Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“‘Miki, are you watching?” Satoru asks, and she jolts, picking her eyes up as she straightens, whipping her attention off of the miniscule curses riding the people that ride the train. 

“Yes!” She assures, meeting his eyes behind dark black glasses, hands fidgeting in the skirt of her new school uniform in excitement and certain unease when she still hasn’t gotten used to being able to see the monsters Megumi can. “Our next stop is Akabane station,” she recites, and Tou-ru smiles, nodding, tugging gently on Megumi’s ear to grab his attention where it’s stuck on the window.

“Hey, you listen too,” he says, and Tsumiki leaves half a mind to the conversation, fingers jittering restlessly.  Another curse wobbles on the back of a person a meter or two away, gurgling lowly, and she can’t help a shiver. “Suguru and I will only be riding with you for the next week, and then you’ve got to be able to do it on your own.”

She has no idea what this new school is going to be like. She sort of misses her old one, but Tou-san had explained that it was too far away to justify staying there, and Tsumiki can understand that. As it is, she’s a little nervous about making just a thirty minute trip to and back every day. 

‘I wonder what the kids there will be like?’ She thinks, swaying slightly with the motion of the metro, leaning back against Tou-ru’s legs where he stands and holds one of the swaying hand-grips, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. The kids at their old school had been…nice enough, she figures, when they’d all been about the same. No one else there had had the money for new, nice uniforms, so she hadn’t felt too out of place when she’d show up each day with hand washed but clearly worn clothes. 

‘You have five new uniforms in your closet,’ she reminds herself, smoothing her hands down the pressed sweater, dyed a dark, navy blue to match the skirt. ‘None of them have holes, none of them are dirty. You don’t look poor.’

“Easy,” Satoru chimes, catching her when the train lurches to a stop and she overbalances, the weight of her backpack pulling her down. It’s new too, shiny and a glossy red, what everyone has instead of the beat up old bag her mom had left her. He chuckles, gently pushing her back upright, adjusting her glasses and straightening out her sweater collar. When Tsumiki looks up, he’s smiling, fond and simple, before he blinks away to nag Megumi about not yanking on the neckline of his shirt again.

‘Come on, Tsumiki,’ she thinks, trying to muster up the determination to be excited instead of nervous as they wait for the doors to open, what she expects to be a two minute walk to their next stop, ‘it’ll be a good day- a great day.’  

For once, she might actually fit in, and not because she comes from the part of the neighborhood below the poverty line. She’ll meet new people who will be able to see her for her, and not her clothes, or her hair, or her scuffed up old shoes, because she’ll look like them and have things to talk about like them. It won’t be awkward anymore, or lonely, or a little nerve wracking when her Sensei leans down with that awful concerned look on her face, and asks, ‘is everything all right at home, Tsumiki?’ As if she still has parents to be there.

Now, she does. Now, she’s like every other kid with a real closet and a real bedroom, real domestic adventures and real stories to talk about. ‘I’m going to make friends,’ she thinks, determined to be excited. 

“I love you,” Satoru sings, smooching a large kiss to Megumi’s cheek to his souring scowl, and then an even larger one against Tsumiki’s just to spite him, knelt down to their level on the sidewalk. “Go to the front desk if you need them to call me for any reason, okay?” He reiterates, a thread of worry he hasn’t been able to shake all day making him spill the words again, even as both Tsumiki and Megumi nod. 

The two of them know his and Suguru’s numbers by heart; they know not to talk about jujutsu there; they know just about everything but-

“I’ll be back here at three-thirty to ride the trains with you again,” he says, for what has to be the third time, and doesn’t protest when Megumi finally groans and shoves at his face in exasperation. 

“Leave already,” he complains, a flush high on his cheeks like he’s embarrassed to be doted on in public, and Tsumiki snickers behind one manicured hand. Her nails catch the morning light, uncolored as per policy but still sneaking around it with a glossy finish of clear top coat. 

Satoru only winds an arm around his waist, tugging Megumi in further to blow a raspberry against his cheek. “So mean already,” he pretends to bemoan as he quietly shrieks, wriggling. “Have a good day,” he wishes, pressing a real kiss to Megumi’s forehead as he calms down, murmuring, “I love you, baby,” to him, reaching for Tsumiki to pull her down for another he leaves on her nose, a soft-spoken, “darling,” for her.

“We will,” she promises, a wide smile on her lips and a clear hope in her eyes. “Isn’t Tou-san getting back from his mission soon?” She wheedles, giving him a side eye as she tilts her head, lips playfully pursing. 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Satoru says, finally standing up, giving Megumi’s ear a last tug. He stands on the sidewalk a little ways away from the front steps, watching their hands slip into each other as they turn, steadily getting farther as they hurry to join the growing stream of students pouring into the gate. 

“Please have a good day,” he mutters into his knuckles as he watches them disappear behind the brick walls, not remembering much about their schooling experience because he’d kept hands off about it the first time. 

He sorely regrets that now. He doesn’t remember whether or not Tsumiki had friends here, if Megumi had problems. He hadn’t begun paying attention to it until they’d gone to middle school and Megumi had started punching people. The most involvement he’d had back then had been forging the documents to prove Tsumiki’s hair color and Megumi’s green eyes to be real, if paying for it out of pocket didn’t count.

He forces himself to sigh, tear his eyes away from the thrum of the crowd’s cursed energy swallowing them whole, and turn on his heel. Walking for a minute finds him a small ally he tucks into, vanishing with the scent of ozone and a slight, stirring breeze.

“Everyone,” Hayakawa-sensei announces, his voice low and smooth as he holds a hand out, gesturing, “I’d like to introduce you to Fushiguro Tsumiki. She’s our new transfer student from Itabashi. Please treat her well.” 

“Hello,” she says, staring out at a small sea of kids who look- like her, she has to remind herself. Their new uniforms and undirtied shoes look like hers. “It’s nice to meet you all. Please take care of me.” She bows maybe a little too aggressively, nerves winding up her shoulders like the prickle of static, fingers squeezing tightly into the fabric of her skirt. 

When she stands up again, she darts her eyes around the classroom, half an ear on listening to where Hayakawa-sensei points out her seat, the other absorbing the dull chorus of many voices repeating the greeting back to her. There’s two girls leaning together in the back of the classroom, whispering. A pair of boys exchanging a note. One girl with thick glasses eyes her curiously, another with a high ponytail scrutinizing her clothes.

‘It’ll be a good day, Tsumiki,’ she repeats, as she walks to the one open seat in the third row to the left, wearing a smile when she looks at the other kids she passes. Her hands feel shaky when she begins to unpack her backpack, the leather the same as all the others and yet the stares boring into her skin. ‘It will.’

The nerves don’t go away as she opens her textbook as Hayakawa-sensei begins class, the pencil case at her elbow that Suguru meticulously helped her pack flowered and cute and not missing anything everyone else has. 

The stares burn against the back of her neck.

“Fushiguro-kun,” Sensei asks, halfway into their math section, chalk pausing as he finishes writing on the board, “can you tell me the first step to solving this?” She freezes as he points to the two fractions set up on the blackboard, a minus sign between them and nothing she knows how to do even though her notebook has steadily been filling for the past two hours.

“You,” she starts, stuttering, eyes darting to her sides where the girl with the thick glasses sits on her left, the boy who hasn’t stopped passing notes to his friend on the right, swallowing thickly. She doesn’t know. “You look at- at the…the bottom number?” She offers, shrinking in her seat as her words weaken, feeling stricken.

Hayakawa-sensei’s eyes narrow, a look passing over his face that she recognizes before he nods, tapping the board with a knuckle. “Correct,” he says, “but we call them denominators. Remember that,” he implores, and ears burning, she nods. 

A snicker floats up from the back of the room, and Tsumiki sinks further, gritting her teeth together hard enough that her head hurts as Sensei calls on another girl and gets an expected answer almost immediately. Her eyes burn, and lips pressed together, she refuses to cry as she shakily copies down the problem onto paper with all her other notes.

The material is hard- harder than her old school had been. It’s hard keeping up, hard when Sensei starts in on a new topic or a new material that she barely remembers being introduced to, hard when it moves rapidly and efficiently and with no time to give to anyone lagging behind. She’s floundering, treading water just enough to keep her nose above the waves, but she knows it isn’t sustainable. She’s smart enough to put the pieces together when she finds them but she isn’t stupid enough to say she’ll keep from drowning, eventually.

‘Private schools are too much,’ she thinks, frantically erasing a character she wrote wrong to put the right one down before Hayakawa-sensei moves on again.

No one had ever cared back at the old school if she’d used the wrong terms, or didn’t turn in her homework, or spent class figuring out how much they could spend to buy ingredients for dinner so long as she passed the tests. No one had ever said anything if passing meant barely, or her attendance was one absence away from a call to the office, or if neither of her missing parents had never showed up to conference week. 

No one had cared so long as she kept afloat, so long as she showed up, did enough to not slip under, and left with her head ducked and Megumi trailing after her. No one cared if she spent every evening helping to do his homework just to show up to class the next day with none of her own done. 

‘It’s okay,’ she thinks, hand cramping and a headache picking up behind her eyes as she tries to make sense of the problem on the board, ‘I can fix this. Tou-san and Tou-ru can fix this. I just have to get through today.’

She blinks, noticing glasses-girl abruptly look away from her, and keeps her own eyes resolutely fixed on the board. 

‘It can still be a good day, Tsumiki,’ she thinks, even though the words warble inside her own head, her pencil shaking in her grip. She hasn’t made a pariah of herself yet.

‘This is miserable,’ she thinks, isolated at her desk over the lunch break in a room full of chattering kids, unpacking the bento Tou-ru made her this morning and looking around at the circles of already established friends. She’s the only person by herself- even the girl with the thick glasses sits at the window talking to someone. 

‘No,’ she thinks, holding onto her bento as her nerves racket higher, eyes landing on the main group of girls in the center of the classroom, laughing and talking and eating together. ‘It doesn’t have to be. Try to make a friend,’ she thinks, slowly standing. ‘Just try.’

“Hello,” she says, interrupting the group as she falls to a shuffling stop at the edge of their circle, roaming through a myriad of curious eyes. “Could I eat with you all?”

“...You’re the new girl, right?” One asks, sleek dark hair and a little red barrette pulling it back from her face to the left side of her temples. She’s pretty.

“Yes,” Tsumiki answers, holding a little tighter to her lunch, trying her hardest to exude as much friendliness as possible as she smiles. “I- We just moved to Itabashi,” she offers, stumbling slightly, not entirely sure of what to make of their expressions. 

“So you’re not from Saitama?” Another of the girls asks, her hair short around her face, the brown of her almond eyes a dark, rich chocolate. 

“No,” Tsumiki replies, shaking her head slightly, “I’ve always lived in Tokyo.”

“Really? Which parts?” The girl with the red barrette asks, oddly interested to know, and swallowing down the sharp lance of nerves, Tsumiki only shrugs slightly, fighting to keep the smile placid on her face.

‘Don’t say Yanaka,’ she thinks, the shout loud in her head, ‘say anywhere but Yanaka.’

“M-Minato,” she lies, a harsh wave of anxiety settling in her stomach, and can’t help the wary thing in the back of her head from shuttering slightly as all the girls seemingly lean in, interested. 

“Really? Tell us about it,” one asks, overlapping with the short haired girl’s request, “what’s the best boutique there? I’ve been begging my mom to take me to Tokyo for weeks.” 

“Well,” Tsumiki begins, falling down into the empty chair behind her, absently popping open the lid of her bento, breathing out a sigh of relief that she has an answer because Satoru and Suguru took them shopping at a few malls over break, there. Tucking one of her bangs behind her ear, she starts to talk, recounting what she remembers as the questions come like Sensei’s demands for mathematics answers.

‘Friends,’ she thinks, as two of the girls bicker between each other over the merits of different stationary names she doesn’t even recognize, ‘right. It’s not so hard.’ Even sitting in the group, included in the conversation and complemented on the adorable lunch her mother must have made her, she doesn’t entirely feel right.

A glasses-heavy stare lingers on her back for the rest of the period.

“Seriously Suguru, why’d you eat them? You didn’t need to,” Satoru chides, a note of discontent in his voice even as his hands stay on his forehead, holding back his hair as he retches. Suguru only heaves, dragging in long, gasping inhales, struggling for any oxygen he can get in between contractions. 

He feels the palm that skims down to his back, cool where he’s hot but warm by itself as it rubs carefully between his shoulder blades and his newest tattoo, a silent, wordless comfort wrinkling his shirt. Maybe a year ago, maybe two, he would have taken Satoru’s words as callous, or ignorantly mean. Maybe between all his convulsing shudders, he would have heard the berating and lashed out in turn. 

“I-” He gasps, choking on strings of his own bile, “wanted- sp-spares-” He’s ducking down again before he can even get the words out, the back of his throat burning and the enamel of his teeth twinging as more acid spills past his lips. 

“Easy,” Satoru murmurs, the hand on his back winding further down until it becomes an arm curling around his chest, holding steady where his rattle with trembles holding onto the toilet’s rim, his body seeking betrayal in turn for his own. “Don’t waste your breath.”

As it is now, though, he knows better than to assume Satoru could be chastising him. The words are harsher because they’re worried, discontented because they’re anxious. They don’t match the tightened grip of his arm in anything but tone, can’t seem to reconcile with the palm on his forehead holding back his hair until he looks past the words themselves and at the way they’re said.

‘We’re both just a pair of liars, aren’t we?’ Suguru thinks, and he’d laugh if he wasn’t busy throwing up all the nothing he had in his stomach.

He groans, finally slumping, knowing Satoru will catch him when he crashes. He feels awful. His head pounds, his stomach is cramping, he can feel the curses slowly unwinding in his belly into little ribbons of malice and hatred and poison. Maybe Satoru is right that he shouldn’t have eaten them. 

He turns his head into the cold when he feels the baby wipe against his cheek, eyes shut as he sits against Satoru’s shoulder for a moment and tries to remember how to breathe. His tongue tastes like a burnt body, like ash and corpse and death beneath the bile. His hands are still shaking, tremoring in a way he’s never figured out how to avoid whenever a curse comes back up.

“...Did the mission go alright?” Satoru asks, after another handful of shortened moments pass, and exhausted, Suguru cracks open his eyes. 

“Yeah,” he rasps, unable to help a cough, bringing one hand up to unsteadily smear at his mouth again even though all the saliva and acid was wiped off. “Took an hour. Said it was second grades. Guess what they actually were.” He snorts, blinking his gaze upward to look at the thinned expression on Satoru’s face, the unhappy press of his lips together. 

He tilts his chin up when the kiss comes, skimming his fingertips along Satoru’s jawline even as they shake slightly, sinking into the softness of his glossy lips and relaxing into the palm cupping along his neck. ‘I love you,’ he thinks drowsily, eyes lidded as he watches the fan of Satoru’s white lashes up close, content or relieved that even tainted and soiled like this, he’ll still touch him. It makes living with the ugliness easier when he knows that even at his lowest, at his most vile, Satoru will still love him.

“Can you stand?” He murmurs, finally pulling away, if away could be called the faint distance between their noses where their lips still touch. Suguru hums, snaking one hand into Satoru’s front pocket for the lozenges he knows he brought. 

“It’s like they pay us just to be a pain in our asses,” he grumbles, aimlessly rambling as he pulls them to standing, not moving at all as Suguru wiggles his fingers around in his pants for the two cough drops. “I mean, seriously, they’re still lying on mission records? I have to respect the balls at least, but I would have thought the passive aggressive backlash would have taken longer than two weeks to come back.”

Suguru snickers, unwrapping one of the menthol candies. He pops it into his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the underside of Satoru’s chin as he finally meanders away on unsteady legs, ducking out of the bathroom for the small sitting area outside of it. He hears the toilet flush, more grumbled complaints floating past the doorway, and crumples the wrapper in his hand as he glances at the vending machine sat against the right wall. 

‘No,’ he thinks, collapsing on the bench with an accidental groan, head tipping back to thunk against the shut windows, ‘it’ll just come back up.’ He wonders for a moment if killing another elder might solve their problems- they wouldn’t be so bold to give him an incorrectly labeled first grade mission if they murdered another one of them, would they?

A sudden flash of cursed energy has him tensing, wondering who else is in this part of the school when he’s unable to recognize the feel of it. It’s almost certainly not anyone from a clan- they wouldn’t be in this wing, and it couldn’t be any other official. There’s no reason for anyone to be looking for them outside of the verdicts no one is intent on fulfilling. 

So who, then, he wonders?

“Hey,” a voice calls, and curiously, Suguru looks up. “Are you Getou?” Brown eyes stare back at him from the doorway, and he feels his brows furrow, trying to recall how he knows this woman from under a faint wash of déjà vu. 

“Who’s asking-?” He says, and blinks in slight surprise when he’s completely talked over.

“What’s kinda girl’s your type?” The woman interrupts, her bright eyes imploring where they look down at him for an answer, and Suguru quietly closes his lips to keep the sour sort of annoyance off his face.

“Tsukumo?” Satoru asks, surprised as he steps out of the bathroom, and he watches as she turns, something excited tugging her lips into a smile.

“Oh, so you do know me!” She says, splitting into a grin, and immediately Suguru finds the words stuck on the tip of his tongue.

‘Tsukumo Yuki, the special grade who never goes on any missions,’ he thinks, slumping further down the bench as Yaga’s mantra recites in his head, ‘and fucks around taking trips overseas.’ He watches her back as she and Satoru start to talk, a flurry of words he’s in no mood to keep up with when it’s not even eleven in the morning and he’s already got heartburn. 

So that’s who. 

‘What’s she doing here?’ He muses, batting away a wave of tiredness he wouldn’t normally be feeling after a normal grade, mundane mission. He definitely shouldn’t have consumed those curses- not after testing out what he had. Even partially forming all nine pieces of Jougo’s reclaimed domain, incomplete dregs more than anything else, is swallowing him whole.

“I heard you two nuked the higher ups,” Tsukumo chortles, inviting herself over to sit down beside him, slinging an arm along the window ledge as she crosses her legs, immune to his oily side eye. “I’m impressed, really,” she continues, before Suguru even has time to tense, flipping a stray strand of long blonde hair over her shoulder with one raised hand. “It’s about time a special grade caused some societal collapse around here.”

“What, too lazy to do it yourself?” Satoru ribs, crossing his arms where he stands in the middle of the room, one white eyebrow raised and black glasses set firmly on his nose. Tsukumo scoffs, gesturing lazily as she rolls her eyes.

“I’ve been busy,” she replies, tapping her foot aimlessly along the floor, “and besides, I hate the college. I want nothing to do with those old gasbags, murder included.”

Beside her, Suguru sits, not saying a word as he feels his eyes widen. He’s never met another sorcerer who openly admits they hate this system, this hierarchy. Kento is too stiffly polite to say it, and Haibara tries to find the optimism in things even when he’s agreeable to acknowledging that they’re broken. Mei Mei profits off of their messed up system, and Utahime is a bit of a traditionalist because to her, it’s always been the way it is and will always stay the way it is.

It’s just been the three of them together alone, unified in their animosity.

“Just kidding,” Tsukumo jokes, shrugging, and Suguru carefully sets his face into stone. “But not really. We don’t see eye to eye. They want to just keep chugging along treating the symptoms, but I wanna get to the cause,” she says, turning her head to catch his eye, and carefully, Suguru doesn’t react.

‘What is she looking for,’ he wonders with no small amount of wariness, noting the way Satoru has gone unnoticeably tense across from where they sit. She sort of reminds him of the therapists his parents had made him see when he’d been a kid, already having made up their minds about him before they’d even met.

“What do you mean?” Suguru offers, tone pleasantly polite when it becomes obvious that she’s looking for a question, and Tsukumo tilts her head, long blonde hair swaying with the motion. 

“I don’t want to hunt cursed spirits,” she claims, the set of her eyes certain and heavy when he meets them, weighted by a determination he’s only recognized in Satoru before. “I want to create a world where cursed spirits aren’t born.” 

“Isn’t that a little ambitious?” Satoru cuts in, and Suguru recognizes the nervous thing in how he hides his hands in his pockets, how he won’t meet anyone’s eye if it isn’t through opaque glass. For a moment, he’s confused- what does Satoru have to be nervous about? And then it hits him.

“Only if your plan was to kill all non-shamans,” he murmurs, crinkling the lozenge wrapper between his fingers as he pulls it back out of his pocket, staring at the black glasses hiding Satoru’s eyes. He knows exactly what sigil his fingers are entwined into inside his pocket, knows exactly what thoughts are running through his head.

“...You know, Getou,” Tsukumo starts, her clasped hands under her chin as she thinks, eyes moved away for the moment, “that’s a decent plan.” 

He can’t help how he tenses slightly, how the cool feeling of slippery anxiety begins to drip into his stomach with the leftover remnants of his swallowed curses. 

‘Is this how it started?’ He wonders, the cold of rancid memories chilling his skull. He doesn’t know all of it- he doesn’t think he could handle knowing all of it, but he knows more than enough from everything he’s seen in Satoru’s domain, everything he can guess on his own. The little trembling words that had whispered against the shell of his ear in the dark when it had first dribbled out into the open like an oil spill.

“It could be easier, using evolution against itself,” Tsukumo continues, like she hasn’t noticed the sudden thickened air, how Satoru stands and doesn’t speak, as if he can’t bring himself to even open his mouth. “But it would take someone crazy to do all that,” she huffs, raising her hands in a shrug, “and I’m not that nuts.”

For a moment, none of them speak, and Suguru sits on the bench in the small room on the edge of the school, drowning in the roiling waves of his thoughts. Hatred, he thinks, is a very fickle thing. 

“Do you hate non-shamans, Getou?” Tsukumo asks, leaning against the wall, a curious expression on her equally curious, non-judgmental face. He sees Satoru twitch, catches the flinch that doesn’t but desperately wants to tear through him like a blade, and looks to his left where brown eyes study him as if they’re trying to dissect him alive.

It almost reminds him of the person wearing Itadori Kaori’s body, but he knows better than to compare ancient, malignant evil to ethically dubious curiosity. Maybe they become the same thing once either of the two lives long enough, but Tsukumo is no curse, and she’s no immortal either. 

‘Yeah, right,’ he thinks, the look in her eye familiar for more than just scrutiny. It’s Shoko, he knows, and maybe just the same as she is now, itchy-fingered and deathly curious- possibly even given too much power to abuse, and fighting the urge to wield it recklessly. He doesn’t know. 

For a moment, he hesitates to answer, because as much as he knows what he believes and what he forced himself to in another life, he has a taste for that curiosity, too.

“...Yes,” Suguru says, just to see the genuine flinch crack through Satoru’s frame, just to try the weight of the words on his tongue, “I could.”

He wants to know- wants to get a look at those crossroads, to understand a taste of what he might have felt in another world, another life. He wants to wade through the hatred, the paralyzing indecision, the ‘I don’t know,’ that would have ruined him, once. 

“Oh?” Tsukumo tones, intrigued. “Why’s that?” 

“Non-shamans are dangerous to us when they’re ignorant, and they’re the reason we have these terrible jobs at all,” Suguru begins, eyes narrowed and fingers restless as he toys with the candy wrapper, unable to help his own curiosity as he thinks through the problem, even if it hurts Satoru a little to do so. It isn’t a hurt they can’t come back from in the slightest, and besides that, he wants to understand.

Maybe if he does, it would feel less like a guilt.

“If we eradicated them, then what curses would be left to form? We’d have an ideal world with no suffering for sorcerers, wouldn’t we?” Even as he speaks, he can see it- the hazy, unclear vestiges of a plan he must have believed in, once. 

If there were no more curses, then there would be no more pain for people like him, with parents that hadn’t understood and had tried to fix, all to his own detriment. There would be no more weight for people like Satoru, overworked to the bone and alone in his own power. They wouldn’t have to carry the world on their shoulders if there was no world to carry, and for a moment, it all makes sense.

“But that’s circular thinking,” Suguru refutes, watching the wrapper fold and unfold in his hand, a sort of sympathy for his counterpart diluting in the simmering disdain for missing the obvious entirely. “Non-shaman’s negative emotions create our problems, we only have problems because negative emotions create them. Isn’t it missing a little nuance?” He knows one rash outlash of murder was what pushed him over the edge into forming a decision, but he also knows there was space between it and his choice to walk away. 

‘Is that how you lived through every day?’ He wonders, maybe a little cruelly as he thinks of another him, lying to himself that playing god could give Satoru any semblance of peace, even if it came at a cost, just to make it easier to sleep at night. He can’t see any other way he could live with leaving for no reason, other than a hastily made meaning besides a cushy bed of lies.

‘And what does that make me now?’ He muses, red on his hands already if not for the same reasons, if not for different meaning. 

Tsukumo barks a laugh, a sly smile slipping onto her lips as she darts a glance at where Satoru stands, unerringly silent as they quietly talk. “You have proof of that?” She asks, lifting a brow, and he shrugs.

He’s been thinking about that new world Stitches had spoken about, what Satoru’s told him of it and those sentient curses fallen in an obedient line for it, so desperate to be human even while proclaiming to be better than them. He’s been wondering how, if they created their perfect world made of curses, wouldn’t it stand to reason that in creating a new status quo, curses would just evolve with the sentient ones? What kind of evil would inhuman turmoil make?

“Not for you, I don’t,” he snarks, unwilling to hand out precious information to someone he doesn’t know. There’s a reason Satoru hasn’t spoken, after all, even if most of it comes from the agonized want for Suguru to come to his own decisions and conclusion, even if it means a destruction, a small death. 

“So…what,” Tsukumo muses, waving a hand, “you want anarchy?”

“No,” he says, watching Satoru fidget imperceptibly, “I want equity. I don’t know if creating an ideal world like yours is possible,” he admits, shrugging slightly as he turns back towards Tsukumo’s gaze, heavy and a little scrutinizing, “so I’d rather change the things I can instead of chasing after a fairy tale.”

“...And what about Fushiguro Toji?” Tsukumo presses, a narrowing of her eyes the only sign of her mild irritation. “He had absolutely zero cursed energy,” she says, holding up one hand in a perfect circle, “and there’s another girl almost like him who was born a few years ago.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t possible,” Suguru throws back, lacing a pleasant smile on his face to be placating or annoying or both, “just that I don’t want to waste my efforts on the theoretical.” 

Tsukumo huffs again, not quite a scoff so much as a harsh exhale, a note of frustration hidden in the coy smile on her lips. She was looking for something in him from the moment he said he could hate non-shamans, he knows, spinning the wrinkled wrapper between his fingers. Just like everyone else had, just like everyone else does- peering with widened eyes, with narrowed ones, looking at him as if they could find what it is they’re searching for if only they did it long enough. 

“What?” She says, as if she’s thinking out loud, tilting her head as she looks him up and down. “You have someone to make it better for?” 

“If you’re asking who I knocked up,” Suguru begins, snide as he stands, “you’re barking up the wrong tree.” 

Satoru muffles a sputter into a closed mouth cough, looking away as his ears start to redden, and Suguru decides that he’s done for the day. He was tired before the philosophy debate, and now he’s just exhausted after it. It feels a little too close to a psych evaluation for his tastes, and he’s been more than tired of those since years ago.

He only sticks his tongue out when Satoru glares at him, unrepentant for petty revenge. He ignores Tsukumo entirely as he raises his hands to cup both sides of Satoru’s face, pulling him down the handful of centimeters they stand separate to meet his eyes over the rims of the glasses. He’s glad when the naked fear isn’t hidden in the lines forcing them taut with stress, that he isn’t lying with a false bravado, and offers a wordless apology in the taste of a menthol-cold kiss.

He doesn’t dislike Tsukumo, he decides. There’s a point in her contrary words and poking philosophies, and he can recognize that they need people like her- they’re too busy to run with theories and ghosts when they’re tethered to the real world. Tsumiki and Megumi need them, and so long as they do, neither of them will have the time necessary to dedicate to changing the whole world instead of just a part of it. Changing their own world is the most they can do for now.

“I like selfless, egotistical idiots,” he says, turning his head as they break apart with a smirk at Tsukumo’s simultaneously elated and gobsmacked expression. “To answer your question, earlier.”

“Hey,” Satoru tones, brows knitting together, but he doesn’t say much else- a testament to how rattled he must feel.

“I’ve gotta know,” Tsukumo starts, a mischievous thing in her narrowed eyes, the sly smile crimping her lips. “Does the carpet match the drapes?” Satoru’s mouth drops open in scandalized offense as Suguru laughs, genuinely amused.

“I bet the higher up’s hate you,” he snickers, unable to help a real grin, and Tsukumo shrugs, raising her hands.

“Guilty and proud,” she proclaims. “I wanted to be at the trial they held for you two, actually, but I was tied up in America.” Satoru hums in slight surprise, blinking behind his glasses. 

“It’s probably better that you weren’t,” he says, hands creeping along his waist until they find enough fabric to curl into. “One of our kohai yelled, ‘that’s bananas,’ after we got the verdict, and it would have been kind of hard to be taken seriously with someone cackling in the stands.”

“You’re joking!” Tsukumo sputters, rocking up onto her heels as she barks out a cracking laugh, hands around her middle as her face splits into a widened smile. “Oh that is rich,” she cries as she settles back down, dragging a finger under one eye. “You’re right. I’d have loved to witness the murder but that would have killed me on the spot.”

Suguru contemplates for a moment, his palms still soft on Satoru’s face, staring at Tsukumo where she stands just behind them. She isn’t any sort of evil that he can recognize, and she isn’t any sort of uptightly moral he can see. She’ll do her own thing, her own research, whether they work with her or not- but she’s the only other special grade in the world aside from them, and for all that they’re strong enough on their own, they don’t have to be.

“Yuki,” he says, catching her attention as brown eyes flicker to his face, an open consideration in them at his offer, “the drapes.” He smiles, thin and pleasant. “They do match the carpet.”

She howls a laugh again as Satoru pinches his side with no small amount of force, face flaming, and Suguru only shrugs, squishing his cheeks together. He tilts his head, lifting one brow, and knows Satoru gets it when he heaves a sigh and doesn’t say a word, grumpy above the relief. Suguru kisses him again, just because he can, and it’s only tame because Tsukumo Yuki is stood barely a meter behind them, laughing like a hyena.

“I’m sure I’ll see you two around,” she chortles, shoving her hair out of her face as they both turn, listening.

“Definitely,” Satoru replies. “We might know some things that could be useful for your research,” he hedges, eyes narrowed in thought. “The next time you’re in Tokyo, give me a call.” He shuffles one arm back, reaching into his pocket to toss his phone to her, and Suguru lets his eyes shut through a yawn, head dropping down onto Satoru’s shoulder.

“Will do,” she says, whistling a short song as she taps away at his phone. “You owe me a fight, too. I saw the shit you guys did to the school. If I don’t get one full technique spar at least once then you can kiss my ass the next time I’m in the country.”

Suguru snorts, eyes hidden against Satoru’s dress shirt as he feels the tossed phone being caught. “Big balls for someone who never takes any missions,” he mutters, though the words are good natured, and smiles when he hears the snicker. 

“Yeah yeah, call me a bum and get on with it,” Tsukumo calls, the step of her boots loud against the wood as she starts to leave. “...Suguru, Satoru,” she starts, the words a little more serious and slightly hesitant as she lingers on the stairs, and he looks up. 

“If you ever wanted to just- tear it down, get rid of all the old assholes.” She just looks like a normal person standing on the steps, blonde hair blowing in the soft breeze and clothing casual next to the formal architecture of the school. “Hell, even if you just need a third set of hands to handle whatever shitty apocalypse is happening. Give me a call,” she promises, “and I’ll be there.”

It’s the weight of her gaze that sets her apart, the unwavering stone to her face that speaks of conviction made of hardened, tested resolve. How she stands perfectly relaxed after a declaration of a massacre, intent to do anything wrong so long as it makes even one right.

“...We will,” Satoru agrees, the other half of the promise. Suguru nods, uncertain if he’s disappointed to see her go, relieved, or some odd combination of the two. 

“It was nice to meet you, Yuki,” he calls as she reaches the road, her bike parked on the shoulder. She raises one arm, waving it behind herself as she mounts it, the loud rumble of its engine shaking the walls as it’s started. They stand together, watching her disappear down the road, a trail of blonde hair and wild cursed energy.

“You’re such a jackass,” Satoru mutters, pinching him again, and Suguru tries to scoff- the noise interrupted into a wheeze as he’s thrown over his boney shoulder. 

“And yet you love me-” He cuts off into a loud gagging noise as Limitless compresses around them, the world melding away from the school and into the walls and colors of home, a dizzy feeling making his head spin as his back hits their mattress.

He groans as Satoru collapses on top of him, wrapping arms around his sides anyway even though the weight doesn’t help the return of the nausea any. “Later,” he promises, thoughts on that kiss forced to be tame in the presence of company. “Give me an hour t’ not feel pukey.”

Satoru nods into the curve of his neck, finally decompressing within the safety of their own home. He shivers faintly with residuals of stress, remnants of old despair, and Suguru wishes he didn’t have to feel it even though he doesn’t regret the little bit of hurt he caused. They’ve done worse, and it wasn’t a pointless sort of wound.

‘I wonder,’ he thinks, the edges of expensive glasses pressing into his cheek as soft lips meander lazily along the skin of his neck, ‘why you ran away from him, instead of towards?’

Chapter Text

“Where’s Tou-san?” Tsumiki asks, looking around him as she and Megumi come sauntering up to him through the throng of people, and Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets, hopeful his hair hides the reddened tips of his ears.

“He exhausted himself on his trip, so he’s at home resting,” he says, and it’s mostly true. Suguru was tired after pulling out the beginning of his original domain, but Satoru hadn’t exactly helped any after they’d gotten back. Not that he regrets it- Suguru deserves all the shit he got for his bullshit back and forth with Yuki.

“Oh,” Tsumiki tones, a touch of disappointment in her voice, but she still reaches up to tangle her hand into his own anyway. “Megumi,” she calls, looking over her shoulder and the backpack sitting on it, eyes darting to where he stands on the sidewalk, trying to balance with his feet set horizontally along the lines of the inset stones. 

He stumbles at the sound of his name, eyes snapping up before he’s hurrying over, bumbling into his legs as they start the walk down to the train station. “How was everyone’s day?” Satoru asks, swinging Tsumiki’s hand and eyes locking onto a blubbering curse across the street.

“Good,” she says, the response coming too quickly, a wide smile plastering itself on her face. 

‘Oh no,’ Satoru thinks, snapping the fingers of his free hand, leading them away from the sight of the curse evaporating into nothing. “Yeah?” He continues, reaching down to curve a hand around the back of Megumi’s head when he stumbles trying to follow the stones, again. “What’d you do?”

He listens to Tsumiki chatter as they walk to the station, interrupted by Megumi butting in with his own input or cutting through conversation to announce each checkpoint they’d had the two of them memorize. He hears about friends, a group of girls that already knew each other and who seem like they could actually be friends from Tsumiki’s endless ramble, and he’s told about all the homework Megumi’s teacher assigned that he doesn’t want to do.

‘Where is it,’ he thinks, picking apart every little thing that falls out of Tsumiki’s mouth to find the thread she’s hiding in a waterfall of words, temporarily coming to a halt as he exorcizes another curse on the train.

“...Woah,” Tsumiki breathes, standing against his legs while Megumi sits in the crook of his arm, messing with the earrings in his lobes. “And it was a- grade four?”

“Right,” Satoru assures, giving her ponytail a small tug, amused at how her glasses nudge with the pull of her hair. “Watch the flow of that person’s cursed energy now that it’s gone. See what it’s doing?”

“Recirculating,” Megumi answers, sharpened eyes on the lady near the back of the car, sat in a seat below a window. She doesn’t make any outward movement to signal she’s felt anything, but Satoru can see the relief in the curl of her wane cursed energy, gradually returning to its natural cycle now that its leech is gone.

“Good,” he praises, the murmur quiet, and the conversation slides away back to school as the train clatters along through the city.

“I have to learn this whole textbook tonight,” Tsumiki declares, slamming her mathematics book down on the kotatsu table and jarring Suguru out of his drowsiness. 

“...Why?” He asks, hesitating slightly, brows crimping together as he watches her meticulously paw through her pencil bag, setting things in it on the table next to the massive workbook. 

“Homework,” she says, eyes still on her hands as she organizes her eraser, one mechanical pencil next to a red ink pen, and two kinds of white-out. When Suguru turns, royally confused, all he sees when he looks over the back of the couch is Satoru leaned against the partially open fusuma doors, a hand dragging over his eyes in utter defeat. 

‘What the hell happened today,’ he thinks, only growing more puzzled when Tsumiki takes out what must be her actual homework from the blue folder she’d put in her backpack earlier in the morning, a thin packet of worksheets and wane in comparison.

“Okay,” he agrees, sliding off the couch cushions to sit on one of the throw pillows hidden under the kotatsu’s blanket, refusing to wince when it makes his spine twinge, whole body aching. ‘Fucker,’ he thinks, silently cursing Satoru under his breath. He’d drawn it out about four climaxes past his limit just to be a dick, not that Suguru doesn’t technically deserve it. 

“Okay?” Tsumiki repeats, blinking as she looks up, a starkly hopeful thing on her face, and Suguru sighs, a fond smile pulling his lips up even as a yawn tries to interrupt him. 

“Okay,” he says again, leaning over the table to pull the workbook closer, eyeing the first page beyond the contents that Tsumiki’s flipped to. 

“Megumi!” Satoru yells, ducking out of the kitchen as he cups a hand to his mouth. “Do you wanna help me make dinner?” It’s silent for one beat, two, and Satoru rolls his eyes. “If you help me make dinner,” he wagers, “we can put off doing your homework until after we eat.” 

Immediately, the pounding of footsteps rattle rapidly down the staircase as soon as the words have a moment to linger, a head of dark hair and socked feet crashing into Satoru’s legs where he stands in the doorway, faintly amused.

“Promise?” Megumi wheedles, and Suguru turns away from the white noise of their exchange as they disappear behind the fusuma doors. “I don’t wanna do more kanji practice…”

“How about,” Suguru begins, giving his back an absent pop as he pulls the packet of loose papers closer over the tabletop, fighting off another yawn, “we start with the homework you were assigned today, and look at the textbook after?” Tsumiki’s got her teeth embedded into her bottom lip when he flickers his gaze back up, her hands worrying at her pencil bag, indecision in her eyes and the furrowing of her brows.

“...But we can still look at the textbook after?” She asks, hesitant to agree, and Suguru stews in his own words for a moment, trying to reconcile the expression on her face with the experiences of his own childhood.

“If you want to,” he says, and watches her nod, a determination lighting her eyes up with a metaphorical fire. He scootches back along the floor when Tsumiki gets up, shuffling on her knees until she can dump herself into his lap, tugging the notebook she’d set on the table closer as she repositions her pencil in her fidgety hand. 

“Hayakawa-sensei said we have to do all of it,” she explains, eyes darting up to his face as she cranes her head back, “by tomorrow.” She blinks, big and owlish, and forcibly keeping the scrutiny off of his face, Suguru wonders why she’s lying.

“He seems very strict,” he muses mildly, shoving the textbook away as he flips through the loose worksheets, clearly copied from it. “You’re doing…fractions? Right?” He asks, and feels Tsumiki’s nod sting against his collarbone when it accidentally pushes on a hickey, skimming his finger under the lines of text for the first problem on the page.

‘I should have taken the train with them,’ he thinks, a budding rose of frustration unfurling behind his ribs and in his hair. If he had, maybe he’d know why Tsumiki seems hellbent to learn her entire math course in one afternoon. It’s a little infuriating that she doesn’t just say what’s clearly bothering her, a little upsetting that maybe she feels like she can’t, but he recognizes Tsumiki in all the cobwebbed corners of his own childhood memories. Of course she doesn’t want to tell them what’s wrong- she doesn’t want to be a burden. She doesn’t want them to think she’s any less than she is, nevermind that she’s just a kid. 

He’d been scared of plenty things when he’d been a kid, too. Rational and irrational and every adjective in between.

“You can times four by seven to get twenty-one…right?” Tsumiki asks, looking up at him as her pencil hovers over paper, and Suguru stills. 

“Twenty-one?” He asks, and Tsumiki shrinks slightly, looking back down at the paper. 

“I know you have to make the numbers under the line the same, cause you can’t divide if you don’t, but I’m not sure…” She trails off, fiddling with the end of the page, and suddenly, he has an inkling of an idea.

“Tsumiki,” Suguru starts, “tell me what…four times eight is.” She freezes, so slightly he wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t leaning against his stomach, and almost imperceptibly, he catches her fingers nudging against her leg, lips faintly moving.

“Thirty-two?” Tsumiki says, after a moment beats past, and with a glaring spark of familiarity, he knows exactly how her first day went. He can’t help the frown from slipping on his lips, softened and sympathetic as he brushes a palm over her loose bangs.

“...You had trouble keeping up today, didn’t you?” Suguru guesses, and expects the flinch when it comes. Tsumiki’s eyes drop immediately, lips pressing together into a line as almost painfully, she slowly nods.

“I didn’t,” she starts, fumbling, “I’m not, it wasn’t like- I’m not stupid,” she pleads, staring down at the carpet, one hand lifting to push her glasses further up her nose when they slip. “I can figure things out- I always figure things out, I’m not stupid, I just-”

“Haven’t had any help?” Suguru cuts in, finishing for her because he doesn’t want her to finish the sentence at all, drawing her face back up when she begins to untense. Despite himself, he smiles slightly, one dimple pressing into his cheek as he twirls one of her bangs around his index finger. 

“Of course you’re not stupid. You’re just behind. You don’t have to be embarrassed by it, either,” he promises, remembering those first days at jujutsu tech almost a full three years ago with a wryly tinged fondness. “I was the same.”

“What?” She gapes, eyes widening into saucers, and Suguru chuckles, an annoyance stained with nostalgia tugging at the edges of his memories for his first days of high school. “But you’re- you,” Tsumiki fumbles, and he outright laughs.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “I’m me, and me is a country kid who moved from Iwate to Tokyo when I was fourteen.” He can still hear all of Satoru’s stupid taunts like a record spinning dusty and slow in the back of his head, Shoko’s drab and dry comments their only company when it had just been the three of them in an empty classroom.

‘You’re in high school,’ Satoru had crowed, on their third day of school when Yaga had shoved a mathematics textbook in their faces and taken a smoke break outside, not that he’d called it that, ‘and you can’t do basic division?!’ His reedy guffaw stills rings in his head as he thinks about it, prepubescent and maliciously gleeful. It hadn’t been their first fist fight, and it hadn’t been their last, either.

“I don’t get it,” Tsumiki says, pouting slightly as she crosses her arms, leaning back against the side of the kotatsu table. 

“I was behind,” Suguru explains, poking her side just to watch her nose wrinkle. “I didn’t have the same education as Satoru and Shoko did, so I wasn’t as good at school as they were, at first.” 

‘Never mind that I spent most of middle school high off my ass,’ he thinks but refuses to say, the sorry thought kept tucked only to himself.

“Really?” Tsumiki leans forwards, the word exaggerated under her surprise. “I thought you were good at everything,” she exclaims, and it would be a gloat if not for the plain truth the words themselves believe they have. He smiles slightly, a small, fond thing that presses into the side of his cheek, reaching a hand up to ruffle her hair.

“No,” Suguru reminds her, something like pride blooming behind his ribs that she even thinks it of him, right beside the winding vines dragging thorns against his bones for every slight he can’t measure up to. “I’m only human.” He pauses for a moment after, thinking, meeting her bright eyes as her world is reshaped.

“We both are,” Suguru continues, because he remembers the crash that had shaken the foundations of his own once. “Satoru and I try our best, but we aren’t perfect. We’re just people, the same as you.” How he’d looked at his parents one day, maybe no older than six or seven, the same as Tsumiki is now, and realized that they’d known absolutely nothing. 

“...That makes a lot of sense, actually,” Tsumiki says, after she falls silent for a moment, thoughts visibly running circles in her mind as they tug on her face. “You just always seem like you know…everything.” She shrugs, eyes flickering back up, and Suguru huffs, nose scrunching in a smile.

“That’s cause I’m older than you,” he teases, gently pinching Tsumiki’s cheeks as he tugs, skin stretching below his fingers as she smiles, laughing. “We’ll get you caught up,” he promises, letting go to cup her face, instead, the pads of his thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones. “Next week, you won’t feel lost during class, alright?” 

“Alright,” she responds, the word soft, the tilt of her nod rasping his palms over the sides of her jaw. It reminds him a little of the beginning, how he’d thought once that the trust the two of them have for him is something larger, something bigger than even Satoru’s own. He can see it in the placid blink of her eyes, the smooth skin between her unfurrowed brows, the small curve of her hands over his wrists. 

Tsumiki has a problem, and she trusts that he’ll fix it. 

‘What did Satoru call it?’ He wonders, as they finally turn back again, beginning with the problems on the real homework before they move to anything else. ‘Some place better?’

His parents had tried to fix so much, when he’d been little just like her. Unlike her, he’d had no trust whatsoever that they could.

‘I promise I’ll do better than they did,’ he thinks, cheek cushioned on the crown of Tsumiki’s head as they work through her struggling homework together, one uncertain number at a time. He thinks they might be, maybe, if this says anything at all. It’s a good sort of feeling.

“Shit, that makes sense,” Satoru mutters later that night as they do dishes after dinner, and Suguru snickers, knocking their hips together as they dwindle into quiet plans of how to remedy the newest situation. 

Tsumiki’s basics need work, so that means Megumi’s likely do, too. Cram school isn’t an option, because Suguru hated it when he did it and Satoru is veering so far from anything strictly traditional he may as well be orbiting backwards, so they decide to stick to home studying. An hour or two each night filled with softened tutoring- times tables and basic mathematics and simplified writing. 

It’ll be easy, he tells himself, drying dishes as he’s handed them and exchanging words as they talk and he thinks. It isn’t as if Tsumiki doesn’t have the motivation for it, and it isn’t as if they aren’t grown adults with an international award for theoretical mathematics between them, and at least one valid diploma. He can read, and write, and add two plus two, and Satoru can mansplain to the high heavens about nothing any of them will ever understand. It’ll work out great.

‘One valid diploma,’ Suguru thinks, and almost snorts. Yaga might have let it slip he’d fudged a few numbers. Apparently, Satoru’s stupid little record with himself of never turning anything in had actually become a record. Sixteen months was the limit, he’d been told.

It’s almost a little bit impressive.

“...What do you think about Yuki?” Satoru asks, after they lapse into silence for a moment. Suguru turns his head, hair falling over his shoulder, one ear on where the kids sit in the living room playing with a horde of stuffed animals in some make believe cult game, the other on Satoru’s voice.

He narrows his eyes slightly, parsing through a barrage of different meanings before he settles on the one he’s sure Satoru meant. “I’m going to make a bet with Shoko for some disgusting amount of money that she’ll figure out a way to get the future she wants,” he starts, squeaking the dish towel over one of dinner’s cleaned plates, catching Satoru’s side eye when he finally slides it over, “if we tell her everything we know.”

“Bold,” Satoru replies, handing him another wet dish to dry as he sets the plate on the rack, “but naive. That bum says she’s doing this, doing that, but I didn’t hear a word from her for almost ten years.”

“So, what?” Suguru throws back. “You think she’s just wasting her salary drinking herself to death?”

“I didn’t say that,” Satoru refutes, eyes settling on the darkened window in front of them, considering the shadows of the forest beyond it as he quietly talks. “Call it a hunch if you want, but…” He trails off, trying to find words to fit in his mouth and drawing up blank, a crease burrowing in between his brows. 

Suguru watches him, studying each little twitch of his fingers, the smallest micro-expressions gliding over his face, and can’t help but wonder. 

“You don’t think she purposely goaded m- him, do you?” He asks, tone hushed as he darts a glance at the parted sliding doors, eyes on Satoru’s lips as he presses them into a grimmish line.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” he admits, shrugging, passing over another dish. “Yuki’s fundamental belief is that humanity’s future lies in breaking away from cursed energy entirely,” he murmurs, staring down at his hands as they mechanically scrub at a small bowl until it’s foaming. “I don’t want to say she could be an…obstacle, because I think she could be a solution to the entire problem. It’s just-...”

“Does the solution count as one if there’s no society to use it in?” Suguru finishes, arching a brow, and heaving a massive exhale, Satoru shuts his eyes, nodding. 

“I just don’t know,” he grits, squeezing the sponge hard enough all the soap squishes out. “Stitches got me before everything happened, and I can’t rely on my domain as an eight ball- it shows the entire multiverse. Every possibility I see is one of an infinite number, so none of them would even be viable to use as a reference because every single parallel world is different from ours down to their damn atoms, and even if-”

“Stop,” Suguru says, the word more solidified than all of Satoru’s beginning rambles, and with a click of his teeth, he shuts his mouth. Silently, he sets the drying dish he holds down onto the counter, reaching up to scratch his nails along the short hair of his newly trimmed undercut. 

“I’m not god,” Suguru whispers, encouraging Satoru’s head to tilt down, “you’re not god.” He lets their lips brush together, staring at blue eyes as they fall to look away at nothing, frustration turning them icy.

“No one else knows the future,” he continues, sliding his hand down until he’s found the back of Satoru’s neck, thumb on the underside of his jaw, brushing over the scar on his nape, “and they manage.” He waits until Satoru nods, heavy like all the things he worries about are a physical weight he carries. “We can deal with whatever comes, be it in ten months or ten years.”

Satoru huffs slightly, slipping past him until the press of his nose is a chill against the side of his throat. “Whatever, huh?” He says, a bitter thing clinging to his tone. “Even another Amanai?” Suguru stills, fingers curling a little too tightly in the loose hair on Satoru’s head. 

“...Even another Amanai,” he agrees, tugging slightly, “you jerk.” He feels Satoru smile against his skin, the soft plush of his lips cool compared to his own body heat, and forces himself to relax. They’ll handle anything, everything, because they aren’t fragile kids who believe themselves to be untouchable. They know they aren’t, and so they check, check again, keep double checking that they’ve covered every corner they can, every backdoor, each loophole. 

Maybe another death wouldn’t be pretty, but it wouldn’t be a forest lighting up into flame. 

‘You have no immediate enemies,’ Suguru thinks, the reminder calming the last of the tension stiffening his frame. ‘The elders are scared shitless. Stitches wants an allyship. Yuki is self contained.’ Their biggest problem at current is Tsumiki being bad at math. 

It makes him chuckle, snickering against the side of Satoru’s head, and when one blue eye peers up at him, curious, he bites his lip against another titter of laughter. “I just thought,” he says, breathing in stutters as an infectious grin pulls the corners of his lips up, “our largest threat at the moment is someone pitching a fit over flashcards.”

Satoru sputters, snorting into giggles, and then they’re just two idiots standing in the kitchen, clinging to each other as they snicker. 

‘Okay Tsumiki,’ she thinks, hands on her backpack straps as she watches the world blur past through the train’s window, ‘today will be better.’

Tou-san and Tou-ru chatter aimlessly above her and Megumi for the ride to the school the next morning, pausing in their bickering to point out each stop, fix Megumi’s untamable hair, resettle the small clip in her own pulling her bangs to the side. She’s almost a little sad to leave them once they get to Minami-Urawa station, because there’s a sort of peace she’s beginning to notice every morning that only exists in the thirty minutes she gets to lean on their legs as the train glides along.

She stares up at the entrance way, Megumi in tow behind her as the two of them wave at the gate, smiles on their faces and plenty of good wishes in their hopes, and swallows down the nerves. 

“‘Miki,” Megumi says, tugging on her arm to get her attention, and she turns, glancing the few inches down to meet his eyes. “You can do it,” he assures, even though the words are a little flat, his attention split between where one of the kindergarten teachers is waving the smaller kids over. She inhales, nodding, finding a smile to give to him as he breaks away, waving.

She can do it, she thinks again, and forces herself to believe it.

“One-hundred and eight,” she answers, maybe not faster than the first day but more confident than it when Hayakawa-sensei calls on her again, a considering look on his face that almost seems pleased as he nods and writes the number down on the board. 

“And the numerators?” He continues, rapping a knuckle on the black board where the top numbers sit in the two fractions, the equations written to times them but not for answers she knows immediately. 

“Uh,” she stutters, frantically trying to add in her head as she flounders, face reddening as she counts. “...Forty-two and…seventy-two?” She offers, shrinking slightly, and resists the urge to cover her face in her hands when he frowns, again.

“Almost. Forty-eight and seventy-two. Good try,” Hayakawa-sensei corrects, and then he’s moving on just as quickly as he looked to her, calling on another kid to answer how to add them together as if they’re crunched for time, or something.

“...I wish I could think that fast,” Glasses murmurs where she sits on her left, and surprised, Tsumiki turns slightly. Glasses draws up, like she hadn’t meant to be heard, a light dusting of blush coloring the tops of her ears where her hair’s tucked behind them. “Sorry,” she says, brown eyes wide in her heart shaped face, and Tsumiki shakes her head when she finds her own beginning to heat.

“No,” she protests, “it’s fine. I- thanks.” They both nod, staring at each other for a long moment before they look away, hands fidgeting over their opened notebooks as they listen. Across the room and a few rows over, she catches Ayaka staring at her and glasses, eyes visibly narrowed from where her red barrette pulls one side of her hair back.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ she thinks, and turns back to her scrawling notes.

“Did Yasui say something to you earlier?” Ayaka asks her once the lunch period starts, and Tsumiki pauses as she unwraps her bento, confused. 

“Just a passing comment,” she explains, thinking of the girl with the glasses, before she’s tilting her head, fingers messing with the cloth her lunch sits in, “why?”

Ayaka rolls her eyes as Hina scoffs, her short brown hair flipping over her shoulder with a toss of her hand. Her nails are painted green today instead of the pink they were yesterday, a total violation of school policy that Tsumiki thinks is unfathomably cool.

“She’s a total weirdo,” she begins, the insult tossed around flimsily, “and bad news all around.” 

“Yeah,” Mayumi agrees, popping open the lid of her lunch as she draws one of her legs up sat on the desk chair their group has circled around, “last year, Ayaka was nice enough to invite her to her birthday party, and she told everyone that her house was haunted before she smashed her cake. It ruined the entire thing.” 

“Oh,” Tsumiki tones, remembering to move as she jars her fingers back into motion, opening the lid to her own bento and feeling a flicker of warmth for the bear-shaped onigiri smiling up at her. “I guess that is kind of mean.”

“Don’t be friendly with her,” Ayaka instructs, holding up her chop-sticks like a pointer where she sits on the desktop, legs crossed in an elegant line. “She’ll only give you problems.” Silently, Tsumiki frowns slightly, glancing to the other side of the room where Yasui sits in the window with another girl, the two of them bent with their heads together as they talk and laugh over something.

“...Izumi, is that a new pencil case?” She asks, to change the topic so no one will notice that she doesn’t respond, and buries her unease in Izumi’s soft conversation. It seems harsh to ostracize someone, but she’s new here, and they’re not. Maybe there really is something bad about the girl with glasses that sits next to her that she just doesn’t know about, but she can’t shake it. 

‘Would they call me a weirdo if they knew I could see monsters?’ Tsumiki wonders, quietly eating as she chuckles when she’s supposed to and listens to Ayaka direct the conversation. She isn’t really sure. 

“Megumi!” Tsumiki calls, and he picks his head up, eyes skimming to the doorway of their classroom. She waves, a grin on her face for the short break they have that overlaps, and he gets up.

“Hey, where are you going-?” One of the kids he’d been sitting near asks, a chagrined thing in his voice that Megumi ignores. They started playing with Lego sets sitting on the shelves the minute their break had been called, and because he’d had nothing to do, he’d sat around and watched. It’s been mind numbingly boring when none of them can even figure out how to properly make anything interesting.

“Did you make some friends?” Tsumiki asks, slipping her hand around his own as she leads them down the hall, passing by small groups of kids in the same wing as they walk. He shrugs, glad to be leaving the classroom. They aren’t allowed to leave by themselves until they’re in first grade unless they have an upper year buddy- a stupid rule, in his opinion.

“Sure,” he says, because the kids in his class seem to think they’re friends, even though they’ve only known each other for two days now. It’s decent enough, he figures. 

“Oh come on, you gotta know somebody by now,” Tsumiki weasels, and making a face, he sticks a foot out to trip her. Tsumiki stumbles, steps stuttering, before she’s reaching a hand up to muss roughly through his hair. 

“‘Miki!” Megumi protests, trying to duck away, but she only knuckles harder. 

“Get what you give!” She crows, sticking her tongue out, and then they’re jostling in the middle of the hallway, banging limbs and nudging shoulders back and forth like they’re at home and not in public.

“Tsumiki, who’s that?” A girl interrupts, her black eyebrow arched and painted nails set on her hips as she shoulder-checks someone in the way walking over. 

“Oh- Hi Ayaka. This is my little brother,” she answers, and instead of offering a hello or a wave, Megumi looks up at the new girl, curious. “Megumi,” she continues, giving his cheek a poke, “say hi.” 

“...Hi,” he mutters, after a moment’s beat, a certain sort of suspicion unfolding in the pit of his stomach when the girl, Ayaka, smiles small and thin. 

“It’s so to meet you,” she says, sickeningly saccharine, before she’s brushing over him entirely, turning back to Tsumiki with a sticky kind of expectation on her face. “Izumi and I are getting snacks from the vending machine. You should come with us.” It doesn’t really sound like an offer, he thinks, lips parting around a slow, silent syllable to words he doesn’t speak.

“Oh,” Tsumiki starts, her brown eyes flickering between the two of them as Ayaka crosses her arms, blinking purposely like she’s waiting. “Well, I was going to spend the break with Megumi since it’s so short-”

“You see him at home, don’t you?” Her friend cuts in, tossing a strand of long, sleek back hair over her shoulder, and attention sharpening, he stiffens. “Spend it with us. It’s only fair since you only see us at school. We still have to show you our snack rules.” 

‘Rules?’ Megumi thinks, face carefully blank as he gives Tsumiki’s fingers a squeeze, the wanting twitch to summon the demon dogs making his fingers jolt imperceptibly. ‘Who has rules for snacks? Is she talking about money?’

“I…guess that’s true,” Tsumiki says, indecision furrowing a crinkle in between her brows, and Megumi watches Ayaka open her mouth, beginning to say some string of words he probably wouldn’t like. “It’s fine,” Tsumiki declares, before they can meet the air around them, giving his palm a nervous tug before it’s let go completely. 

“What,” he starts to protest, extending a hand out to yank on her sweater, because they were going to hang out together- maybe not for any particular reason or thing, but they were going to spend the break together. “No-”

“Megumi, go hang out with your friends, okay?” She only smiles as she unhooks his fingers from her clothing, waving slightly while she steps away, and for a moment, he doesn’t move as she starts to fall into stride with Ayaka. “I’ll see you at home later,” Tsumiki calls, a wince of sympathy on her face even as she turns around. Then they’re leaving, walking down the hallway together to where another two girls stand at the stairwell, clearing waiting. 

Two dark eyes catch his own in a look thrown over a shoulder, and when Ayaka smiles, Megumi glares the dirtiest look at her he can muster.

‘Bitch,’ he thinks, scowling. Maybe that’s why adults curse so much. It’s the only thing that makes stomping back to his classroom and to the boring kids with their boring Legos any sort of bearable. 

Something isn’t right about her.

Chapter Text

The days start to fall into a pattern- they wake up, eat breakfast together, and then take the train up to the school. By the second week, the two of them know it better than the backs of their own hands, and greetings and goodbyes become things had at home instead of on the steps of the elementary. 

Tutoring goes well, Satoru notes happily, when each passing evening has Tsumiki getting a little quicker at her basics. She starts talking more about what they learned in class instead of focusing on her friends, and she doesn’t seem so chagrined in the moments she thinks no one’s looking. She comes home with her first quiz on Thursday, an almost perfect score sat at the top of the marginally marked paper, and as promised, he tapes it front and center to the fridge. 

The normalcy of it continues for longer than he thought it would have, and it’s a peaceful sort of nice.

“Have you spoken to Shoko about Kaori?” Suguru asks, moving a piece on the gameboard that has Tsumiki gloating, her finished homework set aside in favor of something fun before they move on to more studying.

“I’m not ready yet,” Satoru mocks, pitching his voice high and nasally, and lets the tease go to point out the best attack against Fantina’s Mismagius, the tinny sound of the DS he got them for Tsumiki’s birthday a pixelated song along the edges of his ears. “She’s never gonna be ready.”

“Well can you blame her,” Suguru mutters back, snickering as he takes another property card from the Monopoly bank, to Tsumiki’s pained, “Tou-san you’re cheating!”

“Am not,” he throws back, and then they’re bickering back and forth in an aimless circle, arguing about who’s committed tax fraud worse. Satoru rolls his eyes, glancing down to Megumi’s Pokémon game, again.

“Baby,” he says, eyeing Prinplup’s rapidly plummeting health bar, “switch him out. He’ll die if he’s hit again.” 

“I just healed him,” Megumi complains, mashing at the buttons as he uses his turn to switch to Infernape. He’s so pathetically underleveled for this fight that it’s almost a little funny. “I don’t have any normal types,” he continues, fuming a little as another of Mismagius’s attacks drops his health halfway, “and she keeps killing all my stupid Pokémon.” 

“You could level them up some more,” Satoru offers, setting his chin on Megumi’s shoulder, arms slung around his middle as he sits in his curled lap and glares down at the DS, a tick in his brow. 

“That’s so annoying,” Megumi mutters, and he snickers. “Now I’m gonna have to waste all my money on potions,” he bemoans, and Satoru blinks down at the screen, mind abruptly jarring to a halt. 

‘Fuck,’ he thinks, face flattening out, ‘I knew I was forgetting something.’

“Speaking of wasting money, actually,” he starts, straightening up to catch Suguru’s attention, “there’s some politics I forgot to sort out with Naobito.” 

“Politics?” Suguru repeats, puzzled, until Satoru glances pointedly down to the top of Megumi’s head and back up. His face widens slightly, brows drawing up as his expression draws back. It lasts for one beat, two, and then Suguru’s souring, a disdain in the set of his lips as he stares, gaze as flat as a board. “Please tell me you’re not going to barter money for the legal right to our living, breathing child,” he says, and Satoru shrugs.

“Worked the last time,” he offers, and Suguru pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing.

“What worked?” Tsumiki asks, the same time as Megumi stiffens in his lap, the cogs in his head turning. 

“...Are you gonna sell me,” he mumbles, a touch shell-shocked, the DS sitting forgotten in his slackened hands. Tsumiki’s sharp inhale is loud as it fills the room.

“No way,” Satoru declares, tilting Megumi’s head up with one knuckle below his chin. “We’re gonna buy you.” It gets him a confused grimace, green eyes boring into his own under the two black lines of thin brows, and Satoru clucks his tongue.

“Technically, the sale went through a few years ago,” he explains, looking up when Tsumiki abandons the board game to shuffle closer, listening intently as she messes with one of Suguru’s freely given hands. “Your father- Fushiguro Toji- he sold you somewhere in the time after you were born but before you turned five. Legally, you belong to the Zen’in clan.”

Megumi swallows a little thickly, setting the game down as he shuffles, turning around in the nook of his bent knees. “What does that mean,” he asks, the words thin, reedy slightly, like he doesn’t really want to know.

Satoru holds his palms up, weighing each of them before he quietly shrugs. “It means that they could take you, and it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong,” he begins, to Tsumiki’s stricken expression, Megumi’s sharp ripples of uneasy cursed energy, “but there’s a reason they haven’t, you know.” He reaches out, gently tweaking Megumi’s nose, finding a smile to slip onto his lips. 

“...So you’re gonna…buy me again?” He asks, after a hesitant moment where he pauses, grabbing Satoru’s wrist before he can pull it away. 

“Pretty much,” he answers, eyes on Megumi’s as he drops them, green darting around aimlessly as he muddles through some thought or another.

“Can I please curse?” Tsumiki asks abruptly, her cheeks flaming beet red as she backtracks when they both turn to her, bemused. “Once,” she tacks on, “I just mean one time. Now.” 

“Sure?” Suguru says, lifting one brow, and Satoru catches his eye when Tsumiki fists her hands in the bottom of her shirt, shoulders drawing up slightly.

“I think the Zen’in’s are bullshit,” she declares, ears burning, and Satoru barks a laugh, accidentally rocking Megumi where he sits in his lap as he hunches forwards. He keeps laughing, the sound sputtering out into a wheeze as the clap of Suguru’s hand meeting his face rings around the room.

“You’re entirely correct,” Satoru guffaws, squishing Megumi into a hug as he catches his breath, feeling Suguru’s smile press against his shoulder when he leans on his back.

“Are you sure you wanna see it through?” Suguru asks the next day, Friday afternoon while the kids are at school, lacing his boots up as they stand corralled together into the front room of the house. The sight of the weapons slung on his back clash against the domesticity the rest of it reeks with. “You can still back out-”

“And have my pride be slaughtered?” Shoko scoffs, arms crossed in determination as she leans against the wall with the photo of Yaga sneezing hanging on it, something hungry in the set of her eyes. “I’ve got to salvage what I have left. No way in hell.”

“Right,” Satoru tones, arching a brow, and holds up a hand when Shoko makes to argue, if petulantly. “Conditions, please?” He asks, batting his eyelashes and curling his fingers in a beckoning motion just to be annoying. 

“Stay near you,” Shoko recites, a bored thing in the repeated words as she ticks them off her fingers, “no going after the grade twos, no helping.” 

“Ding ding ding,” Satoru crows, cutting off with a hurking sound as Suguru shoves at his face, nose scrunched in mirth. 

“It’ll be fine,” he assures, as if Shoko needs it, “though maybe a little overwhelming. Normally, we don’t send grade fours for anything higher than a three.” Shoko gasps in scandalized, mock offense, kicking his shin without any force as the both of them extend their hands for him to take.

“I am at least a grade three,” she pushes, and Suguru laughs, the sound swallowed up by the contracting twist of space around them.

Watching Shoko fight as if she’s a weaponized sorcerer, and not a sheltered medic, is almost a sort of catharsis. 

True to their word, they clear out the two higher grades belonging to Suguru’s most recent mission order, leaving only the grade three for Shoko to test herself with per her own request. It’s on the more gnarly side- a chattering, lumbering thing with seemingly endless teeth and plenty of disturbingly long claws. The location probably doesn’t help it any, when graveyards are usually steeped in negative energy so concentrated they fuel curses on their own.

They wait on the side as she stands before it, a bow staff clutched in her hand and a bloodlust in her determination, her cursed energy nothing but a fraction of theirs even though her strength might be more combined. 

“...You really make a great teacher, Suguru,” Satoru murmurs, hands in his pockets and eyes working overtime to track each of Shoko’s movements as she slowly batters away at the curse, every fluid motion something Suguru taught her to use and which she improved on by herself. “I can remember when she’d never even bother to look at a weapon, you know.”

“I didn’t really do much,” he says, eyes on where Shoko takes a flying leap off one of the mausoleums in the graveyard, nothing but confidence in the arc of her weapon as she brings it down on the curse’s head. Maybe a part of that is true. He knows Utahime can be attributed to at least some of it, knows Yaga had a hand here and there. 

“Course not,” Satoru teases, a new sort of security settling behind his ribs like a comfortable weight as the sound of a talisman being activated rings like a chimed bell in the still air under the wane, orange tinted light of the curtain. Even still, he thinks, relaxing as the curse gets in a final screech, it was Suguru who pushed it to fruition. “You just taught our best friend how to win a fight. Nothing much at all.”

It earns him a soft punch to the shoulder, a low slung smile as they watch the curse begin to evaporate, the talisman filled with his energy slowly starting to burn away as Shoko stands at the foot of the destruction, a triumph worn on her face like a comfortable item of clothing.

She isn’t a special grade, isn’t untouchable, isn’t immortal. She isn’t nearly done growing, improving, strengthening into something more powerful than she was. That’ll all come in time. She’ll fight now, though, fight until she dies or she’s killed, and it’s enough of a chance for her own survival that it makes something ease in his tightened shoulders. Shoko won’t just go down silently if someone decides she’s outlived her welcome. 

She’ll have a buffer if Stitches decides they’ve gotten a little too bored of their arrangement- a failsafe to keeping her own life and body intact in case Frankenstein’s monster decides to go after its doctor. It’s a relief like nothing else, knowing she won’t be helpless to weather whatever sort of torture they might try to inflict on her if there’s a backstabbing hidden around the bend of a corner. 

No, she’ll fight them until she’s bloody, until she’s inhaling her last struggling breath. 

She’ll give them time to save her if she needs saving. 

“And you’re sure Naobito won’t try to kill you,” Suguru drawls, arms crossed as he stands in the doorway Saturday morning, refusing to say he’s nervous even as he watches Satoru tie Megumi’s shoes, worrying. 

“Nah,” Satoru scoffs, giving Megumi’s cheek a playful squish when his brows sharply dig down at the question. “He’s a petty jerk, but he’s more interested in what he can gain than getting short-lived gratification. Besides.” He sets a palm on Megumi’s head, giving his hair a ruffle as he smiles, trying his best to look reassuring rather than a little maliciously gleeful. “It isn’t like he could.”

“...I could still go with you-” Suguru starts, the words a repeat from where they’ve been on loop for the past hour, and he shakes his head. 

“I remember someone promising to take Tsumiki up to the school today,” Satoru wheedles, and Suguru finally sighs, rolling his eyes as he turns away, pajamas slumping on his frame. He can’t deny it- Shoko had stayed for dinner yesterday night, springing the promise on them that Tsumiki could come up to the school with her for the weekend for private lessons. 

He just thinks she wants someone to monologue to, personally, but he also knows it’ll be good for her. It’ll give her exposure to some of the things Shoko does, and having some time to practice with positive cursed energy will give her something to work on that she actually likes. Only Satoru himself likes math for the sake of math, and he’s not deluded enough to believe otherwise.

“Fine, fine, I’m not worried at all, go have fun doing your horrifically unethical business deals,” Suguru grumbles, lofty as he throws his hands up, disappearing into the kitchen for a long moment. Satoru eyes the last of his hair as he vanishes, amused. 

“Tired?” He asks when Megumi yawns, his hand too small to cover the size of it. It gets him a nod, sleepy green eyes blinking up at him in an annoyance that’s mostly just mild morning grogginess. 

“Why are we going so early?” He asks, a touch petulant as he glares without any heat, and Satoru shrugs. 

“It’ll probably take a couple of hours,” he explains, darting a glance up again when Suguru’s footsteps come back, “and the clans are all super traditional. It wouldn’t be proper to show up midday.” He scrunches his nose, making a show of sticking his tongue out, and feels justified when it gets a small smile that Megumi attempts to shove off of his lips, with little success. 

“Here,” Suguru hums, holding out two wrapped sandwiches in a stack. “Make sure you both eat.” Megumi takes them with an astute nod, little brows drawing down into a serious line, and it’s so cute it makes his teeth hurt.

“Aye-aye,” Satoru teases, and lets the pinch jab into his side when it comes. The kiss he’s given after more than makes up for it, warm against his lips and softened with everything they aren’t saying in front of Megumi. 

“Don’t worry too much,” he says, hooking the curl of a finger inside the empty, loosened skin of Suguru’s bare earlobes, smiling when dark eyes roll sarcastically, the light of the front room catching a faint shimmer of violet in his irises. 

“Listen to Satoru today, please,” Suguru murmurs as he bends down, brushing aside a few strands of Megumi’s unruly bangs. He sighs, but he nods, an undercurrent of his own anxiety fiddling his feet where they swing above the floor, sat on the small bench. “I love you,” Suguru coos, pressing a kiss to his cheek, and then he’s rising, pulling Megumi up with him and waiting for Satoru to open the metaphorical door.

“Ready?” He asks, holding out his hand for Megumi to take. He tucks their sandwiches under one arm, extending the other to fit smaller fingers into the curl of his palm.

“Ready,” Megumi answers, and then they’re compressing, squeezing into the warping of space as he bends it to his own desires. 

“I thought we were going to the Zeinins?” Megumi asks, puzzled as he looks around at the forest surrounding the worn torii gate, the red paint on the arch a little bleached and chipping, slightly.

“Zen’in’s,” Satoru corrects, bending down to take the sandwiches from Megumi’s curled arm, “and we are. This is an old path up to the front gates.” He wastes a moment unwrapping them, the bread chilled from sitting in the fridge, before holding the both of them out to be picked between. Megumi looks down at them for a long second, contemplating, before he takes the one with potato salad. 

“How come?” He questions, steadying himself with a hand on his shoulder as Satoru lifts him up, cozy in the crook of his elbow. He takes a bite of the remaining sandwich- spicy egg salad- and silently blinks a sweeping glance throughout the forest.

“Lotsa reasons,” he says, a vague answer mumbled through a mouthful of mayo that makes his lips burn. ‘Fuck you, Suguru,’ Satoru thinks, bemoaning the fact that he’s the only person in the house who doesn’t like spicy things.

“Like getting jumped?” Megumi offers, perfectly innocuous as he nibbles on the ends of the bread before making a face that looks distinctly dissatisfied, and Satoru sputters a laugh.

“Where’d you hear that?” He wonders, holding out the egg salad sandwich for Megumi to sniff, and gets a halfhearted shrug. 

“Dad used to say it,” he says, taking a tentative bite, and Satoru keeps one pair of eyes on him as he chews a little thoughtfully, another on the underbrush thickening around the pathway as he starts to walk, his steps carrying them under the old, disrepaired torii gate chipping flaking paint. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, willingly swapping their sandwiches when Megumi gestures to trade and unwillingly giving out some of the reason he’s been trying to keep from the kids, though clearly to no avail, “you’re right. One of them is because of being jumped. We can’t be if I can see whoever’s coming.” 

Megumi accepts it with a nod, and they quietly eat as he walks, drifting into a mild silence as the trees pass by. It’s a pretty forest, lush with creatures he can hear behind leaves and green as can be with the oncoming warmth of spring. Just behind where it opens to a clearing, he can see the Zen’in estate, a bright, bustling swarm of people and shamans constantly in movement. There’s no one coming for him, and he doesn’t think there will be. It’s just old paranoia making him cautious. 

“...How expensive am I?” Megumi asks him, when maybe a handful of minutes pass by and there’s a new wad of plastic stuffed into his pocket, crumbs dotting the trail behind them. Satoru frowns, brows furrowing as he reaches up, swiping a thumb over the dot of spicy mayo on the edge of Megumi’s lips.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” he says, fully expecting the petulant glare. He’s never taken an answer like it in stride before and Satoru can’t expect that he will now, either.

“Why not,” Megumi grumbles, the words flat and jerkingly anxious under the irritation used to hide it. “You aren’t like that stupid man, but he sold me too,” he continues, a slight twitch to the bridge of his nose that scrunches it almost angrily. “Are you not g’nna tell me so you’re not guilty when you do it?”

Satoru carefully doesn’t react to the harsher words, keeping his face still and placid as he tries to think of what Megumi actually needs to hear more than what he wants to say. He’s familiar with that anger, knows it as intimately as his own skin when it’s spent years burrowing below it. It’s a little jarring hearing it now when it’s been so absent this time, maybe from the better sense of security he’s given Megumi, or maybe from how he hasn’t yet let him down. Maybe it’s better that he’s young, because Megumi isn’t refined enough to be anything but transparent in his petulant barbs, yet. 

Satoru had been lost more often than not by the time he’d gotten older, finally having learned to be opaque enough to hide the things he’d wanted to. He’d never learned as much as he’d needed to know about how the glaze was made to be able to see the ceramic below it the first time, because Satoru had been too busy being a kid himself to witness Megumi while he’d still been firing in the kiln.

“Yes,” Satoru begins, purposely slow, intentionally calm, “he did,” because though he’s made his peace with fucking things up, he doesn’t want to fuck up this. He feels Megumi stiffen slightly, a line pressing his lips together, a wary anticipation heavy with a waiting hope making his gaze seem sharp. “But I wouldn’t ever sell you back to them,” Satoru promises, shifting Megumi in his arms with a faint bounce. “You’re a child, not a commodity.”

He should have been taught that too, when he was young. He wasn’t. Different has worked for him so far- why shouldn’t it work for Megumi, as well?

“Commodity?” Megumi asks, brows lowering at the word he doesn’t know, and Satoru clucks his tongue.

“A product, or service. Something you can buy and sell,” he explains, adjusting the new, expensive coat Megumi wears so it covers more of him when he shivers. They’re the rich kind of quality he likes splurging on and which Suguru has an asthma attack over buying, thick and luxurious and made of fine fabrics that do more for warmth than a windbreaker ever could. He watches as Megumi’s lips push together, collecting into a pout, eyes falling to the underbrush as he thinks, skimming over leaves and trees and the dusty trail marking the grassy earth. 

“...But I was sold,” he mutters, trying to reconcile two distinct thoughts when they shouldn’t be connected at all, eyes flickering up as he frowns. “Doesn’t that make me one?” Satoru sighs, sniffing judgmentally as internally, he thinks about making an effigy to burn of a few very specific people. 

“That’s a very complicated discussion,” he offers, tilting his head slightly when Megumi holds the weight of his stare, having more than proven he doesn’t need any sort of sugar coating in the last handful of months. Besides, Satoru’s never been one to lie to kids. He’d tried his hardest to protect them from their own unforgiving realities the first time, but that didn’t mean he’d sheltered them. A shield had been putting a stop in an execution order and making time for fun, not denying the horror in being told to die.

“What kinda complicated?” Megumi asks, his stuckered expression opening up faintly at the realization that he won’t be getting fed a spoonful of saccharine sweetness, and Satoru shrugs, the snap of a stray twig loud under the sole of his shoe.

“Morally,” he says, lifting a finger, “ethically,” he lifts another, “and linguistically,” he finishes, raising a third. Immediately, the interest green eyes shine with soddens to something confused, the wane light of early morning making the rosy blush on soft cheeks seem peony pink. “We could have the discussion of it now, or we could wait until you’re older so you have a bigger understanding of things.” 

“I get to choose?” Megumi wonders, the leery words tilted like he’s uncertain of it, or suspicious. 

“Course,” Satoru says, batting away a low hanging branch to keep it from raking through Megumi’s hair, a useless habit with infinity thick around them but one made from all his time spent with Suguru. “We aren’t trying to hide things from you, and this is about you. You deserve to know.” He waits, looking for when teeth bite down into plush bottom lip, and resists the urge to press on it with a thumb to get him to stop when Megumi finally does it. 

“...But I’d get it better if I was older?” He asks, the question less like griping and more like curiosity. 

“Yeah,” Satoru answers, shrugging again. “You’re five. No one expects you to think about complicated things and have nuance.” Green eyes fixate on his face, narrowing, and he can almost see the thoughts running through Megumi’s head- a spark of recognition from the early morning of his last nightmare, a smidgeon of relief sandwiched between a bitter annoyance.

“...Okay then,” Megumi says, hands curling into the lapels of his coat. “I wanna wait.” Instead of answering, Satoru cranes his head down, brushing a quiet kiss to the side of his temple. 

“Okay,” he repeats, thumbing at the side of his lips even though the spot of mayo’s long since been gone. “All you need to understand right now, then, is that you aren’t a commodity. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been bought and sold. You’re a human being,” Satoru says, an unquestionable note of resolution in his softened tone, “nothing else.”

Megumi leans into the press of his hand, nodding, just as a large yawn splits his lips apart. Satoru huffs slightly, not quite a snicker as he keeps striding along, sure the steady pace of his footfalls hasn’t been helping their drowsy, early morning wake up.

“Hey, don’t sleep,” he chides, when Megumi’s head falls onto his collar, “we’ll be there in a minute.” It gets him a high groan, lengthened and annoyed, but for all that he says not to Satoru doesn’t protest when Megumi stays put. 

He can’t say he isn’t relieved- not when a short breath leaves his lips, rattled but calm with the fact that he doesn’t have to explain anything today. Trafficking isn’t necessarily a new topic to any of the clans when they’re all hurrying to snatch up new techniques as soon as they can find them, isn’t even a new topic to any regular shaman when they’re just cattle to pawn off to the butchers heading the clans, human or not, but Megumi isn’t one yet. He’s just a kid, just an almost victim to all their terrible allowances, just another Amanai Riko if only he was being asked to die physically instead of emotionally. 

He should know. He’s a shaman, so of course he will. He shouldn’t know. He’s only a kid, so of course he won’t. 

‘Not today,’ Satoru thinks, ruffling the sides of his coat further open so he can wrap them around where Megumi dozes, covering his sides from the chill of the whispery breeze. ‘Let him learn later. Just give him some peace for now.’

If he doesn’t get it, Satoru can’t help but wonder if one day, he might meet the Mahoraga again.

The estate looks just as it has for decades, for years, for every visit he’d made to it as a child and teen and adult. ‘Loath to be back,’ Satoru thinks, one hand curled protectively around the back of Megumi’s head as he leads him inside.

‘Do not talk back to anyone here,’ rings in his ears as they step quietly along lacquered wooden floors, two servants flanking their sides and people all throughout the large complex pretending like they aren’t looking, even as stares burn holes in his hide. ‘Do not use your technique for any reason,’ he’d said, watching Megumi’s eyes intently as they’d flickered between his own, crouched together at the foot of the grand stone stairs. 

‘And most importantly, do not leave my side unless I say you can.’ Megumi had nodded, hands curled close to his chest and partially raised as if they’d wanted to reach out, the only thing stopping him the out of place fear hiding in the pupils of his eyes. 

“-really is just so generous to have you visiting personally, Gojo-sama,” the anteende continues, spewing flattering words Satoru hasn’t been bothering to listen to from the moment they showed up at the front of the estate doors. “We find your courteousness to be ever so gracious-” He turns him out again, forcing his face to stay flat and uninterested as he looks around, eyes fixated on the end of the hallway in front of them as it branches out into a series of turning corners. 

It’s loud here, bright and clashing and a little violent, the reek of curses emanating from some vault winding encompassing and ginormous below the earth. There’s a group of people down inside it, fuzzy and faint against non-detection talismans, like static crackling in his sight as they train against chained and muzzled monsters.

Walking at his side, Megumi does a surprisingly good job of wearing a persona on top of keeping level, a bored interest in his flat gaze and a holier than thou spirit holding his head up high. One of his hands stays curled in his pant leg, barely noticeable for how it’s hidden behind his side, and Satoru wonders not for the first time if the attitude and adaptivity comes from Fushiguro Toji, living with him, or simply Megumi himself.

“Zen’in-sama is very amenable to negotiations today,” the assistant prattles on, striding too quickly to keep up with them as he blathers to maintain even a shred of goodwill when all the clan heads are constantly punchdrunk on people inflating their egos. “He’s very intent on this exchange happening in good faith, you understand-”

A spark catches his eye, and imperceptibly, Satoru slides his away from the end of the hall, skimming over people and light and cursed energy until he finds it. 

Behind one set of fusuma doors one turn away, Naoya crowds something- a person, he realizes- close to a wall, an excitement or amusement or both in the fluttering roil of his tepid energy. Curious, he looks a little closer, because that spark is familiar, and-

Another one shows up behind him, and Naoya jerks like something hit him, Maki’s nearly invisible cursed energy nothing but a ghost at the front of the room. ‘That must be Mai in front of him,’ he thinks, eyes widening slightly, and can’t help himself, breaking away from the attendee and the two servants entirely. 

It stirs up a bit of commotion, a loud, “where are you going- hey!” That he ignores, the floundering of the servants as they dart a glance at each other like they don’t know what to do. 

“Stay close,” he mutters, glancing a look down at Megumi, and mirrors the understanding when it’s nodded up at him. 

He’d never known much about Zen’in Mai, just that she’d had an inferiority complex the size of the sun and had idolized her sister enough to demonize her. Most of his knowledge had come from Maki and all the things she’d never say. Maybe he doesn’t know her like he knew her twin once, but no one deserves Naoya’s glee, least of all two little kids who haven’t done anything to earn it.

“-you little bitch,” he hears as he rounds the corner, the harshly hissed words bouncing off of thin walls from where they leak out between two cracked fusuma doors. “What, would you like to take her place, instead? I’m sure you’d love that, since you’re such a whore for being reprimanded-”

Megumi clinging to his heels, Satoru sends both of the doors slamming open without lifting a finger, eyes sweeping over the room as Naoya cuts off with an unexpecting stutter. He isn’t surprised in the least to see Mai crowded against the far wall, soot smeared on her cheek and traditional clothing rumbled like she’d been grabbed by her collar. Maki stands at the opposite end, the pair to the sandal she threw held in her tightened hand and refusing to cower even though he can see the fear on her face plain as day.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” Naoya sneers, turning to face him with an unimpressed look, crossing his arms. “Scram. You’re interrupting a discipline session.” 

“Oh?” Satoru tones, mildly surprised and entirely artificial. “Am I?” He turns one set of eyes back to the corridor, where the two servants and the attendant linger at the mouth of the hall, not wanting to interfere but not wanting to be chastised for being late, either. He tilts his head, giving his slack fingers a ripple, and delights in a vindictive crow of satisfaction when he sees Naoya tense, even though his petty mask stays put in place.

On either side of them, the twins both flinch, rapidly exchanging a glance. He can’t blame them for being scared, not when they’ve only ever heard rumors of him, probably thinking that a bad situation is about to be made worse. 

Different, he thinks of, and then, ‘could I change this, too?’

Silently, he steps into the room, shoes brushing above the floor through Limitless, and reaches back with two fingers to tap to Megumi’s forehead when he tries to follow. Stay here, it means, and thankfully, is understood.

“You are,” Naoya responds, shifting like he’s nervous, the first break in his haughty persona a twitch of his eyebrow. “What would Gojo-sama say if she knew her unruly grandson was being discourteous?” 

Satoru takes the taunt with a grain of salt, letting a small, mean smile sit on his lips as he answers. “Why don’t you ask her? I’m sure she’d love another reason to look distasteful.” Naoya bristles at the slight, opening his mouth to throw something back, but Satoru doesn’t give him the chance to. Loudly, he snaps, reveling in the flinch Naoya racks with. 

“Leave,” he orders, tone cold, and doesn’t move an inch when it earns him a look of sheer disbelief and muted anger. 

“Excuse me?” Naoya begins, the hiss deceptively light, and Satoru unfurls his hand. 

“Would you like me to make you?” He offers, the faintest wave of his palm tugging at the loose fabric of Naoya’s hakama, plainly weathering the vicious glare when it settles on him.

“You’ve got some nerve,” he starts, the spitting words infuriated, and Satoru repeats the motion faster, snapping his hand to the side by a bend in his wrist that sends Naoya hurtling into the fusuma doors opposite the pair behind him. He hits them with a loud clatter, sputtering, a genuine spark of fear in the slackened expression on his face. 

“We aren’t children anymore, Naoya,” Satoru tones, the words icy enough that he barely recognizes them to come from his own voice. “Know your betters.” He sees the want to argue, hot like a flame and fizzling out in the chill of the room, knowing Naoya understands the consequences exactly the same as he does.

Satoru can’t harm him without incurring Naobito’s wrath, but Naoya watched him kill someone for less than that. They don’t know how he’ll react to any one thing, and it’s making them cautious. With a flare of his hakama, he whirls, yanking open the heavy sliding doors and then slamming them shut once on the other side, fuming as he strides away, the turmoil of his cursed energy nothing but rancid fear disguised as arrogance. 

The twins don’t say a word, barely breathing as they watch him with terror widened eyes, frozen where they each stand. 

“What a jerk,” Satoru mutters, maybe to break the tension, maybe because he wants to, and then he turns. “Megumi, you can come in now,” he calls lightly, holding out a hand to beckon him closer, pointedly not acknowledging the disturbia pulling his black brows together, the unadulterated confusion making his lips part slightly in a want to ask a slew of questions Satoru can’t answer stood in this estate. 

He crouches down, making a show of being overly fussy as he ruffles a hand through Megumi’s hair, gently pinches his cheeks, smiling wide enough for both Maki and Mai to see it. 

They would let him come near them, but only for the same reason they let Naoya come near them. There’s no other alternative but to comply, and the last thing he wants to do is scare them more. Megumi is a lovely little antidote to that. He’s an entire year younger than them, nothing but a baby in name and face, and if they watch Satoru be gentle with him, they might not think of him as such a large threat. 

“Who are they?” Megumi asks, the quiet question curious as he looks to where the twins stand, Mai still cowered against the wall and Maki as she abruptly freezes mid step in slinking closer to her sister.

“That’s a good question,” Satoru says, staying crouched on the flats of his feet as he turns again, black glasses sliding down his nose. “You two are the Zen’in twins, right? Ogi’s daughters?”

Mai only stares, a deer caught in the headlights and too frozen to respond, but haltingly, Maki nods. “What about it?” She asks, jutting her chin out in a challenge, hands shaking where they’re balled up into fists and yet still brave enough to seemingly stand up to him. Her voice is still adorably high, but he can recognize the notes in it that will deepen, one day.

He smiles, letting the delight show on his face when it’s real instead of fake, setting a hand on top of Megumi’s dark head. 

“Just a family reunion,” Satoru teases, sobering a little when neither of them seem to know how to respond to the friendly mirth. “Megumi, meet your aunts. Zen’in twins, meet your nephew.”

“They’re my aunts?” Megumi exclaims, incredulous, and Satoru laughs, giving his ear a tweak. 

“I told you clans are complicated,” he throws back, and relaxes a little more when Megumi scowls, reaching up to harmlessly slap his small palms on either side of his cheeks. 

“But they’re kids,” he protests, pushing on the skin of his face, “kids can’t be adults. Aunt’s have to be adults. Like Shoko.” Satoru only sticks out his tongue, dragging it to the side to catch on one of Megumi’s fingers. He shrieks, disgusted, and Satoru takes the opportunity when the hands recede to grab him by his middle, blowing a raspberry against the edge of his jaw just to hear Megumi laugh. 

He feels the stares on him, two sets of almost identical eyes boring into his back, their weight only seeming lighter when they look away at each other, instead.

“Okay, sorry, calm down, calm down,” he mutters fondly against Megumi’s ear as he quiets, letting him go to stand again, one hand on his head as he turns to face the twins. “Naoya,” he starts, not missing each of their slight jumps when he speaks, “does he bother you two a lot?” 

“Why?” Maki asks, a wary crease between her brows. “You’re a Gojo. What’s it to you?” 

“Something or other,” Satoru responds, frowning. She meets his eyes, not even eight yet and already so full of fury, a meter away from Mai and more than ready to do anything she can to protect her. The hope is still there, though, when he looks at her a little closer. A glimmer in the shine of her glare, a hesitation in the curt tone of her voice. The flutter of her almost imperceptible cursed energy- like she wants to believe so badly things could be different and yet refusing to let herself hope and face the pain of being wrong again.

“Just answer one question for me,” he says, sliding his gaze away to meet Mai’s too, forcibly keeping anything heavy off of his face. He waits until they both nod, too curious and too compliant to refuse, before he speaks. “If you could leave here,” Satoru asks, threading his fingers a little further into the black of Megumi’s soft hair, “would you want to?”

He remembers Maki had been almost disgustingly intelligent. It was part of the reason he’d loved teaching her. She’d caught on quick to just about everything academic and even quicker when it involved any sort of weapon. It had never taken her longer than a month to master any given thing, and she’d worked to the bone to perfect anything her own intellect couldn’t subsidize. The only thing she’d ever been lacking in had maybe been her own ability to recognize that she didn’t need to prove herself to the people that cared for her, but it hadn’t ever been something he’d considered to be her own fault.

He can see that intelligence now, racing like a hare behind the dark of her eyes, widening them as she sorts through every word he doesn’t say. He knows she knows who he is. He knows she knows what he’s done, recently. He knows she knows that he’s the most powerful person in the room, in this estate, in their entire world at the moment.

Zen’in Maki does not ask why he’d posed that particular question. She doesn’t need to.

He watches her dart a glance over her shoulder, eyes lingering on her sister and where she looks almost achingly hopeful shrunken against the wall, where she looks just about desolate staring at her twin’s back. He sees the moment Maki makes up her mind.

“Yes,” she says, eyes blinking away as they settle on him, instead, truthful to the core even knowing what it means. “I would.”

“And what about your sister?” Satoru asks, sliding his eyes down to Mai, because he remembers the rift between them, as involved in it as he hadn’t been. He doesn’t know much about Zen’in Mai, just that no complex comes from nowhere, and to be demonized at all a person must first be idolized.

She deliberates for a long moment, looking at Maki, looking at him, indecision warring in her pint-sized well of rippling cursed energy. If she wanted to, if she came to him, she could utilize the technique it gives her to its fullest. Mai could become a grade one shaman so long as she has the accommodations necessary- accommodations only Satoru himself and Suguru by extension can provide. 

She doesn’t know this. 

“I would,” Mai still whispers, only just loud enough for them to hear, and it sounds terrified in a way entirely different from the terror Naoya had given her.

