind his sunglasses.

“You never let me pay.” You explained. “The least you could do is let me cook for you.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Sure! Let’s go!”

You eyed him. He reeled himself back.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve had a home cooked meal,” he told you.

“Hm.” You walked away, not at all fighting the urge to tease him a bit. “So, what. You’ve just been surviving on instant noodles this whole time? Poor baby.”

“I eat.” He told you after he caught up to your pace. “How else do you think I got these muscles?” He playfully flexed but even underneath those baggy clothes you saw his bicep. You forced your eyes away and hoped he didn’t notice.

“Let’s just get you something before those precious muscles of yours get all flabby.”

You let him into your house ten minutes later. Satoru walked in and slipped off his shoes. He placed them next to yours before he looked around.

His steps were slow as he surveyed your home. You watched as he walked up to a window, hands drifting over the glass.

“...Smaller than I remember.” You heard him say.

“What?” You asked.

He pointed out the window.

“From the ground, the buildings look a lot bigger, right? But when we’re up here, they are a lot tinier,” he said.

Right, of course that’s what he meant.

He wandered to your photographs, scanning over the various knick-knacks and other things you’ve kept over the years. He smiled when he caught the lone picture of Snowbell, framed and proudly displayed. He lightly tapped on the glass.

“What a cutie,” he told you.

You agreed, stepping closer to admire the picture as well. Snowbell had always loved attention and he was oddly very photogenic. Anytime you whipped your camera out, he would stretch and purr and create these adorable poses for you to snap away at. You often wondered if you should make an instagram for him so more people could enjoy his adorableness.

Maybe you missed your chance.

“Seriously, the cutest little guy.” Satoru continued. “Terrible name choice, though.”

You rolled your eyes. This argument again. You couldn’t tell if he did it on purpose or if he genuinely had a personal vendetta against the name ‘Snowbell’.

“It’s a cute name,” you argued back.

“It’s uncreative. Especially for a work of art like that.” He pointed to the picture of your cat. “Lemme’ guess, you’d name a black and white cat oreo.”

‘Cow would be cuter,’ you thought, but you decided not to give him more ammo.

“It just stuck. Besides, I didn’t come up with the name. My neighbor did.”

It was a couple days after you brought the cat home. Back then, you weren’t sure if you were keeping him. His original name was even more uncreative–‘Cat’. Then, when you were helping Tachibana lug up groceries, her daughter asked if she could see photos. After showing her the numerous pictures you snapped of ‘Cat’, Dani excitedly exclaimed how similar ‘Cat’ looked to the cat in ‘Stuart Little’. Thanks to her, ‘Cat’ turned into ‘Snowbell’.

“Ah,” Satoru said after your tangent, “So Dani came up with the name, then.”

You nodded, but then you blinked.

“How did you know her name?” You asked.

“You mentioned her,” Satoru breezily replied.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Pretty sure you did.” He smiled. “How else would I know?”

Your mouth opened, when a knock came from the door. You decided to table the discussion for now.

You smiled when you saw who it was.

“Hatori!” You greeted. “What brings you here?”

Hatori lingered by the door, polite and reserved as always. He gave a pleasant wave.

“Hey, hope I’m not a bother,” he said, “just hoping I could borrow a cup of sugar.”

You gave a smile. This isn’t the first time he asked for favors like that. You didn’t mind. It was nice to see a sweet tooth that doesn’t go overboard with his sugar like somebody you knew.

Like he’d been summoned, Satoru appeared behind you. You bumped into his chest just as you were about to let Hatori inside. He was so close. You could feel his breath on your back. His faded cologne lingered in the air.

You glanced up. Through his sunglasses, Satoru full-on glared at Hatori.

He’d never looked that upset before. Usually he was all goofy and happy-go-lucky. Now, he was stiff, coiled up like a spring.

“Sorry.” Satoru gave a smile filled with sharp teeth. Had he always had fangs? “We’re all out.”

Hatori blinked. So did you. He reacted first.

“Sorry.” Hatori narrowed his eyes and he looked between you and Satoru. “Who are you exactly?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Satoru reached past you and slammed the door in Hatori’s face.

You remained frozen even after Satoru retreated back into the apartment, slumping onto the couch.

“Uh, what was that?” You demanded after a bit of recovering.

“What?” Satoru whined, immediately going back to his usual attitude. You wondered if you imagined it all. “He was bothering you.”

You narrowed your eyes at him.

“He wasn’t bothering me. He’s my neighbor.”

“You should stay away from him.” Satoru finally told you.

You stared at him as he lounged over your couch as though he owned it. Sunlight streamed through your window, illuminating his hair.

You should have been mad at him. You should have kicked him out. And yet, you could still remember his presence imprinted on your back as he kept you on him. You wondered when your heartbeat would slow down.

“Why?”

“He’s bad juju,” he responded. “I can feel it.”

You gave him a look. “Right. Okay.”

“I can tell with these types of things!” He argued back. “Stay away from him. He’s bad news. He might make spiders crawl out of your sink!”

You rolled your eyes and turned away.

“Do you want food or do you just want to make more conspiracy theories about my neighbor being a spider whisperer?”

“Food, please.” Satoru immediately sprung up from the couch and followed you into the kitchen.

Again, you knew you should’ve been more upset with him. Yet, you weren’t.

It oddly felt familiar.

🐾

The cold made the alcohol bearable.

It warmed your stomach, flushing your cheeks with heat as you felt the burn travel down your throat. When you were younger, you despised the taste of alcohol. You could never understand why anyone would willingly drink the stuff.

These days, you still didn't understand, and yet you drank anyway.

You had to stop soon, but for now, you tossed your head back in reflex, taking another gulp. The bar remained sparse of people. There was nobody in the corner you stashed yourself in, surrounded by empty glasses. You preferred this. You don’t want anyone seeing how miserable you were.

Six weeks had passed since you last saw Snowbell. Truthfully, you stopped looking for him by the second. It was clear what happened to him.

He was dead.

If the universe was merciful, his death was quick. Maybe a predator snatched him up before he blinked. Other deaths sounded far more gruesome: eating something poisonous and collapsing on the hard floor of a cold alley, being hit by a car, or just starving to death.

A more hopeful part of you still believed he might have been picked up before you could send those missing posters out. He was a pretty kitty. His white fur was long and his fluffy tail curled so elegantly. His sweet blue eyes were wide and earnest. The chance of someone seeing him out and about and falling in love with him the same way you did was highly plausible.

Maybe they had seen the posters and just didn’t want to give him back. You think you would be fine with that. You just wanted to know he was okay. A sign. The slightest hint of–

“-Started without me, I see?” A voice teased from your left.

You didn’t bother looking up.

“You don’t drink.” You reminded him, but you didn’t argue when Satoru slipped into the seat across from you.

“Still, it hurts to be left behind.” He arched his plush lips into a faux pout before his mischievous smile was back on his flawless face.

You didn’t even tell him you’d be here, and yet, he showed up anyway. That was always the thing with him. He always just showed up, no matter where you were.

His outfit mirrored the cold that lingered outside of the bar. He was dressed in an expensive looking coat, something that nicely shaped his shoulders and torso. His fluffy white hair contrasted with the dark sunglasses he always wore on his face as he surveyed the mess you surrounded yourself in.

You thought you were about to receive a lecture from him. His smile faded ever so slightly.

“You’ve been crying.”

You didn’t bother denying it. Slowly, you reached up, brushing at your face. Your eyes felt raw, your skin felt open and vulnerable. Your nose felt oddly stuffy, like you were recovering from a fever.

Satoru watched you. You gave a helpless shrug.

“It’s the same thing I’m always crying about.” You admitted. That’s all you really wanted to say, but the words suddenly started pouring out and you couldn’t help yourself.

“I know how stupid this all looks. Trust me, I’m aware.” You started, looking into the glass of your golden brown drink because looking at him would be too much. “He was just a cat. That’s what everyone says to me.”

‘You need to move on,’ ‘You should get another cat if you care that much’. You’d heard all those things and more. You couldn’t even bring yourself to hate the people who’ve said that to you. They wanted to help, in their own way. To them, it was more like watching a child bawl over a lost toy. They didn’t understand.

“He…he wasn’t just a cat to me.” You bit your lip. “He was family. So yeah, the thought of him out there in the cold, miserable. I…I just really hope he’s happy.”

You thought you felt tears prick into the corners of your eyes. You blinked them away.

When you looked at Satoru, you felt yourself frowning.

“Stop doing that.” You told him. Your voice was tight and stern.

“Stop doing what?” Satoru repeated.

“Stop smiling like that.” You insisted. “You always do that. You–you always get this really big smile whenever I start gushing about him.”

“I’m not smiling.” Satoru denied, while still openly smiling.

“Liar.”

You rolled your eyes, but you didn't complain much further. He had this trick he liked to do sometimes. You just looked at him, and you instantly felt better, even a bit.

Snowbell used to have that effect on you, too. Anytime you cuddled with him, his presence washed away any stresses you had. There was just him and his soft fur.

Satoru laughed and shook his head.

“The way you speak of him…it’s nice.” He told you. “It’s nice to hear that. Your cat’s lucky to be so loved. I’m sure he’d be overjoyed to hear how much you missed him.”

You stared up at him.

“You think so?” You asked, your voice hushed.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

He did that often, too. He talked about things like he knew more than he let on–like he knew a secret you didn’t.

