wren ⋆⋅☆

Maybe it was dumb to think you and Satoru, only twenty-five, would’ve worked out when he proposed on a random Sunday in bed. It did seem dumb, though, while you sat across Hana who was relaying her own proposal story. You’d tuned it out, not wanting to hear her drone on about how it was the most perfect, breathtaking moment when he got on one knee at a rooftop restaurant. You didn’t want to be there, partially because you truly felt as though Hana was painting Satoru out into someone he wasn’t, and partially because you were human and humans tend to get jealous sometimes. 

It was meant to be a simple brunch with ten people, friends of friends of friends. You had Reina right next to you, Reina, whose eyes were continuously twitching as Hana would relearn a new moment from that picture-perfect night and feel the need to share it with everyone on the table. You could also see some of your own friends who were aware of yours and Satoru’s relationship look at her, then you, with furrowed brows. Hers mostly out of confusion, and at you to ask why the fuck are you quiet?

“Ugh!” One of the girls, Jia, exclaimed as Hana finally seemed to get to the end of her engagement story. “I wish I had someone like Gojo Satoru; all these men are so unromantic and act like genuine children.”

Truthfully, if Satoru wasn’t your ex-fiancee, you would be on the same boat as the girls who were unaware of your past relationship. Hana’s story, from the pieces you forced yourself to hear, was dreamlike. A small part of you wanted to tell her that her romantic and unchildlike husband had proposed to her, too, right after he’d done some other things that would end that conversation immediately. But you didn’t because it wasn’t Hana’s fault, even though your mind kept putting some blame on her, that Satoru broke it off with you.

“I hope all of you find somebody like Satoru. He truly is the best,” Hana replied dreamily. 

You clenched your fists. Reina slammed hers on the table. 

“You’re so delusional, Hana, it’s concerning.” You wanted to raise your arms and pull Reina down and ask her to shut up. To not cause a scene. But Hana looked at Reina, a confused, concerningly kind expression covering her features and you realized there lived a monster in you that wanted to see Gojo Hana crumble. “Don’t look at me all coy, high, and mighty. You don’t know shit about your husband. Why don’t you skip over these semantics and really tell them the only reason the two of you got married was because your parents forced you to?”

You delighted in the flash of anger that slid across Hana’s face as she pursed her lips, trying to find the right words. You leaned back and stared, an uncharacteristically numb look covering your features. This, a part of you realized, might be detracking you from your healing process but it was fun.

Hana looked around the table and noticed how all eyes were fixed on her figure. If there was one thing you’d learned from girls' brunches, it was that everybody loved when it blew over and left one or many people scathed. She sputtered over her words, the tangle coming out completely incomprehensible and you almost felt bad. Almost felt bad because it wasn’t expected of her to admit to a whole group of socialites that the marriage to the Gojo heir wasn’t out of love, but out of an arrangement that went in their favor. If you were in her place, you, too, would’ve waxed poetic about your marriage because if the truth would bring the palpable exciting energy down, you would feel bad.

“Perhaps it was suggested by our parents,” she started, glaring at Reina with faux sweetness. “But it was only because our parents saw how in love we seemed with each other.”

You tried to hold yourself back but it was just so simple for you to scoff at her words. When Reina looked at you, a sheen of anger coating her eyes, you pushed yourself to talk. “It’s not love if he cheated on someone with you.”

You had thought about this moment before; you’d wondered if, were you to ever meet Hana again, you would drop the ticking time bomb in her presence that might either blow up her entire marriage or just cause a small blip in the working systems of it. But saying it now, after hearing her say all Satoru had said about you was that your fathers worked together, felt completely underwhelming. Though the shoe was dropped and it was clear everybody managed to get a small tatters of it to whisper about with other people, it felt wrong. Wrong because the way Hana looked at you, eyes brimmed with tears and brows coming together in sadness, you had most likely broken a piece of her.

She gulped then cleared her throat. “Can—Can we talk outside? Alone?” she asked and, without sparing a glance at anybody on the table except for you and Reina, she walked to the sliding doors of the restaurant and into the glaring sun above. 

Reina placed her hand on your forearm and said, “Come on, let’s go.” It was surprising to see a miniscule hint of guilt on her features, and you realized you had to have the conversation. 

Hana had most likely heard the clicking of yours and Reina’s heels because she didn’t turn back to face the two of you. “I know you and Satoru had something going on.”

You froze, stunned and silent. 

“I had heard from my mother that you both were in a relationship. He never mentioned it to me, though, and I didn’t mention it, either.” She turned around, eyes wide as she looked down and shuffled her feet in anxiousness. “I don’t know how it ended or when it ended, but I thought when he—he finally acknowledged there was something between us, the two of you were over. I didn’t want to know. We did get married because our fathers told us to, but I wasn’t lying when I said he was sweet and caring.” Her stare burned you like a billion matches. There was truth in her words, you knew—

“You homewrecking bitch!” Reina’s voice cut off your train of thought as she walked towards Hana, an accusatory finger pointed in her direction. Once again, you didn’t stop her even though you probably should’ve. “If you knew he was in a relationship, how could you even think of flirting with him? They were engaged. God! I swear, both you and Gojo are two peas in the same pod. You deserve each other.” Her words were also ringing through your head and there was confusion bubbling up within the same pot as growing anger. 

“Why’d you pretend not to know when we saw you at the club?” you asked, finding your voice again, in a calm tone that surprised you, too. 

Hana shook her head. Her face had curled up into fury, and you wondered if her nice, docile, angel-sent-from-above personality was a card she held up her sleeve the entire time. “I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know because Satoru was mine—is mine. You weren’t a part of his life anymore, so I didn’t want to add any worries that were misplaced.”

You wondered if you should tell her that Satoru had tried reaching out to you at Suguru’s gallery. 

“If he had told me he was with you, I wouldn’t have tried anything with him.”

You were sure you had moved past everything. 

After more than a year of avoiding any fire from your past with Satoru, the past two weeks had been filled to the brim with situations revolving around him. It was easy to ignore what you had with Satoru when he seemed like a distant memory and then a mere ghost in your thoughts. But when he’s insistent on giving you answers you never asked for, answers you didn’t want to know, and his wife had made an appearance that caused your brain to run without stopping, it was difficult to treat him the way you had. 