For a moment, he considers the logistics of putting them in their six bedroom house and two parent home, and discards it as quickly as he thinks it. There’s a limit to the unwanted children they can collect and care for, and four already have a prior claim to that position. 

He’d loved Maki once, for her wit, her tenacity, her unwavering strength of character. He watched her ribbon to pieces in nothing but a fleeting dream in another life, left to be scattered halves in an empty breeze beside the blood droplets being carried by the wind from the reddened pool she’d left behind. He doesn’t know what happened as much as he does. The Zen’in Mai that had looked at her sister and asked her to destroy everything is not so different from the unforgiving iteration of the Gojo Satoru he’s become, after all.

‘There is a next best option,’ he thinks, and wonders how exactly his grandmother will take the news when he finally breaks it to her. He’s sure she’s been stewing in questions she won’t ask after what he’d let slip that night.

“Alright,” Satoru says, pushing his glasses back up his nose, dissolving the tension in the room. “You’ll see me again,” he promises, and turns on his heel to leave, before he pauses. “Soon,” he clarifies. “You’ll see me really soon.”

He can feel their stares on his back still as he leaves, the delicate, budding hope neither of them are choosing to acknowledge. 

Chapter Text

“You’re late,” Naobito grouses, his kimono already slipping off of one shoulder and the reek of alcohol hanging around him like an ugly halo.

“And you’re drunk,” Satoru retorts, carefully positioning himself just behind Megumi- close enough that his head brushes the fronts of his legs, his slick dress shoes boxing in red and white sneakers. “Do you really want to play this game, Ojii-san?” 

Two of the Kukuru unit members share an uneasy side eye where they stand regally along the wall behind where Naobito sits, a flutter of fingers behind their backs trying to belie a signed, coded language. Just to be a brat swinging his weight around, Satoru smiles thinly, digging in his pocket for his checkbook as he shuffles his feet to make Megumi fall in even closer.

“...You’ve got some nerve, waltzing in here,” Naobito mutters, sharpened eyes on the flat black leather in his hand, the expensive pen that materializes in his other. The burn on his face that Suguru left during the trial is healed, nothing but a shiny mark of scarred skin spread in a wash over his left cheek.

“Funny,” Satoru tones, looking down over the rims of his black glasses, “Naoya said the same thing.” It earns him a scowl, a loud tch of a noise, Naobito finally sitting up as he crosses his arms.

“The boy is ours,” he states, and Satoru raises an eyebrow. 

“Legally, maybe. He’ll be mine, though.” He gives the checkbook a wave, clicking the top of the pen as he lets his eerie, closed lip smile grow a little larger. “I’ll pay you double what you gave to Zen’in Toji.” 

Naobito’s eyes narrow, a sharp crease running between his brows as his eyes shine, catching the thin sliver of light streaming in from the cracked shoji doors as he leans forward. There’s all sorts of calculations running behind them, thoughts dredging past that Satoru could guess at if he cared to know.

“And if I barter higher?” Naobito asks, a flat set to his lips that Satoru more than likes the look of. He feels Megumi shift slightly against him, nervously moving weight from one foot to the other, and if he weren’t standing in front of the alcoholic head of the Zen’in clan, he’d reach down a hand to steady him with.

“We do remember what happened to Elder Kaito’s head, don’t we?” Satoru croons, tapping the top of the pen to the glossy curve of his lower lip. “Is petty crime really going to be the thing to stop me from getting what I want?” He blinks, slow and coy, reveling in the buckled frustration curling Naobito’s hands into fists at the patronizing tone of his taunt. 

“You pay triple,” Naobito offers, eyes flickering down to glare at Megumi for a moment as they assess him, raking over his face and the short few feet of height he has, “and I’ll consider letting you buy him.” 

“Oh, but what about if we make a deal?” Satoru offers, giving the pen a fancy twirl between his fingers, something like delight and vindication both making him feel floaty on his centered feet as he imitates only the best of what Gojo Akemi taught him. “I’ve got a feeling it’ll be one you’ll like.”

“...Elaborate,” Naobito rumbles, the low cadence of his voice catching the pitches of his vocal cords, a spark of interest picking his head up. 

“First,” he interjects, flipping his checkbook back and forth between his steepled fingers, “Ogi’s twins. Maki and Mai.”

“What about those two wastes of life?” Naobito grouses, irritated at the tangent, and Satoru splays his filled hands.

“I’m interested in taking them off your hands,” he says, shrugging mildly, “I’m sure no one here would miss them if they’re waste, right?” He’s eyed suspiciously for a long moment, a leer in Naobito’s heavy gaze, before he scoffs. 

“Two-hundred and eight thousand yen,” Naobito states, one graying eyebrow rising, unamused, “and they’re yours.”

“Lovely,” Satoru responds, tucking the number in the back of his mind as he absently swings one pair of intangible eyes around to the east side of the estate, two small flickers gradually winding through long hallways. “Akemi-sama and I will discuss and come back later to collect.”

He visibly watches Naobito’s teeth grit, his patience wearing thin the longer Satoru avoids his original statement. 

“And the deal?” He prods, the words gruff as they leave his mouth, and he can’t help but straighten to his full height from the centimeter he’d been slouching.

“You let me buy him,” Satoru begins, disgustingly grateful for his grandmother and all her broken-in paths paved through the forest, “and I’ll honor the agreement Zen’in Toji left before he died- under a condition,” he finishes, remembering how it had been relief once when he’d seen Naobito’s rapid give. 

It’s nothing short of malicious elation, now.

“A stipulation of money?” He questions, hands facing sideways on his knelt legs as he leans in, suddenly more alert than he’s been since they walked in, and Satoru flicks the pen between his fingers so it’s stood upright.

“Not money. Death.” He smiles, cold and sly and something Suguru had worn more than he ever had. “If I die or become mentally incapacitated for any reason,” he says, watching the imperceptible drag of Naobito’s fingers into the fabric of his lazy kimono, “Fushiguro Megumi will be ceded to the clan for position of clan head.”

He feels it more than he sees it, Naobito’s rippling cursed energy, Megumi’s immediate panic. The former sits and stares for a long moment, the snap of his living residuals flickering wildly as he rushes through the gambling decisions of which son is more powerful, while the latter presses into his legs, a tremor running through small shoulders even though Megumi’s face remains carefully blank.

“...And the other half of this clause?” Naobito asks, leaning back as he straightens, one hand spilling down his chin in thought.

“So long as I live, Fushiguro Megumi belongs to me,” Satoru answers, and they stand in a dimly lit room stained only by a thin ray of sunlight, eyes locked together and immovable will clashing against unstoppable force. 

“Sold,” Naobito declares, bringing the palm of one hand down heavily on the fabric over his leg, “six hundred and fifty million yen,” and he’s barely spoken the words aloud before Satoru’s scrawling the number onto a new page in his checkbook.

For all that bartering goes smoothly, the rest takes longer. There’s a few hours worth of paperwork to wade through, legal documents to sign and contracts to agree to, a witness needing to oversee all of it and then two lawyers the Zen’in’s keep on retainer to look over everything when it’s finally done.

Despite being told multiple times that he can leave the room to play in the adjacent gardens just on the other side of the shoji doors, Megumi refuses to. After the first hour of staunch bickering back and forth over the language used in the contract and then the terms used in Naobito’s altered will, Satoru gives up on pretenses and keeping appearances. 

It’s easier to stay calm with Megumi sat in the hollow of his crossed legs, anyway.

The whole thing is as mind numbingly boring as he remembers it to be the first time, and it’s a wonder how Megumi manages to stay awake throughout it. He nods off like he’s sorely feeling it several times, only to jerk back again, head ramming into his sternum. 

It’s different than the first time too, because Megumi had left the negotiation deals alone. He’d spent the few hours it had taken to iron everything out in the gardens, chasing after frogs and trying to pet the elusive koi fish in the chilly ponds. This time, he stays put, sat as close as he can get, a new degree of wary when he’s finally got something to lose. 

Satoru doesn’t explain his choice to him so long as they’re at the estate- that’s a conversation that has to be saved for the secluded walls of home and nowhere else. 

‘He’s probably so anxious about it because he doesn’t understand,’ he thinks, not for the first time as the bickering picks up again over one kanji character that could be another, and Megumi presses against him like he’s trying to get away from it all with nowhere to go. He can’t blame him. Satoru said on the walk up he’d never sell Megumi to the clan, and yet he’s just heard his sale with his own ears.

‘Soon,’ he thinks, moving his glasses up to his head as the attorney starts to yell at the lawyer, the both of them flapping starched pieces of paper at each other as if he, Naobito, Ogi, and a few heads of the Hei unit he doesn’t recognize know what on earth they’re arguing about this time. Collectively, they all sigh in tandem, and it’s the closest to genuine peace any two clans will ever get. ‘This’ll be done soon.’

“Yaga! I’ll trade you!” Satoru shouts, leaning into the spacious office meant for a full staff of teachers and yet only ever holding three. 

He watches in mild mirth as a tan head shoots up off the desk it had been sat on, a line of drool trailing down Yaga’s chin and circles under his eyes. A glance down as he walks further into the office proves Panda to be sleeping in his lap, a stack of paperwork two feet high on either side of the dusty old computer pulled up to a half answered email.

“Not a word,” he mutters sullenly, dragging a sleeve over his chin as he furiously backspaces a long slew of mismatched letters pressed by his forehead. 

“You could drop Panda off sometime, you know,” Satoru chides, giving Yaga’s ear a flick with one hand, the other adjusting Megumi slightly as he dozes on his shoulder. “It isn’t like we’re that busy.”

He gets a hand batting at him, Yaga’s eternal scowl staying fixed on the screen, and Satoru only rolls his eyes. He gets it, he does, but even he has (an admittedly unreachable) limit to how attached he is to his own babies, and he’s not even sacrificing that much sleep. Panda must be draining Yaga more than he thought when he’s already bogged down by all the work from his promotion. 

“Am I babysitting now, too?” Yaga asks, the dry question coming with a flick of his eyes up to where Megumi’s head pillows against his collar, eyes shut in a light sleep that’s only lasted for maybe twenty minutes since he lost the fight against his own boredom. 

“No,” Satoru says, reaching out a hand and wiggling his fingers in a wordless gesture to trade, “Shoko and Suguru are down in the clinic right now with Tsumiki. I’m leaving him with them.” One dark eyebrow raises, curious to know as Yaga holds Panda up, swapping one toddler for another.

“Hellooo, cutie,” he coos, tamping down on a squeal when Panda yawns, adorably too big for his tiny face, folding him into a cradle as he watches Yaga do the same with Megumi, groggy green eyes blinking open from the sudden change of cursed energy.

“Who are you visiting?” Yaga asks, whispering a quiet, ‘just Ojii-chan,’ against Megumi’s ear as he runs a hand over his hair, calming the panic before it can bloom. 

“Akemi,” he says, offering his thumb for Panda to teethe on, gradually increasing the stream of cursed energy he suckles on like a bottle to that of a small flood. “There’s another pair of Zen’in kids I think could have a better run than before.” 

He watches Yaga tilt his head, consideration staining his worn out face, before he lifts one hand from Megumi’s back as he resettles for Satoru to grab. Wordlessly, he does, plucking each individual memory he wants Yaga to see to set at the front of his mind.

They’re something like a torrent when he strums them, humming memories of Maki throughout her first and second year as she’d grown, how her and her sister had fought during the exchange event in their second year before it had all collapsed, a ghost of a dream of Mai giving in, destroy everything her last wish and something he’s only half convinced actually happened.

“...Goddamn,” Yaga mutters, breaking the melody in two, involuntarily squeezing his wrist under the onslaught of emotion-charged information.

“I think they’d do better in the Gojo clan,” Satoru explains, shrugging with one shoulder as Panda hauls himself further up his body, enamored with looking around the room at six foot three. “It wouldn’t exactly be that different, but it wouldn’t be as violent.”

“And you know this for certain?” Yaga presses, a suspicion in his bleeding tone as he finally pulls his hand away, steadying it on Megumi’s back as he lurches upright, eyes still shut like he isn’t fully awake yet.

“Our head is a woman,” Satoru snaps, a touch callous only because he’s tired himself and a little desperate to be right when he has so few options to help Maki live a better life than before, “of course I know it would.”

Yaga flashes his palms up, differential, and Satoru sighs slightly, turning Panda onto his back along the line of his arm to ruffle a hand through the thick fuzz on his belly. It gets him a delighted hiccup, furry limbs waving in a physical game of peek-a-boo.

“Try,” Yaga says, when the silence stretches for a long moment, Megumi’s green eyes opening lidded and slow as he languidly blinks. “You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t.” 

Slumping slightly, Satoru nods, giving the foot of his office chair a halfhearted kick out of pettiness alone. Maybe it’s a permission he was looking for, or maybe it’s just encouragement he needed. There’s always a reason he goes to Yaga, be it small or big or large, and this is no exception. 

“Alright,” he agrees, and forces himself to hope that this will be a good outcome of different, too.

“Suguru,” Shoko chimes, hand on her chin where she sits half on one of the school’s clinic counters, eyes narrowed in thought, “make another, but about half as large.”

“Alright,” he agrees, pulling another loose sheet of the talisman paper they brought from the store they keep under their bedroom desk to write on, the brush pen practiced between his fingers. As he does, Tsumiki groans, a blistering sort of frustration making her more impatient than she is. 

“I warned you this wasn’t going to be something you’d learn in a day,” Shoko chides, the words partially distracted as she scribbles in a three ring binder, filled to its edges with tabs and paper. Tsumiki pouts, sat on one of the cots as she tries and fails to utilize positive energy. The inked sigil sits in front of her, only a lock when it contains just half of the seal they’d made from the Prison Realm’s, the white fuuinjutsu paper crinkled at its edges. 

“I know,” Tsumiki whines, huffing, shoving her glasses back up her nose as she presses four fingers to the paper again. Shoko hums, clearly disagreeing, and Suguru only sits and watches impassively as he fills another talisman with a small well of his cursed energy. It’s tiny, maybe no more than a single strike’s worth, but unless Tsumiki can learn to use them she’ll never get anywhere. 

She’s been getting nowhere with the larger ones as it is.

“Hey- Megumi I told you not to go in there-!” He calls, rushing to get up from Shoko’s rolly stool, his steps three times the size of Megumi’s own as he comes to a halt behind him, scooping hands under his arms to swing him away from the storage room door. 

“I just wanted to look,” he protests, craning his neck back to glance up at him, and Suguru makes a face.

“Uh huh,” he tones, giving Megumi another bounce as he turns him around, sat in the crook of his elbow instead of held in his hands. “There’s dangerous medications and tools stored in there. You could accidentally open something and cut yourself, or eat something that’d make you sick.”

“I wouldn’t put anything in my mouth,” Megumi refutes, latching onto the second half of his explanation and the second half only, and Suguru sighs, reaching up with one hand to gently wring his nose. 

“You tried to eat a flower on the way here,” he says, and Megumi throws his hands up, head shaking off the tease of his pinched knuckles. 

“Flowers are edible,” he argues, and Suguru gives up, resigning himself to just making certain he has a hold of Megumi so long as they’re in the clinic. “I’ve eaten those before.”

“Why,” he wonders, and then holds up a hand, shutting his eyes for a moment. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know. Why won’t you tell me about something you wanna talk about, huh?” 

Megumi gives him a long, leery stare for an unbroken second, before he shrugs, settling against his arm and head pillowing on his shoulder as he starts to talk about the small forest on the school’s playground he’s building a fort made of fallen sticks inside of. 

Behind them, he hears Tsumiki groan loudly again, the sharp clap of her hands over her face as it likely flames, before Shoko’s low drawl filters in after it. He watches her kneel slightly on the cot when he turns, halfway on the thin mattress with one leg curled and the other on the floor, right hand between Tsumiki’s shoulder blades and his freshly painted talisman in between the fingers of her left.

Tsumiki’s hands gradually draw back down, something a little miserable staining her expression as she sighs, nodding forlornly. She takes the paper anyway, trading away the first, and stares down at it for a long while as she seems to think.

He knows she can see the cursed energy it emanates with the glasses- she’d said so herself an hour ago when he’d been creating the first talisman, only interrupted by Yaga coming to drop Megumi off with a word about Satoru running a family errand. She knows what it looks like, what to do, but she’s still struggling with what both she and Satoru call, ‘finding the thread.’  

It’s been a start, at least, the fact that she’d known what the words meant at all. Shoko had repeated them out of maybe what had been plain curiosity to Tsumiki earlier that afternoon, and it hadn’t just been her who’d been surprised when she’d taken a long, scrutinizing look at the talisman he’d written, and said she’d understood. 

‘You really think Satoru’s right about this?’ Shoko had muttered to him, fingers itching for a cigarette, and Suguru had shrugged.

‘If she got that by herself, maybe,’ he’d answered, a little impressed despite himself, something like desperately hopeful it would work. 

Despite all her frustration, Tsumiki holds the talisman with one hand, and sets two fingers back onto the sigil. She sits bent over the paper, concentrating hard as her eyes flick between things he doesn’t see, never more than a micron in width, seemingly searching for something.

Shoko makes a noise, and when he looks up, she holds up five fingers, mouthing a curt, ‘minutes,’ with a faint nod in Tsumiki’s direction. He understands why as soon as he looks- her cursed energy feels frenzied, manic with a want to succeed and pissed with her inability to do it, and if he didn’t know better, he’d say she might be another hour off from creating the beginnings of a curse.

‘It won’t happen in a single weekend,’ Suguru thinks, boosting Megumi up when he gestures for his shoulders, still rambling away about any topic that comes to mind as he speaks among all of his hummed, passive answers. 

Even if Tsumiki makes no progress with this, she’s already beginning to unconsciously direct the flow of her cursed energy so it isn’t a leaking faucet. All of her intense concentration on its inverse seems to have given her a metaphorical foothold. It isn’t contained like a real shamans would be, but it’s circulating, if ineffectively. It’s a start, and not a bad one in the slightest. 

“So, have you made a decision yet?” He asks, holding out his hand with a roll of his eyes for Shoko to light her cigarette on, evidently caving and taking the smoke. 

“And that question right there is why I have poison between my teeth,” Shoko mutters, inhaling a long draw of nicotine as they walk down the front path of the school, watching the kids race around in front of them with the demon dogs. Still puppies with Megumi’s perceived will, they weave in and out of their equally little legs, tripping the both of them as they try and play a wobbly game of tag.

“You can’t avoid it forever,” Suguru says, a frown tugging on his lips, and Shoko breathes out a cloud of smoke directly into his face, a smug grin on her upturned lips.

“Yes I can,” she declares, dainty and lofty while he coughs.

“For the love of god, Shoko.” He glares, gaze sharpened even though it doesn’t burn any, reaching out to pinch her side in a snapping gesture that makes her jump. “You know I like this as much as you do. Satoru likes this as much as you do.”

“Satoru isn’t the one who’ll be getting his hands dirty,” Shoko grouses, a trace of bitterness in her words, soured to hide their fear.

“Oh yes, that’s right, he’s just going to be an object of scrutiny for something that weirdo believes they killed once,” Suguru snarks back, hands flaring in his pockets as he tucks them inside his jeans, and Shoko barks a gritty laugh.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” she guffaws, a sardonic sort of mirth lighting up her shadowed eyes. She’s been sleeping less since that afternoon they came home, news of an impromptu and highly unwanted allyship sinking the entire day. “I’ve got a hunch you’re not so invaluable yourself, curse manipulator.”

“Please don’t remind me,” he mutters, resiting a shiver at the memory of his body in Shibuya station, the recurring nightmare of a man that looks like him setting his own home to flame, a wicked grin below the line sewn into his forehead. 

“...Just,” Shoko begins, something uncertain in the waning curl of her voice, eyes staring at their feet as they walk down the long, stone staircase stretching beneath the torii gate. “What happens next? I say yes, because of course I say yes, and…then what?” She shrugs, swallowing down something thick, rolling her cigarette from the left side of her lips to their right.

“Satoru’s never done this before. He’d have no idea what sort of things it could cause. I have no idea what sort of things it would cause,” she mutters, face turned up enough to catch his eye, and Suguru exhales a long, heavy breath, a nervous waver in the furrow of his own brows.

“I’m scared too,” he murmurs, and turns one hand out of his jeans, brushing their knuckles together until Shoko latches on, “but being scared won’t get us anywhere.” He gives her hand a squeeze, their eyes locked as they step down onto the last paved walkway leading to the highway hidden in the forest of the mountainside. 

“I hate this,” he admits, because he does, because Shoko needs to hear it, “but I know it could be useful, too. It can’t be until it is, though, and you’re the one that decides that, Shoko.” He keeps watching as she looks away, teeth sunk deep into the filter of her cigarette and eyes shining from a visceral sort of emotion.

“You know we won’t go through with it if you decide you can’t,” Suguru repeats, not for the first time and probably what won’t be the last, either. “But I know you. You don’t hide from things. You’re a total badass,” he snickers, swinging their hands, glancing up when he hears one of the kids shriek, huffing slightly when he realizes it was because Tsumiki was tagged. 

“You caught a flying hatchet midair,” he pokes, to Shoko’s good-natured scoff, digging further as he keeps talking. “You got up and went to Russia on a whim for nothing but a rumor. You have one of the worst cursed artifacts ever created hidden in your skin.” He gives her hand a tug, and lets his face fall into the smooth corners of sympathy when her hazel eyes roam over his expression. 

“I know you’re scared about crossing a line, but you aren’t by yourself,” he says, certain Shoko knows it in her bones, even if she needs a reminder. “You and Satoru pull me back. You and I pull Satoru back. We’ll pull you back, too.” 

“...I know,” Shoko mumbles, her voice tightened slightly, and he lets her when she swings into his side, slipping her hand out of his to put in his back pocket instead, tilting her cheek onto his shoulder. “We trade, I know. I just…” She pauses, lips twisting around her cigarette, and Suguru lets her think, sorting out her words before she says them.

“I’ll do it, I will- I’m just so worried that, this time, we might not be enough.” Shoko looks up, hair loose around her shoulders and the evening sunlight turning her face golden. “It won’t be a power struggle like the kind you two are used to. It’ll be something worse,” she says, swinging her free hand to reach up, making a fist as if to encase the sun.

“You don’t know scientists like I do. You don’t know how we think, what it makes us. I could probably call it a race, even.” She holds it for a long moment, a shadow over one of her eyes as a faint smoke curdle winds into the air, staring at her first before she lets it go. “What kind of monsters will be playing, and how quickly can they become worse than what they already are?”

“...Becoming worse would be inevitable anyway,” Suguru murmurs, once the words have settled into his skin, burning into the marrows of his bones as he thinks of bloody tatami, a chamber room full of horror, Amanai Riko and the wet splatter of her body on stone. “Maybe we didn’t start monsters, but so long as we don’t conform to this world, we’ll only ever keep becoming different kinds.”

He stares out at the road, a black chauffeur car already pulling down from the hidden path winding up behind the school by the assistant he’d called, watching Megumi and Tsumiki chase after each other, giggles and smiles bright in the beginning of the evening. He thinks of that other him, the one that had chosen what kind of monster he’d be from a countless array of them, and then built an entire life for the truth of it. Whether or not it had been real or fake hadn’t really mattered, he supposes, not when his actions had cemented the evil he’d chosen to become. 

Maybe he isn’t that iteration of Getou Suguru, but he’s still a version of him, and certainly no one closer to being a saint.

“I’m alright with being a monster,” Suguru says, turning his gaze away to look down at Shoko, instead. “I don’t know how to make you find your own peace with that, but maybe you should.”

He’s trying to find his, in filling shoes he doesn’t wear and weighing costs against their gain, questioning and questioning and questioning until he can find an answer to pick that he actually likes. One that he wants, instead of one that he needs.

The kids shout something at each other, playing along the tree line, the demon dogs barking and running past where Megumi only narrowly escapes the tag of Tsumiki’s palm. They aren’t playing in any real way- the rules are bent when there’s only two of them to trade off for it, but they look like they’re having fun regardless.

For a long while, Shoko simply stares at him, hovering on the brink of something he couldn’t name when only watching the imperceptible shift of her eyes, the slight furrow of her brow, the twitch of her cigarette as she absently bites along its filter. She turns away, eventually, and he sees how her gaze falls onto Megumi and Tsumiki, how the line of her mouth sets like she’s finally giving in to letting herself become something made of marble. 

Permission to be a monster, just like them.

He doesn’t stop and say hi to Suguru, Tsumiki, or Shoko when he leaves Megumi with Yaga. If he did, he might not leave at all, and he needs to do this in the same way he needed to make Nobara a grave.

‘It’s fine,’ he tells himself as the world tilts, colors melding together and resolidifying into the steps leading up to the Gojo estate. ‘This can’t go worse than the last visit.’ Satoru breathes in, pushes all the worry down, and starts to climb.

He hasn’t been walking through the halls longer than a full minute when Chihrio makes a beeline for him, an imploring intensity staining her expression and her hands kept careful curled by her sides rather than lifted trying to reach for him. 

“Satoru-sama,” she tones, her voice roughened and lowered with age, softened for him like it’s been since he was a child, and yet lacking the fullness of the warmth he remembers it having. 

“Hi, Chi-san,” he says, unable to help letting his shoulders curve slightly, leaning a little away from the rigid line of his full height. Has he ruined this? In burning down the other half of his life, did he burn away her, too?

“...Did you get what you wanted?” Chihiro asks, her worn mouth set in a gentled frown, the black of her dark eyes scattering the memory of a chill down his skin of being a child and getting caught with his nose in places it wasn’t supposed to be. It’s different now from then, though, when it’s a choice instead of a reprimand. She isn’t dressing his wounds, this time; he’s dressing hers. 

“Was it worth it?” She continues, when he only stands in front of her with nothing to say, maybe not grieving in any way a real family would but lingering all the same. She’d been the closest to him when the three of them had been kids, head maid and more than a little observant to the bullying that had driven him to exist in his own tiny atmosphere. That hadn’t meant that she couldn’t find any care for Hoshiko or Hitomi.

“...Why are you asking me this, Chi-san?” Satoru wonders, peering over the rims of his glasses, watching her weathered hands calmly fold over each other on the front of her long apron. “You know I don’t do things I regret.”

She clucks her tongue, brows lowering in a subdued sort of mirth. “Eighteen years old and you still don’t listen,” she chides, giving her head a tilt to let the long braid of her graying, black hair fall over her shoulder, spilling down her back. 

“Was it worth it?” She repeats, the steady stare of her dark eyes a little hallowing as they bore into his own unflinchingly. 

Satoru opens his mouth to respond, to say it was, only to let the words drip off of his tongue. He can see the shrines they’ve made for his cousins, set up in the main room of the house, two urns the mark of a proper shaman burial. He wonders how high the flames of the bonfire reached up to the curling ink of the night sky. Two other staff members kneel before it as he looks on, watching, knowing that though maybe every person in his family has their faults, there’s a reason the Gojo clan is known to be the pride of the oldest three. 

“...Maybe it was for me,” he finally murmurs, a guilt settling like stone in his stomach, “but not for you.” Chihiro regards him for a long, silent moment, a weary thing on her old shoulders and a resolve in the set of her wrinkling mouth. 

“You’re here to see your grandmother, aren’t you?” She asks, finally turning away as they begin walking down the quiet halls, and Satoru nods, letting the conversation trickle away from the somber introduction it had.

He is a monster. He’s accepted that. One wrong makes a right except when it doesn’t, and one wrong doesn’t make a right except when it does. He’s chosen what he’ll give for the wrongs he wants to right, and maybe when all is said and done what it creates will outweigh all the bad he’ll do to make it. Maybe it won’t.

Whatever the outcome, Satoru isn’t looking for atonement. He was a sinner before he split blood and he was a sinner still after red was glittering sticky and bright all over the floor. He isn’t good, isn’t god, and he’s not trying to be. He’s only human, only flawed, only a little evil if only through one set of eyes or another. Let them treat him like one all they want. They’ll only ever be worshiping an imitation, if god isn’t a sinner itself. 

It doesn’t erase the consequences. They glimmer around him like fractals as he walks through the house, trailing after Chihiro to find Akemi, spotted like little faces of shiny stones catching the light. White clothing for mourning, quiet rooms, shut doors, people he’s known since he was born paying painful respects to the only thing he left behind for them to have. 

His cousins have died to further the lives of a handful of children. He’s almost certainly the monster, but is the scale tipped or balanced? 

He doesn’t know. 

“There’s a stain in my office, now,” Akemi begins, sat in the opening of the parted shoji doors where they lead out to a small engawa, a well kept traditional garden stretching out beyond the wood. 

“Hello to you to, Obaa-san,” Satoru jabs back, walking further inside as he hears Chihiro disappear down the hallway, off to whatever chores the maidstaff is running through today.

“That doesn’t sound like an admission of guilt,” Akemi says, the sarcasm light along her tongue as she looks up from her papers, dressed down in a flowy yukata, intricately patterned in washes of blues. “What do you want,” she asks, and the unhidden purple under her eyes is the only reason he doesn’t poke at how easily she caves.

“If you need more money, pull from your mission stipend.” She waves a hand, long, loose white hair fluttering slightly in the breeze whispering over the garden. “You haven’t touched it in months and I put plenty in it-” Satoru cuts her off, hands curving over his calves as he settles down maybe a foot away, legs crossed and casual like it had only been when he was too young to properly walk, yet.

“No,” Satoru says, and then, “well technically, but it’s not about money, really.” Akemi pauses, red eyes narrowing as she looks at him, one leg drawn up and the other curved in on the floor, a large stack of paperwork perched on her thigh and a pen in the long, delicate fingers of her left hand. 

“Go on,” she tones, the low cadence of her smooth voice interested, and Satoru finally sits up straight.

“I’ve got another deal for you. One you might like, this time,” he offers, and stays still as the faintest wash of Medusa scatters over him like the drizzle of misty rain, accidental and unpressured. 

“I heard the sale of the Ten Shadows boy went through this morning,” Akemi begins, head tilting slightly as she thinks, the fingers of her free hand drumming restlessly on her stack of paper, perfectly manicured nails crisp with every tap. “Who else did you buy?”

“You know those Zen’in twins that Ogi had? The two with the weak technique and the heavenly restriction-” He explains, and fully expects the haughty, delicate scoff that interrupts him.

“Not interested,” Akemi says, turning away from him as she puts her pen back to paper, skimming along a line of print in a font so small it’s barely readable. It must be a contract for something. “They’re useless as assets- not worth the money.” 

“Ah, but Obaa-san, I haven’t even gotten to the best part, yet,” Satoru wheedles, rocking back where he sits slightly, lifting a hand to pull his glasses from his nose to set on his hair. When Akemi looks up, brows pinched in a mildly annoyed confusion, he smiles.

“Does the name Zen’in Toji ring any bells to you?” He asks, already knowing the answer, and watches her pale eyes minutely widen.

“...What exactly are you implying?” Akemi mutters sharply, pen falling down to the wood again as she drops her hand, catching the afternoon light as a halo around her colorless shape. It makes her white hair look almost iridescent, long and silky and beautiful, and he wonders for a moment if his would look the same if he grew it out.

“You’ve been replaying the conversation from that night over, haven’t you?” Satoru asks, tilting his head as he shifts his weight to one hip, drawing a knee up to circle his arms around it. “Don’t you want to know what it means?” 

His grandmother sours a little, bittered at not having the upperhand for the secret even as she nods, wholly understanding that fulfilled curiosity is worth more than wounded pride. 

“You said the first time,” she accuses, the words lowered to something spoken quietly under her breath, the secret not one either of them want overheard, even if for different, selfish reasons.

“Because this is the second,” Satoru confirms, and then pauses for a moment as she stills, thoughts running behind her piercing stare, finally giving in and shuffling closer along the traditional flooring until they’re barely two inches away. “I won’t stab you if you don’t stab me,” he mumbles, glaring a mild side eye at Akemi’s squinted eyes, impotently ignoring the small spark of relief when it comes after she nods. 

For all that there’s over forty years between them, sometimes he feels like there’s less. There have always been the moments where she feels like a titan, large and powerful and someone who’s made him feel small since he actually was, but there have been the years where they’d felt more like gods clashing unbalanced weapons, too. Not quite equals, but not quite different. Like this, finally respected in the same way Akemi respects herself, she doesn’t feel like his unmoving, unbending grandmother, impossible to best and impossible to sway to anyone’s desires but her own. Like this, she just feels like a person, as small as him and the same as him.

He can’t tell if it’s unnerving, or just a weight off his shoulders. 

“Things went differently the first time,” he mutters, beginning from the point that she knows because it’ll be the least difficult story to tell, and something in him wonders why it’s easier to be truthful to his sadistic grandmother than his own friends. “Amanai Riko was still killed by Zen’in Toji, but Suguru- Getou Suguru,” he pauses, hands fidgeting in his lap, restless at the memory the words draw to the front of his mind. 

“He defected not long after,” he continues, feeling the imperceptible surprise rippling Akemi’s tightly constrained cursed energy, the slight widening of her eyes. “Started a cult. Deluded himself into killing non-shamans.” Satoru sighs, shutting his eyes as he lets his head fall back against the thick wall, stacked with two metal tracks for fusuma and shoji doors, both sets pulled back to let in the spring air. 

“It…escalated,” he hedges, twirling his thumbs aimlessly around each other, eyes blinking open to meander along the floor. “Eventually, he was used by someone else to, uhm.” He swallows, the words thick, not wanting to realize themselves in front of Akemi- untouchable, infallible Akemi, who had done nothing once for over seven years, either because she’d been dead or she hadn’t cared.

‘She probably thought it wasn’t a cause worth wasting shamans for,’ he thinks dully, and knows that if he had been in her shoes, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t do the very same.

“Seven years inside the Prison Realm is apparently my limit,” Satoru murmurs, lifting a palm to stare down at his nails, perfectly shaped, painted clear, rounded and blunt and yet longer than he’d started with back in first year when he’d been fifteen and barely holding it together.

Akemi tenses next to him, the brush of her hair on his arm a slight tickle. “What,” she hushes, short and sharp, a muted alarm stiffening her entire body.

“It won’t happen this time,” Satoru promises, running the pad of his thumb over the lacquered smoothness of his nails, “Suguru and I sealed it.”

“You sealed- it’s the Prison Realm!” Akemi hisses, turning suddenly enough that her huge stack of papers goes tumbling onto the wood beside her with a dry rustle and a clatter of heavy pages. “It was made to hold you, you reckless little idiot,” she snaps meanly, yanking hard on his chin as she turns his face towards herself, and Satoru flinches, jostled. “Where on earth do you think is safe enough to put it?!” 

“It’s not on earth!” He throws back, the words rasped forcefully under his breath as he wrenches her hand away, scowling as he rubs at his jaw. Akemi grinds to a halt, a blank look settling over her face, and sat so close to her skin, he can actually see some of her beginning, invisible wrinkle lines.

“Why would I tell you, anyway?” He continues, righting himself in a huff as he crosses his arms, sinking into his slumped shoulders. “That would defeat the purpose of the secret.”

“Is that fucking cube floating around our goddamn solar system right now,” Akemi asks, her voice perfectly flat, and Satoru can’t stop the giggle when it trickles through his teeth, only a small note of hysteria in it for once.

‘...Dammit,’ he thinks. That could have solved all his problems, actually, if that fucking thing was soaring past Pluto right about now. Maybe he’ll send it up there if they ever get to put Stitches inside of it. 

“No,” he says, “though now that you mention it-” The cloying squeeze of Medusa cuts his words off into a whistle of strained air, Akemi’s glare stomach twisting as his body is locked and pressurized.

“Moving on,” she bites out, aggressively adjusting the edges of her yukata, blinking to release her technique as she sits back down, and Satoru can’t help a muted gasp as his limbs relax. He scowls like he’d bitten into a lemon, slinking a low glare in her direction but not saying anything about it because she’s right, and he has more important things to talk about.

“I accidentally discovered one of Limitless’s extended abilities when I took my life,” he says, muted as the small jitters of muscle spasms gradually disappear from his limbs, a little sobered as he thinks of who exactly he’s sat next to. “My domain used to be just our universe, but it fractaled into the multiverse after I dumped myself into a different timeline.” 

“...When?” Akemi asks, a hand over her mouth as she thinks, brows furrowed heavily and a million thoughts circling loudly behind her eyes. 

He’d wonder why she’s so quick to believe him, except he knows that he’d never had pulled a stunt like he did last month back then. Satoru of barely eighteen take one wouldn’t have had the balls yet, especially fearful he’d get cut off, and would lose precious funding to support the Fushiguro children.

Bleeding heart, and all.

“Fifteen,” Satoru answers, shrugging, and relaxes somewhat when she nods, humming a short, low note. “I lived to twenty-eight, though. I can tell you with certainty that those Zen’in twins aren’t wasted assets in the slightest.”

“...I never should have taught you,” Akemi mutters, an annoyance in her tone that he knows comes from being on the receiving end of her own tactics, knowing she won’t learn anything else about this story unless it involves a relevance to any sort of deal they make, or she infers it for herself.

“Oh, but you did,” Satoru says, the snooty words lacking the energy he’d normally speak them with, and he sighs again. “I want better for them. Maki became the equivalent of Zen’in Toji if not more, but only because her sister stopped holding her back.” It’s something of a callous way to put it, but he can’t deny that it’s true. He wonders what they would have done together, if Mai hadn’t completed the restriction. He supposes nothing, because without it, they might not have reconciled at all.

“And the Zen’in clan will limit them from this?” Akemi asks, considering, and Satoru nods.

“Naobito only wanted two-hundred thousand or so yen for them. I know you could triple that value’s worth if you brought out their real potential.” I know you could do to them what you did to me, he doesn’t say. “It isn’t as if the Zen’ins think they have any- they’ll never create anything close to what you could.”

Akemi is silent as she turns over the idea, weighing the merits, comparing the downsides. He lets her, stewing slightly in the truthful farce of his own words. He doesn’t doubt that Akemi can make the both of them strong if she gives them her personal interest, but that isn’t what his goal is. It’s just the enticement, the bait to get her to give them a safer home, one that won’t hurt them quite as much as the Zen’in estate will.

He’s more than capable of making the two of them strong on his own- he doesn’t need her help for that. It’s the choice of whether or not Zen’in Mai will want to be is what he does.

“And what’s the catch?” Akemi asks, drawing her raised knee down as she resettles in a formal seiza, gathering her giant packet of legal papers and her forgotten pen, settling them neat and tidy together along the wood at her side.

“If anyone lays a hand on them,” Satoru says, turning his head just enough to catch her eyes, his own strained in a warning as harshly as he can make them, “you can forget about me ever becoming clan head.”

Akemi stills as she turns back to face him, a curt thing in her closed off expression. “Like hands were laid on you?” She says, a patronizing sneer in her plastic smile. “Don’t be small-minded, Satoru, my training made you strong-”

“Your training was abuse,” he spits, bristling as he leans away, nose wrinkling in anger. “I never once felt safe in this goddamn estate-”

“That’s asinine,” Akemi jabs, speaking over him as her hands dig into her bent knees. “The worst you ever had was a slap on the wrist-”

“A slap on the wrist?” He cries, barking a laugh. “That is such bullshit. You used to hit me until I bled-!”

“It was for your own good!” Akemi snaps, and jaggedly, he gets to his feet, a depthless anger making his fists curl as he moves to get away from her before any sort of slap can come, more than well trained when his tongue has always been loose. 

“I want those girls to grow up in this clan,” he hisses, the red of Akemi’s narrowed eyes searing a hatred down his spine, “because it would be safer for them here than with the Zen’ins. You don’t allow men to hit the maids, or rape the women. You don’t allow anyone within the clan to hurt the family children.” He stops only long enough to draw in a short breath, a fury he doesn’t feel often burning the back of his sternum. 

“And I’m probably delusional for trusting you when I know you’re nothing but a hypocrite,” Satoru mutters, phantom aches he can still remember burning along his hands, his back, the length of his arms, “because even in your limits you still had exceptions.” 

Akemi stares at him, cold and icy, unrepentant even as he can see her weighing the merits of this deal in the back of her mind. It’s true, and he sort of hates that it is. Corporal punishment isn’t and has never been a stranger to any of the clans, not when their parents grew up with it and their parents grew up with it. There had been plenty in his own childhood, but even though he thinks it’s barbaric now, he can still recognize that there had been reasons every time he’d witnessed it being used. Not good ones, but reasons all the same.

The Zen’in’s are different. They hit without cause, without care, hurt for nothing other than impulsivity and the desire to feel superior. Women are brutalized there, undervalued and treated like subhumans, and even though some of it’s still the same, that alone is different. Gojo Akemi runs her clan with the reins tightened and a guillotine for meaningless violence, and though maybe some of it’s the same that is just different enough.

It still isn’t ideal. If he could, he’d remove Maki and Mai from any grasp of the clans entirely- but he only has one home, only has himself and Suguru to rely on, only already has two kids to care for and two more they’re waiting to search for. He wants to have them so badly but there just isn’t enough left for Maki and Mai together, for Toge and Kinji and Kirara and Yuuji, for all of the kids he wants better for. If Yuuta ends up how he thinks he might, they’ll be overflowing their capacity by two-thousand and fucking ten.

“I told you I’d keep our family strong,” Satoru says, reaching up to set his glasses back on his nose. “I’m trying to keep my promises. I’ll give them to you so you can build that strength, but if you can’t do the same…” He trails off, shrugging, and watches Akemi bite down on a harshly worded comment.

“I’ll accept,” she begins, a defeat in the set of her eyes, a resignation in her tone, an upper hand in the tap of her nails on the floor, “but only if you divulge where the Prison Realm is.” 

‘Two faced fucking snake,’ he thinks, and rolls his eyes. 

“Fine,” Satoru agrees, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “but don’t think I’m just gonna drop them here and leave. I plan to be involved with those two. I’ll know if you hurt them,” he warns, eyes narrowing, “for any reason.”

Akemi only circles her hand, a wordless get on with it gesture, and Satoru turns, knocking his head to the side with a put upon exhale as he reaches up to yank the collar of his shirt sideways, exposing the dark ink on his pale skin. He feels Akemi’s roiling cursed energy, its intrigue, its surprise, the faintest traces of approval in how she’s impressed by his wit, the sour notes that come from her disdain that he’s soiled his body at all. 

“...What seal is that?” She asks, falling for the lie rooted in truth, and Satoru releases his shirt. 

“Not any you know,” he snarks, and steps away, making to leave. 

“Come back in two weeks,” Akemi calls, just before he turns through the parted sliding doors, “I’ll collect them with you. There’s some gloating I have to do with Naobito.”

‘Of course there is,’ he thinks bitterly, stalking out of the airy room, not quite fuming but not so far from it, either.

Chapter Text

“We’re home!” Suguru calls, slipping his shoes off in the genkan, eyes narrowing at the following silence as he kneels down to untie Megumi’s. 

“Where’s the purebred?” Shoko asks, still for a moment as she ties her hair up into a bun, and Suguru shrugs, knowing Satoru’s home because the curtains in the living room have been drawn but not knowing where he is. 

“I can find him!” Tsumiki calls, wrestling with her sandals for the second it takes her to shuck them off, and then she’s up and sprinting through the house, poking into every room downstairs and yelling for Satoru. She’s been surprisingly upbeat since they made her leave the school, maybe because of Megumi’s distraction or maybe because she’s trying to be cheerful.

“Are you sure he’s home,” Megumi asks, a frown pulling his lips into a thin pout, and Suguru hums, watching Tsumiki throw their bedroom door open, look around inside, make a face, and race for the stairs next. 

“Oh he’s here,” Shoko assures, offering out a hand for Megumi to take as she passes by, and Suguru urges him to follow, content for once not to be the person making lunch. He’ll take Shoko’s sloppy cooking over having to do it himself. “I betcha he’s holed himself up in a project somewhere.”

“Right,” Suguru mutters, standing, and glances away from where they disappear into the kitchen when Tsumiki leans over the upstairs railing connected to the front foyer, her hair swaying over the wood. He’s got a feeling in the pit of his stomach, one that directly contradicts Shoko’s confidence. Maybe it comes from the barely there scent of Satoru residuals, maybe it’s just worry.

“He’s not up here,” she reports, puzzlement knitting her brows together. 

“I’ll find him,” Suguru promises, and skirts around the living room to make a beeline for their bedroom, first.

It’s dark when he steps inside, but it was dark when they left this morning. Nothing’s changed inside of it- there’s still that stack of books they haven’t gotten around to putting away by the bookshelf, still a few articles of clothing strewn on the floor, still some of Megumi’s plushies left on the desk’s chair and the rumpled blankets on their bed. Curious, he looks in the bathroom first, then the closet second, a confusion growing the more places turn up empty.

He’s hidden himself so well that Suguru does a genuine double take when he finally spots the hand draped over the edge of their bed frame. ‘For the love of fuck,’ he thinks, heart pounding as he startles, steadily padding over to where Satoru’s buried himself under every last one of their pillows.

“I love finding corpses in my bed,” Suguru snarks, couching down slightly to see if he can spot Satoru’s eyes under the lip of the quilt, hands wrapped around his knees. “It really helps the theme of cult leader I’m going for.” He tilts his head, eyes narrowing, seeing nothing but a pool of darkness below the lifted sliver of blanket. 

Satoru’s hand twitches, gradually slithering up and away until it’s hidden under the blankets, and absently, Suguru wonders how he’s not baking. 

‘Alright,’ he thinks petulantly, and stands up, marching to the windows along the back wall. He yanks the curtains open with a harsh shh of the rings along the rod, catching the cringing hiss emanating from the blanket pile as sunlight lights up the entire room. Despite it, Satoru doesn’t reappear. 

He sighs, and gives up, coming back to sit on the side of their bed, tugging the top of the covers back until he finds white hair, Satoru’s face mashed into the fluff of their mattress. “That bad, huh,” Suguru wonders, and faintly lifts a brow when the low moan mumbles quietly into fabric.

“If you come out of that cave, I’ll pet your hair,” he bargains, peering over the top of Satoru’s head, and catches when he stills, contemplating. 

‘Gotcha,’ Suguru thinks when Satoru finally starts to shift, sitting up like he’s made of molasses, dripping ooey and gooey into the blankets as they fall back down to the bed. He shoves them further away, hearing them half tumble onto the floor with a wuffing flop, leaving just the bare sheets and Satoru where he sits, dully staring at the wall. 

“God you are such a drama queen- just, c’mere,” Suguru chides, reaching up to bring him down, the touch of Satoru’s skin warm enough that he had to have been under all the blankets for an hour at minimum. He falls easy, slumping like he’s boneless down into his lap, arms coming up to wind around his waist as Suguru feels a warmed nose shove itself into the junction of his hip and thigh.

True to his promise, he runs his fingers through Satoru’s hair, carding up and down again for a long moment where he doesn’t say anything. He thinks, instead, eyeing where Satoru’s just dressed in his boxers, like he’d come home in a flurry to get all of his clothing off, bury himself in blankets, and stew. 

It’s interesting. His problems lie more in the psychosis variety, things like too much thought and too much feeling, mania and crazy and enough stimulation until he ultimately explodes and shuts down. The classic depression look is an odd one on him, Suguru decides. He’s more used to Satoru dealing with his problems by slapping a smile on his face and acting like a nuisance, or melting down like an unmanned nuclear reactor. He’s seen it, sure, but sparingly, and mostly over three and a half years ago when Satoru hadn’t quite been Satoru yet dumped out of that stupid cube. 

“...Was it your grandmother?” He asks, the question tentative, and knows it’s the correct one when Satoru tenses. He hears Tsumiki call something down the stairs, the pound of her feet on the steps loud before they’re jumping off, socks on hardwood skidding towards the kitchen, where Shoko graciously distracts them.

“...She makes me want to hate her,” Satoru rasps, the words dry as they fall off his tongue, and Suguru stills, his only remaining movement the habitual action of his fingernails dragging along Satoru’s scalp. 

“Why’s that?” He wonders, even though he could guess, even though he has plenty of experiences of his own to make a reason. 

“I killed her own goddamn family,” Satoru mutters, the acidic words harsh against his thigh, “I made her feel powerless, I knocked her down and- and she still makes me feel scared.” They sound helpless below their vitriol.

‘Oh,’ Suguru thinks, softening with a sobering sadness, lips thinning in a painful sort of empathy. “Tell me why?” He asks, the words practiced when they’ve spent fumbling years learning how to speak them, and smooths a warm palm down Satoru’s spine when he shivers.

“...Clans are brutal,” Satoru mumbles, arms tightening slightly around his hips, “you know that.”

“I do,” Suguru agrees, careful to stay gentle and soft in the moment, so delicate when it could turn so sharp in nothing but a word. “But I don’t know much more than that.” He feels the bob of Satoru’s throat when he swallows against his thigh, knows the tremor when his fingertips pass over it along pale shoulders, tries to be the calm among them both as he drags his nails through Satoru’s hair. 

“...It wasn’t always her,” he begins, the smallest Suguru’s heard him sound since the night after murdering his cousins and the awful use of his endless domain, “but she allowed all of it. Every time the martial arts instructor would hit me as a correction, or when an outsider would demand an infraction for something stupid, or- or when,” he stops, sucking in a breath, trying to stay level even though the waver of his voice makes it difficult.

“She used to train me,” Satoru whispers, fingers curling tight in the back of his shirt, his jeans, “and she’d just keep going. She wouldn’t stop, not when I’d split open all my knuckles, or bleed myself dry, or collapse because I couldn’t take it anymore.” 

Suguru sits, letting the words sink into his skin, and wonders which of their childhoods could be counted as worse. Does the wrong kind of love outweigh the twisted one? Probably not. 

“The Gojo clan hasn’t ever been as brutal as the others,” Satoru continues, jittering slightly as he rushes to get the explanation out, “not when it comes how we view women, or- or children, but to be one with an important future-” He sucks in a short breath, a tense ripple of strained muscle moving down his curved back. “It was hell.”

He’d known what brutal had meant those years at the tech school, understood the definition of the word when applied to a noun, but hearing it in detail is a different sort of numbness. There had been a reason Suguru had never let himself think long about what brutal could mean after Satoru had come back from winter break with a handprint shining stark and red on his cheek, when growing up in a clan where techniques must be trained means violence is normal. The cold thing settling in the pit of his stomach, fear beside the heated anger, is precisely why. 

Silently, he sits, moving a hand down the line of Satoru’s back as if searching for scars, knowing he’d never find any when he knows it better than the sight of his own palm, and yet tracing anyway. It makes sense Shoko had attributed all his damage when they were kids to his clan, he thinks, counting each notch of Satoru’s spine to force some of his thoughts back into order. 

“...They kept me drugged for years,” he admits, the ugly little secret turning to miasma in open air, and he doesn’t regret it when sharp blue eyes reddened by the threat of tears turn up to look at him. “Little country kid seeing monsters? Surely he’s got schizophrenia, right?”

Maybe it isn’t the same, the pain he choked down compared to the pain Satoru bit through, but it isn’t so different when the fists are removed from it, the list of the prescription orders dragging a mile long. Maybe they aren’t comparable even as much as they are, thoughts of a cold day over the winter break of their first year together heavy on his mind, the chill of a swing set soaking through his clothes alongside the memories of small confessions.

They don’t really talk about their childhoods, even though Suguru knows he’d spill it all if only Satoru asked- that Satoru would let it pour, if only he did the same. Maybe it’s because they don’t matter, maybe it’s because they have enough skeletons falling out of their closets as it is. Maybe it’s because even as different as they were, they were horribly similar, too.

“...We used to play a game,” Satoru offers, picking up his part in the silent rules of the trade as he finally uncoils, shifting onto his side instead of his stomach. “Akemi would sit with me while I did whatever tutoring I had to for the day, and constantly test Limitless by trying to hit me when I wasn’t expecting it.” 

“That’s fucked up,” Suguru mutters, and doesn’t have to think hard about what he sets down next. “I had to learn to lie to psychiatrists, because if I gave them any emotion to work with they’d use it against me. Rumors eventually started going around that I was a psychopath, ‘cause I’d never look angry when someone did something mean.” He feels almost as bare as Satoru looks, laying in their bed and on his thighs, slowly unfurling like a crumpled flower flinched from a curious touch.

“So that’s why you were always so weirdly fake polite,” Satoru huffs, and Suguru can admit that for the first few months of their first year, he isn’t wrong. “When I’d get migraines, I wasn’t allowed to have any pain medication because if I did, I’d learn to rely on them.”

“Bullshit,” Suguru mutters, running the flat of his hand down the nape of Satoru’s neck, gently pulling when his eyes relax a little more at the word, turning him onto his back. It’s vulnerable, and open, and an invitation he asks for that Satoru willingly gives to rummage around inside all of his delicate guts with something as blunt as an ice cream scoop. “You wanna know what withdrawal feels like? I can describe it to you in detail.”

It earns him a snort, a sardonic puff of a breath, a snowy head shaking slightly as a warm forehead tilts against his hip bone. “There used to be these things- bamboo canes. They were dried, cut straight, long and- and thin.” Suguru listens to his swallow, the unspoken fear he knows rests heavy on Satoru’s tongue where it coats his words sticky and sallow. “When I’d do something wrong- and I mean wrong- we’d tell the maids that,” he stops, pausing, eyes stuck on the ceiling and dull as he lines up words in his cluttered head.

“No one is allowed to interrupt this meeting,” Satoru whispers, a memory of a shiver tensing the muscles of his back, and Suguru sits below his weight, wondering how many times he was healed to save scars from marring his perfect skin. He stays silent, because he recognizes the heart of it, why Satoru’s let their game steer here rather than elsewhere.  

“I feel like I’m horrible, for trying to put the twins there,” he murmurs, lips twisting as one pale hand comes up to cover his shutting eyes, a grimace tugging on his whole face. “Maybe we weren’t hit without a reason but it wasn’t safe, either.” 

“Mm,” Suguru hums, “maybe,” parsing through the confusion for a moment before he has a flash of understanding, the stories of Zen’in Maki and Mai recounting in his head. Quietly, he strokes a hand over white hair, smoothing it back and then gently raking it all forward, again. 

“But I know you,” he says, because he does, “and you wouldn’t have let Akemi have them unless you knew they were safe. So,” Suguru asks, the palm of his free hand settling a little heavy over the thump of Satoru’s heart behind his ribs, “I’m asking what you bargained.”

It gets him a weak chuckle, a miserable little sound as it falls past tepid lips. If he’s aware it’s a flimsy circle to disprove his own depressing statement, he doesn’t say. “My being clan head,” Satoru mutters, and Suguru leaves his fingers in the dip of his collarbone when they fall there, curling into the small hollow it makes, the faint shadow. “And information. She thinks I have the Prison Realm.”

He stills at that, not shock but maybe surprise curling chilly up his spine, unable to shake it off for a good long moment. Gojo Akemi, being told of their most massive secret? It makes him reel, a shivery sort of wariness prickling goosebumps over his skin. 

“You told her?” Suguru asks, stuttered, and Satoru nods. 

“I rambled, that night,” he explains, something like unhappy with himself and something like uncaring about it. “Said shit about the first time. She remembered, ‘cause it’s Obaa-san. Of course she remembered.”

“...We aren’t children anymore,” Suguru says, small and maybe for himself as much as it is for Satoru. He doesn’t say anything about the spillage, because there wouldn’t necessarily be a point. If Akemi knows, there’s a reason she’s being told, and he trusts Satoru with all their secrets. 

“She can’t hurt you.” They can’t hurt me, he means, because his parents love him, yes, but it had been their wretched, painful downfall, once.

Satoru tenses, a cringe to his shuttered expression where it hides behind his hand, a waver to his lips he tries to fight and fails miserably at. “She did,” he confesses, lost and helpless, “but, she did.”

And Suguru finally freezes. He sits for a long moment as Satoru’s breaths forcibly even themselves out below his palm, ragged but steadying by will alone, a sick sort of feeling crawling up his throat that reminds him of the malice that tries to escape from his stomach each time he swallows down a curse.

He can’t find anything to say, so instead of relying on words he doesn’t have, he chooses the lack of them entirely. He knows Satoru understands anyway as he leans down, pulling him closer as he winds them together, hiding as much as he’s shielding. 

‘I shouldn’t be able to feel small still,’ he thinks, hands on Satoru’s bare back as they lay together as tightly as they can possibly press. ‘I’m not a kid. I shouldn’t feel like this.’ On some level, all he wants is the thrumming curl of infinity to blanket them thick. On another one below it, he wants Yaga, strong and stoic and bigger than both of them, steady and safe compared to the world and their monsters. Underneath even that, he wants his dad, the version of him he’d known before he turned six, turned sixteen, and had finally understood he’d known nothing of how to fix things.

‘I’m not a kid,’ he thinks, over and over again, a mantra or a prayer. He’s got kids, he can’t still be one himself. 

From the desperate curl of Satoru’s hand into the back of his shirt, he thinks he might be thinking the very same thing.

He waits until Ba-chan’s distracted, busy mixing something together while trying to keep Tsumiki from spilling another bowl full of some ingredient for lunch, and then he slips away from the kitchen. He feels marginally bad about it, because he really likes Shoko and he doesn’t want to give her that many problems, but he wants to find Tou-ru more.

‘Having fathers is exhausting,’ Megumi thinks, winding through the parted fusuma doors on whispering soles, a simmering sort of restlessness making him a bother more than patient. He pauses for a moment, thinking on where he left Aiko, and then stands in the living room, debating going all the way upstairs for him. 

‘Even more exhausting,’ he decides, skipping past the staircase to shove open Satoru and Suguru’s bedroom door, instead. 

He doesn’t hesitate in slinking past the mild mess scattered around the floor, though for a moment he thinks he should. It feels heavy here, weighted, and he can see them both tangled together on their bed, steeping like bitter tea in the misery of a cooled cup.

“I want up,” Megumi says, falling to a halt at the side of it, hands reaching up to yank on Tou-chan’s pant leg. It gets him a grunt, a light chuckle, and then the extension of one hand down he clings onto. The pull of Limitless is odd on his limbs as it tugs, like a touch if it couldn’t exist, but it’s of little consequence to him because it gets him up onto their bed, and that’s what he wants.

“What,” Satoru asks, a smug smile curling on his reddened lips, “you get bored of Shoko?”

“No,” Megumi answers, ticking a brow down in annoyance as he deliberately steps on the soft part of his stomach to hear the following wheeze, picky as he chooses where to settle between them. “You promised to talk about stuff later. It’s later now.”

“Hell. I did, didn’t I?” Tou-ru sighs, and he only kicks a heel into his ribs, legs stretched out over his bare stomach as one of Suguru’s warm palms slinks around his own. His inhale is large against his back, calming and human, and he likes being able to feel the movement of it. 

There’s a lot of things he wants to ask. ‘Why did my father sell me,’ and, ‘did you sell me again?’ and, ‘what was that giant bully doing to those twins?’ There’s even more that he just doesn’t understand. 

It’s frustrating, Megumi thinks, because he wants to know what’s happening around him if he’s going to live in this disturbingly weird world, but he just isn’t the same as Tou-ru. He doesn’t know like he does, even though he thinks it’s probably a good thing, but he feels small because of it right now.

“I don’t understand,” Megumi starts, the only words he knows for certain, and frowns a little petulantly when Tou-chan snickers.

“About why I said the clan could have you?” Tou-ru asks, drumming restless fingers along his calf, mindlessly pressing a thumb along the flat of his foot, eyes lidded as they look up at him where he lays on the silken, rumpled sheets in their soft, fluffy bed. He nods, feeling Suguru’s hand press a little firmer over his stomach, the bend of his arm tightening with the flex of his muscles, accidentally or like he’d wanted to grab. 

“That was a bluff, of a sort,” Satoru explains, and Megumi listens, any snark he could have had set aside, because as much as he wants to be angry that he might have been sold again, he’s deeply uncomfortable with the fear licking along the lining of his stomach in place of it. Tou-ru can fix that, Tou-ru will fix it, but only if he lets him say why. So he stays silent, and he listens.

“I’m not going to die any time soon, ‘cause I’m the strongest,” he promises, running the tickle of two fingers over his toes, smiling when Megumi sticks out his tongue and kicks his feet enough to be annoying. “If the conditions ever were able to be filled, it wouldn’t be until you’re much, much older, anyway.” He tilts his head slightly along the sheets, white hair falling over his forehead like the shifting of powdered snow.

“And by then, you could have the choice of taking your place as clan head, or you could give it up to someone else. You might find you want it, if that did happen, but it would still be easy for you to pass it off, too.” He blinks, languidly slow, a softness around his eyes even though there’s a tenseness left over in his face, and Megumi frowns, wondering where he went after they saw Ojii-chan.

“The whole point of making that deal was because it’s never going to happen,” Tou-ru finishes, giving his foot a soft squeeze, and he nods, even though he can’t quite keep the thing like worry off his face. 

“Okay,” Megumi answers, and despite that he still has plenty of thoughts, he relaxes, because the fear ebbs away with each wave that tries to come back, soothed knowing it was entirely unnecessary. “Are you gonna have those twins, too?” He asks, after a moment beats past, curious. They seemed a lot like him and Tsumiki, and Satoru technically bought him- even if after a theft.

“Well- no,” Tou-ru stutters, eyes sliding away up to Tou-chan’s face and then back down to his own after a tight, tense moment. “We won’t- they-”

“They already have a place within the clans,” Suguru says, taking over when Satoru stops, chewing on his words like taffy that won’t melt. “We’ll care for them like we care for you and your sister, but it’ll be from a farther distance, because we don’t need to uproot them from their home.”

“Even though it’s bad?” Megumi asks, brows pinching above his eyes, and shuffles closer to Tou-chan’s face when his lips press into a sympathetic line. 

“It won’t stay bad like yours was bad,” he continues, easily adjusting the weight of his arm as Megumi slumps against his shoulder, knees drawing up and shifting along Satoru’s side as he turns off of his back, propping his head up with one elbow. “They’ll be properly cared for, so it’ll be like visiting family every month to make sure they’re still being properly cared for.”

“...And they’re my aunts, right?” He asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion as he looks to Tou-ru, uncertain, watching him nod. “Weird.”

“Says the baby who can summon dogs made out of shadow,” Tou-ru teases, reaching over to wiggle skittering fingers along his stomach, and Megumi jerks with a small shriek, unable to stop the sharp giggles from spilling out of his mouth. 

“It is weird!” He shouts, kicking at long arms. “They look like they’re the same age as Tsumiki!”

“They are,” Satoru confirms, palm stilling on his stomach as he finally begs mercy, giving him a moment to catch his breath.

“They’ll be one year above you when you’re all going to the tech school,” Tou-chan hums, ambivalent to the torture going on beside him, and Megumi huffs loudly, sinking back against the warmth of his body.

“...Would you ever have more kids,” he asks, after a long stretch of cozy silence sits, feeling the faint jolt behind his spine, seeing Tou-ru’s expression slacken in surprise. Megumi shrugs, messing with Suguru’s fingers where they rest on his hip, a little shy under the scrutiny. “I know we’re your kids, but.” He shrugs again, looking up because he isn’t sure how to voice the thought, sure enough though that one of them can figure it out.

“Kids…like you?” Tou-ru asks after a beat passes by, his brows pulled together slightly, and Megumi nods. “Oh,” he says, mild, before his gaze is swinging over to Suguru’s again, an entire conversation hidden in small movements and wordless thought that passes between them.

“Maybe,” Tou-san answers, sliding the warmth of his palm up to squish playfully at his cheeks. “It just depends. We wouldn’t have known about you if not for a coincidence, and no one can predict a coincidence.” He watches, something like curiosity burning in his mind as they share another look, one that could be like an inside joke if it wasn’t as heavy as it seemed.

“Why?” Satoru asks, a curiosity in his blue eyes as they narrow. “Does the idea of it make you feel a certain way?”

“No,” Megumi blurts, then, “yes,” before he reconsiders, shrugging. “I dunno.”

It does, as much as it doesn’t. He doesn’t like the idea of sharing either of them with anyone else, but then he thinks of how he shares them with Tsumiki already, and then he just winds up more confused. Picturing other kids, other siblings even, is sort of a nebulous idea, unfathomable past anything but a passing thought and a fleeting stab of green-eyed jealousy. 

A few of the kids at school talk about their brothers, and it’s made him wonder more than once what having one would be like. He loves Tsumiki, but she’s so painfully girly, and maybe sometimes he just wants someone like him to talk to, and do things with. Things that aren’t nail painting, or laundering Monopoly money, or reorganizing the pretty things in her bookcase for the millionth time. Maybe he just wants to sit somewhere for four uninterrupted hours and build a spaceship made out of legos, or play Pokémon with someone that doesn’t use any useless stat moves.

“What kind of way?” Tou-chan asks, shifting as he curls further in on himself, cheek squishing against the sheets and violet flecked eyes narrowed slightly in a want to know. 

“...I don’t want another sister,” Megumi says, after a moment where he decides on the words, and doesn’t expect it at all when the both of them snort into uncontrollable, spilling giggles. “What?” He protests, sitting upright as he grinds a heel into Satoru’s sternum when they start cackling harder. “What’s so funny?!” 

Neither of them answer, the peals of their barking laughter drowning the sound of his outrage, and he huffs in a stuffy irritation, shoving at the both of them as he stumbles out between their shaking bodies. Stupid fathers, Megumi thinks, stomping along their bed until he gets to the edge, dropping with a bounce so he can slide back down to the floor.

“W-wait Megumi!” Satoru cries, choking on his own wheezes. “Come back!” 

“No!” He shouts, fuming out of their bedroom. 

“Gumi!” Tou-chan calls, but it sounds more like, ‘gh-h-h-mi,’ breaking in the center and strained like he can’t quite suck in any air to get it out, and Megumi rolls his eyes as he swings their door shut. It only bounces on the frame when it hits one of the plushies he left on the floor, and then he’s just fuming harder.

‘Stupid fathers,’ he thinks again, cheeks burning, marching away to go rejoin Shoko in the kitchen. 

It’s a fairly relaxed day, all things told, when she’s finally jarred from her tentative peace.

She and Megumi take the train by themselves now that they’re a few weeks in and used to it, though Tsumiki can’t deny she misses the liminality that had existed when both Tou-san and Tou-ru rode it with them. It’s still there when it’s just her and Megumi, but it’s different- less thick, maybe, or languid. They have to watch more by themselves, stay more alert to avoid curses and anyone scummy looking, be ever ready to get off at the right stations and find the right streets to walk down.

Regardless, once it settles into a routine, she finds herself enjoying the commute. 

Classes begin to fall into step as well, settling into a predictable line she finally sorts through with ease. After two weeks of chipping away at tutoring with Tou-ru’s too fast but steady explanations, Tou-san’s blithering determination even when he gets stuck on something and spends twenty minutes puzzling it out, she feels more settled, more confident. Even Megumi seems to benefit, despite all his griping that it’s a waste of time because, ‘look, see, I know my vocabulary!’ right before he writes a word wrong. 

“And tell me both the next step of this problem as well as its answer,” Hayakawa-sensei pauses, eyes narrowing as he skims a thoughtful look around the class, landing on her when her hand raises, “Fushiguro-kun.”

“You have to carry the last ten,” she says, sure in her answer what with all of Satoru and Suguru’s bickering about how to properly do long division, “and the answer is sixty-five point three repeating.”

“Good,” Hayakawa-sensei praises, scribbling on the chalkboard with a messy hand. He looks a little proud if she’s reading his stoic face right, either by the slight raise of his eyebrows against the small softening of his mouth, or the faint lidding of his eyes as he nods.

Tsumiki looks back down at her paper, steadily exhaling a quiet breath, a simple sort of surety settling in her stomach. 

“-And so I said, I can’t wear the same blue dress I did last year, I’d look tacky!” Hina exclaims, giving her head a shake that ripples her short hair as she huffs, and Tsumiki nods, listening intently as they eat lunch, flipping through the couture magazine she’d snuck from her mother in with her homework. 

“I mean, come on. It’s my eighth birthday and you aren’t gonna buy me a new dress?” She scoffs, flipping one of the pages as Tsumiki pops one of the rolled eggs Tou-ru made into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “It’s like they don’t even love me.”

‘Noted,’ she thinks, only a touch dryly, and turns her head in time with Hina and Izumi as she hears a commotion at the front of the room. 

“What’s going on?” She asks, curiously leaning back as she twists, shoulder brushing Hina’s where they sit next to each other on her desktop, Izumi in the seat. 

“I don’t know,” Izumi says, the sound of her soft voice almost swallowed up by the rising clamor of voices growing by the door, rapidly filling into the room. Her hair sways as she tilts her head to look, long, silky, and dark as ink. “Maybe Ayaka’s back?”

“She better be,” Hina grumbles, “she’s been gone for like ten minutes. It can’t take that long to get a stupid drink,” before she’s reaching over with her fancy metal chop-sticks to steal one of her pieces of fried chicken, shoving it into her mouth before Tsumiki has time to bat her hand away. She drops her mouth open in an abject expression of offense anyway, lips pressing into an exasperated line when Hina only smirks. 

‘Whatever,’ she thinks gloomily, looking forlornly at her emptied bento. ‘I still got to eat four.’

The smattering of voices gets louder as they move further in, and she finally realizes what all the fuss is. There’s a boy standing in front of where Ayaka waves a folded piece of notebook paper in the air, a smug look on her face and feet firmly planted in the aisle between the fifth row of desks. He looks deathly nervous, she thinks, hands twisting in his navy sweater and knees sort of knocking together with how he fidgets like he wants to reach out and snatch the paper, despite knowing better than to think he’d get it if he tried.

“Murakami, c-come on,” he stutters, visibly swallowing as his eyes dart around the filling gathering of kids as they turn, interested. “Just give it back,” he pleads, nails clearly biting into his palms, short black hair messy on his head from what must have been his chase after her, and Ayaka tuts patronizingly. 

“Aw,” she croons, “but that wouldn’t be any fun.” She smiles, wide and sharp, her hair whipping in a long dark veil around her as she turns with a flare. “Tsumiki,” she calls, high and wonton as if beckoning a puppy, “you’ve got a letter!”

“I- what?” She murmurs, blinking obtusely as the sound of low snickers start to echo around the classroom, the nudges of elbows and the shuffling of feet as everyone currently eating within it stops to pay attention to the newest spectacle. Ayaka gives the letter a wave again, perching one hand on her hip as she tilts her head.

Hina snickers next to her, giving her a shove off the desk with one hand on her back. “This has gotta be good,” she whispers, a trace of glee in her quieted tone.

‘Oh,’ Tsumiki thinks as she sets her bento on the table, slowly walking towards the center of the attention, ‘it’s a confession.’ The words ring like a bell in her head as her cheeks redden, the knowledge suddenly setting in as she gets a good look at the boy Ayaka’s taken it from- blushing up to his ears, red as a beet, almost hunching in on himself.

“Here,” Ayaka simpers, reaching down to grab her wrist and setting the letter in her loosened palm when Tsumiki falls into line at her side. “It’s yours, after all, so you should read it.” She grins, wide and wicked, a fluttering bat of her dark eyelashes causing a ripple of giggles to scatter throughout the kids watching. 

Blankly, Tsumiki looks down at the piece of folded notebook paper, her name written in kanji that were obviously penciled with care, smudged with all the jostling it’s gone through. She blinks, Ayaka’s words muddling through her head, the sudden shock that they mean for her to speak what she finds in it out loud for everyone to hear like the water of a cold shower.

When she looks up again, she finds herself locking eyes with the boy who wrote it, opposite her by just a meter or two and looking for all the world like he’s standing on a plank about to walk off into the sea. His dark eyes are blown wide, his bitten lips twisted down, soft arms wrapped around his middle like he’s sick.

“What are you waiting for?” Ayaka presses, a gleam in the curl of her dark eyes as she leans forward. “Read it.” 

“...I’m sure I don’t need to-” Tsumiki begins, hesitantly refusing, and jumps slightly when Ayaka snaps loudly.

“I wasn’t asking,” she barks, before turning around to their small crowd of spectators. “Doesn’t everyone wanna see what Yamamoto wrote? To someone like Fushiguro, at that?” She scoffs, loud and haughty, seeming to preen where she stands when a few kids audibly pipe up that they do. “No way does he deserve someone as pretty as her.”

She stands there, looking at this boy, red in the face and cowering like he’s terrified, and can’t help but switch their places around. Imagining the ridicule, the sheer embarrassment that having a confession of her own read aloud just to be made fun of burns a hot stripe of shame down her spine, a thick sort of pain unspooling like scratchy yarn in her chest. She looks down at the clumsily penciled characters that took such care to look neat on the soft white paper, wrinkled between her fingers, and understands with a heavy clarity that she cannot do this.

“Well?” Ayaka says, hands on her hips as she tilts her head to swing her long hair over her shoulder. “Read it already.”

Silently, Tsumiki tightens her grip on the small note, staring down at it as the graphite kanji of her name burns like hot coals along the tips of her fingers where they touch. 

“...No,” she says, looking up behind her curled bangs as she starts to shake her head. “I- I can’t seriously do that- it’d be so mean,” she cries, clutching the paper to her chest, and feels a genuine lance of hurt spike violently through her ribcage when Ayaka narrows her eyes, a disappointed sneer contorting her lips.

“Awh, is Tsumiki-chan too baby to read it?” Hina coos, sneaking up behind her as she plucks the letter from her hands, leaving Tsumiki fumbling after it as she swings around to stand in front of her. “No worries,” she giggles, an artificial nicety in the sound, “I’m not!”

‘Don’t do it,’ Tsumiki thinks, watching Hina’s mouth open as she unfolds the letter, ‘don’t read it.’

“Dear Fushiguro-san,” Hina begins, batting her lashes and puckering her lips. “I always notice you every day when you come to class in the morning, because you’re always wearing something pretty in your hair.” She stops, pressing a hand to her cheek as she pretends to swoon, and Tsumiki jerks her gaze to the boy who wrote it, watching how he’s seemingly shrunken into himself, tears spilling at the edges of his eyes as he stares down at his shoes.

“You write such pretty notes,” Hina continues, speaking louder than the chorus of laughter that’s steadily growing at her melodramatic performance, “and you speak pretty, too. I admire you a lot-” Hina crows a sharp laugh, shoving the paper at Ayaka as she points to a word. “He wrote the wrong character for admire!” She gloats, to Ayaka’s gleeful chuckle, and Tsumiki feels sick, feels dizzy, feels like she’ll suffocate if she stays in this room for another moment.

“What a loser- hey! Where are you going?!” Ayaka yells, as Tsumiki shoves past her, sprinting for the door as quickly as she can get herself to run for it, the sound of her classmates talking and laughing and jeering together slowly muffling the farther she gets along the hallway. 

‘I can’t believe,’ she thinks, ‘why would they,’ and, ‘who would do-?’ as she runs, broken, disjointed thoughts clattering together as she swipes at her face, hot tears spilling over her waterlines. 

She turns into the bathroom on the second floor after nearly tripping and braining herself on the staircase, slipping as she goes skidding on tile and stumbling into one of the stalls, slamming the door shut behind her. ‘Why would they do that,’ she thinks, hiccupping behind staggered, shallow sobs as she stares at the white and faded pink wall, the old paint cracking in places. ‘No one deserves that.’

Her sweater bunches up as she slides down the plastic stall door, burying her face in her arms as she sniffles thickly, shoulders shaking under every inhale. Yamamoto did nothing to them, she knows, after more than three weeks of going to school here and hearing every last scrap of drama there was from Hina, from Mayumi.

‘I thought they could be friends,’ she thinks, the betrayal sharp where it stings like lemon juice on a cut, ‘friends wouldn’t do that.’

They wouldn’t, she knows, even though she can’t claim to have ever had any real ones before. If they publicly humiliate kids for no reason, what would they do to her if they knew what she could see? What would they do to her if they knew her real interests, her real thoughts, her real family?

She cries, biting into the cotton of her sweater so she won’t make any sound, now with some inkling of an idea.

Chapter Text

They sit at the kitchen table, bathed in the golden light of Friday's mid-morning while the kids are at school, staring at Satoru’s innocuous flip phone, sat on the wood in a tangle of loose charms. 

“...Not it,” Shoko blurts, slapping her hand to her nose, and jerking into motion, Suguru copies her movements. 

“Wh- oh come on, you guys are such pussies,” Satoru complains, a second too late when he’d been staring at the charms Shoko got him last December and sitting empty more than thinking. He makes a face as Shoko and Suguru both glare him down with nothing close to reproach in their expressions.

“You do it then, if you’re so brave,” Shoko snarks, and Satoru sticks out his tongue, reaching for his phone.

His hand shakes as he tabs through the drop menu. He’s glad neither of them say anything about it when he knows they see it.

‘Itadori Kaori,’ the contact reads, the near pixelated kanji stark against the light background, and for a long moment, he simply stares at it, too, thumb hovering over the button to press it and call. What will change, if he does this? What won’t? Is he putting them all at risk attempting this insane plan? Or is he creating a failsafe for when everything breaks, again?

He feels Suguru’s cursed energy ripple, predicts the movement of his mouth just as his lips begin to form a word, and forces himself to press the button. 

The ringing has them all sitting stiff and stoically terrified.

It’s shrill in the silence, grainy like only old phones were and grating the longer it trills. It echoes off of the kitchen walls, scratching against his eardrums, and Satoru resists the urge to fidget, staring intently down at the screen as three dots bounce in a line, the kanji of the monster’s stolen name glaring back up at him.

He hears all three of their breaths catch when it finally picks up, the click of a received call filtering in static in place of the staggered noise. “...Gojo Satoru?” A tinny voice asks, and it rings in his ears like the smooth, heart shaped lips it speaks with are brushing along the edge of his ear in a low, suggestive whisper.

“Itadori Kaori,” Satoru replies, and somehow, he’s calm as he answers. “I’ve got news you might like to hear,” he says, eyes flickering up to Shoko’s where she sits tensed and waiting opposite him around the curved table. 

“I’m listening,” the thing that is not Yuuji’s mother offers, and Satoru watches Shoko as he lets the words fall from his parted lips like the sticky, cloying trickle of honey from an overturned jar.

“Ieiri Shoko agreed,” he says, and will never forget the dull, static horror staining her face gaunt for as long as he lives.

“I don’t like this at all,” Suguru mutters, hand curled tightly around his wrist as Satoru drops them down lightly on the stone pavement of a back alley. He only shrugs, not bothering to tell Shoko to lighten her own grip as it starts to cut off his arm’s blood flow. He agrees, after all.

“Don’t let go of me,” Satoru mutters, repeating the words for no sentiment other than his own cresting anxiety as they turn to face the large warehouse, stark against the construction site around it and blank where everything else has color. “Don’t provoke them.”

He feels Suguru’s nod by the brush of dark hair along his shoulder, sees Shoko’s in his peripheral vision. They let him, because maybe the repetition of knowing they have at least one one failsafe makes them both feel better about this, too.

In the dreary absence of words, they start to walk, the large metal sides of the empty building like pieces of the sky color was leached from.

“You actually came,” Kaori purrs, arms crossed over her body’s middle where the thing wearing it stands, leaning against the large mouth of the doorway, old rusted steel propped open from the inside. “I’m surprised.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Shoko drawls, restless fingers twirling a pack of her preferred cigarettes, the grip of her other hand tightening where it holds onto his bicep with no little amount of force. Wordlessly, Satoru increases the thickened miasma of infinity’s forcefield, lengthening the spaces between infinitesimal numbers and the time it would take for Itadori’s corpse to touch them. 

“Can’t be called flattery if it’s true,” Kaori’s voice calls, the liquid roll of it echoing slightly as they fall off the frame of the doorway, wandering into the darkened space of the drafty warehouse. Exchanging a flickering glance, Suguru walks in time with him as they carry Shoko forward where her feet seem to be stuck to the dusty ground.

Satoru wrinkles his nose as they drift inside the large building, drafty and cobwebbed and clearly long since abandoned. “I would have paid for a hotel,” he mutters to Suguru, and tenses when the bark of a short laugh claps around the empty space. 

“I see nothing changes much,” Kaori says, slinking a sly side eye over their shoulder, lips curving up in an amused smile as Satoru stares back at them, stark nothingness on his face. “Hanae was rather picky, too.”

The words, as mild and innocuous as they are, send a spidering shiver trickling down his spine. Silently, Satoru tightens his fists where they sit in his pockets, running the pad of his thumb along the sealed line of his phone, the urge to call Yaga and flee a strong one where it sits heavy on his shoulders. 

The Frankenstein piloting Kaori leads them to a ramshackle table set in one of the stale beams of light flooding in from a high, propped open window, half of it sat in shadow and the other bathed dusty from old, fogged glass. There’s four chairs, all mismatched and looking like they came from a garage sale, or found on the side of the road. It looks dirty, absent, unused. 

There’s residuals all over it.

‘Who is that,’ Satoru thinks, eyes sharpening on the traces of cursed energy from someone he knows he’s seen before in Shibuya but doesn’t otherwise know. They were here, maybe not even longer than a day ago, sat next to Frankenstein while they did nothing more impressive than talk. If he squints, tilts his head, lets the faint, wretched scent of it brush his nose, he almost sees the shimmer of copper, tastes the tang of mental. If he was more inclined to trust anything in this dilapidated old building, he’d almost say it was distinctly Kamo.

It isn’t the scent or energy of any Kamo he knows.

“Have a seat,” Kaori says, the soft timbre of her voice low and easy, pleasant as her body eases into the armless chair with the faded green cushioning and the least amount of stains. 

For a moment, they watch them, light eyes shining with amusement as the three of them stand, locked together like a chain. There’s a challenge in it, one they could agree to play or one they could ignore to no known consequence, and under the scrutiny of eyes that hold no such thing as real as a soul, Satoru stands paralyzed. 

Shoko breaks away first. 

For all that he knows she’s terrified of this, she lets go of his arm, fingers sliding away from the sleeve of his soft shirt to walk wary and confident to the plain office chair, sat on the concrete floor with plastic wheels leaking rust everywhere it’s seemed to have rolled. Suguru’s hand tightens on his arm as she does, a harsh crack of anxiety and its frigid worry making the suffocation of his cursed energy almost unbearable. 

Without a word, he lets go. 

Satoru takes the last chair, something from a dining room compared to the creaky, stripped down metal thing Suguru steals, and stretches out his legs below the table’s surface, feeling the eyes on him in the menial moment infinity doesn’t cover the three of them together. Shoko taps his left shoe once, then lets it rest; Suguru taps his right, then presses down. 

Infinity rings as a thrum humming throughout the air the second they link back together, and he’s sure Kaori’s body must feel it, curse user or sorcerer or whatever she’d been before she’d died.

The message is clear, regardless. 

“As a fellow scientist,” Frankenstein begins, pale eyes sweeping over where they sit and harmless so long as promises sit on the dingey table between the four of them, still and tense and waiting for the silence to be broken, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ieiri.”

“...I’m afraid I can’t say the same,” Shoko replies, the words coming slightly stilted, spoken after a brief hesitation, and Satoru watches the fizzle of her cursed energy, how it twines around her like an agitated snake. 

“I suppose not,” Frankenstein muses, before a low smile spreads thinly on Kaori’s lips, the slow blink of her dark lashes eerie in the wane lighting. “How rude of me- I know all of your names, and yet you still don’t know mine,” they say, gaze flickering up to meet his own, and Satoru shuffles their stacked feet to press down hard on the toe of Suguru’s shoe to keep himself from reacting any other way. 

“Maybe you could guess it, Hanae?” They ask, hands rising to clasp under their chin, and he bristles.

“My name is Satoru,” he says, meeting the steady line of their gaze, refusing to flinch as they watch, and watch, and watch him, scrutinizing for some inkling that they know him like they think they do. 

They cluck their tongue after a dreary moment passes sluggishly by, dragging on like the limp limbs of a carried cooling body, shoulders rising minutely in a faint shrug. “Call it curiosity,” Kaori’s chiming voice says, and Satoru very pointedly resists a glare.

He can feel Suguru struggling not to burn beside him, a polar opposite to Shoko’s icy stillness. There’s a twisting mass of roiling emotions going on inside his head, conflicting and conflating and all sorts of messy. Without moving, he presses harder down on his shoe.

“My name is Kenjaku,” they finally answer, setting their clasped hands down on the table top, seemingly relaxed surrounded by the world’s two strongest shamans. “You may call me any sort of it you’d like, although I tend to go by the categorization of the body I inhabit, if not something neutral.” They tick up a tiny smirk, a self-satisfaction in their expression like someone proud of a bad joke. “Switching it up occasionally is rather refreshing.”

“...You are a sorcerer, then,” Shoko says, eyes narrowed as she hones in on the loose thread of a mystery, one brow ticking in an aborted movement at what has to be the world’s worst humor. “Is your technique similar to Master Tengen’s?”

“So many questions,” Kenjaku murmurs, flicking their gaze to Shoko’s flat expression, the spark of curiosity in her eyes. “I’ll strike you three a deal,” they begin, and unwinds their hands until they’re pressed together finger by finger in a long, sloping steeple. 

“I’ll answer one of yours, you answer one of mine, and so on,” they offer, a small, pleasant smile on Kaori’s lips. “No cheating, please.” 

‘And what do you define as cheating,’ Satoru thinks sourly, harshly scoring, ‘what do you want from Shoko,’ off the top of his list. They wouldn’t answer it threatened with death, he’s certain. 

“Deal,” Shoko blurts, immediately barreling past it as the whispery tendrils of a temporary binding vow hover tentatively over the waver of their cursed energy, the incessant desire to know, dissect, pick apart until she understands turning her impulsive. “You said yourself you were around in the Muromachi period. How old are you?”

“Much older than you,” Kenjaku answers, raising one brow like they think she’s funny. “When did you begin soul research?” They ask in turn, and he watches as Shoko shoves down her initial reaction to seethe in favor of fulfilling the hazy, incorporeal vow. 

“Recently,” she says, and barely gives them a moment before she’s rattling off another question. “What do you want to get out of working with me?”

“Knowledge,” they deflect, and Satoru squeezes nails into his fists, about to open his mouth and spit something petty, when they continue. “I’ve never met a shaman like you and your thoughts. I want to learn more.” 

‘That’s even worse than not answering at all,’ he thinks, closing his lips, a chill weighing down his limbs like they’re full of cold water with the unspoken promise of how they want to use it hanging thickly in the air like a dense fog. Shoko goes to snap out another one, mouth beginning to open and already full of words, until Suguru kicks her in the leg and she spills them all back down her throat.

“How did you kill Gojo Hanae?” He asks, a glint in his eye and a certain promise in his tone, even as he smiles like he’s making small talk with someone he viciously hates. 

“Me?” Kenjaku tones, voice liting high in a question. “No. I didn’t kill her.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Satoru interjects, despite how he’s certain it’s true with their short conversation in the mall, not bothering to stop how his gaze sharpens, unsettled by the flicker of excitement he catches on Kaori’s face. He knows it’s more helpful that they think he’s in a cycle of incarnations, rather than from a different future entirely, but it’s hard not to hate it anyway. Having any sort of perceived connection to Frankenstein makes his palms clammy, his shoulders tense.

“Oh? And why’s that?” Kenjaku muses, eyes turning up in something like glee as they swing Kaori’s pale irises around to look at him, and Satoru scoffs, not in the mood to be toyed with. The vow floats hazy and whispery along the edges of his senses, satisfied enough with their back and forth meeting its rules.

“You said you hadn’t meant to make it so bloody the first time we met,” he recites, and witnesses the disappointment as it slides like a wave over Kaori’s face in real time, thin like a film and only as real as it makes him feel any sort of guilt.

“I wasn’t lying. She made such a mess when she slit her own throat,” they answer, a curling smile pulling at Kaori’s lips, almost like they feel a sickening sense of satisfaction from either the memory or the story of it. “Hanae was very adamant she wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” They sigh, like it’s an unpleasant reminder. “It was such a shame, her suicide. I truly did love her. It was sad to watch her waste her life.”

‘What,’ Satoru thinks, ice dumping down his spine, and reflexively squeezes Suguru’s hand tightly enough to grind his bones together when it reaches for his own. It’s an effort to keep his face blank, sigils from winding his fingers together, the pressure of his cursed energy contained in its binds instead of flooding freely. He sits adjacent to Frankenstein’s monster, letting it watch him and scrutinize his reaction or lack thereof at what he knows was designed to be a verbal sucker punch.

He knows it was indirect, he’d puzzled that much from the mall, but a suicide- Forcibly, he stops the thought, shoving the disturbing knowledge that one of the Six Eyes might have been romantically involved with Frankenstien at the forefront of his mind instead. It’s just weird enough that it cuts off the wanted feeling of sunlight on his skin, fingers dipping in blood, an ache in his throat.

At some point, he’ll give them what they want. He’ll say the right thing, or do the right thing, and finally give them the evidence they need for a false conclusion. 

Today, he decides, knowing they know his calm, chilly exterior is a lie but not of what kind, is not that day.

“Were you studying her?” Shoko asks, the question not so out of the blue when they must know they have the Prison Realm somewhere, though it still seems to surprise Kenjaku. Their face lifts slightly, eyes widening minutely and mouth neutralizing from the smile it had been wearing, like they didn’t think it was going to be brought up.

“I was,” Kaori’s voice says, as her lips settle into a pleased shape as they recover, eyes fixed on Shoko with the turn of their head. “Who are you studying?”

“No one yet,” Shoko responds, a deflection when it’s an answer, though not technically the correct one. Yuuji is a toddler, and living with his grandfather. So long as he’s alive, none of them will touch him, it seems. Otherwise, Satoru thinks, Kaori’s host would have had away with him long before they’d found and cornered him. 

“Do you want to study Satoru?” Shoko asks, nails drumming on the table top with an odd echo, eyes fixed in a certain sort of concentration. 

“...I do,” Kenjaku admits, Kaori’s pale eyes narrowing, gradually sliding to the side as they fall and stay on Suguru. “But I want to study you, as well,” they say, the glide of Kaori’s voice like expensive velvet, and Satoru knows he isn’t imagining it when he feels Suguru’s suppressed shiver. “You’re so very interesting, Getou Suguru,” they murmur, something almost like lust in the molding of the wane words, and it’s enough to get him to have to beat back the visceral feelings of fear the memories of Shibuya still give him.

“Tell me, how many domains do you have at the moment?” Kenjaku asks, a glint in their eye like a scientist staring down the test that will complete their research, and Satoru squeezes Suguru’s hand harshly to keep him where he sits. 

It’s nothing short of a reminder.

“Only three,” he says, letting a thin smile pull at his closed lips, and maybe Satoru hates the insincerity when it’s given to him but he’s disgustingly grateful for it now when it smooths over Suguru’s face, deadened plastic to cover the living, breathing truth of him. He doesn’t elaborate on which ones, sat placid and calm and trying to break his hand under the table, and Satoru takes the turn for himself before Shoko can steal it.

No matter what they say, he thinks, infinity struggling to keep reined in where it wants to expand outward until he’s shredded Kaori’s body down to its atoms, they are the enemy, and they will do whatever they need to reach their goals. He wants to look at Suguru’s forehead, run the flats of his fingers along the smooth skin of it, trace over and over and over where the line had run and where it doesn’t, now. If they’re wondering after Suguru, it’s because they still want him.

“Where would you work with Shoko?” Satoru asks, the flat question firmly driving a wedge in the topic of conversation it interrupts, and only stares intently when Kenjaku raises Kaori’s eyes to look at him with seemingly passive annoyance. 

“Well, ideally the school,” they say, spreading their hands palm out, “but even I’m aware that’s pushing it a bit.” Their brows draw down, eyes lighting up in mirth. “Isn’t Yaga Masamichi the newest principal? I can’t imagine he’d want someone like me in his educational institution.”

Kenjaku pauses for a moment when none of them laugh, frowning like they’d been expecting a reaction. “Oh, he doesn’t?” They pout, odd on Kaori’s elegant face, seemingly entertained by their own antics despite how it makes himself and Suguru tense in discomfort. “Is it because I have secret meetings in abandoned warehouses?”

Shoko makes a noise, a short little cut off sound that got stuck in her nose, and they both turn to her with twin sickened expressions. “What,” she protests weakly, eyes darting to Kenjaku and back to them, fingers coming up to splay slightly. “The asshole’s sorta funny, you gotta admit that.”

“Sure,” Satoru drawls, “when they tell a decent joke.” He glares, more of an unimpressed stare bored a little too harshly onto where Kaori’s corpse sits, spinning the index finger of his free hand in a lazy circle. “I could fund a lab to use, or buy an empty building to convert.”

“I was wondering how deep the Gojo pockets run these days,” Kenjaku wonders, head tilting, short black hair swishing along Kaori’s jaw. 

“Deep,” Satoru mutters. “You find a location, I’ll buy it.”