Or maybe that’s just the way he talked. He’d always been so odd and eccentric. From the short time you’d known him, he always dragged you from one place to another. He was constantly rambling about things you couldn’t catch onto. You’d call him ditzy if you didn’t know any better.

“You know what I think you should do?” Satoru suddenly piped up.

You looked up at him questioningly.

“I think you need something to get your mind off of the whole thing. Clear your head!”

You glanced around at where you were, what you were doing. Yeah, this was getting a bit pathetic.

“Okay.” You agreed. “Like what?”

His smile curled in mischief.

🐾

“What am I supposed to be waiting for, again?”

“Just hold on.” Satoru’s muffled voice came.

You crossed your arms, but you stayed put. Satoru’s apartment was huge. Even from your place on the lavish couch, you could see the wealth sprawled across his place. A bit empty, like he barely lived there.

Presently, he had tucked himself inside his room and told you ‘It’s a surprise!’ You had no idea what he meant by that, but knowing him, he was probably going to come out in something extremely ridiculous. Your imagination took off without you. You could totally imagine him waltzing out after stuffing himself in a hot dog costume.

He didn’t come out in a hot dog costume. Somehow, his surprise was both less and more mortifying than that.

He still wore his usual black clothes, but there was a new accessory he styled himself with. On top of his head sat two white, fluffy ears. You stared at them in disbelief.

“Tada!” He posed like he just unveiled something.

You got up.

“I’m leaving.”

He was in front of you in a flash, reaching the door before you could. A nervous smile spread across his face as he tried to usher you back inside. You’d never seen him look so unsure before, it almost caught you off guard. With those fake cat ears on he looked even more ridiculous.

“Just hear me out for a second.” He tried to say. You glowered at him, but you relented, flopping back down to the couch.

“Think of it as a therapy exercise,” he finally suggested

“A therapy exercise,” you repeated, incredibly suspicious.

He nodded before sitting himself in the space next to you.

“Studies have shown that petting animals reduces stress in humans and all that, right?” Satoru pondered, but a part of you wondered if he was pulling all this out of his ass. “Since we don’t have a cat right now, well…this is the next best thing!”

You stared at him, wondering if he truly thought you were this stupid. His glasses were off, abandoned back in his bedroom, so the blue of his eyes could stare right into you.

“Try it!” Satoru suggested, tilting his head down to show off his new ears.

Well, Satoru has always been a bit weird, right? He was strange, constantly blabbering about things that never made sense, but he was harmless. From the short time you knew him, he’d never revealed himself to be anything but that.

You sighed, but you reached up and gently patted his ears, hoping that would be the end of it.

They were softer than they looked. Almost delicate in nature. The fur was clearly fake but it was smooth and silky and the blooming pink hidden underneath the fur of the ears had such a deep resemblance to your own lost kitty.

“There.” You told him as you pulled away, albeit a bit reluctantly.. “Is our therapy session over?”

“Not yet.” He cheerfully replied. “We got movies too! You’ll love this one! It’s about a cat who wastes all his previous eight lives, and now he’s on his ninth and…”

You tuned out of his rambles, already knowing how this night will end. Truthfully, you didn’t mind a movie night with Satoru. He was fun to hang out with. Maybe a movie night would be good for you–it would cheer you up.

You thought it had to do with those eyes, mostly; they were why you were so agreeable to go along with his whims. A part of you thought he was well aware of your kryptonite, but you could never prove it.

An hour or so later, you were well into the movie when you glanced down at your lap. The setting changed. Satoru ordered pizza a while back and inhaled three whole slices before you finished even one. Half-finished cans of soda laid on the table. When the movie started, you and him sat at a respectable distance between each other.

Now, Satoru’s head settled on your lap with your hand absentmindedly drifting across his hair and faux ears.

The shade of the cat ears almost blended into ivory locks. His hair was soft, just as silky and smooth as that stupid prop he still wore. You wondered what products he used, if he used any at all when Satoru caught you looking at him.

He blinked slowly at you, like he’s fighting off sleep. Ivory, white lashes fluttered closed to meet the rounded parts of his cheeks before that brilliant blue spilled out open all over again. It was something Snowbell used to do. Once, you looked it up and discovered it was a way cats showed silent affection towards their owners.

You smiled. Satoru caught it.

“What?” He questioned.

You shook your head even before your mouth opened up.

“Do you remember the night we met?” You asked as the movie faded into the background.

He nodded and you wondered if he thought of the same night you were–the night when you were cold and wet and miserable and Satoru was a stranger holding out your phone with a smile you couldn’t decipher.

“It’s really strange.” You admitted. “You pop out of nowhere. You know my favorite foods–you know things I didn’t even know about myself. You’re always there when I need you the most.”

Your voice trailed off to a whisper when he rose up to meet you. He was so close and you realized just how many colors his eyes have. Colors you’ve named before: deep navy, rolling cobalt, the softest sapphire, the brightest tanzanite.

He looked into your eyes, too, and you wondered if he did the same thing you did.

“I’m good at reading people.” His voice was equally low and hushed.

“Are you?” You asked.

He tilted his head.

“Am I?” He repeated.

It’s like the world around you disappeared. The TV, Satoru’s living room, the bustling city, faded into irrelevance the longer you stared at him.

“There’s something about you.” You continued because there was nothing left to say. “I think I’ve felt it since the day we met, but I don’t think I could internalize it until now but there’s something familiar about you. I…”

‘I know I’m going insane, but I think you might be my cat.’

The words sat on your tongue, but you couldn’t bear to say it. It was all so ridiculous even as this full grown man sat in front of you wearing cat ears looking at you like you were everything in this universe. You wanted to laugh. Then, you wanted to cry. So much happened in just days and yet nothing happened either.

You were not sure who leaned in first, but neither of you pulled away.

His lips were soft. It was like his hair but a different texture. They were plump and full of life and adoration as he kissed you. A hand reached up to grab your cheek, holding you in place as he continued to kiss you.

You sighed into his mouth and Satoru stopped kissing you and started to eat you whole.

He pressed you into the sofa and you went down with a small ‘omph’ that he swallowed up too. Greedy, was the only word you thought as he kissed you again and again. He wanted it all, and he wouldn’t stop until he got it.

He only stopped when your head was spinning and you gave a low whine. Even then, he pulled away with such reluctance you could still taste it lingering on your teeth.

You were panting, heavy and needy and hot all over. He barely looked affected. His expression was oddly blank, like he was dazed. You would’ve believed he thought nothing of the kiss had it not been for the tight way he still held you, like he was terrified you’d disappear if he wasn’t constantly holding on. That, and the–

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“Yeah?” You breathed. Your eyes trailed down to watch his Adam apple bob with anticipation.

The longing in his voice, it almost matched the intensity of his mouth. He burned so hot, you should have been afraid he’d burn you.

Instead, you reached up to pet the fluffy ears that rested just on his head. He shivered, eyes closing in a way you swore he could feel your fingers tickle the fur.

The slightest of smiles tugged at your lips. A tease.

“What else were you waiting for, pretty kitty?”

His eyes sharpened, there’s the softest hitch in his breath before he was on you all over again.

Rougher, pressing into you like he wanted to imprint his pattern all over your body so you could never forget his space and shape. Teeth that might have been fangs tugged at your lips as his fingers played with the hem of your shirt.

You shuddered as his long, lithe fingers crawled underneath your shirt, pushing it up and over your chest. The fabric pooled around your neck, proudly showcasing your tits, barely covered by the flimsy bra he was clearly eager to rip off.

His hands were cold as they pressed against your feverish skin. You felt goosebumps rise at just his touch as he reached for your bra to feel your tits. The fabric fell away and left you bare and utterly vulnerable to him.

He cursed, barely pulling back from devouring your lips to glance down at his unveiled treasure. Fingers tapped at your chest, eager to explore.

“Can I…?” He asked like you’d say no him–like you ever could.

Your nipples were hard and tender to the touch. A whine left your throat when he gripped them, squeezing at your supple flesh. It almost felt perverted and lingered on desperation.

“You’re so soft.” His tone almost made you laugh. It was like he could hardly believe it himself, needing to touch you more in order to truly prove that fact of the world.

You want to say something teasing when his mouth is dropping down again to lavish your jaw, trailing all the way to your neck and chest. He mapped your body with his lips and tongue before they finally landed on his prize.

“Satoru..” You could only sigh because he was barely touching you and you already felt everything. You relaxed against the pillows and the leather fabric, completely giving yourself to him. Heat pooled at your core as you twitched underneath him.

“Hm?” He asked, still lapping away at your skin. “It hurts, baby? Want me to make it better?”

He swirled his tongue over your nipples, flicking over them like he’s teasing the flesh. Eventually, he couldn’t help himself anymore. He took your entire nipple into his mouth, groaning as he did so, his voice vibrating your skin.

You felt like you were on fire, and yet, it was not enough. Your body was sparking and bursting into flames as you reached up to grab Satoru’s hair, keeping him there as he nuzzled and adored your tits. He’d barely done anything and you already felt like you were high. Your head was up in the clouds as he continued to ravish you.

“Satoru.”

Your voice was pitchy and drowned in want.

“Please please please.” You begged, uncaring to anything else. “Need you.”

He lifted himself from your chest with a loud, debaucherous pop. Your chest bounced lightly with the movement, nipples shiny and perky from his actions. You could already feel the ache on your skin. You were going to wake up tomorrow with marks all over you–you just knew it.