No matter how much you wanted to ignore everything and reset your brain back to its default settings, you couldn’t when the world was caving in on you and reality seeped through its cracks to light a bright, pertinent light in front of your eyes. You hated Gojo Satoru with every inch of your bones, but you were never truly able to forget just Satoru himself.

Your mind had an interesting way to deal with the pile of information dropped onto your shoulders. You should’ve been reliving how Satoru made your blood boil when he got engaged with Hana, how he carelessly broke your heart because he began falling for somebody else, somebody brand new while he was taking space on your bed every night. You should’ve been, but you weren’t. 

‘A relationship broken is always a relationship that could’ve been,’ is what you’d read once graffitied onto a brick wall you were leaning against with Satoru once in the middle of the bustling city streets. You’d pointed it out, he’d agreed. He’d agreed. You wish he hadn’t because there was a fragment of you that wished he remembered those words now. The devilish part of you wished that’s what he remembered, recounted abruptly while he was sleeping next to his wife. 

You wished he’d think of the could’ve been’s instead of the measly fears he told you about at the gallery. 

You also wish you had those fears, too. You loved Satoru to a point that he was in everything you did; your clothes smelt like his detergent because you would always take your laundry to his house for the weekends. The lamp next to your bed had his bracelet wrapped around it because he thought it was too loose on his wrist and he’d lose it. You would always accidentally call him because his contact was on your home screen, causing you to press on it when you were scrolling (he always picked up and he always talked to you for hours after, making you forget why you had opened your phone in the first place). The tattoo, a small design of baby’s breaths, on your hip reminded you of how he had held your hand through the pain. 

You knew Satoru’s dreams. You knew Satoru’s biggest fears. So, why did he never tell you the fears he had for the two of you?

As soon as the thought hit your mind, it was followed by you harshly reprimanding yourself by reminding you that it was because he was getting excited over someone else’s calls, someone else’s dreams.

“Y/N, honey.” You heard your mother’s voice call from your ajar bedroom door before she hesitantly stepped in, heel-clad feet grazing over the off-white floor with footsteps following behind her. “Your friend from the gallery here to see you.”

You knew exactly who she was talking about which is why you raised slightly from your bed, a panicked look in your eyes, and only began pleading with her to tell him you weren’t here. Before you could even utter a complete, coherent sentence, Suguru had walked in with his head down and your mother simply walked out of the door, sparing you a sad smile. She didn’t know any of what had happened, but she most likely sensed it wasn’t anything worth toasting to after seeing Suguru’s mood and your reaction. 

“Please, Suguru.” Your voice wobbled, a slight hiccup in your words because this was too much. Even though Suguru was somewhere on the top of your least-favorite people list at the moment, he didn’t deserve to see you get angry at him without having control over your words. “Leave.”

“Listen, listen, Y/N. I just… I heard some stuff and I needed to check on you.” His words were hesitant, as if he’d rehearsed them but had changed the script at the last minute. He walked closer to your bed and you couldn’t find the words to ask him to leave. “Hana told me—”

You snorted, cutting him off. “Hana told you what? That I ended her perfect, dreamy image of her marriage in public? Are you here to—what? Reprimand me? Tell me I was wrong—”

“Fuck, no. Stop, just for one second.”

You did stop because Suguru seemed more tense than you knew what to do with. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Y/N.”

You stared at him, unblinking. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he quickly addressed, his body finding its way to the edge of your bed. “I want to say I’m sorry, and you don’t have to accept it. I was wrong—I realize that now but… I was scared, Y/N.”

“Scared of what? I wouldn’t have been any worse if you’d just told me what you knew, Suguru. You hid it from me when you saw how I was going insane the month after the breakup.”

“I was scared of this. How you’ve been feeling since Satoru told you the truth himself.” You couldn’t reply to that. “But I want to tell you that even though I hadn’t told you about it, I did let Satoru know really well what he did was wrong. Not that it’s any better, but I never supported what he did. I—I couldn’t stop him from marrying her because… well, because he’s Satoru. I shouldn’t have assumed you were okay, especially not after finding out about Hana after three months. But I thought you were and—I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking straight.

But I heard from Hana earlier today about what had happened at brunch. She said she was scared Satoru would find out what she said and I—I have no idea why she trusted me with that information. I’m not friends with her. I don’t know why she told me.”

You took in a deep breath processing all the information Suguru kept on dropping. “I’m not telling Satoru anything.”

“But she—”

“She nothing. I don’t want to hear it, Suguru. Whatever she did, even if she actively tried to sabotage me and Satoru, it was on him that he let her.” Your phone lit up from beside you and you glanced at the time, internally thanking whoever controlled it for the real excuse to kick him out of your house. “I have plans with Kento. You need to leave now, actually.”

You didn’t miss the way Suguru’s face flashed with a hint of disappointment at your words. 

Kento Nanami wasn’t understanding—not truly—which is why you were surprised that halfway through your date, when you told him you had to talk to Satoru, he understood. He walked you out of the restaurant, a calm, unwavering hand on your back and told you that no matter what happened, he’d be there by your side. 

And though you knew you had people by your side, you really couldn’t remember who and felt a flutter in your chest. 

By the time you reached Satoru’s (and Hana’s) apartment, the urge and confidence you felt when you came up with your plan ebbed away into pieces and left you lying there in a situation you weren’t sure you could face. You raised your hand up to press a finger against the doorbell regardless, trying to force away the thought that you would see the apartment you helped him move into and decorate. You briefly, for a second, wondered if he had changed it. You also wondered if it would hurt to see the small paintings you’d bought as a present for his new apartment not be in the spots of the wall Satoru put you on his shoulders to pin.

When the door opened, you were met with the same eyes that had haunted your dreams and nightmares. His mouth opened, wide enough for a fly to fly into, then he schooled his features into mere curiosity. You realized that you were the one that sought him out this time, you were the one who dropped in unannounced at his house, which meant you should speak. 

“I need to talk to you.” And frankly, at that moment, you didn’t care if Hana was lurking behind him and able to hear you initiate a conversation with her husband. That was what he was: her husband before your ex-fiance.

He breathed out and shook his head as if willing himself to speak, too. “Yes. Yeah. Come in, Y/N.”

And you did. You saw the walls, the paintings, the small hearts on the corner of the dining table you drew with a sharpie, the couch you picked out, and even the necklace you had forgotten that peeked from under his coat on the coat hanger. You didn’t comment on it, though. 