“Deal,” Kenjaku agrees, and when the word leaves their mouth, it doesn’t settle with the weight of a fragmented binding vow. It’s just a simple promise, no strings attached. 

Satoru nods, momentarily wondering at why the clanging panic feels cottony, extending a hand out for Shoko’s phone. ‘Ah, shit,’ he thinks, taking it when she presses it into his palm after rummaging around in her coat pockets for it, the clacking tap of her heel’s point drumming along the cement floor an ice pick to his brain. He ignores her pressed look when it shoves at him, brows lowering over her eyes, darting back and forth in a brimming confusion.

He probably shouldn’t be on the verge of submerging into full blown dissociation while still in the presence of his worst nightmare, but he can’t deny that it helps. The shrieking thing yelling about danger is muffled, the paralyzing terror he can’t quite get rid of every time he sees that line of stitched scarring muted. 

“Contact me when you find a place,” he instructs, holding out Shoko’s phone for them to take, “and contact her when you want to begin working together.”

“Too good to call first?” Kenjaku muses, a small smile ticking up Kaori’s lips as they punch in their number to Shoko’s contact list, maybe the same one they’d given to him or maybe a different phone altogether. 

“I’m not super crazy about people who’ve killed my ancestors, no,” Satoru throws back, and sours a little more when it earns him a snicker.

“I like you, Six Eyes,” they say, holding out Shoko’s phone again for her to take back, and he decides he’s grateful for the dissociation when it settles thick, the harsh, winding fury at any sort of acknowledgement from them spitting vitriol and panic into his veins.

“We’ll see,” Satoru answers, and pushes his chair out from the table, rising to his feet in one fluid motion. He rounds it as Suguru and Shoko follow, grabbing the both of them as he goes and twisting into a different area of space once his hands are buried in fabric. 

Kenjaku only watches, scrutinizing, dissecting every second, every action they see. 

“I wasn’t done-!” Shoko begins, swinging around where they stand in the genkan, hair flaring as her head turns, only to stop short, the sharp words dying on her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru mumbles, as soon as the soles of his shoes touch the wooden floors of home, “I was starting to,” and then doesn’t finish the sentence like it’s floated up and out of his mouth, eyes fixed on the living room and blinking slowly like he’s not really seeing it. 

“Shit,” she sighs, the sound of it deflated, and reaches up to press a palm to Satoru’s eyes.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Suguru thinks, the thought detached and almost observant, the nauseated roil of his stomach a gurgle in his belly that his numbed body doesn’t want to acknowledge. 

“You tensed when we walked in. Why?” Shoko asks, stepping forward into Satoru’s space with one heel clicking on the wood, pushing him back on jellied legs. 

“It looked unused,” Satoru begins, just the lower half of his face visible below Shoko’s palm where it covers his eyes, moving backward as she pushes. Suguru sits down heavily on the bench, watching, breathing shallowly to settle the intense churning of the curses in his stomach, the sickening terror making him feel almost lightheaded. 

“And why was that strange,” Shoko continues, when Satoru’s voice dies off like he’s forgotten he has to speak to be heard, taking the last step to box him in against the wall. His back hits it with a dull thud, fabric scraping over paneling soft in the silence. 

“There were residuals everywhere,” Satoru answers, crowded between the wood and Shoko’s body as she presses as close as she can get, one palm pushing against his shoulder and a knee jammed between his thighs. 

“Whose?” She asks, the cadence of her voice the steadiest of them all when Suguru hasn’t spoken a word since he answered that needling question, and Satoru’s doesn’t quite have any of him left in it. 

“I don’t know,” he says, as still as an undisturbed lake surface, and Suguru watches, feeling the prickle of his own cursed energy soaking the foyer, undecided if it’s a lit match striking gasoline or a sodden one dropped to the dirt.

“Did you recognize them?” Shoko presses, shifting her other hand so it’s pushing against the hollow of Satoru’s sternum instead of his shoulder, and even from a good few feet away Suguru can feel the harsh jolt of reversed cursed energy she snaps against his covered skin.

“Yeah,” Satoru agrees, and then stops, mouth falling open as if to continue but nothing spilling out. He shifts slightly, head twitching like he’d wanted to look away, before his loose hands start moving. 

‘It’s fine,’ Suguru thinks, breathing out a heavy sigh as he watches the faint tremors begin to surface along the length of lean fingers, ‘Shoko can handle this. It’s fine.’ He sets his head in his steepled hands anyway, only watching because it’s better than shutting his eyes and seeing his body setting their home to flame.

“It looked like a Kamo’s,” Satoru gasps, the first real note of cognizance coming back to his voice. “It had the scent of copper but it didn’t look like any of them that I know- I think they were in Shibuya, because I recognized it from there but not from here-” 

“Breathe first, please,” Shoko mutters, and Suguru listens to his plunging inhale, breaths growing heavier as the dissociation breaks. “Suguru,” she tones, and he raises his head, tiredly watching her back, “can you go and get us all something to eat? Carbs, preferably.” 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, and gets up, only remembering to shove off his shoes with his heels when he takes a step and it clacks. He leaves them to stand in the genkan, trying to settle himself with the task Shoko gave him and feeling marginally better as he rummages through the fridge. They’ve got leftover rice that can be microwaved since he’s pretty sure waiting forty minutes for the rice cooker to finish wouldn’t be all that helpful, and there’s still grilled fish from this morning when they’d made the kids breakfast.

‘Come on,’ he thinks snidely, filling dishes one by one to reheat, ‘be a little braver.’ It feels excruciatingly hard.

“Lunch,” he calls, sitting down heavily at one of the kitchen table’s chairs, and listens to the stumbling pad of socked feet on wooden flooring as he stares down at his steaming bowl, still a little sick to his stomach.

“What the hell would the two of you do without me,” Shoko mutters, leaning forward to let Suguru light the end of his cigarette with her own, and Satoru sighs gustily. 

“Die,” he says, only slightly sarcastic, and smiles a little when Shoko chuckles. He doesn’t protest a single word when Suguru roughly tugs him along the tatami floor of the miniature dojo, pulling him closer to where they sit on the edge of the engawa, smoking away their worries. 

“I still think you should at least call Utahime,” Suguru protests, nudging Shoko’s side with his elbow as he hoists Satoru across her lap, doing all the work when he only lays limp like a dead fish. It’s very gratifying, honestly.

“And I said she’s working,” Shoko ribs back, shoving him along as if they’re a conveyer belt, cheek cushioned on Suguru’s shoulder and palms spreading out over the sides of his ribs as they meld down into his spine.

“Lazy excuse,” Satoru mumbles, shoving his nose into Suguru’s lap as he curls the extra length of his legs around Shoko’s hips, never having had any qualms whatsoever at annoying people trying to do their jobs. He shivers, counting the length of his own exhale as fire-warmed hands card through his hair, run down the back of his neck, dip below the waist of his pants to press to their shadows, stained like ink into his hips. 

“Not everyone is a narcissist,” Shoko jabs, and Suguru snorts. His fingers squeeze, slightly, digging into his flesh, running over each little deformity and groove pressed into the scarring like he’s looking for a handhold.  

Shoko wouldn’t seem to be, but he knows his weight is turning her legs numb. He knows it’s probably something she needs to feel, just as much as Suguru needs to skim fingertips over the shadows in his skin.

“That’s just mean,” Satoru pouts, and soaks in the sound of their quiet snickers. The scent of smoke is acidic and bitter in his nose, familiar and coveted when it’s so rare since they both quit. ‘That might be too permanent of a wording, though,’ Satoru thinks, recalling the tang of nicotine whenever the three of them do anything even remotely fucked up nowadays. 

“...I don’t think I should be around them,” Suguru murmurs, once the silence has lapsed for a while and the trees take the place of their talking, softly swaying in the spring breeze like the lapping of an ocean against a beach. “I could kill them in an instant, but it wouldn’t be helpful, and besides.” He breathes out, smoky breath having nothing to do with Jougo’s technique for once, fingers curling a little tightly in his hair. 

“What’s the small chance they’d get my body, anyway?” Suguru wonders, and Satoru shuts his eyes, tracing intangible fingers along the edges of their combined cursed energy, rippling and fraying and scared more than anything.

He wishes they could just kill their monster and get it over with. If he weren’t more paranoid, weren’t more worried, he’d say they should. He’d do it himself, even- find a quiet night and light it up with the blinding supernova of Purple. As it is, they don’t know Kenjaku’s technique outside of a basic rundown, nevermind that they don’t even know Kaori’s. If they kill them, would they just come back like a cockroach? Would putting them down and then burning the body actually get rid of the curse, or would it only return stronger and vengeful?

Would cutting the brainstem lose them access to an important part of the future? Would taking the life of the body leave the soul behind? If they kill Kenjaku now, are they blinding themselves to threats they don’t even know about?

“...I think you’re right,” Shoko rasps, pulling her cigarette back from her lips as she stares out at the yard, a harsh contemplation in the heavy set of her hazel eyes. Satoru turns his head, rubbing against the soft fabric of Suguru’s shirt, feeling the faint movement of his stomach as he breathes, able to see the flaking of her mascara where it’s aged throughout the day.

“It’d be stupid to deny that. We’re gonna be working in a lab.” She shrugs, digging one of her bare feet into the grass at the foot of the small porch. “I mean, all it would take is one syringe of a strong enough sedative, and if we’re going to be doing unethical research, I can’t imagine what else like it we’d have lying around.” 

Satoru swallows thickly, feeling the bob of his throat against Suguru’s navel, though the tense of his whole body below him is more attention-grabbing. He hates the picture it gives him, of Suguru turning his back for a moment and consequently giving up the right to his own soul.

“You don’t think they’d go for me, instead?” He asks, mostly out of a morbid sense of curiosity, and regrets the words as soon as Shoko gives him an answer. 

“I think they would if they thought they’d get anywhere,” she drawls, puffing out another cloud of foggy smoke, and Satoru doesn’t say that he’s grateful for Suguru’s hands when they push down a little too hard on his arms, but he is nonetheless. “It would negate needing the Prison Realm if they had you, but it would also be significantly harder, even taking you by surprise.” She pauses for a long moment, thinking, and if he bothers to give it any thought at all he can parse through what the things in her head might be.

Shoko is the only home base between them. Her body will be off limits so long as Kenjaku can learn from her, so long as they decide that her brain working by itself weighs heavier than the benefits of stealing it to wear. 

Satoru is untouchable and unattainable with his eyes and infinity protecting both him and whoever he’s got trapped below it.

Suguru has no defense.

“Anything they’ll do depends on what their plan is, ultimately,” Shoko muses, chewing absently on the filter of her cigarette, the toe of her foot dragging meaningless patterns in the grass. “We know they’re a scientist, and that they’re trying to accomplish something based on what they did in Shibuya- that’s obvious enough if they’re turning to me to further whatever research they’re doing.”

“...Kenjaku stole the Itadori family’s wife, right?” Suguru wonders, the question almost like he hasn’t really thought it all the way through, yet.

“Yeah?” Satoru confirms, turning his face up as he watches Suguru think, the underside of his jaw the most of what he can see laying on the both of their laps. 

“Why her?” He asks, thumbing at the line of his smoke, eyes narrowed where they fix somewhere undefined. “What’s the point of taking the body of an unregistered, unclassed shaman?”

“...I…don’t know,” Satoru says, stilted, reeling slightly as his mind sputters into a deranged series of thoughts. They know for certain Kaori is Yuuji’s mother thanks to the legal records he’d seen from enrollment and guardianship transfers to the school, but despite knowing that now, there hadn’t seemed like there’d been anything special about Itadori Yuuji, at first- nothing other than his ability to contain Ryomen Sukuna, at least. Not until he’d started looking closer. 

Yuuji had been inhumanly strong, inhumanly fast, a non-shaman with shaman-like traits even before he’d properly become one. He’d even swallowed Sukuna’s finger on a whim, but had been able to control it despite being unprepared. It had thrown him for a massive loop the first time, though as much as he’d been curious about it then, there had been more important things to deal with instead of chasing after one loose thread. 

He still remembers it with perfect clarity, how he’d told Yuuji to switch back that night on the rooftop after ten seconds had passed as a sort of benchmark. He’d wanted to know. Could he, or couldn’t he? 

‘He could,’ Satoru thinks, a cold sort of chill washing over his skin. ‘He could no matter how many fingers he consumed, almost like he was made for it- and Nobara said he came back to himself even after twenty.’ Maybe he shouldn’t trust the words of a ghost and a fever dream but he does, because if he doesn’t then he’ll be standing with a myriad of puzzle pieces without a single corner to start from.

Kenjaku is interested in souls, and Patchwork had called the soul a body, once.

“Why take Itadori Kaori’s body?” He mutters, the low words coming fast and toneless. “Was it specifically for her technique? For Itadori Jin?” He asks, the name sliding onto his tongue from the few papers he’d read about Yuuji’s records when he’d been officially enrolled. “Something either one of them could do, maybe? Something they could make?”

He feels Shoko still, the steady draw of her breath pausing as her cigarette curdles away into the air, Suguru’s forced calm as his heart races in his stomach. “When, exactly, did they take over Itadori Kaori,” she asks, flat as a board, a dawning realization expanding the glimmering flare of her cursed energy.

“I don’t know,” Satoru whispers, a horrifying truth beginning to settle inside the pit of his stomach.

Kenjaku is interested in souls, and Yuuji’s could contain the King of Curses himself.

Chapter Text

“This is insane,” Suguru tones, heartfeltly ignored as he stands in the doorway of their bedroom, watching Shoko and Satoru tear their corkboard full of photos to pieces. He sighs as one slips out of Satoru’s fingers as he piles a stack together on the floor, knelt over the board and nearly knocking heads with Shoko, stabbing hastily scribbled-on sticky notes into the cork. 

“And our lives are insanity,” she drawls, eyes darting between her myriad of tacks as she unspools a roll of thread taken from the junk drawer in the kitchen, scissors at her knees and a specific mania in her eyes.

“Tsumiki and Megumi will be home in fifteen minutes,” Suguru mutters, padding in anyway, crouching down over his feet to look at what they’ve written in the few minutes he’s spent cleaning up their dishes from earlier just to get a break from the crazy.

“So,” Satoru huffs, “that’s fifteen minutes to lose our minds.” Suguru watches him scribble a slew of words on another sticky note, taken from the precarious pile of them they usually keep on the desk, halfway covering one Shoko put down a moment ago. 

‘Itadori Kaori + Itadori Jin,’ her’s writes, with Satoru’s messy kanji for, ‘Ryomen Sukuna’s vessel,’ scrabbled below it.

“You can’t seriously think that kid was created just to house Sukuna, can you?” He murmurs, wanting the words to be a lie even though he can see how they slot right into place with everything else they know, because three years at the tech school learning about everything in history of significance to shaman’s taught him more than he’d ever wanted to know of the King of Curses.

“Don’t be dense,” Satoru snaps, a meanness to his voice that Suguru knows only comes from the frustration, the fear, the grief at knowing a child he’d loved once might only have been created to die. “You’re clever. Use the brain you’ve got and help us, already.”

He doesn’t roll his eyes, though it’s close. He pulls his phone from his pocket as Shoko starts winding thread between certain pins, mumbling under her breath, setting a ten minute timer for when they’ve ultimately got to stop and hide what they’ve created from Tsumiki and Megumi. Maybe they’re both alright with them knowing the inevitable things that they’d find out eventually, this would be too much. 

It could be harmful if the wrong ears heard. Megumi knowing they kill people wouldn’t put him in the same danger like knowing a conspiracy would. 

“So we assume Yuuji was created to be a vessel for Sukuna permanently,” Suguru begins, muddling through all the points they’d rapidly run over before the both of them were scrambling up in a mad dash for something tangible to put it all down on. “You saw residuals from Shibuya that were Kamo in nature, but not familiar to anyone from the clan, at the warehouse that Kenjaku seems to be meeting people out of.” 

He raises a hand to his chin, spidering warm fingers over his mouth as he watches their hands move in a flurry, the puzzle turning over and over in his mind as he looks for a corner to connect together. 

“Kenjaku body hops, and there’s no set age for how old they are.” He frowns, reaching between them to grab a sticky note of his own, gesturing for the pen Satoru has by his knees as he thinks. “How do we know they weren’t inhabiting people as their original selves in the past?” He muses, beginning to pen the words into the small square of paper, tilting his head when Shoko pipes up.

“Stitching. We know they can’t or won’t get rid of it judging on that scar both you and Kaori had, or has I guess, so- what,” Shoko asks, stopping abruptly, a wary sound in the tone of her voice, and Suguru looks up, glancing to her and then Satoru when he follows the gaze of her eyes.

“I gotta- stay here,” he barks, before he’s up and vanishing with nothing but the brief rustle of the photos scattered along the floor they’d pulled off of the board, and with an annoyed, hot exhale, Suguru looks back down to his note.

“They’ve got to be trying to create something,” Shoko mutters, glaring down at the thread between her fingers as she attempts to tie it off around the peg of a tack. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be interested in human transmutation. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Yuuji might even be a homunculus.”

“...What’s to say that he isn’t?” Suguru asks, tilting the pen out and towards her as he speaks, eyes narrowing. “He’d have had to be tailor made even to just host Sukuna temporarily, nevermind permanently. That fucker would rip any normal person to shreds from the inside out.”

“...Shit,” Shoko curses, bringing a hand up to her face as she pushes her hair back, the bags under her eyes shadowed in the warm light of their bedroom. “The only thing I can’t get around is that both of the Itadori’s were nobodies. There’s no record of a Jin or a Kaori at either of the schools from what Satoru said, and we know from the Six Eye’s that Kaori’s body was human.”

“And that means…?” Suguru tails off, tearing his sticky note off its stack to set near the cluster of them they’ve tacked to the board, all the writing things about Kenjaku’s iffy existence.

“They would have had to alter him at the fetal stage, which doesn’t make any sense to me if Kaori birthed him like we think. It would have taken a sorcerer like me to manipulate something like that, or a curse.” She frowns, cutting off the excess of thread, giving the scissors a twirl around her finger as she glares down at the board.

“Where’s that fucking twink-” Shoko grouses, looking up at the opposite wall, and as if she’d spoken for the devil himself, Satoru stumbles back out of thin air with the sharp scent of ozone and dust.

“I think I’m gonna vomit,” he strains, dropping back down to his knees with a thick, musty book in his hands. “Look at this,” Satoru hisses, slamming it down onto the carpet to the page he’d marked with his thumb, and as soon as his eyes fall to the open book, Suguru feels his stomach plummet out of his body.

A portrait of Kamo Noritoshi sits inside the crease between the yellowed pages, clearly from the early days of cameras, the photo in aged black and white. It would be innocuously plain, just a dower man standing with a wagasa in traditional old clothing, if not for the jagged line of stitching sliced across his bare forehead.

“Holy shit,” Suguru breathes, the puzzle snapping into place, and hears more than he sees the clap of Shoko’s palm over her mouth.

“It never really occurred to me,” Satoru begins, leaned over his hands as he kneels in front of the tome, a desolate expression stuck on his face, “because it was just that sort of thing all the clan kids grew up with.” He shrugs, exhaling something shaky. “Don’t misbehave, or the curses will come for you. Be obedient, or the curse users might corrupt you.” 

He pauses, staring down at his splayed fingers, glasses long since forgotten in the kitchen and the blue of his eyes painfully wide as they gaze unseeingly down at the carpet. “Don’t go looking for trouble,” he says, a damnation in their ears, “or Kamo Noritoshi might rise from the grave to give you stitches, too.”

Silence settles over them for a long, aching weight of a minute, thickened and suffocating and gut wrenching. Kamo Noritoshi’s worst crime sits like a brand between them, unspoken and heavy, a blight on the Kamo clan and the worst act of the worst curse user in the last one hundred and fifty years. 

“Kamo was innocent?” Shoko mumbles, shadowed eyes sliding along the corkboard as her hand drips down her chin, a dull thing of horror clinging her expression to her face in a harrowing sort of hollowness. The residuals at the warehouse, Suguru thinks of, Kamo in nature, but not of any clansmen. “Kenjaku created the cursed womb’s fetuses.” 

It’s proof enough by itself.

Suguru sits in the lamplight of their bedroom, falling back onto the carpet with a dull thunk, staring at the mess of their scrawling notes hidden underneath the aged leather cover of an ancient old genealogy, the photograph stuck inside of it glaring up at the three of them where it’s trapped within fading grays.

‘It would have taken a sorcerer like me to manipulate something like that,’ Shoko said, not even a full minute before, ‘or a curse.’

Itadori Yuuji is a death painting.

The shrill sound of his alarm chiming is loud in their ears when it shrieks, and Suguru fumbles to pull his phone from his pocket, shaking fingers slipping as he turns it off. “The- kids,” he stutters, gesturing to the board. “They shouldn’t see this.”

“Fuck,” Satoru curses softly, and then, “fuck!” He yells, slamming the genealogy shut as he hoists it back up, striding to their bookcase where he jams it into an empty spot none too gently. Suguru gathers all the strewn photographs while he does, combing them all together until he has them in an armful, swaying to his feet as Shoko picks up the board.

He hears her drag it to the wall, setting it facedown against the paint before shoving a loose stack of books in front of it to give it a small diversion, coming back to the pile of sticky notes the same time as him to dump on the desk next to all the thumb-tacked photographs. 

When he looks up, Satoru’s got his forehead jammed against the line of a shelf within the bookcase, hands over his eyes and lips twisting harshly as his teeth clench together, the muscle of his jaw tightened and visible. For a moment, Suguru doesn’t do anything, stood watching with something sinking his shoulders down as he tries to wonder what exactly Satoru must be feeling.

He hasn’t heard much about the kids he’d taught, but from the small things he’s given here or there, it’s clear that he loved them. Suguru hasn’t met Yuuji, so he’s just a name to put to a story to put to a tragedy, but Satoru had. He’d known him, obviously still cares for him, and he thinks that it must be heartbreaking to understand that a child he’d tried to save was doomed to die by his own mother’s hand.

Shoko gives him a shove- enough of a surprise that he stumbles, slightly, looking back at her in puzzlement. Her eyebrows raise, silent judgment on her wane face, and Suguru sighs. 

“‘Toru,” he murmurs, walking the few steps it takes to stand next to him, threading his arms around thin middle and setting his chin on one shaking shoulder. “This isn’t the end of the world,” he promises, and shuts his eyes against soft cheek when he feels the movement of a mouth opening, the sound that spills out a choked hiccup instead of words. 

“One day at a time,” Suguru says, squeezing a little harder where he’s wrapped his arms around Satoru’s waist. “You can’t think about it all now. We have to take it one day at a time.” 

“I know,” Satoru cries, and Suguru lets him stand there, pulling himself together because Tsumiki and Megumi will be home any minute, and though maybe they’re not much more than kids themselves they’re still more adult than them.

He takes the kiss when it’s given to him, shifting to let Satoru twist in his arms and lock their lips together in a something salty, glossy, soft, one that doesn’t last for longer than a moment as his head drops, snowy white hair tickling his chin as cold nose presses against his neck. 

Shoko shuffles out of their room, off for what he’s certain is another pot of coffee since it’s not late enough to touch the booze, and Suguru stays where he is. He doesn’t want to ruin the thin peace they have, not in the midst of the world shattering again. 

He’s scared, he can’t deny that, not when he knows both Satoru and Shoko are, too. He’s scared like he has been since that first afternoon at the mall when the monster had found them first, feeling powerless despite all of it he has sitting at his fingertips. There’s so much they’ve handled and so much they can’t control, and he can’t lie that there’s a toll to it all that’s been sitting on his shoulders like a curse of his own. 

It’s nothing short of terrifying, wondering if they’ll get a pleasant ending, if everything will work out for the better without a few lives paving the way for the price. It’s a little humbling, a lot sympathizing, when it pulls him closer to the worries Satoru’s been living with since fifteen and burdened with the weight of the entire world. 

Standing there together, on the lip of a cliff and skirting closer to the edge with every step, he sorely misses the days and weeks after the trial. The high from it hadn’t dissipated for a long while, and with it had come an unshakable sense of security. He’d been powerful then, a titan stomping along the god’s earth, bigger and stronger and the maker of his own peace. 

Like this, he feels small. Their monster isn’t the same beast as the higher up’s and their elders, isn’t something as pushable and punishable as society at large. They can’t just get rid of it by slitting a few unremarkable throats. If they’re the titans who swallowed up the gods, then Frankenstein is the creator that made them. He clutches a little tighter when he feels Satoru soundlessly hiccup with a noiseless sob, choked down like the curses he swallows and refuses to let free. 

If nothing else, he isn’t suffering in the same way. There’s the fear licking up his spine at death, for the hands that would sew stitching into the skin of his forehead if only the needle could reach him, from knowing that if it did his life might be burned to ash by his own flames. 

It’s a fear, but not exactly a tangible one. So long as they’re careful, it won’t be anything more than a nightmare. 

It’s selfish, but stood listening to Satoru piece himself back together, he’s horribly, terribly glad he’s never met Itadori Yuuji. 

“We’re home!” Megumi yells, the sound of the door shutting behind them loud in the silence, and Satoru forces himself to straighten, calm, smoothing the last of his worries away from his face. “Tsumiki had a shitty day-!” Megumi continues, the slap of his sneakered feet pounding on hardwood, and both he and Shoko turn as the kitchen’s fusuma doors are slammed against.

“You’re such a little snitch!” Tsumiki cries, the thunk of her bag dropping onto the floor loud but not quite as blatant as the thing in her voice thickening its notes.

“And what’re you gonna do about it-?” Megumi throws back, whipping his head over his shoulder as he shoves against the edge of the sliding doors, shrieking when one of Tsumiki’s sandals goes sailing for his head.

“Hey,” Satoru barks, the word firm and sudden as it stops both of them in their tracks, catching the sandal midair with a clap of the sole against his palm before it can hit Megumi’s face, peering behind the partially open doors to look at Tsumiki, stood at the lip of the living room, scowling. 

He frowns, sighing, catching the shifting movements of Shoko behind him as she sets down her coffee cup. He’d seen them coming, but it had been entirely peripheral- he’d been more distracted with the revelations about Yuuji to notice any distress either of them might have been flaring with. A door opens and shuts in the stiltedness of the silence, Suguru’s steady inquiry floating aimlessly in the air around them.

“First of all,” Satoru murmurs, sinking down into a crouch to be eye level with Megumi where he lingers in between the sliding doors, looking a sort of cowed, “you better not be swearing like that at school.” It gets him a rapid headshake, wide green eyes nervously darting between his own, and Satoru looks up, brows furrowing slightly as he watches Tsumiki shuffle in place, fidgeting with the hem of her sweater.

“And second, you know better than to throw things at your brother, Tsumiki,” he finishes, letting brown eyes flick up to his face, run away, swing back again, wince slightly. 

“What happened?” Suguru repeats, a hand tracing over the couch back as he treads through the living room, concern knitting his brows together and a tiredness in the pull of his shoulders. Satoru can empathize. He’s exhausted, and they’ve still got an entire evening to get through.

“Tsumiki was crying on the train ride,” Megumi tattles, an apology in the curve of his shoulders and his wavering glance in Tsumiki’s direction, but a certain determination in the set of his little face. “She wouldn’t say why,” he explains, and Satoru lets his lips press together, dropping the sandal in favor of reaching up a hand to pat Megumi’s head, carding his fingers through soft black hair.

“It’s- it’s not important,” Tsumiki hitches, face reddening even as her lips start to wobble, air leaking into her voice as she crosses her arms tightly, shrinking in on herself.

“Are you sure, ‘Miki?” Suguru hums, footfalls quiet on the hardwood as he stops in front of her, kneeling down to her level as he reaches out, flicking one of her bangs. “You sound upset.”

“Nothing even happened,” she admits, miserable, and Satoru can’t help the shocking lance of fear that trickles down his spine. In the kitchen, he feels Shoko’s cursed energy still, rippling, how she leaves the counter to lean out from the parted fusuma doors, hovering over where he crouches on the flats of his feet in front of Megumi.

“I mean- it was just a stupid letter,” she warbles, talking to fill the silence when they don’t, looking everywhere and nowhere as her lips twist, tears bubbling along her waterlines. “It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

“What kind of letter?” Suguru asks, the beginning of stress under his eyes, leftover anxiety wafting off of him in waves, and because he feels like he might explode if he doesn’t, Satoru lets his hand fall down to pull Megumi closer. He squeezes slightly, settling marginally when Megumi leans all his weight back against him, a shaking anticipation roiling in the pit of his stomach.

“Just a con- a confession,” Tsumiki strains, choking on the words as she finally breaks, tilting into Suguru’s arms when they reach up to pull her down. “Yamamoto wrote it f-for me, and they-” She hiccups, sobbing, “they read it to the entire class.”

He feels slightly terrible about it, but Satoru relaxes. ‘Oh thank god,’ he thinks, decompressing knowing it’s nothing overtly serious past schoolyard tortures. Maybe it’s big and large and soul crushing to Tsumiki, but it isn’t dangerous like their newer secrets are. It won’t have unknowable consequences for certain people finding out they know of them 

“Fuck me,” he catches Shoko mutter under her breath above him, feeling the relief in the twist of her cursed energy along with the abject disgust for playground cruelties. 

“Seriously,” Satoru mumbles back, eyelids feeling like lead as his lashes brush over his skin when he blinks, tugging one of Megumi’s legs up to worm his shoe off of his foot. Across them, he watches from the corner of his eyes as Suguru swings Tsumiki up, rubbing circles onto her back as he murmurs little words along the shell of her ear, skin visibly warming in either an accidental comfort or a deliberate one. 

“Thank you for looking out for your sister,” he whispers, head ducked against Megumi’s cheek as he switches feet, feeling the nod shift along his skin. 

If nothing else, he’s glad that they’re still as closely knit as they had been, once. Maybe it’s just another guilt he’d been carrying for how he let them create a wedge, Megumi’s coarse temper having grated against Tsumiki’s kinder ideals as they’d grown. Maybe having Suguru around to balance him will help them do better, or maybe simply having more stability than they did before will recover them quicker as they begin to grow up.

Tsumiki’s sobs are muffled as they dribble out into the living room, shoved up against the side of Suguru’s neck and as wet as they are painful. They ring against his ears like the sharp whine of a tuning fork, making his hands want to jitter and face want to tighten as he hoists Megumi up, shoes tucked against two of his curled fingers by their heels.

Shoko ducks out from the doorway a moment after him, padding over to where Suguru stands, pressing close to offer her own gentled placations as Tsumiki cries. He watches from eyes that aren’t tangible as the pained thing creases her face, empathy like a brand on her skin, setting Megumi’s shoes in their holder and nabbing the both of their backpacks by two leather arms in one hand.

“Are we gonna-?” Megumi begins, the question lowered to a whisper cupped against his ear, and Satoru shakes his head. 

“No,” he answers, placing the two backpacks down on the kotatsu table, collapsing down onto the couch as he waits for Shoko and Suguru to follow, “no homework tonight.” Megumi nods, the rasp of his soft hair a tickle against his cheek.

Suguru is a balmy warmth when he settles in beside him, Tsumiki wrapped up in the curve of his arms and shaking with every hiccupping sob that yanks itself from her lungs. He tilts his head down, eyes lidded as he lets it pillow on Suguru’s shoulder, compliant when Shoko shoves at his legs to sit on his other side, plastering against the twist of his back. 

Tsumiki’s cursed energy practically boils, overflowing from its pot as she cries, uncontrollable emotions leaking themselves all over the place. Just like he had when they were kids the first time, he doesn’t say anything, sighing as he tugs Megumi a little closer where he’s fallen down onto the couch cushion, feeling small hands press against his stomach. Part of being a sorcerer is controlling those uncontrollable emotions, stoppering the funnel before it can leak. 

They’re children, first. 

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Shoko muses, one arm slung around his hips, fingers given to Megumi’s restless palms for him to mess with. “Why don’t we do a spa day?”

“...A spa day?” Tsumiki sniffles, finally uncurling slightly from the crook of Suguru’s neck, her eyes reddened and lips puffy from being bit down on. 

“Yeah,” she says, “you know, something relaxing. Pampering.”

“Shoko, have I ever mentioned you’re a genius,” Satoru mumbles, eyes sliding a little closer to being shut, all his limbs feeling weighted as if they’re made of metal. He’s so tired, and soaking in an onsen wouldn’t be even relatively taxing, not with the three of them sharing the burden of watching Megumi and Tsumiki.

“You could stand to tell me more,” she replies, but there’s a weary thing in her voice, too. Something undeniably exhausted but unexplainably ancient sounding, maybe just as wrung out from their illicit discoveries, a bone-chilling meeting, the tongue-thickening anticipation all of them share for the future. 

“No one ever uses the school’s bathhouse anymore,” Suguru offers, staring up at the ceiling as he rubs a warmed palm up and down Tsumiki’s back, a lingering sort of fear souring his cursed energy but a settled feeling to the rest of him, steadying the longer they sit. “It’s probably ten times bigger than the downstairs tub,” he continues, looking down at Tsumiki, and even barely squinting Satoru can see her eyes widen, blinking away the last of her immediate tears.

“That…sounds nice,” she agrees, words small and roughed, and he can’t help an amused huff. There’s a growing collection of bath bombs below the sink, facemasks scattered around on the countertops, lip balms and scented lotions filling their cabinets. Shoko keeps pawning off whatever Utahime clears out of her bathroom onto them, and the more she collects the more Tsumiki asks them to buy.

It isn’t a bad habit in the slightest, so they’ve encouraged it, much to Megumi’s staunch annoyance now that his side of the sink in the upstairs bathroom is gradually losing its frog theme below a tipping mass of skin and hair care products. It’ll grow on him eventually, maybe when he realizes the magic of a mascara wand again.

“Why don’t we have dinner and then go up?” Satoru suggests, fighting off a yawn as all his tension breaks with an inaudible snap, leaving nothing behind but his own lethargy tied up in its bag of bones. Nothing’s wrong, even though so much could be. Nothing is crumbling yet, but it only takes his own memories to know it won’t.

Maybe ignorance is a certain sort of bliss, but there’s a security in knowledge, and he knows that Itadori Yuuji being born from half of a curse isn’t the end of their world.

“How far out is she?” Satoru asks, swinging Tsumiki’s feet with his hands, feeling her twined fingers shift below his chin, the dull echo of their shoes on hardwood flooring loud in the silence of the school.

“Thirty minutes or something,” Shoko responds, nose buried in her phone as she texts with Utahime, furiously tapping something back in a reply.

“She said that thirty minutes ago, too,” Suguru wheedles, only sticking out his tongue when Shoko bats a hand at him, obediently walking in a zigzag down the hallway as Megumi pulls on his hair like a horse’s reins, crowing this or that command in a childish game of equestrian. 

“Hime-ba’s still coming, right?” Tsumiki asks, a note of something worried cracking in her words, and Satoru hums, giving her ankles a squeeze.

“Yeah,” he promises, “and if she’s super late I’ll just go get her myself, okay?” 

“Okay,” Tsumiki says, quiet for a moment, eyes roaming around the school as they walk through it, marveling slightly at the traditional architecture. It is pretty, long wooden hallways and elegant flooring, big open courtyards and large, separated buildings.

Kento and Yu are up in the dorms when he looks, flares of bright energy where they seem to be collapsed together, sleeping. It’s not late, but it isn’t unusual for sorcerers to come back from missions at odd times, either. He can see Ichiji down in the records room by himself, maybe studying or maybe curious, younger than he’s ever been able to remember him. 

It feels both less and more familiar, not quite the same as being a teacher walking through an empty building, but not a student strutting through the school, either. 

It’s different, something new and nicer for it.

“...Wow,” Tsumiki breathes, hands tugging slightly on his chin as she sits up on his shoulders, staring out at the school’s largest, artificial onsen. There’s technically three, one for the boys, one for the girls, and a communal one to share, though even when they’d been students none of them had ever used them often. They’d never really had the time or energy to sit and soak after showering.

“Told you,” Suguru murmurs, setting Megumi down on the floor, the clack of Shoko’s sandals loud as she wanders into the locker room grumbling about poor connection. “You wanna stare for a little more or actually go and bathe?” He asks, amused, and Satoru laughs when Tsumiki sticks her tongue out to blow a small raspberry, steering them back around to follow Shoko. 

“I’ve never been to a real bathhouse before,” Tsumiki says, ducking as he passes under the doorway, and Satoru lets go of her ankles to reach up instead, humming.

“We used to go a lot as kids until we got too busy for it,” he recounts, pulling Tsumiki up to lower her down to the ground, staggering to the side so Megumi won’t crash into his knees as he goes running into the small changing room. “Megumi!” He calls, to no avail when he disappears around a corner, Shoko’s shout of surprise echoing up to the ceiling. 

Suguru huffs, setting the large canvas bag hanging off his shoulder down onto one of the slatted benches, rummaging around inside of it for the headbands he brought. “No one ever uses these now,” he says, two fluffy towels emerging from the depths of the bag, “so we could start coming more often if you like it.”

Tsumiki seems to think on it, eyes narrowed in contemplation as she tugs off her navy sweater, school uniform wrinkled slightly after a day of use. “Maybe,” murmurs, shrugging, taking care to fold it into a neat square before she moves onto her shirt.

“We have an infestation problem!” Shoko yells, lumbering back into view holding Megumi up by his ankles, giving him a playful swing when he starts to protest. 

“Do not-!” He throws back, breaking off into a series of shrieking giggles when Shoko gives him a light shake, the muscles of her bare arms clearly defined where a sagging towel has taken the place of her shirt.

“Do to,” she presses, a toothy smile parting her lips. “I’d say this species looks like toddlerus annoyingis, the most deadly animal known to aunt.” Megumi laughs again when she gives him a bounce up to let go over his legs, arms wrapping around his middle, the hem of his shirt bunching up around his face.

Suguru rolls his eyes, ignoring them in favor of kneeling down to undo Tsumiki’s ponytail where Satoru laughs, chucking one of the soft headbands at Shoko’s face. 

“That’s my emotional support invasive species, thank you very much,” he chortles, reaching out in a wordless gesture, eyes crinkling in mirth when Megumi’s steps wobble slightly after he’s set down. 

His hair’s a mess, flopping on his head in every direction, and his face is beet red from being upside down when he stumbles closer. “Can the dogs have a bath, too?” He asks, shaking off the dizziness as Satoru taps his elbows to get him to raise them, and it stops him for a moment.

‘They don’t shed,’ he thinks, trying to recall whether or not Megumi’s shikigami could exist in water, or if their projections would dissolve. He thinks they could, but Megumi had never been a huge fan of swimming when it would get hot over the summer and Tsumiki would beg to go to the pool. He’s never been a huge fan of water, period.

“Sure,” Satoru answers, mentally shrugging, because they’ll find out either way, he supposes. 

“Gimmie,” Suguru tones, holding out a hand for discarded clothing, and wordlessly, Satoru chucks it at him, giving the kids a push in Shoko’s direction as she makes for the showers with a low drawl of, ‘move it or snooze, losers,’ a basket of her soaps in hand and a look of melting exhaustion flattening her expression. 

“We’ll be right behind you,” Suguru promises, as Megumi chases after Shoko, Tsumiki lingering behind him. She purses her lips, but nods anyway, taking the two offered towels as she runs to catch up. 

“How much you wanna bet Shoko does something gross with Iori,” Satoru snickers, undressing, and only throws his shirt at Suguru again when it gets him a dirty look.

“Utahime’s starting training to be a teacher next year,” he snarks, “that’s a shit play.”

“And you’re forgetting who she’s dating,” Satoru ribs back, reaching out to pinch Suguru’s ass just to be extra annoying. “Shoko has the least amount of shame out of all of us.” Suguru bites down on a yelp, swatting him with a towel as they shove the last of their clothing in the second canvas bag they brought, towel slung over their arms as they pad side by side out of the small locker room.

“Fine, bet on it then,” Suguru sniffs, hooking their elbows together anyway, and Satoru snorts.

“If they do anything even mildly PG you gotta do bedtime stories tonight,” he offers, and Suguru tosses his hair over his shoulder and directly into his face, something smug in his expression.

“Deal,” he says, and Satoru wipes the satisfied smile off his lips.

‘Dumbass,’ he thinks, and ducks when Shoko aims the showerhead at him, yelling, “have mercy!” Fully ignored in the face of her amused snickers.

Chapter Text

“Megumi, don’t you wanna get in? It’s warm,” Suguru coaxes, reaching out to the lip of the bath where Megumi crouches, glaring down at the water like it’s a living curse, lips drawn up and a wary thing stained onto his face.

It’s odd, this sudden turn of character, when for almost thirty minutes before Megumi had been seemingly excited, perfectly content to let Suguru wash his hair and comb it back, even summoning the demon dogs for a handful of moments to splash around in the water.

“...No,” he mutters, still staring down at the faint ripple of the surface like it could swallow him whole, and he sighs, feeling Satoru’s gaze swing between them, Shoko’s mild confusion as she and Tsumiki turn. Even Utahime has an eye on them, still showering when she only got to the school a few minutes ago, maybe concerned in the same way as them. 

“Not even if I hold you?” Suguru wheedles, stepping closer to drum his fingers along the edge of the stone, watching green eyes dart up to him in consideration, back down to the water, and immediately recoil. 

“No,” Megumi repeats, shaking his head a little violently, and he can’t help but to narrow his eyes, thinking.

Megumi hadn’t wanted to get in the creek that day at the park, either, but he’s never had a problem with bathtime before. ‘Where is this coming from?’ He wonders, stuck on the thought that maybe it’s because the artificial hot spring is so large, or that he doesn’t like the smell of the salts added to it.

“Oh, shit,” he hears Satoru curse, the surprised words uttered under his breath, and he turns, quirking one brow upwards. “Megumi,” he chimes, leaving Shoko and Tsumiki to drift closer in the steaming water, a hypothesis lurking in the crease of his pretty eyes, how he leans along the edge with a small slosh of water, elbows resting on stone.

“Do you wanna learn how to swim, baby?” Satoru offers, a small smile on his lips, and Suguru jolts, turning with a splash that thwacks his wet hair against his back.

“He- what?” He exclaims, looking from Satoru back to Megumi, the damning evidence in the red of his ears, the embarrassment making him look away. “Oh,” Suguru mumbles, when he spends a second thinking about it even a little longer, and isn’t terribly surprised. From what he knows, Megumi’s never left the city, and Fushiguro Toji hadn’t seemed all that involved with teaching his kids basic life skills, considering he’d been busy murdering school children.

“Do I have to,” Megumi whines, curled around his knees, something he’d call irritation on his face if Suguru didn’t know it to be something like fear, instead. 

“Well,” Satoru starts, setting a finger on his chin as he looks up, pretending to contemplate it, “if you don’t, you won’t be able to go swimming with Tsumiki in the summer, and you can’t get in the bath…” He trails off, tilting his head as he leans further down in the water, partially floating as he looks up.

Megumi panics immediately, a sharp lance of urgency widening his entire expression, contrasting harshly with the alarm that sharpens his eyes. ‘You bastard,’ Suguru thinks, and can’t bring himself to condemn the light manipulation any. Megumi will need to be able to swim, if for nothing else than the knowledge that he won’t drown for a petty accident. What better place to learn than in the safety of a four foot bath?

“It’ll be easy,” Suguru promises, holding his head up by one bent elbow, offering Megumi a placid smile when he stays tensed into a ball. “I won’t let go of you at all, pinky swear?” He holds out his other hand, pinky raised high, and watches in fondness steeped with a gentled mirth as Megumi deliberates, staring at his fingers for a long while before he raises his own.

“You can’t break a pinky swear,” Megumi mutters, a suspicious pout on his adorable face, “they’re unbreakable.”

“Absolutely,” Suguru agrees, and waits until Megumi’s smaller finger has curled around his own before he shakes on it. Wordlessly, he holds out his hands, waiting for Megumi to unfold. It takes a long moment, the courage he musters obvious in every slow movement, and Suguru’s careful to be gradual when small palms set themselves into his own. 

“See?” He murmurs, steadily pulling Megumi into the bath. “I’ve got you.” He clings immediately, arms wrapping around his neck and knobby knees squeezing his sides, two wide green eyes staring down at heated water as a heart pounds like a drum against his skin.

Satoru hums, leaning down to press a kiss to Megumi’s temple, moving away again when Tsumiki calls for him, wading through the water with barely her chin above the surface, standing on the tips of her toes. 

“I wanna ride!” She exclaims, to Satoru’s snorted chuckle, giggling in a way that sounds more like herself than the past hour has as he lifts her up out of the water and into a toss, squealing when he catches her again.

“Megumi,” Suguru says, looking away from them, “I’m gonna ask you to do something scary.” It gets the limbs clinging to him stilling in anticipation, green eyes floating up to catch his own. 

“What kind of thing?” Megumi asks, the words muffled against his skin, and Suguru turns, wading through the water and away from the ledge.

“Let go,” he answers, and feels the fingers dig into his shoulders, small heels scrabbling against his back as Megumi holds on tighter. “I know,” he muses, “scary, right?” It takes a moment, but Megumi nods. 

“That’s okay. You can be scared, but trust me, alright?” He asks, lifting away one hand to tilt Megumi’s chin up, meeting his eyes, the rosy flush of his steam warmed skin. “I swore I wouldn’t let you go.”

He lets the silence sit between them, scrutinized under a rapid movement of searching eyes, waiting for Megumi to come to his own decision. If he chooses not to, then Suguru won’t push. He remembers being little when he’s still not so big himself, and how trust had been a fickle, fragile thing. He won’t break it, not now, not unless he has to.

“...Okay,” Megumi whispers, arms tensing around his neck for a moment, “but you can’t let go,” he presses, a strain in the furrow of his brows. “You can’t.”

“I won’t,” Suguru promises, and wonders what must be running through Megumi’s head to garner such a stoic sort of look. Lips pursed, he nods, stiff and stilted, and then slowly, begins to lift away his hands. It’s like watching a turtle emerge from their shell with the molasses-like movement Megumi steadily pulls back by, tensed like he’s waiting for the drop and holding his breath between two puffed out cheeks and tightly shut eyes.

Suguru waits, fond down to the tips of his fingers for small arms to finally let go entirely, curling up against Megumi’s chest as he lets his legs fall slack. For a long moment after, he just sits, standing, waiting for him to notice.

One green eye blinks open, and then the other, the breath leaving him in a gasp as Megumi realizes he’s still above water. He stares down at it for a heavy sort of second, before green is dragging back up, roaming over his face as Suguru smiles.

“See?” He repeats, the word quiet where he holds Megumi above the surface of the bath. “I’ve got you.”

It earns him a nod, the movement more confident than a minute ago, and Suguru can’t lie it makes him feel a little braver, himself. ‘Okay,’ he thinks, lowering his arms, ‘not too fast,’ Megumi’s hands circling around his wrists as tightly as he can squeeze. 

He watches dark hair cloud into ink below the salted water, how Megumi sucks in another breath of air like he thinks he’ll be dunked, the lapping of the bath covering the sides of his stomach as he moves a palm to his back, another to the underside of his thighs. There’s a second, louder notch of satisfaction that there’s more softness on his body where he’d been nothing but points and bones just a month and a half ago, no longer hungry and no longer wanting. It’s gratifying that all the baby fat he has isn’t just on his face, anymore. 

“Can you feel that?” Suguru asks, lightening the pressure of his hands, the breath Megumi sucked in on reflex aiding in his own buoyancy. “You’re floating.”

“...Oh,” Megumi says, the realization setting in quickly once it’s pointed out. Nervously, he shifts, wiggling, kicking one foot in a splash as he finds his bearings. “How?” He asks, and Suguru hums.

“We’re made of water, too,” he explains, slowly turning in a circle, dragging Megumi through the lip of the water’s surface to get him used to its movement, “but only a little bit, ‘cause the rest of us is air. So when we get in big pools,” he says, ticking up a corner of his lips into a smile when one small hand leaves his wrist to trail in the ripples of the water they leave, “we float.”

“So even if I…if you let go,” Megumi hedges, gnawing slightly on his lower lip in between words as he picks which ones to say, “I won’t sink?”

“Not entirely,” Suguru says, tilting his head as he thinks, curious. “Do you wanna try?” Megumi tenses, locking up like a cat with its tail puffed, and Suguru only keeps spinning, leisurely stepping from foot to foot as he turns. 

He can see the morbid curiosity, though, the shine in Megumi’s eyes that say he wants to, even though the rest of him violently protests. “How about this,” Suguru offers, listening to the backdrop of Tsumiki’s happier chatter as something splashes lightly behind him, Utahime’s pleasant response swallowed up by Shoko’s laughter. 

“I’ll lift my hands for a moment,” he says, watching Megumi’s face scrunch in indecisive consideration, “and then I’ll put them right back again.”

“...Okay,” he agrees, the word staunchly interested but pretending not to be, and Suguru lets the smile grow on his face when it tugs. 

“I’ll count down, then,” he warns, amused when Megumi’s eyes flare and he starts to suck in another lungful of air, “three, two, one-” He lifts his hands away, pushing them further down by his sides, and huffs a short, amused exhale in place of snickering when Megumi flails, slightly, jostling before he stops, finally realizing he’s not going anywhere.

“So?” Suguru asks, knocking up one eyebrow as he lifts his palms to skin again, bringing Megumi back the inch he sank. “You wanna try to swim for real?” 

“Yeah,” Megumi breathes, a sort of excitement shining in his widened eyes, the part of his lips, and Suguru can’t say that it doesn’t make him feel a little bit braver.

“They look like they’re having fun,” Utahime drawls, as Suguru abruptly stops turning in languid circles, tilting Megumi onto his stomach as he backpedals, the motion trapped as if in molasses with the water he walks through. The huge, uncolored outline of Rainbow Dragon ripples along his muscles as he moves, the biggest among the other tattoos sitting pretty and decadent on his damp skin.

“Don’t sound too jealous,” Shoko tones, floating on her back in the large bath, a towel draped over her eyes in a bad impression of Kento, her arms swishing every so often to keep herself above the surface. 

Satoru shakes his head, turning his gaze away to focus on Tsumiki’s wet hair where he threads it between his fingers, braiding it and unbraiding it as a simple distraction to keep her relaxed. She yawns slightly, the motion brushing against his sternum where she’d turned her head to pillow her cheek on when she’d gotten tired, eyes heavy as they stare down at the water. She’d perked up more after getting in, the excitement of the onsen drowning out some of her apathy, but now that the novelty’s worn off and they’re settled, lazing around as they relax, some of the sadness has trickled back in. 

He doesn’t quite still when her eyes slide to her left, one of her limp hands lifting to trace along the outline of the long scar stretched across his chest, curiously following the mark until it gets too high to bother to touch. 

“Tou-san said that zombie-lady didn’t give you this,” Tsumiki murmurs, quiet compared to the liting cadence of Shoko and Utahime’s voices as they pick up in a mild conversation, the two of them lazily circling in the center of the bath. “Who did?”

‘Funny story,’ Satoru thinks, much too emotionally exhausted to even toe the idea of going near that conversation, and only sighs, instead.

“An assassin,” he answers, vague, but not in a way that can’t be an answer, toying with her hair still, glad he has something to keep his hands busy with.

“Was it the same one who scarred Tou-san, too?” She continues, poking maybe because she’s curious, or bored, or trying to distract from her own thoughts. 

“It was,” Satoru replies, carefully keeping his tone light, “but they aren’t around anymore. Neither is the weapon that did it.” Tsumiki nods, skin flushed from the heat of the bath and the steam sitting thick and heavy in the air. She shifts, sitting up as she raises her head, uncurling her fingers in a wordless reach for his hand. Silently, Satoru gives it over.

“Did it hurt?” She asks, messing with his fingers, and he hums, raising one hand to slick back his damp hair. 

“Totally,” he says, offering a small smile as he shows off the little diamond mark from the spear where it sunk into his skull, maybe a touch amused at Tsumiki’s mild surprise. It did, it didn’t, he’s sure it was painful enough either time he got it that the memory was erased from the paths of his nerves. “I bet you could ask Shoko later how many major arteries it hit.”

She narrows her eyes, the challenge accepted, and lets go of his hand in favor of pressing a palm to the jagged mark beginning on the side of his neck, dragging down in a butchered gash to his right hip, Suguru’s handprint partially overlapping the line of it. 

“Jugular,” Tsumiki recites, tracing a finger over the side of his neck along the faded scar as she lists them off, “brachio-something,” when she reaches the middle of his sternum where his heart sits, “hep…hepatic?” She mumbles, squinting, palm pressing against the top of his abdomen, trying to recall a name for some vein he definitely doesn’t know but which Shoko certainly would.

“Impressive,” Satoru says, whistling lowly, setting a palm on her head when Tsumiki flushes proudly. “You’ve only had that textbook for what, three weeks?” He asks, and Tsumiki scoffs.

“That’s a month,” she protests, such a little academic snob already with only a crumb of Shoko’s influence, adorably haughty. 

“Ah, forgive this lowly one, majesty,” he teases, skittering fingers along the hollow of her neck to make her giggle, “he never turned in his homework, nay, he jesters!” Instead of playing along, Tsumiki quiets as soon as he stills, the ripple of the water moving along where they sit in a languid push and pull. She watches his face, something running through her head behind her brown eyes, maybe a want to say something or maybe a want not to.

“Did you have a lot of friends at school?” She asks eventually, the mindless drum of her fingers ticklish against his stomach, and Satoru hums, shaking his head.

“I was privately tutored until I turned fifteen,” he answers, leaning back against the towel he’d left along the lip of the bath, the previous tiredness that had felt so heavy melted instead, turned into a calming sort of weight rather than an uncarriable one. “Tou-san and Ba-chan were my first friends.”

“Oh,” Tsumiki says, a dissonant note in it that probably comes from getting an answer she hadn’t expected, one that likely doesn’t answer her unspoken question at all.

“Do you want to talk to me about yours?” He whispers, leaning down to brush their noses together, and reads Tsumiki’s staining blush of embarrassment that she does, just before she murmurs back a small, “yes,” whispered like his own.

“Is it because they were the ones who read that confession to the class?” Satoru wonders, quiet still like it’s a secret that can’t be heard, and feels a harsh stab of sympathy when Tsumiki miserably nods. He pulls her close, clucking his tongue, letting small arms wind around his neck as he shuts his eyes, sighing.

“I thought they were- I don’t know,” Tsumiki mumbles, a betrayal in the dismal sentence, “good? I thought they could be real friends but, but real friends wouldn’t make fun of someone like that, and if they did it to Yamamoto for no reason then what would they do to me-?” She rambles, lower lip trembling against his collar, and Satoru squeezes her closer, cheek squishing on the crown of her head.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, because he won’t lie to her when she needs something to clutch onto, more than familiar with the cruelty of school children even if public school itself wasn’t a vice of his own. “Have they been mean all year?”

“I-” Tsumiki starts, pausing before her statement even begins, only to wilt, shrugging soundlessly as it creates little ripples along the water’s surface. “Maybe,” she admits, and he hums, drawing his knees up on the small ledge they’re sat on to give her another blanket of closeness. 

“There’s all these rules, with them,” Tsumiki explains, and Satoru listens as she talks, steadily spilling a rotten story that builds the longer he does, a grief thick and shallow behind his ribs that her new school is starting this way, a calm behind it that she’s talking about it at all.

He can’t lie that it’s nice, simply sitting together in the mess of honesty every word drops into the lake of it, an ease in the truth of sharing ugly and pretty words alike. He’d never been a large source of comfort for any of the kids, save Yuuta’s few outliers that had come and gone as uncommonly as a blue moon, but it hadn’t bothered him at the time. In the first life, the beginning, sincerity had been as untouchable as his own skin, something only perhaps Suguru had ever managed to pull from him, and which Suguru had stole along with all his humanity when he went away. 

Arms length had been easier, and among the sanitized personality of childish jokes and silly behavior he’d worn around the kids to keep the fear from staring at his back, it hadn’t been something he’d wanted to cultivate. He’d been a shield, he’d always reasoned, and nothing more. Someone to protect life and blood and happiness when it could be found in the moments between, but not the tears when they’d find places to fall. 

Part of him wants to hate that person, so far removed that he couldn’t risk any softness for fear that it would finally chink the weakest link in the armor, but Satoru couldn’t bring himself to hate him if he tried, either. He’d had his moments, before, maybe not perfect and maybe something stilted, but they’d existed, as wane and uncomfortable as they’d been. 

A handful of conversations with Megumi as he’d grown and struggled with all sorts of identities, a few moments with Tsumiki before she’d been cursed that had spelled a gentleness and rawness alike, the first day he’d met Toge with a muzzle on his mouth and a defeat in the set of his shoulders, a generation of genocide hanging over his head like a guillotine.

Maybe it had been resilience, maybe it had been childishness to never set foot long in the thicker, harsher emotions. Maybe it had been the same thing as how he’d refused to get closer to Yuuji until after his first death, more secure in his permanent existence so long as the twentieth hadn’t been found. Maybe it had been the same foolishness that had come from finding a care for him anyway, even knowing he’d be the one to kill him, someday.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Tsumiki sniffles, her words starting to waver, “‘cause I ran, and I’ve gotta see them on Monday again and for the rest of the year and I don’t know what to do, Tou-chan,” she cries, palms coming up to press against her eyes, a few tears trickling out from under them regardless. 

“...Cry, darling,” Satoru says, smoothing a hand down the back of her head, “first, you just cry,” and breathes a sigh of relief when she sobs, quiet and choking but freeing anyway. 

He doesn’t want her to bottle it up, doesn’t want Tsumiki to feel like the burden of everyone else when she’d always been the person carrying their problems. She cares too much for other people, but she’s also her own person. She doesn’t exist to shoulder baggage that isn’t her own. If he can give her just one thing alone, he’s long since decided it’ll be this.

“I’m glad you told me,” he whispers, lips brushing the shell of her ear as she hiccups, trembling, shuddering out rasping breaths as the tears trickle salty and hot down his neck. “We can fix this, baby, I promise. You could switch to another class if they’re mean, or find new friends if they ignore you, or we can figure something else out entirely if nothing works.”

Tsumiki nods, shaking, one set of curled fingers trying to find purchase in the shorn hair of his undercut and doing nothing much more than dragging along his neck, sliding as she sobs, undisturbed by what she can and can’t hold on to when he’s sure she’s got much bigger things to feel.

“I’m- I’m just sad,” Tsumiki hiccups, forcing her eyes to open from their raining thunderclouds. “I thought they were friends. What am I s-supposed to do if- if everyone is like them?” 

Sometimes he wonders how Tsumiki had stayed so morally kind as she’d gotten older, experienced bitter tastes, harsher stings of rejection and pain. It couldn’t have been him, because Satoru has never been a person to find good in things more than something livable, and it certainly wasn’t Megumi.

‘It was only ever herself, huh?’ He thinks, ducking his head to press his lips below her eye, kissing away the trails of saltwater as they come. ‘You saw all the bad and still decided to be as good as you were.’

“They aren’t,” Satoru promises, listening to the soft splashing around them as Suguru laughs, an overjoyed excitement in his loud exclamation as Megumi swims all on his own the few feet away to where he stands. “Maybe some will be, maybe a lot of people are, but not everyone.” 

He curls a palm over her face when she looks up, sniffling, eyes red with tears and lips wobbling under the threat of more. Satoru turns her head to look at the two of them, stood in the deepest section of the bath together and joyously staggering around like loons.

Megumi smiles, huge and wide and toothy as Suguru tosses him, looking for all the world the happiest he’s ever seen him as he lingers for a moment in the air, sharing in the delight of something accomplished, the pride Suguru radiates with like a small sun.

“There’s your proof,” he murmurs, Utahime and Shoko’s chuckles brushing the edge of his ear as they float a little ways away, snickering at their antics. He watches her eyes widen slightly, lips parting around a small, soundless word, a stray teardrop falling down the curve of her other cheek.

He wouldn’t change the growth he’s found, not for death, and not for life. It’s a certain security to share whispers back and forth, emotions tied in sounds and trust in the simple truth handed palm to palm. It feels better than the avoidance ever had, when all it had given him had been a pit for a heart and a longing chasing after the residuals he’d never bothered to follow. It burns like knowing and tastes like love, heart-wrenching and aching in all the worst ways because it means he isn’t alone, isn’t lonely, is loved so strongly and so much that it could almost feel like a curse if a curse could be anguishly, painfully pleasant. 

“You’ll find your people, too,” Satoru promises, gladly swallowing her up in the curve of his arms as Tsumiki ducks back around to cling to him in another desperate hug. “We found you.”

He doesn’t know how to describe it other than that he doesn’t think he could live without it.

By some miracle, he ends up winning the bet.

“And so he said, ‘what are you, a wimp?’ Scoffing at the other boy’s hesitance to go on such an adventure,” Suguru reads, the bookset Utahime had given Tsumiki for her birthday open to the second novel in his hands, Megumi sat in his lap with his nose a few inches away from the pages, eyes following every character and lips mouthing along the words as Suguru reads them.

Tsumiki sits on his other side, perched along his ribs where Satoru lays with his head on Suguru’s thigh, nodding off in the dim lamplight and the softness of her bed. She’s been enraptured since he opened the thing, eyes glued to the page and worries temporarily forgotten so long as Suguru continues to read.

‘Thank you Shoko, for being neverendingly horny,’ Satoru thinks, struggling to keep his eyes open, disgustingly grateful he’d caught her groping Utahime maybe thirty minutes before they’d gotten out. When he yawns, Harbor tumbles off his shoulder, landing in front of his nose close enough he’s able to accidentally breathe in some of its soft, artificial fur.

“Can you refill her,” Tsumiki whispers, eyes still stuck on the book but the request given regardless, and Satoru huffs, flopping one hand up to set on the head of Yaga’s stuffed bear. It does feel emptied, drained down to the dregs as he begins to fill it back up with cursed energy, unable to help melting a little as the wash of calm, warm nothingness returns stronger than it had been when he’d first laid down- like the glow of a nightlight, spilling softness and ease into the dark of a room.

“Is…M’gmui’s?” He mumbles, sinking into the lull of Suguru’s words, head growing fuzzy and thoughts turning cottony the longer he lays and doesn’t get an answer. It’s so comfy…and he doesn’t want to, to move…at all…

“Satoru?” Suguru tones, giving his leg a jiggle. “Satoru.”

Against him, Tsumiki giggles, giving his lax face a poke where he’s started to snore, utterly sacked out. It makes him smile, fondness washing thickly down his insides as something pangs in his heart, honey filled aortas and sugar dripping through his veins. 

“Maybe we should call it a night,” Suguru murmurs, dog earring a page of the story before he slips it shut, the dry rustle of pages shifting on pages loud in the quiet as he leans over to set it on Tsumiki’s nightstand. 

“What,” Megumi protests, fighting off a yawn as he rubs at his eyes. “But we jus’ got to th’ best part,” he whines, flopping against his stomach, and Suguru snorts. 

“And we can pick it back up tomorrow night,” he promises, reaching out with a hand to tug the scrunchie from Tsumiki’s hair, pulling it back between his fingers to rubber-band it somewhere near the small basket full of hair accessories she keeps on her bookshelf.

“Wait you’re gonna- leave,” Tsumiki fumbles, snagging a hand in the hem of his shirt when Suguru makes to get up, a mild alarm widening her eyes as her shoulders draw up, a dusting of pink settling on the bridge of her nose.

“...I was,” Suguru hedges, thoughts about the logistics of carrying both Satoru and Megumi to bed grinding to a halt, an exasperated acceptance gradually taking its place the longer he looks at Tsumiki’s pleading puppy eyes, the line of her pressed together lips. 

“Can’t you stay here,” she asks, quiet, letting go of his shirt when he doesn’t try to move, fidgeting with restless fingers instead. “Just for tonight?” She shrugs, mouth opening to say more, only for nothing to come out as she looks away, sitting back on her heels.

“I don’t wanna sleep alone,” Tsumiki murmurs, staring down at her rumpled duvet, and Suguru sighs.

“Okay,” he agrees, caving like a tree to the blade of a perfectly positioned axe, and thinks about how it’s a terrible habit he’s developing, never saying no to the both of them if only they ask for something looking at him a certain way. Never in his life did Suguru think Satoru would be the stricter parent, and yet here he is, twisting to turn off Tsumiki’s bedside lamp and shoving his boyfriend’s deadweight further down the mattress with one foot to make room for her to squeeze in between them. 

“You wanna stay here, Meg?” He mumbles, leaning down into the sea of pillows, obediently raising arms and shifting weight as Tsumiki picks her way around them, stepping like a cat along the bed as she figures out where to lay.

“Duh,” he snarks, eyes already shut and voice lightened like he’s on his way to drifting off, curled around Harbor where she’d fallen off of Satoru and into his lap with Tsumiki’s rustling. A relieving sight, as far as Suguru’s concerned- ever since Yaga’s given them those bears, Megumi’s been having nightmares less. They’ve both been sleeping better with them, too, if the Six Eyes are to be believed.

“Can you make it warmer,” Tsumiki whispers, finally settling at the head of her bed, back pressed against where Satoru’s taken up the right half and nose a few centimeters away from his own. Both her and Megumi’s beds are doubles, and though they seem so big when it’s just the kids laying on them, it feels small, a little cramped even, when compared to their own- a queen, gotten exactly for this reason, he laments.

“Mhm,” Suguru hums, letting his body temperature rise slightly as he reaches down, fumbling for the lip of the blanket to pull up over them all. It swallows Megumi whole, resting down by his hips and seemingly content to suffocate himself, coming to a stop just above Tsumiki’s nose and Satoru’s forehead. 

“Are you still upset about what happened at school today?” He asks, his own tiredness tugging on his limbs, heavy when it’s been weighing on him all day.

Tsumiki shrugs, grabbing one of Satoru’s flopped arms to hug close, the puff of her small exhale cold on his nose when his skin is so warm.

“I guess,” she murmurs, pulling her legs back with a mild look of annoyance when Megumi grumbles something muffled and inaudible below the blankets, shifting, likely accidentally kicked. “I dunno. I just like sleeping with you.”

“And why’s that?” Suguru asks, one eye cracked open and amused, hair dripping over his neck and along the pillow behind him, heart made of honeycomb and so sweet he feels like he’s getting cavities just watching her face ease.

“You make me feel safe,” Tsumiki admits, messing with the length of Satoru’s loosened fingers, and Suguru has to swallow down the breath that feels like it’s punched out of his sticky lungs. If he tries, he can somewhat remember that feeling, lost in the space of time between turning six and sixteen and learning the world broke, sometimes.

“I’m glad,” he whispers, shuffling closer the few centimeters they lay apart, leaning his head down to bump their noses together as a few unnameable flowers bloom in his hair. “I hope it’s always that way.”

“Me too,” Tsumiki agrees, and Suguru smiles, relaxing as he lets himself fully melt. 

Today was terrifying, in and for more ways than just one. He has no idea what to expect of a future involving Kenjaku, has no idea if everything will be standing even a year from now, a month. He’s scared that something will finally go wrong, that someone will get hurt, that it’ll be another pain they can’t come back from.

It isn’t a fear that’s grand. It’s only around because the unknown is, and he knows better than to listen to whispers in the dark that aren’t real. 

They’re going to build the life they want, regardless of anyone else’s decisions in the matter. In ten years, Tsumiki will still be able to look at him in the calm of her darkened room and whisper that she isn’t scared in the slightest. He’ll make it happen if it kills him or not, because their world is rotten from the inside out, and he wants to fix it until it’s better. 

Chapter Text

“Yu, move over,” Kento grumbles, shoving at him where he takes up the entirety of the small twin sized bed, and makes a face when it only gets him a tittering laugh for it. “You’re such a hog,” he mutters, shoving in despite the annoyance and not meaning it any when Yu shuffles over, turning to face him in Kento’s bed, late at night when they’d gotten back from a mission just a handful of hours ago.

“Just for you, babe,” Yu teases, sticking out his tongue in time with a gaudy peace sign, and maybe if he were less tired Kento would take it in stride and shove at his face, playfully grousing another retort that would spiral on and on until they’d be left snickering in the dark of his dorm room.

He isn’t less tired. He’s exhausted, words maybe a little too loosened where his tongue’s tied in knots. 

“Do you think it’s weird,” he blurts, and then stops, raising his hand, pausing, and then pressing it to his mouth in a belated reaction. 

“Do I think what’s weird?” Yu asks, eyes wide and expression unassuming as he blinks, curious, non-judgmental, and Kento forces himself to relax, to loosen his limbs where they’ve stiffened like a board.

“That we never do couple-y things,” he mumbles, tacking on, “like that,” when Yu’s expression scrunches in confusion. “I don’t call you pet names genuinely, and you don’t call me any, and we never hold hands, actually, or…” He trails off, blinking as it suddenly falls into scope, the sheer amount of things they just don’t do.

He remembers that afternoon they’d sat together on the bench in one of the school’s gardens, painstakingly puzzling out that they’d both liked each other. That no, Yu’s confession hadn’t been an accidental slip of the tongue for any meaningless feelings, and that yes, Kento did like him back. He’d had butterflies in his stomach then, so he’d figured it must have been true.

“Oh,” Yu says, short and concise, a small realization as he blinks, thinking. “I guess that’s true.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Kento repeats, and watches him shrug.

“I mean, I don’t know. How often do couples normally do couple-y things?” He muses, setting his chin in one hand, hair strewn across his forehead in the lazy mess of the dark. They both quiet, wondering, and the only couple that comes to his mind is Satoru and Suguru.

‘Oh, gross,’ Kento thinks, wrinkling his nose as he recalls the last time he saw the two of them with their tongues down each other’s throats. Mentally, he checks their box with, ‘as often as physically possible,’ and then he’s just stumped thinking about Ieiri and Iori. He’s fairly certain they’re equally as bad as Satoru and Suguru are, just that they’re better at hiding it.

It’s…even more weird, when he thinks about the four of them. They’re always in each other’s space, always on each other’s tongues and minds, always with hands in any place that can be touched. Satoru and Suguru already even live together, and every time he’s been to their home he feels nearly smothered in the gooey, honeyed obsession they have for each other.

‘Is that what love is…supposed to feel like?’ Kento wonders, trying to reconcile it with what he does, and maybe feeling something like a pit in his stomach when he comes to the damning realization that no, it’s not.

“...I think a lot, actually,” Yu mutters, staring up at the ceiling as he seems to come to the same realization, and Kento can’t help how his stomach seems to flip.

“...Yeah,” he rasps, fingers curling in the lip of the covers, and feels his cheeks pinken as Yu turns to him. He thinks he loves Yu. He smiles whenever he sees him, and he feels calmer when he’s with him than any other person, and he wants to spend all of their time together when he doesn’t need his own space. If he gets his long-shot little pipedream that Satoru seems so confident on him having, he wants Yu to have an important, front-role place in it. That’s all love, isn’t it?

“I mean- should we try?” He shrugs, skittering a nervous hand through his hair, eyes darting away for a moment. “Couple-y things. Holding hands, uhm, kissing, maybe?” 

“We could,” Kento whispers, and feels his face heat under a blush that Yu’s never stains with, red up to his ears as he shuffles a little closer in an open invitation. He thinks he does love Yu, even if maybe kissing, or holding hands, or anything even remotely heart-pounding doesn’t seem to cross his mind with him. It never has, because neither of them have ever seemed to think about any of it, never seemed to need it, never bothered to remember they’re in a relationship that’s romantic.

“Okay,” Yu breathes, eyes flickering down to stare at his lips, and Kento swallows a little thickly, nerves buzzing like a hive of bees in his stomach. “I- I think I’m…” He murmurs, slowly tipping closer, and closer, and closer, and Kento squeezes his eyes shut when a pair of soft lips brush just barely against his own.

It makes him gasp, slightly, because the brief jolt of it sends a shiver down his spine he wasn’t expecting, and then it’s melting away as Yu pushes a little harder. ‘What do people do when they kiss, again?’ Kento thinks, maybe a little frantically as he tilts his head like he’s seen people do in movies, parting his lips slightly like he’s watched Suguru do in particularly agonizing moments that make him especially want to die.

Then he isn’t thinking at all as he melts, enveloped in warmth and the soft drag of lips and tongue against his own as one of Yu’s palms comes up to cup his face, good and aching and borderline addicting. It’s nice, thoughtless, sending little sparks of serotonin popping in his brain as goosebumps shiver down his bare arms.

They both break away after another handful of moments, breathing a little hard, and he watches with pupil blown eyes as Yu swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, gaze as wide as his own feels. 

“Do you wanna do that again?” He blurts, and Kento snickers, chuckling into a light laugh as he nods, reaching out a hand to pull him closer. He loves Yu. He’s sure of that.

“What are we doing wrong,” Yu moans, the sounds of him burying his face in his hands filtering into his ears where Kento sits pressed against his back, staring at the wall like it could give him even a single answer. As if.

‘We should have stopped with just kissing,’ he thinks, maybe a touch wretchedly, sorely cursing Ieiri for the day she found him in the hallway and pressed a package of non-latex condoms and lube into his hands with the simple advice of, ‘please use google freely.’  

“I don’t know,” he mutters, sniffling slightly, aching in more ways than one with how his heart seems to be contracting in his chest, a myriad of emotions swimming through him he couldn’t identify if he tried. He loves Yu. He’s certain he loves Yu. He did not love the hesitant stumble into sex.

“Maybe we should…ask somebody?” Yu hedges, the nervous thing of his stare slightly wane as it peers over his tan shoulder, and Kento bristles, even though he thinks it’s a good idea.

“Probably,” he says, fingers digging into his mattress. He loves Yu. He does. 

“...Yaga?” Yu tries, and they both sit in strained, potent silence for one beat, two, before they’re each shuddering, twin, “no’s,” echoing around in the dark.

“...Suguru wouldn’t be so insufferable about it,” he mumbles, resisting the urge to put his hands together and circle his thumbs, feeling Yu’s back shift against his own. Satoru probably wouldn’t be either, what with whatever weird secret he’s got going on, even though he still wouldn’t put it past the jackass to laugh about it first. 

“Right,” Yu says, decisively nodding, repeating it again a little softer, after. “Right.”

“I’m sorry,” Kento says, because isn’t sex supposed to be a part of love? How can he say he loves Yu if he can’t even get through this? His thoughts tapper off when he hears Yu’s short puffing exhale the same as he feels it, breathed against his bare back and steadier than it was a few minutes ago.

“Me too,” he offers, the words tilted upwards, and he can’t help his small snort, leaning against his best friend’s back with a whole host of new worries but not ones he thinks are particularly devastating, so much as deeply uncomfortable. 

It’s still harder to sleep than usual that night.

“Boys,” Yaga calls, his steps quickening as they fall along the hardwood of the hallway flooring, waving a stack of papers stuffed inside a folder in one hand, sunglasses slipping down his nose. “Are you heading down the mountain?”

“Yeah,” Yu answers, hefting his backpack on his shoulder, and Kento stops, turning to watch the spectacle, reshouldering his own, heavy with a week’s worth of homework they’ve been putting off in favor of the more taxing missions they’ve been being given now that their grade ranks have climbed a number higher.

“Give these to Suguru for me, will you?” Yaga asks, holding out the strewn folder full of papers, an imploring thing on his stoic face. “I’ve got five back to back meetings today and this mission is time-sensitive.” 

“Sure,” Yu says, an easy smile spreading on his face as he takes the folder, giving it a small shake to resettle the scattered papers in it. “I hope you have a good meeting, Sensei…-” He peeters off, a little wry as Yaga only flings a hand up behind himself as he turns, already halfway down the hallway by the time they look up.

“...That man needs an assistant,” Kento mutters, and smiles slightly when Yu laughs.

“What do you think about dinner?” Satoru asks, the drag of the brush’s bristles in his hair a gentle sort of tug as he pulls it along, thinking in time with each stroke. “We have that pork in the fridge. Maybe something braised?”

“Mhm,” Suguru hums, indecisive, because he likes it, sure, but Satoru always makes the glaze too sweet, and he wants something savory. “Only if it actually tastes like pork by the time you’re finished cooking it,” he chides, wordlessly opening his arms for Megumi to tumble into with a winded snuff when he comes running back inside. 

“Tou-chan’s safe!” He yells, to Tsumiki’s abject disdain as she hauls herself up onto the small engawa outside of the little dojo, both sets of doors pulled back as far as they can go. 

“That’s, that’s so cheating,” she pants, twisting into a collapsing pile of limbs on the tatami, huffing like her life depends on it. “Uhhng,” she moans, ponytail coming loose where it’s spread out along the floor, and Suguru snickers.

“Do you wanna help make dinner?” He asks, giving Megumi’s rounded cheeks a set of rapid pats with his palms, endlessly amused when it makes his leftover baby fat jiggle. 

“Sure,” Tsumiki wheezes, hoisting a wobbly thumbs up above her head, and Megumi nods, slumping in his lap. 

“I’ll get started on it soon,” Satoru promises, the run of the brush through his hair an endless, aimless pattern meant for nothing so grand as a style more than a simple, comforting repetition. “I still have to finish the paperwork for all the collateral this morning.”

“What’d you destroy again?” Suguru mutters, a snide grin showing off a sliver of his teeth as he tilts his head back against one of Satoru’s thighs, sticking his tongue out when it earns him a flick of two fingers to his cheek.

“It was commissioned for demolition anyway,” Satoru whines, shoving his head back up with one palm so he can keep brushing, seemingly enamored with the simplicity of nothing important. “You should have seen it- that nasty old building was practically falling apart.”

“Uh-huh,” Suguru tones, shutting his eyes against the scoff, content to sit still and relaxed, unbothered when Megumi starts squirming in his lap, shuffling around to sit in a different contortion. He blinks one open in curiosity when he feels the swish of one of Satoru’s hands arcing, the noticeable scent of ozone fizzling sharply for a moment. He opens his other in genuine confusion when Kento and Haibara stumble into view, reeling from the jostling yank of Limitless. 

“Uh. Hi?” Haibara says, offering a meek wave and a crooked smile, and Suguru snorts, waving back. “We were gonna try the front door…” He trails off, shrugging, and Suguru gives Megumi a push up when he scrabbles to get up out of his lap, rolling his eyes.

“You’re so lazy,” he tells Satoru, making a face when two hands pull his cheeks out, listening to Tsumiki’s excited chatter and Megumi’s more subdued questions, the both of them circling around Kento and Haibara like minnows. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long, what have you been doing? Is it something cool? I bet it was totally something cool,” Tsumiki rambles, tugging on Kento’s shirt hem where it sits beneath his opened uniform jacket, his softened expression stuck between something unsteady and something endeared. 

“Just sorcery,” he says, shrugging, to Tsumiki’s excited sequel. Haibara laughs beside him, happily holding onto Megumi’s hands as he stands on the toes of his shoes, dead weight he penguin-walks up to the living room.

“Sorry,” Haibara offers, shooing Megumi off just long enough he can kneel down to untie his boots, “we didn’t mean to intrude on your weekend.” He shakes some of the rubble off of them onto the tatami from what must have been a mission they’d gone to earlier, wincing slightly.

“Not at all,” Suguru says, mild as he watches Kento finally give in and pick Tsumiki up, squinting slightly as he adjusts the plastic tiara clipped into her mussed hair. 

“We were playing tea party,” she explains, to his solemn nod, a serious, almost dower understanding crossing his stoic face. 

“Ah,” he tones. “Of course. I’m very sorry we couldn’t make it earlier, your highness,” Kento apologizes, before Tsumiki can even hound him for not coming, and she giggles, twirling one of her long bangs in a habit she’s learned from Shoko as she sighs overdramatically.

“I suppose,” she drawls, rolling her eyes, and smiles wide when Kento sticks his tongue out at her.

“Why do I see backpacks,” Satoru accuses, stretching slightly before socked feet are curving around his middle, and Suguru narrows his eyes, a sharp lance of dread trickling down his spine.

“Please no more homework,” he mumbles, leaning back against the couch cushion, and groans loudly when Haibara offers a sheepish smile. 

“It’s mostly just catch-up,” Kento assures, setting Tsumiki down on the adjacent side of the kotatsu table he settles at, willingly lifting an arm when Megumi plops down beside him with all the grace of a handful of silty mud. “They’ve been overworking us since we were promoted, so we’ve had less time for schoolwork.”

“Whoops,” Satoru offers, arms dripping down his shoulders as a pale chin sets itself on the crown of his head, “that’s probably my fault.” Kento levels a dull glare at him, and Suguru feels the vibration of the chuckle against his back. “I’ll teach you how to make a domain as compensation?” Satoru suggests, raising his hands palm up, and it takes a moment, but Kento nods, seemingly satisfied enough. 

‘I wonder if you want to help carry some of the weight,’ Suguru thinks, a new sort of recognition dawning on him as he looks at the set of Kento’s broadened shoulders, the lack of any real complaints he has for picking up on some of the work Satoru would normally be sent to take care of. If he does, he certainly has no complaints of his own for Satoru taking an afternoon to teach him to form a domain. 

“We also might have something-” Haibara blurts, only for Kento to throw a pencil at him, a sudden blush staining his face as he glares, looking down to Megumi and back up to Haibara in a very pointed manner. “-important! Very important, to uh, to ask you. About,” Haibara finishes, words swerving harshly before they finish rather lamely, nervously messing with the zipper of his uniform jacket. 

‘...Weird,’ Suguru thinks, glancing between the two of them where they sit on the opposite side of the kotatsu table as him, even taking the hint in stride. “Megumi, Tsumiki,” he asks, feeling Satoru lean back, the brush rematerializing in his hand as it begins to gently pull through his hair again, “would you mind finding a game to play upstairs?”

“What?” Tsumiki protests, to Megumi’s loud groan. “But they just got here,” she whines, pouting, slumping down over the tabletop.

“I know,” Satoru placates, “but we’ve got some adult things to discuss- top secret things,” he adds, flashing a wink at her. “They’ll stay for dinner though, and I’ll read you a whole five chapters tonight before bed if you don’t listen in.” 

“Eight,” Tsumiki barters, lips pursed as she eyes them, leery.

“Seven,” Satoru throws back, and Suguru hides a grin behind one palm as her hands slap down onto the wood, a scowl set on her face.

“Ten,” she demands, and Satoru throws his arms up, collapsing against the couch pillows as dramatically as possible. 

“Fine! You win, your skills far surpass me,” he cries, gesturing with his hands as his head cranes back over the lip of the couch, crowing, “perish, mortals! Thy have been banished!” His pointed fingers swiveling at their wrists to direct towards the staircase.

“Lame,” Megumi mutters, dragging himself up to his feet, poking around the drape of the blanket for a moment before Suguru holds up the DS. “Thanks,” he says, taking it with the both of his hands as he makes for the stairs, not even setting foot on the first one before Tsumiki is chasing after him, arguing about whose turn it is to try to fight the next gym leader.

“So…very important…something?” Suguru asks, as soon as the kids are out of sight thundering up the stairs, drawing one knee up to wrap his arms around now that his Megumi is missing. 

Haibara bristles immediately, eyes widening and expression strickening, if the sheer embarrassment it stains with can be called that. “This was a terrible idea, Kento,” he mutters, head dropping into his splayed hands, and beside him, Kento himself doesn’t fare much better.

“Yaga would have been worse,” he says, the words succinct and like they’d been sucked from the rind of a lemon, his whole face gradually turning beat red as he keeps his eyes firmly locked on something that is not either of them.

“What,” Satoru clucks, sectioning his hair off into a new part line he’ll eventually cover with a different one, “could no one figure out how to get the condom on the banana?” 

He should not laugh. He should in no way shape or form laugh, and yet Suguru can’t help it. He stamps down on a snort, clapping a hand over his mouth as he turns away, struggling to keep the giggles in. 

“You said he wouldn’t laugh!” Haibara wails, to the deafening sound of Kento’s palm coming up to cover his eyes, his deep, unimpressed sigh seeming to fill the entire room.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru strains, voice twisted into a higher pitch as he forces himself to calm, “I’m sorry, it wasn’t you.”

“Call me a cum-edian,” Satoru hums, and he reaches back to pinch him on the thigh, hard, right where he remembers he last left a hickey. It earns him a hiss, and hopefully Satoru’s non-judgmental compliance. “Fuck- alright, alright,” he mutters, glowering slightly. “Genuinely,” he sighs, “what did you want help with?”

Suguru watches Kento seem to gather himself, his eyes sliding back to them as his hands lower, fidgeting nervously in his lap, words seeming to build themselves up inside his head as Haibara sits beside him and withers, slightly. 

“What does…” he starts, swallowing a little thickly, thumbs aimlessly circling each other. “What does love feel like for you?” Kento asks, eyes darting up to their faces before they’re dropping back down to the table, a sort of insecurity making his shoulders try to cave in on the pride he’s begun to hold them up with, recently.

It’s surprising, to say the least. He was expecting something significantly less…romantic. 

“Well,” Suguru says, thinking, feeling Satoru’s knees squeeze his sides a little more where they rest languidly along his ribs, “like something overwhelming, I guess? If you can stand a metaphor, I think maybe gravity could work.” He shrugs, not entirely certain how to put it when even he’s aware Satoru and him have something very distinct. The handprints on his hips are proof enough of that, if the tattoos buried in the skin of their shoulders aren’t.

“Like a binary star system?” Satoru offers, and he nods, quietly snapping two fingers.

“Yeah,” Suguru says, “sort of like that. An equal importance that works from a common devotion.”

“So philosophical,” Satoru teases, tilting his chin up to meet his eyes, and Suguru huffs, scrunching his nose.

“Oh yeah? How would you put it, then?” He asks, and listens to Satoru’s hum, the limber fingers that thread down the slope of his neck. 

“A black hole,” he answers, the pad of his thumb brushing over the hollow of his throat, eyes full of memories Suguru does and doesn’t have, and it doesn’t take an explanation to understand what he means. Satoru’s love is something that isn’t necessarily tethered to him- he’ll hand over his heart, whether or not Suguru gives his own in return, no matter the lives they lead.

It’s encompassing, all consuming, an infinite series of decay that has no end after a single beginning, just an eternity to be spent falling. 

When he looks back up, breaking their eye contact, he frowns slightly at Kento’s rigid posture. How he sits tensed and wired, like it wasn’t an answer he’d wanted to hear. When he slides his eyes to the left, he catches Haibara’s blinking confusion, seemingly puzzled like he doesn’t understand the meaning behind their words, and he can feel something nagging at the back of his mind, just out of reach from settling on his tongue.

“So,” Kento begins, the low baritone of his voice dragging slightly as it climbs from his throat, “would you say that things like kissing, or pet names, or…couple-y things,” he mutters, cringing slightly, “are an important part of love?” The words are stiff, stilted, said at a distance like he’s trying not to get too close to them, and Suguru tilts his head, feeling Satoru’s hands settle over his shoulders, fingertips dipping below the collar of his shirt.

“No,” he answers, the vibration of his voice shivering through Suguru’s spine, and he looks up slightly as Satoru continues to talk, edging a little closer to the thing he can’t quite unravel. “Not to me. It isn’t like there are rules, you know.”

“But then-” Kento blurts, stopping himself behind one fist, lips pressed into a thin line as he restructures whatever’s running through his head. “Aren’t those actions what make a romantic relationship romantic? You and Ieiri both do them with your partners.”

“Not really,” Satoru says, letting his arms pull closer, hugging around his neck as he sets his chin on top of his head, again. “I’d still love Suguru romantically even if we never did any of those things.”

‘And you can speak that factually, can’t you,’ Suguru thinks, maybe a little snide, a little soured as he sighs, nodding in agreement. He doesn’t have to have tried it himself to know he’d be the same. What he’d puzzled out while talking with Yuki is all the proof he needs- that him that he isn’t loved Satoru just the same, distance or not, delusion or not.

“What, even if you never fucked?” Haibara says, drawing up slightly at the crude wording, smiling through a small wince as he sits back on his heels.

“Yeah,” Satoru confirms, blinking impassively as if it’s obvious, and Suguru watches Kento stare down at his hands where they’ve pooled in his lap, what seems to be a whole novel’s worth of thoughts sprinting behind his flickering eyes. 

“...So,” Kento murmurs, the words almost hesitant as they steadily spill from his lips, brown eyes finally looking up, “things like sex and affection aren’t tethered to romance?” 

“Definitely not,” Satoru chides, as if it’s obvious, even when it makes Suguru himself still, something slotting into place that he’s never overtly thought about in anything as visible as words more so than ebbing feelings. “I do all those things with Suguru ‘cause I love him, yeah, but also ‘cause I like those things, too.”

“...Huh,” Suguru mutters, turning back to the something he can’t quite grasp as he takes another look at Kento and Haibara, sat together and never having so much as kissed in his line of sight, before. 

“I still don’t,” Kento cuts off, blustering through a frustrated exhale, raking a hand through his hair as Haibara turns to him, something like mild alarm widening his eyes. “I don’t get it. I don’t think I feel love like what you described, and if actions aren’t love then what the hell am I feeling?” He pleads, looking up with a desperate sort of helplessness furrowing his brows, knitting them together in a blond downturn that looks so out of place on his usually so ambivalent expression.

“...Kento-” Haibara hedges, at just the wrong time that Kento talks over him.

“If the choices are romantic or platonic but actions aren’t the things that separate them, then how am I supposed to figure out which it is? The rules don’t make any sense,” he bites off, burying his face in his hands, palms covering his eyes as he hunches over, elbows digging into his crossed knees. 

“...You’ve been feeling like this?” Haibara murmurs, almost a little taken aback, and Suguru watches Kento bristle, panic lacing the tense thing his shoulders tighten with. 

“Maybe,” he mumbles, still hiding in his palms. Suguru glances up when he feels Satoru pull away, catching the narrowed-eyed suspicion on his face, and finally puts his finger on what’s been lurking at the edges of his thoughts as Kento looks up, brows knit together into a crease.

“Oh,” Suguru tones, “you’re trying to find a definition to fit into.” Kento bristles, lips twisting slightly, and Suguru keeps talking before he’s asked to explain exactly what that’s supposed to mean. “Well, you asked how we feel love, and then you looked pissed off at the answer, ‘cause it wasn’t the one you wanted to hear, right?”

“...I guess,” Kento grits, crossing his arms over his chest as he fights to keep his eyes up, brown seemingly glaring if Suguru didn’t know him better than that. 

“You’ve always been a really logical person, Kento,” he continues, “so I can see your reasoning, but I don’t really think love works like that.” He shrugs, offering a wane smile, and looks up when he feels Satoru shift slightly.

“They aren’t the only options either, you know,” he picks up, to everyone’s eyes turning towards him, and Satoru huffs, making a face. “What, does no one use the internet anymore?” He scoffs, and Suguru reaches up to pinch him again, two hands snagging his own before he can make contact among a harried look.

“Romantic and platonic,” Satoru explains, shrugging. “There’s no real rules, so there’s gotta be things in between.”

“What, like a sworn brother?” Suguru asks, and feels his ears heat with Jougo’s technique when Satoru glances down at him and raises an eyebrow, amused. “Don’t give me that look,” he mumbles, “all my dad ever had lying around when I was a kid were dusty philosophy textbooks from college he never read and the cheesy xianxia he hid behind them. What was I supposed to do.” 

Satoru laughs, leaning forwards again, hooking a finger in the loose lobe of one of his ears to mess with the smooth hollow of his plug, ever toying with something when he’s trying to focus. 

“I knew it,” he crows, eyes crinkled in mirth. “Your dad is a fucking nerd.”

“Takes one to know one,” Suguru snarks, and makes a pinched face when the finger in his lobe tugs a little too hard.

“Gay fantasy novels aside, I know there’s types of relationships that don’t really fit anything, or probably both,” Satoru continues, ambivalent to Kento and Haibara’s bewildered expressions over his father’s questionable reading choices. “I know ace people exist too, which actually could make a very disturbing amount of sense about you if I think about it too long,” he rambles, shutting his mouth with a click of teeth before he veers off on an unnecessary tangent.

“Both?” Haibara repeats, curious. “Like not quite friends, but not exactly romantic partners, either?” Satoru nods, humming.

“I think it was called queer platonic? I don’t know. Who cares if you’re not normal, it’s not like any of us are.” He sticks his tongue out, flapping one hand, and Suguru can’t help but feel something like sympathy when Kento perks up, slightly. He turns, meeting eyes with Haibara, and something must pass between the two of them, because it’s almost instantaneous, the way their shoulders relax. 

“You think?” Haibara says, and though he still looks vaguely uncertain, Kento offers a tentative nod, circling his thumbs again. “I guess that’d explain a lot,” he laughs, and Kento finally huffs, a real smile threading onto his lips.

“No rules,” he tries, as if weighing the words on his tongue. “Right.” 

“If it makes you feel better,” Satoru offers, tugging on his earlobe with just enough pressure to be annoying, “you can always make rules now and then change ‘em later. It’s not like there’s a manual to relationships or anything.”