“Yeah?” He asked. His eyes were darker now, twinged with a type of hunger that should have scared you. His cheeks were flushed, dappled with the prettiest red you’d ever seen.

“Need me?” He repeated, hovering closer to your mouth, just inches away.

You nodded. His mouth curled.

“Gotta’ use your words. C’mon, you can do it.” He goaded, placing a chaste kiss on your cheek. You heard the condescension in his voice. In any other scenario, you might’ve just rolled your eyes. In this one, you wiggled your hips, helpless.

“Need you, please, Satoru,” you told him, “need you deep in–in my pussy.”

He shuddered at your words. There was the tiniest breath, a sigh of excitement, before he was pulling away to curl up at your hips. Eager hands gripped at your flesh, pulling down your shorts with a practiced ease.

“Oh, anything for you,” he said as he pulled apart your thighs to look at your vulnerable flesh.

“Anything.”

You were almost embarrassed at the way he looked at you. He practically drooled, licking his lips like he was trying to taste your heated scent. You expected him to rip off your panties the way he was clearly dying to, but instead he spread your thighs wider to lick up a stripe at your inner thigh. You jolted at the hint of teeth so close to your cunt.

“Bad kitty.” You tried to scold but it came out more like a whine. “Kitties don’t bite.”

“This one does.” He purred into your skin before biting you once more.

Just when you were about to complain again, he finally decided to put his mouth to proper use. Satoru eased off your panties, dragging them down your shaking thighs. He didn’t get them all the way off, like he did with the rest of your clothes. Instead, they tangled up your legs, leaving you completely exposed.

He took his prize like a vulture, swooping down to your cunt. His long tongue licked up and down the entire length of your pussy. Words melted back into your tongue as he worked your wet slit.

“Oh.” You sighed as Satoru’s head disappeared in between your thighs.

You thought he was saying something back. Something rested in his voice as he lapped deeply into your cunt lips–a dark tone you can’t place. You didn’t care. It didn’t matter as your thighs tightened around his head, like you wanted to keep him trapped there forever.

“Satoru.” You barely managed out as he licked the nub of your clit, lightly suckling on it as you felt a wave of tremendous pleasure roll down your back.

“Feel good, gorgeous? Don’t be shy, lemme hear you.” He said, his voice slightly muffled as he continued to eat you out.

As though to coax more sounds from your lips, his fingers delved into your pussy lips to rub slow circles onto your clit as his tongue entered your walls. You give him what he wanted, arching your back as your voice got louder and louder. You could hear the debaucherous slick sounds emanating from his mouth licking away at you. They were barely covered by your own moans of pleasure.

“That’s it. Fuck.” He hissed into your trembling thighs as you felt yourself tense up.

“You sound so cute when you feel good.” Satoru purred. “I’m so glad I’m the one who made you feel like this. All for me.”

You barely registered the darkness in his words. At some point, your legs were propped up on either side of his shoulders. Your fingers fisted into his hair, coaxing him deeper into your wet, needy heat. Satoru barely needed the extra encouragement, eating your pussy like it was all he was made for–like he’d die if he did anything else.

Your whines crested into something else. Satoru picked up on it, eagerly moving forward and picking up his pace as your pussy walls trembled from the constant attention he gave you.

“Gonna come for me?” He pressed. “S’ okay. Let go, gorgeous. You can do it. Just a bit more–”

Your back arched, but Satoru anchored your hips, keeping you in place as your orgasm rushed through you. It was the strongest you’d ever come, wave after wave of pleasure fizzed up your toes as they flexed and curled to assuage the intensity.

Satoru kept going until your body flopped down, exhausted by his ministrations. Even then, he only pulled away when your whines turned into pathetic begs of ‘too much’. You watched him rise from in between your legs with bleary eyes. He wiped away his mouth with the back of his hand, never taking his eyes off you.

You must have looked like a mess as you lied there, breathless. He wasn’t much better. His cheeks were dappled in pinks and red as his blue eyes simmered with ocean foam.

“Come here.” Your arms felt like cement but you reached up anyway, caressing his hot skin, coaxing him down. He followed like he was leashed, tethered to your fingers, crashing his lips onto your own.

You could taste yourself on his tongue, sour and sweet. You wondered what he was tasting as he ate your pussy, absolutely relentless. It felt like he’d happily suffocate in between your thighs, lapping away at your folds for the rest of eternity.

That didn’t sound too bad. A part of you hungered to push his head down to your clit again, let him worship your cunt in waves of ecstasy.

But another part of you felt something hot and heavy rest at your thigh, barely obscured by the denim of his jeans.

“Was I good?” He asked between feverish kisses, bringing you back to him.

“Mmh,” you agreed as his teeth nibbled on your bottom lip. “You were so good,” It’s all you could say, mind muddled and soupy by the orgasm.

Satoru moved down, lavishing your jaw and upper throat in kisses.

“Such a good boy–good little kitty.” He practically melted at your words, whining at your throat as you stroked his hair and fluffy ears.

“Yeah?” He asked, lips pulling away from your collarbone.

You nodded. “The best boy.” You continued as you wiggled your hips with need. “But Satoru–”

“I know.” He pulled away, and you mourned his warmth before you saw the way he straddled you as he fiddled with his belt.

“I’m hurtin’ too, gorgeous. Waited months for this.” Months? But hadn’t you met Satoru five weeks ago?

You ignored every alarm bell ringing in your head just in time to see his cock bob between his strong thighs. He looked painfully hard. Precum leaked from a mushroom-shaped tip as his cock touched your bare thigh.

Your mouth watered.

“Ready, baby?” That growl in his voice was back again as he leaned over, chest hovered above your own.

You never broke eye-contact as you licked your lips. You could still taste remnants of him in your mouth.

“Fuck me, Satoru.”

His eyes flashed. He was going to ruin you. You couldn’t care less. You wanted him to.

His cock slipped through your folds, teasing at your clit, still wet from him earlier. Your eyes rolled back into your skull at the first press of him at your battered pussy. You hissed at the same time he did, but you still managed to keep your eyes on him, wanting to admire what you did to him.

His expression was almost pained as he eased himself deeper into your cunt. His eyebrows were pinched together, and his jaw was clenched like he was physically holding back from crying out at the mere touch of your warmth. It looked like he was doing everything he could to stop himself from coming the moment he entered your pussy. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, collapsing into your shoulder to whine at your shoulder.

“I–I can’t do it.” He whined but you could still feel his cock stretching out your hole. “You’re so warm and tight. Feels like–like I’m home.” He babbled.

You tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled moan.

“Don’t say stupid”-- You barely stifled a moan as he pushed himself deeper inside you–”things like that.”

He bottomed out with a stuttered gasp, clinging onto you like you were his lifeline. You’d never felt more full in your entire life. He pressed all the way into your womb. If you looked down, you were half-afraid you’d see his cock imprint itself onto your belly.

“Fuck.” Satoru hissed in your ear. “Look at you. You’re…you’re a perfect fit.”

If you could speak, you might’ve agreed. His cock stretched you out oh so nicely, each curve nestled into the deepest, wettest part of you. A spit of precum dribbled out of your stuffed hole, lecherously coating your pussy lips.

“You okay?” Satoru asked when you shuddered underneath him.

You nodded, tucking your head into the crook of his neck.

“Can I move?”

“Please.” Your voice was soft and keening. “Please, please move, ‘toru–”

“Shit, quit that.” He lightly berated. “I’m tryna hold back but your voice drives me crazy…moving, so hold on, gorgeous.”

You moved on instinct, rather than on his order. A particular thrust left you gasping, making you reach up and cling onto his smooth nape. Satoru barely flinched at you clawing at him, curling his lips as he continued to stuff you full.

The way he fucked you was messy, bordering on desperation as he drilled you into the couch. The stretch against your walls left you breathless and panting for more. The cool air of Satoru’s apartment felt like aloe against your heated skin as he picked up the pace, filling you up with his cock over and over again.

“Shit. You feel like heaven.” He said through gritted teeth. “You’re squeezing me so good–do you feel good? Am I making you feel good?” It didn’t even feel like dirty talk. It felt like he was genuinely asking, scarfing down any lick of praise as he continued to drill you against the sofa.

Your pussy spasmed around his cock, bearing down on him like you never wanted to let him go. Your thighs were painfully clenched as you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist. A hand dropped down from Satoru’s neck to your clit.

Before you could relieve the pressure, Satoru snatched it up. He grabbed your wrists holding them above your head. He reached down with his other, circling your clit with his thumb and turning your head into mush all over again.

“Oh, yes,” your eyes rolled up as his cock pistoned into you. “Satoru its–its–”

“I know, baby.” Satoru lowered himself so his cock hit something deep and spongy inside of you. “Just gotta hold on a bit more. I’ll take care of you.”

Something rumbled in his throat. It almost sounded like he was purring as he rutted into you, and maybe that should have been your final sign, but you could hardly care less as you creamed around his cock. Your mind floated as he fucked you the way he wanted to, the way you begged him too. It was an endless build up that seemed to last for centuries.

Your orgasm hit the minute he slammed his cock into that spot all the way inside of you, rolling away at your clit at the same time. Your back arched as you came around his thick cock. Your pussy milked him for all its worth, gushing around him as Satoru staggered and swayed above you.

He didn’t last all that long after. There was a feral snarl before his cum sprayed all the way inside your womb. There was so much of it. Some dribbled out of your sore pussy all over your cunt lips.