“Do you want water? Tea? Liquor?” 

You almost laughed at the anxiousness in his voice. “I’m good. This won’t take long.”

Satoru’s expression was what you could confidently call crestfallen, and he didn’t try to hide it this time. You forced yourself not to think about it. You merely went down to the couch in his living room that you picked out and placed yourself on the left corner because you always used to sit on the right. It helped you see the TV better. 

“She isn’t home.” You knew who he meant by ‘she.’

“Goj—Satoru, I need you to do something,” you said, unsure of how to start it off. In all fairness, you hadn’t prepared what you were going to say, it was just a messed up, jumbled backbone of stuff that you knew you had to tell him.

His reply was instant. “Anything.”

“I need you to not feel guilty or—I don’t know, keep feeling guilty but just keep it to yourself, okay?” You sounded like you were talking like a preschooler, and it wasn’t much different because Satoru looked at you with the hopeful eyes a kid has before you reject their wishes. But Satoru wasn’t a kid, Satoru was a man who made poor choices and hurt someone by doing something unexcusable, and that made it okay to tell him to stop. 

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t talk to me. If we’re in the same place, don’t talk to me. Don’t ask me not to hate you. Don’t tell me you regret what you did to me.”

It hurt to break your heart by your own words. 

“Y/N, don’t do this,” he trailed off, eyes wide and filled with fear now. “Please.”

“Stop.” Your own eyes brimmed with tears you weren’t going to shed. It was fine dealing with Satoru when he tried to talk to you, but doing it on your own terms gave you an inexplicable feeling of sadness you hadn’t expected. “You’re being selfish.”

“No. How…”

“You take when you want, Satoru. You know more than anybody else that I loved you and lost myself when I couldn’t. You were there that night in the car, holding me when I cried when you left me. You left me!” you exclaimed, pointing your index in his direction that would’ve jabbed him in the face if he wasn’t further away. “You were there even after you left me. You’re there now, making me all confused and angry, when you know you can’t give me anything. You don’t have any intention of being somebody I need in my life, so leave. Make this easier for me and leave. Let me live my life while you live yours.”

He had shifted down the couch, and though he was still not too close, it felt too close. 

“Don’t—fuck, don’t say that, love. Please. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

You flailed your arms in the air, his words not helping your case at all. “You can be sorry a million times over, but what’s done is done. You can’t… Fuck, Satoru. You can’t do this.”

A moment passed. Then another. He placed his head in his hands, facing ahead while you faced his shaking body. 

“I love you,” he said, and you were lost. 

“Don’t do this to your wife, Satoru. You love her. You’re supposed to love her. Don’t do this to someone else.”

“I love you,” he repeated, his eyes now looking into yours with a familiar fire of determination. “You know that, right? You know that I love you?” His words broke out into a sob that ripped directly from his scratchy throat. “Tell me you know that.”

“Then please leave. Don’t show up. Stop showing up, and stop explaining something that can’t be understood.”

And when Satoru placed a hand on your cheek, you didn’t push it away because you saw that previous fire dwindle within a second. He tugged his lower lip between his teeth as he scanned your warm face, your glassy eyes, and he noticed how you were shivering under his touch. You didn’t push it away because Satoru might’ve been selfish, but you were, too. And you would inhale the embers of him before they turned into ash.

“You want this?” he asked, but you could see he knew the answer. You didn’t reply. He continued, “I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want. But—But I want you to know I wanted it to be you. When Hana walked down the aisle, I thought of you. I wish you’d come. I would’ve never said ‘I do.’ I swear. I’m sorry I fucked up—I fucked us up. I got carried away and…”

You smiled sadly. “Don’t do that to her. You have a chance at being happy, Satoru. Don’t ever do what you did to me again.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Do I what?”

“Have that chance at being happy?”

You thought about the question and Kento’s name flashed in your mind. It might have been small compared to the colossal amounts of feelings you felt with Satoru back then, but it was something. Even though you didn’t shake under Kento’s touch or feel your stomach turning upside down everytime he smiled at you, you felt safe and you knew that if you could stay, Kento would stay, too. 

“I do.”

He inhaled a sharp breath, a single tear falling from his eye. “Is it wrong that I still wish it was me?”

You wanted to say no, it isn’t because a part of me wishes it was you, too. You didn’t. 

He continued, “I can’t let you go, Y/N.” 

Another tear, then another, till they continued streaming down his face. You couldn’t stop them. You couldn’t react to them. Not even when he took his hand away from your face to messily wipe them away between sobs and hiccups. 

“You said you didn’t deserve me, and you were right. Remember that.”

For you, breaking habits was difficult because when you were thirteen, your friend handed you a cigarette and said once you get used to it, it’s akin to the feeling of laying on your bed and the duvet is warm to the bone on a chilly day. 

Waking up on a Monday at seven in the morning was difficult for you probably because as soon as your eyes flickered open, you would see Toji staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows with a rueful look on his features. The first time you’d seen this image was the morning after you, Toji, and little Megumi Fushiguro moved into your new place. It brought a smile to your face, the kind of smile that is only worn by a person when they admire somebody when they aren’t looking. That was until he opened his palms and stared down at his fingers, right hand coming up to softly brush the empty ring finger. He’d bit his lip slightly, and you just about missed him from seeing you awake, before he reached down to the pocket of his plaid blue sleep shorts you’d gifted him and pulled out a ring—the ring, you’d realized—and placed it on the empty finger he was focused on. 

You had beat yourself up over witnessing him having a moment as private as that for the next week without his knowledge, but there was truly no way to bring it up to him afterwards organically. 

You could say, “Hey! I actually saw you put on your ring from your last marriage on your finger that morning when you thought I was asleep.” But that would, in nearly every case, not go down well.

Toji had told you, though, why this had grown into a Monday morning ritual. Well, he didn’t exactly tell you that he woke up a few minutes before you to reminisce about his late wife and their marriage, but you’d put the pieces together like you always did. Apparently, Toji’s late wife would always wake up early on Monday mornings and prepare an otherworldly breakfast for herself, Toji, and Megumi; she claimed it started off the week right, and it always made four-year-old Megumi more inclined to wake up on Mondays. In hindsight, perhaps it was silly that you clung onto that little tidbit Toji had told you in passing when Megumi brought it up, but when you saw him wake up on Monday mornings and start his day off by playing a video reel encased in his mind of Megumi’s mother, Megumi, and himself, it was difficult for you to feel comfortable by your presence around him on Mondays. Still, it was hardly Toji’s fault for missing somebody he’d spent years with who got taken away from his life so suddenly. 