“Hey, I like that, Senpai!” Haibara exclaims, leaning forwards on the kotatsu table, smiling wide as beside him, Kento slowly nods, maybe coming to terms with it, maybe easing into the idea. “It has a real sort of star-struck romance to it,” he says, spanning out an extended palm, his infectious, well documented love of sappy rom coms a well known open secret among the Tokyo kids. 

When Suguru looks, the sky’s begun to yellow, orange and mellow pinks scattered across the expanse of it, staining rolling clouds in fractaled hues. ‘We need to make dinner soon,’ he thinks, and can’t bring himself to move. He can’t help musing on it all slightly, curious as he compares what he feels about Satoru to what he feels about Shoko. If he doesn’t factor in physicality or tactility, they’re shockingly similar. A specified devotion, twin bonds that differ in ways he both could and couldn’t describe if asked to. 

Satoru’s feels heavier, taut with a weight he can’t entirely name. Shoko’s feels lighter, as if there isn’t the same amount of force dragging it down. ‘Maybe it’s that pesky heart,’ he thinks, Satoru’s definition of a black hole ringing along the shell of his ears. 

“Oh, before I forget,” Haibara interrupts, twisting to pull a folder out of his slouching backpack. “Yaga-sensei asked us to give this to you, Senpai,” he explains, holding it out, a plain green and stuffed to the gills with what looks like clipped paperwork.

“Just Suguru is fine,” he murmurs, leaning forwards to take it, flipping the folder open to leaf through the pages.

“You’ll have to call me Yu, then,” Yu replies, a smile in his voice that drowns out against the rush of blood that begins to pick up in his ears, growing into a roar the more he skims over printed words, blotched with small dots of ink and thickened in a type-ish font. 

‘Reports of attacks, mysterious disappearances, and strange deaths in a small village located in the mountains,’ he reads, eyes fixing to the page, others pinched between his fingers as he holds them up, stuck on the sentences around it as he reads them over and over and over again. ‘Local, described curse, theorized curse user,’ and then below it, ‘threat is contained, personal asked to eradicate or exorcize it on request of village inhabitants.’

‘Notes,’ he reads, tongue drying out in his mouth and a sickness pooling in the pit of his stomach, ‘village inhabitants specify that said threat has killed before, will kill again. Specifically requested grade one or higher, high risk non-shaman death will create curse.’

“Suguru?” Satoru murmurs, his voice muffled like he’s underwater, and he looks up with a jolt when fingertips skim the edge of his jaw. He opens his mouth, lips parting to say, I think it’s them, but nothing drips past.

Satoru’s eyes fall, sharpening as they skim down the page he holds visible, a stillness dribbling over him that washes away any of the ease he’d had. 

“When did Yaga give this to you,” he snaps, picking his head up as he rises to his feet, and Suguru listens to Kento and Yu’s anxious shuffling as he stares down at the page, so many stories rippling through his mind like a stone thrown into a lake. 

“Maybe- two, three hours ago?” Yu stammers, and he listens to Satoru curse under his breath, a hand raising to rake through his hair before he’s staggering away, ducking into the kitchen where he left his phone to frantically call Shoko.

He hears it ring, the call connect, how Kento and Yu shift slightly and whisper together as he stares down at the page, a dull horror blooming in his stomach, the curses contained within it roiling and chattering as it spreads. 

Suguru swallows, thickened and rotten, fingers leaving indents on pristine, white paper. ‘Do you hate non-shaman’s, Getou?’ Yuki had asked, maybe looking to rile him up, maybe looking for an out, maybe simply curious. 

He doesn’t think he’s ready to find out.

Chapter Text

“Wasn’t it September, originally? Why do you think it’s happening earlier?” Suguru asks, maybe to fill the silence or maybe because he’s curious. 

Satoru doesn’t speak immediately, eyes skimming along the earth where it runs by far below them, the drag of the wind through his short hair setting the small diamond scar on his forehead into sight. 

“...This isn’t the same world as the first,” he eventually answers, arms tightening around his middle where they sit on the back of Rainbow Dragon, soaring through the darkened night sky to an unknown sort of horror.

“It’s similar, but not a copy. Maybe something happened that tipped everything sooner here, maybe it lasted a little longer ‘cause it didn’t, back then.” They’d decided to fly instead of jump, because Satoru doesn’t actually know where the town is, and maybe because they’re equally wary as to what they’ll see. The anxiety of the wait isn’t pleasant, but it’s better than fizzling into existence at the maws of a nightmare when he hasn’t had time to order his thoughts around.

“I just don’t know,” Satoru finishes, and the words feel damning, as cold as the stratosphere rushing over his face, hitting bare skin where he’d tied his hair up into a bun to keep it from tangling. 

Suguru doesn’t say anything as the silence settles. He can’t find the words, nevermind bother with the arduous task of speaking them aloud. Instead, he focuses on the rush of trees blurring past below Rainbow Dragon’s head far below, bloodless knuckles wrapped around its horns and a growing unease simmering in his stomach.

All he can think about is his conversation with Yuki. ‘Is this how it started?’ Rings in his head, over and over and over, drowning out all the other noise.

They follow the mountain road up to the settlement when they find it, landing in a running skitter of claws on pavement, flashing scales glimmering with wane moonlight. He dissipates Rainbow Dragon as soon as their feet touch the road, only noticing his jacket goes with the curse when Satoru points it out.

“Not important,” Suguru grumbles, flaring some of Jougo’s warmth behind his sternum to counter the chill. At the beginning of May, it’s still faintly cold at night, the wind kicking enough bite to it that even Satoru shivers below his expensive, wool lined coat, Infinity a balm around them.

They walk along the side of it in the barren, wasted darkness, their only company the rustling of the trees blanketing either edge, looming in twisted shapes and disturbing shadows in the blackness. Satoru leads them, no doubt seeing the village like a lit candle with the way his eyes seem to glimmer, catching light that isn’t there as he steers them through loose foliage and empty forks.

The closer they walk, the better Suguru can sense a cursed spirit lingering, something large and ugly, drifting around the fringes of where he’s sure the town lays. It’s maleficent, clearly old, reeking with already spilt blood, and it doesn’t take a genius to know who’s been committing the murders listed off in the report. All it takes to dispel is one precise flick of Satoru’s fingers, the shrieking wail of its death ringing throughout the forest. He doesn’t swallow it. He doesn’t think he could get it down even if he tried.

It isn’t until a good ten minutes or so have passed after they’ve veered back onto the path with only their footfalls breaking the silence that Suguru hears it.

‘Are those…people?’ He thinks, eyes narrowed as they meander off of pavement and into the crunching rustle of dried grass, the sound of hundreds of chattering voices overlapping each other. 

It could be a quaint, homey village in the sun, maybe. There’s a smattering of traditional style houses all around them where they’ve seemed to walk in from a backroad, more spaced out among the forest where it seems denser a mile up ahead. He can spy the large, blank spaces of rice fields farther out, long winding shadows of paths between buildings. 

“Who’s there?!” A voice shouts, when Suguru steps on a snapping twig, feeling his eyebrows raise in utter disbelief when the collected group seem to turn in sync, a man waving a godforsaken torchlight in the dark. He spots a few flashlights here and there, held in clenched hands by tormented faces, another torch spitting into view as the people part like a sea.

“The shamans you requested,” Suguru offers, smiling politely as he and Satoru gradually walk closer, beginning to mix in with the crowd though Infinity keeps them separate. “If you could please take us to the problem…?” He says, knowing they’ve already solved it, knowing it’s not why they’re here.

“We only sent for one,” a harried looking woman says, snapping her flashlight up until it’s shining in the both of their faces, the beam burning his eyes. Wordlessly, Suguru lifts a palm to block Satoru’s before he can hiss, glasses forgotten in his pocket when it was going to be dark out, anyway.

“You requested a grade one or higher, so I brought my partner in case I needed him,” Suguru explains, perfectly amiable as he slides the mask on, plastic down to the curl of his smile, and lets the murmurs pick up as the people begin to whisper amongst themselves. 

“Right, right,” the woman mumbles, swinging the beam of the flashlight down to the grass again, wavering for a moment before she turns, nightgown out of place with the wool sweater she wears over it. “This way, then.”

With a shared look, Suguru meets Satoru’s eyes, and doesn’t say anything more as they follow her into the building the crowd has centered around, slatted, wooden, and reeking with the stench of fear.

“What exactly is this,” he utters, staring at the breaks in the cage where two little girl’s battered faces peer from, two wide sets of eyes fixing on him and where Satoru hovers just behind his planted feet, an overwhelming sort of noise picking up in the back of his head. It’s so loud, it drowns out any reminder of old stories Satoru had spoken to him only months ago, clanging and grating and familiar.  

They’ve obviously been beaten, judging by the dry blood on their faces, the bruises mottling their visible skin. Someone or someones have kicked them around, as if they’re things to be broken, and not living, breathing children. God, he can only think, they’re so small. They’re barely bigger than Megumi, huddled together and bleeding from scabbed over wounds. 

They’re so small, and from between the slatted bars of their cage, they stare at him, and they shake.

“What do you mean? Those two are the cause of all this, aren’t they?” The man behind him asks, an affronted thing in his voice, and Suguru doesn’t bother to feel bad about the smothering miasma of his cursed energy when it begins to leak from its faucets. 

“No,” he snaps, feeling Satoru shift imperceptibly behind him.

“But those two…strange ones- they’re using their weird powers to attack the village,” the same idiot continues, as if he hadn’t spoken, so sure of himself and his own ignorance. 

“We’ve already found the cause of the incident,” Suguru begins, only to be talked over, the irritating words grating against the shell of his ears.

“My grandson was killed by these two,” the woman behind him chimes in, an anger in her reedy voice that Suguru forgets as soon as one of the girls in the cage opens her mouth.

“He’s the one who-!” She shouts, arms clinging around her sister, cowering together even though she’s brave enough to protest, and Suguru watches on in something like dull, sharpened horror as the man and woman both shriek over her.

“You shut your dirty mouth, monster!” Is yelled, to the harsh flinch of both girls locked inside the cage, dirtied and bloodied and looking too thin. “Your parents were exactly the same!”

“We should have killed you when you were infants,” the man spits, and upon the sudden swelling of the white noise, Suguru snaps. 

“You’ll be quiet,” he snarls, whirling on one foot as he slams his other down onto the wood, hands itching for flames as sparks pop in his palms, the miasma of his cursed energy rolling off his shoulders in waves, only barely constrained. Both the monkeys recoil, backing up in shock, or fear, and it isn’t like staring down Gojo Hoshiko in the middle of the night, isn’t like the slippery sort of accomplishment at seeing Elder Kaito’s head be bashed in, isn’t like the pure terror that had driven him to try and put Fushiguro Toji into the dirt.

‘This is how it started,’ Suguru thinks, over and over and over like a spinning record with only one song chiseled into it, Yuki’s searching eyes searing in his mind and her words trailing around his ears. He knows, wholly and unshakably as he stands in the room of a small house in a smaller village, sorely reminded of another person who weighs on him like the dirt of a grave, that this is who he could have been.

He can see it as clearly as he sees his own instability in the face of their rotten society. Maybe in another world, he would have stood here, staring at these monkeys, and chosen to condemn himself to their death. Maybe in another life, with or without his Satoru, he would have fallen. Maybe he would have looked at those two trembling girls in that ugly fucking cage, and finally decided who the root of the evil was.

Part of him wants to blame them, standing in front of them with cruelty at his fingertips and direct in the line of his sight. It would be so easy, disgustingly easy, to blame them. To turn around, point the finger, and decide that non-shamans are the fault. 

‘Is this better, or worse?’ He wonders, the memory of Satoru in the forest imposing over the faces of those two little girls when he chances another look over his shoulder, beaten and bloody, a hole in the left half of his head.

The heat of fire spilling into his hands is a headrush, warm and filling, the dryness of his eyes where they’ve fixed on the creatures in the corner a pinprick of discomfort. ‘I want to kill them,’ he thinks, a rage pounding behind his head and a sickening taste on his tongue, nothing but the drum of indescribable, apoplectic anger beating through the soured honeycomb in his heart. He can feel the terror the two little girls in the cage reek with, so goddamn small and trembling together and battered like a toy that wouldn’t work right in the hands of a spoiled child, and somewhere, he can feel himself burning.

He tries, for a moment. Just a second. He stands there, staring at the people cowering in anticipation at the back of the room, waiting for him to move. He tries so hard to hate them. 

‘Non-shamans,’ he thinks, the words sour in his head like the rind of a rotten orange, ‘create curses.’

“Suguru,” Satoru whispers, an echo along the shell of his ear, refusing to touch his skin where it’s heated, fingertips settling instead on his shoulder where the ink sits etched into his body. “You could kill them now, and we could probably deal with the fallout with minimal problems,” he says, and his eyes flare, nose twitching with the want to let the hungered flames leap from his fingertips.

“But what would a massacre say?” Satoru continues, buttery lips brushing against his jaw as he leans down. “What would you, if you did it?”

In that moment, he hates Satoru, because he hears all the words the ones in his mouth aren’t saying. How would you explain it to them later, they crow, to Megumi, to Tsumiki? What would that say about you, they taunt, a callous thing in the barbed jab they hide when left unspoken, that you killed people just because you were angry at an injustice?

‘And they’ll let me see what you do?’ Tsumiki had asked, a desperate sort of hope in her voice as she’d held onto the arms of the glasses they’d made just for her, smiling and laughing and loving him for nothing more than because Suguru makes her feel safe, and he can’t do it.

The memory of her breath on his nose, cool compared to his skin; her brown eyes, softened and honeyed, holding his own; the feeling of her smile spreading against the curve of his cheek. 

Tsumiki loves him. Tsumiki loves him so much, and to choose the spark in his palm would be to say that he couldn’t love her back in the same sort of way. Tsumiki loves him, loves him so much, and he stutters, rendered still, unable to do it.

“You’re lucky I don’t burn you down to ash,” Suguru hisses, and lets his lips pull back to bear the sharp points of his teeth, jerking with a simmering fury when he feels Satoru’s hand finally curl around his burning wrist. As it is, he lets him hold on, words probably sticking in his throat with the thick thing of alarm he can feel in the tremor of his fingers, contradictory to the steadiness of his unflinching frame.

Satoru’s right. He can’t lie to himself like another him did, once. He can barely contain his own emotions, but he can’t forge a justification for them that he had in another world.

‘How could I ever hate my own daughter,’ Suguru wonders, and finally turns away from the two stood at the back of the room, monsters in a cry far different from him. 

This world could be better, one day. It could be fair and benevolent and maybe still twice as dangerous, but it could be a haven instead of a hell. Killing innocent, if ignorantly abusive people, won’t make it that way. Killing non-shamans, as much of a source as they aren’t, won’t create a utopia. Kaito’s head, a bloody fountain in that chamber room, is the first step they’ve already taken. The sorcerers that fight for them by refusing to bow to their law is the second. 

‘There’s no meaning to killing these people,’ he thinks, and aches, because it isn’t a lie. It’s just the simple truth.

Everyone flinches when he brings his hand down in a sharpened arc, dragging the flame from the oil lamp bolted to the wall down with it, scattering a curtain of rippling fire along the floor. One of the monsters screams, the girls both flinch, and Suguru stands in the flickering, twisting light of fire dyed blue to the root, the tips of its orange tongues dancing in a tantalizing reach for flesh to consume. 

He leaves Satoru in a frozen standstill behind him for the moment it takes him to recover, pulling his wrist free as he kneels down by the lock on the wooden bars, roving his eyes over the make of it for a moment before he holds out a hand.

“Give me your glasses?” He murmurs, peering over his shoulder, and takes them with a wordless nod of thanks when Satoru slips them from his pocket and into his waiting hand. He uses one thin metal arm to jostle it into the lock, a hand pressed to the rust as he feels for all the pins to click. 

It’s child’s play when the thing is so old, rusty and simple compared to some of the locks he’d learned to pick as he’d gotten older and into more trouble. He could have just burnt the wood, or torn it down, but he doesn’t want to scare the girls shivering inside of it. He wants to give them a door, and let it be their choice if they decide to step through it.

“Hey,” Suguru tones, slowly swinging the cage door open, staying on his knelt heels as he sets his free palm on the floor, holding Satoru’s glasses up by his fingers with the hand he has on the wood. 

“I’m sorry we scared you,” he apologizes, feeling Satoru take the lenses to set back in his pocket, the creak of the floorboards behind him eerie in the moving shadows of firelight, “it’s alright now.”

It’s hard to keep his face clear of malice and gentled by a smile when the girls back up an inch, eyes blown wide and blatant mistrust on their faces. They’ve got dried blood and crusted dirt all along their skin, the girl with the black hair’s left eye swollen shut, her sister’s right ankle bent at an odd angle. They smell horrible, like they haven’t been bathed in days, ammonia and sweat and copper filling his nose the longer he sits at the foot of the cage. 

They’re so small, he thinks, over and over. 

“See that fire?” Suguru says, turning his head a nudge to glance at it and back, watching them both nod before he continues. “Have you noticed how it hasn’t spread at all?”

It’s a little reliving, seeing the sudden, dawning understanding cycle through both their eyes, proof that they’re still all there when they look so torn apart. 

“Why?” The brown haired girl rasps, eyes swinging back to his face, hollow with a desperation, almost. 

“It’s mine,” Suguru answers, holding out a palm he lights with a spark, Megumi’s favorite character of fire springing to life above his skin, the twisting coils of Rainbow Dragon eerily bright among the dim flickers of flame in the darkened room. “We’re different,” he continues, looking up again as he snuffs it out, “just like you.”

There’s something gratifying to be found in how the fear seems to ebb away from their bruised faces, interest or want slowly taking its place.

“You could leave,” Satoru murmurs, chin hooking over his shoulder, blue eyes glittering inhumanly in the shudder of the light, “if you wanted. We could take you away from here.”

“...To go where?” The girl with black hair asks, her voice parched like she hasn’t had a single thing to drink in days, or as if she’s been screaming, hands still clutched tightly around her sister.

“Some place better,” Suguru says, and extends out a hand, unfurling his fingers as he reaches, waiting. “Some place meant for people like us.”

It’s a stilted, tense moment where neither of them move, staring down at his outstretched palm with twin hesitations, holding their breaths as they seemingly wait for it to vanish. 

The girl with dark hair reaches out first. 

She flinches harshly as she brushes her dirtied fingers against his own, coming back for a trembly second try when she pulls away, slowly sliding her hand into his palm. Suguru lets it rest there for a moment, not ignorant to the way her breaths have started to come heavier and harder in the slightest, before he curls his hand around her own, gently swiping the pad of his thumb over the backs of her small knuckles. 

He doesn’t say anything when she bites down on her lower lip, a tear beading and falling down her cheek, another following it as they begin to cut trails down the blood and the dirt and the dust clinging to her skin. Gradually, Suguru leans closer, as gentle as he can possibly be as he pulls her in, finally reaching out his other hand when she’s close enough to properly grab.

“Okay, okay,” he murmurs, letting go of her hand to slide his palms under her arms, pulling her up and out of the shadowy cell, “it’s okay, we’ve got you.” He feels the wretched sniffle against his shoulder as he passes her off to Satoru, listening to her sobs gradually unravel into something uncontrollable when he hugs her close, careful of all her injuries.

“Ready?” He asks, turning back around to reach inside the cage, again, eyes falling to the brown haired girl’s stricken face as he holds out a hand. She nods, shakily extending her own, and Suguru waits until small fingers are skimming over his calluses to pull her closer.

She gasps, sucking in a sharp inhale to cover a whimper, and Suguru hisses, wincing in sympathy. “Easy,” he tones, low and steady, rising up onto his knees as he ducks below the lip of the small doorway, eyes on her ankle and where it must be broken. He keeps mumbling softened nothings as he swings her legs around straight, slow to keep any movement from jostling her foot, one hand on the back of her hips and the other circling her shoulders as he drags her along the dusty wooden floor. 

“We’ll get you home,” he promises, pulling her up to carry, the familiar feeling of skinny arms twining around his neck reassuring more than suffocating, “where you’ll be clean, and fed, and taken care of.” She shakes, hot tears spilling down the side of his neck, and Suguru turns his head to lock eyes with Satoru, a silent understanding in the grim, unmovable anger he sees in the fine details of blue among the dancing shadows of the fire. 

They stand together, and as Suguru lifts a hand to part the flames, neither of them bother to look at the monsters they leave behind with them, crackling and hungry.

“Tell me your name?” Satoru asks, whispering them into one of the darker parts of the village, hidden in plain sight among the shadows of residential homes, the beginnings of a fire already breaking out maybe half a mile away where Suguru left his flames snapping and hissing angrily. The smoke blots out the stars, darkened and smothering. 

“Mi-Mimiko?” The girl in his arms hiccups, the word more of a question as he does his best not to jostle her using Limitless to shuck off his coat, grabbing the dark, heavy fabric once it’s floating aimlessly in front of him, catching her quiet sigh of relief when he wraps her up in it. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Mimiko. I’m Satoru,” he murmurs, listening to Suguru do the same pressed against his back, warmed like a summer day and surely a balm to Mimiko’s sister when the air outside bites with a chill. He tilts his head back against Suguru’s own as he talks, feeling him fall quiet, feeling him steady, feeling him like the bark of an oak tree, rooted forever. 

“Do you think you can find your house? We can take some of your things with us if we hurry,” Satoru says, watching Mimiko’s good eye widen slightly, her dirty hair rustling as she faintly nods, somehow managing to keep the shake out of his voice.

“That road,” she whispers, pointing towards a darkened street, and Satoru falls into step with Suguru when he moves, following the lead of her small, extended finger.

They walk for maybe four minutes, listening to little words as they guide them to a quaint house along the edge of the forest. They don’t speak as their footfalls tread softly over grass, crossed paths, silent but silent together. Satoru doesn’t think about it, but he can feel it, the relief sitting heavy and aching as it crushes his ribcage, an anxiety thick and cold dripping down the back of his throat, pooling in the pit of his stomach like tar and slimy against the vicious, heated thing of pride.

‘You get to keep him,’ he thinks, maybe more than once, trying to settle the remains of the nerves he buries as far down into their grave as he can dig them.

As the house comes into looming view, they stop just outside of its perimeter, holding for a moment as he peers through its windows, dark and empty of any people. Suguru leans against his shoulder instead of grabbing his arm when they’ve both got an armful of battered child, stumbling slightly when Satoru warps them inside the house, sure it’s temporarily abandoned.

It’s faintly messy, obviously lived in, signs of life though few of any child. 

“Where’s your room?” Suguru asks, quiet in the darkness, and he hears Mimiko’s sister offer a raspy, liting, “that one.”

They both turn, peering beyond the doorway of a cramped bedroom, and Satoru sours when he sees two old twin beds, a small, barren closet, one or two old toys and scattered blankets strewn messily over the floor, like they’d been thrown off suddenly. It doesn’t look particularly inviting. 

‘Their parents are dead,’ he thinks, recalling some of the things the two people in the room had said, and figures they must live with extended family who didn’t care much for two kids not their own.

“Do you have anything you want to take?” He asks, the question for the both of them as they linger. 

“...No,” Mimiko mumbles, hiding against his collar and shivering even wrapped up in his coat. Satoru looks up, shrugging when Suguru only shakes his head, figuring he might as well still poke around if neither of the sisters want to keep anything. 

He bundles her up a little snugger as he turns away, padding deeper into the house, striding into the first room he sees that looks like an office. Pulling open any drawer with tugs of Limitless mostly get him bills and inventory paperwork for the rice fields he’d seen on their way in, loose paper and old statements, someone’s highschool diploma and nothing as useful as a birth certificate.

‘Monkeys,’ he thinks, just for the sick fun of it, rolling his eyes with a huff as he lets go of Mimiko with one arm to break into the small safe he finds under the desk, nothing it in save a pile of cash and a wedding ring. 

Suguru raises an eyebrow as he stands back up, extending out a hand, and Satoru takes it. Mei Mei will find herself another pretty penny, he supposes, blurring back into the front hall of home.

Shoko’s already waiting by the couch when they stumble into the foyer, drawing up with an edged inhale as her gaze settles on the two girls in their arms, a simmering anger in how one of her fists curls, squeezes tight, and then lets go. 

“You didn’t heal either of them?” She asks, stalking forwards, only to halt when the both of them flinch, and Satoru watches her take it in stride, holding up her palms as she takes a step back. 

“We were busy,” he grits, the thought of the paperwork to come from all the collateral Suguru’s fire will create already a sore in his mind, though certainly one that’s much preferred to the size it had been the first time around. She sighs, but doesn’t protest it, tilting her head up with a warning on her face as Megumi and Tsumiki peer over the upstairs railing and into the foyer. 

“You two,” she says, pointing a finger, “no crazy tonight, please.” 

“Yeah,” Tsumiki breathes, staring down at Mimiko where Satoru holds her, her sister in Suguru’s arms. Megumi only nods, holding onto the legs of the railing as he stares, a complicated expression stuck on his face. 

“Did Kento and Yu go back up the mountain?” Suguru asks, disregarding his shoes entirely as he starts to pad into the house, and Satoru follows after him, running a palm over Mimiko’s head when she shudders, her single good eye darting around the house but mostly fixing on Shoko. 

“Yeah, ‘bout an hour after you left,” Shoko answers, leading their parade into the downstairs bathroom, rummaging in the cabinets for medical supplies. “Run down, please,” she barks, though not harshly, flipping open the medkit and setting it on the counter with a loud thwack. 

“Mimiko’s left eye is swollen shut, probably infected,” Satoru rattles off, able to send a sparking pinprick of reversed cursed through her body where his hand sits on her head. “Definitely infected,” he corrects, slowly sitting down on the bathmat, peeling off his long coat where he’d swaddled her in it.

“Nanako’s right ankle is broken,” Suguru continues, picking up where he left off. “I’m not sure what else.”

“Good enough,” Shoko mutters, and turns, drying her washed hands on a towel. “Hi,” she tones, stepping the short foot forwards to crouch down in front of where Suguru’s settled beside him, Nanako sat sideways in his lap as he works his boots off, a tepid, wary thing in her eyes and something scared on her sister’s face.

“I’m Shoko,” she says, a ripple of her long, brown hair falling off her shoulder, and Satoru darts a glance to the doorway where Megumi and Tsumiki come bumbling to a stop, ducking behind it when they catch his eyes on them. “I’m a doctor. If you let me, I can make your injuries stop hurting so much.”

Both of the girls turn to Suguru, pleading maybe as they look to him to know if they can trust her, and Satoru sighs, fond already at how he knows they’ll be trailing after him like ducklings lost at the pond. ‘Didn’t that idiot interrupt his declaration of war to take them to get crepes?’ He wonders, the bitter memory taking on a tang of sweetness.

“She can,” he promises, leaning in close to them to whisper conspiratorially, one hand up to his mouth in a playful gesture. “Shoko’s the best doctor in the entire country,” he says. “She’s so good, even supervillains ask her for help.” 

It earns him one weak giggle, two small smiles, and Satoru watches as they both look back up, taking Shoko in with a new sort of perspective. “Hi,” Nanako rasps, while Mimiko raises one hand to wave, faintly, and Shoko smiles wider than she normally would, waving back.

“Can I touch you?” She asks, lifting both her clean hands. “It’s how my power works. I can see what hurts if I do.” The twin’s eyes slide to their sides, meeting for a moment in soundless communication, before they both nod, uncurling a little more.

Shoko puts her hands out, the motion slow and steady, palms coming to a rest on their heads. She’s silent for a long moment, still as she sorts through a barrage of information pulled by reversed cursed technique, tamping down on a sigh when she seems to read her fill. When she looks up, Satoru and Suguru both catch her eye, refusing to visibly wilt at her imperceptible headshake.

“Bath first,” she declares, lips thinned into a line. “Then I’ll see what I can heal and what has to sit.”

“How’s warm water and soap sound?” Satoru asks, looking down at Mimiko where she’s still huddled against him, her one open eye widening slightly, nothing but sheer want on her dirty face. 

“Please,” she whispers, and it’s all the answer anyone needs.

“Tsumiki, can you get me two…- four towels,” Shoko asks, readjusting her count when she glances back at the twins, and as if she hadn’t been hiding to cover the fact that the both of them are absolutely spying, Tsumiki pops up from behind the doorway, determination furrowing her brows. 

“On it!” She calls, running out of their bathroom for the linen closet, leaving Megumi in the dust behind her, looking bewildered and inconceivably lost.

It’s a pain to get the twins out of their bloodied dresses when all the old clots congealed until they were glued to their skin. Satoru holds a sigh behind his teeth as he inches fabric off of Mimiko’s spine, muttering soft, ‘I know,’s’ so long as she winces, listening to Suguru do the same beside him. 

It makes a mess, scattering red flakes and fresh droplets along the floor from reopened cuts, scabbing, platelets and, apparently, just enough information to rumble an acknowledgement through their warding grid. 

‘How about that,’ Satoru thinks, helping Mimiko balance as she steps out of soiled underwear, dribbling more bloody droplets on the ground from a cut on her knee, feeling the shift in the talisman chain. It isn’t a strong connection like Megumi and Tsumiki have, made directly into their own keyed doorways, but even weak it’s something. A tie, faint or not, and proof enough they clearly went overboard making their own house near sentient with blood fed sigils. 

At some point during it all, Megumi finally trickles in, face stark with a dull sense of discontent at the sight of all the bruising mottling the two of them, dark blemishes and unpleasant cuts marring their limbs. He sits against the unopened cabinets filled with beauty products, silent, maybe rethinking a thing or two.

Nanako’s sudden inhale breaks the tepid peace, face draining to ashen white as her hands clutch over Suguru’s forearms, right foot hovering above the floor where she must have accidentally touched it, Satoru realizes. She strains hard, face steadily reddening in an effort not to cry, only for the tears to drip faster for it, splattering onto the tile with the flaked blood and dirt from her soiled dress.

“I-I’m sorry,” she hiccups, “I’m sorry, I- I’m not try- trying to,” before breaking off into a sob, short hair mussed and shoulders rising as high as they can sit. 

“It’s okay,” Suguru breathes, lifting his hands to cup her face, thumbing tears away as fast as they can fall. “It’s okay. Cry. You can cry,” he promises, and no one refutes it when Nanako only sobs a little harder. 

The sound of the bath filling drowns it out, somewhat, but it’s still enough that Tsumiki stutters before she steps back into the bathroom, several rolls of white towels in hand and a mild alarm on her face. 

“Is she okay?” He hears her ask Shoko, gathering together no small amount of sterilized products along the counter, and doesn’t pay much mind to her response when Mimiko finally falters, her exhaustion catching up.

“They’ve had a rough night,” Shoko says as Satoru catches her when she slumps, looking her over for any spots of red and finding nothing that isn’t already there, not relaxing but sighing anyway as he curls her into the hold of one arm, brushing his knuckles under her good eye- lidded, barely open, tired to the bone.

“You can doze if you need to,” he murmurs, rising to set Mimiko in the clean water of the partially filled bath, intentionally left low when they’ll be replacing it frequently. “I won’t let you go.” One dark eye hovers over his face, small fingers twitching under the warmth of the water, contemplating the hand behind her head keeping her above the surface. 

“Okay,” Mimiko whispers, finally giving in, inky lashes stark compared to her pale face, the water around her already clouding. Wordlessly, Shoko throws him a washcloth when he opens a hand, and Satoru holds it under the rush of the faucet for a moment, bringing it back up to begin the neverending task of clearing the grime from her face. 

It’s nothing short of an arduous one. With every careful pass of cloth over her cheeks, she seems to change color, lightening from a dusty, muddy, ashen waneness, to the bleachedness of hungry flesh kept from sunlight. Clearing the grime from under her eyes reveals dark, sleepless bruising, and trailing even a little lower as the water melts away endless dirt finds more along the lines of her neck. 

People are evil, Satoru wants to think, letting the washcloth sink into the dirtied bathwater for a moment in favor of his hand alone as he smears filth from Mimiko’s hairline, specks of blood and sweat and more mud. Dark eyes crack open a sliver when he starts to move down, thumbing at a cut on the curve of her bottom lip. He sits for a second, staring at it, knowing they only have so much of their energy to spend using reversed cursed to heal things, and then healing it anyway because Satoru’s least favorite kind of cut is a split lip, and something little isn’t always so small against things that are leagues bigger.

Inky lashes fan out against tepid skin again as Mimiko dissolves into a new degree of limpness, maybe relieved or maybe just too tired to be anything else, unbothered when Satoru wrings a hand around in the rippling water for the cloth. Words float around behind him, talk of bones and procedures and pain he halfheartedly listens to, dragging a hand lower below the clattering sound of the rushing faucet over the partially plugged drain, scrubbing a smear of dried blood off of Mimiko’s stomach. 

‘Don’t think that,’ he bites off, the thought snapping harshly as Megumi takes her place overlaid in his vision, the mirage battered away because it’s hard enough staring down at Mimiko and all her cuts and bruises without his head’s shitty help. It’s hard enough cleaning the sticky sweat, and clinging dirt, and cloying ammonia from the body of a baby he doesn’t know without wanting to break down a little, or put someone in the ground. Intrusive thoughts aren’t one’s he’s willing to entertain when carefully avoiding pressing on the scrapes left on Mimiko’s hip from a fall, the purple decorating her belly from the flats of balled knuckles or a boot, prints of hands on her legs and arms marbled with dried dirt. 

“W-wait!” Nanako shouts behind him, suddenly and loud enough to jerk his head up, tears thick in her voice as Shoko runs two fingers down her broken foot when Satoru glances back, terror at having it set or the fear of pain making her nervous. “I’m- I’m not-”

“Trust me,” Shoko murmurs, and Satoru feels the odd sparkle of reversed cursed glitter behind him alongside Nanako’s gasp, the sickening snick of a bone snapping back into place echoing in the bathroom. 

“Not so bad, see?” Suguru placates above her, the sound of a package of wet wipes crinkling open, a steady pile of them growing beside his outstretched legs as they wipe away as much filth as they can. “Didn’t I say Shoko was the best doctor in the whole country?”

Nanako gasps wetly, the sound out of place with how it can’t decide if it’s overwhelmed or relieved, and Satoru hums, pulling the drain as he holds Mimiko up with one arm to let the dirty water flush, the faucet having never stopped running. Silently, he hears Megumi get up, padding out of the bathroom on bare feet, and only wonders for a moment where he’s going when he thinks he might have a clue. 

“Look for any wounds on her scalp,” Shoko instructs, the words called over her shoulder as reversed cursed holds her attention, and Satoru tones a vague reply, careful to keep Mimiko’s head above water as he swings his legs over the side of the bath, propping her up between his calves. Her spine is stark under her skin, a mountain ridge dyed a range of bruising blues.

Lashes blink against his calf as he dribbles shampoo in his palm, the gaze behind them fuzzy.

“Do you like lavender?” He asks, holding his foamy hands out in front of Mimiko’s nose, Suguru’s soap something he thinks might be a good idea when her hair resembles his, thick and dark, if shorter and much, much dirtier. 

“Yeah,” she mumbles, giving the shampoo a delicate sniff, entirely boneless against the support of his legs. 

“That’s good,” Satoru says, tone light and calm as he runs his palms over her hair, slicking it with soap before he starts to rub it in, gradually untangling clumsy matting from roughly shorn strands. “It’s Suguru’s favorite, so it’s the only kind of soap he buys.” She smiles faintly, huffing a half of a sound that doesn’t seem to have the energy to be anything bigger, lips wavering under every pass of his hands through her hair. 

He doesn’t say anything when she begins to cry, tears dripping down into the soapy, filmy water, proof enough that the gentler things haven’t been very abundant in their lives. 

She seems to calm the longer they sit, though, soap gradually scrubbing away the muck in her scraggly hair, relaxing when his hands stay gentle. She’s so small, thin and wiry, the shadows of her ribs carved into the plane of her sides among sharp, scraped hip bones and knobby knees, visible with every shallow breath she takes beside the protrusion of her spine, and he’s certain her twin is exactly the same. 

‘They weren’t fed,’ he thinks, the thought gloomy, more than a little pissed when the stretch of his palm is able to cover her entire sternum side to side as he scrubs soot from her skin, small because she’s little but small because she’s been starved.

He’s not exactly proud of it, but he can’t say he can entirely blame Suguru and his choices anymore, if this was the reality he’d seen below his own outstretched fingers. It doesn’t give him any more forgiveness for the resentment he keeps locked away somewhere hollowed and untouched, but it does lessen the sting he’s never been able to let go of for being thrown away.

A trade of love based on need doesn’t make him feel any better about it, even as it does, because he can imagine a Suguru terrified to his marrow sat beside a tub, staring down two little girls more bruise than bodies, hooked into a line and unable to swim free from the sharpened point. 

Satoru looks up when Megumi returns, Aiko dragging along the floor squeezed between his small arms as the door swings open with a short creak. It catches the attention of both Tsumiki and Nanako where they sit near each other, patient and assistant to Shoko as she works to meld the fracture of a set bone together.

“...Here,” he says, staunch and stiff, thrusting Aiko out for Nanako to take, still sniffling every few breaths. “His name’s Aiko.”

“...Thank you,” she hiccups, trembly hands reaching out to curl into the artificial fur of the soft toy, lower lip wobbling as she starts to dissolve into another wave of tears. “He’s- he’s really cute,” she cries, sputtering into sobs again, and despite the night at large, Satoru can’t help it when he smiles.

“Don’t worry about clothing,” Satoru promises, threading Mimiko’s limp, bandaged arms through one of Tsumiki’s pajama tops, shorts slightly damp where they meet her skin. “Don’t worry about anything, right now. We’ll take care of it all in the morning, okay?” 

“Okay,” she whispers, hands fisted in his water-stained shirt, eyeing Shoko as she kneels in front of them, having swapped places with Suguru and Nanako. 

She’s seemed to have hit her own limit, sat in the tub as Suguru washes off all of the blood and dirt and grime, limp in his arms and looking about three steps away from collapsing into an eternal slumber. Even Megumi’s started to slump, leaned up against the small of his back on the bathmat and tired in the late hour when he woke up so early. 

“Can I take a look at your eye?” Shoko asks, holding waiting fingers out that Mimiko easily leans towards, more trusting once she’d seen Nanako hobble onto both her feet without any drastic pain. Shoko clucks her tongue, running the pad of her thumb in the hollow below it and over her brow, looking for fractures, Tsumiki sat waiting and ready at her side to hand her anything she asks for.

“I’m gonna need to go up to the clinic and get antibiotics tomorrow,” she mutters, lips pursing, reversed cursed a shine between her limber fingers as it works below the skin. “I can repair the damage, but I can’t get rid of the infection. For tonight, just keep it covered. If she says it’s painful at all, you can use regular eyedrops and tylenol,” Shoko explains, words coming after a moment she spends looking thoughtfully unhappy, turning to Tsumiki with a request on her lips.

“Already got it,” she says, holding a gauze eyepatch up, still packaged in its sterile plastic bag, and Shoko snorts, taking it gladly. 

“I’ve taught you well, my pupil,” she drawls, ripping the plastic open with deft fingers, sliding the cheap eyepatch out to hold up for Mimiko to see. “It goes around your head,” Shoko explains, extending the loop with her index fingers and thumbs as she sets it over her eye, “just like this,” adjusting until it’s sat comfortably behind her ears and over her damp hair.

“...It’s weird,” Mimiko mumbles, scrunching her nose, to Tsumiki’s quiet giggle.

“You look like a pirate,” she says, the tips of her ears red, and Satoru watches Mimiko perk up slightly, a hesitant sort of endearment curling up the corners of her lips.

“A cool one?” She whispers, to Tsumiki’s grin, her nod bouncing the long curls of her bangs.

It only takes a few more minutes for Shoko to finish bandaging the last of her minor cuts, more out of precaution to keep them protected so the scabbing doesn’t rub off on anything, rather than any worry for infection. With Mimiko finished, Suguru hauls Nanako out of the tub to take her place, finally clean and something of a shock when her hair lightens no less than eight shades.

‘That is a lot of dirt,’ Satoru thinks wryly as he hoists Mimiko up, rising to his feet to make room on the bathmat for her and accidentally toppling Megumi over in the process, watching Suguru towel her off, marveling slightly at the delicate, honey blonde hue of her hair. It almost looks like it could be white in the right setting, the color of bleach toned to nothingness. 

‘Now Tsumiki’s the only outlier,’ he half-heartedly chortles, amused at the thought, though not as mockingly victorious as he’d like that he’s finally got a companion in the light hair category. 

He steps around them, padding out of the bathroom in a beeline for the kitchen, already sure of what Shoko will tell them later when small ears aren’t listening intently to their every word. “Are you thirsty?” He asks, looking down at where Mimiko’s slumped against his collar, already beginning to drool over his shirt. 

She blinks slowly, thinking over the words for a long moment as he pulls two glasses down from the cupboards, leaning over the sink to fill them. She jolts up with a sway the moment he hands her one of the cups, her single visible eye watery and wide, glancing up to his face before she dares to wrap her hands around colored plastic.

“Drink, please,” Satoru asks, pushing the cup into her palms, nothing left in him to be bubbly or silly, “you need the water.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. 

It’s almost impressive how quickly she guzzles it, nearly choking in her haste to shove as much down as possible before its taken, and Satoru doesn’t waste a useful moment being chagrined by knowing why she thinks that as he pulls the the cup back to refill the second it’s empty. It’s chugged again, and on the third refill he stops before he hands it over, raising an eyebrow.

“Sip it,” Satoru says, “slowly. You’ll make yourself sick if you drink it too fast.” Mimiko nods, swallowing, singular eye darting between his face and the water. Despite it, she does as he asks, sipping constantly but small as her elbows begin to shake with the strain of holding it up. 

Grabbing the other filled cup, Satoru uses the knuckles of the same hand to nudge against her arms, taking some of the weight as he wanders back to the bathroom, feeling Mimiko’s small groan as she lets her head drop to his shoulder, stomach catching up to her.

“-should be fully healed within a week, but don’t let her overwork herself. It could still be called a sprain,” he hears, Shoko’s succinct instructions fed to Suguru’s diligent nods, an ace bandage snug around Nanako’s right foot and pajamas damp around her collar, limbs covered in gauze and eyelids drooping above Aiko’s fluffy head.

“I come bearing gifts,” Satoru announces, kneeling down onto the bathmat to offer Nanako the other cup of water, shooting a glance to where Megumi’s taken up residence on Suguru’s other thigh, an arm slung over his eyes to block out the light of the bathroom. 

When he looks back, he sees her light eyes flare, a crack of hesitation rippling through her body after she makes to move forwards and grab it. “It’s yours,” Satoru promises, pushing the plastic cup into her hands. “Drink it.” Warily, Nanako nods, fingers settling around the sides of the cup as she drags it up to her lips, sloshing a little over the side in a rush when it finally sinks it that she has it and it’s hers. 

“Are you staying here tonight, Shoko?” Suguru asks, catching the cup as it slips from Nanako’s fingers, tilting it back up to her lips as she drains it, other hand occupied as Megumi’s pillow.

“Yeah,” she says, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. “I don’t want to make the trip back to Tokyo.” He nods, humming a low note, looking tired himself sat between two kids and Tsumiki as a third by his feet. “I can’t wait to see Yaga tomorrow and give him the great news,” she snickers, a low grin on her face and mirth in her eyes, gladly lifting a hand to pet Tsumiki’s hair when she flops over her thigh.

“What, gonna give him a card, too?” Suguru snarks, but the rib has no bite to it, exhausted more than anything as he yawns.

“That’s a great idea,” Shoko muses, messing with Tsumiki’s hair instead of her own, and Satoru snorts, unable to disregard the thought that they look like photocopies of each other, chestnut hair and heart-shaped faces, their only difference the sardonic thing to Shoko that flattens most of her features which Tsumiki doesn’t have. “Congratulations!” She splays one hand, teeth on full display. “It’s twins.”

“If it’s you giving him the aneurysm,” Suguru mutters, letting his eyes shut for a moment as he sighs, slightly gusty, “then I’m in favor.”

Satoru laughs, grinning, taking the cup from Mimiko’s slackening fingers before it can fall and splash all over the floor, hitching her up a little higher as she begins to nod off. He looks down, exhaling softly, having wanted to at least get them fed before they’d slept, lethargically resigning himself to the morning as his second-best option.

“...They’re malnourished,” Shoko says, when she sweeps her steady gaze over the pile of mostly dozing kids scattered around them, “and I saw signs of long-term abuse. It’ll probably be awhile before they’re entirely healthy.” She shrugs, only as apologetic as she can be in clinical sympathy. When he catches Suguru’s eye, Satoru knows he’s picked up on what Shoko doesn’t say.

If Tsumiki and Megumi took months to settle, they might take years. 

One night of adrenaline-fueled trust won’t make up for a lifetime of mistreatment, and a month of safety won’t erase habits etched into the bones of a body. ‘That’s alright,’ Satoru thinks, leaning over to tug Tsumiki up, getting to his feet with the two of them tucked in his arms as Suguru does the same, Megumi and Nanako leaning against his shoulders. 

They’ll have those years. Maybe it won’t be fast, or easy, or simple, but they’ll have time to break it down until it is. 

Chapter Text

Somehow, all six of them fit in their bed.

It’s more cramped than normal, even with a queen, but they’d be stupid to let Megumi and Tsumiki sleep in their own beds alone if the twins are sleeping with them, and the last thing either of them want to do is instigate any reason for jealousy between the four of them. 

Tsumiki shifts and jostles accordingly as they all fill in when she’s still something like half-awake, both her and Megumi thankfully dressed for bed because of Shoko’s amazing competence, and when all they have to do is change shirts and shuck off pants, Suguru thinks that maybe they’ve succeeded at being parents. 

Megumi wakes up just long enough as they’re adjusting around four kids to fumble over the mattress, tottering below the blanket until he finds the valley of his legs, tumbling down between his thighs to use his hips as a pillow, seemingly content to bake under the covers. Nanako’s hands stay fisted in his shirt, Aiko resolutely forgotten on the floor, so she gets first dibs on using the left half of his chest as a giant pillow. 

Satoru slots against him on his right side, Tsumiki squished between them and somehow tilting diagonally between his right shoulder and Satoru’s hip, Mimiko curled against his stomach with her back to Tsumiki’s own. 

For a while, it’s peaceful, quiet, nothing but the steady softness of breathing and the sounds of the forest muffled behind the windows and walls of the house. For a while, Suguru doesn’t think about much of anything, distracted by the gentle rise and fall of Nanako’s breaths, the weight of Megumi’s head on his navel. For a while, he stares up at the ceiling surrounded by a halo of his own hair, Tsumiki’s back below his other palm, watching the world turn from somewhere far away.

“...What happened, Suguru?” Satoru asks, barely anything but a whisper, and when he blinks, the earth comes rushing back in, hurtling close as he’s plunged back down to its unforgiving soil.

“I,” he says, stopping, choking on all the words crowding inside his mouth to the point he can’t even keep it closed. Flickers of what he’d felt at that village, sitting next to Yuki, in the forest cursing Mei Mei for a death she’d caused all come whispering back. 

“Why are you asking,” he ends up murmuring, staring up at the ceiling still, choking on it because it isn’t what wants to come out. “Shouldn’t you know, already.”

“...No,” Satoru whispers, reaching one hand across the sheets in a rustle of dry fabric. It curls around his wrist again, the same as before, a gentle squeeze, nothing but a reassurance that he’s there. “I’m not in your head.”

‘I know,’ Suguru thinks, and finally shuts his eyes, screwing them tight against the burn of tears that feels so different to the burn of flames. “...I wanted to try,” he whispers, stilted and small, painful as it crawls its way up and out of his throat. “I wanted to try and hate them so badly.” His voice shakes as he lets it go, seeing nothing but spots behind his eyelids as Satoru’s thumb drags up and down the bone of his wrist, soft and steady, silent and waiting. 

“Look at what they do in their ignorance,” he continues, finally cracking his eyes open as a tear breaks loose, curving down his cheek as he keeps talking, keeps spilling, keeps refusing to lie when they’ve only ever put him in a corner, when they’ve promised not to- not to each other. 

“They fear what they don’t understand because they can’t control it, so they break it instead,” he hiccups, lips twisting painfully over his teeth as it all bubbles over. “They break it and just keep breaking it because maybe they think whatever damage they’re doing is helping,” he bites out, fighting off a choked exhale when he realizes where all the cramming words are coming from.

‘Oh,’ Suguru thinks, memories stacked on memories shoving through his head, clearing of their dust and cobwebs where he’d purposely shoved them deep down, far away, finally dredging up again. It immediately makes more sense why he’d snapped so easily in that little village, among all the other reasons he knows by heart but which he’d never dare to utter aloud. 

“I know you love my parents, but they were the same,” Suguru hushes, a fear in the truth and an awful sort of honesty wrenching it painful and whole from his tongue. “They didn’t understand me, ‘c-cause I was different.” He sniffles, accidentally letting loose a tiny, pitiful little sound, and can’t help the anger that comes from hearing it. It’s soothed in some form or another when Satoru tugs on his arm, bringing it closer to his side of their filled bed. 

“They tried to fix me- they tried so much shit trying to fix me,” Suguru rambles, feeling the tears coming hotter and heavier as they drip from his eyes, Satoru’s palm wrapped around his wrist never wavering, squeezing the longer he talks. “They took me to see therapist after therapist after psychiatrist, and when all the professionals told them it was this disorder, that disorder, they believed them.” He stops, sucking in a rattling inhale, trying to contain some of the harshness as it leaks into his voice, desperate to keep it quiet so the kids won’t wake up and hear the worst parts of himself given words.

“You give me a list, I bet I’ve swallowed every fucking pill on it,” he mutters, unsteady and bitter, a shake in his hands where he keeps them light and gentled on both Tsumiki and Nanako’s backs. “Do you know how much time I’ve spent high off my ass taking drugs to deal with all the disorders I didn’t have?” Suguru hisses, finally turning his head to meet Satoru’s eyes, unable to help the heavy glare his expression snarls with.

He’s sure he doesn’t. Satoru wouldn’t know a thing about what it’s like, sat at a desk in a classroom or a couch in a home, staring at the teacher and the wall, watching words appear on the blackboard and someone ask what he wants for dinner, muffled as if underwater and so foggy and fuzzy and faded that whatever answer he gives ends up lost to the current. 

How nothing feels real sat with the fish, choking on air bubbles and watching anemones bloom around the people beside him, ever wondering if they knew every moment was a millennia, passing by like molasses dripping from his fingers, immortalizing the pain in amber as the world moved on without him.

Maybe the morphine and the anesthesia could give him an idea, but all of that hadn’t been permanent. Satoru had been drugged for weeks. Suguru was drugged for years. 

“They didn’t fucking believe me- they never fucking believed me that none of it was helping,” he says, an agony ripping his throat to ribbons, staring at Satoru with every drop of the vitriol he can’t control, and maybe withering slightly when all he sees reflected back at him is a softened pain, a gentled adoration, one that he knows exists because Satoru hurts when he does. Pain, sympathy, and an awful sort of understanding, because Satoru and Satoru alone is the one person on the planet who knows him for his entirety, evil and good and everything in between.

“They didn’t even pretend to listen to me until I…I stood in front of them,” Suguru rasps, remembering the chalky feeling of the pills on his tongue, how they’d all tumbled down his throat and scratched up its inside. “And…and tried to kill myself with a bottle of antipsychotics,” he admits, roughened and a little desperate, feeling split in two as another set of tears spills down his skin, unable to meet blue eyes as they bore into him, a new sort of realization dawning in their depths as they widen. 

He doesn’t want to see them, putting puzzle pieces together, words to names and names to faces. He can’t get another set out of his head as it is. 

The look on his parent’s faces isn’t one he’s ever forgotten. The sound of it sits clearly in his ears as the memory hovers below his fingertips, the deafening clatter of the pill bottles hitting the kitchen floor as his mother had lunged for him, nails digging into his arms and begging him to spit them out among the echo of his dull, dry swallow. How his father had stood a few feet away, eyes blown wide and lips parted as if to yell, shout, say anything, only for the silence to sit heavy on them, instead. Like he’d been so, utterly shocked, that he hadn’t even had any words left to scream that he was.

“And, and all of it,” he cries, letting his eyes shut when Satoru’s hand finally unwinds from his wrist, limber fingers reaching up to brush away saltwater, “all of it was because they wanted me to be fucking happy.” His voice finally breaks, snapping to splinters, and it takes a long few seconds of choking down on a genuine sob for him to keep speaking anything close to clearly.

He’d finally learned to recognize what an overdose felt like, that night, cursed energy burning chemicals to nothingness and knowing with crushing sort of clarity that with every mouthful he’d taken, none of it had ever come close to killing him.

“I never felt like I was- wasn’t some sort of damaged, or, or broken, because they thought something was wrong with me, just because they didn’t live in the same world I did,” Suguru strains, leaning in to the touch of Satoru’s palm, a rawness to the truth he hates as much as he’s grateful to it. “They used to fight with each other, too, b-because they couldn’t agree on how much was too much.” He grinds his teeth together for a moment, sniffling something thick, weathering the pain of the sob trapped within his ribs.

Hands over his ears, blanket over his head, words mumbled in his mouth to keep from hearing the shouting echoing up from downstairs, knowing well enough he was unfixable but maybe not wanting to listen to more about it, either.

“And a part of me-” He mumbles, once the weight has passed, curling shaking fingers into the back of Tsumiki’s shirt, knowing for certain he’s a monster now but finally understanding which kind. “A part of me wants to hate them for it.”

“...How come you didn’t?” Satoru asks, instead of saying he’s sorry, hair splayed on his pillow and silver in the dark. Even buried under his own grief, Suguru can recognize what his question means. He isn’t asking about his parents. Satoru already knows he can’t hate them, not when he’s seen them together for years, gradually healing the longer they leave him and his issues alone. 

For a moment, he doesn’t answer, breathing in wetly, maybe a sort of bitter except for the sole fact that with Satoru, he’s never felt like he’s broken. With Satoru, he’s never felt like he’s someone he shouldn’t be. With Satoru, he only feels like Suguru, whoever Suguru is.

“I thought of Tsumiki,” he says, shrugging only faintly since both the girls are using his shoulders as pillows, “and I thought, how could I hate my own daughter?” He laughs, nothing but a sputtering, weak little thing, feeling more tears dribble onto his pillow as he stares at Satoru in the dark, calm and steady even though his eyes are so wide. Wanting to know, because they don’t let each other suffer alone. 

He sniffles miserably as he watches Satoru lean away, rummaging around for a moment before he’s turning back, a tissue in hand he brings up to his sticky skin, drying the tacky tears clinging to his face. 

“...I can’t,” he begins, a hesitation to the words as he lets them trickle out, blue eyes staring down at his lips instead of meeting his own. 

“I can’t honestly say I blame you for wanting to know,” Satoru mumbles, one hand curling around Mimiko’s shoulders a little snugger as he talks. “If I were you, I think I’d want to at least understand that hatred, too.” He looks away for a moment, blue eyes narrowed in an uncomfortable sort of truth as Satoru opens his mouth, lips parting around something that Suguru recognizes to come from the same place as all his unspoken revulsions, the ones he will and won’t ever admit to. 

It’s a balm, in a way, knowing that on every level he ever stands on, Satoru will always meet him there. No matter if it’s deep enough to dive to, or a climb that should last years, Satoru will always find him, and then meet him, wherever it is that he’s standing.

“I mean, if I went looking for it, I still have some hatred for you,” Satoru says, brows furrowing a dipping crease into his skin, a potent shame staining his entire face bleak. “I don’t think it’s wrong to hate,” he whispers, glancing up again, and Suguru feels his stomach bottom out in the best way possible, freefall lightening his limbs and settling his thoughts, whipping away the desolation with the rush of the wind. 

He doesn’t clarify what kind of hate he means. Whether it’s non-shaman’s, the him that Suguru isn’t, the him that Suguru is, any of the things that linger around them like ghosts, whispering radio static in their ears and chilling a perpetual shiver down their spines. He doesn’t need to, because if Satoru is the one person who understands him, then maybe Suguru is the one person who understands Satoru, good and evil and everything in between.

It’s not a permission, but an admission. A confessional that whatever Suguru chooses, good or evil or bad or indifference, Satoru will never condemn him. It makes him sigh, the last of the tense thing leaving his wired muscles as nothing but a puddle in their bed, finally able to relax with the worst of the storm passing. 

Maybe he’d known it anyway, but it’s still nice to hear. I love you, in anything but the words. 

“...But I don’t need to hate anything,” Suguru offers back, equally quiet, nose to nose with Satoru on the pillow and buried in a bubble of calm when he has no justification to create, “so I don’t think I want to.”

“I’m still glad you know,” Satoru murmurs, messing with a few stray strands of his hair with the hand holding the balled-up tissue, and Suguru huffs, a watery, star-struck smile tugging on his lips. I’m still glad you chose, he means. I’m glad you decided for yourself. 

“Me too,” he says, and he is, because knowing what he could do, who he could be, makes choosing someone different, something else, a little easier. The guilt isn’t so stark when he’s stood on the other side of it, a sinner atoning for a wrong he’s never quite committed, if only Suguru was jaded enough to say he feared any god to the point of bothering atoning for anything. 

He’s chosen his monster, after all.

Laying there, bathed in the moonlight dripping in from the parted curtains, overheated by the warmth of five other bodies and calmed with the softness of the only one he’ll ever love, he doesn’t feel as shattered. Maybe their vows might be based on a cheesy Pokémon joke, but Suguru wouldn’t change them, not when they mean everything and anything between them, years and lives and people they are and aren’t anymore.

Hatred is a fickle thing, he thinks. 

When she wakes up, it takes her a long moment to figure out where she is. 

‘What…?’ Nanako thinks, groggy as she fists the soft sheets below her, shifting among the fluffy blankets and sunken pillows. ‘Where’s the-’ She begins, a light shock of memories washing over her like a little electric tingle from touching a socket in a wall, eyes flaring wide as she stares up at a ceiling she doesn’t recognize.

‘We’ll get you home,’ that man- Suguru, he’d said his name had been Suguru- had promised, and, ‘okay, okay, it’s okay,’ as he pulled them from the depths of the cage. 

Where’s Mimiko is her second, most important thought, the lancing ache that spears through her whole body into a dull thrumming of pain her forgotten third. Her limbs are itchy, gauze wrapped around them over cuts and scrapes, and her ankle hurts, but not like before where she’d sat on a snapped bone for days from nothing but a moment of delirious glee from one of the- 

‘Don’t think about it,’ she jolts, shoving the thoughts from her mind, slowly dragging her eyes down to look around the room from the big, comfy bed she’s in. 

It’s dark, large, thick curtains draped closed over the windows, a certain clumsy clutter scattered around as if it’s a place that’s lived in. There’s tall bookshelves, a messy desk, a door leading into a bathroom she remembers from last night and so many plants she wonders how anyone manages to keep them all alive. When she turns her head, neck sore and headache pounding behind her squinted eyes, Mimiko’s dark hair comes into sight, sprawled along the sheets and stark compared to their gentle cream color. 

Following it, Nanako spots her face, mashed into one of the cloud-like pillows and drooling all down her chin, an eye-patch sitting around her head. ‘...Okay,’ she thinks, swallowing thickly, eyes snapping up to the door when she hears noise from outside of it. ‘Okay.’

Noisily, her stomach gurgles, twisting again in a feeble, last ditch attempt to tell her to eat, and lips thinning, Nanako doesn’t move. She’s hungry, so hungry she doesn’t even feel hungry anymore than just dizzy, but, ‘everything hurts,’ she thinks, eyes slipping shut again as she grimaces, resisting the urge to groan out loud. Getting up seems…less important than staying right where she is, sinking into the suffocating softness of what has to be a luxury mattress, nevermind that she doesn’t know what’s beyond that door. 

She doesn’t get the choice of refusing to find out.

Footsteps pad along the floor outside of it not a moment later as if the gurgle of her stomach had summoned them, quiet and then growing louder, socked and unhurried and terrifying until the door’s cracking open, firmly reassessing her definition of which terror is greater.

‘Please don’t be a monster,’ she thinks, eyes pulled taut, fingers squeezing one of the pillows hard enough to wrinkle the Hello Kitty band-aids wrapped around four of them. ‘Please, don’t be a monster.’

She makes out dark hair, first, long and loose, then dark eyes, soft lips, soft nose, the smell of something hitting her hard enough to make a woozy feeling crawl up from the pit of her stomach. 

“Good morning,” Suguru murmurs, barely above a whisper, leaving the door partially open behind himself as he wanders further in, the plate in his hands piled with four sandwiches holding her gaze as if snared in a rabbit-trap. “It’s nice to see you awake.”

Nanako swallows, fingers twitching as she watches him settle on the edge of the bed, nothing but easy movements and languid lines, a dry thing in her mouth curdling her tongue and a hope blooming painful and thorny around her ribs.

“...Hi,” she offers, timid and shy and rasping when she feels like she’s swallowed sand, still, relaxing a little more when Suguru smiles, leaning forward to set the large plate down on a clear part of the bed. 

“...Are you feeling alright?” He asks, eyes skimming over all the gauze that pretty doctor had mummified her in last night, a crease ticking between his dark brows, and she’s hasty to nod. Whatever luck they’ve found, she won’t push it. “Really,” Suguru clucks, eyes narrowing in something she’s hesitant to call mirth, unable to help tensing on a recoil when one of his hands reaches closer.

“Do you want to sit up?” He asks, palm held out in an offer, violet flecked eyes waiting for an answer. “I want to give you those,” he explains, darting a glance back at the sandwiches, “but you could choke if you eat them laying down.”

“Okay,” Nanako whispers, blinking down to stare at his palm, hand a little clammy as she uncurls it from the pillow, pink band-aids stark against the flesh of their skin when she reaches back. It hurts when she’s pulled up, because every single muscle in her body seems to be protesting her existence, and moving pulls on all the little cuts and scabs hidden under gauze. 

Suguru smiles at her, though, a small, proud little thing, and maybe she’s not pushing her luck Nanako can’t lie to herself that it’s a dangerous sort of want bubbling in her belly to see it again, after it’s gone.

“There’s four,” Suguru explains, leaning back to grab the plate, pointing to each sandwich sitting on the patterned ceramic as he talks. “Plain peanut butter and jelly, egg salad, potato salad, and lettuce, tomato, ham.” 

When she looks up, lost, he seems to fumble for a moment, a draw of confusion on his face before it smooths, understanding relaxing the lines under his eyes. “They’re yours,” he explains, as if it’s just perfectly obvious, nudging the plate forward. “Take any you want. We can make more if you don’t feel sick.”

“...Any…?” Nanako mumbles, staring down at fluffy looking milk bread, vibrant, fresh ingredients, stomach twisting itself into a knot. Instead of taking one like her twitching hands desperately want to, she looks at Mimiko, still face down in a pillow and clearly asleep. 

“...Mimiko likes jelly,” she says, chewing on the inside of her cheek she’s so hungry, unable to decide, unable to gauge what the price of this will be.

“What about you?” Suguru asks, head tilted slightly and a river of silky black tumbling down his shoulder, a note of concern in the pull of his lips, a quiet curiosity in the upturn of his eyes. 

“...Can I have the- the lettuce and…ham. Please,” she asks, fingers digging nails into her palms trying to keep her hands still at her sides, because the last thing she wants to do is look like a wild animal in front of this man, so calm and so kind and unassuming when they’re all unassuming at first. 

She wants it so badly she feels like she’s drooling, sitting and shaking in place. She wants to stay liked by this stranger more, sitting helpless and small and maybe desperate to hope.

Her eyes stay fixed on his hand as he picks up the sandwich, holding it out for her to take, giving it a tiny little shake when she hesitates. “Please eat,” Suguru murmurs, pressing the food into her palms when she lifts them, “you need it.”

‘We can’t really be so lucky,’ Nanako thinks, staring up at his face as he sits, quiet and still, placid as he asks her to do something everyone else had taken joy from stealing away. ‘There has to be a price,’ she wonders, biting into the soft bread, the crunch of fresh lettuce, the sweetness of tomato slices and the sickeningly delicious salt of lunchmeat. 

Maybe it’ll be one worth the relief in the dark eyes that steadily watch her choke it down as slowly as she can possibly force herself to. Maybe it won’t. 

For the moment, she decides she doesn’t care yet.

Mimiko takes the jelly, and then the egg salad sandwich when she wakes up a few minutes after her sister’s devoured one of her own, maybe roused by the scent of food or the slanted beams of sunlight spilling through the lipped curtains over the windows. 

‘Stop thinking about homicide,’ Suguru chides himself, reaching down to thumb away a spot of potato on Nanako’s cheek, fond as he watches her force herself to eat it slowly, unable to help taking massive bites even though she savors each one. ‘You burnt their village down. They’ve had their karma.’

She doesn’t recoil, a far cry better than last night, than even a handful of minutes ago, pale eyes flickering up to him for a moment before they’re dropping right back to breakfast, though he doesn’t miss how she shuffles slightly, the movement a dither in uncertainty.

She hisses suddenly, eyes screwing shut under a wince as her ankle is jostled, and Suguru frowns, skimming fingertips down her bandaged calf, looking for swelling even though he knows it’s not broken anymore- just tender. “I’m sorry it still hurts,” he offers, looking back up with a small smile, “it’ll be healed soon.”

Both Nanako and Mimiko exchange a glance, jelly on the corner of her lip and a new dot of potato on her twin’s, adorably identical despite their different colors. 

“It’s okay,” Nanako offers, shrugging slightly, even though she tucks her foot closer to herself. He watches Mimiko’s lips thin, pressing together in something he can’t read before she’s huffing, rolling her good eye as she gets to her knees.

She wobbles along the mattress, teetering unsteadily as she fumbles closer, and Suguru can’t say he isn’t surprised when she tumbles back down at his side, pointedly shoving the last corner of the egg salad sandwich into her mouth, nose tipped up and a dower sort of smugness on her pouted lips.

‘Oh my god,’ he thinks, teeth grit to keep from snickering, ‘they’re exactly like Megumi and Tsumiki.’ Nanako scowls as Mimiko loudly chews, cheeks puffed and clearly struggling, basking in her own satisfaction when he sets a hand on her head, for whatever reason she has he doesn’t know about. 

“...If you’re both ready,” Suguru starts, cataloging each little expression he catches as he cards his fingers down through Mimiko’s silky hair, “we could go and explore the rest of the house? Tsumiki’s been dying to properly introduce herself.”

Despite Mimiko’s burst of bravery, even she seems to shrink slightly at the suggestion. Nanako looks about ready to combust across from him, the two of them seeming to struggle with the idea for a moment before their eyes lock. He watches on, amused, peering in from behind the curtain at their soundless, wordless conversation, spoken in small headshakes and rolled eyes and annoyance. 

“...Okay,” Nanako says, after a stilted, silent moment, blinking up at him with an unguarded fear in her eyes only buoyed by a desperate want to trust that weighs heavier than it. 

“I want to meet Tsumiki,” Mimiko offers, shrugging slightly as her fingers mess together nervously in her lap. “She seemed nice. Last night.” 

“She is,” Suguru assures, sliding off the bed as he gets to his feet, steadying Mimiko with a hand on her shoulder when she tilts, opening his other out in front of Nanako. “Ready?” He asks, a repetition of the previous night, softer and easier for it when it’s a very different sort of cage, and light eyes boring down at his hand in a breathless sort of freeze, Nanako nods. 

“Ready,” she whispers, and reaches back, holding out her arms to be picked up. 

Suguru’s careful when he slides his hands around her, mindful of her bandaged ankle as he scoops her close, chagrined slightly at how little she weighs, endeared at the small fingers when they fist into his shirt. 

“I promise,” he murmurs, brushing a thumb over her temple as he tilts his face down to brush a kiss over her forehead, “no one else will ever hurt you. Not while I’m around.”

He lets her press her face close, tucking his chin over soft hair as Nanako hiccups, what have to be a million things running through her head and a horrible swell of emotions squeezing her ribs tight. ‘I’m glad,’ Suguru thinks, extending a hand for Mimiko to take, a small smile ticking up the corner of his lips as she grabs the crumb ridden plate off the bed before she slides off of it, ‘that we left how we did.’

That person is a guilt still, gnawing away at his insides and teething at his heart if he pays it any mind too long, but it isn’t as much of one anymore. It’s just a shadow, just a reminder, nothing but a figment of a nightmare when he’s made his own choices at the same crossroads that had created it.

It must be much more gratifying to be gentle with the two of them, knowing there’s nothing he’s running from, than to promise them the world knowing he’s burning it down.

Satoru turns away from the counter when he finally sees Suguru draw the girls out of their bedroom, apron loose on his frame and a jittery excitement making him want to tap his fingers on the wood. At his feet, Tsumiki and Megumi continue to bicker, arguing back and forth about something mundane, nothing important, not tired in the least even though they went to bed late and woke him up an hour ago at nine in the morning.

He’s a little worried at how they’re going to juggle between the four of them when he and Suguru are only two people, but Megumi and Tsumiki still have two months left of school before summer vacation starts, and he can’t imagine they’ll be enrolling the twins anytime before it. It’s still going to be a struggle, he thinks, cleaning the counters from the mess of flour Tsumiki had spilled earlier, trying to manage Frankenstein and twins and more twins. 

‘Why’s it always twins,’ Satoru thinks, and tamps down on a snort. A regular person’s joy, a shaman’s bad omen. They won’t be, though. Mimiko and Nanako will be another slot of evidence in his truth that what he’d done once had worked, another two children he wants to make a better world for, to eventually pass it down to them to change when he no longer can.

With any luck, Maki and Mai will follow them in their second chance.

‘Stop thinking about it,’ Satoru chides himself, pulling back from the smooth wood, clearing his head of any thoughts of the Zen’in twins. He’s still got a day before he needs to meet with Akemi, thank god- there’s a lot they’ve already got on their plate to deal with, first.

When he steps away from the counter, sponge in hand to rinse, both Megumi and Tsumiki abruptly zip it, heads turning in synch with a frankly alarming speed. They scrabble over each other to follow him as he turns away from the sink, clinging to his legs as Satoru finally leaves the kitchen. 

“Are they up? I hope they’re up- I want to meet them so badly,” Tsumiki rambles, to Megumi’s exasperated groan and exaggerated eye roll, hands yanking on the sides of his pant leg. 

“You already met them,” he argues.

Tsumiki scoffs, prissy. “That isn’t how it works, Megumi, you’d know that if you had any friends,” she says.

Megumi gasps, affronted. “As if you have any!” Which kicks them off particularly strong before they’re going right back at it again like mouthy chihuahuas.

“Kids,” Satoru groans, dragging the words out as he shakes a foot between them to separate where they’ve gotten dangerously close to taking swipes at each other, “could you lighten up a little?”

“He started it!” Overlaps with, “she started it!” and Satoru only sighs, smile crimped and exhale exasperated, more than used to it and disgustingly fond even as he crouches down to lightly yank on both of their ears.

“The two of them have had a rough couple of days,” he says, switching his stare between the both of their eyes, another set focused on where Suguru finally pads out of their bedroom, Mimiko beside him holding the plate he walked in with and one of his hands, Nanako sat in his crooked arm when she shouldn’t be straining her foot, still. “I don’t mind your bickering, but it might stress them out.”

“Sorry,” Megumi mutters, ears heating slightly, and beside him, Tsumiki nods.

“We’ll stop,” she promises, looking up again as new voices tentatively murmur behind them, trying to peer around his side to catch a glimpse beyond the open fusuma doors. He’s about to open his mouth, to say thank you or something like it, when the lance of surprise hits him just before the sound of the shattering crash does.

It’s almost impressive, how time seems to slow, molasses-like and thick as Mimiko’s foot catches on the edge of the carpet where it was rumpled by the demon dogs a few days ago, the stagger of her alarmed expression as she tips, hands stretching out and plate soaring in an arc for the hardwood.

The sound of it is loud, echoing, sharp and bright in his ears, a memory and reminder and plenty of reasons wrapped up into one he doesn’t care to think about. Not when the first thought in his head is how both of those bandaged little girls are going to be absolutely terrified when the liquified moment finally settles.

He blinks, and it all comes rushing back to full speed, the whisper of pieces skidding along hardwood a giant in the silence. When he turns, spinning on his heels, Mimiko’s sprawled out behind the armchair, face buried in the living room’s carpet and plate in pieces all over the floor. 

‘Shit,’ Satoru thinks, eyes snapping up to Suguru, tensing a little himself at how he’s gone rigid, stiff as a board and clearly tamping down on his reaction to the sound of breaking ceramic by how tightly his lips are pressed together.

He’s right, though. He knew he’d be right- because if he looks bad, the girls look even worse. 

In Suguru’s arms, Nanako’s frozen, staring down at Mimiko in a dull sort of horror, any blood she had left in her face drained to nothing. Foot propped up on the curled lip of carpet she’d tripped on, Mimiko lies motionless, head having stopped as she’d picked it up, eyes glued to the floor in front of her face and the both of them spilling uncontained cursed energy everywhere in their terror.

For a moment, all he sees is Zen’in Mai, cowering against the wall where Maki can’t reach her, facing down Naoya’s misplaced wrath and never ending cruelty, terrified when he’d walked in and terrified when he’d simply stood a few meters away. 

‘No,’ something echoes, maybe made from whipping canes or the red he’d watched his hands stain with when they’d barely been the size of his kid’s palms, ‘not in my fucking house.’

“Woah,” Satoru whistles, leaving Megumi and Tsumiki as he steps forwards with a hand outstretched behind him to keep them from following through the shards, purposely smiling when two pairs of stricken eyes dart towards him, a potent, reeking sort of fear blanketing the living room. “That was some fall.”

Mimiko flinches as he walks closer, infinity wrapped around his footfalls as he steps over broken ceramic, a noticeable tremor running through her whole body as he crouches down onto his toes, purposely gentle and purposely slow as he slips his hands under her arms, pulling her up so she’s sat upright. He can feel the pound of her heart with the fingers pressing against her sides, and the ice in his blood boils knowing the reason why.

“Are you alright, sugar? That looked like a nasty hit,” Satoru murmurs, letting go of some of his own relief as Suguru finally uncoils, gradually beginning to come back down, decompressing as he muddles through his immediate reaction to the sound he unmistakably associates with death. 

He’d be more worried, but he knows Suguru can handle himself, especially when there’s a child who needs his attention more. 

Mimiko only stares at him, fear slowly morphing into plain disbelief when he only swipes a thumb below her nose and the bead of red dripping down into her cupid’s bow, lips pursing in concern as he twines a glimmer of reversed cursed through the small cut. He stares back when she says nothing for a long moment, slowly raising an eyebrow as he lets his smile grow, palms cupping her reddening cheeks to squish, slightly. Like it was an afterthought, she nods, short and curt and jerking. 

“F-fine,” she blurts out, her one visible eye wide as her hands curl into the hem of Tsumiki’s pajama shirt, brows knitting into a valley. 

“That’s good,” Satoru says, forcing his expression to brighten, softly brushing his thumbs over the apples of her cheeks, giving them another small squish with his palms. “Plates are replaceable, you know,” he whispers, leaning forwards as if to give her a secret, though the words are loud enough for everyone to hear them clearly, “but adorable little girls aren’t.”

Tsumiki fidgets slightly across the living room, a small movement like she’s taking the reminder for herself too, which is exactly what he wants. Neither of them have broken something yet, so there hasn’t been the need for him to say anything like it, and though he’s fairly positive the two of them know they’d never be hit in this house, he knows in the marrows of his bones and the scars on his skin how much words can mean as much as they can’t.

Mimiko blinks, long and large, lips soundless as they part to speak even though she obviously has nothing to say. “...You’re…not mad?” She whispers back, maybe a few heartbeats later when Suguru’s started to sink down onto the floor, eyes temporarily shut as he finds his breath, every careful inhale steadying it a little more. His cursed energy ripples, wavering, gradually reining back in as he calms.

“Mad?” Satoru repeats, scoffing like it’s unthinkable, brushing his thumbs along her cheekbones as he listens to Megumi and Tsumiki carefully pick their way closer, knowing better by now than to step near the jagged pieces. “Why would I be mad? It was just a plate.”

‘Your spilt blood and split skin is not worth cheap dishware,’ he wants to say, but doesn’t, because Mimiko is only eight years old and shouldn’t bear the weight of that kind of gravity, yet.

“...Just a plate,” Mimiko echoes, incredulous, and Suguru finally hums, leaning against the back of the couch and calmed despite how Satoru can see the faint jitter of his hands. He’s certain if he were to reach out a palm, his heart would be pounding.

“Just a plate,” Suguru assures, raising one away from Nanako to pull Tsumiki closer when she nudges in, tilting down to press a soft kiss to her cheek, eyes darting to where Megumi seems to be struggling trying to find a path that isn’t dotted with sharp edges. “We have plenty more of those.”

“...But you’re shaking,” Nanako murmurs, big, pale eyes staring up at him, a panic in how her hands tighten and twist in his shirt but a want in how she bothers to question at all, trying hard to find the surface in waters she’s never tested before when they’ve only had a few lucid hours together. 

“And you looked really- really upset. Are you…are you angry?” She asks, hesitant and anticipatory, shoulders drawn up even though she’s seemed to recognize that they’re safe from any surprise violence. Suguru huffs, a quiet puff of air from his nose, arm settling heavy and lazy around Tsumiki’s waist as she sits down at his side.

“No,” he says, “I’m not angry. I just…” His eyes trail away for a moment, brows creasing as he thinks of how to word it, and Satoru finally gives in and pulls Megumi over the mess with a curl of Blue when he can’t seem to find a path around it that doesn’t circle the entire living room.

“Do you know how sounds can make you think of things?” Satoru offers, setting Megumi down beside him, one hand staying planted on his shoulder as his other returns to the soft baby fat of Mimiko’s cheek, eyes flickering up to Suguru as he continues. “Like,” he begins, and claps, sudden and loud, expecting the sharp wince both the girls and Megumi cringe with, to Tsumiki’s impassive stare.

“I don’t like the sound of ceramic breaking,” Suguru explains, as Nanako’s expression changes, a glimmer in her eyes as she puts the puzzle together. 

“Oh,” she says, mildly toneless, and then sits in his lap for a long moment, face blank like she has no idea what her reaction is supposed to be now that she isn’t worried about consequence. As much as Satoru hates it, it’s almost something he can recognize to be familiar- the listless sort of aimlessness, an unknown when faced with irregularity. Yaga had been a lot better than he is now at knowing how to change it.

“You can break things.” Satoru shrugs, gently tugging at Megumi’s nose to get him to scowl, carding his fingers into the back of Mimiko’s hair to see her little, hidden smile, the small shiver that tickles goosebumps down her arms. “It’s fine. Accidents happen. I break things all the time.”

“Really?” Nanako hushes, eyes blown wide, and Suguru laughs, the last of his unwanted panic gone and replaced with a quiet, unnoticeable exhaustion. 

“Yes,” he agrees, one palm rubbing up and down her back in a repetitive rhythm, maybe to ground himself or maybe to ground her. “We’re not perfect.”

“...No way,” Mimiko mutters, and a little bit behind her, Tsumiki snorts.

“Tou-ru never remembers which page of our bedtime story we’re on,” she says, wrinkling her nose when Satoru sticks his tongue out at her, “so he always starts at the wrong place, and then he spoils it.”

“I am so very sorry, your highness,” Satoru snarks, rolling his eyes overdramatically, a smile on his lips as Tsumiki giggles. 

“You stole my pancake this morning,” Megumi tacks on, evidently still bitter over the pancake he was promised and more than happy on joining in on any Satoru-bashing session. “I wanted a banana one.” 

“And you got a banana one,” Satoru replies, skittering his fingers over Megumi’s stomach when he flops along his thigh, hands batting them away in what will become genuine playfighting once he’s a little older. “So demanding. I made you four!” 

“I wanted five,” he throws back, yanking on his fingers to bite, and Satoru only shakes his hand when itty bitty milk teeth drag harmlessly over his skin. 

He doesn’t know what sort of boon Megumi’s indignancy is, but he’s glad for it. The undeniable safety only the baby can bring a wash of calm he can visibly see settling over the twins as they go back and forth. He shrieks when Satoru yanks his hand back, mercilessly tickling along the sides of his neck, careful to keep infinity a solid wall between Megumi’s flailing and Mimiko’s wide eyed look of blatant envy.

“Speaking of,” Suguru mutters, fondly exasperated as Megumi rolls away, tumbling into his side and Tsumiki, shoving her hard enough she topples back onto the floor, an offended, wordless shout leaving her lips. “Are you two still hungry? I bet there’s batter left over.”

“There is,” Satoru says, and leaves Mimiko with a last bright smile and soft pat to her cheek as he stands, using Limitless to gather all the shards from the floor, hovering them between his curved palms as he pads back into the kitchen. 

“...I want a pancake,” he hears Mimiko tentatively request, voice soft but warmer than before, more daring than what he’s sure it’s been so far. “Can I have a pancake, too?” 

“Me too,” Nanako copies, turning around to plead, hesitant but bold, “can I have one too?”

He smiles to himself as the shards are dumped into the trash. Maybe it’ll be a long time before their first thought is safety over anything else, but a village isn’t built overnight, and every single one starts with a foundation, first.

“You’re going to kill that poor man,” Suguru drawls, wry amusement thick in his voice as he stares down at where Shoko’s leaned over the blanket they’d spread out over the wood of the small engawa. She only grins a little wider, poorly folding a piece of cardstock containing messy, scribbled kanji. 

“That’s the point,” Shoko throws back. As if he’s any better, Satoru rolls his eyes, spooning another mouthful of Suguru’s homemade applesauce up to Megumi’s lips. He’s letting the babying slide because he’d seen that squinted, narrow eyed stare he’d had on his face, watching them explain antibiotics to Mimiko and then Nanako by extension, an inkling stirring in the silky darkness of his cursed energy.

“Would Ojii-chan like hearts?” Tsumiki asks, sat in the hollow of Shoko’s crossed legs, a red marker in her hands as she helps to decorate the world’s worst congratulations card.

“Oh yes he would,” Shoko says, an evil sort of glee in her narrowed eyes, her closed lip smirk growing another notch larger when Tsumiki starts scribbling them all over the paper.

“Still feeling alright?” Satoru asks, ignoring them as Suguru starts to nitpick the shape of said hearts, reaching over their small assortment of foods for the water pitcher. Mimiko shrugs as he refills her cup, shyer after the plate incident but maybe just a little tired, too. “Not queasy, or dizzy?” 

“No,” she murmurs, raising her glass to take a sip, dark, choppy hair a soft rasp against his shirt as he sets the pitcher back down, ever grateful for the fact that he’s six foot too tall with legs the length of the Atlantic. They make for a very great argument diffuser when two snobby little kids realize they can both fit in his lap.

“That’s good,” Satoru hums, smearing jam on another piece of milk bread, munching not because he’s ever hungry but because he wants to encourage the both of them to eat more. “I don’t like antibiotics much. They make me feel all icky.”

“...They taste really bad,” Mimiko offers, small but bashful, dark eyes peering up behind her bangs to glance at him, and Satoru makes a show of sticking out his tongue and fake gagging.

“The worst,” he crows, to Megumi’s annoyance, one small fist yanking on his arm, even though it gets her to giggle slightly. He does feel bad for her- she’d really choked trying to get it down, some chalky, foul smelling pill Shoko had brought back from the school’s supply half an hour ago that clearly tasted as horrible as it looked. It’ll get her eye back to normal, though, so he can’t say a temporarily bad taste isn’t worth it.

“Yeah yeah yeah, here comes the airplane and all that jazz,” Satoru snarks, scooping another spoonful for Megumi to eat, thumbing at the side of his lips when a little dots at their corner. ‘You’re so damn pampered,’ he thinks, unable to find it in himself to be genuinely reproachful that they’re being spoiled.

“What do you mean, you’ve never seen a bunny before?” Suguru teases, mockingly aghast as he stares down at Nanako, the conversation filtering back into his ears when Satoru glances up. “They’re everywhere.”

“I dunno,” she says, shrugging, a blush coating her nose and hands fidgeting together in her lap as she leans back against his stomach, “they blend in. I don’t see ‘em until they run.” He snorts, bringing his hands back down from their perch on his hips to settle soft but weighted over her waist. 

“I guess they do, huh?” Suguru agrees, flicking another pen back in Shoko’s direction when it begins to roll. He grabs a slice of honeydew as he draws his fingers back, lifting it to take a pointed bite before offering it down to Nanako, a sneaky ploy to get her to keep eating.

“We have a bunch around here,” he muses through the mouthful, something small and pleased settling on his face when Nanako takes a hesitant bite, sitting on the taste of it for a moment before she seems to decide that she likes it. “I think there’s a family that lives under the engawa, actually.”

“...And what are you doing?” Satoru asks, setting the jar of applesauce on the covered wood as he glances down, suddenly feeling Megumi’s cursed energy spike, wispy and sheer like a curtain as it sways. His little hands shape into the sign for rabbit like they can’t just see them.

“Nothing,” he lies, plainly guilty in true toddler fashion, clearly trying to summon one. Satoru raises an eyebrow, temporarily ignoring Mimiko’s confusion and Tsumiki’s curious glance up because he’s a little curious himself. Megumi’s done a lot of growing in the last month in just managing to control the coming and going of the demon dogs, and he’d called him a prodigy for a reason.

“You’re joking,” Suguru mutters, when the shadows around their late breakfast twist, coiling into the loose shape of a bunny before two are springing free, coalescing into life, white fur, and twitching pink noses. 

“Good job!” Satoru exclaims, when Megumi expectedly slumps, eyes blinking unevenly as his head lolls, a low groan pulling from his lips. “I’m so proud of you, baby!” It only gets him a wrinkled nose, scrunched to hide a pleased smile, but flesh can’t hide the excited beat of a heart when he slides an arm around Megumi’s middle to hold him up. 

“They’re so soft,” Mimiko murmurs, a small awe in her voice as one of the shadow bunnies shuffle up to her, nose twitching and looking for cuddles when Megumi’s never really gotten around to changing his internal thoughts of rabbits to anything other than soft and snuggly.

“He can make bunnies?” Nanako gasps, looking up at Suguru, to his bark of laughter. Tsumiki takes the moment to weasel out of Shoko’s lap to chase after the other one, getting to it before it can run, teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she smiles wide enough to dimple her cheeks.

“It’s so cute,” she squeals, clearly only just restraining from squeezing it as she runs a hand down its back, and Shoko chuckles lowly.

“I don’t envy you,” she chortles, brown eyes narrowed in mirth, and Satoru sticks his tongue out at her. Megumi’s more nasty streak of jealousy will not be a problem, he’s decided. They can divide their attention between four kids. Things will work, whether they want to or not.

“Show off,” he still finds himself fondly muttering, carding his fingers through Megumi’s soft hair where he lays and pretends like he didn’t just induce himself into a nap, the afterimages of his unfamiliar shadows fading rapidly without his direct focus on keeping them tangible. Shoko stretches, grabbing attention as her spine cracks, rising to her knees and stuffing the few pens in her back pockets to put away in the kitchen. She leans over, swatting them both on the head with her horrible card.

“I’ve actually gotta go soon if I want to see ‘Hime today,” she explains, to Tsumiki’s put upon whine of protest, “so sorry to leave you boys helpless.” 

“Rude,” Suguru jabs, grabbing the homemade card before Shoko can thwack him with it again, thumbing it open to look down at its contents. “Who says we need your help?” She makes a face in retaliation, flashing him double birds they really shouldn’t be advertising around Megumi and his slippery lips. 

“Are you their sister?” Nanako blurts, face reddening when all three of them turn to her, shrinking slightly in Suguru’s arms as she shrugs. “Sorry,” she whispers, to Suguru’s raising eyebrows and Shoko’s small, growing smile. “I just- you seem like siblings.”

“Don’t be,” she assures, “that’s…not actually a bad way to put it.” 

“Awh, is your heart gonna grow three sizes, too?” Satoru snarks, nabbing the pen she throws at him out of the air before it can hit his forehead and bounce onto Mimiko. 

“Wait,” Tsumiki interrupts, yanking on Shoko’s pant leg, “are you not related?” Her eyes are the size of saucers, some new revelation apparently striking her hard, and Suguru laughs, doubling over around Nanako.

“Maybe in spirit,” he says, grinning. “Shoko’s our best friend, so she’s more like a sister than anything, but no, we’re not.”

“I’d never get a single day of peace if I was related to you,” Shoko teases, flicking her hair over her shoulder, and Satoru scoffs as Tsumiki sits back down, slowly nodding. 

“Actually, speaking of peace,” Suguru mutters, something trite in the narrowing of his eyes as a frown overshadows his grin. “Has Shelly texted you at all?” He asks, mildly distracted with his eyebrows crimped in distaste, lowering the card for Nanako to look at when she cranes her head.

“No,” Shoko answers, hands stuffing in her pockets to thumb at the curve of her phone, their impromptu code flying right over the kid’s heads, “I think she’s busy helping Mary find a new place, still.”

“Well if she’s found one she hasn’t called me,” Satoru offers, shrugging, tamping down on a shiver at the reminder. Hopefully it’ll be at least another week before Kenjaku finds some place that isn’t a dusty warehouse. He doesn’t like that that fungus is growing on him like some rotting mold. The longer ancient evil sorcerers can stay away from them, the better.

Shoko hums, brows lowering, a contemplative suspicion on her face that lingers for the moment it takes her to smear it away. “Remember to save me a spot in the scrapbook,” she says, waving over her shoulder as she turns, picking her way through their tangle of food and small children to duck back into the house. 

“Make sure Yaga knows I made that card when you give it to him!” She calls, to Suguru’s low snort, only for Satoru to recoil, a sharp lance of betrayal spiking in his stomach.

“Did you tell him?!” He yells, craning back to watch Shoko disappear through the living room, nothing but her arm sticking out around the bend of the corner flashing a peace sign. Satoru gasps, offended, hands still cradled gently over Mimiko and Megumi as they stare up at him with squinted eyes. “I wanted to do that! Shoko!”

“Who’s Yaga?” Mimiko asks, a slant to her lips and a slight curve in her shoulders, as if she’s worried but won’t say so.

“Ojii-chan!” Tsumiki exclaims, smoothing out her dress where it was rumpled chasing after Megumi’s bunny. “He looks all big and gruff but he’s actually really nice,” she says, before she pauses, lips pressing together as she squints. “He’s not really related to you, either, is he,” she mutters, to Suguru’s barking snort.

“No,” Satoru says, softly shaking his head, smiling when he reaches out to tug on her ear. “I think of him like a father though, so it’s good enough for me.”

“Is he coming?” Megumi asks, having fully slid down onto the blanket, eyes still stubbornly shut. 

“Probably,” Suguru sighs, tucking the card under his elbow as he stands, taking Nanako with him. “Cause Ba-chan can’t keep her big fat mouth shut.” Megumi smiles, just a hint of baby teeth showing as Tsumiki laughs, following him into the house with a few things crammed into her arms as they begin to clean up. 

“He has to draw me another dragon,” Megumi mumbles, words softening as Satoru scoops an arm underneath both him and Mimiko, swinging up to his feet to set them down on the couch so he can help pick everything up. He catches her interested look, something like surprise washing over her face.

“Maybe if you’re still awake,” he chides, rolling his eyes at Megumi’s annoyed huff. He gives it four hours before Yaga stomps through the front door and yells at them for giving him more paperwork, waving around the mission report they still haven’t found the diligence to do.

‘Whatever,’ Satoru thinks, not particularly worried when he knows all Yaga’s going to do is sigh and make more stuffed bears the second he goes home. Tsumiki’s very right about him. He looks all gruff, but really, he’s just a huge softie.

Chapter Text

“There’s more?” Nanako asks, light eyes swinging up to his face, large with curiosity. 

“Course,” Suguru says, resettling her in his arms as he climbs the stairs, “you probably didn’t see the second story last night.” He taps her cheek, getting her to turn her head as he listens to Satoru follow after him, Tsumiki brushing past him in a rush of bright colors and dark hair. 

“...Oh,” Nanako breathes, lips parting as she stares out at the sprawl of the upstairs. He watches her eyes roam over the closest wall, mostly untouched when no one uses the bedrooms lined along it yet, meandering over the large cream carpet under the couch and chairs as Satoru brushes by him. 

They drag to the small overhang looking down on the foyer after he’s striding away in Tsumiki’s wake, gradually moving along over the open door to the guest room Shoko used last night, to Megumi’s, to Tsumiki’s on the opposite side of their shared hallway, to the one behind her room, hiding another terrace. 

Her lips press together for a moment, fingers fidgeting restlessly in the noisy moment it takes her to speak, filled by Tsumiki’s excitement to show Mimiko her room and Satoru’s placations for her to keep quiet so as not to wake Megumi up. 

“...Are you rich?” She asks, leaning up to whisper against his ear behind a cupped palm, and playing along, Suguru turns his head to whisper in her own.