Minutes later, when you barely put yourself together after that mind-numbing orgasm, you could still feel Satoru deep inside you. His head settled into the crook of your neck as he tried to regain his breath. You felt butterfly kisses across your skin as he lavished you in exhausted affection.

You stopped him when he tried to pull out, using the last bit of your strength to cinch your legs around his waist.

“Stay,” you mumbled, “‘feels nice.”

He smiled against your neck. You felt his arms wrap around your waist as he laid down with you. The couch was probably a snug fit considering how tall Satoru was, but you could hardly care less.

“Yeah?”

You hummed. You thought he said something else but you were too tired to care. Nestled in the arms of a man who fucked you silly was a good position to pass out in.

Just before you fell asleep, you noticed the funniest thing.

Between the pussy eating and the rapid fucking, those stupid, fluffy ears still remained on top Satoru’ head.

🐾

You woke up to sore legs and an aching body.

Your stiff limbs complained whenever you moved. Blearily, you opened your eyes. Sunlight poured in through a window. It was late-morning, at the very least.

Your environment also changed. The last thing you remembered was falling asleep next to Satoru’s warm chest on his sofa. Now the only thing you felt below you was a springy mattress and fluffy pillows. You laid naked underneath a bulky blanket.

Satoru was nowhere to be found, but the spot beside you was warm. Outside the room, you distantly heard a muffled phone call. Bits and pieces.

“Lost the curse user? That’s fine…got really curious about the…nah, it was my fault for getting caught up in that…yeah, I guess things mostly worked out…should thank him, honestly–”

You must have dozed off. When you opened your eyes again, Satoru was underneath the sheets with you. He watched you with a strange smile on his face, propping his chin up with his hand. His white hair was tousled like he’d never left. He was shirtless, proudly showing his bare skin when the light marks you left on him. With slight disappointment, you noted his cat ears were gone.

“What?” He asked, noticing your souring mood.

You scowled and turned away from him.

“You bit me,” you said, pulling an excuse out of the air. “‘Can’t believe you did that. Get out. I’m banning you from the bed.” You lightly nudged him with your foot.

Neither of you acknowledged that it was his bed in his apartment. Instead, Satoru whined, slumping over you in a bear hug.

“I’m sorry!” He kissed your shoulder, lightly licking over a mark he made the night before. “Please forgive me!” He caught onto your smile. “You’re into groveling? I’ll keep that in mind for next time–”

“Shut up.” You lightly scolded, but you sank into his hold regardless.

“Can I use your shower?” You asked after a few minutes of cuddling. As much as you liked this moment, your skin still felt clammy from last night.

“I can draw us a bath.” Satoru rubbed his cheek against yours with a satisfied sigh. “I got lavender scented bubbles and everything.”

“That sounds nice.” You nodded, but neither of you moved.

He practically invited himself into your shower time, but you didn’t mind. It was a little cute how eager he was. Or maybe that was just you missing every sign in the book. After all, this guy spent weeks and weeks helping you skulk around outside searching for your cat. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so surprised he was this forward.

Speaking of your cat….

“Satoru?” You called.

There was a hum against your skin as his head buried into the crook of your neck.

“I don’t think I need to worry about Snowbell anymore.” You tell him. “I…think he’s fine. Wherever he is.”

“Yeah.” Satoru said in this voice that you couldn’t read. “Wherever he is.”

You needed to shower, but he was so warm and the bed was so soft and perfect. You couldn’t help but drift off again, letting Satoru cling onto you. Distantly, you wondered maybe….

“mama, eated?” he asks, glad to know now that you are awake. “mama, i get—i get nana? for you?”

“i’m okay, my angel.” you grumble, hiccuping back the cries that are triggered from his clueless compassion. “i’m not hungry.”

“mama sick?” lucian’s voice tilts into something somber and sad. now he tries to grip the duvet and climb the mattress to you. your heart beats like thunder.

“no, lucian—“

he makes his way up the slope, practiced and proficient, and crawls all the way over to you.

biting your lip enough to draw blood, you hide your face in the pillow, only allowing one eye to sight him. “lucian, listen to mama. go to papa.”

“no,” he plants himself firmly on the pillow beside your head and pats your clammy forehead. “mama sicky, need medicine.”

you catch his small fingers in your hand and hold it on his lap. “not sick, honey. i’m okay.”

he’s quiet for a while. the thought too profound to know why, he doesn’t seem to believe you. so he guesses again. “mama, bad day?”

your sinuses burn. softly, you ask. “what?”

“bad days no good.” he says. his voice of sympathy sounding all too familiar. he slides himself under the covers and squeezes himself in the space between your chest and the pillows. “bad days make woosi cry. is mama cry?”

there are weights on the corners of your lips, and smoke behind your eyes. the moonlight, once again, strikes his features so elegantly you’d think heaven sent a real angel for such a feeble soul. fresh air to your fumes. a gentle whisper to your silent tantrum.

the next sharp inhale you cannot hide, and in its trembling exhale lucian’s question is answered.

“i’m sorry, mama’s just…” you can’t explain. a bad day is true, but somehow it is not enough to encompass it all. and in his humble persistence, it feels like he deserves to know nothing short of that.

his hand, smelling of blueberries and milk, comes up to caress your hair. and his cheek falls onto the pillow before your one peeking eye. “s’okay, mama.”

“mama’s just very tired.” you whisper, turning your face to him. “and being tired makes me sad.”

“sad okay.” he says, wise beyond his years. you don’t have the time to wonder how. “sad now-mal like happy. sad is—is opposite!

“sad im…im-pow-tant too.”

he sounds so proud of himself for remembering. your fingers curl around his again and you kiss his palm. “yes, you’re right.” you take a breath. “mama is sorry for crying.”

“papa say no sorry for cryin.” lucian whispers to you like a secret. “papa say cryin is good, and cryin okay. helping— helping, uh, sad go out body.”

you smile. “he said that?”

“a-huh,” he snuggles closer. “and huggies help too.”

finally, like a bloom in spring, you uncurl yourself from your ball and wind your arms around the little body that has come to save you. “okay. let’s test that.”

his bell-like giggles are almost enough to flip your mood entirely when he is tickled by your closeness. never mind the ache in your ribs or the twinge in your neck; this pain is outmatched by the weight of your loving boy in your arms.

“yay,” he murmurs quietly when your sobs turn to small giggles. “i helping.”

you sigh, deep and freeing. “you are, my angel. i needed this, thank you.”

he shuts his eyes, and takes in a breath. “and woosi needy mama.”

You should’ve known something was up when he specifically bought only two first-class tickets to Las Vegas and your flight was at midnight. He’d insisted the two of you sneak out of the Kyoto Jujutsu Tech compound where you’d stayed for the duration of his visit to the Gojo clan, and hadn’t bothered to inform Shoko or Utahime or Yaga.

And so, again, you reiterate firmly and resolutely: none of this is your fault.

Your predicament—standing in a parking lot behind a Denny’s at nine in the night with a small fire going in a trash can nearby—is entirely, absolutely, positively Gojo Satoru’s fault.

“I want a divorce,” you tell him.

“We’ve been married for forty-seven minutes.”

“Forty-seven minutes too long.”

“You’re burning our wedding certificate!” Satoru says. “How are we supposed to file for divorce if there’s no proof we even got married?”

“I’ll figure it out,” you say, poking at the certificate with a stick you found on the ground. The corner of it curls and blackens satisfyingly. “I’m very resourceful.”

“You’re committing a crime is what you’re doing,” he says.

“You committed a crime first.”

“Getting married isn’t a crime—”

“Fraud is.”

Satoru opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, at a loss for words. This is a rare and precious occurrence—Gojo Satoru, speechless! You would be savouring it more if you weren’t currently a married woman in a Denny’s parking lot in Las Vegas at eleven o’clock in the night.

Satoru had told you it was a vacation. He’d shown up at your room in the Kyoto compound at half-past ten with a bag tucked under his arm and said, simply, “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving where?” you’d asked.

“Somewhere that isn’t here,” was his cryptic reply.

You’d been in Kyoto for six days. Six days of watching Satoru navigate the Gojo clan and their elders with their careful smiles and careful words. Nearly a week of watching something tight and unhappy lodge itself behind Satoru’s eyes while he pretended, convincingly, that everything was fine. You knew he wasn’t; you’d watched him perfect his act for years, after all.

So, you went. You told yourself it was because you’d never been to Las Vegas. This, at least, is true.

You’d grabbed your bag and followed him out through a side entrance of the compound at nine forty-five, and you didn’t inform any of your friends or superiors. Because of this, your phone has been periodically buzzing in your pocket for the last several hours and you’ve been ignoring it, which is a problem that is also, for the record, Satoru’s fault.

The flight was actually wonderful. First-class seats entailed warm socks and warm food and a window seat, because Satoru had graciously sat by the aisle. When you were flying over the Pacific, he’d fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his sunglasses still on. He looked younger when he was sleeping, you’d thought. More like the version of him you’d met when you were both too young and foolish to understand what being a sorcerer actually meant.

After you landed, Satoru took you to a casino and then to a fancy place for lunch, and then to another two casinos—if he wasn’t careful, he’d turn into a gambling addict soon—and then he took you to a chapel on the Strip with fake flowers zip-tied to the pews and an officiant named Francis who had red hair and smelled like cigarettes and convenience store chewing gum.