You were just overthinking like you always did.

A Thursday in late June marked one year since you had been living with Toji. A year of going to sleep next to him and waking up with him there. It was a silly anniversary, and you weren’t going to mention it for it would most likely garner confused looks from the Fushiguro’s, but you still decided to cover the dining table with a variety of well-enjoyed foods between the three of you. 

There was a small photo-frame that stood in an arbitrary corner of the table where nobody sat. It was a small, old digital camera picture of you, Toji, and Megumi on a lake and camping trip your friends had dragged the three of you to. It was simple; Toji was sitting on a log, five-year-old Megumi between his legs who grinned wildly with a s’more in his hand, and you sat next to Toji with your head leaning on his shoulder. Your friend had gifted it to you on a random Tuesday, and when you smiled so wide at her, she embarrassedly brushed you off and said, “The person who printed this said there’s a discount if I get two pictures printed for the price of one. I just thought the picture of me and my husband would look good with you and your… Toji.”

Neither Toji nor Megumi had seen the picture. Well, not until the moment Toji walked in with a sweaty Megumi wearing his junior league hockey uniform. Megumi was babbling about the delicious smell until he saw the new addition to the table (after cooing at the takoyaki from his favorite restaurant and telling his father he knew he could smell it while they pulled into the driveway) and picked up the frame with his growing, stubby fingers.

“Is this from Lake Ashi?” he asked excitedly, eyes tracing every corner of the picture as if he was recounting the exact moment it was taken. When you nodded, he said, “I had such a good time there!”

You smiled, and ruffled his dark locks before retracting your hand and saying, “Go shower!”

He stuck out his tongue at you before he ran upstairs, saying something about how nobody can start eating until he’s back. 

You walked to Toji who was watching the scene play out from the other end of the table and wrapped your arms around his neck. “Hey, how was your day?” You grinned slightly as your body melted against his frame, a strange sense of euphoria enveloping you even though you’d only been apart for a day.

His arms wrapped around your waist and he bent down slightly to peck your lips. “Thrilling. I watched a bunch of seven-year-olds run around ice with sticks longer than them.”

“Sounds like a fun time,” you replied, nuzzling into his chest, right against the soft thumping of his heartbeats.

“What’s the good food for today?” he asked, stepping away from your hold and scanning the dishes on the table with a puzzled expression.

You smiled teasingly. “Why? Do I not make good food everyday?”

He snorted, and you concluded that the way he looked at you then was with love. The usual deep set of his brows were relaxed as he reached over to you and flicked you on the forehead. Lovingly. “I cook all the meals because the last time you tried, there was a fire alarm and the entire building had to evacuate.” He paused, staring at you while you opened your mouth to stop him from continuing. He beat you to it, though, by saying, “At four in the morning, too.”

“Me and Megs wanted a late-night-snack,” you argued playfully, slapping his bicep. 

“That you ended up getting in a 24 hour convenience store after running the entirety of the fire department and residents wild.”

“Semantics,” you brushed him off. Walking over to the plates, you started scooping portions and placing it on the plate until you remembered Megumi’s demand.

Your body unconsciously carried you to the photo frame and you picked it up, smiling slightly. Toji walked to stand beside you, his eyes uncharacteristically focused on the slightly overexposed picture. His fingers reached to pull it out of your hands and you didn’t stop him when he walked to the small ledge above the (fake) fireplace to place it between the small collection of Megumi photographs. It was a small gesture, but it was more than you could ever ask for.

Your mind skipped over the fact that all the other photos on the ledge were either taken by Megumi’s mother (five of them were) or had her in them holding Megumi (two of them did). Although whenever your friends had come over to your place, they’d cautiously asked you if you truly are OK with keeping pictures of his late wife in your living room and you’d always said that you were perfectly fine with it. Honestly, it was never your intention to erase her from their lives because, after all, she was Toji’s wife and Megumi’s mother. There was no erasing her, and that was fine whether or not you had a place in their lives.

When you came home from work the next evening, the house was relatively quiet. 

You walked into the living room, feet aching from having to wear short-stump heels but, still, heels all day. Every single day at your job as an editor for a magazine made you question whether or not you truly had the skill to walk around heels, even short-stump ones. But once again, the feeling of taking them off with delicacy because you were afraid the rough insides would scrape the parts of your skin your sock didn’t cover gave you a feeling of triumph. You were convinced that the day you come home without the visceral urge to shred the dark pieces of footwear into pieces would be the day you could claim you were invincible. 

You didn’t call out to Toji because you figured he was probably with Megumi, shopping and whatnot, doing simple father-son activities. He hadn’t texted you all day, and the little demon slithering through your thoughts wanted you to overthink (like you always did) and go berserk. But you had learned to tame that little demon (severely distracting yourself by doing anything and everything).

When you had changed out of your work clothes, showered under a moderately warm stream of water, and thoroughly washed your face to stave away the office particles, you sat down on the couch expecting a text from Toji. It was nine in the evening, and it was dark outside. He had never gone this long in a day without dropping you a text, even if it was just a word, and you weren’t wrong for expecting it. Breaking habits was difficult.

When you scrolled through your missed notifications and scrolled past your friends’ messages, making a mental compartment in your mind to reply to them later, you were surprised to find that Toji had, in fact, not texted you but Naoya Zen’in had. Toji’s cousin. It was simple, short, lighthearted, and it read:

missed you today!

It could have been Naoya texting the wrong person (it wouldn’t be the first time) but an itch in your mind told you it wasn’t.

??

It was simple, short, and lighthearted. You were surprised at how quickly the bubbles appeared on his side of the chat; you barely had time to exit the screen before he’d replied:

the stupid zen’in dinner is boring without you there to annoy toji

he said you were feeling sick tho. feel better

It was rude not to reply, but it was ruder for you to find out this way. Find out what, exactly? That Toji had simply not wanted you to go to the once-in-a-while Zen’in family dinner you had been to a grand total of one time. That was one incident you always pushed to the back of your mind—something you couldn’t do with the Monday morning incident(s) because they always played out in front of you, never missing a week—because if you thought about it too much, you would end up shattering your entire heart and it would all be your own, unstoppable mind’s doing.