“Extremely,” he says, because though it gives him heart palpitations to think about how much money Satoru has for too long, it’ll mean that Nanako won’t feel like a burden the same way Tsumiki’s trying to unlearn. Maybe it had been a mistake not to impress that upon her early on, but at least they’ll get a second chance to try again, to do a little bit better than before.

“Oh,” she murmurs, blinking stagnantly for a moment, before her ears are blushing red again. “I’ve never met anyone who’s rich before,” Nanako admits, shrugging slightly, something shifting in her gaze as she looks up, thoughts realigning to fit her new view of him.

“I hadn’t either,” Suguru offers, lifting his eyes for a moment as Satoru ducks into Megumi’s room, disappearing around the corner to presumably put him down for a much needed nap. “Don’t tell anyone,” he teases, raising a finger to his lips as he smiles, “but Satoru’s gonna marry me, so we’ll both be rich together.”

Nanako shakes her head, miming zipping her lips, eyes wide as saucers. “I won’t,” she whispers, and Suguru can’t help a snicker, leaning down to kiss her head as he finally follows after everyone else. She stills slightly as he does, like she hadn’t been expecting it, and silently, he takes it as a spite to start doing it more.

“We don’t have anything to get done today besides paperwork, so we’ll try to order some things for you two,” he muses, peering around the hall’s corner to catch Mimiko lingering outside of Megumi’s room, eyes locked on Satoru as he tucks Megumi in. Her hand curls around the doorway, something jealous or miserably longing drawing her shoulders up, pushing a delicacy into every fidget of her shifting movement as she watches. 

“Mimiko,” he calls, a touch trite when she jumps, head whipping around in a flare of shaggy, inky hair to look at him, as if she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t have. “Do you want to come see the extra bedrooms?” 

“I do!” Tsumiki calls, though it’s less loud than earlier now that Satoru’s pointedly shushed her once or twice. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone in those rooms,” she says, head tilting slightly as she bumps up against his side. “Are they the same as ours?”

“Mmhm,” Suguru hums, cupping a hand around the back of her head, “I think the windows are on opposite sides since they face east instead of west.” 

“Cool,” Tsumiki hushes, turning when Mimiko slowly nudges towards them. 

“I’ll go find that dinky laptop,” Satoru promises, quietly shutting Megumi’s door just enough to block the noise out, “we’re gonna need to do another shopping spree.” He wrinkles his nose when Suguru pinches his side as he passes, playfully offended as he swings to a stilted halt. 

“It’s not dinky,” he chides. Satoru rolls his eyes, scoffing, grabbing his hand to twin their fingers together as he pulls him closer. “It’s cutting edge!”

“Babe, sugar, my one and only,” he schmoozes, pecking a kiss to the tip of his nose, his cheeks, his chin, “it’s so damn dinky.” Suguru shoves him away by his face, feeling teeth below his fingers as lips split into a grin, begrudgingly keeping his mocking remarks about useless time travelers to himself. He listens to Satoru’s echoing laugh bounce along the living room as he vanishes back down the stairs like he’d heard them anyway.

Nanako’s silent as he leads Mimiko and Tsumiki on a mini-parade for the opposite side of the upstairs, face flaming and eyes stuck on the stairwell where Satoru disappeared, clearly rearranging what the word ‘marry’ means in her head. 

‘Good,’ Suguru thinks, another smidgeon of righteously glad as Tsumiki and Mimiko start to chatter lightly back and forth, ‘they should know what real love looks like.’ He can’t imagine that they’d have seen it living in a family that could treat them like they had.

“They’re both connected by fusuma doors,” Suguru explains, opening one of the western bedroom doors and frowning at the sight of the dust he can see standing three meters away from the nearest window. “I think the other one is a little bit bigger, but only by an inch or two, so no one should be getting a worse deal.” 

“Woah,” Tsumiki tones, spinning in a circle as she looks around the empty space, bare feet leaving imprints on untouched carpeting, immediately making for the shut sliding doors when she’s seemed to complete her panorama. “Doesn’t Megumi have these in his room, too?” She asks, huffing to shove one side open.

“Yes,” Suguru snickers, setting Nanako down on the carpet as carefully as he can before padding over to help her, pulling it open with ease where the hinges have gotten stuck and sticky from their lack of use. “We put furniture over it though, since it’s connected to the guest room.”

‘Which feels very suspicious, now that I think about it.’ He only lets his eyes narrow for a moment as the thought runs through his head, an odd flash of how Satoru chose a house with six bedrooms instead of five. As far as he’s aware, the Fushiguro siblings and the Hasaba twins are going to be it. ‘...Shit,’ he sighs, resigning himself to the inevitable realization that he’s been sorely played.

“...Who are these for?” Mimiko asks, quiet as she looks up, knelt on the carpet beside Nanako, eyes tracking his face as he wanders back, slotting down beside them as Tsumiki peers around the other room.

“What do you mean?” Suguru chides, an easy smile settling itself on his lips as he gently pokes her forehead. “They’re for you, silly.”

“...What,” Nanako murmurs, near silent and almost breathless as it seems to escape her, eyes turning wide as they dart up to his face, hands stuttering to a halt where they’d been carding through soft, cream colored carpet. “But-” She begins, tripping over her own tongue, ultimately shutting her mouth as her brows furrow a crease into her skin.

“You didn’t think we’d take you just to give you away again, did you?” Suguru asks, soft as the thickened silence settles, absently holding out a hand when Tsumiki whispers back. He watches their faces, almost identical in features and shape, eyes large and lips barely parted, no color to either of them when they’ve had nothing to eat for however long they were in that cage. 

Wordlessly, Nanako shrugs, lips thinning as they unsteadily press together, and Suguru sighs again, more audible as he tugs Tsumiki into his side.

“You’re not captive,” he starts, words quiet as the stairs creak slightly a ways away, Satoru’s footsteps nothing but a thought. “If there’s someone else you’d rather live with, we’d do everything we could to find them.” 

Tsumiki’s head leans along his ribs, her body slanting against the line of him, entirely at ease as she melts not unlike warmed butter, eyes trained on Nanako and Mimiko with an urgency she won’t speak of. They haven’t known each other longer than two hours, and already he can see the want she has for them to stay.

“But if there’s not,” Suguru promises, reaching out his other hand, slow as he brushes dark bangs out of darker eyes, blonde hair away from little nose, “I meant what I said. We’d take you home, right?” 

Nanako blinks, a little rushed and a little rapid, eyes starting to shine as she bites down on her compressed lips, a flush returning to her chalky face. “...Even if- if we’re not-...not what you wanted?” She asks, nothing but a whisper, and Suguru nods as the door whines open further.

“Especially,” Satoru chimes, sinking down onto his knees just behind them, laptop set on the carpet and eyes partially hidden behind opaque black glass. “There’s nothing we want from you,” he continues, setting a palm on Mimiko’s head, sending a scattered wink Tsumiki’s direction, “aside from getting you healthy, maybe.” 

Mimiko only stares up at him, seemingly stuck as her twin swallows thickly, something hard to choke down evidently trudging through her mind. “It’s hard to believe a stranger might love you unconditionally, isn’t it,” Suguru says, low and quiet, “when your own family couldn’t?” 

“It-...yes,” Nanako whispers, like her voice has gotten caught in her throat, her nose starting to dribble even though she refuses to cry despite her red-rimmed eyes. 

“It’s ‘cause they weren’t your people,” Tsumiki butts in, brash and somewhat shy, fingers restlessly messing with the hem of his shirt as she looks down, her expression losing its tenser edges as she thinks of something, a memory. “They find you,” she says, “if you don’t find ‘em first.”

“...I’d like to find mine,” Mimiko haltingly says, an unabashed hope in her open face, eyes flickering from his own to Satoru’s to Tsumiki’s, and finally to Nanako’s, as she sits between them all and seems to finally choose.

“I want to be,” she murmurs, terrified. “I really, really wanna be.” 

“Then you can,” Satoru promises, leaning over the both of them as he winds an arm over Mimiko’s hips, tugging her back into his lap as Suguru pulls Nanako closer, mindful of her ankle as he swaddles her in the curve of his arms. None of them say a word about how she cries, silent tears spilling over that find themselves dampening his shirt, and when Suguru looks up, he’s relieved to see that Mimiko seems equally reassured where she presses into Satoru, less teary but more clingy.

“There’s no rules to family,” Suguru says, the words partially muffled against smooth blonde hair as he strokes a warmed palm down Nanako’s back, increasing his temperature another notch when she shivers. “Sometimes, we make our own.” 

She sniffles, loud and uncontrollable, small fingers wrapped so tightly in the collar of his shirt they warp the shape of the threads. He doesn’t mind, because this pain held in his palms is a kind that doesn’t make him want to set his hands alight- it’s agonizing, maybe, and quietly loud, and awful, but it’s not the kind that breaks. 

It’s the kind that rebuilds, he thinks, thumbing away one of Nanako’s tears when she finally looks up, still crying and still sniffling and still scared but hopeful beneath it all. Wanting, instead of simply needing, and it’s enough of a mirror that it’s as uncomfortable as it is reassuring. 

“We’ll do better,” he whispers, “we’ll do better, we’ll do so much better,” saying it over as many times as he can stand it, one palm curved around Tsumiki’s head and the other over Nanako’s, because he means it, means it as maybe the truest thing he’s ever said. They will do better. He’ll do better than his parents, do better than the twin’s, do better than Satoru did once and do better than he himself might have.

There’s a catharsis in it, a release, maybe. The guilt doesn’t feel like so much, after.

“I’m starting to think there’s going to be a divine karma for all four of them picking rooms without a fight,” Suguru mutters, to Satoru’s soft laugh, leaning against his side as they browse through what he calls, ‘disgustingly primitive online shopping,’ with plans to drop an even more disgusting amount of cash on clothing and furniture. 

“Just be happy about it and don’t question it,” Satoru snarks, skimming down another row of nightstands. “She said she liked the darker colors- what about this?” He asks, turning the laptop around to show off a deep colored wood, a small nightstand with two drawers and skinny legs. 

“Mimiko?” Suguru calls, and can’t help his amusement when her head whips around, sending her halo of dark hair flying. “What do you think about this one?”

Her lips slant, and wordlessly, she gets up from Tsumiki and Nanako’s small circle sat in front of her large bookcase, rummaging through the lower shelves together so she can show off all her stuff. 

“...I like it,” Mimiko offers, politely stopping just short of his feet, and tongue clucking, Suguru pulls her closer.

“Yeah? Maybe we could try to find a bed that matches, unless you want another color?” Satoru begins, nudging the laptop’s trackpad closer to her as Suguru settles her against his stomach, arms loose over her own and chin tucked above her head. 

“...Maybe,” Mimiko says, shrugging, indecisive as her sister. 

“Are you sure?” Satoru needles, giving an aimless scroll through the website only he’d call gaudy and its endless pages of furniture for sale. “There’s an infinite amount of money at your fingertips and therefore infinite options.”

“Uh,” Mimiko stutters, brows furrowing slightly, and Suguru tilts his head, recognizing that tone.

“Maybe having a list to pick from would be easier?” He suggests, not raised poor but not raised rich either, lifting his head to crane over her to catch her eyes, thumb brushing the edge of her jaw as he tilts it up. 

‘Losers,’ Satoru mouths, but doesn’t say, because he doesn’t mean it as anything but a joke though the twins would hear the farthest thing from one as they are right now, tentative and delicate and waiting for one wrong move to shatter the glass.

“I think so,” she whispers, shivering slightly when he hums, head pillowing onto his sternum with a sort of numbness he’s beginning to realize comes from a newfound sort of awe for tactility. Megumi had been similar, even Satoru had years ago at the beginning of it all, but it’s more evident with them- more obvious, when softer touches have clearly been rarer. At least Megumi had had Tsumiki before them.

“How about we pick…five items of furniture each that’ll go in your room,” Suguru begins, kicking Satoru’s ankle when he opens his mouth to say, ‘ten,’ instead, “and a randomized list of clothing for you to sort through later?”

Mimiko sits back, eyes narrowing slightly as she thinks about it, chewing on the idea. “...Okay,” she agrees, after a moment’s beat by, nodding. She doesn’t immediately make to get up and rejoin Tsumiki and Nanako after she’s spoken. 

Instead, she stalls for a second, halting, deliberates another second, before seemingly deciding to ultimately stay put. Neither of them say anything, not perturbed in the least, and Suguru only smooths a hand down her hair in a repeated pattern as Nanako and Tsumiki finally turn back to see where she’s gone. They stare for a moment, still caught up talking, before they turn right back around. 

It’s nice to watch Nanako simply relax, seeing her sister in the clutch of his arms. It’s nice having Mimiko in them, a little weight that’s just a bit bigger than Tsumiki when they’re both a year ahead. It’s nice to know that any sort of fear is a tameable thing, after all, and nice still to think that maybe Mimiko just wants contact, and has decided they’re safe enough to ask it from, if only silently.

“Question for you,” Suguru says, nudging Satoru’s shoulder as he starts clicking through furniture listings, eyes narrowed as he pokes through colors and designs to add to the cart for Mimiko to pick from. He hums, so Suguru keeps talking, careful not to let any of the real words leak through when Mimiko’s sat in his lap and still fragile about their tentative permanence here. The last thing he wants to do is give them some false impression more kids is something he doesn’t want. 

“Is there going to be another Pokémon? One that starts with Yu and ends with ta?” He asks, and Satoru stutters, nothing but a brief stilling of his fingers over the keyboard as he searches a new category, lasting barely a second before they’re picking up again.

“...Maybe,” he mutters, staring too intently at the screen, and Suguru rolls his eyes. 

“You said four,” he wheedles, purposely playful, ever mindful of Mimiko’s sharp glance, keeping his hands soft as they stroke down her hair, thumb at the base of her spine. There’s no fight, they promise, gentle and easy, there’s no pain.

“I know,” Satoru mumbles, something like sheepish as his cheekbones stain with a dusting of pink, embarrassment hidden under black glasses. “But, listen he’s-...I don’t have an excuse,” he sighs, tabbing back a page, adding another lamp to the list. “I didn’t think it would even end up being a thing, initially,” he mutters, an old sort of frustration thinning his lips together, “but if the last mission was different, what’s to say that won’t be, too?”

“...And if it doesn’t happen at all?” Suguru asks, curious about the kid he’s heard maybe the least about, nothing he really knows of him save a demon tethered to his ankle and a shyness that had made him endearing, if not for a massive amount of unparalleled strength. He knows Yuuta had a rough life. He also knows Satoru wasn’t very involved in it.

“Then it doesn’t happen,” Satoru responds, maybe clicking on another item a little too aggressively, maybe harboring a guilt just different enough to be similar to his own, “and we don’t bother.”

“...You miss him, don’t you?” He finds himself asking, feeling Mimiko decompress little by little against him, her own tiredness catching up to her when he’s the temperature of warmed blankets, larger and soft and safer now that she knows she resolutely is. Wordlessly, he holds her a little snugger, noticing she practically melts as soon as he scratches feathery fingers through her choppy hair.

It takes a moment, one steeped in a heavy sort of silence, before Satoru looks up. He shrugs, an answer if only one to Suguru alone, eyes skimming away before they gradually meander back. 

“...They just…remind me of him. That’s all,” he murmurs, a melancholy to it, or maybe a longing. “I shouldn’t even be- it wasn’t like I didn’t get a goodbye,” he huffs, tapping along the keyboard to search for a new item, the startling efficiency something Suguru would be perturbed by if he wasn’t already accustomed to it.

“I don’t think a haunting counts as a goodbye,” he jabs, rueful and dry, enough so that Satoru looks up again. His eyes dip down to where Mimiko’s shut hers, slumped in his lap and starting in on a nap of her own, evidently content enough to do so at all.

“No,” Satoru agrees, “it probably doesn’t.” He falls silent again, thinking, fingertips ticking atop keys he doesn’t press. “I didn’t find- that Pokémon,” he fumbles, “until years later. Y- it was off the radar entirely until the gym leader caught our attention.” Satoru shakes his head, sighing slightly heavy, a wish in the lidded slant of his eyes. “If she hadn’t, I can’t say he would have stayed around much longer.”

“...What about now?” Suguru asks, curious, because as much as he thinks five kids is nothing short of an utter nightmare, they’re already at four, and he can’t deny that he’s a bit of a bleeding heart, too. If Satoru comes home one day with a tiny little squirt with two big blue eyes, and roughed up black hair, and band-aid scattered skin, Suguru can’t say he wouldn’t just open the door and offer, ‘come in,’ with a tired smile. 

“I’d like to find it,” Satoru admits, fingers dragging restlessly along the edges of the laptop and its whirring fans, “but it would take a massive amount of paper trails, and time we don’t really have to give away…It’d be no better than looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“And if it’s not?” Suguru wonders, curious to see how far he can poke this sore, and only offers a pleasant smile when Satoru turns his head to stare at him, a chagrined look on his face. 

“And if it’s not, I want to find and keep it,” he grouses, eyes narrowed and a bit miffed at having information pulled like teeth, “happy?” 

“Yes,” Suguru says, leaning forwards to press a peck to soft, glossy lips. It gets him a pout, one that’s melodramatic and entirely fake, but just annoying enough to make him laugh. “I don’t mind,” he promises, reshuffling Mimiko slightly as her limbs loosen into limpness, tucking an arm below her legs as he cradles her against his chest.

He can’t really imagine anything else he’d rather be doing.

“Maybe I’m not thrilled at more crises,” Suguru teases, “but do I look like someone who isn’t happy with their life, to you?”

Satoru huffs, face turning down as he snickers, a shine in his eyes as their murmurs lap like waves below the endless chatter of the two girls sat a few feet away from them, quietly giggling together, shyly getting to know each other. 

“No,” he says, “you look pretty happy to me.”

“...It’s nice having a big family,” Suguru confesses, glancing down to Mimiko as he brushes his knuckles over the curve of her cheek, dark hair tickling his chin. “It was…it was really lonely growing up by myself,” he continues, pushing the words out even when they try to stick, because Satoru’s heard all of him he could possibly hear, and one aimless confession won’t change anything that’s already settled. 

“So it’s been nice. To have this, I mean,” he explains, pulling Mimiko a touch closer, maybe a little in love if it could be said to be big enough of a word.

“...I could make you another-” Satoru teases, a grin stretching his lips wide as Suguru snorts, shoving a hand against his face as he leans in, peppering kisses all down his cheek and chin and throat. 

“You didn’t make any!” He shouts, laughing helplessly as Mimiko jars awake, jerking when long, limber fingers find the ticklish spots on his ribs and neck. “Satoru!” He collapses on the floor of Tsumiki’s room, gasping when they topple, giggling like an idiot as Mimiko clutches to his neck, Satoru an unrepentant nuisance hovering above him.

“You’re so annoying,” Suguru pants, winded, only to get one pink tongue stuck out at him for it.

“You like annoying,” Satoru refutes, leaning down when he raises a hand up, and Suguru sighs, not chagrined in the slightest.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and sinks into the kiss as easily as he thinks he ever has. “I do.”

“I’m home!” Yaga calls, his voice loud as it rings from the foyer, and Suguru can’t help that he immediately perks up. “Shoko said that there was a surprise I don’t want to know about-” He cuts off with a sharp halt as he lumbers into the living room, the fusuma doors secluding the kitchen pulled open to a view of Tsumiki, Mimiko, and Nanako sat at the table, steadily working through a package of sweetened snacks they really shouldn’t be eating before lunch.

“You’re joking,” Yaga mutters, a flat look on his flatter face, and Suguru can’t help a mild sputter as he listens to Satoru fumble around in the kitchen, lunging into the square arch of the doorway to pop one of the confetti cannons left over from Tsumiki’s birthday in his face.

“Surprise!” He crows, absolutely elated at the dull glower it gets him “It’s twins!” 

“Is it,” Yaga says, toneless, and Suguru finally laughs, nabbing the card Shoko made off of the counter as he pads closer.

“Here,” he says, “from your favorite mortician.” Slowly, Yaga takes it, his lips thinning out like melting rubber left in the summer sun as he skims over both the badly folded pages. There’s shittily drawn confetti, a smattering of Tsumiki’s wobbly hearts, and even a horrible stick figure doodle of what’s clearly Satoru, blindfolded and disturbingly pregnant in the corner.

“You’ve outdone yourselves,” Yaga drawls, eyes fixed to the brief blurb of words they left among the mess. Nothing much besides a short, ‘congratulations! There’s aspirin in the cabinet!’ “Did you kill anyone,” he mutters, a touch lower so the twins won’t hear it, and silently, Suguru shakes his head.

“...I…did burn the village down,” he admits, after a moment passes by and Yaga only stares at him, sunglasses hanging on his shirt and two gold stars stuck to his face, obviously left over from Panda or Yu. 

“But no one’s dead,” Yaga presses, taking the moment to wrap up solely in him as Satoru lets them have it, sweeping away to entertain the girls for the few minutes they spend, doing this…thing. This, ‘have you committed homicide and do I need to be worried,’ thing.

“No one’s dead,” Suguru repeats, a little surprised himself when the words come out rasped, and can’t even be bothered to hide it when the contrite thing slips onto his face. 

He looks away for a long second, happy still, sure, though unable to lie and say he doesn’t feel some of that turmoil coming back. The worming, unpleasant kind he’d felt holding onto Satoru after his visit to the estate, the disgust or the shame at knowing he’d wanted to take lives without guilt. Maybe the simple fact that he wants to hate his parents, some days, even though he can’t ever bring himself to.

“Don’t start,” Yaga interrupts as soon as he opens his mouth, one hand coming up to sit on his head, and Suguru doesn’t bother with pretending like he’s strong enough to stand on his own when he lets it fall forward. He doesn’t want to stand on his own. He can’t lie to himself that, even though he’s found plenty of wells of bravery, sometimes he still gets scared.

“I don’t need an explanation,” Yaga murmurs, arms strong and sturdy around his back as Suguru squeezes him like he’s nothing but a kid, hands around his neck and face slotting into hiding against the pulse of a jugular. “Just tell me what you need me to give.”

The words don’t mean more words themselves, Suguru knows. They’re permission for the silent sort of requests, too. So, he tightens his arms a little more, clinging even though he should be strong enough not to, and Yaga doesn’t say anything even though he knows he understands. One large palm comes up to the back of his head, its matching arm curled around his back, and Suguru doesn’t give a single shit about any sort of strength he should or shouldn’t have.

He’s scared. He can admit that. He’s scared about a lot of things a lot of the time, and he can be brave about everything else still beside it. He can want Yaga, strong and steady and safe, and still have his own footing.

He doesn’t need to crumble first before he can be given the glue.

Satoru’s voice drifts from the kitchen while they stand there, stuck like statues, quietly explaining who Yaga is again to Tsumiki’s delighted interjections. He hears plates shuffling around, and the clink of utensils, and glasses being refilled. There’s chatter, good and hesitant and excited, blurring into background noise as he rests his head against the curve of Yaga’s neck and takes a moment to just breathe in.

“I’m proud of you,” Yaga whispers, turning his head just enough to brush his lips and scratchy goatee against his temple, and Suguru chuckles, a little weak when he’s letting himself be, if only for a moment. 

“Thanks,” he whispers back, and though he still feels small in Yaga’s arms, he feels bigger than the last time he hung in them for a while. “Do you wanna meet them?” He asks, finally pulling back as he rubs at his eyes, not shiny or crying but a little prickly nonetheless, and fully expects it when Yaga scowls.

“What kind of a question is that,” he scoffs, gently cuffing him on the head, and Suguru laughs, tugging him into the kitchen.

They like him, because of course they do. 

It takes a few minutes, some gentle prodding and Yaga’s own gruff exterior to take a walk for a moment, but they like him. ‘How could they not?’ Satoru thinks, amused as he watches Mimiko and Nanako fawn over the little doodles of bunnies Yaga’s made on leftover napkins, shaded to look like them.

Witnessing Suguru be swallowed up by him for a few long minutes might have helped, too. He’ll get his own hug, he thinks, swinging up the stairs to get Megumi for lunch. There’s no way Suguru can hog their stress-principal to himself.

“Megumi,” Satoru tones, rapping softly on his bedroom door as he breezes it open, quietly padding inside as he catches movement under the thick duvet. “Are you ready to come eat lunch, darling?” 

He hears a groan, little and low and grumpy, and bites down on a smile, nothing short of disgustingly endeared when post-nap Megumi has always been the cutest thing he’s ever seen. 

“Meeegumi,” he sings, chiming the stretched vowels as he sits down on the edge of his downy bed, searching along the lumps of blanket until he finds something solid. “You’re gonna miss Yaga if you don’t get up.”

“‘M up,” he hears, grumbly and petulant from below the covers, before they’re rustling, shifting around until a dark head of messy hair pops out, two groggy green eyes blinking unevenly as more wuffling noises drift out from under the blankets. “He’s gotta… dragon,” Megumi snaps, sudden and alarmed as he turns, Shiro’s fluffy head poking out of the blanket fort like a wack-a-mole. 

Satoru laughs, grinning wide as he holds out his arms, endlessly delighted when Megumi willingly pitches himself into them. 

“Dragon,” he repeats, leaving the puppies to their own devices in Megumi’s overly-warmed bed as he hefts him up against his side, leaving the door cracked as he strides out. 

The yawn stretching wide beside his face is huge, rows of tiny baby teeth and scattering popping noises, fully matching the lazy slide of green eyes as they sweep over the upstairs, stilling on the railing dipping over the foyer as voices drift up from below it.

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ Satoru thinks, just about ready to keel over and die when he steps into the kitchen, the sight of both Mimiko and Nanako giggly and smiling threatening to explode his heart in his chest. Maybe there’s still some trepidation, a little fear, it’s not overwhelming. He’d even go as far as to call it underwhelming.

‘They just look like regular little kids,’ he muses, coming to a stop beside Suguru and Tsumiki at the table, catching a dark pair of crinkled eyes and knowing they share the same sentiment. Between twin smiles, bright eyes, and giddy excitement at a silly game, Mimiko and Nanako just look plainly happy.

One little thing, indeed, Satoru thinks. 

Chapter Text

After the chaos of the last two days, he can’t lie and say it’s not nice to have a lazy, unbothered evening. The time passes quickly, rolling through lunch and a steady stream of never ending introductions, until Megumi finally manages to break Yaga away from the girls and Tsumiki’s rapidly appearing, rapidly growing collection of nail polish. 

“No,” Megumi interrupts, for about the fourth time in ten minutes spent doling out self-important, little demands about how he wants his own dragon drawn, “it has to have bigger wings.” Satoru peers over his booklet of report papers to watch Yaga smooth out a harried look, the sweep of his pencil passing over expensive drawing paper wider than before. 

“Bigger,” Megumi complains, brows furrowed into a crease, and without even a sigh, Yaga silently erases. Beside him, Suguru snickers, a sly little smile sitting on his lips for a moment before he manages to smear it away, fingers carefully re-wrapping Nanako’s ankle as she sits in his lap and watches on impassively. 

“Hey, Yaga,” Satoru pipes up, and lets the smile show all of his teeth when two oaken eyes raise to meet his own in a sulky glower. Megumi throws a hand on another part of the massive drawing, sending eraser shavings scattering over the top of the kotatsu table as he opens his mouth.

“I changed my mind, I want it to have a beard,” he says, slapping the face of the giant, coiling lizard with wings. “Like yours.” 

“Like mine,” Yaga repeats, holding his eyes steady, and Satoru tries, he really does, to keep from smiling wider. 

“Yeah, that’s what I just said,” Megumi snarks, sniffling slightly, a wet sound of what has to be allergies that doesn’t break up his petulance whatsoever. 

“What was it you complained about a while ago? Something about wanting our first adult milestones to be normal?” Satoru finally says, tapping a finger against his chin just to be annoying, and only laughs a touch too gleefully when it gets one rubber eraser thrown at him. Despite the obvious suffering he’s experiencing, Yaga only leans back down and points at the pencil sketched onto the paper, muttering this or that to Megumi and his leery, contemplative squinting. 

All the while, the girls watch on. 

Mimiko’s eyes seem to be plastered to the two of them, Satoru’s noticed, fixated the longer they sit here in the calm of the living room and bicker back and forth between menial things. Despite the white patch, he can tell exactly what sorts of thoughts must be running through her head from the look of even just her left eye, constantly darting back and forth between Megumi, Yaga, him, Suguru, and Tsumiki- unbothered where she rests between his crossed feet, buried in a new Pokemon game.

She’s still got something doodled on her own piece of paper, even though she’s spent more time watching than drawing in the past half hour since they migrated from the kitchen. It’s a little clunky, like she’s never really bothered to doodle before, but he thinks she’s having fun doing it. 

‘In between the neverending doom-thinking, maybe,’ Satoru mutters to himself in his head, scrawling another signature below the box of his written report, dotting the kanji with absent little hearts just to be obnoxious. 

Nanako’s been similar. They’ve definitely settled since the morning, but he can see the wariness they both ooze with like they’re radioactive. It’s in every curved line of their softened posture, every narrowed slight of their identical eyes, the tense of Nanako’s curled fingers as Suguru had checked over her foot again. The wince in Mimiko’s shoulders when Megumi had back-talked Yaga the first time.

‘Just give it time,’ Satoru thinks, the reminder as harsh as it is quiet, mindlessly dropping down a wrist for Tsumiki to pull a hair tie off of when she tugs on his pants. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

It’s still harder than Tsumiki and Megumi were at first, just in a completely different way. 

“Hey, Mimiko,” Suguru begins, to the sudden turn of her head in a wash of black hair, single eye wide and a little startled, though not scared. “C’mere a second. I want to see how your eye is doing.”

“How long did Shoko say it would take to heal?” Satoru mumbles, leafing through another five pages of legal jargon about arson he doesn’t actually care about. Something something fines, something something one point four million yen, something something where did he leave that damn checkbook…

“A few days,” Suguru answers, reshuffling Nanako to make room for her sister when she pads closer. Satoru hums, raising an arm for her to slip under, turning his head to offer a small smile and a short kiss to Nanako’s forehead when she curls into his side, eyes a little wide but without any hesitation in them. 

“That’s good,” he trails off, making a face as he scribbles a note in the margins. No government will be getting records of said arson, period, and no he does not care what jujutsu legislation has to say about that.

Within a matter of moments, Tsumiki’s wormed her way up into his lap to show Nanako Pokemon Emerald, and then he’s listening to the muffled chatter as they go back and forth about how the game works. Tsumiki has a horrible little habit that he’s noticed of using stat moves, something Megumi loathes with an unbridled rage, and which she seems set on indoctrinating Nanako into, as well. Maybe it’s just out of spite, or maybe she actually thinks they work, he doesn’t know. It’s probably spite, knowing her. 

“That’s not looking too bad, actually,” Suguru muses, and Satoru looks over, watching Mimiko’s head tilt slightly by the gentle press of his fingers along her jaw, dark eyes raking over the corners of her inflamed right eye. 

It’s still slightly swollen, red around her iris, clearly irritated and obviously not healthy, but it’s infinitely better than it was even last night. “Maybe two more days?” Suguru wonders, letting her chin go, huffing quietly when Mimiko shrugs, as if it’s inconsequential to her. 

“...Can I keep the patch off?” She asks, tugging on her fingers in either a nervous movement or one that’s absentminded, and Suguru nods.

“Sure. Just make sure you don’t touch it, okay?” He asks, raising two hands to give her cheeks a squish, and Satoru finally looks away when he catches the shy curve of her sudden smile. It looks like it could almost be comfortable, tentative and a touch new, but like it could become well worn, some day.

It’s good enough for him.

“But can’t I stay up just a little later?” Tsumiki whines, yanking on his pajama pants until the waist of them is sagging, and Satoru refuses to let the groan tumble out of his mouth even though he gives himself one second, two, of staring forlornly at the ceiling. 

“‘Miki, it’s almost ten,” Suguru chides, reshuffling Megumi against his shoulder as he steadies Nanako, determinedly hobbling from the bathroom to their bed, a grimace on her ashen face but a stubbornness in the glower of her blonde brows. 

“You’ll be grumpy in the morning if you don’t sleep,” he warns, more for her benefit than for theirs, because as much as they dislike fighting their toddlers about menial grievances in the morning when they’re overtired, said toddlers always take it worse. 

Tsumiki doesn’t sigh, but her exhale is large, frustrated and uncertain, as heavy as her gaze when it drops to the carpet. A flush stains her ears red, likely from the memory they’re all thinking of from not that long ago- the day she’d come home and just about burst into tears, horrified she’d been mean to them at seven in the morning after only five hours of sleep. 

“...’S not fair,” she mutters, almost under her breath, but Satoru’s close enough to hear it. It almost doesn’t seem like her, to blame the world around her than anything else, except he’s beginning to understand how Tsumiki functions, really functions, right down to the tips of her fingers and the strings of her heart. 

“Tsumiki,” Satoru murmurs, crouching down to her level, and keeps his expression placid and clear when two large hazel eyes blink up at him, a little watery if he’s looking for it. “What are you avoiding?” He asks, knowing he’s right when she locks up like an oak tree, stiff as a board and fingers curling into fists. 

“Nobody,” Tsumiki says, but it’s a weak thing, flimsy and hesitant and clearly lacking any real dedication. “I don’t know,” she continues, when Satoru only watches her, waiting for the break. “It isn’t- I can’t do it,” she finally explains, voice hitching on its high notes as her hands find the hem of her shirt to wring into. “I dunno what they’re all gonna say tomorrow and- and I don’t wanna see them after what they did anyway, and-!” 

“Tsumiki,” Satoru hums, quiet and calm and somehow enough to get Tsumiki to cut off, a sniff her last word in a rant. “You’ll warp it,” he murmurs, reaching out to tug her fingers out of her shirt, folding the plane of her palms inside of his own, lifting his eyes with a faint smile once he feels her hands relax. 

“Remember what I told you?” Satoru continues, letting her arms slide away when Tsumiki moves, tilting down onto his shoulder with a miserable nod. “If it goes badly, we’ll fix it,” he promises, enveloping her into the most encompassing hug he can give, lips pressed in a permanent kiss to her temple. “I believe in you, though. You can make new friends, ‘cause you’re really good at that, and I know you can stand up for yourself.” 

“...Can I?” Tsumiki warbles, muffled against his shoulder, and Satoru scoffs.

“Of course,” he assures, eyes darting away for a moment to catch Suguru tucking both the twins in, Megumi already passed out in a lump below the blanket. “Don’t you know you’re the coolest person, ever?” It gets him a huff, another sniffle, two hazel eyes slowly looking up from the shadow of his shirt.

“Cooler than Shoko?” Tsumiki drawls, in an almost perfect impression of her, and he smiles. 

“Maybe someday,” Satoru agrees, and leans down to meet her when she tilts her face up. “Be scared,” he offers, brushing their noses together in another silent kiss, lifting a palm to cup her cheek as he catches the burn of Mimiko’s envy across the room, “be terrified, be angry. Don’t let it stop you from being brave, too.” 

“Okay,” Tsumiki says, a little steadier than before, and he can see the twisting of her cursed energy, frantic and settled and wild and still, a contradiction leaking from every slip it can and yet gradually calming, too. He waits as she closes her eyes, a large, long inhale raising her ribs, before the breath of her exhale ruffles his bangs. 

“Okay,” she repeats, eyes blinking open as she stares down at their feet, just melancholy, and nothing else.  

“You can do this, Tsumiki,” she mumbles, barely there, obviously not meant to be heard, and Satoru smothers his smile as it comes. 

“Yes you can,” he agrees, smoothing back her bangs to press another kiss to her forehead, dragging a palm down her blushing cheek when he pulls back, something big and suffocating in his chest at helping her create the confidence she needs. 

Because he wants them to be, Satoru thinks, finally standing up as they follow everyone else in going to bed for the night. He wants them all, not just Megumi, not just Yuuta, to have that confidence- the kind that gives them feet to walk with, words to talk with, hands to fight and make and be with. Maybe he’s not going to raise them to be soldiers more than sorcerers this time, but it doesn’t have to mean they’ll be weaker willed. 

‘They’ll be stronger than that,’ Satoru thinks, a cherry pit of relief lodged in his throat as he lays across from Suguru on their queen sized bed, four kids squished between them and the weight of their futures resting on their backs. 

Despite telling Tsumiki otherwise, he makes it only a few hours, himself. 

It’s difficult trying to pull himself loose from the tangle of hands that hold onto him, small fingers clutched into his shirt or around his arm, little sleeping faces scrunching in annoyance that he’s getting up at all. It’s still way too much fun to see how many kids he can stack up against Suguru before he wakes up. 

Most nights, he stays there, laying awake among the warmth of a body or bodies, soft breathing and gentled touch, but tonight, he feels restless. Busy. Untethered. 

For an hour, he walks around in the quiet of the outside beyond the porch, fingertips dragging on leaves and branches, cool wood and moisture laden moss. He watches the clouds pass over a moonless sky, able to make out the stretches of stars not visible in the struggles of the city, and leaves tangible footprints in dewey grass. It’s warmer than it’s been, almost balmy compared to the chill that’s been lingering. 

Eventually, he wanders back inside, spooked by a stray shadow and a passing thought, preferring the safety of score marked wood burned into power than the aimless current of the world at large. The kitchen gets one lap of pacing, the living room two, and then he’s right back where he started, standing in the dark of a room he vacated, eyes meandering to anything he could distract twitching fingers with.

He settles at their cluttered desk, and then there he stays, hours passing by like sand in a filigreed glass, endlessly trickling into a single section of desert, windless and barren save for the reflection of the place it sits in, forever spilling. The shadow comes back, gradually, melting into hues of absent light and into the sluggish pace of his thoughts the longer he sits, sifting, because-

When it’s quiet like this, sometimes he catches himself thinking of it. 

‘Not the same,’ Satoru refutes, mumbling the words soundlessly as he leafs through the photos left on their cluttered desk, blinking unsteadily as the sounds of the forest suddenly drop from a deafening roar to nothing but a murmur beyond the walls. The whisper of quiet breathing behind him becomes suddenly visible in the softened silence, the rush of cold water the breaking of fog dumps with it like a waterfall over his dizzy head. 

The cicadas are starting to get louder now that summer’s coming, and the frogs are all out of hibernation. It’s like a little symphony, croaking and humming amid the chime of crickets and the stir of trees in the breeze, nevermind the off rustle of someone moving among the blankets, a stray curl of noise from a dream, inhales and exhales over soft fabric. 

It couldn’t be the Prison Realm if he had his eyes closed, ears deafened, soul snuffed, Satoru recounts, slowly breathing out a shaky breath, taking note of every little thing around him, by him. It’s home, nothing less and so much more. 

He can’t help a small huff thumbing at the edge of one of Tsumiki’s birthday polaroids when he blinks his eyes back open, hand tiredly rubbing at them. It’s one of the few she hadn’t taken up to her room likely out of forgetfulness alone. It’s cute, Shoko and Utahime on either side of her with all three of their cheeks squished between identical smiles. 

It’s one of many left on their desk from the corkboard Shoko stuffed behind a stack of books only three days ago. They’re a little aimless strewn over soft wood, a mess against all the other pages and sticky notes and pens scattered on a shared surface. He feels a little bad that they’re left here to be homeless while they find a way to put their madness down to paper so long as they’re dealing with Frankenstein, but both he and Suguru have been a bit busy to be finding places to put them. 

‘I wonder where those other photos went,’ Satoru wonders, unable to sleep, running from a nightmare, tracing at the edge of the polaroid and thoughts meandering to that little disposable camera he and Suguru had used back in second year, the photos they’d taken at that tiny park and then the ones they’d taken after it. The pictures captured in darkness and desperation and a sickened thing of relief. He remembers packing the camera, remembers setting it in a drawer somewhere. It’s probably in the desk, or it’s probably in the kitchen with other junk.

‘But that’s not junk,’ Satoru muses, lifting his head when a small noise catches his attention. For a moment, nothing follows, until the silence is broken again by another rustle, limbs against sheets and a tiny sound like a stoppered voice, one he recognizes to belong to one of the twins. 

As he gets up, photo set on the desk and draping sleep pants catching on his soles, Mimiko gasps, jerking upright into a filmy shadow if not for the vibrant, nauseating curl of her cursed energy, wild and frenzied as she blinks out of a dream. Her hair whips around her face as her head darts back and forth, eyes skittering over the darkened room, a stutter in her inhale that shouldn’t be there. 

She makes a noise, something high and distressed as she scrambles to the side, rushing to get off the bed to run, maybe, and nearly stepping on Megumi as she does. Satoru’s there before she can, an arm around her middle and a soft whisper against her ear. 

“Easy,” he hushes, expectedly weathering the rough yank against his arm and the harsh shove to his shoulder, one heel digging into his stomach and another ramming against his hip enough to shove the waistband of his pants lower. “You’re okay, it was just a dream.”

Mimiko stops, hands fisting into his shirt and knees finally settling against his sides as she seems to recognize him, breathing hard as she jitters like a shaken leaf, sucking in air that sounds like it’s going much of nowhere. “Sa- Sato-” She wheezes, floundering as she suffocates, chin hooking over his shoulder and digging against his skin, “Sa-”

“Hey, hey, I know,” Satoru mumbles in a brief clarity of alarm as he steps away from the side of the bed, rushing soundlessly on the bounds of infinity to the kitchen for the chill of the freezer, more than familiar with the breathless wind of panic. “I’m with you, it’s okay.” 

Mimiko sobs, a dry thing that’s more of a flat cry than anything, terror streaking her fingernails white as they leave crescents in his shoulders. She continues to heave as he slips into the kitchen, chest expanding against his own too quickly and too roughly with every breath she inhales but doesn’t quite breathe, eyes screwing shut against the curve of his neck. 

Satoru pointedly doesn’t let his thoughts run as he yanks the freezer drawer open, hand mindlessly scrounging for a bag of frozen berries as he works to fix. Something hurts behind his ribs listening to Mimiko struggle, obviously scared and something like a mirror, a new understanding dawning for things Suguru’s almost certainly felt, watching and feeling him do the same. It’s close to agony, hearing her pain, feeling it in swathes of useless exhales, the clutch of little fingers into his shirt. 

“It’s okay,” Satoru mumbles, little things and useless things and plain, quiet comforts as he worms the bag in between them, “it’ll be okay, Tou-san can make it better, you’ll be alright.” Mimiko jerks as the cold jars her, flinching and stiffening rigidly as it snaps her out of her tunnel vision, gasping a winding inhale that drags against the back of her throat like rubble on pavement. 

For a moment, she doesn’t do anything as Satoru resettles her, kicking the freezer door shut as he clutches her a little closer, squeezing to keep the bag pressed between them so it’s held steady. He waits, listening, one palm spread over the plane of Mimiko’s back to feel her first, trickling inhale, the other cradling the underside of her neck, feeling small lips part against the line of his own, a humid exhale finally warm on his skin.

“There you go,” Satoru whispers, rubbing small circles over her spine, “in, and then out again, just like that, baby.” Mimiko hiccups, shaking still but startled calm, dragging in another inhale that settles before she finally lets herself breathe it back out. “Good,” Satoru praises, quiet as he presses a soft kiss to the crown of her head, padding out of the kitchen. It feels smothering inside of it. 

She shivers as he slides open the opposite set of fusuma doors, a shadow moving over the tatami floor as he pulls one side of the shoji open after them, sucking in the night air, the scent of grass and trees and summer where it hides over the ridges of the mountains. He doesn’t make any move to put the bag of frozen berries back between them when it falls as he sits down, not when Mimiko doesn’t reach for it, not when she feels steady sat in his lap and shakily past her nightmare. 

She sniffles slightly, a small sound when her tears are scattered like inconsistent drizzling, just a few making her eyes damp. “I know,” Satoru promises, letting go with one hand to thumb at her wetted lashes, meeting dark eyes when they flicker up to his own. “They’re scary, aren’t they?” 

“...They?” Mimiko rasps, leaning into the brush of his knuckles, eyes beginning to droop as the exhaustion swallows her whole, and Satoru hums, readjusting her to better fit in the hollow of his crossed legs. 

“Panic attacks,” he answers, shrugging, leaning down enough that he casts a faint shadow over her face from the light of the surrounding city when the moon is nothing but a dark crescent, the brush of his bangs a breath away from her forehead. “When you can’t breathe, and you feel like you’re going to die.”

“Oh,” Mimiko tones, refusing to look away from where she’s caught his eye, as if she’s stuck or maybe as if she’s still wary that if she were to look away, she’d find she’d only be dreaming again. “How do you know?” She asks, soft, hands gradually dropping away from where they’d wrinkled into the shirt up by his shoulder to tangle in the hem by his stomach, fidgeting restlessly. 

“I get them too,” Satoru admits, fanning his palm out over the curve of her cheek, a little enamored at how the simple admission of a secret washes any last trace of tepid fear from her eyes. Instead, her lips part slightly, eyelids lifting in interest, an ease relaxing the tight thing pulling her shoulders taut. 

“You do?” Mimiko hushes, the last of her stress forgotten, and Satoru hums, letting the small smile sit on his lips when it wants. 

“Not so much anymore,” he explains, curling a stray strand of hair behind her ear, thumbing along her softened cheekbone where it’s been made stark by starvation, “because Suguru helps me through ‘em, so they aren’t so bad now.” 

Mimiko swallows a little thickly, eyes wide as she blinks, a clear, visceral want staining the paleness of her face, and Satoru fully expects it when she bites down on the inside of her lips, knowing what she wants to ask even though she’s hesitant to say it. He’s not entirely sure how to get her to- he’d like her to be able to take that step, but it’s also only been days, and maybe there’s been a long sort of trust growing in the hours as they pass by, it’s also just a fledgling thing. 

“I’ll help you too, okay?” Satoru says, because as much as pushing works trust isn’t the sort of thing it’s for, and feels a little more settled when Mimiko blinks rapidly, lips thinning as she nods. “You don’t even need to ask. I’ll always help.”

“...Can…I be honest?” Mimiko murmurs, near quiet as death or a deer in the woods, a trepidation in the aimless movement of her hands but something almost un-nameable in the sheen of her widened eyes. “Really, not lying, not fake, honest?” Satoru nods, humming, certain to cradle her a little closer, card gentle fingers through her hair. Anything to get her to feel safe, when honesty is something he’s sure has only ever come at a price before.

“Sometimes I don’t think this is real,” Mimiko blurts, before she can swallow the words whole, her expression shuttering into something mortified as it spills out even though she forces herself to keep going. “People don’t- no one ever helped, no one ever really cared, and- and no one does what you do. I- I don’t- I wanna believe you will ‘cause I really like you but I also don’t-” She cuts off with a snap of an inhale, caught up in the rush, shrinking slightly as Satoru sits and doesn’t reel, hands so tight wrapped up in the seam of his shirt her knuckles are visible through fabric. 

“...You don’t think it’ll last, right?” Satoru finishes, matching her quieted volume, tilting his head down as she nods, face flaming and fear the rotten coil of sickening sweetness below the embarrassment her cursed energy sparkles with. 

“No,” Mimiko agrees, the singular word something that could be miserable if she weren’t so desperately clinging to anything but. 

“That’s okay,” Satoru assures, closing the inch they’re apart to kiss her cheek with all of her previous envy at the front of his mind, lingering for a long second as he breathes in, settling everything in his head and everything rattling in his ribcage as he finds what he wants to say. 

“You can think anything- feel anything you want about us,” he begins, rising enough to meet Mimiko’s eyes, wavering between his left and right, a touch violet in the wane light of the moon and so terribly similar to Suguru’s, in color and more.

“I won’t be mad if you’re still scared it’ll all go away in a month, or a year, even. Neither will Suguru,” he promises, tilting his face into the rise of small palm when it reaches for him, softening at how Mimiko feels brave enough to touch him at all. “You’ve been through a lot. You have a right to be scared.”

“But…” Mimiko mumbles, brows furrowing as her lips slant into a faint pout, evidently thinking hard about it. Satoru lets her, curious to know what exactly she’s thinking of even as he’s sure he already knows, a level of content that he’s making her think at all. 

He wants these kids to have better than him, to get better, be better, do better. He wants to give Megumi, give Tsumiki, give Mimiko as she sits cradled in his lap close to two in the morning, calmed from a panic attack and wary for the future, something better than what he had. He wants to give them the ease of freedom, in feeling, in thinking, in saying whatever they want. 

“...Do I?” Mimiko wonders, words lilting as they raise in a question, tapering off as she stares at the shape of her hand splayed over his cheek, so small in comparison, a fallen star in an empty ocean of pale skin. “Everyone- you have to be a certain way. For everybody,” she says, a crease knit between her brows as she talks, parsing through thoughts that spark a blip of excitement in his chest. 

“You do,” Satoru agrees, maybe close to elated that she’s thinking about something like this at all, because he’d never known much about Mimiko or Nanako as people the first time, and finding out that one or both of them have the same mind as Suguru would give him another piece of peace to hold close for everything he’s never gotten to heal. 

“Everyone expects something,” he continues, unable to deny that he does like being able to discuss a little deeper about big topics with the kids, when Mimiko is eight instead of five and a little more world weary than Megumi. “But here’s a thought for you- what kind of way do you have to be for someone who expects only you, just as yourself?”

It gives Mimiko pause, her lips parting only to stutter, mouth falling closed as she turns the words over, eyes dropping just to dart right back up to where her fingers sit spread over his cheekbone, lips drawing together. 

“I…want to say,” she starts, the words slower than molasses as she gathers them, her other hand leaving the hem of his shirt to match her right, pressing to his face in an odd sort of fascination Satoru finds endearing. “People aren’t like that,” she finally gives, fanning her fingers closed, spreading them out again until her pointers are brushing the edges of his nose, pinkies just shy of his ears, thumbs dipping against the divots of his lips. “Cause people are mean, and selfish, and they like to hurt other people because it makes them feel big.” 

Satoru hums, smile growing a little more and carrying Mimiko’s thumbs slightly as it moves, the delicate warmth of her palms seeping into his skin. “But if everyone was like that,” Mimiko says, decisive, “then Nanako would be like that too, and she’s not. So everyone can’t be like that, and maybe you…you’re not like that, too.” She stares up at him after, the softening statement dying on her tongue, her singular open eye hoping and wanting and clearly some sort of scared, and yet still daring to meet his own despite it. 

“And maybe I’m not,” Satoru repeats, a rush of pride making him dizzy at how intelligent she already is, using the hand that isn’t holding her up to mirror her own. His palm is too large over her thinned face, the tips of his fingers able to meet her forehead even as his heel could touch her chin if he let it, though Satoru can admit he doesn’t mind how her cheek rests swallowed up in the curve of his hand. 

“Just like that,” he murmurs, utterly in love, “I want you to be yourself, just like that, whether it’s scared, or happy, or angry.” He brushes his thumb under Mimiko’s eye when she blinks, lips pressing together. “I want to know you, whoever you are. If that person is scared right now,” he shrugs, tilting down enough to rest their foreheads together like he had with Tsumiki only hours earlier, feeling Mimiko’s hands lift to sink into his hair, “then I want to know them, too.” 

“Okay,” Mimiko whispers, and though the simple word itself is plain, he can hear the weight it bears. Maybe it’ll carry with it what he wants it to keep, the trust or the freedom he wants Mimiko to know she has to be, do, feel anything, everything. Somewhere along the line, Megumi and Tsumiki understood they could. He wants the twins to know the same. 

“I-” Mimiko blurts, fingers fisting in his hair, pulling slightly on accident in her rush of what must be courage, Satoru muses, or a want to keep what’s in front of her for even a little longer, “that person- I’m really scared.” She keeps on tugging, eyes scrunched shut and resolutely keeping him trapped close as she spills her heart out. “I don’t wanna lose this, I really like it here, I-I feel safe here, I like you, I like this, I don’t want any of it to end,” she rambles, hiding so close she can’t be scrutinized, maybe, brave in a measure Satoru hadn’t been expecting so early on. 

“I don’t want you to get rid of me,” she admits, a misery in the confession even though it’s buoyed by some of the trust she must have, because Mimiko finally opens her good eye where she’d been squeezing them both shut, hands still twisted in his hair and locking them forehead to forehead. She shrinks, unwilling to let go even though he can feel the shame to in the twitch of her tangled fingers, the envy he knows she’s been boiling with refusing to let her. 

It’s a little eerie, having something he’s lived with all his life spoken to him beyond a mirror. “I don’t want you to know me,” she says, “and then decide you don’t want me, too.”

“...Well that’s easy,” Satoru murmurs, satisfied he only fumbled for a second, using the scant inch of leeway he has to tilt his chin down, pressing another smothering kiss to her cupid’s bow, the side of her nose, her cheek. “Don’t you know how much I already like you?” 

“...No?” Mimiko whispers, and he smiles, happy to stay so close when her hands finally unlatch from his hair, sliding down as her arms lock around his neck, instead, soothed maybe that she hasn’t been rejected. 

Somehow, Mimiko finds a way to press even closer, either enthralled or addicted or craving the touch when he knows she’s had so little of it in her life, when he knows she’s been so envious of all the ones she’s seen Tsumiki and Megumi get. Satoru lets her, not quite caring how his roots twinge or the way his neck cranes, because it’s something he can give her, and he can’t deny he likes the gravity of the tactility, too. 

“Really,” he muses, murmuring the sound against her cheek as he reshuffles, raising one knee as a support for his elbow, twisting a little more so Mimiko’s bent legs fall around his side instead of over his thigh. “Maybe I should list all of the reasons then,” Satoru teases, already with plans to do just that which are only reinforced when the bandaged arms around his neck coil tighter. 

“I like how brave you are,” he says, “and how you talk. I like that you’re trying your best, and I admire how you still want to try at all, even after what other people did.” Mimiko hiccups, tamping down on the sound harshly like she hadn’t meant to let it escape, clinging to him and refusing to let him watch her cry by keeping his face too close to see. “I like how adorable your nose is, and I like the color of your eyes. I like how you say a lot, and I like how you say just a little, too.” 

“I- I really wanna stay,” Mimiko sobs, clutching as hard as she can. “I wanna- I wanna stay.”  

“Then stay,” Satoru offers, kissing away her tears as they roll, smoothing her bangs off her forehead as she cries, a reminder of Megumi, Tsumiki, another facet to add to himself and this life he’s learning to live. “We’ll be here, and we’ll love you.”

Mimiko nods, barely, and he sits on the wood of the engawa, listening to the sounds of the forest as they hum, letting her cry as long as she wants before he carries them both back to bed. It feels good in a raw, ragged sort of way- pleasant like the pain of newness is after so long old. Maybe there’s a lot he can’t protect them from, but comfort is a balm, and one that might be worth more than anything else he could be. 

‘For the rest of your lives,’ Satoru thinks, as Mimiko’s tears gradually wane and her exhaustion wins out over catharsis, ‘I’ll be right here.’ No matter Frankenstein, no matter the higher up’s, no matter the world. He’s different, has made it different, so he finally will be. 

Chapter Text

Despite their best efforts, someone’s still grumpy. 

“Meg, come on,” Satoru groans, making a face against the palm that shoves at his forehead, Megumi’s pants stuck on his feet and refusing to be worn. “You have a vocabulary test today, do you really wanna make that up?”

“No,” Megumi whines, and then, “I don’t wanna,” and then he grimaces, a pissy contortion of his tiny face, before, “no,” is being shouted longer and louder and whinier than before. 

‘For fucks sake,’ Satoru thinks, weathering the miniature tantrum as he rubs a hand over Megumi’s back, heaving slightly with the string of negatives yelled right next to his ear. He’s not exactly looking forward to being late today, considering she’s going to dig at him for it non-stop on the ride up to the Zen’in estate, but there’s no real way to rush any kind of bitch-fit, least of all a toddler’s.

He winces sharply when Megumi shrieks, wordless complaints devolving into senseless noise as little fists twist into his shirt, grimacing even though he doesn’t move. A heel kicks against his knee, flattened palms yanking until fabric is groaning, and Satoru only sits, dragging a hand up and down Megumi’s spine as he yells for any reason or no reason at all. He knows better than to think words would do anything, actions or even the lack of them, either. Maybe he hadn’t weathered age five the first time, he still isn’t stupid enough to say it comes with any sort of logic to follow. 

‘It’s not like it really matters, though,’ Satoru sighs, looking down over the curve of Megumi’s shoulder when he flops over on his own, suddenly deflating like a popped balloon among the puffing of listless, panting breaths, seemingly having either given up or gone dormant. ‘Akemi would rag on me for anything if she could.’  

“...You wanna try again, baby?” He asks, when the silence settles for a few seconds longer, a stab of sympathy lancing harshly into the pit of his stomach when Megumi miserably nods. “Okay,” Satoru murmurs, and doesn’t say a word about how getting him dressed for the day is more comparable to bending a limp, wet noodle than anything else, after. 

Megumi stays quiet, as if all the energy to be mad was leeched right out of him. Instead of fighting the other pieces of his uniform, he just lets himself be manhandled into them. Instead of pitching another fit about going downstairs, he just lets Satoru tuck him into the curve of an arm. Instead of protesting he isn’t hungry, he willingly takes the slice of honey drizzled toast when he’s given it, nibbling on it mechanically as Satoru carries him around in the midst of the frantic morning rush. 

“Tsumiki- your shoes!” Suguru calls, packing up her lunch into her bag, a harried look staining his face when she comes running down the stairs, sweater bunched up around her head. 

“Coming!” She replies, narrowly missing the armchair as she goes ducking into the front hall.

Satoru keeps the noise of surprise hidden under his breath when he sees Mimiko appear behind the bend of their doorway, ignoring her for the moment it takes to get them both out the door. He can’t even begin to imagine how busy it’ll be in another month or few once the twins are ready to go back to school, the thought dissipating fast as he sets Megumi down on the small bench in the front hall.

“If you need to come home, go to the office. We’ll come get you,” Satoru repeats, like he does every day Megumi has a shitty morning, and doesn’t bother to hide the faint uptick of his smile when it gets him the same, stilted nod. He doesn’t say anything as Satoru couches down and ties his shoes, but that’s usual for Megumi, nothing more than a cloud of scowls and flat expressions on his worse days

“I love you,” he murmurs anyway, rising to press a kiss to rounded cheek, thumbing a crumb away from the dimples of pouted lips as he does, and wonders just for a moment when instead of acting like it’s gross, Megumi only leans in. 

“Megumi, we gotta go,” Tsumiki complains, threading her arms through her backpack where Suguru holds it up, impatiently bouncing on her toes from the anxiety he can clearly see winding her tight. 

“You’re ten minutes ahead of schedule,” Suguru hums, a fond amusement in his honeyed words, “I think you’re fine.” 

“Yeah, ten minutes it’ll take for that stupid crosswalk to turn,” Tsumiki complains, to his small, adoring snicker, and Satoru tunes them out for a moment as he looks Megumi up and down. 

He seems fine, eyes open if glued aimlessly to his knees, face clear of any flush or grimace, a melancholy weighing his shoulders down that seems like it could belong just to the morning and the slog of getting out the door rather than anything bigger. ‘Maybe it’s the twins,’ Satoru thinks, hiding the way he wants to press his lips together as he gently pinches Megumi’s nose to get him to scrunch it. It isn’t as if he hasn’t spotted a few moments of envy here and there- from both parties, no less.

“It’ll be a good day,” he promises, to green eyes finally fixing on his face, and feels a little better when they roll. 

“Says you,” Megumi mutters, pouting something sore, and Satoru scoffs, softly cuffing his cheek. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “says me.” Megumi sticks out his tongue in retribution, but he lifts a hand anyway, catching the backs of his knuckles in a gesture he doesn’t tend to make when it isn’t late or obscenely early. 

“Bye,” he says, just a little bit of a whistle to it, and Satoru sighs, dragging him up into a hug to tug him down onto his feet, taking another moment to stare at Megumi’s face when he tilts it upwards. 

It has to be the twins, Satoru muses, pressing another kiss to the tip of his nose before he shoos him along, Tsumiki nearly hanging off the door handle in her exasperation to get her own problems over with. It isn’t as if he doesn’t know Megumi’s more unsavory tendencies, and besides that, he’s little. He’d be worried if he wasn’t jealous.

“...Do you think he’s fine?” He mutters, as Suguru comes to stand next to him in the doorway, plastering big smiles onto their faces as they wave them down the grassy driveway.

“Who, Megumi?” Suguru says, breaking away from the sight of the siblings as they turn the tree line’s corner, a tilt of his head sloping his hair down his shoulder. “He just seemed overtired. He did go to bed really early last night.” 

“Probably,” Satoru sighs, and sets it aside, shutting the door with a snick and a lock as he hurries into their room to change, breezing past Mimiko with a gentle pat to her head in favor of letting Suguru deal with the twins today. 

‘Please let this go smoothly,’ he thinks, a jitter hiding in the curves of his spine.

He has no idea what sort of chaos it’ll cause if it doesn’t. 

“...Where’s Sa-san going?” Mimiko asks, rubbing at her eyes as Satoru whispers out of the closet, brushing past him in simple business casual. He stops long enough for a kiss, another pecked against Mimiko’s cheek, and then he’s vanishing again, gone up the mountain for the Zen’in twin’s sale and already late. 

“Sa-san?” Suguru repeats, giddy, and only feels it thicker when Mimiko’s cheeks heat and she looks away, pretending not to see his gaze at all even though she’s sat in the crook of his arms. “Sa-san is going to go to an important meeting today,” he teases, wondering how far he can push before it curdles.  

Mimiko’s face visibly tightens, a scrunch wrinkling her nose and a poignant regret thinning her lips. She looks embarrassed more than anything else, sheepish instead of cowed or afraid, and silently, Suguru takes it as a little victory. 

“...A fancy meeting?” She mumbles, gradually turning back around even though she resolutely ignores the teasing, the uneven cut of her shaggy hair brushing the back of her neck. 

“Something like that,” Suguru agrees, lips tilting for a moment as he thumbs at it, willingly giving into the snub since she doesn’t want to give up the slip. The last day and a half were so busy, he realizes, that he never really stopped and noticed, but her hair- both of their hair- looks almost as if it was sheared off in a spur of a moment decision. ‘Or by rusty scissors,’ he thinks, brows furrowing.

“Did someone cut your hair?” He asks, the question intentionally left light as he pads them both into the kitchen, looking for something to make them for breakfast that’ll be easy on their stomachs. 

Mimiko actually does tense at the question, not going rigid so much as she stiffens, a wary sort of caution turning her limbs leaden. “...Why?” She asks, nothing more than a rough whisper, and Suguru glances down instead of opening the fridge, a little curious at such an emboldened question. 

‘It never ends, does it,’ he thinks, the revelation that he’s right and someone did do something to it making his tongue sour in his mouth, because he can’t see any other reason Mimiko would be defensive about the length of her hair unless it’s something she lost, recently. 

“It’s uneven,” Suguru explains, reaching up to brush a half of it over her shoulder, tracing along the jagged edges. “And I don’t see split ends, so it’s probably new.”

“Oh,” Mimiko murmurs, eyes dropping down to stare at much of nothing, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip as she thinks through whatever slew of thoughts is running through her head. He lets her, turning the few steps it takes to lean up against the edge of the counter, content to wait if it means he can get anywhere at all. 

“...They cut it,” she whispers, after a long, silent minute has passed by, dark eyes flickering up to his own and filled with a rawness he can recognize from the mirror in only his worst memories. Suguru can’t help the twitch that runs through his face, how his expression sharpens and his hands curve snugger around her body, a flare of heat flashing his sternum warm. 

They cut it, did they, he wants to mutter, a simmering anger already drowning in the slick sort of recoil he feels at the thought of losing something as precious as hair length. He says nothing, because he wants Mimiko to keep talking, even though he knows all the words she’ll give away will only make him angrier. 

She hesitates, a slight twist of her lips her most notable discomfort, and Suguru can’t blame her. 

“....Aun- they took it, because monsters-...monsters shouldn’t look like little girls,” Mimiko finishes, hands wringing silently together and eyes wide in her face, what could be a note of terror in the stain of her irises, so dark they could almost be violet. “Do you think they were right,” she asks, voice almost toneless save for the halting inflection of it, a haunting in the downward curve of her lips and the paleness of her tightened fingers. 

Suguru isn’t surprised, because he knew he’d be right. He still feels like he’s been lit on fire. 

For a moment, he doesn’t speak- can’t bring himself to speak drowning in the memory of Tsumiki asking if she’d been a leech, of the harsh sort of grief that comes with putting himself in Mimiko’s shoes and imagining his hair being shorn from him. For a moment, he utterly can’t, stuck in the coil of an engulfing sort of anger, a paralyzing kind of pain as it bites into his bones with fangs. 

‘How can people be so cruel,’ he wants to wonder, fighting to keep from burning into an ember, to keep his eyes from narrowing, his lips from scowling. He doesn’t, because he knows the answer, and it lies somewhere between the monster he’s chosen and the monster he hasn’t. 

It feels better to give kindness than to raze harshness, anyway.

“I think,” he begins, exhaling a superheated breath that warms Mimiko’s cheeks, words softened and slow as he reigns himself in, “that monsters have a habit of lying.” He pauses to let her soak in the statement, lifting a hand to brush a thumb over her cheek, crease lines of their pillows fading against her skin. 

“You do?” Mimiko whispers, blinking large and hopeful, a catch in her inhale as she tilts her cheek into his palm, and Suguru nods. 

“Little girls can’t be monsters,” he assures, and keeps his voice steady for the sole reason of giving it the finality he wants her to hear. He’d love to be angry, to hiss and disdain and march right back down to that village to burn it into cinders again, but violence is the last thing Mimiko needs, that Nanako needs, that he himself needs. 

‘Once a plot of land is burned, ’ he thinks, pressing a kiss to Mimiko’s forehead as she screws her eyes shut for a long moment, fighting off what has to be the insistent pressure of tears, ‘you have to sow it again.’ Gently, he encourages her to set her head down, stroking a thumb over the curve of her ear as a nose presses against his neck, a hiding place from anything, everything. 

He’s already charred the field. Now he has to plant the seeds.

“You can let your hair grow back, if you’d like,” Suguru offers, quiet in the early morning and the somber setting, giving his head a small shake to let some of his own scatter over his other shoulder. “You could even try to get it longer than mine,” he teases, eyes crinkling slightly with his smile as he forces the anger down, stuffing the injustice back into its box for a time he actually needs it. 

Mimiko sniffles once, though her eyes stay dry, curiosity seemingly winning out over the embarrassment or fear at baring honesty. “...I don’t know,” she waffles, reaching out to run her fingers through a loose set of black strands, “it’s really long.” Her lips slant in thought, eyes stuck on her hands as her other reaches out to mess with the ends of his hair, looping two locks together into a twirl. 

“I liked mine being long,” Mimiko admits with a small shrug a few beats later, and Suguru hums, flattening a palm over her shoulder blades, trying to recall where they last left the hair scissors. 

“We should trim those ends, then,” he says, making to get up off of the counter, “otherwise it’ll all grow back chunky-”

“Trim?” Mimiko repeats, suddenly strained as she jolts up, and Suguru stops before he even takes a step, eyes immediately falling down to her face. 

“Trim,” he says again, brows furrowing when she seems to draw into herself, stress leaking back into the corners of her eyes. 

“With…scissors?” Mimiko asks, the words weak, and Suguru doesn’t get it for a moment that might be deliberate obtuseness for another painful, shitty thing, before the memory of the cuts all along Nanako’s body the first night they’d bandaged them come slamming back into him like a sledgehammer. 

“I’m not sure how else we’d cut your hair, pumpkin,” he murmurs, unable to keep the wince off his face as he brushes aside her bangs, burying the shock of bitter sadness under a wave of satisfaction when the pet name makes her cheeks heat pink. “I can’t really think a knife would be better,” Suguru teases, maybe trying hard to keep some of the levity, and doesn’t shy away from the feeling of relief when Mimiko gives him a shaky, wry smile.

“Probably not,” she agrees, soft and nervous but willing to find humor at all, and Suguru can’t lie and say he doesn’t admire her at least a little. “I don’t…” Mimiko starts, eyes darting away and then back as she fidgets imperceptibly, clearly uncomfortable with the idea as much as she wars with the want for it. “I just- I don’t know,” she mumbles.

“I want to- it to be like it used to be,” she whispers, restless fingers moving back to the two pieces of his hair she’d twined together, running their pads over its flat edges. “But…” She makes a face, something scrunched or twisted he’s beginning to recognize means she has a thought to say, but doesn’t want to say it. 

“...It’s okay to be scared,” Suguru promises, tilting her chin up with one curled knuckle, eyes flickering between her own and their similarly darkened color, the reddened irritation of her right looking better than it had yesterday. “It’s okay to be anything. It’s not wrong to feel things,” he says, ticking up a small, sympathetic smile as he drops his hand to skim a touch over the bandaging on her arm. 

Of all things, it’s that, apparently, that makes up her mind. 

“I wanna cut it,” she blurts, a blush burning her face beet red. “I mean trim. I wanna trim it.” 

“You sure?” Suguru asks, eyebrows raising in his mild surprise, wondering where on earth the sudden boost of confidence came from. “We can wait until you feel more comfortable-”

“I wanna,” Mimiko protests, fingers shaking in their fists but the set of her lips slotting firm. 

“...I guess we’re trimming it, then,” Suguru slowly agrees, pushing off the counter to meander back to their room to find the hair scissors, unable to shake the distinct feeling he’s missed something somewhere when Mimiko inexplicably relaxes against him. 

‘Probably Satoru,’ he thinks, rolling his eyes even as he brings a hand up to curl around her shoulders. 

Whatever it is doesn’t really matter. What does is doing the same thing he’d done for Megumi in the baths- pushing a little, but not a lot. Just enough to give a touch of bravery, a pinch of confidence. 

One small step and all, he thinks, smiling into her hair. 

She shakes as soon as Suguru picks up the scissors. 

It isn’t as if he can blame her- not when there’s bruises all over her, cuts smattering her skin, scabs in every place they could congeal. It does make him want to bite his tongue and sigh out the words he won’t say when Mimiko’s whole face falls ashen, eyes wide in their sockets as she stares at the metal held between his fingers. 

If only, he finds himself thinking, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that time moved faster, moved slower. If only they’d had them forever, and not just now. If only they’d been loved instead of battered. 

“You have full control here,” Suguru murmurs, soft and slow when he can already see her breath beginning to catch, stooping a little lower to meet her eyes. Mimiko’s dart up to his own from where she sits on the bathroom countertop, an indescribable sort of fear turning them glossy. 

“To stop, to keep going, to take a break,” Suguru continues, thoughts in his head turning as he thinks of best how to deal with this when it’s different from Tsumiki and her scarcity, Megumi and his anxiety. He presses the hair scissors into her trembling palms as soon as he comes to the first decision he thinks might work, watching dark eyes stagger down to shiny metal. 

“...I know,” Mimiko whispers, nothing but an unconvincing whistle, but she wraps her fingers around the curved handles anyway. 

“Just touch ‘em for a second,” Suguru murmurs, carding his other hand through her hair, the one he’d passed over the scissors with lingering above her own. “Get used to them.” He thinks this could be similar to Tsumiki, and how she’d needed to be listened to, first. That maybe, floating in the water before sinking could make it easier to tread. 

Mimiko inhales loudly, a ginormous breath through her nose, eyebrows downturned in determination. He hovers close by as she turns the scissors over in her hands, running a fingertip along the neck and parting the blades with a quiet flinch, fear filling up with a mundane curiosity. 

“They aren’t so big, are they?” He asks, spoken quietly over her shoulder, and marginally calmer, Mimiko nods. 

“I…I wanna do this,” she mumbles, staring down at the scissors with a glare that speaks she said it more for herself than for him. “It’s not fair that- that they should get to choose for me still.” 

Suguru huffs, a little sad, a lot proud, dragging his palm down from her head to cup her cheek instead. “It isn’t,” he assures, “and they won’t,” pressing a small kiss to her brow bone, because he’s noticed Mimiko seems to thrive off of tactility the same way Megumi does.

It still isn’t exactly easy.

She lasts as long as the scissors stay in her line of sight as Suguru takes them, and once the image of them disappears in the mirror behind her head as he wets the ends of her hair, she starts locking up like a wooden board. Her jaw clenches as if nailed shut, fingers white-knuckled over Tsumiki’s sleep shorts, eyes wide in her reflection even with one still red and irritated. 

At the sound of the first, molasses slow snip, Mimiko forgets to breathe. Suguru gives it a count of three, four, five, watching her face get redder and redder in the mirror, before he’s giving in and doing something about it. 

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” he mutters, tugging her around by an arm as Mimiko opens her mouth to ramble without any words left in her lungs, shoving his hips into the counter’s edge so he can be as close as possible to her. 

“I’m still sorry,” Mimiko wheezes, twisting his shirt into fists as he drags an over-warmed palm up and down her back, scissors set to the side as he puts pressure on the back of her head. 

“Why? It isn’t your fault,” Suguru weasels, just to be annoying, and feels Mimiko’s wretched smile when it jams itself into his stomach. 

“This shouldn’t be- be hard,” she whines, shoving closer still as if she could burrow below his skin, and Suguru can only let her, a certain joy sitting pretty and content next to all the animosity he has for why she does in the first place. She wants to be close to him, because Suguru makes her feel safe, and it’s enough to drown it out. 

“It’s so not fair,” Mimiko mumbles, the grumble nearly hidden below her breath, and he laughs, small but amused, skittering ticklish fingers up her ribs to get her to squirm. 

“Why don’t we try this?” Suguru offers when Mimiko’s face pops up, flushed and pouted, a leftover tremor in her lips. “You take the scissors,” he starts, reaching behind her for where he dropped them, “and try trimming a little of my hair, first?” He holds them up, giving the metal a shake as Mimiko’s eyes widen, darting from the blades to his face in some sort of shock.

“I- I couldn’t do-” She stammers, fingers tightening in his shirt, and Suguru pokes his tongue out, giving his head a shake to spill inky hair over his shoulders. 

“I’ve got plenty,” he says, teasing a wink, and when Mimiko still hesitates, wonders if a little impulsivity might not be a bad thing. He wants her to be able to get through this without having a panic attack, and he’s certain that a little exposure could be a good thing, but…

‘Couldn’t hurt to try,’ he thinks, with the distinct feeling he may or may not regret it in three hours, but stupid enough to do it anyway. If Satoru were here, he probably wouldn’t let him. ‘But he isn’t here, is he?’ Suguru snarks to himself, slowly raising his hand as he parts his fingers in the handles of the scissors.

If it goes badly, there’s always Shoko, and if there isn’t Shoko, there’s always hairclips. 

“Whoops,” Suguru tones, and smiles as he says it, listening to the shhk of the scissors as they cut through some random section of his hair where it sits over his shoulder, locks of black falling down to the floor as Mimiko’s eyes blow wider than should be possible for her tiny face. 

He glances down as her mouth drops open, soundless shock making her gape, a little impressed with himself that he accidentally shore off a good three inches when he sees the forgotten hair on the floor by his feet. Absently, he wonders what synonym of stupid Shoko’s going to call him later. 

“See?” Suguru assures. “It’s not a big deal.”

Slowly, Mimiko’s eyes unglue from his uneven lock of hair, dragging up to his face as if she’s never seen him before in her life. A moment beats past, and then another one, before she sputters.

“But- but- your hair!” She wails, hands clenching in his shirt, a look of alarm blaring on her face. “What are you gonna do-?!”

“Not panic, first of all,” Suguru chides, setting the scissors to the side to pat her cheeks, squishing them slightly when Mimiko only looks at him like he’s crazy. Maybe he is, at least to some degree. 

“Shoko, the doctor who patched you up,” Suguru explains, thumbing at his cut hair with a simple smile and a simpler ease, “her technique lets her regrow hair as fast as she’d like.” He watches Mimiko’s expression change, turning from a touched horrified, to contemplating, to a sudden irritation, and speaks before she can open her mouth to protest why he hadn’t said so in the first place.

“We don’t want her to do it for you, because you aren’t healthy enough to handle it yet,” Suguru says, just as Mimiko’s lips part around a mouthful of words. 

“...Oh,” she falters, as they all go tumbling out. “Is it…is it ‘cause her technique…?” Mimiko stumbles, eyes squinted up at him as if to check that she’s saying it right before he nods, and she relaxes, continuing with, “it uses our energy, and not hers, right? That’s what it felt like when she…” Mimiko shrugs, making a jumbling gesture with one hand he chuckles at, amused. 

“Exactly,” Suguru agrees, a little surprised she’s realized it, but not wholly shocked. Mimiko’s smart, clearly. Maybe the same as Megumi, even, watching too much and knowing just enough. “You need that energy for other things,” he says, reaching up to brush a thumb over her eyebrow, her reddened eye shutting slightly, “like this.”

“...I guess that makes sense,” Mimiko mumbles, tilting into the touch of his skin, pouting if only slightly, and Suguru huffs. 

“Mhm. So,” he finally finishes, bringing his hand down to gently tweak her nose, “it isn’t a big deal if you cut a little of my hair. If I want to grow it back, I can.” He pauses for a moment, scissors forgotten on the counter, a feeling he gets when he looks at Tsumiki anytime she struggles with something almost making it a little hard to breathe. 

“I want you to be comfortable with this,” Suguru murmurs, willingly giving over his hand when Mimiko’s fingers untwist from his shirt to curl around his knuckles, eyes darting in miniscule movements between his own. “I don’t care if it means some of my hair. I don’t care if it means all of my hair.” He gives Mimiko’s hands a squeeze, her fingers so much smaller compared to his, clutching as if he’s a lifeline. 

And maybe he is, he thinks, because Suguru means every word. He looks down at violet eyes nearly the same color as his own, staring up at him as if they’ve just seen the dawn of a new day after an endless life of night, and wants to fix, and fix, and fix, until nothing is broken anymore. He’d take pieces of his own body if they’d make hers better, he thinks, feels, knows. He’d carve himself hollow if only it’d give any of these children he’s decided to call his own anything better than what they’d had before. 

Maybe, he thinks, this is what his mother might have felt the first time she’d looked at him and seen something terrible brewing behind his eyes, unknowing of how to make it better besides destroying some of herself. 

“...You’d really do that for me,” Mimiko whispers, the words a little rough, raw in a way that’s gotten more distant with Tsumiki, with Megumi as they’ve settled. 

“I’d do anything for you,” Suguru answers, leaning down the few inches they’re separate to brush their noses together, knowing in the chrysanthemum flowers that bloom in his hair and the warmth coursing through his veins that the words are entirely true. 

He’d walk through a trail of blood for her, for any of them. He’d remake the world- will remake the world for them. He’ll fix until it’s better, until it’s something worth living in, if they’d ask or not. 

He’ll do absolutely anything for her, Suguru knows, as Mimiko pitches into his arms and clings tighter than she has all morning, babbling all sorts of nonsense into his ear that he weathers with a warm smile and a warmer hug. 

It goes easier, after, as they resettle and Mimiko tries to match the opposite side of his hair to the one he cut, slowly calming down the longer the scissors sit in her hands, in her own control. It’s softer, too, when she smiles more despite the shake in her palms, giggling instead of tensing when it makes the sheer choppy instead of smooth. 

It feels worth it, for every one he gets to tuck away to keep forever, a memory to hold close. Impulsivity or the lack of it, impulsivity and the brunt of it- he doesn’t regret it in the slightest. 

He’d do anything to keep the smile on her face once it starts to shine. 

It’s the sound of the birds that she notices first. 

They chirp outside of a window, loud enough to be heard through the glass, and when she brings a hand up to rub at her eyes, the softness of expensive pillows drags against her limbs. 

‘Where…?’ Nanako thinks for a moment, groggy in the early morning, warm from soft blankets and a cozy mattress, fading body heat and the sounds of the forest just beyond the walls. She blinks up at the ceiling as the feeling of the ace bandage around her foot comes back to the front of her mind, ‘oh,’ her only tangible thought. 

She lays where she is for a while longer, gradually picking up the sounds of people in the bathroom a few steps away, slowly realizing Mimiko isn’t beside her. It’s enough to get her shifting, curious as she sits up, nose wrinkling at the persistent ache in her foot.

It has yet to go away, but Suguru had said that was normal. ‘Dumb cousin,’ Nanako thinks, lips souring in a twisted reminder of who did it, before she’s shoving the thought away entirely. It makes her want to shiver as a rush of cold pools in her stomach every time it comes back, a chill she’s not fond of in the slightest. 

A little shuffling gets her to the side of the bed, and a careful hand on the headboard keeps her weight off her bad ankle. 

Hop one isn’t bad, hop two a little unsteady, hop three fine until- Nanako gasps, scrabbling for purchase as she slips on something slick, a rattle filling her ears as she catches herself on the edge of a desk, heart pounding. A couple of things fall off of it as it settles, swishing onto the floor in a shushing rustle, and curiously, she looks down, head tilting.

“Polaroids…?” Nanako mumbles, shaky fingers reaching down to pull one from the hardwood, the image stark against a black background when she turns it around. 

No one had ever let her near photos again after she’d accidentally shown her hand, the pull of a barely grasped power saving Mimiko from a harsh hit. It had left Aunt and Uncle silent and shaken for days, overly tense and thin like a worn thread. She’d never been more grateful they hadn’t told anyone, even left starving and exhausted trapped in the basement. The musty old cellar had still been better than any other punishment for daring to exist, at least until the cage, anyway-

The image is sweet, she decides, forcibly blinking the memories away. It’s Suguru, caught in what she thinks is mid-laugh as he holds up Megumi under his arms, his own smaller and blurry like they’d been in movement. There’s something on his face- frosting maybe, and bows in his short hair. The background is too bright and overexposed, like it’d been taken near a window, but it’s clearly the living room. 

Instead of putting it down, Nanako finds herself holding onto it, hesitant to let it go for a reason she’ll never call jealousy to ears that could hear it. For a long moment, she holds it close, staring, wishing, before she’s forcing herself to move again. 

The voices still drift faintly from the bathroom, hushed and slightly quiet, almost murmurs if not for their liting cadence. Fingers digging into the lacquered paper of the polaroid’s border, she hobbles closer to the door, blearily peering inside. 

‘Oh,’ she thinks, relaxing marginally as she finds Mimiko, sat on the counter with her back to Suguru, stood behind her as they quietly talk. ‘That’s where-’ The words cut off abruptly as a flash of sliver catches her eyes, Mimiko’s flinch loud in her vision when she jolts, the unmistakable shhink of scissors through hair loud in her ears. 

She doesn’t think when she moves. She doesn’t think at all. 

“Get away from her!” Nanako shrieks, slapping a palm against the photograph in her hand as her ears pop, a surge of dizzying energy making her waver where she stands and impulsively acts on memories.

Her fingertips feel like static as Suguru jerks, the scissors clattering to the countertop as he startles, forcibly thrown back into the shelf full of products with a loud crash as if yanked by a ghost. Nanako gasps, knees buckling as her ears ring, head thickening under pressure as she hears Mimiko yell something, the polaroid in her fisted hand smoking.

She doesn’t really have time to think still as she falls, the hair-split second of the frozen moment taken up more by the sight of Mimiko’s face than anything else, and how it’d been smooth of any genuine fear before she’d acted. It’s the only thing she can conjure falling, and falling, and falling, realizing how stark it had looked compared to her memories of it stricken, terrorized as they’d been forced down in that dirty cage and shorn of what little humanity they’d had. 

Her stomach drops as she does, heart pounding, head throbbing, ankle aching where she’d stepped on it harshly, tilting into blankness and nothing for the price of a dire mistake. Suguru hasn’t hurt them, and Mimiko hadn’t looked scared, but there’s always a price. There’s always a cost. It’s always more than what she can turn over. 

Her last thought as she careers into tile is a morbid, silent, ‘what have I done.’

“Shit,” Suguru curses, lunging forwards to shove a palm below Nanako’s forehead before it cracks against the tile, knees hitting the floor hard as his hand cushions her skull with a dull clap. 

For a moment after, he sits and he stares, listening to the shelf behind him fall onto the tile with a deafening clang, the multitude of soaps, plants, and bottles that had been on it tumbling throughout the bathroom in a loud jumble of noise. He blinks, breathing through the shocks prickling up his arms from being thrown, the aching dig in his back from hitting the metal edges of the shelves. 

“...A-are you okay?” Mimiko jitters, hands fisted in her short hair as she looks on, eyes blown wide and an unmistakable fear on her face and her whistled words. 

“I’m fine,” Suguru murmurs, brows furrowing as Nanako twitches, her eyelashes fluttering against his palm. Slowly, he lifts her head, other hand extending to support her body as he sits her up, looking for any injury. 

He can’t see one, even after smoke catches his eye. “What…?” He mumbles, peering down at the crumple of paper that falls from Nanako’s limp fist as he leans her against his chest, reaching down to spread it out. 

Seeing the polaroid finally clicks what happened into place. ‘Oh,’ Suguru thinks, before, ‘oh!’ A jolt of excitement ripping down his spine like static at the use of Nanako’s technique. He can’t help his mouth parting, eyes widening, realizing that the blotting polaroid capturing a picture of himself was what let her do whatever she had. 

‘Her technique must be like Yu’s,’ Suguru wonders, caught up in theorizing in the moment before Nanako groans, eyes blinking open fuzzily. 

He sees the moment she comes back to clarity, pale irises meandering over the destruction behind them, dragging over the photo on the ground. They blow wide, panic hiding plainly in small pupils. 

Nanako’s face jerks up, fixing onto his own as her mouth spills open, lips trembling under a barrage of words that all get trapped under her tongue as the fear settles thinly on her skin. 

“I- I- I-” She stutters, inhaling sharply when Suguru moves even a centimeter, freezing as he shifts. “I’m sorry,” Nanako hushes, hands shaking where she squeezes them into fists, eyes stuck on his mild expression. “I’m really sorry, I’m sorry, oh god I’m really sorry-”

She cuts off with a high noise when he moves one of his hands, freezing into place again like a cornered bunny, and Suguru stutters to a halt. Carefully, hesitant almost, he reaches out, eyes narrowing when skimming a touch to her cheek only has her shrinking, face scrunching as she waits, tensed. 

‘They’ve both acted differently this whole time,’ he wonders, puzzling the thought out as he waits, drawing his hand back for the moment, not entirely sure what to do when Satoru is typically better at this sort of crisis than he is. ‘Maybe…?’ Mimiko has been a veritable sponge around any affection she can get, a jealous little thing in the face of any that isn’t hers and a dragon hoarding wealth any time he and Satoru touch her. 

Her sister has been a little different. 

Clearly, Suguru wants to scoff, watching her flinch again when he so much as twitches. It makes him more than a little glad for what probably will never be the last time that fists weren’t what made his childhood sour. Weary, certainly, but morbidly glad.

“Nanako,” he says, gentle but firmer than he’d like, and can’t help his own curiosity when her shoulders draw back, her head lifting as her eyes snap back open. ‘Well look at that,’ Suguru thinks, puzzling apart that a command has her doing what touch would for Mimiko, thoughts lining up one by one in his head. 

She hadn’t responded to it back when Mimiko broke the plate, he realizes. It had been Satoru explaining his reaction that had calmed her down. 

‘Oh. She needs stability,’ Suguru realizes, lining up his next words in his head as she sits in front of him and waits, alert, upright, and entirely still, ‘not comfort.’

“Your ankle,” he asks, keeping his hands flat, biting down on the urge to be gentle with her even though he knows it isn’t what will help her, “does it hurt?” 

Nanako falters, clearly thrown off guard, tongue tied up into a knot as her brows furrow, confusion flickering over her face. “You fell,” Suguru explains, watching her eyes dart back up to his face immediately, favoring what he can do in the moment to help her when he feels just a touch helpless, an inch out of his depth. 

“I’m worried you jarred it. So answer me honestly, please,” he asks, feeling Mimiko’s stare boring into his back, Nanako’s caught in his own. “Does it hurt?”

“...Yes,” she finally whispers, drawn up, tense still, waiting to see where the conversation goes, likely.

“In what way?” Suguru asks, concerned she might have twisted it again, frustrated when he has to be patient like this. He’s never been one for a more authoritarian approach, not when he spent most of his life never being listened to. That’s more of Satoru’s toolset, Satoru’s ability. There’s a reason he’s impulsive and Satoru isn’t, after all. 

“It’s- throbbing,” she murmurs, a little stilted, but at least honest. 

‘Shit,’ Suguru thinks, swinging around in place for a moment as he looks at the cabinets, then the door, trying to remember where they last left the hot water bottle before he wants to smack himself in the head for being an idiot. 

She probably pulled it when she activated her technique, he muses, careful to reach out slowly to unwrap the ace bandage around her foot. Hands warming, he cups her sole with his left, his right smoothing gently over her joint. The motion makes her wince slightly, but some of the tension loosens from her shoulders with every degree he ticks the temperature of his palms up. 

“Does this feel better?” Suguru murmurs, quiet in the stuffy silence, and feels maybe a little vindicated with his own success when Nanako nods.

“It does,” she admits, barely more audible than a mouse, and Suguru hums. She’s speaking at all, so he’ll count it as a victory.

“Good,” he says, and lets the moment linger for one more beat, two as he searches for fractures, before he tries to pick her up when he finds none. Nanako goes easier after, the previous flinch missing when he curls his hands below her and lifts, careful to keep her foot from brushing anything as he sets her on the counter on the opposite side of the sink from Mimiko, curiously watching on and much more relaxed than her sister. 

As he sets a rolled washcloth under Nanako’s right foot to keep it off the hard granite of the countertop, Mimiko leans up, mumbling near his ear. “Are you really okay?” She worries, hands messing with her borrowed shirt, and Suguru huffs.

“Perfectly fine,” he promises, leaning down to drop a kiss to her temple, relieved one of them at least speaks the same language he does, and fully expects it when Nanako explodes on the spot. 

“But, but where’s the-?!” She yells, only to shrink when they both turn to her, a turtle shoving back into its shell as all the ferocity trickles away. “I don’t-” She continues, stumbling, her roughened words jumbled slightly as she shoves them out. 

“I attacked you!” Nanako exclaims, hands reaching up to snare in her hair. “I hurt you! I ruined the entire bathroom and made a- a huge mess!” She pants, a little winded with the rant, eyes raking all over his face as Suguru stands and stares at her, not surprised but maybe a little shocked into place. 

“Where’s the price?” Nanako continues, fingers squeezing tighter in pale blond strands as her lips twist down in a desperate thing. “What’s the cost of this?!” 

“A cost?” Suguru repeats, blinking, all the rest of her rant expected, maybe, save for that. 

“Yes!” Nanako cries, something he’d almost call anguish shoving lines into her face that shouldn’t be there if only he knew it wasn’t primarily distress making her desperate. “There’s always one! I just did- I- Why aren’t you-?!” 

With a sharp click, Nanako slams her mouth shut, teeth clacking together as her whole face pales, ashen as she silences. Suguru falters at the sight of it, a little at a loss, lips parting to speak even though he has nothing to say- nothing besides a slew of horrible inferences and conclusions, maybe. 

‘Cost,’ he thinks, the sentiment familiar but not for physicality. ‘Why would she think there’s a cost to this-?’ The only reasons he can find are none he likes, the only reasons he knows himself the ones that had twisted little verbal knives deep into skin. 

A murmur of something Satoru had said whispers along the edges of his thoughts just as smaller words soak through the silence. 

“...Why aren’t you hitting her,” Mimiko mutters, breaking the stalemate just as it settles. When Suguru turns, she’s staring down at the counter, knees drawn up to hide behind her hands, dark eyes gradually flickering up to meet his own. 

‘There used to be these things,’ Satoru had murmured not even two weeks ago, wretched in a terrible sort of trade, ‘bamboo canes. They were dried, cut straight, long and- and thin.’ It hadn’t been a surprise to hear of them, though it had been…new, in a sense. 

“Uncle would have smacked her for this- a backhand,” Mimiko recites, as if it’s the lines of a story she’s recalling rather than the memories he’s sure must make one. 

‘When I’d do something wrong- and I mean wrong- we’d tell the maids that-’ He’d stopped after, stuck, the coming confession caught in a whisper. 

“He would have adjusted his rings first,” Mimiko continues, eyes dropping back down to her feet as she speaks, voice dulled, flattened against the violent words. “Twisted ‘em until the heavy sides were facing upright,” she mumbles, a flicker of a twang on her tongue as she shoves off a shiver, detailed down to the knuckle. 

‘A cost,’ Suguru thinks, dull as he listens, and wonders how violence can compare to hundreds of grams of useless drugs. Maybe they can, or maybe they can’t. Does it even matter, really? 

A price is a price is a price, isn’t it?

“He used to like seeing the imprints of them in our skin.” She looks up again, a rawness to the honesty despite the sunken sort of pain hollowing her quiet. “There was a cost,” Mimiko explains, nothing but an airy whisper, “always, for everything. This woulda been a backhand and hungry for th’ night.” 