Francis had cried a little during the vows, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Satoru had found this enormously gratifying. You, however, had been in something of a dissociative state.

“It’s not fraud,” Satoru says now, in the parking lot, watching you cremate your marriage certificate. “We did actually get married. Francis witnessed it. There are photos.”

“There are photos?”

“Francis had a camera.”

“What?”

“I think it’s just something he keeps on him professionally.”

You stare at him. He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. His sunglasses are still on. His suit jacket is open, and his tie, which had been done up neatly for the ceremony (clearly he’d planned far enough ahead to wear a nice tie) is now loosened and slightly crooked. The cheap gold ring on his finger—wrong hand; he’d fumbled it in the moment and jammed it on before either of you could correct it—catches the light from the parking lot fluorescents.

“That’s it!” you say, snapping your fingers at him. “That’s our proof to file for divorce! Take me back to the wedding chapel, Satoru.”

“No way,” he says. “I’m taking you to dinner first. We need to commemorate our first night of being married.”

“We’re behind a Denny’s,” you point out.

“I know,” Satoru says. “Denny’s is a perfectly acceptable dining establishment, but I meant somewhere nice. There’s a steakhouse on the Strip that has a three-month waitlist.”

“Then we can’t go there.”

“I called ahead.”

You gape at him. “Three months ago?”

“No,” he says. “I called ahead on the plane. You were asleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep for that long—”

“Yeah, you were asleep for, like, four hours. You even snored a little.”

“I did not—that’s not the point! The point is, you planned this. You planned all of it, the chapel, the restaurant, the—” You gesture at the ring on his finger, the ring on yours, the dying fire in the trash can—“everything.”

“Not everything. I didn’t plan for you to burn our wedding certificate in a fit of rage.”

“That’s your fault by proximity.”

“That’s not a legal standard.”

“I’m making it one.”

Satoru smiles, quick and bright. You have a long and storied history of making Gojo Satoru laugh when he isn’t expecting to, and it used to feel like winning something. It still does, if you’re being honest.

“Come on,” Satoru says, nodding towards the street. “Dinner first, Francis later. We can get the photos after and then you can file for divorce. I won’t stop you.”

“You’d better not,” you say.

“I said I won’t.” He holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re really not.”

“I’m a man of some of my word,” he amends.

The steakhouse is situated on the upper floor of one of the larger casinos on the Strip, lined with dark wood and low, hushed lighting. You are seated by a window. The Strip sprawls below you in every direction, extravagant and relentless, all that light going nowhere at tremendous speed.

“Were you really that confident I’d say yes?” you ask once the menus have been set in front of you.

“I was… hopeful,” Satoru says. It’s not a word you can recall him ever applying to himself before, in all the years you’ve known him; it sounds odd. You pick up your own menu and look at it without reading it.

What you’ve learnt about Satoru and what most people tend to miss is that underneath all the grinning and grandstanding and carelessness, there is someone who wants things very badly and has learned not to show it. You’ve known this for years. You’ve watched him want things, and watched him bury it under layers of grandiosity until it’s almost invisible. Almost.

“The elders have been at it for two years,” he says finally, without looking up from the menu. “The meetings, the candidates. They’re all very suitable women from very respectable families. Good for the clan’s interests.”

“You never told me it’d been going on for that long.”

“Didn’t want to make it a thing.”

“Satoru—”

“It’s fine. It’s just—” He sets the menu down and looks out at the Strip, all that light below. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life performing for someone who sees me as a resource. I do enough of that already. I knew it was going to happen eventually and that they were going to stop asking and start insisting. So. Vegas.”

“Vegas,” you echo.

“You were the obvious answer,” he says matter-of-factly. “You already know what you’re getting into with me. You don’t have any illusions. You—you’re my best friend. There isn’t anyone I’d rather be stuck with.”

“Stuck with,” you repeat. “Incredibly romantic.”

“I said what I said.”

The waiter arrives and Satoru orders for the two of you. You look down at the ring on your finger and think about how it came from the little rotating display by the chapel door, five dollars American. It fits almost perfectly except for being on the wrong hand.

“Er. You fumbled the ring,” you say.

“I was nervous,” he says.

Gojo Satoru, nervous. Gojo Satoru, who treats most of human experience as something happening at a slight remove, who has never, to your knowledge, shown up to anything in his life uncertain of the outcome—nervous!

“Were you,” you say.

“Briefly,” Satoru says, with great dignity. “It passed.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Of course.”

The fountains in front of the Bellagio are in the middle of their routine, water arcing up in great pale columns against the dark. The light from them moves across the window in slow, repeating patterns. Satoru’s eyes catch the shifting light. You swallow hard.

“We’re not arguing about the divorce, by the way,” you tell him.

“We’ll see.”

“Satoru.”

“We’ll see,” he says again pleasantly. You’re going to say something else, something firm and unambiguous, but he’s already put his cutlery down and is walking out, and you’re already following.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #2 – BREAKING AND ENTERING.

The supposed 24/7 active wedding chapel has a sign tacked onto the front door when you arrive later, which reads, Under maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience!

“Fuck,” you groan.

“Language,” Satoru says. “Maintenance at midnight. Huh. That’s strange.”

“That’s what I’m focusing on right now, yes, thank you.”

You press your face briefly against the chapel door’s small window. The lights inside are off. Through the glass you can just make out the shape of the pews, the flowers zip-tied to their ends, and the little altar at the front where Francis had stood several hours ago and wept openly into his handkerchief. How are you supposed to get the photographs of your husband—you are using that word provisionally under extreme protest—looking at you like you’re the only fixed point in the room?

“He might live here,” Satoru says.

“Francis?”

“Some of these places have a back apartment for the officiant. We could knock.”

“We’re not knocking on a man’s door at midnight,” you say.

“It’s nearly one.”

“That makes it worse!” You step back from the door and look at the sign again. There’s a narrow alley running along the left side of the chapel, squeezed between the chapel building and the 24-hour tattoo parlour next door. You only notice it because Satoru’s already walking towards it. “What are you doing?”

“Recon,” Satoru says. “Just looking.”

He disappears around the corner. You stand on the pavement with your hands on your hips before deciding to follow him. The alley is cramped and smells stale. There’s a dumpster and a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the chapel wall. Satoru stands with his hands in his pockets, looking upward with his head tilted back.

“No,” you say.

“There’s a window.”

“I see that.”

“It’s open!”

It appears to be a casement window on the chapel’s ground floor, propped out at an angle, about eight feet off the ground and just wide enough for a person to fit through.

“That could be a bathroom window,” you say. “We’d be breaking and entering.”

“The window’s already open,” Satoru says. “Technically we’d just be entering. The photos Francis took are currently somewhere in that chapel developing in a back room, unattended.”

“If we get arrested,” you say, “I’m blaming you entirely.”

“Obviously.”

“I will give a statement to the police and it will contain your full name and a detailed account of everything that’s happened tonight, starting with the chapel and working backwards to Kyoto.”

“Sure. Boost or be boosted?” Satoru asks, turning to the chairs. “I’d say I’ll boost you, but I want it to be on record that I think you’d make a better lookout.”

“I’m not being a lookout.”

“You just said—”

“I’m coming with you.”

He pauses, glancing at you, his expression softening just a little bit. Warm and amused—gone before you can fix it in place.

“Obviously,” he says, smiling, and starts stacking chairs.

The window is, in fact, not a bathroom window. It opens into a small storage room at the back of the chapel, with folding tables against one wall, boxes of artificial flowers stacked against the other, and a mop in a bucket in the corner. Through a door on the far side, you can see the chapel proper. The dripping you can hear means the maintenance situation is a ceiling problem, probably towards the front.

“There’s a whole back operation,” Satoru says, impressed.

“We need to find the darkroom,” you whisper.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because we’re trespassing.”

“Right, yes,” he says, lowering his voice. “The darkroom will need ventilation, so it’s probably towards the back.”

“How do you know anything about darkrooms?” you ask.

“I went through a photography phase in my second year of middle school. It was a whole thing.” He opens the storage room door and peers through into the chapel. “All clear.”

You follow him through. The chapel at night, empty and dim, is a different place entirely from what it was several hours ago. Smaller, somehow. Without Francis and the lights, it’s just a room with cheap flowers and worn carpet.

“Back room’s through here,” Satoru says softly; he’s already at the door behind the altar. You cross the chapel quickly, not looking at the pews or the aisle, not doing anything so foolish as standing in the dark and sentimentalising about a five-dollar ring and a laminated vow card.

The back room is small and smells sharply of chemicals—developer and fixer, mostly. There’s a red safelight along the wall that Francis has left running, bathing everything in a dim glow. A long workbench runs along one wall, and on it, clipped to a line strung above the bench, are your photographs.

Four of them, hanging in a row, damp and gleaming slightly under the monochromatic light. Even from across the room, you can make out the chapel and the altar. Neither of you says anything for a moment, until Satoru walks to the bench and stands in front of the photographs. You make your way and stand beside him.

The first one is mid-ceremony. You’re both facing Francis, and you can see Satoru in profile—head tilted, shoulders set. The second one is the ring exchange; you can see immediately why it’s blurry. You’d both been laughing, actually, you remember that now, because Satoru had fumbled the ring and said something under his breath, and you’d bitten down on a laugh and not entirely succeeded. Francis had captured exactly that, the two of you with your heads slightly bent towards each other.