Toji wasn’t the one to invite you to dinner last year. Surprisingly, the callous cousin who had manifested in the form of a breaker of peace today was the one to invite you. Your boyfriend had his jaw clenched throughout the entire interaction, and you were sure it was because Naoya wasn’t meant to meet you. You had been at his apartment while Megumi was in school to spend time with him when Naoya burst into his cousin’s home through the spare emergency key Toji had hesitantly given him. It started with Toji yelling at his cousin that it is actually rude to barge into someone’s house without knocking and that the rule applied even if they were cousins and yes, it still applied after they had come closer after being distant and despising each other their entire childhoods. It progressed to you making tea for Naoya that burnt his tongue and Toji telling him that you are no good with anything that heats up. It ended with Naoya bringing up the dinner and how he, too, was introducing his girlfriend (now his wife) to the family and it would be lovely for you to be there, too. He’d said something about divided fire.

The dinner itself was what you could call pleasant. You met his family and they were as civil as they could be surrounded by many people who are related to them. The entire time, though, Toji was bouncing his leg up and down and brushed off your hand when you tried to stop him. 

You do remember his mother had said something to you that ticked Toji off, and it wouldn’t take a mastermind to figure out why. 

“You’re the perfect girl to have as a daughter-in-law, dear.”

Truthfully, you hadn’t realized that Toji would see her words and level its severity higher than you would. That was why after the longest hand of the clock ticked thrice and his chair scraped against the floor when he stood up and walked away wordlessly, you were shocked.

You assumed that, today, Naoya had taken his wife to the Zen’in dinner. You could have texted her to confirm, but you knew. And you weren’t sure if you had any right to be mad at Toji over this. 

When you walked over to the television next to the (fake) fireplace, you noticed something missing. You knew it was missing because despite it only having been a day, you had looked at the picture of the three of you on that ledge for so long the night before when Megumi was fast asleep and Toji was immersed in a book and the image of the scene had been ingrained into your mind. It was somewhere beside the habits, Mondays, and love compartment. 

The picture wasn’t there.

And the only trace in the living room of you being a part of Toji and Megumi’s life had vanished as soon as it materialized. It was just a picture, but it was the first one that you had brought out in the house. Toji was the one to keep it between the other pictures, and he was the one who took it off, too. You understood second-thoughts, and you knew he probably had strong feelings about it but it still hurt. It was akin to being handed candy as a kid then having it taken away from you after the first bite.

You had been heartbroken before, but the way your heart sank into a cold abyss was a feeling you had never experienced before. You weren’t sure if this was your heart breaking or the tendrils of a boyfriend-girlfriend argument sowing its way into the universe and you were just the first to realize it. It had been a year and a day in this apartment you were convinced turned into a home over that time. A year and a day since you and Megumi began collecting stickers from the different stores you went to and stuck to the corners of his whiteboard. A year and a day since you and Toji woke up with each other in the same room after a night of you tossing and turning, coming to almost-there consciousness when Toji would steal the blanket back from you and pull you into his warm embrace because you had a tendency to hog it. 

The door clicked and you weren’t sure when you had gone back to the couch and began wordlessly staring at the ledge. You weren’t sure when this house stopped feeling like home for you, despite your best efforts to make it one. You weren’t sure if it ever was because there were no pictures of you, Toji, and Megumi in the living room.

You barely noticed Megumi coming towards you, pressing a slobbering kiss against your cheek and mumbling, “So tired. Gonna go to bed now. Goodnight.”

When Toji was the only presence you could feel—not see, because you were sure that seeing him would ruin you when you were in this state—in the room, you continued questioning whether or not you could get upset at him over this.

So, you said simply, “I haven’t had dinner yet.”

You heard him sigh softly. When he came to sit next to you and say, “Sorry, love. ‘Gumi’s practice ran late.” You knew Toji, so you knew he probably thought it was overkill to use his son for this lie.

It was like a time bomb was ticking, and you were the time bomb. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, and he was sweet. It made you think, for a hitch of a moment, that he cared. And you knew he did. Care, you mean. Just not in the way you had convinced yourself he did. It might’ve been your fault because you always saw Toji as your boyfriend when, in harsh, world-turning reality, Toji was just your boyfriend.

You have had many boyfriends over your lifetime, so what prompted you to believe Toji was anything more serious? Just because Toji came with a past baggage that weighed just about what you could help him carry and an adorable, hockey-loving seven-year-old kid? Because he moved in with you? People move in together all the time. Hell, you lived with a girl you only spoke to when you had to make a cleaning schedule for the room back in university for a year.

“No,” you replied truthfully. 

In that moment, you were scared of how this interaction would end but you were more scared of how the words you carefully locked away in your mouth had been tampered with by some universal force and were just about to come out. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. You finally turned around to look at him, and you didn’t realize you had stared over every inch of his face, as though memorizing it to a tee. He seemed to realize that, too, because his fingers fished for your hands and suddenly your hands were warm. Under his touch. 

“I haven’t had dinner.” You were sure the words would come rampaging out of your mouth, ready to strike blows at Toji where it hurt, but you were reduced to a mere shell within now and the minute you saw Naoya’s text. 

“Baby?” he asked and it hurt. “D’you want me to make you something? I can. Whatever you want.”

“How was dinner?” you asked, and you wanted to make yourself believe you weren’t waiting for a ‘ha, got you!’ moment, but you weren’t perfect. 

“We just stopped by the convenience store to get some food.” You hated that he was lying because if you didn’t know the truth, you’d believe him. Toji, you realized, was good at lying. 

“Naoya texted me,” you said, shaking your head as if you were trying to get rid of any thoughts.

“What?”

“Naoya texted me. Said he missed me at dinner.” At this point, you knew Toji could see the cracks in your facade. 

Toji didn’t reply for a moment, and you felt like you both were blessed with the silence you needed for a moment. You weren’t prepared, you didn’t have a set of bullet points you wanted to discuss with him like you usually did when you were at odds. No, this time you were discussing everything you always omitted from those bullet point lists; they were off-the-table because you knew they would do more harm than good. They would break the cycle of a comfortable relationship. 

“I didn’t think you wanted to go,” he said, sighing as he squeezed your hands lightly. 