It’s maybe the most he’s ever heard her speak in one sitting. ‘People are monsters,’ Suguru thinks, teeth clenched hard enough together his molars grind in an effort to keep the fury off his face. Nothing, he knows, but filthy, dirty monsters. 

‘So what if mine were worse?’ Satoru had fumbled, years ago now about the monsters of his own back when they’d still been clueless kids. He hadn’t really understood then, not the gravity or the lack of it, but he does now. 

“Well,” Suguru murmurs anyway, tilting Mimiko’s face up with a knuckle under her chin, “I don’t wear rings.” He’s glad when a corner of her lips tick up, fighting against how they want to cave, even as she finds a reason to smile, small as it is when he stands in front of her and struggles to. 

Pain is pain. Trading one kind for another means nothing when it still hurts.

‘No wonder comfort hasn’t worked for her,’ Suguru thinks, several things slotting into place at once as he presses a warmed kiss to Mimiko’s forehead, skimming a hand through the newly evened ends of her dark hair- almost finished. He can’t imagine Nanako would be terribly receptive to it if she was the one constantly taking the brunt of the punishments by the way her sister speaks of them. 

When he draws back, Mimiko blinks a few times, staving off any sheen that would turn her eyes shiny as they flicker between his own, assessing or wondering or maybe just memorizing. To his right, Nanako sits still, simmering under her own confusion, pressurizing like a bomb waiting to go off. 

“Good job,” Suguru murmurs anyway, knowing more than he’d like how much praise means when it’s about the simple things, the ones that are so much harder than anything else. He smiles finally, swiping a thumb over Mimiko’s flushing cheek, proud that she’s getting comfortable enough to tell him things like it at all. 

When he leans back up, Nanako’s as tense as he thought she’d be, curled in on herself and more of a mess of furrowed brows and downturned lips than a kid. 

“I- I don’t get it,” she flounders, the words weak and unsteady as she looks between them, inconceivably lost. “I did something wrong,” she pushes, “I did- I was…” Only to dribble off when Suguru says nothing, palms drifting down to squeeze the countertop to keep from squeezing into fists. He’d be mad enough to taste the lava on his tongue if only he wasn’t forcing it all down into a pit to bubble, simmering until it’s actually useful. 

She shrinks again, as small as she can make herself, and Suguru hurts. 

“What I did was bad,” Nanako whispers, arms wrapping tightly around herself, and lips slanting, Suguru tilts his head. His hair shifts with the motion, slinking over his shoulders, unnaturally uneven when Mimiko’s matching cut wasn’t a perfect line. 

“Was it?” He asks, drumming his fingertips along granite counter, waiting to reach out and touch her until Nanako’s calmed more. Until she doesn’t feel like she’ll be hit. Pain, he wants to think of, among a childhood of bottle caps. He’s going to do better than his own parents ever could. 

“Was-” Nanako repeats, bewildered, only to click her jaw shut again with a snap. 

“I don’t think it was bad,” Suguru declares, if only to keep her from getting the wrong idea, happy to turn his hand up to be held onto when Mimiko’s fingers come searching along his own. “You panicked because you saw me holding scissors near Mimiko’s face, right?” Suguru wonders, curious to which trauma she’d been reacting to, wanting nothing less than never to know.

Slowly, Nanako nods, short hair ruffling slightly against where she’s huddled into the mirror. 

“I think you panicked because you thought your sister was being hurt,” Suguru explains, glad when Mimiko’s small fingers wrap around three of his own, the touch settling in a way he’s not so proud to admit he himself might need at the moment. “If she had been,” he continues, watching as Nanako’s face slackens, the gears behind her eyes slowly starting to turn, “you might have potentially saved her.”

“Can you really look at me and tell me you think that’s bad of you?” Suguru wonders, softened in the heavy silence, vindicated when Nanako’s eyes widen not out of fear, but from understanding. 

Without a word, she shakes her head no, stilted and hesitant. He can’t help himself from trying a small smile, after, huffing slightly when Mimiko tugs his hand closer, hugging his wrist like one of Megumi’s stuffed animals. 

“I don’t think it was bad at all,” Suguru admits, a personal victory in how Nanako’s shoulders slump as all her tension releases, how she sags slightly, lips parting in a small afterthought. “I think it’s a pride.”

He waits, after, easier to be patient when he knows he’s finally gotten somewhere. Nanako breaks quickly. 

“I-...I really like it here,” she confesses, words watery and a little painful to listen to even though he knows they’re what’s going to finally give her an absolution. “I really like this place and- and you and I, I don’t wanna-” She fumbles, hands unwrapping around her middle to tangle together in a show of nerves, wringing like a towel coiled tight. 

“I don’t know what the rules are,” Nanako hushes, stricken as her head ducks, wretched gaze glued to the countertop as she spills her heart out. “I wanna be good and- and what you want but I’m not like Mimiko! I’m gonna keep screwing up until-!”

“Hey, hey,” Suguru soothes, as her head comes rushing up among her quickened words, tangling together as they start to ramble. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, finally reaching out to set a hand on her shoulder, brows furrowing as he puzzles through her stream of thoughts. 

Nanako inhales a rattly breath, trembly still even though she quiets, waiting. 

“...We don’t want anything from you,” Suguru repeats, lips thinning in concern, “remember? There’s nothing we expect, goodness or badness included, okay?” Nanako nods, short and jerky, even though he can plainly see how her eyes grimace in disbelief. 

“There’s no…” Suguru starts, beginning on a rant of his own about how there aren’t rules to being a child, only to falter, stuck on the sight of her face and how lost Nanako looks. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that she was likely the one taking most of the hurt in their house, not when she’s so dead set on having guidelines as if life is a never ending test and not a meandering walk through the woods. 

‘It wouldn’t be fair to her not to give her something,’ Suguru realizes, when this is the same sort of lifeline as Mimiko holding onto his hand. She needs this, and as it stands, he’s the only person who can give her her own. 

He has to meet both of them halfway, just like he has with Tsumiki, with Megumi. They can’t be reeled in from the lake until they’re in reach, after all. 

He’s going to be better than his parents. 

“...Okay,” Suguru starts, slow as he thinks, parsing through several of the unspoken things Megumi and Tsumiki have picked up on over the months. “The rules are…if you’re hurt, you have to tell me or Satoru,” Suguru decides, not missing the way Nanako’s brows knit together, “and maybe help clean up if you caused a mess.”

“...That’s it?” Nanako asks, disbelief coloring her words faint, and Suguru shrugs, smoothing the hand left on her shoulder down her arm.

“That’s it,” he promises, the weight of Mimiko’s satisfied stare heavy where it sits on the side of his face, Nanako’s is even heavier as it looks at him like he’s not real in the slightest. “Kindness had a price too, didn’t it?” He asks, quiet as he pulls her closer along the countertop, mindful of her injured foot, listening to her breaths start to catch on the back of her throat as they dampen. 

She nods roughly into his shirt when Suguru tucks her close, sniffling into his sternum as he drags a warmed palm up and down her back, encouraging Mimiko to lean against his side. 

“Kindness won’t have one here,” he murmurs.

Nanako shudders slightly at the words, hands clinging into his shirt, and he doesn’t need to feel her mouth opening to know she’ll protest it. “You don’t have to trust that now,” he hushes, “just listen to it. That’s all I ask.”

Nanako sobs, shoulders shaking even as not a sound escapes her lips, choked up in her throat from what can only be a trained kind of cage. “You’re okay,” Suguru promises, the words spoken quietly into Nanako’s hair, wrapped up tightly in the crook of his arm. “You’re gonna be okay.”

He lets the words sit and stew in the air as the three of them linger, Nanako shoving impossibly closer as she cries herself dry, Mimiko calmly looking on and clearly in no hurry to rush anything or anywhere else, despite the little of her hair left to finish evening out. 

For a while, that’s where they stay. Soaking in the silence, settling into soft promises. 

Suguru doesn’t dare move so long as Nanako shoves into him and cowers, waiting until either he has to for some reason or another, or she decides to pull away first. He waits long enough, convinced he can’t even shift for fear that he might set her off again, that it takes him longer than it really should to realize she’s slumped, head held up entirely by how she’d jammed it into his stomach. 

‘...Cute,’ he thinks, when he tilts back just enough to give Nanako slack, holding her up with one hand on her thinned shoulders. She blinks tiredly, clearly a little out of it, a yawn big enough to pop her jaw temporarily taking over her face. 

“...Can we finish my hair?” Mimiko asks, quiet where she looks up from under his arm, and among Nanako’s mumbled, formless, ‘mghf,’ Suguru smiles. 

“Sure,” he agrees, equally soft as he finally draws away, not particularly surprised any when small fingers latch clumsily but urgently into the hem of his shirt. 

“Wait,” Nanako croaks, nothing more than a rasp of a whisper, nothing less than a touch desperate, and Suguru can’t lie and say he doesn’t feel a wave of relief to finally speak in a language he understands. 

“Easy,” he coos, when Nanako jostles slightly in his arms, hands shooting up to cling around his neck. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“...But,” she mumbles, lashes dragging against the skin of his neck as if her eyelids weigh tons, limbs tense with the fear he’ll disappear and yet retaining enough slack for him to know she’s wholly exhausted herself. “How’re you g’nna…Mimi’s hair?” 

“...Great question,” Suguru mutters, lips slanting in thought as he puzzles through his answer. Mimiko watches his face, curious enough to match his raised eyebrow with a shrug, but not so curious as to offer anything helpful. 

“Can’t be that hard, right?” Suguru asks, more for himself than for them, and only offers a flowery smile when Mimiko’s brows furrow slightly. “Have some faith,” he mutters, miffed when they only sink lower on her face, and can’t help a surprised grin when she pokes out her tongue. 

“We can go slow like before still, right?” She asks, something wary flashing over her eyes when Suguru paws around the counter for the forgotten scissors.

“Always, baby,” he promises, smoothing a palm over her head before he reshuffles Nanako in his arms, feeling not unlike a human jenga puzzle as he juggles how to hold both her and a pair of hair scissors without contorting his wrists. 

“...I wish we could really match,” Mimiko sighs, wistful as she turns back toward the mirror for the length he still has that she doesn’t, her tongue looser now that her fear has settled into something calmer. 

‘Suguru,’ he thinks, ‘don’t fucking do it.’

“Well…” He says, giving the scissors a twirl around one finger, meeting two pairs of mismatched eyes in the mirror, already one impulsive decision deep before nine in the morning. “Who said we couldn’t?”

‘Famous last words,’ he thinks, not repentant in the slightest when Mimiko’s entire face lights up. He’d do anything for them, burning the world to the ground included.

He can just regret it later.

Chapter Text

“You’re late,” Akemi snaps, and just to be petty, Satoru rolls his eyes. He can’t lie that he revels slightly in the flippancy of doing so when it makes her sneer with closed, red painted lips.

“Have mercy, your majesty,” Satoru mutters, following after the sharp click of her heels as she strides towards where the chauffeur car waits, the doorman supposedly ignoring their waspish back and forth and yet absorbing every word to later tell to the entire garden staff. “Some of us have toddlers.”

“Some of us had toddlers,” Akemi throws back, slipping into the back of the staff car as gracefully as ever, “and we never found excuses to be late.”

“You’re such a fucking pain,” Satoru grouses, following after her, the slam of the car door punctuating the snap of Akemi’s fan as she unfurls it, warmer now that it’s bordering into late spring. 

“I’d watch your tongue,” she murmurs, red eyes sliding to the side to glare at him, frosty when he’s made her wait an hour, “we do remember who’s banking for this, don’t we?”

“Obaa-san,” Satoru mutters, not bothering to hide the face he makes when it’s not even nine in the morning yet and he’s already itching with anxiety, “I’m not playing this game today.” Akemi raises one perfect white eyebrow, incredulity if it could have any poise at all, and he sighs, slumping down into the car seat.

‘Hag,’ Satoru thinks, glaring with all the vigor he can muster when she raps his arm with a harsh snap of her fan to sit up straight. It hits his tongue next when he sticks it out in childish protest. It hits infinity when it comes flying back a third time. 

It’s a very long, very silent car ride. 

“Naobito,” Akemi calls, swaying on expensive heels and in an even more expensive kimono as she saunters down the front entrance into the Zen’in estate, “what a pleasure to do business with you again.” The smile on her face speaks it’s more hers than his, vicious and cutting where he only stands sallow and clearly pissed. 

“Hello, Gojo-sama,” two of the servants chorus beside him, bowing low enough he can see the backs of their necks as they hold out a tray of hand towels. 

“Hello,” Satoru murmurs, gladly taking one when the walk up the stone steps is brutal even in mid May, “thank you.” They both nod, waiting for him to set it back on the tray before stepping back, only to be seen and never heard. 

He can’t help how his lips thin after, more than a little ruffled to see clan life up close again when he’s been avoiding it for decades. ‘It’s only for a few hours,’ Satoru thinks, slipping something cool and aloof onto his face as he approaches where Akemi and Naobito stand, exchanging what look like heavily barbed, very one sided pleasantries. He can manage that much.

“-fool me, you witch,” Naobito hisses, cutting off just as Satoru steps into earshot, lips pressing shut and eyes peering with a harshness he’s only seen kept reserved to them or the weak. He clears his throat, straightening up, and it’s easy to tell he’s already been drinking today, what with how the stench clings to him like mold. 

“Satoru-san,” Naobito acknowledges, roughened, then, “Akemi-sama. If you’ll follow me.” He turns, sweeping the long plaits of his hakama as he goes, a new sort of wrinkle below his eyes that wasn’t quite there this early last time, Satoru notes, only a touch gleeful. 

“As I said,” Naobito picks up, once they’ve passed under the main torii gate and into the central estate, “I’m quite grateful you’ve chosen to take those wretches off our hands.” He smiles, sleazy and almost oily, eyes narrowed as if he’s particularly proud of something, Satoru thinks.

“I do hope you find a proper way to dispose of them,” Naobito continues, waving a hand aimlessly as they stride down old wooden hallways, and silently, Satoru meets Akemi’s eyes when they hit their corners. His gaze snaps down when he catches the twitch of her fingers, twisting into two of the Gojo clan’s military signs. 

‘Silent,’ she says, and then, ‘mine,’ right after, a detestable sort of gleam in her eye, and more than happy to step back, Satoru lets her have it. 

Akemi laughs, an elegant chuckle that he knows ends mean as fast as it starts sweet, picking up her stride slightly to be shoulder to shoulder with Naobito in a way Satoru knows he hates as she antagonizes him. 

“I as well,” she teases, lips curled up in something deceptively beautiful, but wholly sly. “One must not mix trash and recycling, after all. You do remember what you lost back in ‘eighty-seven? We wouldn’t want a repeat.” She laughs again, casually brushing a touch over his shoulder, and Satoru can’t lie he’s a little impressed with how quickly Naobito turns as red as a beet, veins popping in his neck. 

“Of course,” he bites, only barely kept from a snap. “It was such a shame, when your son made off with that useless whore. Such a pointless theft.”

“Why Naobito,” Akemi simpers, a delicate smile on her pretty lips, disturbingly youthful despite edging into her forties. “It’s simply hilarious to think Chiyoko useless. I found her quite useful.” It sharpens then, metaphorical fangs poking behind her red stained lips, and Satoru sighs as Naobito sputters into a hissing retort. 

‘For the love of god, they’re awful,’ he thinks, refusing to let the grimace show on his face as they start to bicker over his mother’s past and her supposed worth, snapping back and forth in a useless tirade. He’s never enjoyed hearing the stories, not even after she finally died of sickness once he’d gotten older, and he’d been an orphan in more than just sentiment. They’d never felt like anything but pins and needles when she’d never been a mother to him.

Instead of listening, he sweeps his gaze over the estate, cataloging people and places, searching for particular signatures, watching for words here and there. It hasn’t changed much if at all from the place he remembers in one life and a second, just as traditional and simple and hiding the same old blood in the walls. 

He supposes it’s a good thing that Naobito thinks they’re buying trash, because if the drunk knew what sort of resource his nieces could become, he’d be exploiting them to their last breaths. Maybe it’s better if their last parting is a bed of ash and cinders as opposed to anything else. 

It doesn’t take long to reach the main room, Zen’in Ogi and several Kukuru unit members waiting staunchly behind the doors servants slide open, dower and sallow in the foggy morning of the mountain. It’s dark within, quiet and lonely. Waiting. 

“Brother,” Naobito greets, unbothering to address the room at large as he takes his place beside Ogi, Maki and Mai knelt shoulder to shoulder at his feet. 

“Shall we get this over with, already,” Ogi mutters, one antsy hand on the katana in his belt. “I have soldiers to train.”

“Of course,” Akemi smooths, breezing into the room, checkbook materializing into her waiting hand. “I do believe we’ve already agreed on a price, so I’d like to go over contracts.”

Satoru tunes them out for a moment to look down at the twins, combing over visible skin for injuries or marks as he stands at Akemi’s shoulder, hands held stiff clasped together behind his back. They look alright, from where Mai stares down at the traditional floor and Maki glares up at the room at large. When her eyes finally rake to his, Satoru watches them narrow, expecting the vitriol in them when it shines. 

He knows better than to think it’s just directed at him. He thinks it has more to do with Ogi stood impatiently behind them, waiting to sell off his only children to an entirely different clan when their birthright belongs to the one that doesn’t want them. 

Maybe, he thinks, the look of them on the floor was the kind of sight that had driven his mother to run from this place. It isn’t as if he wouldn’t in her stead, Satoru wonders, tracing over the old words he’d only ever be sparsely given about how his parents met. How a Zen’in’s lowly servant had fallen for Akemi’s second son, how she’d run, how they’d lived in some sort of peace from the divinity of their only child, until Ryo had met his fate facing a curse. Until Chiyoko died of loneliness.  

Standing in front of two unwanted twins, two unwanted children, Satoru wonders if his parents had truly found love, or if Suguwara Chiyoko had only been running, leaving the bad for the worse and entirely unknowing of it.

He hopes he isn’t making the same mistake. 

“In buying Zen’in Maki and Zen’in Mai, the Gojo clan will formally sever any ties they have to the Zen’in clan, be it familial, social, or political,” Akemi begins, raising an eyebrow as she meets Ogi’s flat stare, a knowing thing in her red eyes. “Their reputations will be our reputations, their powers our powers, their actions our actions. Is this amendable?” 

“Agreed,” Ogi mutters, elbowing Naobito’s side when he hesitates, suspicious of Akemi and the tricks she’s pulled on him before, where his brother is simply desperate to be rid of his perceived failures. 

“Agreed,” he repeats, sour like a lemon rind, and Satoru watches Maki’s face instead of theirs as they say it, noting the widening of her eyes, the realization fluttering over her expression. 

“I’d like to include a clause,” Akemi continues, once she’s certain no one else will interject to disagree, and Satoru looks back up, curious. He catches her eye long enough to see a smidgeon of her thoughts, how they seem to lack something malicious, for once. 

As she opens her mouth to speak, Satoru catches the flicker of something- familiar, the energy plain but, ‘Maki’s mother,’ he realizes, watching the figure hover beyond the shut sliding doors, hesitant, wary, terribly regretful. 

“The twins can never be bought back,” Akemi declares, letting the words settle heavily over the darkened room before she tilts her head, the tall, intricate up-do of her hair not moving an inch. “The Gojo clan will own them until they are of age.” Her earrings rattle, dangly and precious, flashing with the dim notes of light they catch from the morning, barred by thin paper doors. 

Mai seems to have stopped breathing when he glances down at her, eyes fixed to the floor and gradually weighing with the gravity of what a sale means. 

Maki burns like a fire snuffed into silence. 

‘I wonder if you’ll hate me for this one day,’ Satoru thinks, cool as he catches her eyes, dark like Fushiguro Toji’s and full of the fury he could never quite conjure. Hate or love, he’ll take whatever it becomes. 

‘You can only do your best,’ is what Shoko had said once, and she’s been right ever since. 

“In turn,” Naobito begins, hands sliding into his large hakama sleeves, a narrowed look on his face, “the Gojo clan shall pay five-hundred thousand yen. They may never return on their purchase.” He glares, low and simmering, and Satoru doesn’t need to look at Akemi’s face to know she’s smiling, small and pleased despite the monetary snub. 

“It’s a deal,” she says, and bows only enough to tip down her chin, the etiquette personally offensive to Naobito and his specific ideals on what women should and shouldn’t do when he gnashes his teeth, but bowing still, anyway. 

The next few moments pass by quickly, rushing in a hurry as if the taboo has been committed. Maki’s mother disappears down the hallway, smothering everything she feels judging by the harsh snaring of her cursed energy. Ogi vanishes through the doorway, in a hurry to leave his only hang-up behind. The lawyers step away from the sidelines, presenting a semi-blank copy of a contract with a flourish for Akemi and Naobito to put to paper. 

Maki and Mai are dragged up by their arms, shoved forwards, and left to look up at him, utterly and completely abandoned. 

“Let’s leave them to the ugly parts of politics,” Satoru murmurs, carefully guiding each of the girls towards the paper shoji doors by a hand hovering along their backs, steering them towards the gardens where they can speak without listening ears.

Behind him, Akemi and Naobito have knelt down onto the tatami while one of the Kukuru members drags over a small lap table, already beginning to argue with the lawyers about how to put their deal down into writing. 

Maki and Mai exchange a glance, twin eyes blinking in turn, before Mai darts a last look into the room. Satoru lets her have it for one, two, three seconds, and then he shuts the paper doors. 

They make it all the way to the center of the garden before Maki breaks. 

It’s a long, quiet walk, maybe five minutes in total, but excruciating ones to wait when the twins say nothing as Satoru slowly walks alongside them, steps dragged out to match their smaller strides. 

“...What will you have us do, Gojo-sama?” Maki mutters, inky eyes flicking up to glare at him, the title of his name nothing much more than a smear to stain in the white sand under their feet. “Move into the maid’s quarters? Maybe the cooks? Or will you pawn us off to whoever pays enough-?” 

“Maki-” Mai interrupts, eyes darting nervously between them only to be talked over, Maki’s vitriol spitting when he knows she must be hurting. 

“Maybe we’ll make nice doorstops for whoever feels in the mood?” Maki glowers, teeth bared as she stands and refuses to cry, her face scrunched in anger and her small fists shaking at her sides. “Maybe you’ll even-!”

“Maki,” Satoru cuts in, soft but sturdy, lower when he’s trying to be quieter to offset her burgeoning yelling. She abruptly stops, mouth shutting with a click, lips trembling even though she fights to look like she’s in control, nose scrunched in as harsh of a glare as she can muster. 

Silently, Satoru sinks down, tilting onto the balls of his feet to be eye level with them, a fragile thing winding into his own ribcage when he tries to set the image of the girl he’d known over the baby in front of him, flushed and uncertain and undeniably scared. 

“Why do you think I went out of my way to talk to you two, that day?” Satoru asks, relaxing his shoulders, setting his palms on his knees. Maki falters, thrown off guard, and Mai’s gaze finally unglues from her sister- snapping to him in confusion, brows furrowing. It’s an adorable expression.

“...I…don’t know,” Maki mutters, some of her immediate acidity thinning out as she fumbles. Satoru huffs, ticking up a smile, and points down at her traditional sandals.

“You threw one of those at Naoya,” he answers, unable to help it when it grows a little wider as her eyes do, her head picking up with a sudden spark as she catches onto the trail of gunpowder he’d left the last time he saw the two of them. “You were going to throw the other one, too.”

“...What does that have to do with anything,” Maki breathes, seemingly frustrated, entirely hopeful. Waiting for nothing more than a crushing disappointment. 

“I’m a fan of anyone who can piss off Naoya,” Satoru teases, sticking out his tongue, relaxing marginally when Mai smiles slightly, nervous but less so. “But also because you would have fought. You wanted to, didn’t you?” Satoru asks, matching Maki’s face as it smooths blank, hiding anything that could give her away. 

“With us,” he murmurs, slowly lifting up a hand, “you could learn- better than anything the Zen’in’s could teach you. Better than anything the Zen’in’s could make you.” 

Maki doesn’t move when he holds it out, waiting, eyes flickering down to his palm and then up to his face, almost a little lost.

“So you only want us for resources?” She asks, flat, and Satoru tilts his head. 

“Did I say that?” He asks, and watches Mai shuffle in place, fidgeting with the edge of her plain kimono. 

“I don’t know,” Maki challenges, jutting out her chin, “did you?” 

Of all things, it’s that which makes him laugh. Both the girls recoil faintly, exchanging another glance as he snickers, caught up in the sass. ‘You never really do change,’ Satoru thinks, warmer when he opens his eyes again, so terribly fond at the sight of Maki, of her sister, defiant and annoying because it’s just who she wants to be.

“Why did you even want us,” Mai asks, timid as she speaks up, thumbing at a loose thread in her sleeve. “Everyone else thinks we’re worthless.” Her eyes flicker up from her sandals, darting between his own, and Satoru isn’t as wary to set a gentle hand on her head as he is Maki- she wouldn’t bite his fingers if he tried, he doesn’t think. 

“Everyone else is blind,” he murmurs, eyes tipping over the rims of his glasses as he speaks, sliding away to Maki as he lets the words hang. 

“...I could learn,” Maki finally repeats, after a stilted minute passes and his hand falls back down to his side, expensive white sand clinging to his pants when Satoru sits down in the garden, just to be a dick to the perfected lines drawn in it. “What do you mean by that?” 

Maki’s lips purse, pouting in petulance as she follows him, sinking roughly down into a kneel in the sand of the zen garden as she finally gives into her own curiosity, frowning. Tentatively, Mai follows her, eyes constantly flickering between the both of them.

Wordlessly, Satoru holds out his hand again, palm parallel to her face. “Hit it,” he says, shrugging. 

Making a face, Maki hesitates for a second, before slapping a weak punch against the hollow of his hand. It’s the correct form, tightly wound, but plain. Unenthusiastic. 

“I said hit it,” Satoru chides, a tease in the gentle mock, “what was that, a love tap?” 

He grins when he sees the words dig in, Maki’s frown twisting into a scowl as she winds her elbow back, upper body twisting with a full force punch to his palm. It smacks loudly through the garden when it hits, a flash of pain radiating through the bones in his hands as they jitter, and Satoru only whistles, impressed. 

“You’re what, seven?” He says, knowing full well she is. “The Zen’in’s don’t understand what kind of gift a heavenly restriction is.”

“A gift-?” Maki snarks, reeling back in what would be offended dismay if she didn’t look so eager to hit him again, maybe addicted to the force or maybe just cause she thinks he’s annoying. 

“A gift,” Satoru repeats, pulling his hand back to tug on the collar of his expensive button up, dragging the neck away from his own to flash the scar from the Spear of Heaven. “Not just anyone could leave a mark like this on a person like me,” he murmurs, watching the both of their faces slacken in shock as they take in the sight of scarred skin. 

He knows he doesn’t have to say the name of the devil that gave it to him for the both of them to have it sat heavy and waiting on their tongues. 

“The Zen’in’s are blind,” Satoru emphasizes, letting his shirt fall back into place. “They won’t recognize what sort of treasure they have no matter how loudly you yell. Either of you.” He pauses for a moment, sighing as Maki slowly swallows the words down, as Mai sits nervously beside her, clearly uncertain if she fits into the narrative. 

“They’ll hurt you, and they’ll push you away,” Satoru continues, slowly reaching out again, nudging small knuckles. “You can call me any kind of name you want,” he murmurs, turning up his hand to catch the undersides of little fingers. “I won’t care if you hate me later for this. I’ll be glad if you don’t.”

When he looks up, both Maki and Mai are still, frozen, eyes locked on his face. 

“Maybe I’m tired of children being stolen from their own childhoods. Maybe I’m just selfish because I’m lonely.” Satoru shrugs, curling his hand around their fingers, barely bigger than Megumi’s, the same size as Tsumiki’s. Their nails are dirty, unpainted, chipped with housework. He wants better for them.

“You killed Elder Kaito,” Maki breathes, holding his gaze, a sort of revelation blooming in her depthless irises. “Why?” 

“I’m making my own world,” Satoru answers, “some place better than this,” and finally relaxes for the first time all day when Maki suddenly understands. 

The next two hours go much more peacefully, after. They wander the gardens, playing menial, unspoken games and quietly talking, waiting for Akemi and Naobito to finish their legal bartering. Mai lets him hold her after an hour passes, a little fearful to be picked up but tired enough to give in after a while. He can’t blame them- he’d be awake all night too if he knew he was being sold in the morning. 

Maki seems to settle a little more at the sight of Mai sat comfortably and safe in the crook of his arms, the final hammer to the nail that Satoru means them no harm. She’s still a little pistol after, obnoxious and wheedling, but that’s just who Maki is. 

“Of course there’s training fields at the Gojo estate,” he scoffs, kicking the loose rock back Maki’s direction in their silent game, answering question after question. “What do we look like to you, barbarians?” 

“What about the servants?” She weasels, eyes narrowed as she thwacks the stone a good few feet ahead. “Are they paid?”

“Two-thousand yen an hour,” he answers, “with provided housing and meals.” 

“Yeah right,” Maki crows, bumping into his legs when Satoru kicks the stone again, aiming for the pile of rocks neatly stacked a few feet away. She makes a small noise when it clatters into a mess, a little, ‘heh,’ that makes him want to laugh. 

“What about the women? Your figurehead is one. Is it the same as here?” She asks, face tilting up to catch his eyes, and silently, Satoru shakes his head, gently resettling Mai where she’s slipped slightly. 

“No,” he promises, “Obaa-san doesn’t allow that kind of household.” The lie tastes bitter when it coats his teeth. It is one. It isn’t one. It’s only a truth when there aren’t exceptions. It’s only a lie when there are. 

“That’s too good to be true,” Maki argues, and sighing, Satoru nods. 

“Something like that,” he says, “but not for you two.”

“What do you mean?” Maki wonders, yanking on the side of his pants, a harsh note in her voice that makes it difficult to remember she’s only seven. She sounds so much older occasionally, so much more weary and worn. It isn’t right.

“I mean that I wouldn’t have taken you both if I didn’t know you could be safe,” Satoru mutters, quieter lest anyone listening hears, even though he knows there’s no one else in the garden. 

Old habits die hard, he muses, gently rubbing a palm over Mai’s arm to calm some of the panic he can see flaring in the dim sparks of her cursed energy. He can’t lie he’s grateful to be holding her when the familiarity of the weight calms some panic of his own, the lingering anxiety crawling up his insides at Megumi’s oddness this morning, the worry he’s missed something that’ll lead to hurt, later.

“I made a deal with Akemi,” he explains, looking back down to Maki and her expectant stare, not surprised when her brows draw together, shadowing her eyes as she thinks. 

“What kind of deal?” They narrow, clearly calculating, waiting for his input to figure out how fragile her footing will be under it. Mai sits in his arms doing the very same thing, though much quieter. 

“My grandmother and I have another arrangement set up,” Satoru begins, walking slowly through the meandering trails of the garden so Maki can keep up with his strides without struggle, each step lingering and lazy. “I’ve agreed to take her place when she steps down, so long as she lets me do what I want.”

“...How does it…?” Mai murmurs, voice a whispery whistle as she braves a question, shrinking slightly once the words have left her mouth. 

“I’ve refused to become clan head if either of you are hurt by anyone, in any way,” he says, meeting Mai’s widened gaze first, Maki’s soul piercing stare second. 

He’s sure there’s more than a lot going through her head- both of their heads. He’s sure that there’s memories of a mother that had distanced from them, a father that had never wanted them, an uncle who thought they’d be more useful dead than alive. The weight of an entire clan and its burden of being the worst, the deadweight, the weakest. He’s sure they’re both trying to reconcile how on earth he could want them when their own family hadn’t. 

“That’s excessive,” Maki mutters, though it’s hesitant. Buried in hope she won’t say aloud.

“So is violence,” Satoru retorts, and lets her look away when she turns, refusing to meet his eyes and let him see that she agrees, that she wants at all. “I’ll be coming to the estate twice a month to check on you two,” he continues, offering Mai a wink she doesn’t really return, caught up in her thoughts. “You deserve to be respected just like anyone else.”

“Don’t say things that’ll cause problems,” Mai whispers, staring down at his feet as she pulls restlessly on her fingers, already completely popped. 

“In my world,” Satoru responds, raising a brow when dark eyes gradually lift, “it doesn’t.” 

Tentatively, a small touch brushes along the side of his hand, enough to make him falter for a moment, before Maki’s pushing through her own timidity and shoving her hand into his own, left in reach at his side. 

“...You’ve got a lot of promises to keep,” she mumbles, face turned away even though she squeezes his hand like a lifeline, and Satoru huffs, gently squeezing back. 

“I do, don’t I?” He murmurs, and doesn’t regret even a single one. 

Her heels crunch oddly in the white sand of the zen garden. Despite it, Akemi’s prideful stride bears no falter. 

“Satoru,” she says, smooth and elegant, “it’s time to leave.” 

Sat before her, he looks up, expecting the wide eyed stare Mai has fixated onto Akemi where she looms behind him, how Maki looks too, though doesn’t turn her head. He knows the only grace he has for the lack of a reprimand is that they’re on enemy territory, and to appear untouchable they must first seem united. 

“Of course, Obaa-san,” he tones, polite for nothing but appearances, eyes given down to Maki and Mai instead of to her, where they sit around a scattering of drawings traced into fine sand with little fingers. When he rises, he holds out two hands, giving the both of theirs a squeeze as he pulls them to their feet.

‘It’s okay,’ Satoru mouths, so long as his back is turned to Akemi. ‘It’ll all be okay.’

It has to be, it needs to be, he’ll make it be. 

The walk back is quiet. Neither of the twins say anything as they wind through the traditional compound, not about the avoidant gazes of passing servants, not of the staunch silence of the attendant leading them to the front, not of how Akemi keeps her head high, forwards, and devoutly ignorant of them. 

The chauffeur that drove them up bows immediately as they come into sight maybe ten minutes later past the ridiculous stone stairs, whirring into motion to open doors and politely usher them along. 

“...They won’t be bringing anything?” Satoru asks, giving Mai an encouraging tap to climb into the wealthy luxury car, eyes sliding to their corners. 

“No,” Akemi murmurs, her own raking over Maki where she follows, watching them as they speak. “Ogi desired they leave with nothing. I wasn’t one to refuse.”

There is not a thing they’d have with any worth, she means, and as much as it makes him feel like a part of the circuit his family runs of human trades and power deals, he can’t help but agree. If either of them were allowed to have anything sentimental, of course Ogi would do everything in his power to destroy it. That man, Satoru knows, would sooner kill his own children than admit that’s what they were.

He only wishes it was less literal of a knowledge than it is. 

“They’ll need-” He starts, only for the snap of Akemi’s fan to cut him off.

“I’ve had far more children than you,” she sniffs, “I’m well aware of what they’ll need.” She turns on her heel, after, stalking to the other side of the car for the opposite door, and instead of getting caught up in the snub, Satoru can’t help but stand in place, lips parting under his own confusion.

If he wouldn’t say better, he could almost swear he might have heard a chilly, agitated fury in the sharpened curves of his grandmother’s words. 

“You’re too thin,” Akemi recites, listing off a series of judgements as she leads them through the Gojo estate maybe an hour later, after a rather listless, very quiet drive up. 

“Starting tomorrow morning, you’ll be dining at set hours each day under my own watch. You’re both too scraggly, as well,” she continues, heels clicking against stone as they stride alongside her through the outside paths of the main courtyards, connected in a maze throughout the winding house. “You’ll be under the care of a nursemaid each and expected to dress appropriately to status.” 

Satoru doesn’t interject, only because he knows this is the best of what his grandmother could be giving, even if it is harsh in one manner or another. Clearly, she’s taken his word to heart if she’s intent on turning the twins into ornate little heirs like his cousins had been. 

Mai looks like she’s been hit by a truck, eyes wide in her head and a falter in her steps, self-consciously tugging on the sleeves of her plain kimono in the face of all the other people around them, dressed significantly better, significantly wealthier. She’s so obviously overwhelmed it’s almost sort of painful, but there’s really nothing to be said about it, not when being dumped into a new house, a new family, a new life is little better than a band-aid to just rip off lest the sting be dragged out longer. 

Maki looks lost, eyes swiveling everywhere and brows caught in a permanent furrow. It’s not a look he’s ever seen her wear, before. 

“We’ll have permanent rooms prepared for you tonight, so you’ll begin today by learning the layout of the estate. You’ll be expected to bathe properly before dinner, and you’ll be waited on by handmaids if you’re uncertain how to dress our style of kimono,” Akemi rambles, less a sign she’s nervous and more of one that her mind’s racing, running through a marathon as she schemes, planning, plotting.

“We’ll begin an assessment on your techniques and abilities within the week,” Akemi continues, launching off into another tangent about her plans for the two of them as she struts along, long legs leaving Mai slightly in the dust. 

“...Gojo-san?” She whispers, creased worry lining her features when Satoru stoops down to pick her up, chewing on the inside of his cheek when he catches her skin feeling warmer than it had earlier, either a flush or a stress bound fever.

“You’ll be fine,” he murmurs, setting her in the curve of his arm as Maki falls into step beside him, determined to keep up on her own. Her gaze catches on a group of Gojo sorcerers training in the nearby field, sparring in a flurry of faint shouts and clacks as weapons clash, and he doesn’t bother to try offering her any support when her eyes practically glue themselves to the sight, utterly enraptured. 

“-forget everything and anything Naobito ever said,” Akemi finishes, gradually stopping as they hit the center courtyard where everything connects, clapping her hands together in front of herself. 

“...Yes ma’am,” Maki mumbles, eyes still stuck on the Gojo sorcerers a ways away, how over half of them are women, even more clearly unrelated to the main line.

“...Everything?” Mai asks, nothing but meek, and Akemi raises one perfect brow. She looks him up and down, clearly not impressed with the weakness, not caring enough to say anything about it yet.

“Everything, child. You belong to the Gojo clan, now,” she responds, a gravity to the words that finally forces Maki to turn her head. “As far as I’m concerned, you are Gojo’s. Your actions are our actions, your power our power. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” Maki recites, one hand noticeably fidgeting with her kimono behind her back, the only sign of her nerves when she has no more hesitation to speak of. Mai only nods, lips sealed shut, a calm settling over her that Satoru knows is really just latent shock.

“...Good,” Akemi purrs, eyes narrowing as she catches on to Maki’s slipping fascination. “I’ve changed my mind,” she announces, clapping loudly as she whistles, a short, sharp melody that flicks up at its end. 

“Yes, Akemi-sama?” One of the waitstaff calls, backtracking to lean out of the nearby hallway’s open shoji doors, a stack of linens in their arms. 

“Fetch Kiyoko-chan,” Akemi instructs, eyes never leaving Maki’s where they’ve seem to have caught on her own, a certain likeness recognized by likeness resonating between them Satoru hadn’t expected to be found. “I want these girls looking like royalty within the next hour.” 

“Right away, Akemi-sama,” the girl replies, passing her armful of bedding to another servant come rushing over to exchange work, the system well practiced when it’s one rewarded for efficiency by patience. 

Satoru doesn’t miss her curious expression as she takes off down the hall, sent to find the woman in charge of all their outfitting, sure to spread the gossip within the minute. 

He lets his shoulders relax slightly, after. ‘Maybe this won’t be a mistake after all,’ he wonders, daring to hope. 

“You sure pissed off Chihiro,” Akemi gloats, gaze sweeping over the flurry of movement taken over the room before them, filled with people as they drag in furniture, beddings, air out old closets, oil squeaky fusuma doors. 

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Satoru grits, arms crossed as he leans against the far wall, one set of eyes focused on where Maki and Mai sit together in the large, ornate bathhouse for the main family several rooms away, attended to hand and foot by no less than three separate maids. 

“Too high to acknowledge such mortals, kamisama?” Akemi snarks, the dig on the meaner side when she knows it’s her fault Chihiro was one of the only staff through eighteen years of growing up who would treat him as a human being, and not some praise worthy god. 

Satoru turns his head, narrowing a withering glare her direction, and Akemi only smiles, slow, close-lipped, and sly. 

“You’re mighty prickly today,” she observes, an assessment in her stare as it slides over him. “Do you really think so lowly of me?” 

“Don’t ask for answers you don’t want, Obaa-san,” he quotes, stuffing his hands in his pockets, pretending like he isn’t sulking. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth, brat,” she snaps, though it lacks any real bite, intricate nails tapping along her arm, crossed impatiently over her chest. “You saw the restricted one. She isn’t fragile.” 

“And her sister is?” Satoru retorts, brow ticking in annoyance. 

“Potentially,” Akemi muses, “though that can be rectified in time.”

“They aren’t tools,” he hisses, glad for the glasses on his nose when they obscure his expression, the red of Akemi’s boring into him with only the empty threat of stone behind them. It’s still enough to make him shiver.

“Aren’t they?” She argues, perfectly calm, perfectly collected. “Tools are meant to be used, cared for, repaired. Is that not what we’re doing at this very moment?”

Satoru doesn’t open his mouth and dignify it with a response, a little more hesitant to say he’s made the wrong choice but not so bold as to say it was the right one yet, either. 

“You said you were keeping your part of our deal,” Akemi says, looking straight ahead into the cluttered rooms, separated by opened fusuma doors and directly in the center of the main wing of the house. Her own are only two halls down. “I can’t be condemned for building the strength that you promised me, can I?” She asks, blinking, the red of her eyes heavy on him when she opens them again.

“...I suppose we’ll see, won’t we,” Satoru mutters, not shy to meet her eye- never shy to meet her eye. For all that he’s terrified of her, of what she can be, he’s never been shy to hold her gaze, free his tongue, speak his mind. Scared, maybe, angry, yes, but never shy.

Maybe a part of it comes from being revered by almost the entire compound, once upon a time. Maybe it comes from being elevated to greater than human, better than a person, a god with no humanity to speak of until he was left to create it for himself. Maybe he’s just a spoiled brat like Akemi likes to call him, never told no and cocky for it. 

Maybe it comes from knowing that no matter how hard a hit would come, how much blood would stain the floor, how much regret he’d bite his tongue with, it was better than staying silent and unheard. 

“You’re going to be a real parent eventually,” Akemi mutters, prim and poised, “you’ll understand one day.”

It’s a relief when his phone rings. 

“Hello?” Satoru answers, grateful for any excuse to get out of the suffocating bubble of barbed conversation Akemi always brings with her, wandering away from the fluster of busy people and busy movement. 

“Gojo-san?” The person on the other end asks, and he can’t help knitting his brows together, a sinking feeling weighing down his stomach.

“That’s me,” Satoru whistles, and stills into place when the blow comes.

“Fushiguro-kun is currently in the office for fighting another student,” the receptionist says, “he’s been suspended for the day and needs to be picked up from school.”

Suddenly, all the stomach dropping anxiety leftover from the morning feels justified. 

Chapter Text

Despite her nerves, Tsumiki isn’t afraid when she walks into school that morning. 

‘Well,’ she thinks, tugging nervously on the hems of her sweater sleeves, ‘that would kind of be a lie.’  

The air smells nice out on the playground, crisp still with the last thoughts of winter and warm with the burgeoning whispers of spring, melting into summer. The leaves on all the trees are starting to bud back, and parts of the grass in the yellowed field are spotting green, again.

“Oh, so now you talk, huh?” Hina sneers, arms crossed and a scowl on her pouted lips, and Tsumiki can’t help her wince. 

It’s…marginally fair, when she’d spent all morning ignoring them. It hadn’t been hard considering most of their desks are separated by last names, and they’d been busy with classwork besides. Normally, though, there’s notes that get flicked back and forth, glittery pen on paper and giggly words written hastily on thin lines. Smiles thrown over shoulders, snickers shared with petty jokes. 

She’d ignored all of it today.

“Yes,” Tsumiki answers, holding her head up as high as she can justify, calmly meeting Hina’s eyes with nothing but sheer force of will keeping the waver off of her lips. 

She can’t really bring herself to meet Izumi’s, not when she stands a few feet away as little better than a shadow, uncertain of where this all seems to be leading. As it is, she’s glad Mayumi isn’t here to laugh at her too.

“...You gonna be a giant pansy all year, Fushiguro?” Ayaka calls, long black hair picking up slightly in the faint breeze, twirling along the edges of her thin jacket, red to match her barrette.  “‘Cause I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I really want to be friends with a pansy.” 

The words make her want to flinch, cower, apologize, even though Ayaka was the one who started all of it. ‘Over a dumb letter, too,’ Tsumiki wonders, even though she knows it’s not really just a letter. God, she knows.

“That’s fine with me,” Tsumiki says, offering only a shrug as she thinks of what Tou-san would do. Easily, she crosses her arms, slipping an uninterested mask over her face like she’s seen him wear a thousand times now. Restlessly, she drums her fingers along her arm, heart pounding. 

“I don’t think I really want to be friends with a bully,” she repeats, parroting Ayaka’s own taunt back at her, forcibly keeping the shake from her voice. She tosses her hair slightly, throwing the curls of her ponytail over her shoulder, and feels more than a little successful when Ayaka’s mouth drops open in pronounced offense. 

“A bully?” She cries, stomping a foot. “That’s so-! I can’t believe you’d call me something so hurtful, Tsumiki,” Ayaka pleads, brows lowering in a pain she knows has to be fake, but which looks so distressingly real when her face falls, hands fisting at her sides. Her nails are red today, too.

“Not just you,” Tsumiki replies, ignoring the jab for what she knows it is. She can’t help that her words come weaker than before. “Hina, too.”

Hina does exactly what she thinks she will when she balks, clapping a hand up to her face before she turns away, pretending to sniffle. Maybe Tsumiki would feel bad about it, giving them a name for their monsters, but she’ll never be able to erase the look on Yamamoto’s face from her mind when they’d read that letter. She’ll never be able to forget the sheer humiliation, the mortification, the terror reflected right back at her for spilling his heart out for everyone to hear. 

Maybe she’d feel bad about it, if it wasn’t exactly what they were.

“I can’t be friends with people who treat others badly,” Tsumiki declares, doing her best to imitate Satoru’s unflinching confidence, Suguru’s steady indifference, and feels a little bit more secure when Ayaka’s fake hurt finally bleeds away.

“Fine, then,” she drawls, flicking a hand as she turns to walk away. “Have it your way. You’ll come back eventually, though.” 

As she turns on a heel, Hina looks over her shoulder long enough to give her a once over before she rolls her eyes, falling right into step. They make quite a pair, jewel toned jackets and colored nails and broken rules all between them.

“Izumi!” Ayaka calls. “Come on.” Tsumiki watches as Izumi stutters for a moment stood just a handful of feet away from her, looking torn as her dark eyes dart between them, pretty and delicate and seemingly conflicted. 

Tsumiki doesn’t say anything as she watches her falter, arms slowly dropping to her sides, a little curious. Izumi’s always been quiet, soft spoken, less involved than even her in the beginning. She’s always felt like little better than a pretty ornament that Ayaka hangs up to look decorated, when she’s never really speaking more than sitting silent. 

Silent, maybe, Tsumiki wonders, because of Ayaka.

“No,” Izumi murmurs, quiet in the scattered loudness of the playground, staring down at her expensive outdoor shoes. They’re pretty, unscuffed, the single straps at the front of her ankles perfectly buckled. 

“...What?” Ayaka starts, belated after a moment of surprise. 

“No,” Izumi says, finally picking her head up. Her dark hair sways, silky like the curtains Tou-ru had hung in the living room, pretty eyes narrowed with a purpose. “I don’t want to be friends either.” 

“Wh- you’re joking,” Hina sputters, mouth dropping open in shock, a flush starting to tinge her cheeks pink. 

‘Oh my,’ Tsumiki thinks faintly, more than aware that the three of them have been friends since preschool. 

“No,” Izumi repeats, before she frowns, thoughts churning. Then she spins on her heel with her back to Hina, making a grab for her hand. “Tsumiki always talks to me because she’s interested,” she says, as hesitantly, Tsumiki curls her fingers around Izumi’s own. “You just want someone to talk at.” 

Then she’s tugging, dragging them away from the grassy pitch. 

“You can’t seriously-!” Hina cries, but Izumi doesn’t seem to be listening. 

“Bye, Hina,” she calls, airy and light like Tsumiki’s never really heard her be, pulling them away to another area of the playground. More than a little surprised, Tsumiki follows easily, a tiny smile beginning to tug at her lips.

They walk until both Ayaka and Hina are out of sight, all the way to the other side of the swings where a row of bushes blocks off a section of fencing from the adjacent neighborhood, large sycamore trees gradually growing back to life after winter standing shady above them. 

“...Wow,” Tsumiki fumbles, staring up at Izumi when they putter to a halt, before she’s snapping her mouth shut in embarrassment, not in the least what she’d meant to have said. Izumi shrugs, but she smiles, and it’s more than Tsumiki thought she’d give after all of that, so maybe it’s fine to be a little awe-inspired. 

“Hey!” Someone yells, clearly out of breath as they run towards them, curls bouncing. “Hey!”

“Is that Yasui?” Tsumiki asks, squinting, before Yasui Sadako is bounding up in front of them, doubling over her knees as she pants, glasses slipping down her nose. 

“H-holy,” she gasps, “what did you say to them?” Her head pops up, words loud in the background chatter of the playground’s noise, and Tsumiki raises her hands.

“Ah, nothing! Nothing much! I just-” She starts, only to be cut off by Yasui’s brightened laugh.

“Are you kidding?” She cries, elated. “They look like someone just ruined their entire year!” 

“I- I didn’t mean to do…that,” Tsumiki wilts, sighing, not entirely unrepentant for upsetting the two of them even if she knows they probably deserve it. 

“Well,” Yasui says, reading up to adjust her glasses, “I think a lot of people would call you their personal heroes for it.” She shrugs, stubbing the toe of one shoe in the mottled dirt, speckled with slowly rejuvenating grass. “They’ve been mean to a lot of people since we were little.”

“Oh,” Tsumiki says, dumbly, unable to think of anything better to replace it.

“I’m sorry,” Izumi murmurs, fingers curled into her sleeve, long lashes hiding her eyes as she stares at the ground. “I didn’t stand up for you at- at her birthday last year.”

“Oh,” Yasui stutters, fingers fluttering at her sides a little nervously. “Oh, uh, no, no, it’s okay!” She placates, laughing awkwardly. “Ayaka’s…She woulda yelled at you too, yanno? It’s fine!” 

“So…” Tsumiki starts, glancing between them as they stew in a stilted silence, evidently uncertain to their footing with each other even though it doesn’t seem to be bad. “You two know each other, right?” The both of them nod, and she doesn’t think she’s imagining it when she sees the slight smile Izumi’s eyes thin with, the crooked one pressed into Yasui’s cheek if haltingly. 

“I’m Tsumiki,” she blurts, sticking out her hand for the first time this year, because she sits right besides Yasui and they’ve never exchanged a genuine conversation before. “Fushiguro Tsumiki.”

“I’m Yasui,” Yasui says, clasping her palm with a giant grin plastering onto her mouth. “Yasui Sadako.” 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Tsumiki offers, smiling, and watches Yasui’s eye’s dart away for a flicker of a moment. 

“It’s really nice to meet you too,” she says, making an absent snapping motion with the hand at her side, and when Tsumiki turns her head for a moment to glance at whatever it is that’s caught her eye, she can’t help but still.

On the gutters of one of the houses pressed against the yard of the school sits a curse, nothing but a grade four, little and relatively harmless. It shrieks as it withers, Yasui’s snap of cursed energy just enough to get it to dissolve into nothingness. 

Slowly, Tsumiki turns back, and only watches Yasui as she keeps smiling, utterly unaware she has any idea of what was just done at all. 

His most repetitive thought as he sits and wilts on the playground is that he wishes it was still cold enough out to warrant an actual coat. If it were, he could just be one temperature- freezing. Then he wouldn’t be freezing and sweaty sitting in his. 

Megumi shivers, hugging closer to his knees, trying to find any way to sit that feels more comfortable than the last despite how it just makes his stomach turn. So far, nothing seems to be working. 

‘I want-’ He thinks, the thought a broken record in his head, violently snapping it off before it can finish. ‘Stop it,’ he pleads, ‘Just stop it.’ Neither of them are here. Neither of them are coming for him. Megumi’s alone, sat on the lip of a mulch playground, unable to even summon his shadows with the weight of his trembly fingers. 

He can still see Tsumiki past the fog making his head fuzzy, his face warm- how she seems to be succeeding in whatever verbal beatdown she’s started further out into the grassy yard. He’s been watching since it began, waiting for when he has to move, to summon a shadow or cause enough of a commotion to distract from a fight. ‘As if Tsumiki would get in a fight,’ Megumi thinks, jittery, hot and cold and freezing and sweaty. 

Despite that, he hasn’t moved. ‘I want Aiko,’ Megumi whines, if to no one but himself, refusing the want to sniffle, arms curved tight around his middle. He doesn’t dare think the other names sitting heavy on his mind.

“Hey!” A boy calls, close enough to his headache that he wrinkles his nose. “Megumi!” 

‘No,’ Megumi groans, scowling down at his feet as he listens to the crunch of woodchips and mulch under sneakers, ‘not him.’

Sanemi’s not…so bad, he figures, when they’re inside in air conditioning and Megumi can ignore him while he thinks they’re playing together. It’s more annoying when he whispers during class just to brag about something, or wants to work together when they have to pair up and he’s stuck listening to him talk about his stupid rich family, but it’s more bearable than Aki is, anyway.

“Go ‘way,” he grumbles, hunching in on himself further, scowling something foul when Sanemi comes shoving to a stop by pushing on his shoulders. 

“But I wanna play hopscotch! Come play with me,” he demands, ever entitled when Megumi’s become his chosen toy for the month, fingers fisting in his coat, tugging like he’s a doll. 

Not so bad, Megumi seethes, until he starts whining like a spoiled little brat. 

“Go ‘way, S’nemi,” he slurs, crumpling over his knees even further until he’s so scrunched he’s sure Tou-chan would call him a pumpkin. The thought makes his eyes sting, because it brings along with it the warmth of the sound of Tou-chan’s laugh, the hollow of his palms, of Tou-ru’s soft whispers that it’s alright.

It’s not alright, he wants to cry, it’s all wrong and messed up and his whole body hurts, but he doesn’t want to go to any of the lame teachers standing around the edge of the playground yard, because none of them get it. None of them get him. 

Sanemi shoves him again, rocking him like he’s one of the flimsy toys their teacher keeps around for the hour they get a break, pouting right next to his ear. The touch makes his skin sting, even under expensive merino wool. 

“You never wanna play, Megumi,” he complains, utterly put out, and Megumi scowls harder if it could be considered possible to. “You have to play with me!” 

“I said go away,” Megumi rasps, finally reaching around to yank his coat from clawed fingers, glaring at the mulch and Sanemi’s red shoes. “I don’ wanna…” He pants, out of breath, “jus’ leave me alone.” 

He doesn’t bother looking at the other kid’s face- he doesn’t care, not when he’s shivering in the warmth of late May, sweating, clammy, and cold. He swallows, the feeling thick, trying his best to count his breaths in the way that Tou-chan taught Tsumiki to do when she feels anxious. 

The yank is unexpected. 

He yells, lurching backwards into the wood chips, flailing blindly as he brings his arm up to knock away whatever had grabbed him. His knuckles collide with something fleshy, hard enough to make his skin hurt, before the sharp howling makes his ears ring. 

Megumi stumbles, straining for balance as he scrambles back up, hands jittering into the sign for hound and freezing before his fingers can touch together. Summoning Kuro and Shiro would only make him feel worse, but- A shoe jars into his leg in retaliation, cutting off whatever thought he’d had running through his mind, and maybe he feels dizzy and icky and like the weather keeps flipping on its head, Megumi knows one thing first and foremost.

‘Don’t lose a fight you can win,’ he thinks, the words faint even in his own head, and lunges before Sanemi can kick him again. 

He starts screaming immediately, like a total wimp, but he still fights back, tightening fingers in his hair and pulling until Megumi’s hissing, shrieking wordless things as they tousle in the mulch, coats swishing together and limbs flailing. He gets one punch in when he manages to roll out on top, and then another after it, fist reeling back for a third before he’s grabbed.

“Fushiguro!” Someone yells, utterly aghast, and Megumi squirms, writhing like a caught fish on a hook as he glares down at Sanemi. He jabs a foot down into the scattered wood chips, kicking dirt at him for a last blow, unable to hide a gasp when the person tugging him away pulls harshly on his arm. 

“What on earth were you thinking?!” That same person chastises- one of the teachers he realizes, foggily catching up as he pants, winded, listing slightly as he’s dragged away. Sanemi’s pathetic sobbing circles the edges of his ears, partially real and mostly hammed up, and it’s infuriating enough that he forces himself to find his footing.

“I didn’t start it-!” Megumi yells, only to be roughly pulled along, marched off to the office while the adult above him scoffs. 

“Right,” the man mutters, entirely unbelieving, and Megumi can’t find it in himself to be all that surprised. Disappointed, maybe, but not surprised.

“Lemme go!” He shouts, trying to rip himself out of the hand fastened tight to his upper arm, unsuccessful but knowing better than to try and get them to see anything but a troublemaker. “It wasn’t me-!” All they ever see is a troublemaker.

The teacher doesn’t listen. 

And why would they, Megumi wonders, below all the posturing, the outrage, any defense he can keep up to feel prickly and untouchable as he’s walked all the way to the office. Dragged, really, like one of Tsumiki’s captured barbie dolls when they play bandits. It’s humiliating, when it catches the attention of all the kids and staff in the hallways, infuriating when he’s pulled around like a sentient slab of meat, obnoxious when his flushed knuckles sting. Terrifying, when it means his parents are going to be called, because he actually has parents to call, now. 

Despite himself, there’s a twist of relief in that sentiment, as horrifying as it is.

Why on earth, he thinks, not for the first time, what likely won’t be the last, why on earth would they listen to him. ‘Megumi’s just the troublemaker,’ he repeats, hollow in his own head as he sags in the uncomfortable office chair he’s dumped in, shivering like he’s in negative weather. ‘Megumi always starts it.’

What are they going to say, he wonders, when they hear about this one. When they hear about the next one. And the next, and the next. 

He sucks in an inhale, staring at the floor, trying to convince himself he can’t feel the way his stomach flips, how his vision wavers. He doesn’t feel it at all when his head pounds, when he blinks and suddenly feels faint. His palms aren’t sweaty. He isn’t scared about what this is going to do to him, here. He isn’t terrified about what they’re going to say when they see him, bruising on his knuckles and troublemaker stamped on his forehead. It’s unconvincing. 

‘I want Tou-chan,’ he thinks, staring at the ugly carpet, his outdoor shoes, ‘I want Tou-ru.’

He’s alone. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Satoru’s not panicking. No, he’s not panicking. 

The door nearly slams when he stalks through it, buzzing with static down to the tips of his fingers, eyes on Megumi and Megumi alone where he can see his cursed energy fizzling weakly through the walls. When the receptionist tries to speak to him, he ignores her, gaze stuck on where his baby sits slumped in a too large chair, staring at the floor, looking beat down in more ways than one. 

‘I knew something wasn’t right this morning,’ he thinks, all semblance of frantic forcibly washed out of his limbs as he whispers closer, creeping down into a kneel, slow as he watches Megumi where he sits like a statue, completely still.

Even slower, Satoru waits as hazy eyes gradually register his pants, little brows furrowing in confusion as green heavily raises, unsteadily focusing on his face. 

“Hey, baby,” he coos, offering a quiet smile, reaching out to curl gentled fingers around Megumi’s knee. 

He isn’t expecting the flinch. 

“...Megumi?” Satoru murmurs, a spark of fear inginiting in the pit of his stomach as Megumi shakes his head, listing slightly like the action made him dizzy. He hiccups, the noise a little pathetic when even littler hands clap up against small mouth to hide it, glassy green eyes staring up at him in a way Satoru doesn’t even want to begin to label. 

A look down gives him all the information he needs when he sees mulch and woodchips clinging to Megumi’s pants, the flush of promised bruises painting his knuckles pink, what he thinks might even be a fleck or two of blood. 

Not for the first time, he thinks again how much he hates Fushiguro Toji, his fault or not.

“Megumi,” Satoru murmurs, ducking lower to keep his words out of anyone else’s ears when the registrar seems to be trying to pry them out of thin air leaning over her chair like she is. 

Slowly, Megumi shakes his head, hands glued over his mouth, face scrunching into a scowl. His exhales come choked, like he can’t breathe out of his nose or he’s trying not to cry, and Satoru knows just looking at the flush on his face it’s got to be a combination of the two. 

“I’m sorry,” he warbles, muffled behind his scuffed palms. 

Maybe he hates Fushiguro Toji, but in the moment, he just hates himself more.

“No, I’m sorry, Meg,” Satoru murmurs, tentatively bringing a hand up to card limber fingers through dark hair, sticky slightly with sweat. “I should have had you stay home today.”

For a moment, nothing changes. For a long, staggering moment, Megumi only stares at him, feverish and fuzzy and not understanding. Satoru waits, patient as anything, as everything, as he needs to be for Megumi, waits still and silent and painstakingly gentle as he brushes through soft hair. Waits, until he finally sees what he wants. 

It hurts, somewhere fathomless and acute, to watch the way Megumi’s eyes steadily fill with realization, widening until they’re glossy and shiny from more than just whatever cold he’s caught. His hands slip off his face, collapsing onto the chair at his sides, and Satoru sees the way Megumi’s lips tremble, fighting against the steep down turn they try to pull with. 

When he shifts, tilting down a little more, Megumi’s face is flushed hot enough Satoru can feel it just knelt nose to nose with him. The pang of guilt has thorns when it coils, resounding in his ribcage as Megumi sits in front of him and shivers, struggling to stay put together despite the relief clearly shoving him close to tears once it comes. 

It feels so much better than the wavering fear from only moments ago that it’s almost hard to breathe, watching it slowly be replaced. 

Shakily, Megumi’s hands raise again, twitching as if to reach out, and it’s all the push he needs. 

Small fingers bite into his arms when Satoru pulls him in, murmuring useless nothings into sweaty temple as he rubs a palm up and down Megumi’s back, refusing to say a word about it when little arms snake around his neck and squeeze tight. 

Megumi trusts them immensely, he knows that. He knows he’ll never be hurt, never be yelled at, knows what safety feels like be it in the dark of a moonlit window or on the hardwood floor next to shards of a broken plate. 

Except, Satoru sighs, for the fights. He knows they’re inevitable when Megumi’s going to grow up in a different kind of world from the rest of his peers, but Megumi doesn’t yet. All he knows so far is that the world sucks, and people leave. 

The guilt really does feel piercing after that thought. 

“Ah- Gojo-san-?” Someone asks, somewhere aimless behind him as a door opens, and Satoru huffs, hefting Megumi up into his arms as he stands. He doesn’t bother with pretending like he isn’t holding him closer than necessary, tighter than he should. Megumi soaks up contact like a sponge, and Satoru will be damned before a lackluster hug is the thing that tips him over the edge.

“Easy, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he chants, softened under his breath when Megumi hiccups again, convulsing for a moment before he steadies, breathing hard like he’s trying not to vomit. “What,” he snaps, tossing a flattened look over his shoulder, icy when he sees the pinched thing on the teacher’s face. 

“Fushiguro-kun got into a fight today at recess,” the man continues, not Megumi’s teacher but one of the ones in his grade level. Maybe in the classroom across the hall, even. “We need to discuss consequences.”

“Are you serious,” Satoru mutters, unable to help the face he makes. “Look at him,” he says, too surly when they’re just trying to do their job. ‘Badly,’ he thinks, soured.

In his arms, Megumi breathes unsteadily, eyes squeezed shut and face an alarming shade of pink. He shivers hard enough it’s visible, clearly uncomfortable despite how tight he clings in turn. 

‘Why didn’t I just have him stay home,’ Satoru bemoans, sickened that he didn’t trust his own intuition earlier. If he had, Megumi could have been with Suguru, safe instead of hounded for what doesn’t take a genius to realize was probably a provoked encounter. Megumi’s prickly enough when he’s healthy.

“It won’t take-” Glasses tries. Yeah right. 

“Does he look like he’s in a state to talk about consequences?” Satoru parrots, refusing to give into the petty niceties that want to slip into a smile on his lips. He keeps his frown, instead, more than a little pissed that no one noticed Megumi had a fever for over four hours. 

“Well,” the teacher starts, clearly miffed at the rebuff, “that’s no excuse for getting into a fight-”

“Can it wait,” Satoru interrupts, doing his best impression of Akemi as he narrows his eyes, lowers his brows, sets the line of his lips into a frigid one. 

The guy falters for a second, floundering as he tries to find a way to circle around it, only to eventually collapse in on himself with a sigh. “Yes,” he concedes, face pinching into a frown again, “I’ll have a conference scheduled with you next week.”

“Thank you,” Satoru says, offering a short, curt nod, before he’s turning, scrawling a sloppy signature on the attendance sheet and leaving without so much as another word. The registrar calls after him, but it’s not anything he sticks around to hear. 

Turning a corner, he vanishes, glad for what isn’t the first time that the schools don’t have good security cameras yet.

“Surprise!” Suguru yells, along with two chorusing voices as soon as he steps foot in the front hall. “You’re home early,” he says after, something puzzled scrunching on his face until his eyes drop a fraction lower and settle on Megumi.

“What happened to him?” Suguru worries, Mimiko and Nanako forgotten at the lip of the hall as he stalks forwards, hands hovering as he tries to figure out what’s wrong.

“What the fuck happened to your hair?” Satoru gapes, mouth spilling open as he stares, rooted to the floor. Suguru looks up, inky black swaying around his face from where it sits a centimeter above his shoulders just a touch unevenly, and Satoru cuts him off before he can say anything about how it looks.

“Nevermind,” he mutters, even though a distinctly alarmed memory of Bmo’s, ‘like the devil,’ rings in his ears, “I don’t care,” and shoves past him when Megumi hiccups again, rougher than the last. He’ll think about Suguru’s hellish new haircut when he’s not in danger of getting vomited on.

‘Fuck-’ He thinks, panicked as he all but runs for the kitchen, skidding along hardwood as Megumi convulses against him. ‘Please don’t puke yet, please don’t puke yet, please don’t puke yet-!’  

Megumi lurches right as Satoru tips him over the lip of the sink, gagging as he spits up bile and acid, hacking as he tries to war with his own gag reflex. He sobs, fists twisting into his shirt hard enough to yank it against the edge of his throat, and Satoru sighs, only a touch relieved.

“Don’t fight it,” he chides, rubbing a palm up and down Megumi’s spine as he tenses, desperately trying to inhale even though he can’t get any air down. The words are useless, because Megumi’s five, and he doesn’t have the self control yet to listen to them. 

Satoru keeps murmuring anyway, kissing away the tears as they fall and holding Megumi up over the edge of the sink as he gags, spitting up foamy bile and empty stomach acid, gasping in huge lungfuls of air like he’s drowning. 

“What happened?” Suguru asks, quiet as he sneaks up on them, brushing Megumi’s sticky hair from his forehead as he leans close.

“Fever,” Satoru mutters, lips pressing into a line when Megumi hiccups out a pathetic whine. “Punched a kid, too, I heard.” 

Suguru’s brows raise, unimpressed with the anecdote when Megumi shudders below their overlapping palms, huge, painful tears dripping down his chin. “It’s fine,” Satoru says, cutting Suguru off before he can say anything more. “I’ve got him. Stay with the twins.”

“...You’re sure?” Suguru asks, hesitant when Megumi sobs again, louder than before, a pained thing twisting over his face that does nothing to hide the way almost ten inches of his godforsaken hair is gone. 

Satoru only knocks a foot against his calf, darting a pointed look towards the kitchen doorway where both the girls stand, partially hidden behind the wall. They’re watching sharply, though, eyes on the three of them as Suguru deliberates, probably the reason those ten inches are gone, specifically. Irkingly enough, Satoru can’t really be mad about that.

“Alright,” Suguru agrees, leaning down to press a kiss to Megumi’s cheek before he leaves, ushering Mimiko and Nanako out with a soft, “come on, you’ll get sick too if you stay.”

Satoru watches him leave until the godawful bob of his shortened hair disappears around the corner, eyes dragging back down to Megumi, instead. He looks absolutely miserable, a line of spit dribbling from his lips, spots of puke splashed onto his shirt, bags rimming his eyes and whole face scrunched in pain. 

“Okay,” Satoru breathes, running a palm over Megumi’s sweaty hair as he taps the faucet on, “you think it’s finished?” 

Silently, Megumi nods, sniffling wetly. He blinks, a few tears tipping over, and it’s hard not to acknowledge how it makes his ribs feel tight. Satoru winces in sympathy as he cups his hand under the faucet, bringing his palm up to Megumi’s lips to give him something to wash the bile out of his mouth with, not entirely unconvinced it won’t be making a grand reappearance later. 

“C’mon,” he murmurs, flipping the tap back off once the mess has cleared down the drain and Megumi’s washed the acid off his tongue. Shuffling him up into his arms, he bits a lip at how he only flops over his shoulder, limp like soggy bread. 

“How’s a bath sound? You’ll feel better once you’re clean,” Satoru rambles, whispering out of the kitchen as he makes for their room, unable to ignore the large packages lined up of what’s probably the twin’s new furniture in the hallway he’d missed before, distracted by Suguru’s terrible new haircut. Damn that man’s impulsivity paired with scissors. Whatever. Satoru knows him. He’ll be begging within a week.

‘Fuckass bob,’ he thinks with a grimace, only twenty-eight percent bitter, gently shutting the door behind him as he slips into the side bathroom, sighing into Megumi’s hair as he shudders slightly. It’s not worse than like, running off to commit minor genocide, Satoru supposes, but, well. Is it. Megumi groans, sniffling a damp patch onto his shirt. No. Well. Maybe- No.

Megumi scowls when he’s set down, and the tears keep falling in stuttered blinks as Satoru works off his soiled school uniform, resigned to another load of laundry in the evening. He refuses to say anything even when he hiccups, still crying, the sound drowned out by the rush of the water.

It’s…a little nerve wracking, knowing there isn’t really anything he can do to get Megumi to stop looking like someone just ran over Kuro in front of him. He’d never been able to help when he or Tsumiki had gotten sick the first time, especially so when he’d never really been there in the first place. Not beyond buying the right medicine and setting out something to eat when he’d leave, anyway. 

‘At least Tsumiki’s okay,’ he muses, helping Megumi into the warmed water of the bath and refusing to make a visible face at the way little fingers tremble wrapped around his own. Someone will have told her Megumi went home since she’ll need to collect his backpack and homework, nevermind that he left in what was obviously a well warranted rush. So though she’ll be alone today on the train, she’ll at least be worried for Megumi’s cold, rather than his missing whereabouts. 

Megumi sniffles again, harder than before, and Satoru doesn’t even bother getting up as he summons the tissue box with a curl of Blue, pulling one loose as it settles onto the bath mat beside him. 

“Blow,” he says, holding it up to Megumi’s stuffed nose, and absolutely hates the misery ridden, reddened side eye he gets before Megumi’s honking out a glob of snot, coughing with a scratchy throat after. 

“We’ll get some cold medicine in you later,” Satoru declares, rambling to fill the silence as the water runs, tipping Megumi back into the bathwater to wet his hair. “And we’ll make you something warm to eat, and bundle you up in so many blankets you’ll totally disappear!” 

Megumi doesn’t react to the tease, instead only swallowing a little roughly, small hands rising from the water to hold onto his arm as Satoru lifts him back up. He doesn’t protest, even though he keeps talking, reaching one handed for his soap since the kid’s shampoo is all in the upstairs bathroom. Megumi hadn’t ever been terribly chatty, but he’d always gotten significantly more dower when sick, even with just a mild cold or allergies, and Satoru’s never liked silence.

“-Suguru made it for me once, you’ll love it. We can even put unholy amounts of ginger in it,” he continues, blathering about nothing much as he lathers soap into Megumi’s hair, palms sweeping down his neck and back and arms for any drops of sick that had caught. “You love ginger, it’ll be great, you’ll be feeling better in no time-”

“I don’ get it,” Megumi interrupts, raspy and thin, barely anything more than a whisper, and immediately, Satoru shuts up.

“...Don’t get what, baby?” He asks, brushing a soapy curl of black away from lidded eyes as he leans a little closer, noting how Megumi’s small fingers squeeze where they grasp onto his arm, still. 

“Aren’t you-” Megumi sniffles, huffing out a cut off sob. “Aren’t y’ mad?” He blinks, staring up in the wane light of the bathroom, another aimless tear dribbling down his cheek.

“About what?” Satoru wonders, ginger as he brings his free hand down to press it away, soft when Megumi hiccups again, listless where he sits in the warmth of the water, a lost thing on his small face.

“I- I make trouble,” he mumbles, stuffy past the congestion. “I made trouble.” 

“The fight?” Satoru infers, to Megumi’s stilted nod, humming as he lets his palm press to flushed cheek, unhappy with how hot his skin feels to the touch. “You’re sick, pumpkin,” he murmurs, thumbing away another trailing tear, “don’t worry about that now.”

“Later?” Megumi repeats, thin and whistled slightly. His brows furrow, knitting together in a puzzlement that doesn’t match the thing flattening his lips into a line. “Not now-? Later?” Megumi asks again, suddenly moving, head tilting up in a soundless snap as his fingers tighten further. 

His eyes, Satoru notes, are wide. Large, open, glossy and lit enough for him to make out each strain of green accentuated by light shrunken pupils. Black lashes skim water beaded brow bones, long enough to touch, and it’s the first glimmer of unease that settles in his stomach like wet sand dribbled from loose fingers. 

“...Yes,” Satoru agrees, gaze darting between Megumi’s two eyes, his held arm dipping down into the water in an afterthought. Absently, he gives Megumi’s knee a gentle squeeze below the bubbles on the surface, refusing to indulge the inkling of why his cursed energy looks snapping, snarled, frenzied with the reasoning he can guess at, but doesn’t want to. 

“We’ll deal with it later,” he continues, when Megumi says nothing, sat still as a statue as he stares, and stares, and stares. “Meet with your teacher. Talk about consequences.” Satoru shrugs, aimlessly smoothing the flat of his thumb over Megumi’s flushed cheek. “But not right now, okay?” 

It’s the wrong thing to say. 

“But,” Megumi abruptly protests, glassy eyes widening as he suddenly jostles, the water sloshing along the edge of the tub, “but I don’ wanna-” His breath catches, tumbling off into another stuttered sob, breathy and panicked. 

“Megumi-?” Satoru starts, alarmed even though there’s a voice in the back of his mind telling him exactly what he knows is happening. 

“I won’t- I won’t start more trouble!” Megumi exclaims, thrashing slightly in the tub as he tries to move forwards, small nails biting into his arm where he’d shoved his sleeves up to his elbows. “I promise! I- I’ll-” Megumi bites off another sob, a gasping thing that sounds absolutely wretched as it squeezes itself out of his throat. 

“I don’ wanna be replaced,” he cries, shoving into the hollow of Satoru’s palm a little desperately, fingers digging in hard enough there’s almost a thought to be had about finding bruising later. “Don’t- you said you wouldn’ gimmie back to him!” 

“Give you- what?” Satoru parrots, voice thin, a trickle of horror pooling in the pit of his stomach as he turns the words over in his head, watching Megumi shake his own, lips wobbling with every tear that mixes into the sudsy bathwater. 

He looks- he looks scared, Satoru thinks, a maw of teeth swallowing up his heart whole. He looks scared because of, what? 

‘Because I haven’t done good enough,’ a hiss spits against his ear, the voice in the back of his head. 

“I don’ wanna go wi’h him!” Megumi shouts, squeezing his arm impossibly tighter between tiny, bloodless fingers, splashing slightly as he yanks any part of Satoru he can reach ever closer. “Don’t gimmie ‘way!” Huge, splotchy tears spill over his waterlines, falling from his chin like rain as he chokes on his own cries, so horrifically little and so horrifically wrong. 

‘I hate fevers,’ Satoru thinks, uncaring about the state of his shirt as he leans down, wrapping his other arm around Megumi’s shaking shoulders to pull him close, fingers threading through soapy hair. ‘I hate them.’ He’s more familiar with the delusions they bring than he likes. 

The insecurity is wrong, he has to remind himself, carding his fingers into the wet hair on the back of Megumi’s head, pressing the palm he has under the water to small ribs, reedy with unsteady breaths. This is a first. There is no avoiding firsts. 

“You’re not going anywhere, Meg,” Satoru promises, forcibly calm to counter the hurricane. He listens to Megumi pointlessly sob against his ear when he leans down, trying to give even a little comfort as he drags a hand up and down small spine, ribs pressing sharply into the side of the tub. 

“You’re mine, remember?” Satoru tries, folding over the edge without a thought when Megumi’s hands release from his arm and snake around his neck, instead. “Mine and Suguru’s. You’re not going anywhere.”

Firsts are what build everything else. Mimiko dropping the plate, Tsumiki’s anxieties about shopping. Megumi’s first fight. There’s no predicting them, no good he could do enough to cut out the fear before it can begin. Megumi’s a baby, maybe, but he’s not an infant. He had a life before they found him, experiences and memories and lessons learned, if not the kinder ones. 

‘You are doing good enough,’ Satoru thinks, and the words are violent, like shrapnel from a weapon scattering around delicate things. It’s…it’s hard, he can admit. It’s hard to believe them listening to Megumi cry, unable to do anything at all. 

The promises he mumbles over and over are probably little better than useless when Megumi’s so out of it, busy sobbing a wet spot onto the last dry area of his shirt over a terror that isn’t even real. He likely won’t remember it in twenty minutes, nevermind twenty hours. Satoru repeats them all anyway, mumbling words into the side of tensed neck and soapy skin, lavender bubbles pressed against his nose as he holds Megumi close. 

He’s supposed to be able to fix things. He’s supposed to take a problem and be able to make it better. Sitting here, knees jammed against stone and porcelain, listening to his child cry about things that aren’t even real fervently does not feel like making it better. 

It makes him want to flounder, to panic, to run and find Suguru to get him to fix it, and Yaga next if he can’t. 

Except, Satoru thinks, pulling Megumi up and partially out of the water when tiny hands scatter upwards and cling even tighter to the back of his skull, this isn’t about fixing. ‘What did I want when I was sick as a kid?’ He wonders, trying to remember through the haze in his memory of unmedicated fevers, isolation from everyone else, being told to work through it by himself. 

He remembers tears dribbling into silk pillows; little, fisted hands twisted into a soft blanket; thinking of stuffed animals he’d sometimes seen in stores in the city when he’d be chaperoned on an assignment. How mostly, he’d think in circles about the sight of mothers on the street, caught from within the window of a car. How they’d smile at their children, holding their hands crossing the road. 

He thinks of Suguru laying with him all weekend August of first year, when he’d just been set free from the cage of the Prison Realm, and how even if it hadn’t made him better, he’d been there anyway. How he had stuck around to hold his hand, push back his sweaty hair, help him shower after spending all weekend sweating into Suguru’s own sheets. 

He can’t make all of Megumi’s problems disappear, maybe, but he can wrap him up in the space of his arms and endless kisses, can give infinite words mumbled into his temple and never ending promises that it’ll be okay. He can hold him close and tell him he’s not alone, that he’s loved. 

It doesn’t solve anything, not really, but the relief comes sharp and acute from realizing there isn’t anything he has to solve. Satoru just has to be there. That’s all Megumi wants. 

It’s enough to sit and bear what he can’t fix. 

Megumi settles maybe half an hour later, worn out from crying and reduced to Aiko’s state of being- floppy and limp and boneless, seemingly made of nothing better than stuffing. 

Satoru takes the boon for what it is and manages to finish up the bath without another meltdown, sleeves soaked into a dark gray with soap and water by the time he’s washing the last of it out of Megumi’s hair, half in the tub because he didn’t want to let go and half on the mat, not an inch of him truly dry and not a shred of him caring about it.

“There, see, that’s better, isn’t it?” Satoru murmurs, running the hose over the last of the conditioner in Megumi’s hair, smoothing the excess water out with a hand, pressing a kiss to the tiny palm that reaches for his face. 

Megumi makes a noise, barely audible when it gets caught in the congestion gunking up his nose, but it still makes him smile when it sounds like wane agreement, cheek cushioning on damp hair under a contented smile. It’s nice to be rewarded for his patience. To have proof that he was right, that he’s not making a giant mess. 

Megumi’s significantly more clingy like this, he notices, when sniffly nose shoves against his throat and stubbornly stays there, wet lashes smearing on his skin. Not that Satoru particularly minds. After the shit Megumi unmistakably said about Toji, he isn’t certain that he himself wouldn’t be a little clingy. 

Still, it makes his job a smidge easier when Megumi’s arms automatically lock around his neck as Satoru bundles him up into a towel, shivering into his collarbones and snuffling snot onto his wetted shirt. It’s more cute than it has any right to be- pathetically cute, maybe, but cute all the same. 

He mumbles small nonsense into the top of Megumi’s head as he opens the doors, smoothing a palm up and down his back as the chill of the air makes him shrink. Satoru nabs Suguru’s faded sweatpants for himself as he swings out of their room, breezing up the stairs as calmly as he can when Megumi winces with the movement of his feet, head either aching or stomach upset. 

“Mimiko, hand me that booklet-?” He hears Suguru ask, the cadence of his voice drifting out of the room closest to the stairs, the door left open just enough for him to see the twins surrounded by an assortment of bolts and screws. He smiles, huffing a laugh through his nose, curious to which thing they’re building based on the sliver of Suguru’s scrunched expression he catches. 

It looks perplexed, with a hand on his chin and lips pouted into a frown, his black brows laced together like a knot. 

“...I think we did this backwards,” Suguru mutters, to Nanako’s peals of sudden laughter, Mimiko’s quiet snicker, and he smiles, leaving them to their chaos as he makes for Megumi’s room. 

“You wanna wear the blue pajamas, darling?” Satoru asks, soft in the darkened space of Megumi’s room as he pads in, refusing to bother to flip the light on when enough spills in through the three paned window.

Megumi seems to think about it for a moment as Satoru moves to his small wardrobe, thumbing through hangers to find the right set, eventually nodding when reddened eyes settle on soft button up. Satoru grabs it, along with a pair of cotton underthings, resignedly trite when he tries to set Megumi down on the edge of his bed and he only clings tighter. 

“I’m not leaving,” he murmurs, gently pulling wiry arms away and kissing the distressed look off of Megumi’s scrunched face as he pulls the edges of the towel further in. 

“I can’t wear wet clothes,” Satoru jokes, smiling wide and forcibly upbeat even as he stays quiet, distracting enough that Megumi’s attention splits to where he doesn’t notice his hands being let go of immediately. “Then you’ll get all wet too, and then you’ll be cold. Get it?” He hums, laying the pajamas down on the rumpled quilt.

Megumi coughs, and he huffs slightly, lips pouting, but no tears follow. So, Satoru takes it as a win. 

It’s probably the fastest costume change he’s done in his life, shucking out of his wet shirt and pants in favor of Suguru’s sweats, forever smelling of cinders and lavender, fully malleable to his toddler’s silent demands. They’re obvious in narrowed, lidded eyes, the glare of sheer annoyance something that would be disgustingly adorable if not for the fact it’s leveled at him. 

“Look, see? Not going anywhere,” Satoru rambles, an extension of the quiet, aimless nonsense from earlier. When he crouches down again, it’s to Megumi’s blinking stare, a touch vacant and heavy with exhaustion. 

He huffs, sympathetic, and so isn’t rough about it when he pulls the towel up to dry Megumi’s damp hair. “Okay?” Satoru asks, smoothing his palms down Megumi’s sunken shoulders, thumbs brushing along the edges of his softened jaw. 

“Uh huh,” Megumi mumbles, nothing but a shell with flushed cheeks and a stuffy nose. Satoru leans forward, tilting small face up to press a kiss to warmed forehead, sure to linger for a long few moments. 

If nothing else, he wants Megumi to remember this one day. To think back on it when he’s sick again in a handful of years, or a decade, and know that he’s always been loved. 

“You won’t care yet, ‘cause you’re five, but sick days are the perfect excuse for doing absolutely nothing,” Satoru rambles, voice lowered in volume when he can feel the pulse of Megumi’s headache along his temple, the pitch lowered in turn. 

It seems to work, endlessly talking about sitting in front of the television and blowing off work as he gets Megumi dressed in underwear and soft pajama shirt, knowing better than to go for pants too when it’s a fight to get him to wear them without any duress. Megumi lists as Satoru manhandles him this way, that way, eyes lidded and head perpetually slumped on his shoulder, lulled into complacency. 

He doesn’t get any protesting until he’s smoothing soft cotton down Megumi’s back, feeling tiny fingers twitch curled up against his bare stomach, little nose scrunch. Megumi huffs, making a faint, ‘mhgh,’ noise, shifting slightly where he’s puddled onto his shoulder. 

“Nnno,” he mumbles, the whine muffled, and Satoru lets his barrage of nothing taper off. 

“What’s no, honey?” He asks, playing with the mussed ends of dark hair, knelt at the foot of his bed. 

“No,” Megumi whines, shrugging into a squirm, heels grazing the points of his hips as he scowls. “No,” he continues, bemoaning nothing Satoru can puzzle out until he sees Megumi reach for the hem of the shirt, yanking on it even as he presses his eyes into the bone of his shoulder with a pressure that can’t seriously be comfortable.

“...No shirt, either?” Satoru asks, two parts faintly amused or exasperated and another horribly empathetic as one of Megumi’s palms pushes flat against his bare stomach, the other tugging at the middle of his shirt. 

“No,” Megumi protests, blunted nails digging into the scar Fushiguro left just enough to be mildly irritating, and Satoru sighs, giving in. Without a complaint, he undoes all his hard work, popping each button again and shrugging blue fabric from Megumi’s arms, not terribly surprised when he’s always been picky about clothing.

Satoru is surprised when immediately, the hand shoving at his stomach disappears, instead materializing up around his neck with its pair, knobby knees bonking against his ribs as Megumi shoves as close as physically possible. 

“Don’ want it,” Megumi mutters petulantly into his sternum as Satoru sets ginger hands over his back, sniffling grossly into his collarbone and almost certainly leaving some snot behind. 

He doesn’t even notice.

‘...Oh,’ Satoru thinks, gently lifting Megumi enough to stand up, turn around, and sit back on the lip of the bed with the weight of a new realization sinking him down. Absently, he counts along the knobs of Megumi’s spine, his other hand cushioned below him still. ‘I…oh.’  

He doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite as human as he does, sat on the edge of Megumi’s bed, holding him close because all Megumi wants from him is the comfort of own body. 

‘Oh,’ Satoru thinks, nothing else besides it running through his head as his lips twist, refusing to sit flat. Suguru’s handprints are proof that he’s touchable, that he can be human, but Megumi refusing his favorite pair of pajamas just to feel the touch of his own skin might be proof that he is, too. 

Wordlessly, Satoru flops back onto the bed, gentle as he can be as he tucks Megumi’s damp hair under his chin, mindlessly rubbing his thumb over ribs that don’t jut anymore. Being suddenly horizontal gets him a sniffle, the sound of snot being jammed back into sinuses making him grimace in misplaced amusement, but more than that, Megumi only wriggles closer. 

“I have to feed you, you know,” Satoru whispers, the width of his combined palms almost covering the entirety of Megumi’s unblemished back. 

“Hngf,” is all the reply he gets. When Satoru looks, head lifting up to catch a sliver of Megumi’s face, all he sees is lips relaxed into something slackened, dark eyelashes skimming rosy cheeks. 

“Fine,” he murmurs, gaze drifting back up to the ceiling and the glow in the dark stars they’d bought half a month ago, either in some sort of short circuit or some sort of awe. “I guess we’re napping first, huh?” 

Megumi says nothing, already beginning to drift. He has to get started on making rice porridge, and getting cold medicine down with it, and all the other chores readily awaiting him. Satoru doesn’t move. Instead, he curls his arms around Megumi a little snugger, wondering how it must feel to be wrapped up like he is, small and young and too little to find shame in it yet. 

He’s sure Megumi would yell at him if he moved, or be dejected at the least. He’s sure that a very, very large part of himself would never forgive him if he did.

So, Satoru doesn’t move.

Chapter Text

“Maybe over there?” Mimiko says, the nail of her thumb between her teeth as her brows furrow, indecision warring on her face. “On the other side of the doorway?” 

Obediently, Suguru moves, refusing to let any struggle show on his face as he hauls the dresser where she points, because it’s just a giant piece of wood. He can carry that, no problem. It’s not heavy at all.

‘This thing is a nightmare,’ he thinks, fingers cramping from holding onto sharp edges as he sets it down where Mimiko wants, listening to both her and Nanako snicker slightly sat in the middle of Mimiko’s room on the empty bed frame, doing no work whatsoever. 

“Okay,” he pants, turning, grimacing a smile as his hair swishes along his jaw. Maybe it’s been giving him a semblance of hives having it this short, even temporarily, but he has to admit it is far less sweaty than usual. “Where do we want your bed?”

“We should put it on the opposite wall!” Nanako declares, the most at ease he’s seen her so far, a bright smile on her face and a brighter look in her eyes. “Then we can have an even bigger room when we slide our doors open.” She grins, more than a little proud of herself, and Suguru chuckles. 

“Sure,” he agrees, glad that they’ve taken to the fusuma doors on the left wall connecting the both of their rooms together. “We should get matching rugs to put on either side. Then it’ll look like there’s one giant rug,” Suguru muses, mirth infecting his smile when the two of them perk up in excitement. 

“But first,” he continues, “please keep all limbs and belongings inside the ride at all times,” just to make them shriek into giggles as he shoves his t-shirt sleeves further up his shoulders, hands curling under the lip of the bed frame. 

The girls holler in sheer delight as Suguru lifts the thing up, teeth grit as he tries to balance it enough to move one side at a time to keep from warping the frame. They cling to the boards on the bottom, wide grins showing off baby teeth, jostling every time he picks it up and sets it down, the posts leaving indents in the carpet. 

He’s panting, sweaty slightly once he gets it set in the back right corner, the foot of the bed facing the fusuma doors on the left wall and directly to the side of a large, curtained window. At the very least, Suguru thinks, grabbing Nanako’s hands when she reaches for him trying to balance on the wooden slats as she stands, it’s the last large piece of furniture for the day. 

“I can’t wait to do mine,” she says, practically vibrating in place, and Suguru scoffs. 

“You mean for me to do yours,” he teases, tickling along her ribs, grinning wide when Nanako only squeals with a reedy laugh. 

He’s sure they’ll get to it in the next day or two, since most of the furniture was delivered today. It’s been a busy afternoon since Satoru got home with Megumi three hours ago, putting together Mimiko’s nightstand, her dresser, her bed frame. They’re still asleep on the other side of the upstairs, considering he hasn’t seen Satoru come out of Megumi’s room since he whispered over to check on them an hour ago- passed out together in bed. 

“Do you both want to paint them the same color?” Suguru asks, reaching out an arm to pull Mimiko off the slatted wood to come sit with him as he settles on the carpet, Nanako sinking easily down into his curled legs. “We could do it before we decorate.”

“I dunno,” Mimiko says, evidently thinking hard as she sits, holding onto his thumb and eyes perpetually drifting back to his hair. She looks nothing short of elated every time she sees it, so it feels worthwhile, Suguru thinks. Even if he knows for a fact he’s going to cave in less than a week and beg Shoko to grow it out again with reversed cursed. 

“What about orange,” Nanako offers, to Mimiko’s scrunching expression.

“What? No,” she protests. “...Purple,” she says, nodding, to Nanako’s shocked scoff. 

“No!” She exclaims, hands tossing up, and Suguru laughs again, endeared at their petty offense. 

“You can paint them different colors, too,” he says, wry, watching as Mimiko and Nanako leer at each other, their side eyes a short step off from glares. “They’re your rooms. You get to decide.”

“I want purple,” Mimiko seethes, as Nanako sticks out her tongue. 

“Then your majesty shall have purple,” Suguru sighs, leaning down into a mocking bow. It squishes Nanako against his cheek, and when she wriggles, he turns his head, blowing a raspberry onto the underside of her chin.

“Tou-san!” She shrieks, which only makes him buzz another, high off her laughter as she squirms, hands clutching at his arms. Beside him, Suguru catches as Mimiko stills, and for a long moment after he finally comes up for air, can’t figure out why.

‘I- Oh,’ he thinks, brain catching up as Nanako pants, slumped in his lap, ‘oh, shit.’

He can’t help it when he freezes slightly, hands stilling as he swallows down the lump in his throat. It’s honestly a little amazing, Suguru thinks, realizing he’s gotten so used to that title he didn’t even notice Nanako had said it. That, somehow, somewhere, father just became a part of who he is now. 

When he glances down, he watches in real time as Nanako’s face falls, slackening in disbelief, as Mimiko sits and stares, seemingly refusing to say anything, do anything, breathe even.