In the third one, Francis had asked you to face each other for a photo, and while you’re looking at the camera, Satoru’s looking at you. You look—Francis had said surprised, and yes, there is that, but there’s also something else, something you would rather not name.

Satoru is looking at you the way he was looking at you in the chapel, the way he’s been looking at you in these odd unguarded moments all evening.

“We look like idiots,” Satoru says.

“Francis was right,” you say. “We both look surprised.”

“Were you?” he asks.

“Yes. Were you?”

“No,” he says, then adds quietly, “Maybe. About—about other things.”

In the fourth photograph, you are outside the chapel, looking at the ring on your hand, and Satoru is looking at you looking at the ring. Francis had captured the angle so cleanly that you can see Satoru’s full expression, soft in a way his face almost never is in front of other people, private. You realise you’re holding your breath.

“We should take them,” Satoru says.

“We can’t just take them,” you say. “They’re developing.”

“They look pretty developed to me.”

“Satoru, they’re damp—”

“They’ll dry.” He’s already carefully unclipping the first photograph from the line. “Francis has the negatives. He can print more.”

“You don’t know that Francis has the negatives, and besides, we’re stealing from him.”

“We’re borrowing from Francis.” Satoru holds the first photograph carefully by its edge and looks at it in the red light before setting it down on the workbench. “Hand me something to put these in. There should be a folder or an envelope on the bench somewhere.”

There’s a paper envelope at the end of the bench, brown and flat. You pick it up and hold it open. Satoru slides the photographs in one by one.

“We need to leave Francis a note,” you say, “and money. For the printing. For—everything.”

“How much do you think midnight darkroom theft runs these days?”

“What?”

“I’m asking genuinely.”

“A lot,” you say. “Leave a lot.”

You find a notepad on the workbench next to a jar of pens. Francis, you write. We’re sorry for the unauthorised visit. We needed the photos tonight, so please print yourself copies. Enclosed is payment for the developing, the breaking-in, the trouble, and your time. Thank you for everything. It was a beautiful ceremony.

You fold the note and put it on the workbench. Satoru takes his wallet out, removes a quantity of cash that makes your eyebrows go up, and weighs it down with the jar of pens.

You go back through the chapel and through the storage room and back out the window into the alley. Satoru drops down behind you and lands easily on the ground. The night air is warm, and the Strip is still brightly lit not thirty feet away. You hold the envelope against your chest. The photographs inside are still slightly damp.

“For the record,” you say, “this is also your fault.”

“The chapel was closed,” Satoru says reasonably. “I didn’t plan that part. Plus, we have the photos, so. Seems like it worked out.”

You look at him with his loosened tie and ruffled hair and think, He’s going to be completely insufferable about this for years. You are going to have to hear about the Vegas chapel break-in for the rest of your natural life and possibly longer.

“Come on,” you say. “You said the hotel’s three blocks away.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #3 – VANDALISM.

There is only one bed. It’s not, on its own, an unusual situation. You’ve shared sleeping arrangements with Satoru before—field missions and overnight calls that left two sorcerers and one room. You’d use a pillow wall, most of the time.

The difference is that you are currently married to him.

“You booked a room with one bed?” you ask.

“They may have assumed, given that I made the reservation under a recently married couple’s names, that we would want,” Satoru says, gesturing at the bed, “the one bed.”

The bed in question is enormous, dressed in white linen and piled with decorative pillows. There’s a bowl of strawberries on the bedside table. The whole room smells faintly of roses.

“Did you request the honeymoon setup?” you say.

“The woman on the phone seemed very enthusiastic about it.”

“That’s not an answer!” You look around the room, hands on your hips. “Well, there’s a couch. You can use that.”

It’s one of those small, decorative couches present in hotel rooms to fill a corner, hold throw pillows, and look tasteful in photographs, but not to sleep on.

“I’m not going to sleep on it, but noted,” Satoru says, striding towards the minibar, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the chair by the window. “Whiskey or gin?”

“Whiskey,” you say. “We can put a pillow wall down the middle.”

“We’re married,” he says, crossing the room with two small bottles. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “It seems a bit prudish.”

You take the whiskey from him and twist the cap off. Satoru has his own bottle balanced between both hands, still unopened, and he’s looking out the window at the city below. You’ve spent enough years watching him, but it doesn’t seem to change anything; the flutter in your heart remains the same, as does the contentment you feel in your chest.

“I want to see them again,” you announce.

Satoru looks at you. “The photos?”

You reach for the envelope on the nightstand and slide the pictures out carefully, holding them by the edges. They’re drying, stiffening slightly. You hold them in your lap and he leans in slightly.

“You should’ve warned me,” you say quietly.

“About which part?”

“All of it.” You tap the third photograph’s edge, gently. “This.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “If I’d warned you, you’d have said no.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you,” he says, not unkindly. “You’d have thought about it too long and decided it was too complicated, and then you’d have spent months being strange about it, and then we’d have gone back to normal, and—” He stops, turning the bottle in his hands. “…I didn’t want to go back to normal.”

“It’s still a bad idea,” you mumble.

“Probably,” he agrees. His hand shifts on the duvet between you, the tip of his little finger coming to rest against the back of yours. “Hasn’t stopped being true, though. Whatever it is. You know what I mean.”

You do. That’s the problem: you’ve always known what he means, even when he’s being deliberately oblique about it. You’ve known him too long and too well for any of it to not make sense anymore. Which means, you understand now, that you’ve also known you’re in love with him for longer than you thought.

You look at the fourth photograph—Satoru, standing outside the chapel, watching you look at the ring on your hand.

“You could’ve just said something,” you tell him. “At any point. Like a normal person.”

“I took you to Las Vegas and married you,” he says. “That’s me saying something directly.”

His hand turns over and covers yours, warm and assuaging, and whatever reservations you’d been carefully maintaining for years simply crumble.

You close the remaining distance. Satoru’s free hand comes up to your face before you’ve fully moved, which means he was thinking about it too—has been thinking about it, probably, for longer than tonight, longer than Vegas—and he’s kissing you.

He kisses you decisively. There’s a certainty to it that shouldn’t surprise you—this is Satoru, who does nothing halfway—but it does, a little. But what surprises you more is how easy it is. How it doesn’t feel like a change in anything so much as a long-overdue acknowledgement of something that’s been there all along.

When you pull back, his forehead drops to yours. His sunglasses are still pushed up on his head, and you reach up and take them off without asking. He lets you.

“Hi,” Satoru says.

“You’re still wearing your sunglasses indoors at midnight,” you chide.

“I said hi.”

“Hi,” you say.

He smiles; it reaches his eyes. “So,” he starts.

“Do not say ‘I told you so.’”

“I wasn’t going to. Probably.”

“Insufferable,” you say, and kiss him again, which is both a rebuke and a surrender but mostly just because you want to. He makes a sound against your mouth that might be a laugh, and his arms come around you properly this time.

The decorative pillows go first. There are seven of them, and they go in ones and twos without either of you paying much attention—one knocked off when his arm comes around you properly, two more when you shift closer, the rest sliding off the edge in a soft succession of thuds. One of the small whiskey bottles, empty now, rolls off the mattress and lands on the carpet. You don’t notice any of it; you’re somewhat preoccupied by Satoru taking your face in his hands and tilting it and kissing you until you forget what you were arguing about.

You suspect that he’s thought about this for a long time, the same way you have.

“You’re thinking,” Satoru says against your mouth.

“I’m not.”

“You are. I can tell. You get this little—” He pulls back just enough to look at you, and traces something between your brows with one finger. “Here.”

You stare at him. “I hate that you know that.”

“No, you don’t,” he says. He’s right, and you hate that too, so you tell him so by pulling him back down by the front of his shirt.

He lets you tug at him willingly—more than willingly, with an enthusiasm that sends you back against the pillows and makes you laugh, briefly, before his mouth finds your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp. His hands are at your waist, warm through the fabric.

His tie joins the pillows on the floor; you get the knot loose while he’s working on the matter of your buttons. His shirt is untucked and you run your hands on his waist, his ribs, the warm plane of his stomach. Satoru groans against the side of your neck, and you shiver. He tosses your shirt aside, too, and his eyes darken when his gaze lands on your chest. He takes his time with your nipples, rolling them around with his thumbs, before taking one of them in his mouth.

He moves lower, pressing kisses to the underside of your breasts, moving down to your navel. When he reaches the waistband of your jeans, he looks up, pupils blown wide and asks, “May I?”

“Yes, yes, please.” You nod frantically, helping him pull your jeans and panties off when he unbuttons it. You’re already wet and needy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru says, gazing up at you before littering kisses on your inner thighs, so close to where you want him. 

“Satoru, please,” you say. “I need you.”

He blows on your wet core, making you shiver. “Need me to what?”

“I need you to, hah, just—”

Satoru latches onto your clit, sucking and swirling his tongue around the bud. You moan, your hands flying to his hair and gripping the silver-white strands. He alternates between quick flicks and long, broad strokes, keeping your folds spread apart with two fingers while his other hand traces patterns along the underside of your thigh.

“Fuck, fuck—” You curse when his tongue moves in a circle right around your clenching hole. Satoru doesn’t stop. If anything, the sound of your voice breaking, the way you curse his name, only spurs him on. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you. He’s always known how to push your buttons. But this is different; this isn’t a playful tease during a mission.