You exhaled sharply. “Please don’t lie, Toji.”

“I mean it—”

“Please don’t lie.” If you weren’t aware of Megumi upstairs, you probably would’ve raised your voice an octave higher. Just because you felt like you had to. But as you pleaded with him, your words came out soft, delicate, and a complete contrast to the red, hot, fiery anger taking space through your veins. 

“I didn’t want you to go,” he admitted.

You had never been stabbed, but you were sure this is close to what it would feel like. “Why?” you croaked out. 

“My family, they’d start asking about when we’ll get married and… yeah. Jus’ didn’t want the hassle.”

“Will we?” You didn’t think before you spoke. 

“What?”

“Get married.”

“What?”

You changed the topic swiftly because truly, you didn’t care about getting married to Toji. As long as you had him and he had you. “Where’s the picture, Toji?”

“What picture?” Surprisingly, he sounded almost OK with talking to you and didn’t curl into himself like he usually did whenever topics such as this almost arose. Almost, because they never completely did. 

You felt like you were breaking an unwritten rule. 

“You know what picture.”

“I kept it in the room, Y/N,” he said, sounding as though he was treading carefully. As though you were a hibernating bear, ready to pounce. 

This shouldn’t be hard. Love shouldn’t—

“Why?” you whispered, closing your eyes as you felt the salty wetness build up. 

He didn’t respond, and you weren’t patient. 

“Why, Toji?—”

“Because it didn’t belong there.”

You wanted to laugh. He might as well have kicked you and knocked the air out of your lungs because the latter did happen. You found it hard to breathe under his stare, his nostrils flaring in annoyance the way they did. 

You didn’t want to ask why, because you knew why. You understood why, and you wished you could be blind to human emotion, to human flaws and errors because it would be a lot easier to walk away from this with the feeling that he was wrong and you were right.

When you stood up, your joined hands pulled away, too. If you weren’t as cynical as you were in that moment, you probably would’ve thought it was symbolic. Because a part of you was slowly pulling away from him, too. And love can be hard, you realized and accepted once again, but it doesn’t have to be dealt with all the time. 

You weren’t sure if you could continue fighting constantly with the thoughts inside your head just so you could feel that Toji is here because he wants to be, and he’s not doing it while comparing you to his late wife. It was difficult to feel you being pushed away from him and his son’s life, even though it happened in the form of a photo frame from a small printing store. But maybe, just maybe, love shouldn’t be harder than you can handle. 

This was one of the days your elbows were resting against one of the thin marble tables in the basement—which, you had to admit, was crafted to perfection to be Suguru’s space in his gallery—and mindlessly scrolling through your phone while he worked on his laptop. 

“Yo.” You heard him call from his desk just a few feet away from you. “I have to run out to pick up a late shipment. I’ll be back in like—twenty minutes? You can stay here, we'll meet up with Nanami once I get back.”

Nanami Kento was another new addition into your life, and you’d be lying if you said he wasn’t the most exciting one. It wasn’t that you hadn’t heard about him before—you had, occasionally from Satoru who was his acquaintance back when they were classmates—but he was fresh and new which made it a lot easier to open up to him. You, Kento, and Suguru had plans for dinner tonight with Reina, too, who backed out a few hours ago because her mother had arrived from her month-long trip. 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Go ahead,” you replied, sending him a small smile over your shoulder as he gave you a short wave, gathered his car key, and went upstairs. 

You just continued swiping through your phone, replying to some text messages from earlier this week that didn’t particularly mean much. You’d spent the past few days at home to only sleep, choosing to spend time with Reina, Suguru, and Nanami. You had been in touch with Shoko, too, but hadn’t found a time to meet up with her since she’d gone abroad for an internship for a couple months. Still, it had taken you a long time before you finally began talking to the friends you had that were connected to Satoru. 

You heard the small ding of the sound the system made when the door before the basement unlocks through the keycard and furrowed your brows. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since Suguru left, there was no chance he was back. It was followed by heavy thumps of footsteps going down the stairs, and you only had to see the black lace-up shoes to know who it was. 

You wanted to scramble for your things and hide underneath a table, but you didn’t have enough time because Satoru saw you the exact moment his face came into view when he stepped on the third-last step. 

“O—Oh. I didn’t know you were here.”

You tried to clear your voice, to pretend that this situation was no big deal. Of course, running into your boyfriend of three years and fiance for a few more months who broke it off with you on a random Tuesday was, in one way or another, a big deal. “He left to get a shipment. I don’t think he’ll be back soon.”

For some reason, for some fucking reason he walked closer to you. You had said that Suguru would take a while because you wanted Satoru to take the hint and leave, not so he could step towards you—closer and closer till you could look into that sea in his eyes almost clearly— and take a seat three chairs down from you. No. You didn’t want him near you, especially not after the night on the balcony. 

“Guess I’ll wait, then.” His voice was honey. It was so smooth, so soft that your ears would feel warm whenever he spoke. 

“You can just call him.”

There was always something you believed when it came to Satoru ever since he began pursuing you before your relationship: he was persistent. He would leave little notes all over your room that you’d find in drawers days after they’d been placed, asking you to go on a date, to give him one chance. Some notes, you found days after you went on said date with him, and that was when you realized how he truly was persistent. It wasn’t just when it came to you, though. When you, Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko went to a bar with an indoor mini golf area, it had taken all three of you to manipulate the ball’s trajectory when he wasn’t looking just so he could pass the hardest route. It was two in the morning and you were ridden with sleep—it wasn’t your fault. When Satoru put his mind to something, he almost always achieved it. 

“No point. I’ll just wait—I haven’t seen him in a while.” Just as you knew, Satoru wasn’t backing down. 

You didn’t know his motives, and you’d tried really hard to not dig deep into his actions to try to find out. Satoru always haunted all your questions, he was like a ghost within your body constantly testing you, trying to get you to question why he did what he did. 

You remembered that you and Satoru were once a blank page, not an entire book that had come to a tragic, unfulfilling end. You tried to erase every word, but they were written in pen and the traces always lingered. So, the only thing you could do was close the book and keep it somewhere far from your sight, but you couldn’t do that when he showed up in front of you. Not as a ghost but as a person, reminding you he was still here, real and moving, and he had pieces of you that you would never get back. 