“...Hey,” Suguru murmurs, breaking the silence as he tilts Nanako’s face up with thumbs under her jaw, gentle as he huffs a smile. “It’s alright,” he promises, brushing away her bangs, sure his expression must be the most fond, disgustingly adoring thing he’s capable of. 

“...It is?” Mimiko asks, timid as she inches closer, tense slightly. 

“It is,” Suguru agrees, letting go of Nanako with one hand to tweak her nose. “You can call me anything you like. Satoru too.”

“...Anything?” Nanako echoes, brows puzzling down, and Suguru smiles, hopelessly endeared. 

“Anything,” he says. “Our names, a nickname, Tou-san, Tou-chan,” he rattles off, shrugging. “The only thing I don’t want to be called is mother, you hear me?” He teases, mockingly stern, and feels unmistakably proud of himself when they both giggle. 

“But you have long hair,” Nanako protests, shy even though she’s so clearly peering out of her shell, and Suguru lets his mouth drop open in exaggerated offense. 

“I had long hair!” He tosses back, tugging at her cheeks until they’re stretching, listening to her laugh like the chime of a bell. 

“Okaa-san!” She yells, the word muffled between her pulled lips, and Suguru reels. 

“Betrayal!” He shouts, rocking back. “Betrayal from my own daughter! How can I go on like this?!”

“I’ll never call you mother,” Mimiko declares, pushing to her feet. Suguru tilts his head back when she latches onto his shoulders, arms draping down his front and clearly stood on her tip-toes to catch his eyes. “I promise, Baa-chan!” 

Suguru gasps, breath falsely punched out and mostly the wind of a laugh, clapping a hand to his chest as he fakes keeling over. “Oh no, what’s this?” He startles, leaning his weight back. “Gravity is getting…stronger!” 

“Tou-chan!” Mimiko shrieks, her grin evident in her voice as he collapses back on her, the push of her tiny hands on his shoulder blades incremental to his actual weight. “You’re heavy!” 

“No, I’m dead,” he says, lolling his tongue out of his mouth, hands still circled around Nanako’s middle. 

“Hi dead,” she giggles, blonde hair splayed over his sternum as she looks up, a grin stretched wide over her cheeks. “I’m daughter.”

“Hello daughter,” Suguru muses, messing with a lock of pale gold, “I’m father.”

Nanko doesn’t say anything after, but her smile seems to melt across her entire face, eyes a little shiny and hands curled close to herself. Below him, Mimiko seems to fare little better, trapped with his head just above her lap. She sits up with the slight room she has, and wordlessly, Suguru shuffles down. When she moves, he watches the curtain of her dark hair blot out the ceiling, calm under the delicate touch of her fingertips as they reach up to trace along his nose. 

“I mean it,” he murmurs, something suffocating filling up his ribcage, a familiar sort of feeling he’s learned to recognize to be all consumable, inextinguible love. “You two are ours- Satoru’s and mine. You’re my daughters now, you understand?” 

Wordlessly, Mimiko nods, her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth as she blinks away the glossy thing staining her dark eyes. 

“...We never really knew our parents,” Nanako whispers, the secret quiet, given to the bubble they sit between, the delicacy of the shared silence. “They died when we were really young.” 

“Uncle used to call them freaks, and Auntie didn’t like them very much, either,” Mimiko tacks on, a learned sort of flatness to the confession, practiced until it was clearly worn into indifference. 

Suguru hums, drawing his knees up even as he lays there on the floor, head heavy in Mimiko’s small lap and Nanako’s elbows boney as she twists around flopped over his stomach, chin pointed as it rests on his sternum. 

“They were probably different,” Suguru muses, stroking a palm down Nanako’s hair, his other reaching up to curl around Mimiko’s hips. “Like we are.” For a long moment, he watches the two of them sit on that statement, knowing they knew it already but not in the context of together. Only, he thinks, as alone.

“...What…” Mimiko rasps, the question seemingly lodging in her throat. “What’s…”

“What’s having parents like,” Nanako blurts, hands wringing into his shirt, to Mimiko’s abject relief. 

“Well,” Suguru begins, lips pursing as he thinks on it, “it’s always having someone worried over you, and someone there when you need them, and a home to come back to.” As he speaks, he shoves the thoughts of his own childhood firmly away. 

His own parents were always there, and they were always worried, but there had been an uncrossable divide between them for most of his life. If Suguru were asked about his, he thinks he might have said, ‘difficult,’ and, ‘unsteady,’ and, ‘loving to a fault.’ There’d been little better option, when they’d been part of two different worlds since he’d learned to put a name to the monsters in the dark, though he knows they’re trying their best to bridge that canyon now. 

“It’s…knowing that out there, somewhere, someone will always love you,” he says, thinking of what he wants more than what he had. “No matter what you do, or who you are.” He’s going to do better, be better, than anyone in his life ever had been. 

“Oh,” Mimiko whispers, palms set forgotten on his cheeks, eyes caught like a thorn to his own. 

“Oh,” Suguru echoes, smile softened just for the two of them, not missing the way that Nanako’s fingers curl tighter into his shirt. “Give it time,” he murmurs, gently squeezing the back of her neck, the base of Mimiko’s spine. “You’ll have your own answer eventually.”

“I- I hope so,” Nanako blurts, sitting up with a jostling rustle, knees bracketing his ribs and socked toes skimming the cream carpet, leaning back against his raised thighs. 

“I know so,” Suguru replies, palm falling to her waist, her weight reassuring as much as it is relaxing. She’s right here, Mimiko’s right there, the both of them are perfectly fine, perfectly okay, a blank slate to love for what might be the first time in their lives. 

“...If this is a dream,” Mimiko whispers, palms little as they curl under his chin, “I don’t really wanna wake up again.” Her hair skims his cheek, ticklish as it brushes with the motion of her slight tilt down, and Suguru can recognize words spoken to someone else. 

If he had to guess, he thinks, tilting his chin up to press a silent kiss to her cupid’s bow, it was probably Satoru. 

“Even if you did,” Suguru promises, because he knows what it means to be believed, “we’d come find you.” Mimiko nods, not quite sniffling as she curls closer, head slotting into the hollow of his shoulder, hands still held onto his chin, dipping against his throat. 

And for a while, they stay like that, laid out on the carpet, soaking in the sobriety of the moment. He can’t find a reason to move, not when Mimiko seems content hidden against his collar, fingers absently tracing down his skin like she can’t really believe he’s real. Not when Nanako leans back against his legs, hands pressed against his own where it sits on her hip, trying hard to swallow down sentiments she hasn’t learned yet when he knows she’s desperate to believe them.

They sit there, basking in the silence for long enough that Suguru turns his head, short hair dragging along the carpet as he meets Mimiko’s dark eyes. They watch him, curious, achingly fond already if not awestruck, and Suguru barely has to tilt his head up to be met for a brushing kiss. 

It speaks volumes that she even rises for one alone, not trepidatious or jittery in the slightest with his palm resting along her temple, lips whispering over her forehead. Like she’d learned to recognize it, had expected it, and that if nothing else makes more than a little part of him overjoyed. 

Suguru opens his mouth, about to say something horrifically sappy, when he catches the muffled sound of the front door opening. 

“I’m home!” Tsumiki yells, the sound of it slamming shut echoing up from the downstairs, and on top of him, Nanako jerks. 

“Up here!” Suguru calls back, leaning away from Mimiko’s face so he’s not shouting directly into her ear, noting with delight now Nanako spills off of him like a cat, clampering away in a hobble to the open door of Mimiko’s half put together room to peer out. 

Tsumiki’s steps thunk up the stairs, her socked feet doing nothing to muffle the sound, and Suguru watches on in amusement as she nearly comes careening into Nanako. 

“Hi!” She startles, something bright lighting up her eyes when Nanako smiles back, and tentatively thrusts her arms out in a gesture for a hug. Suguru snorts when Nanako tilts in, falling more than leaning forward, something giddy in the squeeze of her arms as Tsumiki’s entire expression lights up like the sun.

He’s even less surprised when Mimiko slinks out from under his head, deliberately moving over him in a way that leaves him no room to sit up as she steals Nanako’s vacated position sat atop him. He rolls his eyes as she settles on his stomach, tugging at her bare toes in petty retribution. 

“H-how was school?” Nanako asks, stilted and overeager and horribly awkward as she follows Tsumiki further into the room on staggered feet, unsure how exactly to interact when they’ve only had a few genuine hours together.

“Crazy,” Tsumiki complains, stopping short at his side. “Sensei said Megumi went home early ‘cause he was sick. Is he okay?” She asks, hands wringing and a worried thing pinching her face. 

“He’s fine,” Suguru promises, patting Mimiko’s side in a wordless apology as he sits up, curling her with him as he stands. “Last I saw, he was napping with Satoru. You wanna check on them?” He asks, resettling Mimiko with a bounce. “It’s been a while since I poked my head in.”

“Yes, please,” she says, practically jumping on the chance as his hand is snagged right alongside Nanako’s, the four of them a merry little caravan as Tsumiki tugs them across the living room and down the hall to Megumi’s bedroom.

Tsumiki doesn’t even bother to start talking about her day as she strides along, only letting go once they turn the corner, making a beeline for Megumi’s door where he left it cracked. Suguru can understand her urgency, watching her gently push it open and step inside, footsteps quiet as she pads to his bed. They’ve only been living with them for the short end of five months, and for years longer, Megumi relied on Tsumiki alone. 

As it is, it’s adorable to watch her lean over the side of Megumi’s bed, relief scattering over her features as she listens to both him and Satoru breathe, calm and steady, clearly still asleep. 

“‘Miki?” He catches Satoru mumble, eyes still shut and arms curled protectively around Megumi, to her small huff.

“Hi, Tou-ru,” she whispers, hands relaxed as she leans over her palms, evidently cataloging whatever expression he’s wearing, fuzzy from a nap. “Is Megumi okay?” Nanako bumbles into his hip, trying to see around the door, the both of them intently listening in.

“Sick,” Satoru whispers back, yawning. “‘Was throwing up. You don’t wanna catch it,” he murmurs, lifting a hand to shoo her out. “Go have fun with the girls.” 

“Are you sure?” She protests, biting on the inside of her cheek. “I can help-”

“Go,” Satoru repeats, and Suguru can feel the smile in his chide, the fondness in the hand that gently shoves Tsumiki’s face away. “I’ve got him.” Clearly, Suguru thinks, amused at the bundle of dark hair and curled limbs Megumi is laying on his chest, sleeping harder than a rock.

“...Okay,” she says, giving in after a moment, seemingly unable to help herself when she stops to drape a loose throw blanket on the bed over the both of them with an unrepentant furrow of her brows. Then, she’s leaving, soothed enough that everything’s okay to shut the door to a crack, again, sighing heavily behind it. 

“Wait- your hair?!” Tsumiki whisper-yells, whipping around in a wide eyed frenzy, and among their circle of eye contact, the three of them fail miserably to muffle their giggles. 

“So you’re really not gonna keep it like that?” She asks a few minutes later, downstairs where they don’t have to whisper. 

“No,” Suguru assures, breaking down all the boxes the furniture came in while she unpacks her homework, amused at the sight of Mimiko and Nanako’s curiosity looking at what seem to be her math problems. “I’m keeping it short until Mimiko’s healthy enough for Shoko to regrow her hair if she wants. Then I’ll make her or Satoru regrow mine, too.” 

“Oh,” Tsumiki tones, familiar with Shoko’s little wealth of weird abilities from every odd weekend they take her up to the school to practice with her. She’s gotten closer in the last month and a half to wielding reversed cursed energy, having stated the last time they were up that she’d been able to find the right thread, though she hadn’t been able to pull on it yet.

It’s something fancy to do with energy channels and abilities and how energy manipulation comes naturally to sorcerers, and no one else. At the very least, she’s always excited now to go back up.

“...What kind of math even is that,” Nanako asks, something leery leaking into her voice as she sits on Tsumiki’s right, staring down at the stack of papers pulled from her folder like it personally wronged her.

‘Oh dear,’ Suguru thinks, more than acquainted with how underfunded schools in the boonies are, and refuses to sigh out loud as Tsumiki jumps to explain. 

He listens to them chatter back and forth for a long moment, making space for Mimiko in his lap when she crawls back in it, content to talk from a distance, and resigns himself to another several months of playing tutor. ‘Not until after summer, at least,’ Suguru thinks, relieved. They still have to acclimate the twins to regular home life before they can dump them into school. 

“Oh!” Tsumiki exclaims, palms clapping against the top of the kotatsu table, to Nanako’s bewilderment. “I almost forgot! Tou-san!” She shouts, eyes shining when Suguru turns, head tilting in question.

“Hm-?” He hums, only to tumble over himself. “Oh-! Your friend group! How’d it go?” He asks, once the memory knocks into his head that she was going to confront her friends today, something hopeful blooming in his belly at Tsumiki’s unbridled excitement. 

“It went great!” She exclaims, downright squealing. “I mean, it was horrible ‘cause Ayaka’s kinda mean when she doesn’t get her way, but it also went like really, really good!”

“Yeah?” Suguru pokes, another blanket of relief relaxing his shoulders as he listens, glad she’s found her footing. It’s nice to hear that Tsumiki feels confident enough to stand up for herself, if for no other reason than pride, or knowing she won’t be walked over. 

“Yeah! Izumi decided she didn’t want to be friends with them anymore either, so I still have a friend, and Yasui thought us standing up to them was super cool too, so I even made another friend!” Tsumiki rambles, buzzing in her excitement, gasping for a breath as she talks, not a word in edgewise anyone else could get. “And get this!” She says, leaning over the table, eyes wide. 

Cupping a hand to her mouth like she’s telling a secret, Tsumiki continues with, “Yasui’s a sorcerer!” 

That stops him in his tracks. “What?” Suguru asks, taken aback. 

“Yeah! I saw her exercise a grade four curse at recess,” Tsumiki explains, turning to Nanako and her rapt attention. “We call the really weak ones grade fours,” she explains, to her wide eyed nod, the little smile on her lips at being wholeheartedly included. 

“What’s her full name?” Suguru questions, a curiosity settling in the pit of his stomach besides a slight worry. Satoru had chosen the schools he had because of Saitama’s low shaman population. There shouldn’t have been any in their grade levels. It’s likely harmless, but Satoru is also the Six Eyes, and he’s sure it’s becoming common knowledge by now that they have children. 

“Yasui Sadako,” Tsumiki replies, contemplating for a moment. “Do you not recognize her family?” She wonders, head tilting and ponytail swishing, having learned enough in the past few months to know that most sorcerers know each other, or are at least aware enough of who attended which school and when. 

“No,” Suguru admits, “I don’t, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t in any records.” It’s probably harmless, he figures, especially so if Yasui only just decided to befriend Tsumiki when she’s had several months to at this point. 

“I don’t get it?” Nanako pipes up, chin set in her hands as she plants her elbows on the table, and Suguru purses his lips, setting his cannibalized box down to thread his arms around Mimiko, instead. 

“Sorcerers are few and far between,” he explains, feeling Mimiko’s eyes flickering up to his face. “We’re rare, so most of us are scouted by the two colleges that exist to train us. We all sort of know of each other, even if we’ve never met.” 

“So…” Tsumiki starts, only to trail off, and Suguru shrugs. 

“Her family might be unaffiliated,” he says, careful as he meets her eye, “or, they might be curse users.” 

“...Right. I- I know that,” Tsumiki says, gaze dropping, lips twisting in uncertainty as she eyes the table top. 

“It doesn’t mean you can’t be friends,” Suguru reminds her, purposely gentle, loosening his arms when Mimiko twists in his lap, clearly interested in listening but also, apparently, in trying to worm her way into the most warm part of him. “It’s just something to be aware of. You two might not have the same ideals as you grow up, if she’s from a different background.”

“...I know,” Tsumiki bemoans, head thunking down onto the table, and Suguru chuckles as he notches up his temperature a few degrees. 

“Well,” he sighs, smoothing a hand down Mimiko’s back, leaning against the sofa, “I’m proud of you.” He smiles as Tsumiki turns her head up enough her eyes are visible, hair spilling down her shoulders. “It was really brave to stand up to them like you did.”

Tsumiki looks away, cheeks flushing, a little smile of her own pressing into her dimples. “Thanks, Tou-san,” she murmurs, a warmth in the curl of her voice. 

“Wait,” Nanako mutters, tapping at her lip as she tries to order everything around, such a counterpoint to her own sister, pressed against his belly like a lizard in the sun and clearly starting to doze off. 

“I’m still confused,” she admits, biting down on her lip as she shrugs, meek slightly but curious or calm enough to ask, and huffing, Suguru sets to work on explaining. 

Megumi refuses to let go of him, even after they wake up another hour later, groggy and bleary eyed. 

‘God, what time is it,’ Satoru wonders, yawning as he gives up on bothering to unstick Megumi from his chest where he’s determined to be glued, bundling up the throw blanket Tsumiki left on them under his arms. He can see the sun setting through the bedroom window, golden just above the treeline. 

“Oh my god, Mimiko is that a zombie? Is there a zombie in my living room?” Suguru teases, to Tsumiki and Nanako’s chiming laughter, sat at the kotatsu table with the girls and homework clearly forgotten among what looks like a messy game of cards. 

“Are you seriously teaching them how to play poker,” Satoru rasps, squinting, gently patting Megumi’s back when he hiccups, goosebumps prickling down his arms as he stands in open air, wearing nothing but Suguru’s sweats and the toddler suction cupped to his skin.

“Maybe,” Suguru throws back, before, “Nanako, I totally just saw your cards.”

“Did not!” She protests, snapping them up to her chest, and he snorts. 

“There’s rice porridge on the stove,” Suguru hums, eyeing him amusedly from behind the shorn curtain of his cut hair. Butterfly clips have been placed in it by his temples, pulling it up and away from his eyes. “Give him the kids dose of the cold medicine I left on the counter- try giving him a spoonful of honey or sugar too if he refuses to take it.” Just his bangs hang over his face, framing rather than the statement part of the look, and it’s jarring enough Satoru only stands and stares at him for a long moment. 

“What,” Suguru says, among Megumi’s weak, scratchy cough, and Satoru shakes his head in disbelief, meandering to the kitchen. 

“Oh come on,” Suguru calls after him, throwing his cards up and evidently a psychic when Satoru didn’t even say anything about his hair. He laughs, rumbly and low, caught in his throat with his voice still thick from the nap. 

The chatter picks back up as he vanishes behind the fusuma doors, only half opened, little voices mixing with the light cadence of Suguru’s own, and it’s a nice sort of white noise. 

“Megumi,” Satoru murmurs, inhaling the calming scent of porridge made with chicken broth, something he knows comes from Suguru’s dad’s recipes, spotting the cold medicine on the counter. “You hungry, honey?”

“Hng,” is all he gets, but he notices when the breaths against his throat come slightly shallower, a touch more awake. 

“Come on,” Satoru leads, brushing his knuckles along the high of Megumi’s cheek, “I know you’re thinking about it.”

“Am noh,’” Megumi mumbles, even though his eyes crack open, fuzzy from the sliver of green he catches. 

“You can’t take that medicine until you eat,” Satoru says, readjusting the blanket wrapped around Megumi’s back as he pulls the lid off the pot, left on the lowest burner setting. It looks good, the picture of comfort food, and it smells heavenly. 

Megumi sniffles, the sound wet, but his eyes open a little wider as the steam hits his face, squinted but clearly intrigued. “Just try a nibble?” Satoru asks, pulling a spoon from the drawer, dipping it into the pot before holding it up to Megumi’s lips. 

He stares at it for a long moment, contemplating, dark hair stuck up flat on one side of his head from sleeping on him all afternoon. Tentatively, Megumi opens his mouth, and Satoru offers up just the edge of the spoon to taste. He sniffles after sitting on it, thinking hard, before wordlessly opening his mouth again. 

Satoru passes over the rest of the spoon before he steps away from the stove, pulling a small bowl down to fill, and then the sugar as an afterthought. He’s heard stories here and there about how it was the main method Suguru and Shoko’s families used to get them to take cold medicine when they were little and the liquid shit was all they could have, but he’s never tried it himself. 

‘Imagine,’ Satoru scoffs, ladling porridge into the bowl before pressing the warmth of it against Megumi’s curled hands, content when he sets his palms to it, if just to feel. The wild thought of Akemi ordering one of the maids to shovel raw sugar down his throat makes him snicker slightly. 

He leans back against the counter instead of rejoining the living room, not wanting to let the other kids catch whatever nasty thing Megumi’s got, spooning up little mouthfuls of simmered chicken stewed in rice, broth, ginger, green onions and water. He can smell other spices in it, other things, but he doesn’t care to pick it apart, not when Megumi actually eats it, clumsily closing his lips around each spoonful, maybe, but eating all the same. 

“How’re you feeling?” Satoru murmurs, as one of Megumi’s hands close around the handle of the spoon, unsteadily tugging it to hold under his nose for a moment, wetly inhaling the steam with his sinuses stuffed up. His eyes scrunch after he realizes he can’t breathe through it at all, pissed, sulking from below dark lashes.

“Icky,” Megumi mutters, surly, and Satoru laughs. It’s quiet, more just a puff of air than anything. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “you look like you feel icky. Does your stomach still hurt?” It gets him another glare, even as Megumi shovels the spoon into his mouth by no real force of his own, seemingly content enough with the babying when he looks like death warmed over. 

Satoru waits patiently as little nose scrunches, dragging the spoon back through the bowl for another bite. “...No,” Megumi mumbles, eyes glazed and heavy with bruising. “Head hurts.” 

“Keep eating, then,” Satoru urges, lifting the spoon. “Once you finish, you can take some medicine, and we can go back to bed.” Skeptical green eyes flicker up to his own again, narrowing slightly, before Megumi nods.

“...’Kay.” The agreement is little, exhausted, but it doesn’t exactly sound miserable. It’s enough to make him sigh, relaxed as he tips the last of the porridge down for Megumi to swallow; enough to make him feel more certain he’s doing the right thing. 

Maybe he’s got a leg up in that regard, Satoru can think, setting the bowl in the sink for later as Megumi slumps back over his shoulder again, it isn’t all that high of an advantage. ‘Can you even call that a time travel paradox?’ He wonders, unscrewing the lid of the new cold medicine after tearing through the plastic, eyeing the dosage limit as he dribbles the fluorescent liquid into the measuring cup it came with. 

He purses his lips, eyeing the way the medicine seems to be the consistency of wet slime as he tilts it. ‘Probably not.’ He sighs, staring at it. 

“That looks so nasty,” Satoru mumbles, barely there under his breath, but Megumi still makes a noise, nose scrunching against his neck. “Nothing, nothing,” he covers, just a touch louder. “You ready for medicine?”

“Guess so,” Megumi grumbles, sitting about as straight as a sloth as he stays slumped over for several long beats, lashes blinking slow, like those frogs in nature documentaries, glazed over and thoughtless. 

It takes Satoru giving him a tiny bounce, shuffling him up another notch, for Megumi to finally pick his head up, bruising carving a hollow below his sunken, lidded eyes. They barely look green under their shadows, he thinks. 

“Ok, so,” he starts, holding up the cup and what is clearly radioactive sludge dyed an aggressive red, “Tou-chan said you could have a spoonful of sugar after taking this.” Satoru gives it a waggle, watching Megumi’s foggy eyes trace the small swing of the measuring cup, something wary in their narrowed squint. “You want it?”

“...Maybe,” Megumi whispers, raspy as the corners of his lips tug down, one little fist aimlessly curling over his shoulder in search of hair he doesn’t have, used to coiling into Suguru’s. 

“We’ll do it quick, yeah?” Satoru promises, plastering the most encouraging smile he has onto his face. “You won’t even taste it.” 

The way Megumi’s stare levels flatly at his face declares he doesn’t believe that sentiment one goddamn bit, but instead of throwing a hissy fit, or scowling, he only sighs. Long, weary, and bone achingly tired. 

It’s adorable.

“Okay,” he wallows, voice snuffed from his cold, and trying not to let his giddy grin show on his lips, Satoru busies himself with pressing a kiss to his sweaty forehead. 

“You’re way braver than me, Meg,” he teases, to the sound of one exceptionally pathetic sniffle. 

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” he murmurs after, bringing the small cup up to Megumi’s lips, glad even though he definitely isn’t for the congestion when it’ll muffle the taste. Hilariously, he downs it like a shot glass, quickly and efficiently. Despite it, Megumi still gags, one hand flying up to clutch onto his wrist and a shudder wracking his tiny body as he swallows thickly, tongue immediately sticking out and scowl twisting his lips into a pretzel.

“Good job,” Satoru praises, tossing it into the sink without looking as he fumbles for a spoon, dragging it through the sugar bin before holding it up, not even bothering to bring it to Megumi when he lunges for it like a starving man given dinner. “You’re all done, it’s done.”

“Gross,” Megumi whines, crunching through a mouthful of sugar granules, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and a miserable expression dragging down his entire face. 

“Yeah, I know,” Satoru sighs, setting the spoon down in favor of rubbing a hand down his back, rucking up the blanket pooled in the crook of the arm holding Megumi up. “You’ll feel better sooner now, though, and look! There’s a whole pot of porridge left just for you.”

A sniffle rumbles into his shoulder, wheezy and wet, among a blubbering moan. ‘Yeah,’ Satoru thinks, wincing as he fills another bowl, ‘me too, baby.’

Despite himself, they end up on the couch.

He doesn’t think he’s ever slept this much during the day in his life, Satoru muses, bundled up in every throw blanket they have in the living room with Megumi plastered to his stomach like a starfish. His face has only gotten more flushed since he’d eaten another bowl, skin clammy and temperament fluctuating with his body’s inability to pick a temperature. 

“Suguru, you’re gonna bake me like a clam,” Satoru protests, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple as hands warmed hot enough to faintly glow sweep gently between Megumi’s bare shoulder blades, apparently making his shivers bearable, though definitely not the heat of the blankets. 

“I’m sorry, did the pillow just talk?” Suguru hums, carding orange hued fingers through Megumi’s hair, the pant of his shallowed breaths ticklish against his stomach. “Suck it up, Tou-ru.”

“So mean to me,” Satoru mumbles, tipping his head back over the armrest, sighing gusty and petulant. 

He lays there as he listens to Suguru gently coo as he coddles Megumi, sat at the abandoned kotatsu table and turned against the couch’s edge so his shortened, shifting hair splays along his sternum with his every movement. 

If nothing else besides his imminent demise as a lobster cooked in a pot, Megumi seems to be a touch less miserable under the attention. His expression hasn’t changed from gloomy and his body’s still tense when he can’t find a comfortable way to lay, but his eyes stay shut in some sort of contentment, lashes fluttering slightly every time Suguru pets over his hair, or presses a warmed palm to his skin.

The girls have scattered across the living room, the last hour spent switching between ogling Tsumiki’s homework to manicures to starting some cowboy game with her barbies that had been interesting specifically for the fact that it had involved aliens, maybe. They’ve seemed to move on to something else now, though.

Satoru cranes his head slightly, listening as the three of them sit huddled together, passing around Tsumiki’s glasses in the opened crack of the fusuma doors leading to the dojo. Not allowed in without one of them unless the weapons are sealed, Tsumiki had only pulled the doors back to show them, to two wide eyed stares and badly disguised interest. 

“So, you can see what we do? With these?” Mimiko asks, peering through the lenses of Tsumiki’s glasses, turning them over, around, trying to find what’s special about them through sight alone.

“Yep!” Tsumiki chimes, sat between the two of them and so giddy at having sisters, of all things, that Satoru has been able to almost taste the fizzle of her weak cursed energy. “It was kind of a shock, seeing one for the first time.” She laughs, sheepish, to Mimiko’s soft huff. “I almost knocked Tou-san over I ran into him so hard.” 

“They’re so ugly, right?” Nanako takes them when Mimiko passes them over, tracing along the thin metal holding the glass with one delicate finger, eyes fixated on the shape of them. “I mean, during harvest season, we used to wade in the rice fields until after dark, and once I saw one staring back at me from the woods.”

Mimiko chuckles, bright and sly, turning to Tsumiki with a grin wide on her face. “You should have seen it,” she snickers, to Nanako’s put out, ‘Mimiko!’ “She jumped so high, and then she made a mess of everything running through the water.”

“Oh yeah?” Nanako butts in, red in the face with embarrassment even though he can tell it’s not malicious in the slightest, though he can guess she’s aiming to poke a button in turn for her own. “What about when you saw old man Nakahara’s cat and spooked so bad you smacked your head on the shed’s doorway?”

Satoru can’t help it- he snickers, gaining all three of their attentions as he chuckles, endlessly amused with the trace of a twang that leaks out when either of the two of them talk long enough. How they bicker back and forth like Megumi and Tsumiki do when they’re riled up, how it reminds him of himself, Suguru, and Shoko, even. 

“Oh please,” he starts, beckoning them closer by a hand draped over the arm of the couch and wiggled fingers. “If you want to talk about scaredy cat, you should ask Suguru about the time he went to a haunted crypt.”

“You are such a little-” Suguru protests, head jerking up and shortened hair swaying as he reaches out, shoving at his face. 

“It’s true!” Satoru crows, laughing as his nose is pinched, pitching his voice as he talks through it. “I’ve never seen you so freaked out.”

“Wait!” Tsumiki exclaims, scrabbling up as she jams her glasses back onto her nose. “Haunted crypt? Like the haunted crypt Shoko-ba fought an army of skeletons in?” 

“The one and only,” Suguru sighs, feeding into the rumor like he’s put out by it when Satoru knows he loves watching the kids sheer awe at their exaggerated stories the most. 

“A haunted crypt?” Mimiko repeats, overlapping Nanako’s cried, “skeleton army?!” The both of them following suit as Tsumiki tumbles over, side stepping scattered dolls and pens. 

“Tou-san, you never said you were there too!” Her brows furrow as she tugs on Satoru’s limp hand, throwing herself over the section of the couch’s arm his head isn’t draped over, glaring up at Suguru.

“It wasn’t relevant,” he replies, shrugging amiably, a cattish smile coy on his face, and Satoru rolls his eyes in an overexaggerated circle as Nanako and Mimiko come crashing into his side. 

Huddled against him beneath all the racket, Megumi grimaces, shoving his face into the soft part of his stomach as if to burrow below it, and taking pity, Satoru pulls him closer. He curls the fingers trapped in Tsumiki’s hand, pulling one of the forgotten pens up towards him with a flicker of Blue, nabbing it with his other as he gently shakes her loose. 

“Okay, yes, fine I will tell the full story,” Suguru caves, to the whining protests the three of them kick up with, ‘Suguru,’ this and, ‘Tou-chan,’ that, Satoru notices, scrawling out a dampening seal onto the palm of his right hand. “You three little hooligans gotta quiet down though, Megumi’s trying to sleep,” he hushes, leaning back to let them crowd close. 

“Mn, not that quiet,” Satoru pipes up, soft as he sets his hand over Megumi’s eyes, kicking the seal into a fragment of power with a marginal push of his cursed energy, watching in satisfaction when his entire body goes limp in relaxation as the noise muffles below a barrier. It’s not the most conventional usage ever of a seal designed against the Inumaki family, but it works. 

“Also,” Satoru starts, turning his head even as he keeps the slow, dragging strokes of his thumb over Megumi’s temples even and steady, “how come he’s Tou-san but I’m still Satoru?” 

Tsumiki laughs at his pout, grinning at his mocking indignance, and it’s maybe a testament to Suguru’s sheer charisma or maybe just the fact that they feel safe when the twins only giggle, recognizing a joke for all that it is. 

“Sorry, Okaa-san?” Nanako tries, hiding a giddy smile behind her drawn up knees, to Mimiko’s squeal, muffled behind her clapping hands. 

“Best daughters ever,” Suguru says, to what can only be an inside joke, hands smacking together in the mimicry of a prayer as he bows, hair shifting off his shoulders in an inky curtain, to the both of their unadulterated howls. 

“I’d never betray you in such a way, Tou-ru,” Tsumiki mutters, so staunch and serious curved over the arm of the couch like a lanky cat. 

It makes him laugh, sputtering at first and then gasping with wheezes after, grin wide over his lips as he struggles to catch his breath, winded when Suguru finally calms the girls down enough to start in on a long story. 

How couldn’t it, Satoru wonders, wiping dripping tears of joy away from his waterlines as he cradles Megumi close, careful to keep the noise out of his ears and the light from his eyes. It’s sheer stupidity, glee for the fun of it, delight because of a shared joke, made at his loving expense. It’s familiarity, plain and simple domesticity. 

It’s family, in every awed sound of the word. Laying there on the couch, Satoru laughs, because he thinks, ‘this is everything I’ve ever wanted.’ 

It’s much calmer once Suguru gets started in on a heavily edited retelling of their adventure in St. Petersburg, Tsumiki, Mimiko, and Nanako hanging onto the edge of his every word as he talks, twisting the tale of a wild adventure into mystery and horror as he speaks like a storyteller. 

In the months since they started doing bedtime stories, Satoru’s watched him grow, embracing the drama as if it’s second nature, holding all of their attention like a fish on a hook with nothing but the cadence of his carefully picked words. If nothing else, it’s impressive, but also why he notices when Nanako’s unwavering attention abruptly breaks. 

It’s small, short, nothing but a flicker of her eyes to where Megumi lays shoved up under his chin, like being close enough to feel Satoru swallow will help make his cold go away any faster. There, he thinks, and then gone. 

Her gaze keeps coming back in little increments, small notices, just a blink and a passing thought. 

Until, Satoru observes, watching her finally get up unsteadily with a tightened grip on the kotatsu table’s edge, Suguru pauses to sip for a moment at his water. “Where are you going?” He asks, trite, to Nanako’s pinched expression.

“Just- forgot something,” she says, explaining nothing, eyes darting to their bedroom as she takes a hobbling step forwards. 

“Wait, hold on, you’re gonna hurt your foot-” Suguru chides, already getting up to help. Nanako’s put out huff has him stopping, all of them watching in surprise as her ears start to burn red, something determined on her face and unwavering in the riddling puzzle of her suddenly agitated cursed energy.

“I- I can do it,” she protests, picking her head up and shaking her hair out of her face. “I wanna do it.” 

“Nanako,” Suguru sighs, quieting when Satoru sets one of his hands on his shoulders. When dark eyes meet his own, he shakes his head, barely a movement at all.

‘Let her go,’ he thinks, lifting his brows, watching the affront draw down Suguru’s face. 

‘And have her hurt herself?’ The cock of his singular eyebrow says, annoyed, but mostly just worried. Silently, Satoru squeezes, watching as Suguru rolls his eyes and purses his lips, but doesn’t say anything more while Nanako stumbles along the edges of furniture to walk the few feet to their bedroom. 

‘Independence,’ Satoru taps out, Morse into the muscle of Suguru’s shoulder as they both sit glued to the sight of their doorway, waiting for her to come back. ‘Builds trust.’ Suguru sighs, but he knows he gets it when he doesn’t make to follow, sat just slightly tense instead. 

Maybe Satoru’s not exactly the expert on traumatized kids, even if he could still count as one himself, Suguru notwithstanding, he did teach a large handful of them for a long couple of years. There’s memories he has to draw on, experiences left tucked in the nooks and crannies he purposely lets himself forget about when possible. 

There was a lot to learn, balancing Kinji’s coarse personality and penchant for disrespecting authority beside Kirara’s desperate, terrified desire to be something other than just a boy. In juggling Yuuta’s anxiety and overwhelming insecurities against Megumi’s utter lack of a shit to give. Even in trying to figure out a way to elevate Maki when she would refuse to have much of any of him. 

Whatever happened while they were home alone today, he’s recognized, set the beginnings of the foundation, just like he’d done with Mimiko that night. Somewhere in the hours he was gone and the few he was asleep, Nanako found solace in something Suguru said or did. She had to, when she laughs like she doesn’t fear anything, or tries tentative jokes like she really believes it might be safe to find humor, or adoration, or love even, if he was bold enough to say she was ready for it. 

Whatever has her trying to stand on her own two legs can’t be undercut by coddling. 

“Aiko?” Suguru asks, the question in the curve of his voice when Nanako comes toddling out of the bedroom again, Megumi’s stuffed dog plushie swinging from her arms. 

“I left him there on accident,” she explains, shrugging, quieter than before as she stumbles back, every step a challenge but one that seems to be being succeeded at, what with how she doesn’t look unstable so much as unsteady. “He helped me feel better.” She shrugs again, listing slightly to a halt in front of Suguru’s crossed legs, gnawing on her lower lip.

“Can I give him back?” She asks, quiet in the silence Mimiko and Tsumiki seem to be refusing to break. 

“Of course,” Satoru says, a little smile curving up the corners of his lips. ‘See,’ he taps, gentle and reverent into Suguru’s shoulder as he shifts, uncovering Megumi’s shut eyes from below his sigiled palm. He doesn’t miss the way Suguru’s widen, how his face clears of everything save a silent understanding.

Megumi grumbles slightly, shifting uncomfortably as his eyes crack open, squinting in the warm light of the living room, bathed orange with the setting of the sun. “Hn?” He tones, wordless in its whine. 

“Uhm,” Nanako starts, shy slightly, before, “here,” she says, leaning on the help of Suguru’s stable palm as she reaches over him, setting Aiko in Megumi’s line of sight. 

“Thank you for giving him to me,” she whispers. “It- he made me feel a lot better. He could probably make you feel better again, too.” 

‘Who knew we found angels in that place,’ Satoru wonders, taking in every detail of how Megumi’s heavy eyes slowly register the toy set on the edge of the couch, gradually flickering up to Nanako’s waiting face, the antsy blinks of her pale lashes. 

Shakily, little hands extend out, fingers burying into the soft, artificial fur of the stuffed dog as Megumi pulls him close, eyes fixated on Nanako’s own as she hovers at the edge of the cushions. He blinks, sniffling, and Satoru swears he can feel it in the shape of his inky cursed energy as all of Megumi’s snuffed jealousy liquefies into admiration. Like dye, spilling to the depths of the ocean.

“...Th’nk you,” he mumbles, squeezing Aiko close, still staring up at Nanako as if he’s finally seeing her for the first time. 

She nods, the smile spreading across her lips small and then sudden, wrangled close so it won’t spill wider than the curve of her cheeks, elation in the rise of her small shoulders. “Yeah,” she breathes, “yeah. You- you’re welcome.” 

‘Told you so,’ Satoru taps out, when she finally sinks back into Suguru’s lap, the words warm and fond against the flat of his shoulder. The head that knocks against his side after is a little heavier than it needs to be, you got me without words at all. 

Chapter Text

“Just imagine,” Suguru crows, a proud little thing in the curve of his voice, “in another few days, you’ll have your very own beds to sleep in.” 

“What, and miss out on all this?” Satoru teases, breezing by him as he sets Megumi down in the fluff of their pillows, utterly sacked out by some combination of cough medicine, the noiseless seal he’d written into his palm, and endless body heat. 

It earns him a thwack to the ass with Nanako’s discarded pajama shirt, Suguru’s tongue visible for the moment it glares at him. 

The twins giggle slightly, Nanako stood on the carpet in front of Suguru’s crossed legs, her sister knelt at her side. “Aww, you mean you’re kicking us out soon?” Tsumiki says, bouncing away from them to launch herself at his lap, and Satoru wrinkles his nose, hauling her up onto their bed.

“Nah,” he hums, turning her around so he can wrap his arms around her middle, passive as Suguru’s careful hands help Nanako step out of loose sleep shorts. The bandaging spiraling up her arms and patches smattering her skin have aged since Shoko put them there. “You can’t get rid of hooligans once they’ve infested.” 

“Tou-ru!” She squeals, legs kicking aimlessly as he tickles along her ribs, though only for a moment. He drops a kiss down to the crown of her head as an apology, worries over Megumi forgotten where he sleeps soundly at his side. Instead, they drift to the girls, the scraping of healing cuts that appear as Suguru steadily unwraps all of Shoko’s hard work. 

The levity seems to suck out of the room like an opened airlock with each falling bandage, leaving them stood in a suffocating sort of thickness as some of the melancholy returns. He can’t help but stare at the flashes of old red he can see, eyes roaming over dark colors where there shouldn’t be, drawn as if by the pull of gravity.

Silently, Satoru slides Tsumiki off his lap, leaving her next to Megumi as he pads closer. His footfalls sink into soft carpet, cool hardwood, sound absorbed into nothing. He feels her eyes on his back, shifting away to look at Nanako, and can’t help how the planes of his face sink into a heavy set sort of calm as honeyed eyes flicker up. 

“...Nothing hurts, still?” Satoru asks, quieter in the sunken thing swallowing up the room, and slowly, Nanako nods. 

“Not really,” she whispers, fingers curving aimlessly at her sides when there’s no shirt for them to curl into, eyes darting away again, pale lashes skimming her cheeks as she looks down at her bare toes, sinking into plush wool. 

Satoru hums, silently taking the soiled bandaging from Suguru’s steady hands when it’s given to him, sending it scattering away with a sway of his wrist, white blotched a rusted brown, winding like a ribbon sunk beneath water towards the trash can they keep below the desk. He says nothing as Suguru traces the flats of his knuckles down the curve of Nanako’s cheek, tender and adoring for the moment he lets it linger, before turning away in favor of her sister. In his place, Satoru kneels down, eyes blinking up to find Nanako’s own. 

“You know,” he starts, quiet, steady, taking her hands first before he shivers feathery touch over the remnants of scrapes, the scabs on her skin, “I was similar to you, once.” 

Nanako’s lips part, Mimiko’s eyes rushing away from Suguru’s gentle help, but she doesn’t speak. The words seem to lodge themselves in her throat, somewhere, and it’s a feeling he can recognize. 

“I don’t carry scars of it, though,” Satoru hums, skimming light fingertips over the bruising on her arms, a trickle of reversed cursed winding through muscle, down to bone. “You won’t, either.” He finds nothing wrong that wasn’t already, healed pockets of pooled blood where bruising sears yellow, cuts whittled into dotting lines. 

He feels Suguru’s eyes on him like the warmth of a flame, wavering and potent, though he knows he won’t speak despite having so much he could say. They each have their demons, Satoru supposes, when those dark eyes turn back towards Mimiko, thumbing below her eye socket as they check on its infection. As much as Suguru suffered as a kid, it’s Satoru himself who suffered the same as the ones stood in front of them now. 

“Even still,” he murmurs, tracing a soft press of knuckles down the back of her spine, purple over the bone, no injuries to speak of save the ones already healing. “Never, ever believe that having none makes it less.” 

When he looks up, Nanako’s eyes seem locked to his own, tethered by force if not will, shiny with a faint film but most of all wide with something he might call hope. 

She doesn’t flinch as he runs fingertips over the mottled bruising coloring her stomach yellow and purple with fading injuries, likely from a boot, maybe from fists. She doesn’t make any noise at all when he unfurls his palm to sit over her chest, her skin warm and pointed bones hidden below it, ribs jutting sharp and only waiting to hide behind softness they’ve probably never known, yet. His hand nearly swallows her whole.

It’s a reflection, Satoru thinks, feeling breaths trapped in the exposed flare of a ribcage, the dips of sunken collar, the slats of a sternum sat beneath skin so thin he could swear he might hit bone if he cut it. It couldn’t be anything else when he knows that skeleton, the mirror of the thinness, malice made or not. 

It makes him want to frown, to let his nose wrinkle in a snarl, to sit there and bite horrible words maybe, feeling the gradually recovering hurt against the hollow of his own hand. It makes him want to sit and stare at nothing at all, memories of life before Suguru, before Shoko, before Yaga even simmering in a low boil behind his heart. 

‘She’s healing,’ Satoru thinks, the form of Nanako’s soul comforting below his hands as he trails them up, palms cupping her face, so much bigger, so much older. ‘That’s what matters most.’ Large eyes shift between his own like an unsteady candle flame, wavering in a tentative trust, little lips parted so slightly in a shy breath he might not think they were at all if he couldn’t see them up close. 

“...But what if one day I don’t remember,” Nanako breathes, hands slowly reaching up to coil around his wrists, steadied on her uneven feet where she balances carefully on only one. “What if it won’t feel real?”

“It’ll always feel real,” Satoru murmurs, brushing a thumb below her eye, so soft in pale color they could be golden in sunlight. Beside him, he can see Suguru pulling Mimiko down into his lap, palms running over her arms and sides again even though he’s already made certain she hasn’t reopened anything old. “You just need it less, eventually.”

Slowly, thickly, Nanako nods, swallowing something harsh. “...How?” She asks, pressing into his palms, and Satoru huffs, pulling her closer, warm skin on warm skin. 

“Other things become more important. Things that define you better than pain does,” he answers, and it’s rooted in the truth that sits right beside him, dark, violet eyes on how Nanako tucks under his chin, hiding in the curves of his arms. “You’ll find them, baby,” Satoru murmurs, pressing a kiss to her head as he smooths a hand down her hair, “I did.” 

‘We’ll make them,’ he thinks, finding Suguru’s gaze, offering a small, unseeable smile. It’s returned, equally little, barely catchable, and he knows Suguru’s thinking exactly the same thing he is. 

“...You promise, ‘Tou-ru?” Nanako asks, hesitant and shy, tilting his head slightly as she looks up, hair shifting under his chin, and Satoru lets the little thing of his smile stretch into something wider.

“Yeah,” he says, encouraging her to sink lower, cradling her weight close once she’s pooling down into his lap and off her strained foot. 

“Speaking of names,” Satoru continues, something amused crawling across his face when Nanako’s flushes red, the tips of her ears burning like Suguru’s skin. 

“You call us Otou-san,” Suguru picks up, fluttering Mimiko’s short hair, his own swaying with his movements, “and yet your family name is still Hasaba.” 

With a faint rustle, Tsumiki slides off the side of their bed, footsteps light as she pads along the floor. Without a word, Satoru raises an arm, tugging her close when she ducks below it. 

“...Is that…wrong?” Mimiko asks, eyes large as she tilts her head back to see Suguru’s expression, the endeared wrinkle of his nose. 

“Not at all,” Satoru replies, shifting Nanako over to one thigh as he falls out of his kneel, Tsumiki slotting over his other leg. “Unless you’d like to change that name?” He offers, raising a brow, fond more so than amused when Nanako’s mouth drops open slightly. 

“...Is that allowed?” She breathes, eyes so wide he could swear he might find his reflection in her pupils, to Tsumiki’s sudden stare along the side of his face. 

“Anything is,” Suguru hums, cheek leaning against his shoulder, hand curving a lock of inky hair behind Mimiko’s ear. “All you have to do is ask.” His smile is soft, melted, utterly content and wretchedly in love. To lose any of them now, Satoru wonders, might really destroy him. 

“I want-” Nanako blurts, halting immediately as she rushes a hand up to clap over her mouth, only to stop again, brows knitting slightly as she slowly lowers it, a tentative certainty in her slowed movement. “I want to,” she repeats, a blazing sort of trust in the open thing of her expression, how she sits calm and steady against him, not a semblance of a flinch to be found.

Them, Satoru corrects, shoving her bangs back to press a kiss to her forehead. Losing any of their children now would destroy them. 

“...Hasaba never really felt like- like home,” Mimiko stumbles, teeth sinking into the side of her cheek. “I mean, it was, probably, a long time ago. I can’t really remember that anymore, though.”

“Me neither,” Nanako mumbles, before she’s surging up with a purpose, a determination settling over the square of her tiny shoulders. “We’re your daughters,” she declares, what has to be a repetition, solidified by her petulant, “you said,” tacked on after. 

Suguru laughs at that, soft and bemused. “Alright then, Getou Nanako,” he teases, and there’s an inexplicable feeling to watching it sink in. To how both her and Mimiko’s faces seem to clear, all their thoughts rushing away, replacing instead with a heart stopping awe, or relief, maybe. 

“How’s it sound, baby?” Suguru asks, after the silence settles, curving Mimiko’s head up with one palm below her chin. 

“New,” she whispers, “I like it.” Suguru hums, then, and it feels permanent in the way finality does. 

Tsumiki’s sudden jostle is what breaks the moment.

“But-!” She exclaims, breaking off as soon as she’s said it, a lost thing shoving her brows together as she looks up, catching his eye though her own dart between them endlessly. 

“‘Miki?” Satoru asks, concerned, one palm pressed snug against Nanako’s stomach and the other rising to brush chestnut bangs from her eyes, sure with an inkling but not entirely certain. 

“...But,” she says, trying again as she looks down at her twiddling thumbs, “but we’re still Fushiguro,” she mumbles, staring aimlessly, lips wavering from the edges of them he can see, “and…and we came first.”

Suguru’s worried chide is forgotten when it’s hushed below his breath, less important than how Satoru brings her chin up again with two curled knuckles, lips slated into a line. 

“That wasn’t intentional,” he promises, sterner than he normally would be, “you are not less, you understand?” Harsher. Tsumiki nods, chagrined, biting into her lower lip even as she nods. “We thought, well,” Satoru sighs, wanting nothing less than to pit them against each other, wanting nothing more than for all four of them to feel undoubtedly loved. 

“You knew your mother before,” Suguru explains, picking up in the stiltedness of the moment, Tsumiki’s oaken eyes snapping away to the placid thing on his face. “And Megumi’s so little. We thought you’d rather keep her name since it’s familiar.”

“Oh,” Tsumiki tones, less with the dull notes of before, more with a plain listlessness that promises she just doesn’t really know what to do. “I…I guess so.” She shrugs, making a face. “I don’t know,” she mutters, and Satoru huffs, pulling her head down to his chest. 

“What if you hyphenated it?” Suguru suggests, after a moment where everyone seems to stew. It gets Tsumiki to look up behind the curve of his arm, Mimiko and Nanako’s interest as she perks up, slightly. “You could keep both that way.”

“What d’you mean?” Tsumiki asks, loose hair ticklish over his skin, and Satoru leans over the few inches to press a careless kiss to his temple in silent thanks. 

“Fushiguro-Gojo,” he says, Suguru’s warmed smile and sly side eyed like candle light against his peripherals, “or Fushiguro-Getou.” He shrugs, only with one shoulder so not to dislodge Suguru when his cheek squishes against it, pleased with himself when it earns him a rumbly hum. “On paper, you could be one, and in spoken word, you could be another. Or both entirely, if you can’t decide,” he suggests, to Tsumiki’s dawning realization, the dropping of her mouth as she considers it.

“If you guys get Getou,” she declares, wiggling an arm over his own to point at the twins, “then I get Gojo.” She grins after, like it’s a perfect deal, smile only widening when Mimiko giggles, and Nanako nods. “It’s only fair,” Tsumiki explains, looking up at him when Satoru makes a noise. 

“You really wanna be a Gojo, ‘Miki?” He teases, skittering fingers up her ribs to hear her laugh. “We’ll have to dye your hair white so you look the part!”

She laughs, bright and unburdened, crowing, “no! I like my hair!” as he blows raspberries against her cheek. 

Suguru chuckles on in baritone mirth as he switches in torturing Tsumiki for torturing Nanako, an armful of giggly little girls spreading an infectious sort of laughter to his own lungs. The high of it doesn’t dissipate until much later that night, lasting all through the usual routine of bedtime and then a mild argument over Tsumiki’s strawberry patterned pajamas when the twins still haven’t gotten their own clothing, yet. It sits in his lungs like a drug, oxytocin and cotton in his ears when he breathes warmed inhales from the curve of Suguru’s neck, four kids who want their names snug against them while they sleep. 

If he cries a little that night, well past the time anyone else is awake, Satoru doesn’t feel the need to mention it. They aren’t tears meant to be worried over, after all. 

He wakes up too hot, sweaty and uncomfortable, but too cold, too. 

Megumi moans, dull and nothing but a whisper, bleary eyes cracking open to look around. It’s dark- obviously Tou-chan’s room, and there’s the steady sound of breathing by him, under him. Inky hair dyes the pillow across from him black like the night sky, only intercut by strands of blonde from- from-

‘That’s Nanako,’ he thinks, coughing, shivering slightly where he can feel the fan blowing goosebumps onto his skin. Mimiko must be on Suguru’s other side, then, he wonders, spotting the brown of Tsumiki’s hair messy over her pink nightshirt in the middle of the bed. 

“Megumi?” Tou-ru whispers, voice thickened with sleep, and he sniffles a touch miserably, feeling less icky than before but still gross enough. “You alright, pumpkin?” He makes a noise, something caught and petulant in the back of his throat as he yawns, eyes still heavy from sleep but too groggy to genuinely collapse back into it. 

“You feel less warm than earlier,” Tou-ru notes, quiet, melodic, and Megumi blinks slow and languid at the palm that pushes up his bangs. It’s nice, he decides. Warm, but not in the stuffy way. Comfortable, but not smothering.

“...Goosebumps?” He hears, whispered as if to no one other than Satoru himself, fingertips tracing down his bare spine. It’s followed by a soft, ‘oh,’ a smile in the understanding in it. 

“C’mon,” Tou-ru murmurs, and Megumi squints as the world tilts, feeling sturdy palms shift as they hold him tight. One leaves his shoulders to grab a stray throw blanket kicked to the end of the bed with the quilt, he realizes. That’s why it’s cold. 

When he forces himself to open his eyes a little wider, skimming over the bed, he sees the gentle glow emanating from Tou-chan’s skin, soft like a dying ember. At his side, Tsumiki’s got one leg kicked up above the blankets and both arms splayed out. ‘Evil sister,’ Megumi thinks, bitter over every year spent waking up without any covers in the middle of winter because Tsumiki doesn’t understand the meaning of sitting still, even asleep. 

He grumbles something under his breath he knows Tou-ru probably doesn’t catch, squirming until the missing hand is coming back to trace wide down his shoulder blades, bringing with it the warmth of a cotton blanket, of calming touch. 

“Hey, listen,” he murmurs, as Megumi lets his eyes slip shut, hearing the shifting slide of fusuma doors, the dojo’s paper shoji ones after it. He cracks them open enough to look over pale shoulder, trying to find the little paper demon dogs he and Tsumiki cut out and hid in the paneling. 

“You hear that? The frogs are waking back up from winter,” Satoru croons, a lulling baritone, voice rumbling a vibration in his chest. Megumi blinks again, yawning, watching the lip of the dojo’s engawa disappear as feet miles away step down into dewy grass, wandering around another turn of the house. 

“Where d’they sleep…?” Megumi asks, mumbly as he rubs at an eye with one fist, sniffling an inhale of petrichor and wood, fresh air and forest mulch. 

“At the bottom of ponds and lakes,” Tou-ru answers, quiet as he walks, soothing. “All winter long,” he sings, the catch of his breath louder than the notes of his voice. 

Megumi hums, filing away the information to keep later, remembering the sign for frog but too tired to bother to make it, shifting again so he can turn on his other side, press his other ear to the beat of Tou-ru’s heart under his skin. He keeps watching anyway, though, as Satoru paces a fraction of the yard, shifting the blanket every time it begins to slip. It’s not really cold enough outside for one, balmy with summer just on the edge of the nearby mountains, but it’s cozy, so Megumi doesn’t care. 

“Y’know,” Satoru murmurs, an uplift to the words, said with no intention of ever being finished. Megumi blinks a touch blearily as easy steps focus into something sharper, marching with a purpose rather than a meander. The engawa comes back into view, long and simple, but instead of making for the dojo, Tou-ru stops at the bundle of fabric and chains that have sat along the edge for months now. 

“We never bothered to put this thing up, even though we went through all the trouble to get it,” he huffs, amused over something, and curious, Megumi watches as he raises a hand. 

It never really gets any less mesmerizing, watching either of his parents use their techniques, so coveted and so dangerous but so beautiful, too. It makes him wish he was a Gojo sometimes, watching Satoru pull on objects with nothing so real as touch, slowly threading metal chain links through hooks with a power Megumi hasn’t been able to understand the working of’s yet, and maybe never will. The metal drags a large tarp of fabric with it, plain in some desaturated cream, decorated on either end by wooden poles wound through rope. 

“...Hammock?” He mumbles, not entirely sure when he’s never seen a real one before, to Tou-ru’s bright hum.

“Yeah,” he answers, finally stepping closer to hook the other end in with his actual hand. He gives it a tug, after, seemingly contemplating, before he smiles, wide and excited. “You’ve never been in one, right?” He asks, and silently, Megumi shakes his head as blue eyes catch and hold his own. 

“Check this out, then,” Satoru gloats, before he’s tipping back into the sway of the tarp- the hammock, he thinks, before he’s too busy holding on when it lurches to bother thinking about using the right word and when. 

Tou-ru laughs, quiet and amused, hands tightening slightly around him because Megumi only squeezes harder when he tries to let his arms loosen. “Easy,” he coos, tilting until they’re laying back, and Megumi watches the world fall horizontal again as his heart beats in his throat. 

“See?” Tou-ru murmurs, one foot still on the wood of the porch and both arms wrapped around him and the blanket as he lays under the jut of the roof, slowly rocking them into a sway. “Isn’t it nice?” 

Nice, Megumi tries, squinting. He lays still for a long moment, processing the wave back and forth of the hammock, the faint breeze it stirs by his face, ruffling his hair. Tou-ru’s warm beneath him, and his arms curl around him tight enough Megumi feels like he won’t fall even though he knows Satoru would never let him, so…

Nice, he decides. 

“Nice,” he says, slurred around his teeth as he yawns, eyelids drooping. Satoru huffs, the exhale breathed into his hair, and Megumi feels the smile pressed into his scalp. 

“You feel a little better?” He asks after, words lulling into low melody, buzzing behind his sternum, and Megumi nods, lost in the calm of the rocking. “That’s good. I told you it’d go away fast.” 

He doesn’t bother replying, eyelashes skimming his cheek in a fight to pry his eyes open, trying to clutch onto Satoru’s collarbone with the hand he doesn’t have slung over a shoulder, already slipping. Megumi likes this, he decides. The cloying, almost warmth of the outside, the croak of the frogs far away and the trees swaying in a rustle of leaves. Tou-ru’s actual warmth, the beat of his heart, the rock of the hammock as a palm drags up and down his spine. 

‘This is okay,’ Megumi thinks, soaking in the attention. He likes this, and he thinks he likes his new sisters, too, even loud as Nanako is. Especially, he grumbles, when he still gets attention like this. 

The rocking continues on, slow and steady, and as groggy as he’d been unable to sleep, he doesn’t quite feel so restless anymore.

“You’re so cute,” Satoru whispers, laying in the hammock still well after Megumi finally falls asleep, brushing his knuckles up and down softened skin, rounded shoulder blades, the dip of a spine in a well fed body. One side of his cheeks has been squished with a vengeance laying on his chest like this, baby fat only more obvious when it’s shoved upwards. 

He sighs, still gently rocking them with one foot on the ground, melting into the serenity of the moment. Megumi’s breaths are even, deep, lost to the sound of the forest moving around them, and absently, Satoru thinks they should get a windchime, too. 

Laying there, maybe two in the morning, feeling the calmed ripple of Megumi’s cursed energy, hearing the relaxed beat of his heart, he wonders if maybe he’d died all those years ago after all. That maybe, heaven is real, and he’s living in it. 

‘No,’ Satoru laughs, nothing but a smile and an exhale, carding his fingers through soft, dark hair. ‘Heaven couldn’t make anything nearly as perfect as this.’ 

If nothing else, one day, he can die now knowing he’s felt truly, unrepentantly happy. 

He spends a long while out on the porch after, gently rocking in the hammock, watching the forest, listening to Megumi, eventually letting his eyes shut to soak in as much of the moment as he can. Lays there, content as he’s ever been, his baby held close and the world held far, far at bay.

“Wow,” Mei Mei drawls, eyes raking up and down him and lingering on his shorn hair as Suguru opens the door that morning, his glare flat and unimpressed. 

“Fuck off, Mei,” he tones, to Tsumiki’s crowing, ‘oooh!’ resounding loudly in the living room. “That doesn’t count!” He calls, throwing the words over his shoulder as he steadies Megumi with a hand carding through dark hair, warmer than a human could possibly get. 

“My piggy bank says you owe it eight hundred yen!” Tsumiki yells, the sound of her homework being rapidly stuffed into her folder crinkling alongside her voice.

“Do you make it a habit to get extorted?” Mei Mei says, squinting at him, and Suguru doesn’t dignify the mockery with a response. He only turns away, muttering, “close the door behind you,” as he leaves, fighting off a yawn as heels click on the hardwood behind him. 

“Do you have everything?” He asks, reshuffling Megumi with a bounce as he tilts down, raising a brow as he peers at the contents of Tsumiki’s backpack. 

“Almost,” Satoru interjects, swooping in behind him with her bento, slipping it in beside her schoolwork and pencil case. “You ready to go, ‘Miki?” 

“Yeah,” she says, shouldering on her bag, taking Satoru’s hand as he leads her back to the entryway, a last glance thrown over her shoulder to where Mimiko hovers in the doorway of their bedroom, yawning as she waves goodbye. She barely spares a glance at their visitor, uninterested when it’s her sisters that are the focus of her attention now. 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you there?” Satoru weasels, voice drifting away as Tsumiki toes her shoes on, all alone today with Megumi still stick. 

“Tou-ru, I said I’m fine,” Tsumiki whines, exasperated, and Suguru huffs, finally turning to look at Mei Mei. 

“Not a word,” he mutters, hair a mess and a touch of Megumi’s drool on his shirt, sure there are eyebags already forming on his face even though the last two days have potentially been some of the most rewarding ones in his life. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Mei Mei replies, prim and prissy, and Suguru only rolls his eyes. 

“Alright princesses, fight’s over,” Satoru sings, breezing past them with Tsumiki departed from the house, starting in on her trek to school. “I want to see those documents on my kitchen table in two minutes or less.” Then he’s gone again, nothing but a blur in the sway of Suguru’s squinted vision as he picks up Mimiko, setting her on one hip as she yawns again. 

“...Thanks,” Suguru offers, a little stilted when all of his interactions with Mei fare best either after ten in the morning, or when he’s had a lethal dose of caffeine. “For doing this.”

“Of course,” Mei Mei schmoozes, gliding alongside him when she didn’t even bother to take off her damn heels, a level height with him by the three inches they prop her up. “Rich boy always pays nicely.”

“God you are such a money sucking leech,” he hisses, to Mei Mei’s jabbing elbow, the sound of her strides clacking obtrusively when she trips on his stuck out foot. Her hair sways, held up in a high, elegant ponytail, the sharp thing of her vicious grin lighting up the ends of his nerves in a fire.

“Stop,” Satoru orders, smacking the both of their heads with a rolled newspaper, something Yaga must have left behind the last time he was at the house. They both lurch, repentant as they make eye contact, pointedly not riling each other up anymore as all three of them shuffle into the kitchen. 

“…Two unsigned birth certificates, several falsified legal cases, and two registries,” Mei Mei explains, only slightly grudgingly as she unpacks, setting each stack of clipped papers down onto the main table as she pulls them from her shady briefcase, blue eyes darting up to gauge their reactions. “I trust these are to your liking, Satoru?”

Suguru watches on in something like awe tinged bemusement as Satoru leafs through each stack one by one, eyes roaming over careful print and fancy documents he has no clue to the workings of. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, Mimiko having fallen back into a doze held against his front, one arm below her and both hands thumbing along paper.

“...Yes, they’re good,” he responds, maybe a full two minutes later, thoughts obviously turning a hurricane in his head. “Six hundred thousand up front, and…?” He asks, trailing off with one arched brow, to Mei Mei’s satisfied smirk.

“Mh,” she hums, eyes flickering between both the kids in their arms, “how about I cut you a discount. Five percent,” she offers, and Suguru can’t help it when he snorts. She turns her head rapidly, thwacking him with her hair, only grinning wider when he nabs it and yanks.

“You two are children,” Satoru mutters, summoning a pen from further in the kitchen as he traces along the first birth certificate, like he’s not any better.

“What characters are you going to use?” Suguru asks, turning away from Mei Mei as he watches the pen hover over thick, expensive cream paper. When she doesn’t say anything, watching on herself, he knows she’s more interested in this than she’s letting on.

“Yours,” Satoru says, poking his tongue out, “duh.” Suguru scoffs at that, leaning into his space over the table, dragging a palm down Megumi’s back when he stirs, slightly.

“You’re not changing the meanings of their names at all?” He presses, knowing Satoru knew what he meant from the start. He watches indecision war in blue eyes for a moment, a contemplative thing settling over smooth lips. 

“...No,” Satoru admits, after the silence has settled. “Someone who loved them gave them those names,” he murmurs, still staring down at the paper like it’s got an answer written on it somewhere. “I know it.” 

Despite herself, Mei Mei stays quiet. The scratch of the pen is loud in the silence as Satoru fills in her certificate, as he presses it into his hand for Suguru to do Nanako’s. Getou, they read, summer and oil, unfound and unfamiliar outside of the tiny thing of his own childhood home. 

‘People will think they’re from Iwate, too,’ he muses, thoughts on the little hot springs maybe two hours outside of his own town that gave his mother’s family their name, rare when it doesn’t come from everyone else’s tradition. It’s a warm thought, the idea that the kanji making up their own names only makes it seem truer.

“Hey,” Suguru murmurs, holding the paper in one reverent hand, “Mimi.” 

“Mhg?” She mumbles, nothing but a noise, and when his eyes glance up he catches the endless thing of contentment in the lidded slant of Satoru’s, stuck on her face where she’s tucked it against his neck. 

“Look,” Suguru says, the dry rustle of paper loud in the moment, and isn’t surprised at all when the sound gets her to raise her head. “That’s you,” he continues, holding up her certificate, Nanako’s tucked behind it in the hold of his pinched fingers.

He forgets about Mei Mei entirely as her violet eyes widen, all remnants of sleep washing away as her lips part, a dawning realization smothering awe over her entire face. He forgets about a lot of things stood so close to Satoru their hips brush, Megumi a warm weight in his arms and the paper in his hand a promise to keep. Mimiko’s eyes are shiny and bright as she blinks.

“That’s me,” she echoes, cheek squishing as she pillows it back on Satoru’s shoulder, fingers extended to brush over wet ink, careful not to smudge it. 

When he looks up, blue eyes are already on him. Satoru’s mouth does something interesting between a tremble and a tug, the smile almost painful when it marks itself across his face. He thinks Mei Mei might look away when they lean closer, lips locking into a heavy kiss, breaths trapped between them along with their children and the words of welcome home, unspoken when they’re so loud anyway. 

One of Satoru’s hands tangles in his hair as they let it linger, frozen together as they breathe, caught up into each other’s overwhelming joy, and he doesn’t realize what it is at first when something tickles along the sides of his face.

“You- Satoru!” Suguru gasps, pulling away just enough to knock their foreheads together, one hand cupping the back of Megumi’s head and the other setting the certificate back on the table in favor of reaching for his regrown hair.

“Whoops,” he giggles, cheeks flushed and rosy, pupils blown slightly, looking like he could cry if only someone dared to mention it. “Sorry,” Satoru hushes, but he doesn’t mean it any, not when his cheeks probably hurt from the force of his own desperate smile.

Suguru only smiles back, then, standing there in the kitchen with Mimiko’s eyes glued to the both of them, Megumi’s quiet snuffle as he shuffles a little closer. 

“You sap,” he whispers, lovesick like an idiot, two kids trapped between them and four in total, an entire life waiting to be lived. 

“Yeah,” Satoru whispers back, and no one says anything when the word comes out wet. Limber fingers trail through his hair, accidentally regrown back to where it was before he cut it, a kind of reverent Suguru could recognize even cold in the moss.

He’s not the only one who’d wanted a family.

“Alright, you ready?” Suguru asks, and Satoru watches on fondly as Nanako nods, brave as can be as she holds her finger up to be pricked. She only winces slightly when the needle beads a single drop of blood, and then she’s blinking wide as the rush washes over all of them with the red smearing on the sigiled marks of her room’s door frame. 

Satoru doesn’t really listen to the incantation, said mostly to funnel power to the right places, instead focusing on the hum buzzing almost imperceptibly around them, the swell of Nanako’s cursed energy as it rebalances. 

It’s almost funny, he muses, chin set on Megumi’s soft head as they watch Mimiko wordlessly hold out her hand next. It doesn’t take barely anything to tie the two of them to home, not after all the blood they already spilt that first night in the bathroom, soul data in the rawest way possible. 

‘They’ll be safe here,’ Satoru thinks, Tsumiki leaning against his legs, Megumi tucked in his arms, Mimiko and Nanako shoving close to Suguru where he crouches to drag each of their pricked fingertips along their respective doorways. His eyes are crinkled soft, achingly fond, his smile nothing better. 

The twins look happy, tugging on his arms and asking every question that comes to mind, Tsumiki’s voice chiming in as soon as one catches her attention. There’s already an impression of potential he can see like a mirage hanging over the four of them, all so different and yet so similar too. A held breath waiting to exhale, power slowly growing in the pitted pairs of little lungs.

‘Yeah,’ he thinks, surer about it than maybe anything else in his life, ‘they’ll be fine.’

Chapter Text

Another week later has both the twins room’s finished, painted, furnished, and a wealth of excitement when they’ve never had the kind of luxury like it. It isn’t hard to get them to try sleeping separately the first night their beds are fully put together, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, and though maybe they end up with one or both a handful of times in coming the mornings, it spaces out as the days wear on.

There’s a lot left they still have to do. Megumi has a meeting with his teacher to discuss consequences for the fight in a few days, the twins need serious tutoring to catch up to their coming grade level, and the corkboard forgotten face down against their wall burns like a flame held to his palms.

Satoru knows Suguru feels it too, the rising tension that prickles like static in the air every time Shoko comes home, first to check on the twins and then again almost every day following, just for dinner but just for petty updates, too.

“Nothing?” Only to exchange for, “nothing,” is swept silent and unspoken between the three of them, the waiting worse than the pain of doing. 

Every fifth and twentieth of every month Satoru has to go up to the estate to look after Maki and Mai, they’re still taking grade one and above missions, Yaga needs help babysitting for Panda, Akemi wants every detail he’d ever known about the Zen’in twins techniques. 

“Does anyone have an eight?” Yaga asks, laying on the upstairs living room’s floor, carpet lines mashed into his face and glitter in his hair. He sniffs, and a little glitter gets up his nose, too.

“No,” Megumi tones, bored looking slung over his chest like a cat after a brief internal war of picking Yaga over sitting between the girls, not playing so much as cheating to cause a ruckus. “Go fish.” 

It’s busy, even in the pocket of their own home, but not the kind of busy that’s unbearable.

“Bah,” Yaga deadpans, “youth these days,” to Nanako and Tsumiki’s snickers. They’ve been wiping the floor with him, Mimiko lost in the dust since she discovered the magic of the felt markers Satoru got so long ago meant for coloring in Suguru’s tattoos. 

“Please tell me I have this right,” Shoko mutters, and Satoru looks up when her stack of Yaga’s paperwork is shoved under his nose, crosseyed trying to look at it. She shuffles closer when he takes it, frowning over his shoulder and around the lollipop stick in her mouth as he skims over signature boxes and complicated schooling legislature. 

“...This initial goes here,” he corrects, pointing to the right line with the back of his pen, to Shoko’s groan. She nabs them back with a rustle, her, himself, and Suguru all hunched over the upstairs kotatsu, literal stacks of paperwork on it next to the mess bleaching the tabletop printer paper white. 

“Kids need good food to eat,” Shoko mocks, the words high and nasal under her breath as she dabs white-out on ink, a twitch in one of her eyes. “The schools should have private chefs.” She scoffs, scowling. “What the hell ever happened to living off of dry cereal and instant noodles.” 

“I have a very strong feeling that the three of you maniacs would have been at least ten percent more sane if you hadn’t had to do your own grocery shopping,” Yaga mutters, handing over three of his cards to Tsumiki with a forlorn sigh. It’s weird to see him relaxing, of all people, fuel enough alone to keep doing his paperwork for him at least for the moment.

“I dunno,” Suguru tones, skeptical, frowning down at a mission report and no less than five separate manilla folders from the school’s archive of records at his side. He shifts obediently when Mimiko pushes him forward with one hand on his spine, coloring in Rainbow Dragon true to its namesake. “I mean, I really doubt getting to have professionally made omelets every morning would have swayed any newly awakened homicidal tendies better than wheat thins.” 

He pauses a moment once the words are spoken, eyes narrowing down the page. Then he highlights something on the paper, after, brows furrowing, scribbling another note into the file the three of them have started on the Itadori family.

“What are wheat thins?” Nanako yells, to Tsumiki’s wordless shout, her cards going flying as she crosses her arms, fuming at having lost.

“The shittiest cereal on planet earth,” Yaga answers, stoic and dower even as Megumi perks up at the word choice, and Satoru only partially listens as the four of them bicker back and forth over whose swear jar gets the money. 

“Satoru,” Shoko asks again, and he sighs, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling even though he still takes the paper. 

Panda, at the very least, has been the most manageable out of all the kids, content to sit in his lap and suck on a milk bottle as he drains as much cursed energy that can fit into his tiny reserves. He hiccups now and again, babbling nonsense that’ll turn into real words in another few months if not weeks, something soft for him to pet every time staring at a jumble of intentionally misleading political writing starts to piss him off. 

‘It’s a goddamn curse,’ Satoru thinks, explaining the document to Shoko, ‘being a teacher.’ 

He really means next in line for principal, but he tells no one that. It hadn’t been something he’d wanted then, and it’s not something he wants now. The only reason he’d put up with the promise of it back in the first life when Yaga had asked it of him is because he’d known there would have been no one else vying for the position with good intentions. It was the same reason he’d taught back then at all, and the same reason he knows he’s going to teach again anyway in a few years now.

‘Maybe I’ll reference Yu for it when that asshole asks me again,’ Satoru thinks, resisting a sadistic chuckle. Yu would actually be good at it, if he survived the workload. He’s got the potential for a having a strong backbone and even bitchier petty streak, though Satoru’s sure he doesn’t really know it yet.

A notification chime dings, forgotten in the clutter of the chaos around them, and he doesn’t bother to think anything of it until Shoko suddenly falls still. 

“...What?” Suguru asks, noticing the same time as he does, and Satoru swallows thickly when she only stares down at her phone. 

“I, uh,” Shoko fumbles, lips parted but nothing coming out where her eyes are glued to the screen, mind moving a mile a minute behind them. “Mary texted,” she rasps, and the both of them stiffen before the words can even form. 

“What’d they say?” Satoru presses, and he doesn’t miss Suguru’s sudden, muted flinch. His portion of Yaga’s papers are set down on the table, entirely forgotten, tense hands curling around Panda’s fluffy middle. 

“Just an address,” Shoko responds, holding the phone up for the both of them to see. 

“Well, shit,” Yaga swears, to the hounding of the kids about his foul language. 

“You’re leaving?” Nanako cries, hands wringing into her new shirt, orange and flowy and perfect for summer, thin enough the motion’s going to leave wrinkles. 

“Only for a while,” Suguru placates, kneeling down in front of her as Satoru shrugs on a sweater- not because he’s cold, but because he wants more pockets to hold certain things. Mostly, his shaking fists.

“You didn’t answer,” Mimiko tones, gaze oddly level but nonetheless piercing as she stares at them, “so you don’t know how long.”

“Got us there,” Suguru sighs, setting a hand on Nanako’s head, arm curling around Tsumiki when she wanders close, more used to this than the twins. He doesn’t think he’s imagining it when he catches the tremble in Suguru’s own fingers, so faint it could just be a trick of the light. 

“Are you gonna be back by morning?” Megumi asks, quiet, Panda held against his chest below his fuzzy arms, a mimicry of Aiko’s lanky body.

“Before then, I’m sure,” Satoru promises, leaning down to smooth back his hair, fiddling with Panda’s little paws where they curve over the cage of Megumi’s arms. He snorts a huffing exhale from big, black nose, babbling a babyish, ‘Chichi,’ at no one, the only word he knows yet. 

“We’re only meeting a…a friend,” Satoru explains, the lie sour on his tongue.

“...It’s not gonna be like last time,” Tsumiki pipes up, nervous slightly as she wraps her arms tightly around Suguru’s own, “right?” 

It gives him pause for a moment, trying to riddle out exactly which memory of hers it is, before it hits him. Tsumiki must be talking about that day after the mall, when they’d first seen Kenjaku. She probably thinks of it for the same reason he thinks of Shibuya when he hears the right name. She doesn’t want a repeat, he realizes, melancholy weighing him down. 

“No. It won’t be like that,” Satoru promises, as Suguru hums, Shoko’s clicking steps filling the air as she ducks out of the entryway. Tsumiki purses her lips, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed down as she stares for a long moment, unsure. Then she sighs, long and large, and nods. 

“Ojii-san will stay here with you,” Shoko says, leaning over the both of their shoulders, her hair like a river as it hangs. “You can pester him all you want. We’ll be back before you even get bored of him.” 

“...Be safe,” Yaga says, in lieu of any of the kids speaking, all of them quiet as they watch their shoes be slipped on. 

“Who do you think you’re talking to,” Satoru ribs back, mostly for the sake of the four sets of little eyes on them, playing at cocky so they won’t see the fear in his own. “Be good for gramps,” he calls, pulling Suguru along with him as he steps back, knowing he won’t go unless he’s dragged. “We’ll see you soon.”

The last thing he sees before they’re vanishing is Mimiko and Tsumiki’s exchanged, wary glance, Nanako’s furrowed brows, Megumi’s flattened disappointment. 

“I don’t like it when they have to leave,” Tsumiki complains, morose as she stares at the door, and Masamichi only sighs. 

“I know,” he answers, toned quiet, wordlessly hoisting both Megumi and Panda up into his arms when two sets of little hands and paws reach out as if to grab. “It isn’t fair. But you need to remember that they’re special grades. They’re always going to be busy.”

Tsumiki nods, glum, but he can still see the maudlin anger buried beneath it. 

“How many special grades are there?” Nanako asks, eyes turned up to him and wide, even as a smile plasters itself onto her lips like if only she tried hard enough, she wouldn’t be sad about them having to leave for the afternoon. It makes something ache, something loosen behind his ribs. 

“Right now?” Masamichi hums, beckoning them after him as he pads away from the front door, away to the dojo. “Only three.”

“What?” Mimiko gasps, jaw dropping slightly as she blinks, brows high as she trails after him, Tsumiki dragged behind her by two clasped hands. “Oh. Wow.”

Masamichi chuckles, opening both sets of doors leading to the porch, inhaling the scent of fresh air deeply when he’s been crammed into his office for the past month. 

“That’s why they’re always so busy then?” Tsumiki asks, breaking away from Mimiko and Nanako to claim the hammock that was put up sometime in the space he hasn’t been here. “‘Cause no one else can do the work they do?”

“Exactly,” Masamichi sighs, leaning down to Megumi’s affronted protests to boost her up with one palm, happily hefting Mimiko up second when she holds out her hands. “I’m sure if you asked them, though,” he muses, watching on fondly as the two of them stagger trying to wade on their knees in between the rock of the hammock, “they’d both rather just stay home with you four all the time.” 

“...Really?” Megumi asks, close by, and Masamichi turns his head to two giant green eyes an inch from his nose. He makes a face, blowing air at him to ruffle Megumi’s bangs, amused at the scrunch of his little nose. 

“Really,” he promises, waiting for the dower nod to set him down onto the lacquered wood. “Go play,” he chides, giving Megumi a shoo out into the yard. “Summon the bunnies again, or something.”

Megumi rolls his eyes, huffing out an exhale, but he goes anyway, nabbing Nanako’s hand as he spills off the edge of the porch. They ramble to each other as they meander further out into the yard, seemingly getting along much better than they had the first time he’d met the twins, already conspiring for something he’s sure he’s going to regret later. 

His knees creak when he folds down to sit along the edge of the wood, body tired after so many years. God, he’s only thirty and he’s already ready to retire. 

Nanako shrieks the same time as a massive plume of what looks like smoke erupts in the yard, a closer look proving it to be the shadow rabbits he’d mentioned. She whoops, loud and excited as she grabs one and squeezes despite its hind legs kicking against her, to no damage dealt. It explodes in a massive plume of smoke, to her blinking confusion, and Megumi’s jarring understanding.

He stumbles, tripping over one of the scurrying rabbits, head snapping up as something important runs through it.

“Do that again!” He shouts, whipping around and accidentally stepping on another shadow, sending the rabbit poofing away like a smokey firework. Nanako looks back at him, surprise washed all over her face, but when Masamichi does nothing, she only shrugs, and lunges after another.

Mimiko and Tsumiki giggle together quietly as Nanako and Megumi spirit around the yard after the massive cloud of summoned rabbits, gradually grabbing and exorcizing each individual one. 

It’s a little hilarious, he has to admit, as they slowly rack up more and more tamed bunnies- obvious, in the resummoned ones that sit patiently waiting for orders versus the ones that go tearing down the yard in fleeting escape. 

“Hey Ojii-san,” Tsumiki pipes up, flat on her stomach, legs kicking in the air as her elbows lean over the edge of the hammock. “Do you think we could become special grades one day?” 

“You know,” Mimiko adds, sat pressed against Tsumiki’s side in the dip of the fabric, collapsing into a sore looking slouch. “So we can help Tou-ru and Tou-chan so they don’t have to work so hard.”

‘You two,’ Masamichi thinks, reaching out to give the hammock a pull and a push just to hear their brightened giggles as they rock, ‘look at the troublemakers you’re going to give me.’  

“Definitely,” he answers, not necessarily because he believes it, but also not necessarily because he doesn’t. If anyone could raise the bane of his existence, it would be those two. And who knows, he muses, watching Megumi and Nanako run around the yard, toppling into the grass and jumping over rabbits practically flying around the greenery. Maybe they really will be.

Soaking in the warm light of spring tipping over into summer, sat on the back porch listening to shrieking giggles and silly chatter about who’s going to be the best sorcerer one day is a balm on his aching joints. Because Masamichi knows, knows it in the bones that hurt more and more every day because of the specific hellions he spent three years chasing around.

Satoru and Suguru could do anything they ever set their minds to, be it something as hard as raising a family or something as simple as burning the world down.

To his surprise, it’s not actually as creepy as the warehouse was.

“You mean you never heard the ghost stories about this place?” Satoru murmurs back to him when Suguru says as much, and instead of asking further, he just sighs. 

Itadori Kaori’s body rests against the brick wall of the old restaurant, seemingly placid as she offers a mild wave of her fingers. Suguru keeps the glare off his face, but only marginally when it takes actual effort. 

“Thanks for coming,” Kenjaku says, falling away into the dilapidated old building with its faded old posterboard sign, their heels clicking on equally old, faded cement flooring as they lead them inside. “I do apologize for the wait. It took me a while to find somewhere suitable.”

Shoko hums, but that’s about anything either of them give as they walk in, Suguru stuck close to Satoru’s side under the hum of Limitless even as Shoko begins to drift further away. The doors are old and metal, squeaking on rusted hinges, and he squints as his eyes adjust to the dark.

‘Nevermind,’ Suguru thinks, swallowing down something sour as he makes out the edges of a large, splattered black stain sweeping along the dusty cement. It smells like old blood, dipped with malice, a rotting desperation. ‘Definitely creepier.’ The poor joke doesn’t really do much to keep the jitter from his hands, the sharp thing out of his eyes. Instead, he stuffs them deep into his pockets.

“I believe this should work well,” Kenjaku continues, swaying into the main body of the room and gesturing up to the partially hidden second story, blocked off by wooden railing and a spiral staircase. “It’s secluded, and there’s a butcher’s and an auto shop a block away. It would be easy to hide any…” They pause, light eyes sliding away from Shoko as they explain, falling to land on his own. “...Noise made here. Scraps, too.” 

Suguru subdues a shiver again, but only barely. He’s too busy locked into Itadori Kaori’s gaze, Kenjaku’s eyes, the faint, flickering memories of a nightmare he’s never quite had yet of flames consuming everything. 

“But that’s not necessarily relevant for now,” Kenjaku says, sweeping past the moment as if it never happened, gracefully reaching out as they stalk further in. “There’s plenty of places to put heavy equipment, storage too. Come, you must see-” 

Manicured nails close tight around Shoko’s arm, her quiet, wide eyed, “don’t-” swallowed up by the clapping sound of Satoru’s voice when he speaks.

“Let go,” he snarls, there one instant and gone the next as he appears in between where Kenjaku’s grabbed Shoko. The threat echoes around the gusty nothingness of the empty building, pitched lower than Suguru’s maybe ever heard it be before. 

Silently, face drawn sharp, Kenjaku’s hand opens with a flared movement, slowly pulling back as Kaori’s heels click with a careful backpedal. Their other hand raises to join it, expression wary under the piercing weight of the Six Eyes’s full attention. They blink, once, twice, letting the dust settle before they speak again.

“...Don’t,” Shoko breathes, quiet, roughened. “Not- yet.” She doesn’t cower protected behind Satoru, gaze glued to Kenjaku’s meticulously controlled apprehension like she’s picking it apart piece by piece, curious more than startled. 

“Apologies,” Kenjaku murmurs, stoically monotone, robotic, before the illusion breaks and they simper in an attempt at sympathy, smile bland. “I got a little carried away,” they say, eyes flicking up to Satoru again in a motion Suguru might almost be stupid enough to call nervous. “Lost in the excitement of a new lab and all. I’m sure you understand, Ieiri.”

“...Yes,” Shoko offers, tentative as she steps around Satoru, one hand on his arm as she squeezes, the edge of a glare on her face. “Of course. What kind of equipment did you have in mind?” She asks, palm dragging down his sleeve until she’s stepping away, following as Kenjaku leads her up to the second level, pausing at the old wood staircase to level a look at the two of them.

He’d call it, ‘down, boy,’ but it’d lack the gravity that makes him feel lightheaded. 

“...That’s interesting,” Satoru mutters, when Suguru finally finds his feet and shuffles closer. 

“What is?” He wonders, almost hesitant to ask. Satoru looks a surprised sort of contemplative as he glances down, the corner of his eye caught more than anything else. 

“Didn’t you see it? They flinched,” he says, fingers tapping against his jeans where they hang half out of his pockets, and Suguru looks back up to the staircase where Shoko and Kenjaku disappeared into with a new sort of understanding. 

There’s a malicious, toothy grin on Satoru’s face when he turns back, vicious and something he’d only expect someone with everything to gain to wear. 

“They’re afraid of special grades,” Satoru explains, huffing an exhale of a gloating laugh as he sweeps a hand through his hair, pushing it back only to let it fall again. “They’re afraid of me.” His eyes gleam just a little too unnaturally as he says it, smile stretched just a little too wide. Suguru swallows thick, finally looking away, turning the new revelation over in his head against the old.

That’s good, he knows. It’s great, even, suddenly knowing they’ve got an upper hand like it, because that’s confirmation that Kenjaku won’t move first when Satoru’s involved. If they’re afraid, it’s because they know they can’t win. There wouldn’t be any other reason for an entity like Kenjaku to hold fear like that.

What does that mean for me, though? Suguru wants to ask, maybe aloud to the empty, fuzzy air of the old restaurant where someone was definitely murdered. Satoru’s infallible because he’s untouchable. There is no failsafe against him when the only two in existence rest in their skin. 

Suguru is not so lucky.

Limber fingers find his own, tangling them together in a silent reassurance, and he inhales sharply as he squeezes back. Suguru could kill them before they lifted a finger- unless, he thinks, refusing to let the shiver show as it trembles through his shoulders. Unless Kenjaku’s got other power they’re sitting on they don’t know about. Unless Kenjaku’s got a plan to get rid of him.

Because that’s all it could take, right? One well set, exceptionally detailed plan, made with the intent to kill and designed over years for any and all roadblocks. If anyone had the capability for it, it would be their Frankenstein. 

“You know I’ve been wondering actually,” Suguru blurts, though quietly, running from the circles of his own thoughts when they steer further into the hole he doesn’t like to think about. 

“Hm?” Satoru hums, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand, head tilting as he listens. Indulging, because Suguru knows he’s aware of every worry running through his head. How couldn’t he be, when Satoru’s undoubtedly thinking of them too?

“That person in the…who had that box,” Suguru fumbles, eyes darting upwards as a little soil and dust spills from the rafters under the floorboards, voices muffled but not inaudible above them. “Back in third year, on vacation.”

Satoru snorts, a loose grin breaking free from his lips at the wording. His other hand comes up, smoothing along the far side of his face as Suguru sighs, leaning into the touch, trying to steady again. 

“They looked like you,” he whispers, tugging on the hand in his own. 

“Oh, yeah,” Satoru agrees, the sound dazed, or a little far away as he thinks, frowning slightly. He pauses for a long moment, eyes glancing up, sliding back down, hand slithering out of his own and possessively around his waist like Suguru asked. “That’s ‘cause they kind of were me.”

Suguru furrows his brows at that, opening his mouth to protest, because no way in hell- only to stop when Satoru draws his hand back to lift his index finger to his lips, eyes wide, before he pulls it out just far enough to point at the ceiling. ‘Oh,’ Suguru thinks, listening to Kenjaku’s footsteps mingling with Shoko’s, the dull drone of their voices, ‘that’s right. The ruse.’ 

‘Incarnations,’ Satoru mouths after, sticking his tongue out and rolling his eyes, and it’s light enough that Suguru can’t help huffing a laugh. It makes him feel a little better, joking about it. He’s always found a certain love for Satoru being able to buoy hard moments.

“Gojo Hanae,” he says, actually explaining, face soothing back out into something watchful, attentive as he talks. “She was the last living holder of the Six Eyes. Muromachi period.” 

“Oh,” Suguru tones, trying to place her in their history as Satoru’s palm resettles against his cheek, welcome when it’s tilted into. “You remember?” He snarks, a double edged sword when he’s got no shortage of bets that Kenjaku’s listening in, the inside joke old.

“My eyes were open,” Satoru gloats, sly as he meets it head on, nose wrinkling in mirth. “Of course I remember.” He gets a punch to the shoulder for that, the both of their snickers quiet when they’re not really much more than loose air. 

“...How come she got packaged? Don’t you think- isn’t it…weird?” Suguru whispers, barely a breath next to Satoru’s ear, memories of that night in the crypt loud in his head. He remembers the sight of her, the mauling of her corpse, the hollow of eye sockets, dribbled out like jelly onto stone. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s aware enough now to know that.

It takes a moment for Satoru to answer, evidently thinking on it as he replays the same scene in his own head, chewing on the words before he says them. 

“...You saw all the cuts on her, right?” He asks, to his nod. “Those were the kind that Shoko makes on corpses,” Satoru murmurs, sounding like he’s thought about it a lot since that night, and it takes barely a second of digesting that sentence for Suguru to gain a sickening inkling of understanding. 

“Her eyes were pulled out,” he mumbles, faint, to Satoru’s hum.

“Mhm. They still had their nerve endings attached, did you notice that?” He presses, to the lance of horror that has Suguru jerking his gaze up the inch they’re separated. “They were studying her,” Satoru says, mouthed more than whispered when it’s spoken maybe a millimeter from his lips, so quiet it may as well not be words at all. 

It makes him recoil, shocked into nausea as he turns it over himself and finds a vehement agreement in the memory, a maelstrom of things shrieking through his head. 

“...If they had that kind of access,” Suguru wonders, the words like sludge on his tongue, “why didn’t they just take her body?” It feels like a question he shouldn’t be asking, molecules he shouldn’t let stick. A ghost he shouldn’t make.

Lean fingers leave his face to squish Satoru’s own, pursing his lips as he debates. 

“It’s…probably the Six Eyes,” he murmurs, sighing, sending a pointed glance up to the ceiling, all Suguru needs to know for why he hesitates. “They’re a cycle. Incarnations isn’t that far off.”

That feels like a bucket of ice water, Suguru thinks, fighting to keep the hysterical smile off his mouth. ‘I hate this,’ he wails, safe in the barrier of his own skull, ‘I hate this so much.’

“I think…if they never took, then- When the current holder dies, they must return to the cycle immediately. The moment her heart stopped,” Satoru says, a suddenly stark, suddenly clear explanation for the damned and the damned alone to hear, “she was just a normal sorcerer.” 

And oh god, Suguru wonders, what does that mean for me? If Kenjaku managed to find a way to kill that Six Eyes, other Six Eyes, what does that mean for him. 

“A dead one, maybe” Satoru whispers, the hint of an old terror in his shadowed eyes, “but normal. Just another Gojo with Limitless.” 

And why would that be any use to Kenjaku, he muses, like a ghost in his own skin. If she died in the Muromachi period, they were probably already established, judging on the homunculus made out of a little boy named Itadori Yuuji, Sukuna’s vessel and planned so much farther back into the Heian. Before Gojo Hanae, before her birth, her life, her death. 

Why would a coveted treasure like the Six Eyes be worth anything to a body snatcher when they vanish as soon as the last beat of a heart pounds? Why would Satoru be worth anything when he’d be little better than Gojo Akemi in terms of power used as a puppet? What’s the point, he thinks, fingers tightening into Satoru’s shirt, if he’s no longer god once he’s dead?