He dives back in, his tongue flattening out to lap at you with broad, wet strokes that cover everything from your clit down to your opening. You arch your back, your hips lifting off the mattress instinctively, trying to press yourself harder against his mouth.

“Satoru… please, I’m—”

“You’re what?” he mumbles against your skin. He doesn’t wait for an answer, sliding two fingers deep inside you. You let out a strangled cry, your toes curling. His fingers are thick and warm, and he curls them, hooking them upward to find that sensitive spot that makes your vision blur. His thumb remains locked into your clit, rubbing circles on the engorged bud.

The sensation is overwhelming. It’s too much and yet not nearly enough. You can feel the tension building in your lower belly, a tight, simmering coil that winds tighter and tighter with every second.

“Right there,” you moan, your fingers knotting into his hair. “Right there, Satoru, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Your breath comes out in short, jagged gasps, your chest heaving. Just as you are about to orgasm, Satoru stops. He doesn’t just slow down; he pulls his fingers out of you with a sudden, wet pop and removes his mouth from your heat entirely. You freeze, your eyes snapping open. “Satoru, what the hell—”

He’s hovering over you, braced on his elbows, his hair messy and falling over his forehead. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips, though his breathing is just as heavy as yours.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

“I hate you,” you groan, your hips twitching involuntarily, searching for the friction he just stole from you. “I actually hate you so much.”

“Liars don’t get to come,” Satoru teases, though his hand reaches down to gently stroke the skin of your inner thigh. 

He shifts, moving upward to kiss you. He tastes like you, and you moan into his mouth, before he pulls away just an inch, his gaze dropping to your drenched core. “I want to feel you,” he murmurs. “I want to feel how tight you are around me.”

Satoru slides backward, just enough to strip off his trousers and underwear in one hurried motion. His cock springs out, thick and flushed. Your mouth waters simply looking at it, while he pumps it once, twice, thumb circling the tip. He doesn’t lie back down. Instead, he sits up, leaning his back against the headboard of the enormous bed, his legs spread wide. He reaches out, grabbing your waist with those large, strong hands and pulling you forward until you are hovering over him.

“Ride me?” he asks.

The need for friction, for fullness, for him overrides any lingering frustration. You shift your weight, guiding his cock to your entrance. As you slowly lower yourself down, the feeling of his cock filling you, stretching you open, sends a fresh wave of pleasure through you. You let out a long, shuddering moan as you sink down completely, inch by inch, your pelvis flushing against his. Satoru lets out a choked sound, his head hitting the headboard with a thud, his eyes screwing shut.

“Fuck,” he moans. “You’re—you’re so tight. I can’t—”

“Shut up,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.

You begin to move, a slow, grinding rotation of your hips. You watch his face—the way his jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, the way he looks at you with warmth and wonder. You quicken your movements, bouncing on his cock. Satoru’s hands move from your waist to your hips, fingers digging into your skin, helping you ride him. He thrusts upwards, tilting his hips and dragging his cock against your walls.

“Look at me,” he groans. You look down, your eyes locking onto his. “I love you,” he says.

You feel the coil in your belly snap. Your orgasm washes over you as you clench around his cock, milking him. Satoru moans, his back arching off the bed as he thrusts upwards one last time. “I’m going to come,” he says. “Let me—”

You slide off his cock and he comes, his release spurting onto his stomach, a little bit on your thighs. You collapse against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tightly, pulling you into the crook of his neck.

For a long time, neither of you speaks. Eventually, Satoru shifts slightly, kissing the top of your head.

“So,” he whispers. “Shower?”

You lift your head slightly, looking at him with tired, happy eyes. “Already?” you say with faux innocence. “I thought you’d want to fuck me on that stupid couch first.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #4 – EMBEZZLEMENT.

Hopefully Satoru didn’t mind you swiping his credit card from his wallet while he was fast asleep, one arm thrown over his face while the other was stretched out beside him. You’d wriggled out of his grasp carefully, pressing a gentle, barely-there kiss to the tip of his nose, before digging through his jacket’s pockets for his wallet and pulling out his black card.

It’s for a good purpose, you console yourself, hurrying through the streets of Las Vegas with a jewellery shop’s location pulled up on your phone. 

Las Vegas in the early morning is a different city entirely from the one that had swallowed you whole last night. It’s not quiet, exactly—it’s never quiet, you suspect—but it’s quieter, the frenetic energy of the Strip mellowed into something slower. The crowds have thinned, at least.

You walk with your hands in your pockets, Satoru’s black card tucked safely between two fingers. The morning air is warm and dry, and the sky above the glow of the Strip is beginning to lighten from black to the deep bruised blue that comes just before dawn.

The jewellery shop is three blocks from the hotel, according to your phone. It’s a small, well-lit place that stays open through the night, catering to those Las Vegas visitors who find themselves in need of jewellery at unusual hours, which you now understand is a larger demographic than you’d previously considered.

You walk and think about the rings. The ones currently on your fingers are not adequate. They’re soft metal, the gold already slightly scuffed from one night of existence, and they’ll tarnish in a week. You’d noticed this morning, while Satoru was still asleep: the way your rings sat a little loose, the way it had already lost some of its shine. It’s more of a placeholder than anything else.

The thought of replacing them had arrived while you’d lain in Satoru’s arms, listening to him breathe and looking at the ring.

You aren’t scared, though you’d expected to be. You’d expected to wake up this morning with the full weight of what’s happened landing on you like a dropped beam, and to spend the subsequent hours dealing with the considerable wreckage of your own panic. It seemed like a reasonable response to having been married to your best friend in Las Vegas by a crying man named Francis and then having the matter become rather more settled than a marriage certificate alone would suggest.

But when you’d woken up with Satoru’s arm around you and the photographs on the nightstand, what you’d felt was something almost irritatingly simple: you’d felt like yourself.

The jewellery shop is small and bright, jewellery arranged in lit display cases along the walls, a pudgy man behind the counter. He looks up when you come in, takes in the look of you—your clothes from last night, slightly slept-in, your hair not fully combed—and nods pleasantly.

“Morning,” he says. “What are you looking for?”

“Wedding rings,” you say. “Two of them, please. Something that’ll last for a long time.”

He nods again. “Do you know the other person’s size?”

You think about Satoru’s hands—the ring sliding onto his finger in the chapel, his hand covering yours on the duvet last night, the warmth of his arm around this morning. “I can estimate,” you say.

He shows you to a case along the left wall. The rings inside are simple, for the most part—plain bands in gold and silver and white gold, some with small details, most without. You find two plain bands in white gold, clean-lined and unornamented, substantial enough to last. 

“These,” you tell the man behind the counter.

He nods. You produce Satoru’s black card and spend a figure that makes you wince slightly but not reconsider, because the point isn’t the cost and you’re sure Satoru will agree with you about this when he wakes up and finds both you and his credit card gone. You leave the ship with the rings in a small white box and stand on the pavement outside for a moment in the warming air.

You pull your phone out and type in the search bar, Chapel of Eternal Love, and punch in the number attached. 

“Hello, Chapel of Eternal Love, Francis speaking—”

“Francis,” you say, smiling. “I have a favour to ask.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #5 – MARRIAGE.

Francis, it turns out, is delighted. He’d gone quiet for a moment when you explained what you were asking, and then said, Give me an hour, and hung up before you could confirm the details. 

You make your way back to the hotel with your ring box in your pocket and the morning brightening steadily around you. The casino lobbies you pass are still going—slot machines, a scattering of determined gamblers, staff moving between stations—but the Strip itself is relatively peaceful, the night’s crowd entirely dissolved and the day’s not yet arrived. You have the pavement to yourself. It’s a strange and pleasant feeling, Las Vegas in the interstitial hour.

Satoru is awake when you get back, sitting up in bed with his hair in complete disarray and the duvet bunched around his waist. When you open the door he looks at you blankly.

“Morning,” you say.

“My credit card,” he says.

“Is fine.” You cross the room and hold it out. He takes it without looking at it, still watching you. “I needed it for a purchase.”

“What kind of purchase requires you to leave the hotel room at—” he glances at the clock on the nightstand—“six forty-seven in the morning?”

“The important kind.” You sit down on the edge of the bed and take the white box out of your pocket, setting it on the duvet between you.

Satoru picks the box up and opens it, and doesn’t say anything at all, which is the loudest thing Gojo Satoru can do. “You stole my credit card,” he says finally, “to buy us wedding rings.”

“I borrowed it,” you say. “To replace the ones we got from a spinning display rack for five dollars each.”

“I liked those rings.”

“They were tarnishing,” you say. “There’s more, by the way.”

You tell him about Francis. He looks surprised at first, and then warm, so utterly warm when he tugs you closer to him and kisses you again, and again, and once more for good measure. Satoru closes the ring box and holds it in both hands, the way he’d held the whiskey bottle last night before he’d covered your hand with his. 

“I thought you wanted a divorce last night, and now you’ve stolen my credit card and called Francis.”

“Yep.”

He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light filters through the curtains and he looks extraordinarily, unfairly beautiful, even just woken up.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” Satoru sets the ring box on the nightstand, next to the photographs. “Okay.”

Francis has decorated the chapel when you arrive. You’re not entirely sure when he found the time—it’s been barely two hours since your phone call—but the maintenance issue has apparently been resolved, because the lights are on when you arrive. The door is unlocked; when you step inside you find that Francis has replaced the zip-tied artificial flowers on the pews with fresh ones, white and small. There are candles lit along the windowsills. The worn carpet, in the warm light, looks less worn somehow, or perhaps you’re simply disposed to see it differently today.