“I’m leaving,” you murmured, deciding that you had the choice to leave it all behind. To leave him all behind. He could haunt you from within, but you couldn’t let him materialize once again into your life. 

“Y/N, stop,” he said, arms reaching out to you when you walked past him to go to the staircase but stopping as though he realized it was wrong. 

And you replied, “What?” because even though you knew you shouldn’t, a part—a big part—of you was still left in his car where he asked you for the engagement ring. A part of you still couldn’t let him go entirely because you were never good at leaving things behind.

“I want to… apologize,” he began, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. He lifted his hand when you opened your mouth, beginning to say something, and he said, “You don’t have to say anything, okay? Please, just give me five—two minutes of your time. I just need to talk to you.”

And like he told you to, you didn’t say anything because if Satoru wanted to talk for five—two minutes, then you would let him. 

“I got married,” he said, as though he was in a daze within his own mind. You scoffed, but didn’t say anything. “And that… that was fucked up. You didn’t deserve hearing about the engagement three months after I ended ours.” 

Although it was all true, although you had relived all those moments inside your head, hearing Satoru say them made them real. This wasn’t Reina helping you get over him, this was the him you tried to get over for months. It was humiliating knowing he knew exactly what he did, though there was no doubt he didn’t before this. He knew better than anyone how you felt without talking to you because he was there, holding your hand when a stray tear left your eye as if he was still yours.

You still didn’t say anything.

“I met Hana a month before I ended it with you.” You weren’t sure you could hear this. If somebody held a knife to your chest at that moment, you probably would still stand still, completely silent because there were no words left in your mouth. “I didn’t intend on getting engaged with her, Y/N. I meant it when I said I felt I couldn’t be tied down but—” He paused, as if he didn’t want to continue. 

And he didn’t continue, at least for a few minutes that felt like long, grueling hours. 

“But she was new, and I hadn’t felt that… newness for so long. Not since I’d met you. And she said things, Y/N, that made me think we couldn’t get married, that we couldn’t work.” His eyes looked at your face, and it was equivalent to a thousand needles piercing your skin because he waited for you to say something, to agree? But you couldn’t, not even after he had broken you completely and left you on the side of the road like you meant nothing. Because in your stupid, twisted head, you could have worked. If he wanted. 

He continued, taking your silence as a cue. “When I ended it with you, I—I didn’t want to. I swear. You deserved better, and I realized that I didn’t deserve to be anywhere near you. I couldn’t look at you without feeling guilty about the second-thoughts I was having because another girl made me rethink.”

This wasn’t what you expected today, was the only thought swirling through the tendrils of your mind.

“You don’t have to say you understand because I don’t either. I’m not sorry for ending it with you, Y/N, because you didn’t deserve me after all I did, after all I thought about us. But I am sorry for lying to you and, in a way, making our relationship seem meaningless because you probably thought I moved on too quickly.”

“You did,” you said, surprising yourself with the finality of your words. But you couldn’t take it back now that you had made yourself an almost-coherent member of this conversation.

“What?”

“You did move on, Gojo. Too quickly. I don’t think that, I know that and you do, too.”

He tugged his lower lip between his teeth, and you looked anywhere but at his downcast face. It was hard to admit it to him because you couldn’t stop your words, not when he was piling on brick after brick preparing to tumble it all down with you on the other side. If you stayed there any longer—

“I liked Hana then, but the marriage wasn’t what I expected.” You leaned back against the wall, placing some more distance between the two of you. Satoru seemed as though he was clutching at the flimsiest of straws to keep you there, to let you let him talk. “My father—he pushed for it and after losing you, I didn’t fight against it. I thought a marriage like this would hurt less than us getting married and—”

“And what?” you prompted.

“And having to end. I don’t know—I didn’t want us to fail, Y/N.”

You smiled wryly, understanding there was nothing more left for him to explain. “Okay.”

“Okay? That’s… it?”

“I didn’t question why you did what you did before, didn’t try to get answers. I’m not going to change after you’ve given me those answers I never asked for.” At that point, you were looking to find any words to make a swift exit, but you still remained rooted in your spot. 

He sighed, fingers reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You’re saying you would rather not know?”

Of course, you wanted to know, but you had kept yourself from looking for answers. You knew that whatever ran below the surface of Satoru’s flimsy, no-good, unbelievable reason to end your engagement would hurt, and you were always good at taking what he said at face-value. Obviously, you were right but that didn’t grant you the satisfaction of a person whose beliefs were just proven right would. 

“I’m saying I’m over it, Satoru.” Your voice was convincing enough. "And if you want a successful marriage, maybe you should tell your wife that you got involved with her while you were engaged to me. I'm not the only one who you should be apologizing to."

As soon as you turned your back towards him and headed for the stairs, the door on top clicked open and Suguru gave you a wide smile and wave when he saw you on the other end.

It was funny, real fucking funny, how on a random Tuesday, every question that had plagued your mind like a ceaseless tornado over almost two years was answered by the harbinger of pain himself. You had been so deeply lost in your own soul, and even a person drowning felt uneasy when pulled back up into the air. Satoru pulled you out and now, he stared at you as if he was a friend who offered you a single piece of a chip because you were starving while he ate an entire packet of it. You weren’t sure how he felt but, with the way he looked at you, you were sure that some immature, adolescent part of him that’s growth stunted in middle school truly believed he had done you right. By telling you the truth two years later. 

You didn’t notice Suguru had walked down the steps and taken notice of Satoru and was now flashing his eyes between the two of you as if you were a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. You weren’t. 

“Satoru, man. What the fuck are you doing here?” Suguru asked, and you should’ve made your way up the stairs and away from them but you stayed put. Your mind somersaulted, making excuses for yourself to yourself that you had plans with Suguru anyway, and you would leave with him once he makes Satoru leave.

“I just wanted to hang,” Satoru replied, shrugging his shoulders. 

Suguru inhaled a deep breath and you could see the corners of his ears turning a dark, angry shade of red in annoyance as he stared his friend down. “Just leave for now, dude. I’ve got plans.”

You didn’t look at Satoru, but you felt his gaze on you as his footsteps reached closer to the stairs. You moved, not wanting to have any unnecessary contact with him. As he reached you, he halted his steps and looked at you and you could have buried yourself right then into a hole because you hated this. 

“I know I’m not in the position to ask for anything but I want to tell you, again, that I really don’t want you to hate me. We don’t ever have to talk again, if you don’t want to, but please don’t hate me.”