Francis himself is standing at the altar in a clean shirt, his red hair combed and his camera in his hands. “You came back,” he says.

“We came back,” you confirm.

Francis looks at the two of you—Satoru in a fresh shirt with his tie done up neatly again, you in the best thing you could assemble from your bag on short notice—and grins. “The rings, did you—”

You produce the white box.

“Right,” Francis says. “Right, yes. Let’s—shall we?”

Here is what you think about, standing at the altar of the Chapel of Eternal Love for the second time in less than twenty-four hours:

You think about the first time, yesterday, and how you’d stood here in something close to a dissociative state, your brain running through the situation at high speed. You think about the parking lot behind the Denny’s and the small fire in the trash can. You’d meant it when you said you wanted a divorce, though you realise now that you were frightened of what being married to your best friend entailed.

Satoru had let you burn it, too. He hadn’t argued because he’d known you’d come around. Not from arrogance, but because he knew you, the same way you knew him, all the way down to the things you didn’t say aloud.

You think about the darkroom, the four photographs drying on the line in the red light. Climbing back out through the chapel window into the warm Las Vegas night and holding the envelope against your chest, the photographs still damp inside it. You think about the rings in the spinning display by the door—you can still see them from where you’re standing, the little rack with the remaining rings. They were the beginning, it turns out.

You turn to look back at Satoru. He’s smiling at you.

Francis clears his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”

The vows are the same ones from the laminated card. Francis offers alternatives—he has a small binder with options—but Satoru shrugs, so you use the same ones. When Francis gets to the rings you open the white box yourself. You take Satoru’s ring out and hold it; he holds out his right hand out of habit before catching himself and switching to his left, and you both laugh helplessly. Francis gulps and pulls out his handkerchief. You put the ring on the correct hand this time.

Satoru takes yours from the box and looks up at you—there’s that expression, the one from the photographs, the one you have a name for now. He slides the ring onto the correct finger and holds your hand for a moment after.

Francis is fully crying now. He dabs at his eyes without embarrassment and beams at the two of you over his handkerchief with radiant approval.

“I’ve never had anyone come back,” he tells you. “In twelve years, you’re the first.”

“We forgot something the first time,” you say.

Francis tucks his handkerchief away and straightens up. Smiling, he announces, “You may now kiss,” and so you do.

“i know, kier, it’s okay.” you pat his cheek and start the shuffle-walk towards a surface he can rest on.

you barely make it a few steps before the weight is lifted off your shoulders and kieran is hoisted up and over sylus’s shoulder.

“sy—“

he grunts, lumbering into the living room and tossing kieran on a couch haphazardly. kieran groans but slumps like dirty laundry over the arm rest.

then sylus returns, a willow hovering over you with limp limbs and a head hung low. you reach up to touch his face, feverish against your palm, and frown. “you didn’t puke too, did yo—!”

his shoulder muffles the rest of what you have to say, smelling fruity and tangy from his choice of alcohol, as he presses his forehead to your neck. “just buzzed.”

his arms circle your frame, larger now with the little heartbeats growing stronger in you, and you’re enveloped in his warmth. slightly off, but just as meaningful.

“papa’s just buzzed.” he whispers to your ear, and it tickles.

“looks like papa doesn’t know how to hold his alcohol.” you tease. you should have warned the twins that sylus is a poor drinking buddy when it comes to the harder fun drinks the youths tend to order.

but you couldn’t crush their drinking with dad dreams, especially now— in this time of sylus’s life—he takes pride in the title more than ever.

sylus was reluctant, not because he didn’t want to indulge, but you’ve just entered your second trimester and he’s been loathe to leave you since… well, since the announcement.

you teased him about being clingy, he whined in the privacy of your bedroom to your baby bump. tattling to your child how mama is keeping him and them apart.

but eventually, he caved and brought the unmasked twins to one of his more private speakeasy’s. which then, maybe escalated into something more neon and bouncy, you aren’t sure. the state of kieran tells you so much and so little all at once.

“i can!” sylus protests.

“f—ck! i gotta fy-ook!” kieran hiccups behind you in distress.

when you start to rush to find something to catch it, sylus holds you in place. you hiss at him. “sy! it’s gonna get on the carpet.”

“luke will clean it.”

you push him away just enough for him to tube-man upright. but kieran has already found a vase and stuck his face into it, now hurling accordingly.

“see?” sylus slurs. “my kids are smart.”

kieran’s dry heaves echo into the hollow artifact and trigger your own reflexes. suddenly, your stomach isn’t feeling so well. you pry away the corded muscles around your waist and sprint to the bathroom.

outside, amidst the chaos, sylus is bellowing. “kieran, look what you’ve done!”

and kieran is wailing, “i’m sorry! i’m s—orry!”

“ohh, i’m going to kill you.” luke returns just in time to witness his twin’s mess into the vase.

sylus is there, standing like a stunned specter when you emerge from the bathroom door. he blinks a few times like he’s rebooting before he places both hands on your cheeks. “are you okay?”

“yes,” you say kindly, stroking his ring fingers with your thumbs. “don’t yell at them.”

“okay.” he nods, squeezing his eyes shut and swallowing. “sorry.”

he turns his head and yells into the hallway. “sorry!”

“s’okay, dad.” luke calls back, tired.

“we love you, dad!” kieran cries, voice crackly and strained.

sylus grins, goofy and loopy, chuckling once and slowly turning back to you. “i like being dad.”

you smile at him. it’s been such a time since you’ve seen him drunk, and the last time wasn’t nearly as tame as this. tonight he’s just… happy and cute.

“do you hear me?” he asks, pressing his nose to your bump as he falls to his knees. “i love being your dad.”

“he isn’t even out yet.” you laugh, nails against his scalp that make him melt further onto you.

“doesn’t matter.” he murmurs, peppering kisses over what he believes is the little’s foot. “i’m dad. m’papa.”

he clings to you and snuggles his face into your belly when you sit among your boys in the living room. there, you laugh as luke paints you a picture of their night. how the speakeasy didn’t escalate into a full party, rather a case of your husband’s singing bug.

“boss sang like, seven songs.” luke says, and you laugh when sylus groans into your side. sedated only by your gentle caresses through his hair. “then, a gooey duet with kieran.”

“on the wings of love is a classic and you’re a—hic— pleb for not knowing it.” kieran interjects.

luke ignores him, still upset about cleaning up after his brother twice. “they sang through, like, three bottles of brandy.”

“and sum’beer.” adds kieran. “soo fun.”

“not fun.” grumps about luke.

sylus pouts against you. “you guys said you like it when i’m fun.”

“bossss,” kieran sings. “you were awesome. i will never—hic— ever—hic— ever forget tonight.”

luke watches his brother warily, but then softens when he looks back at sylus. “he’s right. tonight was pretty sick, boss.”

“dad.” sylus corrects, his voice now a grumble teetering towards unconsciousness. “i’m a dad—a’papa.”

“a’papa!” kieran responds enthusiastically, as if sylus had just recited a psalm. he closes his eyes and murmurs it to himself happily over and over.

“i think a’papa needs to go to bed.” you say, brushing back sylus’s hair from his eyes to see them closed. his mouth now slightly ajar too as his breathing steadies.

kieran’s echos fade too shortly after, and soon turn to soft snores.

only you and luke are left awake to witness the crackle of the dying fire in its hearth.

quietly, you ask. “why didn’t you drink?”

luke clicked his tongue and took a while. “i did.”

“but?”

he twists to retrieve a folded piece of parchment from his pocket. its crinkles sounding solemn as it is placed gently into your hands.

you give him a curious look as he sits back and waves for you to open it.

in big, bold, elegant font, it reads:

CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH

秦薛明 — Lucas Qin

luke turns shy when you look back at him. suddenly, his fingernails have turned interesting that it needs all of his attention.

“i hope you don’t mind.” is the first thing he utters and you are appalled at his words. “or he discussed it with you. we don’t expect you to think of us as yours, but we—we’d love to be part of the fa…”

his voice trails away when you plop yourself beside him and wrap him in a tender embrace. “of course you’re mine.”

he sniffles for the first time since you’ve known him. you don’t dare to look. but he leans his head towards you and swallows. “i didn’t want to forget.

“i didn’t want to wake up and maybe think… it was all a dream.”

all their lives— such hard and painful ones— they never had more than the other. never been wanted. never belonged.

at the gift presented to them, once pristine in the folders sylus had meticulously placed the parchment in, luke and kieran felt as if they had been killed, burned and reborn anew.

unmasked. with a face. with a name.

after years of always pausing by the door and waiting by the barrier, never did they think that they would be invited in.

and that will always be there to haunt them, the idea of being impostors in places they aren’t supposed to be in. where they think they fit, but their reality is bathed in delusion they would blame on their nonexistent childhood.

but now written, they will have something to tell them it’s all true.

“happy birthday.” you kiss his temple. he freezes at the affection, at the difference it makes coming from someone other than his brother. from another member of the family.

and as if you knew what he needed to hear, you swear.

you swear as if it is known, written in the stars eons ago. indisputable by fate or anything brutal that makes its demands. a truth you have lived and remembered and etched into your bones. you swear,

“you’ve always been our sons.”

a kick against his elbow that rests just by your belly is all is needed for him to believe it.

thank you for reading! ❀(*´◡`*)❀