You looked at his eyes, then stared at him for a moment longer. You laughed, it was bitter and held a certain form of venom you had never shown Satoru, at the sincerity in his features. “Say what you just said but slower, just so you can also comprehend how utterly senseless you sound.”

A hint of annoyance flashed across his features before he tamped it down and shook his head. He started heading up the stairs, not bidding Suguru or you a goodbye, and you sighed in relief. 

“Y/N, I—” Suguru started, but you cut him off by pushing him by his shoulders in annoyance. “Woah, woah. What did I do?”

“You didn’t tell me!” you exclaimed, your voice finally coming back to you after whatever-that-was. “He cheated, Suguru! And you didn’t tell me.” You were saying your thoughts exactly as they leaped through your mind, barely comprehending that you had resorted to punching—albeit lightly—Suguru’s chest as you closed your eyes. 

Everything was blank, and for a moment you were convinced you had lost a wire inside your brain throughout this entire ordeal. 

“Hey, listen,” Suguru said, his arms reaching out to gently grab onto your shoulders. “You kept on saying you don’t wanna dig deeper and all that bullshit once the two of you broke up. And you were doing good, Y/N. You know how long it took you to start acting like yourself again? Four months. I didn’t want to ruin your process because you were healing.”

You gritted your teeth and said, “You had no right, Suguru. And you had no right to assume when I moved on because it didn’t take me just four months. If your—if your fiance cheated on you and didn’t tell you, I wouldn’t keep it from you.” Your voice trailed off as you stared into his eyes, and that was when you’d realized you truly couldn’t rely on him because he was Satoru’s friend first and yours second. 

You had—in great fashion—run away from Suguru’s art gallery before he could even form a defense to your words. At that point, you were sure he wouldn’t be showing up to dinner with Nanami because that would not be a good moment for the three of you. You had dug for your phone and texted Nanami, telling him that you’ll be at the restaurant in ten minutes to which he’d instantly replied saying he’ll be there in five.

It didn’t take long for you to drive and reach the restaurant, which is why you were sitting across from Kento who looked more curious than anything. You tried to avoid his watchful gaze, though he didn’t say anything. That might have made it tenfold uncomfortable because he often came to his own conclusions, without asking any questions, and ran with them. 

“Stop staring,” you muttered, fingers absentmindedly flipping through the menu. “And decide what you’re going to eat.”

“I already know,” he replied, unmoving with his stare. 

“You and Geto fight?” he asked as soon as you’d both placed your order with the waiter. He raised a brow when you tilted your head, feigning confusion. “You can tell me, I don’t give a fuck.”

You laughed at the lightness of his words. “Why do you think we fought?”

He let out a chuckle, barely audible, and took his phone out. “Because he isn’t here? And because he texted me and said ‘sorry, can’t make it.’ And he said you two were coming together and his text was sent the same time you said you were on your way.”

“Okay, genius,” you drawl, resting your arms casually on the wooden table. “I guess it could be considered a fight,” you admitted.

His eyes flickered with the slightest hint of interest but it was gone the next second. “Oh, yeah? Lover’s quarrel?”

“God, shut up.”

“Don’t go thinking I’m God just yet,” he muttered, a smirk playing on his full lips.

You threw the napkin in front of you at his face which he, unfortunately, caught with his hand. “Me and Suguru aren’t even friends like that,” you said, almost believing it. Truth was, it was the heat of the moment and you wanted to clutch at every strand of dignity to make it seem like what Suguru did didn’t hurt, alongside with what you now knew Satoru did, too. 

“Uh huh,” Kento sarcastically went along. “So what happened?”

You debated on whether or not you should tell him the entire story, knowing that he was friends with Suguru and sort-of knew Satoru. But there wasn’t anything wrong with confiding in a friend, right? You chose to give him bits and pieces from the day—about how Satoru, your ex-fiance wanted to talk and give you a whole rundown of how he pretty much fell in love with another girl while you were engaged—which slowly got you talking about the few months after the breakup and Satoru’s new engagement. By the time the two of you were about to order dessert, you had told him pretty much everything—not without being prompted though. As soon as the two of you moved on, he’d say something like that fucker’s so stupid. What did he say after that? It was almost like a conversation with Reina, but with Kento it felt different. 

He’d look at you every so often while you talked, a glint present in his eye that usually wasn’t there. He’d run his fingers through his blond hair and slightly lift the direction of his eyes to meet your eye, and if you hadn’t been shit-talking your ex’s best friend, you would’ve felt the warmth radiating through your body under his gaze more. 

“I meant it,” Kento started, chewing the last bit of the cake you forced him to order. “That Gojo kid is stupid for that shit.”

You laughed, biting your lip to contain the blush that crept up your cheeks. “Calm down, otherwise I might start to think you like me.”

He looked at you with a blank stare then tilted his head to the side, as if trying to read you. “You’re dumb.”

“What?”

“You actually think I’m not interested in you?” he asked, then laughed as if it was the most preposterous thing he had heard. You thought about it for a moment, and realized every attempt at flirting he made, you brushed off as a joke. That’s just Kento, you’d kept on saying to yourself. You’d ignored every attempt he made because the waters after a three-year-relationship were tumultuous, and it was never your first thought that Kento was truly interested everytime he made a comment slightly suggestive.

It took you a moment to realize you still had to reply to him, and in that moment you allowed yourself to feel the warmth underneath his gaze. “What?”

“I’m not saying I’m about to drop to one knee and propose or something. I’m just telling you there’s interest present.”

You weren’t surprised; only Kento could make something that people always shy away from saying seem so easy. You smiled. You weren’t sure if this could work, and you weren’t even sure if this conversation would ever lead to anything in the future, but it felt like a welcome recess from every other part of the random Tuesday. For a moment, it was easy to forget Satoru, Satoru’s betrayal, and Suguru’s behavior. Kento had come into your life during, what you’d consider, a limbo period where you were still navigating the almost-two-years-ago-breakup and its aftermath. He was fresh, and he was new. Perhaps that was the newness Satoru was talking about.

And maybe there was something innately weird about Kento, someone who was interested in you, to listen to you talk about your ex and then tell you he’s interested in you, but you’d always been a fan of the unexpected.

“Don’t go all quiet,” he murmured, twirling his glass of water around absentmindedly.