Why, he wants to shriek, why would Kenjaku even bother trying to go after a toy they can’t have, when a perfectly usable one stands right next to it?

They only end up being gone for a handful of hours. 

Most of the last hour is spent listening to Kenjaku dither about prices, luckily or not. “I know your pockets are deep, but building a lab from scratch isn’t exactly cheap, and so…” They say, as if they actually have remorse for using Satoru as a piggy bank, and he promptly decides to stop listening. 

Suguru woefully tunes out the discussion, firmly wrapped back around to finances, a topic which he loathes with no small intensity, busy ruthlessly shoving every last anxiety he has about all of this into some little box he never plans to open ever again.

‘What will you do,’ hisses against the shell of his ear, a shiver suppressed every time he feels Kaori’s assessing eyes fall on him. ‘How will you fight when she comes for you?’ Suguru doesn’t know, and it’s making his bones feel cold trapped in the mold of his skeleton. 

Because he knows- that’s what Kenjaku’s final plan has to be. There’s no way they’d just give up, not after what they’d talked about after that last meeting. He’s smart enough to know that nobody brings back an ancient, slumbering evil for good intentions, that if Kenjaku built a vessel to reanimate Sukuna within then there has to be a reason for it, and with reason comes control. 

Satoru’s said Itadori Kaori was a sorcerer, undoubtedly. Her body cycles and funnels cursed energy. She may or may not have had a technique, but she was clearly good for something once. Something that now, she’s likely not terribly good for anymore. 

For all his determination, Satoru’s been terrified of this. Devastated, in a way. To work with the being he knows has plans to kill them all, in one sort of death or another? How monstrous an agreement. Suguru knows that, and so he’s kept quiet about his own worries, as unfounded as they’d been until little but two weeks ago, worn to the back of his mind with all the other events happening that had just been more important. That sight he’d seen sat in Satoru’s domain months ago, lines carved into his forehead and plastic smile on his face, there had been no chance it’d come to pass. Not like this, not now.

Until Kenjaku had looked at him through Itadori Kaori’s eyes, lustful and meticulous in trying to pick him apart, and then. Then, Suguru had started to worry. 

It’s been stupid of him, sitting on anxieties he won’t even bother to admit to himself when they’re beginning to terrify him, but he can’t help it. In some sort of twisted way, he thinks it’s even brought him and Satoru a little closer together, because now he can understand much more intimately the kind of fear he’d spoken of once talking about why he’d hidden life in the Prison Realm. It’s thick trickling down his spine every time he’s faced with a reminder of their monster. Slick like oil, thick like blood. 

Suguru won’t say it, not yet, but he’s scared.

“For the love of god, just give me a number,” Satoru moans, the words partially shouted as he throws his hands and checkbook up, interrupting his solitude spent firmly behind his back, to Shoko’s sour, barking laughter. “I’m not taking a loan for a measly eight million yen!”

Kenjaku, for all their schtick as an evil mastermind or whatever, flushes slightly. Despite himself, Suguru finds it in him to have a notch of sympathy for dealing with rich men and their rich habits. 

‘Oh, disgusting,’ he thinks, shivering, listening to the scrawl of Satoru’s pen and the meek, if he could call indifferent sheepishness meek, number of fifteen million yen be thrown out into the open. The day he finds empathy for a body snatching, brain eating, zombified curse user is the day he starts looking into monk robes. God, his skin crawls. 

“A pleasure doing business,” Kaori says, coy as Satoru hands them the check, though Shoko only huffs loudly. 

“When did you want to actually…y’know, start?” She asks, a trace of hesitancy in the question, more than a little misplaced excitement. 

“Once it’s built,” Kenjaku replies, and Suguru tries his best not to listen, even as the words keep tumbling in his ears, dizzying and far away. “It’ll take a few months,” crashes with, “I can have my hands on the right supplies by then,” Shoko’s voice mixing uneasily in his head with Itadori Kaori’s, his mental image something along the lines of an old kid’s cartoon. Shoko, dressed in a robber’s get up, stealing the cursed fetuses from the archives. Taking books, weapons, seals to study. 

It’s such a bad idea, even though he knows they need it. It makes him reconsider, maybe, that stalling conversation back in late April, or early May. Pushing Shoko to give in, knowing she already had weeks ago. 

Except, they need Kenjaku for more than just to keep tabs on them, he knows that. They’ll need their input on how to unwind a soul, how to detangle the different threads of two people, how to build a homunculus, how to kill one. Besides the predicament of Itadori Yuuji, Kenjaku is a wealth of information. Satoru had made that clear back when they’d spent entire nights frantically whispering about it after that day in the park. The fact that they’ve been alive since before the Heian even is means enough.

Shoko needs them for study, Satoru needs them for information. Kenjaku needs the both of them for any multitude of horrible, terrible, disturbing reasons. He’s sure he wouldn’t want to know a single one of them.

Satoru and Shoko need Kenjaku, and Kenjaku needs Satoru and Shoko. 

Nobody really needs him.

‘And what a terrifying thought that is,’ Suguru thinks, forcibly calm as Satoru slips their arms together, as Kaori walks away into the street traffic, as they take the train back to let their emotions cool. 

Ideally, he’d love not to be needed. How hilarious that when finally given what he wants, it’s nothing short of his worst nightmare.

“Hey,” Satoru says, as they’re getting ready for bed that night. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Suguru mumbles, hackles raising, and very pointedly does not look over his shoulder at the expression he knows he’d see. Because despite the detour, the rest of the evening had been nice. 

They’d come home after four hours, significantly more exhausted but marginally more relieved, and the kids had forgiven their absence quickly when they’d walked in on Yaga suffering through a tea party. Though, the polaroid taken of him dressed up in Tsumiki’s toy tiara, a feathery pink boa, and hot pink nails grinning like an absolute idiot as Mimiko spilled tea all over the table might beg otherwise. 

It had been relaxing, calming, and most importantly, distracting enough he’d forgotten about the rest of the afternoon enough to feel marginally calm for a while. The gentle words, though, bring it all rushing right back in. 

“Suguru,” Satoru sighs, quiet in the dark of the hour, the held breath when all the memories catch up. He doesn’t sound disappointed, exactly, just…

“I know,” he mutters, refusing to turn around, staring at the wall, the bookshelf. The corkboard faced away behind him feels like the heat of the sun burning against his back. Suguru should know- he might as well be a miniature version. 

He knows exactly what tone of voice that is. Hell knows he’s used it enough on Satoru in the past. Maybe, just maybe, he wonders, it wouldn’t be so wrong to test his own luck once in a while. It had worked well for them after the murder of his cousins, sort of. 

‘You just don’t want to think about it,’ something says, that same little thing that gets so angry when Satoru tries to close himself off. It’s true enough. If he did, maybe he’d finally have that long coming meltdown hiding at the edges of their busy days- the one he thinks might have started with recognizing old fear that day sprawled in their bed weeks ago now, talking of childhoods they’d hated. The one that will end the next time Kenjaku sets light eyes on him and simply stares, appraising, waiting. 

Maybe he’s found places to be brave, bravery isn’t fearlessness.

Shaking the thoughts away, he tries hard to hold onto some of the calm that had lingered putting the kids to bed to brush off the shivers, listening to their put out whines that none of them were tired, of read us just one more story, of don’t go to bed, Tou-san! Tries to bring the feeling of quiet joy back he gets kissing their foreheads goodnight, of smoothing down their covers, of brushing his knuckles over rounded cheeks. 

It only lasts a moment before it fades, and so he gives up.

“I-” Suguru starts, voice rasping into a whistle, finally speaking where Satoru patiently waits. “I wanna use the hypocrite card,” he admits, daring a glance over his shoulder, nothing but a peek when he’s got them hunched high. 

It’s not that he expects anything in particular, really. It’s just…

Satoru looks exactly as he’d thought when he finally does. Trite with the flat thing of his closed lips, concerned in the knit furrow of his white brows. Frustrated, in the lines crinkling his eyes at the fact he can’t do anything to help. Knowing anyway that pushing to try probably wouldn’t do much. 

“...Okay,” he agrees, and Suguru feels some of his tension relax when two long arms open seamlessly where they’re stood on opposite sides of the bed, black sleeves draping over sharp wrists from too many washes of Satoru’s favorite winter sleepshirt. He knows Satoru knows something is wrong, but he also knows he won’t push unless he thinks he needs to. Part of him wonders if maybe he should. A larger, more cowardly half silently begs him not to.

“Sorry,” Suguru still finds himself saying, spilling like oil into Satoru’s arms as they settle into bed, pressing close. It earns him a hum, fingers carding through his hair, comfortingly long again. It earns him the shake of a head, the sigh of a dragging inhale against the leftover scent of his lavender shampoo. 

“I love you,” Satoru murmurs, tilting his head up just enough to kiss his forehead, and Suguru huffs, hiding away in the curve of his throat. He knows Satoru hears his response in the fingers he buries into the shirt at his back, the pulses he counts of a beating heart. 

“I love you when you’re strong, and I love you when you’re annoying, too,” he teases, to Suguru’s jittery snort. 

He sinks into it, when arms tighten around him, when infinity blankets just a little thicker. It feels nice, feels safe. “You like annoying,” Suguru mumbles, to Satoru’s fond, eye rolling smile.

“I adore annoying,” he responds, quiet, melted like ice cream forgotten on the counter, sweet and sticky with it. 

“I…am sorry,” Suguru repeats, because he is, because he’s better than this, but maybe not always. Sure, there’s promises first, but there’s not always a why to justify breaking them. Satoru taught him that. He’s a monster in his own right, but he’s only human, too.

“No,” Satoru murmurs, kissing his forehead again, brushing back his bangs, “it’s okay. Just go to sleep. You’ll feel better when you’re rested.” That, at least, he can’t find any argument against. Today was exhausting. 

It’s not really fair, he thinks, that where Satoru seems to finally be burying his hatchets, Suguru keeps digging up new ones. 

Maybe he loves sleeping with the kids, he muses, laying there in the quiet of the dark and the languid stiffness of requested silence, Suguru can agree that there’s a relief to be felt when they have their bed to themselves. He’s missed wrapping himself up in Satoru’s lanky limbs, the tone of his muscle, the puff of his breaths. Missed the feeling of safety that comes from knowing nothing can harm either of them, hidden in each other. Not memories, not dreams. Not people. 

Regret isn’t something he’ll admit to, not now, not later, but laying there waiting for sleep to come, he isn’t entirely sure that playing hypocrite was the right decision. 

Chapter Text

“I want to live,” her little voice tremors, shaky with a desire kept hidden for the bare weeks it was given the room to exist. “I want to be with everyone-”

The crack of a gunshot steals her words, the last smile on her face melting into horror as she falls, hand still outstretched to hold his own as her skull caves against ancient stone hard enough to splatter the hole in her head along the ground. 

Suguru stares, unable to move as Riko gurgles, lips wavering soundlessly as she chokes on a bile made of her own blood. 

“Why am I here? What a stupid question,” someone chuckles, the sounds echoing behind him, bouncing off the walls as if they’re reflective. It grows, buoyed by duplicates, until the next time they speak it sounds as if it comes from thousands of mouths.

“Don’t you know?” The figure says, standing in shadow and large by swathes of fabric as he clutches Riko’s limp body close, teeth bared down to his gums as all the life squeezes itself from his chest. They laugh, after, low and at first, quiet. 

It only keeps growing as Suguru kneels there in the dark of some catacomb, the edges of his vision stained gray as the knees of his uniform pants stain with the growing puddle of blood seeping below his legs. His fingers wrench into Riko’s shirt, dyed as crimson as the fading edges of the stone floor, swallowed up into a sanguine pit. 

The laughter is shrill in his ears, scraping against his brain like pieces of rough metal, shrieking and grinding and so deafeningly loud. 

He’s shaking, he realizes, arms trembling where they clutch around Riko. His whole body is tremoring as if in an earthquake, and the laughter is so, so loud.

“Why am I here,” that person repeats again, “why am I here he says!” 

Suguru flinches, the roar in his ears dizzying as a dribble of red spools from his bottom lip, puddling sticky and thin onto Riko’s forehead. Her eyes flicker up as it hits, blinking sharply. 

“...Run,” she rasps, nothing but a gasp scratching against the cage of her throat, “tell him to run far away from you.” Her weakened hand trembles up, and up, and up, reaching closer, and then closer still. 

“Suguru,” she whispers, “Suguru,” and it sounds like a whine as her jagged fingers twist into strings sewn into his forehead. They tighten, and then harshly, they pull. 

“I’m sorry,” Riko cries, muffled under the laughter and the breaking of thread, barely audible at all as his head lurches back with the snap of her yank, little pieces of skin and sinew torn from it with the snatch of her curled palm. 

When he turns his head, listing heavy to his side, he sees the flicker of movement as if in a mirror- the window of their living room, curtains ragged set at the side, fizzling with smoke and flame, darkened as if at night. Black as the starless city sky.

“Why, he asks! Are you blind?” That person yells, shouting for all they’re worth, vocal chords shredding wretchedly, and Suguru watches as his mouth splits into the same malevolent grin Satoru’s had only a handful of hours ago. 

His own face reflects his in the fire-lit window, pitch as a void and glowing gently from the flames consuming everything before it. It smiles wide, deranged, with a soul that isn’t his buried in the open, stitchless wound cut across his forehead. As he watches, listening to his home burn into ash crumbling around him, creaking and groaning under the weight of sparking, ember seared wood, Suguru finally realizes the laughter comes from him.

“You ask why I’m here,” his reflection spits, maddeningly amused. “Don’t you see?” It croons, arms tightening around Tsumiki’s corpse. 

It giggles, manic, excited, and his stomach twists harshly.

“I’m you,” Kenjaku whispers, wearing his face, burning his home and his family to the dirt.

His eyes snap open first, the breath in his lungs halted. 

There’s a figure stood across from where he lays, wreathed in pitched shadows and harsh lines, watching. A crack shakes the house, rain pelting against the windows, and Suguru knows acutely and horrifically that he is alone. 

There’s two people in the house. One stands only feet away from his bed, and another he can hear quietly moving upstairs, footsteps creaking on old wood amplified in his adrenaline filled ears. Upstairs, he thinks, fear dripping from his teeth like the blood that had spilled from his forehead, where his children sleep. 

Though he tries, he can’t move. 

In the morning, he’ll recall that he doesn’t remember what happened in the in between, doesn’t really remember the passage of time in the space of the darkness, liquidy and thick and trickling between his closed fingers. He’ll recall that most of the moments after he woke up from the dream he can’t remember at all. 

Save for the eyes, Suguru thinks, feeling them bore down on him like a physical, snuffing weight. They’re heavy where he meets them, light like the sun and piercing like a sword, stuck in the sockets of that shadowy figure he sees by the side of their bed. 

Thunder crashes overhead again, loud and disorienting, close enough he feels his eardrums shake. There is someone upstairs, there is someone by his bed, and Riko is dead. 

His eyes snap to the wall immediately when it creaks, the sound of the bedroom door opening, the twisting movement of shadow. Something isn’t right, because he doesn’t know when the red numbers of their alarm clock changed into entirely different ones when he looks. It’s foggy, almost, not entirely real, but real enough he feels the pound of danger in his ears, the threat of death just around the corner where he can hear footsteps in the nothingness. 

Feet pad along hardwood, soft in the dark, unhurried. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He thinks he hears the plipping of blood dripping onto the hardwood with the movement of the second person. He can’t move. There is a monster coming towards him and he can’t move.

Frankenstein, something whispers, the scent of cinders in his nose and the taste of ash on his tongue, Riko’s blood warm and sticky on his knees. Kenjaku feels like copper and fear, and if only he could move, because Suguru is going to kill them. 

The bed dips, weight sinking close, the figure shadowy in the dim light hidden behind curtains. They lean over him, face indistinguishable in the dark save for the light of their familiar, uncanny eyes, and something is wrong about that because Kenjaku’s stolen eyes are light like the sun, not blue as the sky, but he doesn’t care because he is going to kill them.

Whispering fingertips graze the edge of his face, reverent and loving, and the thing that keeps his muscles locked disintegrates with the snap of terror that coils them taut. 

As his fist makes contact with skin, the crack is loud in his ears, reverberating through his arm, the pressure of bone and cartilage against his knuckles satisfying if not horrifying because it isn’t a dream, he realizes, but real enough to touch. The loud, familiar, “fuck!” That rings after it as the clap of palms hitting skin echoes around the room is sharp enough it breaks through the remainder of the fog.

The fog, he thinks, slowly fading away as the ringing starts up in his ears, shrill and whining. The fog of the dream, reality pulsing in the bruise forming over his knuckles from punching- from punching Satoru, Suguru realizes, stomach plummeting. 

“You’ve…you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Satoru mumbles, nasal and thick as he moans, eyes screwed shut and hands overlapping where they’re covered over his nose. “Come on.” His head hangs, white hair swaying loose, little plips of blood dribbling over his tightened fingers and staining their sheets- swallowed whole, Suguru recognizes, by the drip of the rain into the gutter along the side of the house. What he thought was dripping onto the hardwood. 

‘Oh,’ Suguru thinks, dull, trying to figure out why he feels lightheaded when he’s not in the middle of a fight. When he turns, searing gaze thrown over his shoulder, the person he’d thought had been in the room first turns out to be a stack of books on their desk and a jacket thrown over the back of the chair. Someone else’s faraway porch light is muffled through the treeline beyond the window above it. Sunny, golden eyes. 

‘Oh,’ he thinks again, vision graying at the edges, that whine in his ears loud as he begins to tilt, knees dug into the soft press of their mattress. Satoru says something, eyes cracking open to look at him, but he doesn’t hear it.

‘That’s a lot of blood,’ Suguru wonders faintly, eyes stuck on the shadow staining Satoru’s chin dark, slick from liquid. ‘That’s- that’s too much blood.’ Is his chest heaving? Oh, his chest is heaving. Why is his vision fuzzy, then, if he’s breathing so hard? ‘Why can’t I breathe,’ he thinks, and the shock finally gives way to panic. 

‘Oh god,’ he thinks, hands coming up to twist in his shirt above his pounding heart, ‘I can’t breathe.’

In front of him, Suguru slowly collapses, liquifying down onto the bed as his inhales start coming in wheezes. He tries to mumble something, but it’s too breathy, barely a voice at all when it’s seemingly lodged in his throat. 

His eyes blow wide, pupils more shrunken than Satoru’s seen since- ever, and, ‘shit,’ he realizes, ‘oh, Suguru.’ 

“Hey,” Satoru croaks, voice backed up by the blood dribbling down his throat and the fact that his nose is broken for the grievous sin of not turning a light on when he walked back into the room. Pity him, he just wanted to make sure the storm didn’t wake up any of their kids.

“Hey, Suguru, c’mon, look at me?” His hands are bloodied when they latch onto jutting shoulder blades, staining old, worn shirt with reddened handprints. He scatters them downwards, thumbs curving over Suguru’s jaw, forcing his head up where it’s bowed, long hair pooled on the sheets. Dark eyes meet his own, panicked and pained as breaths choke unsteadily behind bared teeth. 

“What’s- what’s happening to me?” Suguru gasps, wheezing the words out with a sorely felt struggle, hyperventilating even though he can never quite catch his breath. 

“You’re having a panic attack,” Satoru murmurs, pressing his palms a little tighter over the sides of Suguru’s jaw, shuffling closer, tilting their foreheads together, eyes sharp as he watches the scrunching pinch of his face. “I need you to focus on me, can you do that?” 

“I-” Suguru chokes, trying again only to a whistle of a word, giving up in favor of a jerking, tiny nod. His hands haven’t left his shirt, clutched into fabric tight enough it’s starting to thin into a tear. 

“Good,” Satoru mumbles, lifting one hand to stroke it down dark hair, leaving it on the shoulder below and pushing after in a semblance of something grounding. He feels like his brain is trying to empty out, watching Suguru fall apart like this. As it is, he clings tooth and nail to every little thing Suguru does to help him when he has one, shoving away the want of a hysterical thought that Suguru’s never had one of his own, before. 

“The kids are safe,” he murmurs, reversed cursed working harshly to repair his nose where it was shattered somewhere in the back of his sinuses until his voice is clear again, the letting blood finally tapering off into a wane trickle. “No one is here but us. You’re under infinity. Nothing can touch you.”

Suguru shutters, desperately trying to digest the words, obviously struggling when Satoru knows he’s too busy trying to breathe to actually hear much of anything. Silently, he lifts away the hand pressing down on his shoulder, firmly prying tensed fingers away from warping shirt instead. He keeps repeating the same, gentled words, softened, ‘we’re home, I’m here, it’s okay,’s as he places trembling, jittering palm to his heart.

“Inhale,” Satoru instructs, sucking in an exaggerated breath himself as Suguru’s clawed fingers shove into his sternum with a certain madness to them, watching the frantic motion of his shoulders as he tries to painfully follow. It’s rough, stuttered and cut off in the back of his throat, but it’s a start. 

“Exhale,” Satoru whispers, and then lets the cycle repeat, over and over again until Suguru’s choking breaths become less haggard. Until they gradually even from roughened to unsteady, unsteady to exhausted, heaving only from strain instead of panic. 

He still trembles as Satoru pulls his head down, shaking as if there’s an earthquake trapped inside him, a humid exhale scattering into his shoulder like sand under the pound of a sole. Arms wind around him, snaking over his waist, shutting into a cage linked in the small of his back. Inky hair spills over his spine, handprints stuck to the sides of old shirt, and Satoru leans his head against Suguru’s temple even though there’s still blood tacky on his chin.

“S-Satoru?” Suguru rasps, after long enough he’s begun to think that the silence has seeped into their bones. He hums, calm as he strokes a palm down curved spine, the bracket of tense thighs squeezed tight around his hips. “Is…infinity?” He wavers, voice rough, and Satoru sighs, pressing his lips against the shell of Suguru’s ear. 

“Can’t you feel it?” He murmurs, thickening the hum of the barrier ever stronger, possessive as he cards his fingers through long, sweaty hair. “Nothing can touch you. Nothing but me.” 

Suguru sobs, after, but it’s quiet, nothing but a faucet tab turned to let spill. Satoru lets him, feeling the tears soak into his shirt, not entirely sure what he must have been dreaming of but certain enough to make a guess. All he wants, he thinks, feeling the pound of Suguru’s heart shoved against his own, listening to muffled cries hidden in his throat, is to be safe enough for Suguru to believe that he is, too.

It’s been a steep learning curve for himself, adjusting to that monster. At first it had been unbearable because he’d been terrified, too close to his own trauma to be rational about it in the slightest. Shoko had always been there to ground him in the after, Suguru during the before, and with each encounter, it had gotten easier.

Until today, Satoru thinks, pulling Suguru’s head ever closer, stroking over his tangled hair as he struggles to breathe evenly. Forcing the terrified flames of his cursed energy to catch on his own, to simmer down, and down, and down, until it’s less of a blaze and more of a flickering candle, wavering and unpredictable, but not wild. 

Today, he’d gotten his first real foothold. He’d postured, and Kenjaku had cowered, as insignificantly small as either action had been. Frankenstein fears the doctor, he’d learned, and it had been enough to finally make a sort of peace with…everything involved in it. 

There’s not much control Satoru has over that situation, but he’d always been walking around with more than he knew, and that alone makes it infinitely more bearable. 

‘Where I’ve been finding it, though,’ he thinks, cheek squished over Suguru’s tumbling hair, eyes lidded heavy as he feels the hands clutched in the small of his back open to press over his scarred hips, ‘you’ve been losing it, haven’t you?’

They sit there for a long while in the trembling aftermath, listening to the rain wash away the sobs.

“Easy,” Satoru murmurs, lips brushing against the shell of a too warm ear as another crack of thunder rips through the sky, shocking Suguru into a flinch as the sole of his foot tries to slip on the floor of the filled tub. “It’s only the storm.”

“I know,” he hushes, but it’s thin, unconvincing as strong hands cling to his arms, the lap of the bathwater loud in the broken silence of the bathroom. Satoru makes a face, but he doesn’t push. Instead, he leaves a kiss tingling along the line of Suguru’s tightened lips as he steps away for the first time in maybe more than an hour to wash the dried blood off his face. 

He feels eyes glued to his bare back as he scrubs a washcloth over his chin, inspecting the bridge of his nose in the mirror. It’s not so bad, Satoru muses, squinting as he traces a line down it. Maybe a millimeter off from center that he’ll get Shoko to fix later. Lucky thing that Suguru punched him straight on. Wry, he tries to shake off the lingering feeling of cartilage shards spilled somewhere behind his nose where it collapsed. They’ve been reabsorbed but, well. Still.

“Sorry,” quietly bubbles up from below the bathwater, utterly miserable, dark eyes fixed on nothing where they peer only just above the surface. Satoru snickers, impressed beneath the cringe of unease that Suguru hit him so hard only halfway lucid. 

“...Nah,” he tones, head tilted after he thinks for a moment, feet shifty on tile as he pads to the side of the tub. Crouching, one arm slung over his knees, he meets Suguru’s maudlin gaze, grinning sly and low. “I’d say we’re even now for everything after Toji.” 

It earns him a huff, amusement shining through exasperation, and so Satoru counts it as a win. 

They’re quiet among the slosh of the water when he steps in second, raising up to the tipping edge because neither of them bothered to fill it carefully enough to accommodate two bodies. He feels the drawn in line of Suguru’s legs, shuffled close to himself in an effort to disappear, and aimlessly shoves at his calves with one foot until he loses the glossy thing over his eyes in favor of looking up with a glare. 

“I can’t wash your hair if you just sit and sulk,” Satoru teases, flicking a bead of water at him, and knows Suguru’s come a long way back from the panic of earlier to be able to stick his tongue out in return as he shuffles around. 

“...I feel like shit,” he mumbles, voice dropped in exhaustion, and Satoru hums, dragging him further back with two hands on the flat of strong stomach. 

“That generally tends to happen, yeah,” he replies, wispy and aimless as he encourages Suguru to tilt down, hair wetting in the water as it spills over the lip of the tub in a quiet splash. He keeps him there for a long moment, watching the shuttered planes of elegant face fight to even out, warring between different things when it can’t decide on something singular to be. 

“...Is that what it’s like, for you?” Suguru asks eventually, eyes lidded, fixed on something far away. “Every time?” Satoru lets his lips slide away in a purse, a trickle of embarrassment or maybe just something shy pooling in his ribcage. Mortification is too strong of a word, sheepish too weak.

“Yeah,” he answers, low, hands smoothing down Suguru’s dark hair, fanned out into a cloud in the water around him.

It earns him a disbelieving huff, dark eyes blinking up at the ceiling. “No wonder you’re always so tired after,” Suguru murmurs, before shivering, lips spilling back into a wavering frown as he blinks a little too rapidly. “I didn’t like that,” he whispers, a cloying fear trying to creep back in. “I really didn’t like that.”

“I don’t, either,” Satoru promises, leaning down above him to press a kiss to water dampened cheek, lingering there when a hand curls around the back of his neck. “I’m sorry you had one, too. I probably should have made you talk about it, earlier. Maybe you wouldn’t have.”

Suguru shrugs, and the movement is swallowed up by the ripple of the water. It’s sort of a dead end, that thought, so neither of them try to finish what can’t be. Maybe, maybe not. What’s a rabbit hole except another kind of pit?

“You know,” Suguru mumbles, a wane, dull sort of amusement in the weary smile that tugs at his lips, “I think I prefer the breakdowns.” Satoru can’t help a small snort, can’t help it when it breaks into a short laugh, smile wide and smile real when he kisses it against Suguru’s own. 

“Your dad actually told me something a while ago that I think is pretty funny, in the hindsight,” Satoru says, soaking in the collapse of the moment, the break between the rigidity of fear and the melting of easy relief. He drags his fingers through Suguru’s hair as he leans back up, smoothing it out before he reaches for lavender shampoo.

“Oh yeah?” Suguru muses, eyes slipping shut as he inhales deep, obviously settling whatever thing has crawled into his ribcage and taken up space, either too much or too little. “What’d he tell you?”

“He said you were like your mom,” Satoru explains, quieter than before as he drags a palmful of soap down Suguru’s hairline, watching it foam into white and purple bubbles as he scrubs it in. Suguru’s raised knees are like twin mountains peaking above the water just a ways down, unable to be fully stretched out when their tub is big, but not big enough for two people their height. 

“How so?” He whispers, barely louder than a heartbeat.

“That you’re both good at always pretending to look fine,” Satoru continues, unable to break the spell of soft words, everything dimmed with the overhead lights, “but when something’s finally wrong enough, you’ll let everybody know it.” 

He waits for a moment as Suguru’s eyes flutter open, long dark lashes clumped together with the wetness of the water and the damp thing of past tears. “He said that, huh,” he mumbles, a weight to it that speaks of a certain expectation, a knowing thing grown throughout years. A hum rumbles in the bottom of his throat, considering. 

“He’s not wrong,” Suguru admits, the agreement a touch stilted. “I mean, you know…” He trails off, and Satoru wonders if Suguru thinks of what he’d said the first night after bringing the twins home, like he suddenly does. Wonders if the first thing to come to his mind is the confession of a suicide. Wonders if he thinks the same thought, about parents and terrible parenting. 

“Know what?” Satoru asks, just to ask, just to be certain, because they’re long since past walking on their tiptoes around each other’s hardships. He won’t do it now, not after everything.

“I assume you remember, sir king of trying to kill yourself,” Suguru grouses, sulking slightly as he sinks, lips melding into a repentant frown. Satoru barks a laugh, head craning up to the ceiling with the force of it as he sighs, eyes shut for a long second. 

“Of course I remember,” he murmurs after, dimmer, like everything in this sunken bathroom before dawn. He shifts a little, thighs moving to better bracket warm hips, fingers drumming restlessly on wet skin. “...You said you did it because neither of them ever believed you, right?” 

“Right,” Suguru agrees, relaxing maybe from sheer force of habit, even though they both know Satoru would have to be the biggest hypocrite on planet earth to find a ledge to lecture from about that particular topic. “I mean, a part of it was because my brain chemistry was all kinds of fucked up from the pills, but…”

Playing hypocrite, though, was exactly what got them here. 

“Maybe it’d be big enough, right?” Satoru fills in, quiet. “How much longer can you really do it.”

“Fourteen years,” Suguru answers, and something inside of him aches for little eighth grade Suguru, so small compared to the giant Satoru knows. All gangly, awkward, pained little eighth grade Suguru, so misunderstood by everyone around him. “It was part of the reason they let me go to some fancy, mysterious, religious private school in the mountains.” He says it like it’s funny, and a part of it is to the two of them. The rest, though, is just sad. 

“Why was this the first one I’ve ever had, though,” Suguru wonders, said aloud like he’s forgotten he’s not trapped in his head, and Satoru watches the slight movements of his face, his knitting brows. “It’s not like things now are really worse than they used to be back then. It doesn’t make any sense.” How he blinks, eyes dipping along the ceiling, as if they’ll find answers in the alabaster paint.

Satoru sits on that for a long moment, using the lowest setting on the showerhead to wash the soap from Suguru’s hair, pulling the drain and letting the tub refill. Little fourteen year old Suguru, he thinks of, an image formed in his mind made from three years ago and the day he’d first laid eyes on a sulky kid with weird bangs and pimples on his chin. Little fourteen year old Suguru, who hadn’t gone to high school yet, who didn’t have any friends, who didn’t even have parents who’d believed him. 

It draws away after, in favor of broad shoulders slumped against a brick wall, a tired smile. ‘I’m declaring war,’ spoken with the full intention of dividing the necessary forces to win. 

You never change, Satoru wants to say. You never really have.

“I’ve got a guess,” he offers, and tilts sharp jaw up with a thumb running along its edge as dark eyes glance up to hold his own. “You didn’t have anything to lose back then, did you?” Satoru says, and witnesses the thoughts form and solidify in the violet of Suguru’s eyes as they’re realized. 

“Huh,” he breathes, as if it’s that simple, “no. I didn’t.” Suguru pauses for a moment, sliding his thoughts along his teeth beneath his tongue, eyes wandering away and then back, pulled as if by a magnet before they can get far. 

“All I wanted was to get out, to escape my own life. Some days that meant taking my bike twenty miles outside of the city, and some days it…” He trails off, gaze a touch glassy, the gears behind dark eyes obviously grinding to a clanking halt.

“I kept waiting for someone to save me, you know that?” Suguru whispers, the admission almost hidden by the lap of the water as Satoru leans forwards over top of him, fingertips tracing along the edge of sharp face with a reverence he’s never been able to let go of. “Like all the shows on late night television. Like some charming bad boy on a bike would miraculously come to town, tell me I wasn’t crazy, and whisk me away.”

“Sorry I didn’t come with the bike,” Satoru says, because it makes Suguru laugh, the smile spreading into his own palm where he holds the bone of his jaw. “You saved me too, you know. In a lot of ways.”

“Good thing we’re stuck together, huh?” Suguru wonders, eyes caught and dragging on his own like a lure on a fishing wire, and Satoru wouldn’t ever look away, not for anything. “I can keep saving you, and you can keep saving me?”

It sounds like a joke, the pretty little question, truth hidden in mild sarcasm and with the bat of wet eyelashes. He knows that it isn’t. 

“In this life, and the next, and the next, and the next,” Satoru echoes, answering even though Suguru’s pretending like he isn’t asking, because it is a question, undoubtedly. It’s a question and a begging plea disguised as a silly tease, given away by the tremor in the corner of soft lips and the desperation lining dark, violet eyes.

“I love you,” Suguru blurts, as Satoru bends down to capture him in a kiss before he reaches for the conditioner, grabbing the back of his neck again when he tries to pull away, a copper tint running over his nose as Jougo’s technique sparks fire inside his skin. 

“What a coincidence,” Satoru teases, sinking right back down into the softness of those lips when he’s tugged, “I love you too.” 

“Do I have an actual foothold to lecture you on bottling shit up, or not?” Satoru asks, maybe twenty minutes later spent doing nothing innocent in the bath waiting for the conditioner to set, and Suguru squints where they’ve migrated back to their bed, washed and dried. 

“Uh,” he mutters, evidently thinking hard as Satoru strips the bloodied sheets, a towel draped over his dark head and wholly forgotten. “...Maybe?” He tries, making a soured face. “No, no wait I take that back,” Suguru hastily tacks on the second Satoru opens his mouth to complain. 

“I’ve been…uneasy about Mary since they showed up, you know that,” he mutters, the explanation a touch trite as he pulls cotton from his head, shoulders curved in. “I just didn’t…it finally sunk in today, is all.” 

“Why?” Satoru asks, balling up plain cream linen in his arms to dump in the washer. “Cause you were too busy trying to deal with me?” 

Suguru winces, guilty as could be, and Satoru rolls his eyes as he leaves for the three minutes it’ll take to start and run the washer. The ping of the button is loud in his ears as he dumps in a little too much detergent, shutting the door harder than necessary even though he closes the one to the laundry room exceedingly quietly despite the rumble of the machine. If the storm didn’t wake the kids, he certainly won’t.

“It wasn’t just that,” Suguru mumbles as soon as he pads back through the doorway, eyes downcast as he stares at his crossed ankles, sat on the edge of their bare bed in just a pair of briefs. 

His tattoos are loud in the dark, coiling over his skin and demanding all the visual attention they can have. Rainbow dragon in particular seems more thunderous than usual, mouth open in a snarl instead of a stylistic choice, shifting with every sigh and breath Suguru takes. 

“I’ve been…kind of scared recently,” he admits, hair split in two over each of his shoulders, and Satoru trails fingertips down one side as he sets a hand on warm skin. “Ever since that day you came back from talking with Akemi, and I found you sulking. It was just- it was a harsh reminder. That’s all.”

“Of what?” Satoru asks, finally rounding the last step to stand in front of him, slowly kneeling down to see Suguru’s face when he doesn’t lift it, hands limp in his lap. 

“...Are we really cut out for this?” Suguru wonders, face tilted away as soon as Satoru threads their fingers together, a waver to his lips that twists them into a frown, a furrow in his brows and a worry in his glittering eyes. “I mean I know I hated it when she said it, but my mom had a point. We’re only eighteen, we’re not even- we’re still kids,” he says, sharpened eyes flickering back with an abruptness to him that matches his outburst. 

“Sometimes,” Suguru breathes, something pained worn weary on his face, “sometimes I still just feel like a kid.”

And what does he say to that, Satoru wonders, kissing Suguru’s knuckles, melancholy for a lot of things and a lot of reasons. He knows what that statement means, beyond just its surface. It’s true enough, because they are just kids still, kids that can fuck up, kids that can make mistakes, but kids that are holding up the weight of the world, too. Kids that weren’t allowed to be kids, with enemies no child should be capable of having. They’re only kids. How are they supposed to do all of it, handle everything? How are they meant to be Atlas when really, they’re only a legend of Achilles in the making?

“Shoko said this, a while ago now when I told her I was worried,” Satoru repeats, eyes on Suguru’s palms as he holds them between his own, “if you fuck up, then you fuck up.” He looks up, after, meeting eyes stained to ink in the dark light before dawn, uncertain how to put to rest all of the worries in them when he’s spent two lives doing nothing but living through them.

“And we’re definitely gonna, at some point,” he continues, quiet in the early morning, the late night. “But when we do it, we’ll do it together, okay?” 

Suguru nods, jittery, still unsettled. He doesn’t move though, only sits in the syrupy moment, fingers curling around his own. 

“...Whatever we do,” Satoru promises, “we’re always going to do it together.” It brings a little smile to his lips, a thread of reassurance. 

“I know,” Suguru murmurs, and it has softer edges than before. “I just wish we’d had more time.” Time to exist, he means. Time to breathe. Time to grow up. Satoru sighs at that, finally letting go to sit down next to him, cheek cushioned on fire-warmed shoulder and hands tangling together on a naked mattress. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, nothing but a whisper. “I feel like a kid a lot, too. Like everything is out of control, and I can’t fix it. I wish we didn’t have to do it all now. I wish we could do some of it later.” 

“We’re…still doing better though, right?” Suguru asks, head turning to meet his eyes, a line between his brows again. “Than my parents? Than your family?” 

He snorts, unable to help it. “That is such a low fucking bar,” Satoru laughs, to Suguru’s playful shove, making a noise when they topple because Satoru pulls him down with him. “Yeah we’re doing better,” he refutes, confident in that alone if not anything else. “When I was as old as Megumi is now, I worried about whether or not I’d get smacked for talking back. He worries about Tsumiki using up his favorite fucking crayon.”

Suguru finally laughs at that, something wry and joyful as they lay pressed together side by side, two hands clasped into one. “God,” he snickers, “we’re so fucked up, ‘Toru.” 

“Maybe,” Satoru agrees. “Maybe it means they won’t be, though.” 

“I hope so,” Suguru murmurs, and the silence feels heavy again when it settles, though not from the weight of their fears. 

They lay there for a long time, talking. Digesting harsh whispers of buried fears together, breaking down only to rebuild. Eventually, Suguru actually feels as calm as he looks in both cursed energy and body, a magnanimous revelation, really, and Satoru has half a mind to think he’s doing a pretty bang up job fulfilling his half of those pesky marriage vows they have yet to bother with. 

Despite it, Suguru can’t go back to sleep after, even though it’s barely past four in the morning by the time the sheets come out of the dryer, and so Satoru doesn’t bother either. 

He makes them toast and eggs, forces Suguru to eat, and then curls up on the couch with him, snuggled close under one blanket and the drone of the lightened storm, cozy from Jougo’s technique. They talk in increments, discussing plans for summer, about tutoring the twins, more tattoos for the future. Anything, everything, whatever they can to pass the time until the sun rises, whatever they can to distract from all the things neither of them want to bring back up, temporarily settled again.

“I feel like we did her a disservice,” Suguru murmurs, hands taking a page from his own book and messing with fingers not his own, pads running up knuckles as over lines. “I mean, we made a cenotaph for Nobara.”

Satoru hums, glad to be taller for the moment where Suguru sits curled into him, thighs on either side of his hips and tilting into the back of the couch. “We did regrow half the forest for her. There was that giant peach tree to the south you made.”

“I guess,” Suguru murmurs, thinking on it, thinking about anything else than earlier, slightly slothish still after the slow comedown, the lethargic settle. “Actually,” he starts, only to taper off, brows furrowed in thought. “Tsumiki never got around to piercing her ears,” he says, finally lifting his eyes as he explains, piece by piece. “And I think I want a new tattoo.”

“Oh yeah?” Satoru asks, glad for the peace of the moment, glad for just the two of them. He loves the four of their little monsters, loves them so much more than he’s ever loved anything in his life, but he can’t lie that he’s been feeling a kind of separated from Suguru trying to balance between them. 

“Yeah,” Suguru repeats, something a touch easier blanketing over the curve of his shoulders. “We could introduce the twins to Tamaki. It could be a good first step to getting them re-socialized.”

“Huh,” he tones, pondering that. “That is a great idea.”

“I’m just full of them, aren’t I?” Suguru snickers, smug as anything, to the light cuff Satoru gives the side of his head.

Chapter Text

“Megumi,” Suguru murmurs, gently pushing his bedroom door open, wafting the smell of syrupy pancakes in with him. “Wake up so you can come get breakfast.” A groan emanates from beneath the covers, something shuffling under the movement of the blankets, and Suguru can’t help a sly grin as he raises his hands. 

“Oh my god, Megumi!” He yells, fingers pouncing along small sides and skittering, the following shriek swallowing up his words. “Megumi, the tickle monster got you!”

“Nooo-! Tou-chan!” Megumi wails, flailing, gasping for air as he jolts out from under the blankets. He glares hard as he sucks in a lungful after lungful, and Suguru only laughs when one of the throw pillows off his bed is chucked at him. 

“Good morning,” he coos, the mattress dipping beneath his weight as he sits down on the edge, pulling Megumi closer for a real hug.

“Worst wake up ever,” Megumi grouses, seemingly glowering, except for the fact that he only snuggles closer. 

“Oh, I’ll bet,” Suguru hums, relishing in the comfort of the weight in his arms, the solidity of Megumi’s small body as he settles in his lap, real and unharmed and undoubtedly loved. “Satoru made pancakes. Nanako’s going to eat them all if we don’t hurry.”

That has green eyes snapping up to his own, all notes of sleep washing out of chubby little face in favor of a dire urgency. 

“She can’t,” Megumi reels, eyes widening, before, “she will.” Absolutely aghast as he wriggles away. “Nanako!” He yells, nearly skidding out of his room, a few aimless bunnies of shadow forming in the wake of his tiny, thundering footsteps. 

Suguru follows, taking a moment to turn to the wall and snicker an ugly laugh behind his palm.

“You know, I didn’t want to hope they’d get along so well so fast,” Suguru murmurs, watching as Nanako chucks a piece of bacon at Kuro, to Megumi’s beguiled egging on, to Tsumiki’s abject horror. She turns to Mimiko, mouth open and arm flung out in a point towards the madness, only to stop mid movement when her eyes meet the sight of Mimiko’s cheeks stuffed with one of the pancakes stolen off her own plate. 

Satoru barks a laugh where they’re stood further in the kitchen, dirty dishes and half emptied coffees in hand. The faucet mostly covers the sound of it, running as he gets a head start on washing everything, eyes crinkled in a mirthful smile as he looks on at the cluttered table.

“And yet,” he crows, muttered, and the both of them turn when someone shrieks again.

“That was my pancake- and my bacon!” Tsumiki cries, hands slamming on the table top as Megumi shoves Mimiko closer trying to scamper away, the two of them giggling maniacally as they cram no less than four pieces into their mouths. “Nanako!” She wails, clutching at her hair, only to get a sympathetic pat to the shoulder and the offer of a pancake of Nanako’s own.

None of them notice when Shiro jumps up on the other end of the table and starts to lick the dribble of egg yolk off Mimiko’s plate.

“This is either going to be a very long or a very fun eighteen years, huh?” Satoru asks, arching a brow, and wordlessly, Suguru flicks a handful of miraculous flower petals at him.

The theft of her breakfast is promptly forgotten when they tell Tsumiki where it is they’re going.

“Wait! I have to get-! Wait!” She demands, sprinting back upstairs, likely for the earrings that Kento and Yu got for her birthday. Mimiko watches, absently reaching up to touch one of her ears, and Suguru makes an thoughtful note of it as he helps Megumi tie his shoes. 

“It’ll be for an hour, at least,” he explains, thoughts swimming in peach blossoms and bunnies and ideas of what he’s going to ask for. “Whatever I’m going to have Tamaki do for me is going to take much longer, so you’ll go home with Satoru earlier.”

“I wanna stay though,” Megumi complains, wordlessly holding out his other foot, and Suguru huffs, no doubt because he wants to use his sketchbook again. They’d torn out the drawings Megumi had made last time with Tamaki’s fancy pencils and framed them, because terrible or not they’d been absolutely adorable.

“It’s going to take all day,” he chides, tying tiny shoes tight. “All day,” Suguru emphasizes, to the pout that grumbles only inches from his face. 

“Is Tamaki the person who drew on you?” Nanako asks, popping up over his shoulder and then hovering there, and Suguru quirks an eyebrow, grin splitting his lips. 

“They’re tattoos you little munchkin,” he teases, reaching behind himself to boost her up. “Not doodles.”

“But they’re technically drawings,” Nanako throws back, slung over his shoulder like a rucksack, to Megumi’s huffing snort.

“I’m gonna get some, too,” he declares, nose turned to the air and arms crossed in his baby sized, designer coat. As if, Suguru chuckles, amused.

“...Could I get my ears pierced?” He hears Mimiko ask, significantly smaller behind him, and listens to the bright hum Satoru sings, interrupted with the clomp of Tsumiki’s pounding footsteps. 

“Sure,” he says, certainly smiling that thousand watt thing of his. “Nanako, you wanna pierce your ears as well?” 

“Now wait a minute,” Suguru starts, only to be cut off in a barreling, “yes!” yelled right against his ear, lips pulling into a flat line when he’s completely outvoted. 

‘Really,’ he mouths, to Satoru’s unphased, flowery smile. A couple of Gojo military signs are flashed at him behind his back, and dear god they should really just start learning JSL or something he thinks, picking out, ‘no,’ and, ‘wait,’ and, ‘do now,’ and, ‘steady.’

‘No use in waiting,’ he translates, eyes rolling, ‘doing it now will facilitate trust.’  

Yeah, Suguru thinks, setting Nanako down as she crowds around Tsumiki with Mimiko, all three of them looking at the small package of earrings she got two months ago. They really just need to start using regular sign. The Gojo military’s proto-language is not enough to have entire conversations about the twin’s trauma impacting their ability to do things. Whatever, one of them at least will probably chicken out and maybe they’ll only have to deal with a single child panicking at the thought of a stranger coming near her with a needle. 

“Suguru, where’s your coat?” Satoru asks, trying to thumb through the closet behind the girls, lips slanted into a frown when he looks over his shoulder. “You’re going to need a new one if you lost it, which you better not have,” he grouses, pouting. “I liked you in that one the most!”

“My coat-?” Suguru starts, blinking, only to double back, suddenly remembering where on earth it’s been since the beginning of May. “Oh, that. Hold on.” 

Megumi ducks with a startled look as he pulls the void where his curses rest forward in space, unsettled clearly judging by the tense thing his fists ball into, though Tsumiki only looks mildly perturbed and the twins vaguely surprised. No wonder he forgot about it, they were a little busy with a number of much more important things to realize he’d accidentally let it get sucked in with Rainbow Dragon, much less to retrieve it.

Or, he swallows, hand closing around familiar fabric and pulling, what’s left of it.

“...Holy shit,” Satoru curses, staring at the state of pathetic fabric that used to be his nice coat. 

“Four hundred yen!” Tsumiki exclaims, a reflex at this point, but neither of them acknowledge it, too busy looking at the state of his forgotten clothing.

“Wow,” Suguru mutters, turning the thing over in his hands. It’s a wreck, desaturated as if it were bleached by the sun and worn thin, holes in places that gape wide, the smell of mildew and rot clinging to the shreds of it. Shreds is probably the wrong word though, he wonders, turning it over. It doesn’t look shredded, not by something with claws or teeth. It looks…

“Did it disintegrate?” Satoru asks, stepping closer until he’s over his shoulder, hands coming up to steal it from his own. “This thing looks unrecognizable,” he whistles, eyebrows shooting up.

“It was only in there for like a month,” Suguru mumbles, too shocked to sound put out, and watches as Satoru’s eyes narrow behind dark glasses, brows furrowing and mind turning.

“Yeah,” he responds, slowly, “but it was in there.” He looks up, something calculating in the gaze he levels at the lingering maw of miasma just barely out of human sight, still drawn close to the surface. 

“Does Tou-chan have a shadow, too?” Megumi pipes up, eyes on the same thing, even as they flicker back. “I thought- his looked like a real shadow,” he mumbles, when the both of them stand and stare, tugging at the end of his shirt even though he leans up against Suguru’s leg.

Satoru’s expression is pointed when it raises, like the words were taken right out of his mouth.

“What- no,” Suguru balks, “no, I am not-”

“Oh come on,” Satoru whines, veritably pleading as he clasps his hands together. “You have to try it. What if you can?” 

And what if he can. It rings in his ears, flooring, a giant sort of wish and an even bigger boon. The girls mutter together as he turns back to the hidden mouth of his void, probably distracted over earrings again while he feels pulled as if by a siren’s call. What if he can? Another iteration of would he do it, the phrase Satoru asked him back in first year when he had that trick hidden up his sleeve, the reprieve of his misery that had made the foul taste of it bearable. 

Swallowing thicker than before, Suguru reaches out a hand, pushing it into the nothingness between the wall and thin air, heart pounding in his rib cage. The coat was in ruin, he tries to remind himself, it’s not a hospitable environment to anything but curses, there’s no reason to get his hopes up.

Except his hand sinks, disappearing into the freezing rot of the darkness, and he has half a mind to think Satoru’s questions are very dangerous indeed, because Satoru invites the impossible in. Satoru beckons it close, croons until it’s swayed, and then he turns around and he breaks it until it’s just possible alone. 

With a harsh exhale and a scatter of liquid excitement in his veins, he opens another rift with little but an afterthought, index finger tapping against Satoru’s far shoulder entirely behind them.

Looking over his own, Suguru waves his hand in hello, grin splitting wide when Satoru’s jaw drops open. As his eyes flare wide. As he starts to vibrate in place, spilling out into hopping jumps as he whoops, hands shooting up in the air. Suguru can’t blame him, not when he does just about the same thing yanking his hand out of the plummeting cold, the prickling wrongness, the sludgy feeling of death in no space he could describe, elated even though the kids only look on at them as if they’re lunatics. 

“You’re amazing,” Satoru breathes, crushing him in a kiss, and Suguru swoons, easily swallowed whole, buzzing with energy to test their newest discovery. How lucky is he, he wonders sometimes, any time things like this happen. How lucky is he to have been loved and loved again by the man that destroyed the limits of his potential by the simple audacity of his birth.

“Gross,” Megumi complains, shoving at Satoru’s thighs when they crowd close and subsequently squish him in between them, to Tsumiki’s utterly offended admonishment.

“No!” She cries. “It’s true love. You just don’t know it when you see it ‘cause you’ve still got cooties.” Her arms cross, frown staunch, and their kiss breaks when snickers spill out of it.

Nanako laughs, hands hanging over Tsumiki’s shoulders as she points. “Megumi’s got cooties!” She crows, only to fall back when Megumi wriggles free, giddy laughter stuttering out with her steps as she runs from outstretched hands. 

“Are you really in true love?” Mimiko asks, tugging on the hems of their jackets, and Suguru stoops to swing her up into his arms. 

“Nah,” he tones, to Satoru’s giant grin, “true love has nothing on us.”

“We’re soulmates,” he explains, prim and delighted, pressing a pecking kiss to Mimiko’s cheek, easily blushing into a little smile. “Which means we’ll be together forever and ever and ever.” 

“You didn’t mention…” Tamaki trails off, eyes wide, and Suguru tries very, very hard to keep the sheepish thing out of his smile. He fails miserably, evident in the flat thing Tamaki’s expression morphs to.

“Technically,” he says, “only the twins are mine.” 

“Uh huh,” Tamaki mutters, eyes trained on where Megumi sits on Satoru’s shoulders, Nanako hanging off one arm. Mimiko and Tsumiki stand at his sides, their visible personalities varying with their differing enthusiasm to be willingly poked by needles. 

“They’re not staying long,” he promises, as Satoru greets a chirped hello and immediately gets distracted balancing Megumi’s demands to use the fancy pencils again against Nanako’s sudden one-eighty into a tense shyness. “This one was owed a late birthday present,” he explains, setting a hand atop of Tsumiki’s head, “and this one may or may not be feeling brave today.” His other rests on Mimiko’s as he speaks, unendingly fond.

“I see,” Tamaki drawls, eyes glittering. “Hi,” he says, crouching down slightly, wearing his nicest smile, the same one that eventually drew Megumi out of his frosty shell. “I’m Tanaka Tamaki. I do all of your dad’s sick tats.” 

“Hi! I’m Gojo Tsumiki!” Tsumiki beams, holding onto his wrist where he’s let them slide off onto both of their shoulders, trying to keep from rocking on her heels. “My uncles got me earrings for my birthday so I have to get my ears pierced,” she explains, bright smiles and all consuming joy, to Tamaki’s knowing nod.

“Of course,” he agrees, playful, as if Suguru doesn’t know he wholeheartedly believes that sentiment, especially when it’s made by too many piercings to count and even more visible ink. “What about you? Same reason?” 

Mimiko shakes her head, ducking closer to him, suddenly silent in the scary newness of a public place in noisy city she’s never seen, facing a person she’s never met. Suguru’s careful to keep his palm over the center of her chest, his arm an easy blockade to hide behind, the mouthed words of, ‘not personal,’ all Tamaki needs to get it when he glances up.

“Well,” he announces, hands clapping together, “I have got the perfect person for you.” 

Suguru relaxes, like gravity finally releasing. There’s a reason he likes Tamaki, and it’s always more than just because of his artwork. 

“No, it doesn’t hurt,” Satoru answers, amused as no less than all four of their ridiculous kids peer over the glass case holding multiple levels of expensive starter earrings. “It pinches, and then burns a little I guess, but it doesn’t hurt really.” 

“That kinda sounds like it hurts, Tou-ru,” Tsumiki mutters, skeptical as she and Mimiko both look up, and Satoru only raises his hands, shrugging. 

“You’ll be fine,” he promises, smoothing his palm over Tsumiki’s neatly tied back ponytail, Mimiko’s butterfly clipped fringe. “You’re tough.”

“I guess so,” Tsumiki says, after a moment of thought he’s almost entirely certain comes from each and every lesson she’s had with Shoko over the passing weekends. There is a lot to learn to being a doctor, and Shoko has never been anything less than a brutal teacher.

“I’m going to pretend that I didn’t see any of those numbers,” Suguru shudders, one hand under Megumi, tilted back against his chest as he points at a pair of metallic studs in silver, before he falters, stutters, and then and moves his tiny finger over to a more sparkly pair instead. 

Satoru snickers, hand coming up to curve around Nanako’s head when she glues herself to his back, having hopped from Suguru to him once he’d been in reach like an adorable, socially anxious leech. 

“Oh please, as if you’re not marrying me for my money,” he teases, both of the twins plastered to him, font and back. It’s not bad in the slightest save for how it makes him worry, the clench it squeezes his heart with. They’ll learn to be more comfortable around new people in time, it’s only this bad because it’s so recent, he has to rationalize. They’ll come around. This is the whole point of that- ripping the band-aid off. It isn’t like either of them can go to school if they can’t get over their fear of people.

“Oh, Mimiko, there’s amethyst starters. They’d match your eyes,” Suguru points out, catching her gaze as he gestures to the further end of the case, where the significantly higher quality but significantly more expensive shit sits. Satoru is going to laugh so hard when he sees the total price. The look on his face is going to be amazing.

“O-oh,” she squeaks, perhaps faring even worse than her sister when Nanako’s at least managed to mumble in either of their ears. He feels Tamaki’s questioning stare bore into his side again, though it isn’t pressing. Satoru knows that he knows he’ll be getting the whole scoop while he tattoos Suguru today, so he doesn’t bother. 

“You should look,” Satoru urges, giving her hair a gentle comb through, refusing to push if she doesn’t feel ready to leap. It gets dark eyes looking up at him, violet in how they seem so worried. “What,” he murmurs, tone softer, hidden under his breath, “you think we’d let anything happen to you?”

Violently, she shakes her head, ruffling up his shirt and shoving into his abdomen. Behind him, Nanako’s fist loosens slightly in his sweater.

“Most people aren’t like they were,” Satoru says, and no one has to say the name to know who they’re talking about. He doesn’t bring up Limitless or infinity for maybe the sole reason of the entire life he lived under it, once. It would be easy, maybe, but easy isn’t permanent. 

If they hide under Limitless, they’ll never want to come out of it again, and a life spent an entire, invisible universe away is a very lonely life to live. 

“We know,” Nanako hushes, but it jitters leaving her mouth. “It’s-” And then she stops, teeth shutting with a click.

“Hey, you’re already doing amazing just being here, alright?” Satoru tones, low and quiet as he shifts, twisting just enough that he can get his arm wrapped a little snugger around Nanako, pull Mimiko into his stomach further. “This is already brave. No one will be disappointed if you decide you can’t be any braver today.”

“You’re- gonna be here, right?” Nanako asks, after a choking minute goes by, Tsumiki’s silent glance back her only interaction as she stands with Suguru, pointing at different pretty studs inside the case. There’s a reflection in the hazel of her brown eyes, an understanding she’s learned herself that forces her to keep near, but not in. 

The sight of it is only fuel for a stronger resolve to spoil his kids more than he already does. Each one of them knows hardship, each one of them knows what it is to suffer. The only inconsistency between them is the how.

“Where else would I go?” Satoru hums, giving her side a squeeze, and can’t help the quiet awe he feels watching her gather her metaphorical feet beneath herself. Sometimes it’s a little mesmerizing, even through everything he’s lived himself. There’s been moments, after all, where he struggled to pick back up, to stand again, to walk after falling. To run even, so long beyond the catalyst. 

A grand settlement of two whole weeks, and Nanako’s already trying to find her footing again. It took him almost four months. 

“T-Tou-chan,” she wavers, stuttering and shaking like a leaf blown from a tree even though her fingers unhook from his sweater, even though she steps away, knees a little unsteady as she lets go. “Is- is there anything yellow?” 

Her words sound winded, panic evident in the clench of her fists, and yet she stands alone anyway, Suguru maybe a meter apart on the other side of the case, Satoru just a few inches. It may as well be a canyon. 

“Come look at these citrines,” he croons, beckoning her closer, Megumi on one hip and Tsumiki peering around his side. Maybe he really shouldn’t think about it like he does but Satoru can’t help but compare it to a toddler’s first steps, incredible and big, even stumbling and tiny as they are. 

Nanako slumps like she’s boneless after just about crashing into Suguru’s other side, having rounded the several feet of the earring case by herself in a mildly busy shop, putting a little wealth of distance between either of them, if only temporarily. 

‘Yeah,’ Satoru thinks, unimaginably proud, ‘they’ll be alright.’

Tsumiki babbles so much she doesn’t even notice she’s been pierced until the needle is in her ear. 

“Oh,” she stutters, words grinding to a halt as the technician- a wonderful girl in her last year of highschool who had immediately matched Tsumiki’s bubbly, rambling energy- fiddles the stud into the newly made hole. “Huh. That’s weird.”

“See? Told you,” Satoru gloats, holding one of her hands where she lies on the reclined studio chair, letting go as she turns to her other side per direction.

“Wait, really?” Nanako blurts, hands clapping over her mouth as soon as the exclamation leaves it, and beside her where they stand with Suguru, Mimiko seems to peer a little more out of her shell. 

“Yeah,” Tsumiki responds, eyes glinting with excitement as her right is pierced, crinkling with a slight wince. “Getting a paper cut is definitely worse.” The tech laughs, a bright snort as she threads the other earring through. 

“I’d have to agree,” she drawls, to Tsumiki’s otherworldly smile.

The gems in her studs are lab grown and pink and set in ludicrously expensive fourteen karat gold metal, because Satoru knows she has no alloy allergies and she never really wears that many cool colors. Her smile is even brighter than they are catching the studio light, baby teeth flashing loudly amid her excitement. 

“I love them!” She squeals, bouncing in place as she cups her ears. “I can’t wait to switch them out all the time!” 

It’s apparently convincing enough that neither Nanako or Mimiko chicken out. 

The most difficult part is getting them up on the chair one at a time, letting the tech get close enough to dot their ears, letting anyone else touch them at all. “Watch me,” Satoru hums, leaning close as the girl- Mari- waits to come nearer with the ink after the first, full body flinch. He gives Nanako a second to stare at him when her eyes slide away from unfamiliar hands, perplexed, before breaking it with a dorky expression that makes her giggle. 

Mari sees her chance, marker barely registered as Nanako smiles. 

It goes easier after that, when Nanako realizes that no one is going to hurt her after Mari sits and waits patiently for her to calm when she keeps fumbling her words after the marks are in place. Maybe it’s because he was her once, but Satoru recognizes it intimately- knowing throughout the whole of his head that nothing’s going to happen, to the loud, visceral disagreement of each and every cell down to the membrane.

The rambling and distraction doesn’t work a second time with Mimiko, but where Nanako got through the rest giggling at Satoru wiggling his brows at her, she just powers through. 

“It’s fine,” she murmurs, barely anything but a whistle, squeezing his hands tight, tight, tighter, until the actual needle pierces her ear. Then, she slackens, expression flattening out, almost a little disappointed it seemingly didn’t hurt at all.

Later, after Megumi abruptly decides he’ll do it when Suguru’s done with his tattoo, more excited to see Tamaki than for piercings he only wants because his sisters are getting them, Mimiko leans close to his ear. 

“That was kind of pathetic,” she whispers. “I mean…like, really?” Satoru throws his head back walking up to the register, and he laughs.

“Eighty-thousand yen-” Tamaki crows, and Suguru groans.

“Stop,” he mutters, face in his hands. 

“Like I understand spending crap like that on tattoos, people budget for those,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear, offering a fist for Megumi to bump with his own before digging around in a large, flat filing drawer for a small sketch pad and a set of quality HB pencils. “But eighty-thousand yen on impromptu piercings-?”

“I’ll haunt you,” Suguru mutters, sitting down on the regular chair next to it, “I will. I’ll slam your cabinets and everything.”

“No you won’t,” Tamaki refutes, to his loud, melodramatic sigh. 

“Look. Look okay,” he spills, rambling slightly because he’s trying to remind himself that’s not coming out of his personal bank account. “I’m marrying rich. I have a very cushy salary. I am not broke. I am not broke, Tamaki,” he hisses, swinging around a pointed finger.

“You sure?” He teases, eyebrows trying to wiggle and failing horrifically, and Suguru finally breaks into a wry sort of sheepish ire. “Lucky you, though. I don’t even know what sort of things you had to do to get a guy like Gojo.”

“Don’t even ask me,” Suguru mumbles, curling up over the velvet edge of the waiting chair, obviously thrifted from some place judging by its hilariously clashing poshness. 

Tamaki takes it in stride when he’s never really gotten a lot of time to genuinely talk to Satoru, always busy either tattooing Suguru himself or never seeing him in the first place. They fall silent for the moment as he pulls out a slightly bigger sketch pad to work on and a drafting pencil, google opened up and waiting on one of the monitors Satoru calls, ‘clunky ass old motherfuckers.’  

It’s quieter in a way not related to volume without the kids, having left with him in favor of waiting at the park nearby if they decide to only do the drawing today, as well as to get the twins some fresh air. The girls had looked adorable with their color coded earrings, purple and yellow for Mimiko and Nanako, pink for Tsumiki, all of them the several hundred yen step-up’s from the plain, silver studded starters both he and Satoru had gotten once upon a time. At the very least, they’ll look nice for the half a year they’re forced to have them in.

“So,” Tamaki asks, pencil clicking, “what are we doing today?” At his feet, predictably shuffled halfway underneath the chair like a mole, Megumi glances up from his doodles, curious. 

“I want to add two more irises to the chain on my ribs, and then separately, something to do with peaches,” Suguru explains, placid as Tamaki takes notes, “and bunnies. I’m not really sure what else.”

“Hm, okay,” Tamaki tones, words stretched out as he writes. “Just line work still?” Suguru nods, and so he looks back down to his pad of paper, thinking hard judging by the crinkle of his eyes. “Alright,” he mumbles, head ducking as he sketches out a series of thumbnails, and Suguru waits patiently as he does, thinking.

It takes him a second to place why he gravitates towards rabbits specifically when thinking of the twins, nothing forthcoming for a blank moment before the drawing Yaga did on a napkin comes buzzing back into clarity. They’d tacked it up onto the corkboard they’d gotten to hang in the kitchen by the dining table, having run out of room on their own even before it was cannibalized into a mess of red thread and insanity. 

“Give me a second,” Suguru says, and it sounds far away in his own ears as he stands, heart pounding up into a frenetic pace as he breathes a touch heavier, psyching himself up for what he knows is going to be absolutely abysmal. 

“What-?” Tamaki asks, but it’s lost in the drowning feeling of looming darkness that follows the summoning of the abyss that keeps his curses. Below the chair, Megumi gasps, flipping the paper up to hide behind even though he seems to be more excited about it than two hours earlier now that he understands it’s like him.

‘Fuck it,’ Suguru thinks, because Satoru’s only a few streets away, and he knows with an absolute sort of sureness that he’s aware of what he’s doing, maybe if for the Six Eyes or maybe for the pressure of his cursed energy. If something goes wrong, he’ll be here in a heartbeat.

Without another glance, he steps into the void.

The total amount of time he spends in it is maybe ten seconds. 

He sucks in a breath and he can’t breathe anything at all. He tries to find footing and nothing exists. Things with no name brush against him with a wrongness he can’t describe, and ice spirals on his skin. 

It’s terrifying for a long, agonizing second torn into an eternity. It’s cold and he can’t breathe and then it’s last night all over again, blood on the sheets and terror on his mind and the monster only steps away- Only, there’s a clarity to the shock, the breath being pressurized from his lungs, the knowledge that though there may be monsters here, none of them are the one he fears most. 

Then the other side he’d summoned before he’d even walked in comes whirling closer, and Suguru faceplants into the floor of the kitchen with an unceremonial smack.

He lays there for a long, shaking minute spent gasping like a fish out of water, eyes wide as the ice formed over his back and hands starts to crack and melt. ‘Holy shit,’ he thinks, shivering as much as he’s shaking, ‘holy fucking shit.’ The things in that gaping maw felt eerily close to some of the ones Satoru’s described before when Suguru asks him to talk about anything, about nothing, and he rambles about the emptiness of outer space because it’s always on his mind. 

On jittering legs, he forces himself to stand up. His footfalls falter, but he unpins the napkin Yaga drew the bunnies on, shaded to look like Mimiko and Nanako, and then hovers with locked muscles. He doesn’t want to go back in again. He does not want to go back into that abyss again. 

It would take over an hour to take the train back to Tamaki’s studio.

Groaning, head hanging, he pounds a fist on the wall, cursing the impulsivity. Why is he the impulsive one. It’s not fair. Satoru’s the idiot that eats his weight in sugar weekly and pays Mei Mei exorbitant amounts of money for forgeries of legal documents. Not him. Suguru swallows, thick and nervous, and bleeds lava into the hollows of his veins. Fine, he thinks, remembering familiar hands holding his own and adoring eyes promising him that whatever they go through, it’ll be together. And dammit, he repeats, fine. He’s been relearning how to be brave now for months. He can be brave again for a handful of seconds.

Fine. No air? He’ll hold his breath. No warmth? He’s made of it.

The nothing comes when he calls, a miasma and a curse, because nothing made from him could ever be palatable, and Suguru lines up the exit to the entry impossibly close in the same kind of infinity Limitless warps. He thinks that, maybe even with time, he could get it near infinitesimal. 

Hands blazing red, heat in the back of his throat and fire in his skin, he falls back in.

“-not fair, because I’m not your uncle! I shouldn’t have to contribute to the swear jar if I’m not- holy fucking-!” Tamaki yells, spilling off of a rolly stool as his pencil and sketch pad go flying, tipping over ass up. Megumi laughs, unadulterated and jubilant at his misfortune. 

“Shit,” he wheezes, bent in half collapsed on the floor as Suguru inhales unpoisoned air, shaking off the clutching panic of the vacuum, the terror at being lost inside a twisted representation of his own stomach. 

“Twelve hundred yen,” Megumi gloats, a sly thing in the words spoken over the edge of his borrowed sketchbook alongside his catty little smirk.

“Don’t let my toddler extort you, please,” Suguru tones, trying to be suave, evidently succeeding by the gurgle he gets, the point of a shaking index finger that flicks up into a middle almost immediately after. He snorts, and some of the tension dissolves from his taut shoulders when Tamaki barks about yokai.

They do end up getting to the actual ink that day.

“So, you think this is it?” Tamaki asks, holding up a polished image on his sketch pad he’d done in the fifteen minute break between setting up his station and Suguru corralling Megumi to the bathroom and back.

“...Yeah,” he chokes, forgetting his own voice for a moment, eyes locked on twin branches blooming peach flowers, two almost identical forest hare’s traced from Yaga’s napkin stylistically interwoven between. “Yeah, that’s it.” 

“Great,” Tamaki grins, wide and excited, “let me get this stenciled and we’ll get started.”

It goes by quick- he’s used to it all now, the sounds of the tools and the scent of the ink and the clap of black latex gloves snapping on steady hands. Used to the smell of the studio and the sound of the people and music within, the cold of the spray used to activate the stencil against his skin. It’s familiar, usual, nice. A balm to the last of his frayed nerves. 

“I wanna watch,” Megumi pouts, drawings forgotten on the floor as he crowds the edge of the padded studio chair, fingers dimpling the sanitized leather Suguru lays back on. 

“Didn’t you want to draw?” He asks, amused at Megumi’s put out huff. He’s careful as he settles, not wanting to smudge the stencil of the irises, being done first since they’re smaller than the newer one. Their stencil was already pre-made, besides.

“I did draw, now I wanna watch,” he complains, blinking big green eyes up at him as if it’ll get him what he wants, and it will, Suguru sighs, picking him up anyway as he turns on his side, elbow down and head held in his palm. It absolutely will. 

“Don’t touch,” he whispers, close against Megumi’s head, black hair tickling his nose when he nods, little fingers backing away from smudgeable purple ink.

Tamaki only laughs, rolling close on his wheeled stool, pen in hand and ready to trace. “I’ll make an apprentice out of you yet, Megums,” he gloats, gloved hand sturdy when his fingers dimple along his ribs, careful as he surveys where to start first. 

“How’s it work,” Megumi asks, hanging over his shoulder as Tamaki slowly works two more irises along the chain on his ribs, the buzz loud in the quiet of the backroom. 

“It’s a bunch of tiny, itty bitty needles,” Tamaki mutters, almost a mumble as he focuses in, the flowers made of careful lines and detail work more than anything. They won’t take longer than an hour at most, but an hour dragged out into more minutes than sixty by the hands of toothy perfectionism. “They’re like straws,” he continues, eyes fixed on his skin even though Suguru watches Megumi’s own wide eyed intrigue. “Spit ink into the dermis every time they break it.”

“Woah,” Megumi hushes, chin settling on his shoulder as he sits down, unbothered when Suguru curls an arm around his hips. “Like snake teeth?”

“Like snake teeth,” Tamaki agrees, a little grin ticking up at the corner of his lips. “Metal,” he mutters, and Suguru snorts. It’s a nice habit, he thinks, listening to the whirr of the machine and the smooth cadence of Takami’s voice. Listening and talking to a friend, even. One that he made for himself, not because of work or universal expectations or pressure. Just a friend. 

“Does it hurt?” Megumi asks, seemingly captivated, and not for the first time Suguru really begins to believe he might one day end up with ink of his own.

“Probably,” he says, poking his tongue out to the wrinkled annoyance of Megumi’s dark brows. Tamaki snickers, and for a while after, it’s meaninglessly peaceful.

The actual gossip comes once Tamaki’s set and finished the new stencil, the one of the peach tree branches and blossoms and bunnies. It fits snug over his chest, just under the hollow of his throat and spanning to the edge of each collar bone, curling against the curve of each shoulder. That, if nothing else has yet, might actually hurt.

“So, story?” He asks, batting his lashes, and Suguru rolls his eyes with a wry smile as he drapes his arms over his bare stomach. 

“It was a mission out in the boonies a few weeks ago,” he starts, fond watching Tamaki’s face fall somewhat serious as he listens, eyes drawn away as he carefully works through the tattoo, maybe only a few inches off from his face. In his lap sat on the cushy rolly stool, Megumi doesn’t bother to pretend to listen, too busy watching the bite of the pen leave lines in his skin, though only under the promise of sitting very, very still. 

“Seemed normal at first. Curse lurking around the town, residents going missing. The usual,” Suguru explains, eyes drifting up to the ceiling, contemplating. It’s freeing, on one hand, being able to tell the truth to someone not involved. It’s claustrophobic on the other, odd and off putting when he’s so used to secrecy. 

“They had two shaman kids locked up in a cellar, ones like Megumi. Thought that they were doing it, wanted us to kill ‘em.” It’s easier to tell, broken up into bite sized pieces. Small enough he won’t choke on them. He can only tell it in bite sized pieces, though. If he tries anything else, the words really will get stuck, will clam up his mouth, clog up his throat. Will choke him until he’s suffocating and uselessly retching, just to try and get a trickle of air down.

He waits a moment as Tamaki stills in his peripherals, the pen lifting away for the second he pauses. His face is slightly stricken in its blankness when Suguru looks, eyes sliding down long enough to catch the bob of his throat as he swallows.

“You’re joking,” Tamaki mutters, before shaking his head, sighing. Lifting up the pen again, the bite returning to his skin. Suguru can see in excruciating detail every line cleaving itself against his mouth, his eyes. “That’s- I don’t even know. That sounds barbaric.”

Suguru hums, noncommittal, pointedly not mentioning he wanted to kill every last person in that quaint, quiet town. Tamaki doesn’t need that information.

“Life sort of is,” he says, when the silence gets too thick, and relaxes a little more when Tamaki huffs a harsh exhale from his nose, the non-laughter wry.

“...’M dad was gonna sell me to a clan,” Megumi mumbles, piping up in the break between words, and Suguru’s eyebrows raise with the admission, impressed he seems to like Tamaki enough to want to trust him. Tamaki, however, jerks, the motion jarring in its surprise and thankfully missing needles from his skin. 

“What?” He chokes, gaze snapping down even though Megumi only glares at the wall. “Your- he- is human trafficking, like, common or something?” He asks, wincing, and in a mild warning, Suguru sets his index finger to his lips, eyes sharp in their stare. 

“Sorry,” Tamaki hushes, staring at his feet, free hand tense wrapped around Megumi’s middle. “Sorry. I just didn’t really…think about what it might mean, being a…a shaman.” He looks up, shrugging, dark eyes sheepish if not for being shadowed by a newfound sense of unease. 

“Don’t be,” Suguru says, clipped hair loose enough that he feels another strand slip out of plastic claws. “People rarely do. We’re insular for a reason.”

“...Clearly,” Tamaki mumbles, before he’s squaring his shoulders and brushing the words off, the roughened drag of careful strokes picking back up. 

“They’re cute kids,” he offers, filling the void of the kind of story no one ever really wants to hear. “Fraternal twins. Nanako’s a real chatterbox once you get her going. Mimiko’s more sneaky.” It earns him the shake of a head, a slight smile.

“So, what? You two just go around picking up children like strays now?” Tamaki asks, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. An overstep, he wants to know. Suguru just thinks it’s funny. 

“Guess you could say that,” he teases, lifting a hand to poke Megumi’s nose, sticking his tongue out when he tries to bite it, if softly. “Satoru and I have a…bet going, I guess. We’re trying to make our society better, cause it sucks, and these little terrors are sort of a large part of that.” 

He grins when Megumi finally catches his finger, grabbing his palm with tiny hands and petulantly gnawing on his knuckles like Panda. One of his teeth digs in hard, almost with a real weight of aggression to it, and his brows shoot up with the wondering thought if his baby teeth might be ready to start falling out. 

“Sounds exhausting,” Tamaki replies, mildly distracted, before his eyes are flickering up for a moment. “That’s all, though…?” He asks, hesitant like he almost doesn’t want to, but something in him dictates he must, and Suguru rolls his eyes, fond.

“No.” He grins, grabbing Megumi’s chin to gently shake it, thumbing at the canine that had dug into his knuckle when his mouth opens to complain about the manhandling. It doesn’t feel loose, he thinks, eyes narrowed. Not yet anyway. 

“Neither of us could get pregnant, you know? Obviously the next best step up from teen pregnancy was teen parenting.” His gaze is sly when he raises it to meet Tamaki’s, mirth coiling in his ribs at the incredulity on his face.

“You’re something else, Getou,” Tamaki barks, the shock sliding away into sharp laughter.

“It’s Suguru,” he says, lips ticking up into a smile. 

“So- mph!” He cuts off, words crushed against the press and drag of Satoru’s lips, air spilling between them as hands slither over his hips and yank close as if desperate. “Can I,” Suguru gasps, between a break that’s quickly rolling through another kiss, “you fucking-” 

“You’re,” Satoru pants, foreheads tilting together as they breathe hard, breath warm between them, “you’re so hot.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Suguru breathes, watching the smile blossom as it does, as Satoru’s pupils dilate like a cat’s. His grin is big and dopey to match, disappearing into another melding kiss he falls right back into because deep down, Suguru is little better than a nerd himself. 

“Show me how it works,” Satoru demands, suddenly pulling away as his entire expression dazzles like a living gemstone, bright and effervescent. “I’ve got a couple of theories.”

Despite the shiver that wants to crawl up his spine at the idea of venturing back into the little frigid hell of his metaphysical stomach, Suguru only sighs and complies. The world feels balmy, almost warm with the beginning of June as they step outside onto the back patio, fusuma and shoji doors pulled halfway open. Soon, Megumi and Tsumiki will be on summer break and they’ll get a vacation from waking up at the crack of dawn.

‘As if,’ Suguru snorts, leading Satoru further out into the yard, settling the swarming in the pit of his stomach from nerves and curses alike. 

“It’s…kind of unpleasant,” he hedges, beginning with a shy look thrown over his shoulder, to a curious hum. “There’s no air in it, and it’s freezing- like, a kind of cold I’ve never actually felt before, freezing?” Suguru tries, wincing, stilted as he tries to put to words the deep unease each and every piece of his innate technique gives him.

“...Huh,” Satoru breathes, eyes staring at nothing as the gears in his mind turn relentlessly, already picking apart what Suguru can’t even begin to fathom. “Open it. I want to see for myself,” he says, a moment later spent thinking hard in patient silence. Suguru shrugs, inhaling deep as he stares up at the sky and tries not to compare their equally abysmal luck. 

The nothing comes easily as ever, despite a lack of curses hiding within it. It’s just dark miasma, shivery abyss, a portal that’s visible but not, intangible but real. 

Stepping around him, Satoru puts a hand out, fingertips brushing through black smoke before pushing at it. He makes a noise as his arm disappears, eyes brightening with a solved mystery as he turns. 

“I’m sticking my head in,” he announces, and Suguru only has half a second to thank god and above that it wasn’t a raunchy joke for once before white hair is vanishing, as well. 

He waits for one beat, two, three, and then just as he starts to get nervous, Satoru yanks himself out of his falsified doorway with a loud gasp. “Holy shit,” he giggles, grin spread wide and ice in his delicate lashes. Two hands grab his shoulders and violently rattle him. “Holy shit, Suguru! You have the Nether in your back pocket!”

“The what,” he asks, cascading back and forth, not entirely sure he wants to know save the excitement Satoru radiates like the warmth of the sun, just enough to make him sorely reconsider. He’d do a lot of things to keep that look forever fixed on his pretty face. 

“Your technique is so fucking cool,” Satoru whipsers, and then his pocket dimension is rippling closed as he’s distracted by a slippery tongue shoving up against his own. If nothing else, though maybe it’s closer to disturbia than anything to him, Satoru loves it, and Satoru can love anything enough for the both of them. So, Suguru never feels quite so wrong held safe in the palms of his hands.

“It’s anoxic, first of all,” Satoru explains, rambling into a hurricane of words as he scribbles out notes on a pad of paper. “So no oxygen, and then what I think is really interesting is that it’s cold, specifically.” 

“Why that?” Suguru wonders, sprawled at his feet, forehead knocked against scarred hip. The second he’d laid down, all the tired had come racing to catch up. 

“Cold isn’t real,” Satoru replies, as if that makes any godforsaken sense, “so naturally I’d assume that it’s somewhere on the kelvin scale, especially if it’s a vacuum like I think-”

“What,” Suguru mumbles, lost in the barrage of words he doesn’t know the meanings to, feeling very much like he’s listening to Shoko go on another tangent about some medication or another. Satoru glances down at him, a look of amused pity biting down into his lower lip, eyes crinkled in mirth. 

“Cold is the absence of heat,” he murmurs, hand leaving his notes to gently stroke through his bangs instead, fingers playful as they pull featherlight along strands of hair. “And heat is energy. Cold, therefore, lacks energy.” Suguru hums, though his eyelids only droop further in turn. Today wasn’t exhausting, really, it’s just that he’s still tired from last night, and Satoru is a balm along the edges of his fraying soul. Soothing, in each calming pet and the lull of his voice. 

“Which means that your technique is specifically designed to contain your curses, likely by making them completely immobile down to their atoms,” Satoru continues, the explanation quiet where they sit in the dojo, the shoji doors still parted to let in the warm breeze of the coming summer. “It’s like a primordial refrigerator,” he snickers, soft in the lateness of the evening. 

Suguru would laugh at that comparison, but as it is, he’s already slipping. His eyes shut, he tries to open his mouth to reply, only for his lips to fall slack as limber fingers scatter along his scalp. 

“You really are infinite,” Satoru murmurs, the words nearly lost to the draw of sleep, “just like me.” He doesn’t think he dreams the reverence in them.

“You’re amazing, don’t you know that?” Satoru whispers, endlessly fond staring down at Suguru’s face, laxened in sleep. He isn’t surprised he’s collapsed so easily, not when he spent most of last night awake, and what little he was asleep bogged down in dreams. “Everything about you is amazing.”

He’s sure that even if he was awake, Suguru wouldn’t agree. 

The nature of his technique hasn’t ever been once he’s liked, or found solace in, or even been comfortable with. That alone was why Satoru had worked so hard to get him those special grades as quickly as he could. Watching Suguru suffer would have been enough fuel on its own, but knowing where that suffering would inevitably lead had been worse. 

Maybe it’d led them to compare in another world, they never bother in this one. Suguru’s technique is worse in one way, Satoru’s is in another. The touch of Midas or no touch at all. Who’s to say which is more unbearable. 

“You’ll be okay with it, someday,” he finds himself promising, stroking his fingers through thick, inky hair, spilled out into an oil slick along the floor. “I know you will.” And he believes it, he really does.

Suguru’s skillset is incredible, he’d meant that, because Satoru had taken one choked breath inside the pocket dimension that holds all of Suguru’s unending curses, and had a massive revelation. 

He’d always sort of wondered how it worked, always sort of spent thoughts and time turning it over and around, never with any concrete findings or answers, but plenty of guesses. Some of them, Satoru is disgustingly giddy to find, were actually right.

The rancid, inhospitable environment will make using Suguru’s curse dimension in the way Megumi uses his shadow impossible to a degree, but that isn’t the point. Having a waypoint like his own is all they really need. Being able to miraculously appear anywhere at any time is the greatest boon they could ever ask after. Nevermind the eerie resemblance it has to absolute zero, affecting his skin but not his clothing; or the anoxic atmosphere, devoid and yet full; or the fact that he’d say it lacks gravity if he didn’t recognize a focal point when he sees one. 

Satoru grins, wide and elated. 

‘Imagine carrying literal fucking space in your back pocket,’ he thinks, nearly vibrating in excitement. ‘God that’s so cool.’  

At his hip, Suguru slips slightly, head thunking down onto the tatami, and Satoru winces. His thoughts are neatly packed and boxed up for later as he shifts onto his knees, arms full as he gathers Suguru up, pressing a faint kiss to the side of his neck as he leaves the dojo. Pulling the shoji doors shut with a curl of blue, the fusuma follow after, nothing but a faint snick to signify that they have.

He has a theory based on that tattered coat, god his favorite stupid coat of Suguru’s, because it had hugged his arms so nicely, what a waste- one that’s only amplified by the fact that ice had settled on his skin but not on his clothing. 

Suguru’s weight dips their mattress when he lays him down, shuffling as soon as he’s touched the pillows, arms circling around one and nose shoving close. ‘Cute,’ Satoru thinks, and leaves for only a moment to grab a brush. Suguru hates waking up with tangles.

Maybe, just maybe if they’re really, really lucky, the space of his endless abyss won’t affect living things the same as it does the inanimate. Maybe, Satoru reasons, sitting back down on the edge of their bed, gently combing through messy locks of black, objects will be able to be passed through it with no effect for a short amount of time. 

‘You have no idea,’ he thinks, leaning down to press a kiss to the back of Suguru’s neck before pulling the blanket up over his shoulders, ‘just how special you are.’

Instead of sleeping, he spends hours writing Shoko a new paper.

Chapter Text

On the kids’ second to last day of school, they get a call to the house phone.

‘That’s weird,’ Suguru frowns, ‘I thought we only gave the number to-’

“Suguru!” His mom crows, and hiding the shiver that crawls through him like a livewire, Suguru does his best imitation of a smile.

“Hi, Mom,” he grits, and hopes to all that is holy and not it doesn’t sound forced. 

On the other end of the kitchen, Satoru shoots him a look- one eyebrow raised, head tilted, a cautious frown on his lips. Frantically, Suguru shakes a flat palm in the air along with his head, and watches the shrug he gets for it and the flip of another potato pancake in a mild sort of relief. Behind him, the sound of Megumi and Tsumiki shoveling in their plates as fast as humanly possible in between bickering with the twins is loud, especially so when they’re about to be several minutes late getting out the door.

“What have you been up to? I know you said your job hasn’t been all that exciting recently but there has to be something,” Emiko continues, and Suguru stares at the wall for a long moment as she talks before his brain catches up.

‘Jobs,’ he thinks, palm dragging down his face, ‘right.’

“Oh, you know, same old,” he croaks, and manages to bullshit something about Ijichi spilling coffee all over their boss- a true story, fact checked by Haibara Yu and glorified by one Ieiri Shoko. Word is, Yaga had just sighed, to Ijichi’s crippling mortification.

Suguru stands there, twirling the phone cord around one finger and half heartedly making conversation with his mother as Satoru cleans up the kitchen and ushers the kids out the door. He watches them scamper out into the front hall, weathering Tsumiki’s hug with a simple pat to her head and a silently blown kiss, wondering slightly.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to his mother. He loves her, through everything his childhood and beyond had been, he does. But…

“And you know Isamu, he just hasn’t been able to get his head out of his office long enough for dinner with this new project of his!” Emiko laughs, and Suguru chuckles weakly, thoughts turning to his father and how his job as a structural engineer, while well paying, has always kept him busy in his books. “I know you’re all grown and independent now, but I still miss you, pumpkin.” She sighs, forlorn and staticky over the landline. “You know we still keep that silly photo of you and Satoru on the fridge? I never had the heart to take it down.”

“Oh,” he says, and then, “that’s nice, Mom.” It is. He remembers that silly photo, one of him and Satoru back when they’d still been fifteen, glued at the hip together on their second winter break. They’d made mooncakes to celebrate a belated mid-autumn festival, since Suguru had been up at the school during September, even though Isamu had said it was perfectly fine and not to bother. 

Satoru had tried to fit an entire cake in his mouth, and then turned to him, cheeks puffed like a gerbil. Suguru had only heard the shutter go off when he’d balked into a laugh.

“Are you alright, sweetie? You sound a little out of it,” Emiko pokes, worry in the easy words, and Suguru fumbles to shove some of the emotion back into his voice he’s been missing since he picked up the phone and heard her own.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine it’s just- busy. You know.” It sounds like a weak excuse, even to his own ears. Is he alright, Suguru wants to scoff, how funny. Is he alright talking to his mother, a woman he loves and yet the same woman who had made his childhood a living nightmare? Suddenly, sickeningly, he doesn’t think he knows anymore. 

‘Am I a terrible person for this?’ He wonders, head thunking against the wall even as Satoru’s footsteps come closer with the resounding sound of the front door shutting. Mimiko and Nanako still sit eating and talking at the table, torrid reminders for everything he’s been steadily burying when rescuing them dug it all right back up. It’s been a while since he talked to his parents. In that while, he’s had a lot of time to think about them.

They have no idea they have grandchildren, and he’d thought, maybe selfishly or stupidly, he’d get to keep them to himself for a while longer. Because there’s only one reason his mother’s calling, he knows. 

“Well,” she trills, a sly thing creeping into her voice, “how about a vacation? Isamu and I already bought the train tickets! We were going to surprise you two next weekend, but he insisted I call first.” She laughs, like it’s funny, like Suguru doesn’t have ice pooling into the pit of his stomach. 

“That’s great,” he chokes, staring at his feet where they disappear into slippers. “When are you coming?” He feels lightheaded, as if he’s floating away into the stratosphere. 

“We were thinking next weekend, since you said you don’t work those, usually?” And fuck, he did say that. “I actually have it off for once, and Isamu is finishing up his contractor that Thursday.” His mom sounds so hopeful, asking in a demand of a surprise to come see him when the last time she did it was months ago. Almost six, now. Half of an entire year, fallen like sand through her fingers. He’s not even nineteen years old, yet.

“Just, tell me the time your train gets in when you leave,” he hears himself say, the words summoned by nothing he thinks and spilling off his tongue like lies. “So Satoru can come and pick you guys up.”

“Of course,” Emiko laughs, like it’s funny, like she’s not about to put their entire life through a massive upheaval. Like Suguru isn’t about to be sick all over his nice slippers. “Ah- my pot’s boiling over, I’ll call you back later, alright? Love you!”

The phone clicks, and then whirrs, static in his ears as the call disconnects. Suguru stares at the wall.

“...Suguru?” Satoru asks, hand setting delicately on his shoulder, and the shiver returns tenfold. Mimiko and Nanako have gone quiet, sat at the table with mostly cleared plates, quietly watching them. Waiting.

“I’m- gonna be sick,” he mumbles, faint, before he’s wrenching away from Satoru and stumbling for the sink, heaving up the tea he drank and the fruit he’d eaten maybe ten minutes before. None of it’s even digested yet. 

Above him, having followed much slower, Satoru strokes a hand down his back, and Suguru refuses to look at his face. He knows he heard. He knows exactly what he heard. 

He loves his parents, loves his father and his mother. Love doesn’t erase the sickened thing curling in the bottom of his stomach next to all of his writhing curses, though. Doesn’t erase nights spent spilling acidic memories to waiting ears and days spent watching fear uncoil in place of calm in little faces and littler hands. Love doesn’t erase a life he lived once, wishing that anyone, anything would save him, too. There’s a parenthood of his own sitting at the tips of his fingers for it, and an ugly truth to be found that better exists. 

That better has always existed, and he just didn’t have it.

“Who was that?” Nanako asks, breakfast forgotten in front of her as Satoru leaves Suguru to clear their plates, slumped miserably over the sink. His smile feels more like a wince than a smile when he answers. 

“That was Suguru’s mom, your grandmother,” he answers, trying to muster up something cheerful. Mimiko gives him a wary side eye, gaze slinking away from him to Suguru’s pathetic slump, and then back again. “Yeah okay, so it’s a little complicated,” Satoru admits, to Nanako’s tentative smile.

“...We’re all kinda- complicated,” she tries, “right?” Her eyes are wide, worried, maybe, but hopeful too.

“Yes,” Satoru huffs, and stacks the plates in his arms to ruffle up her short hair. “A merry little band of misfits. Me included.” The toss of his hair and the haughty sniff he simpers with makes them giggle, even though the worry remains. “Go brush your teeth!” He calls as he turns on a heel, partially to get them out and partially because he’s trying to be a responsible adult. “Or no tea party today!” 

“Going!” Nanako jolts, hustling to get out of her chair even though Mimiko follows much slower. 

“...Things are going to be fine?” She asks, hesitating to duck out of the doorway, and Satoru softens as he sets the dishes on the counter. 

“Of course,” he promises, stooping closer in a handful of strides. “It’s not that kind of complicated. Suguru’s parents are good people.” His hand is large when he sets it on her head, knelt down in front of her, watching violet eyes watch him. 

“Good people can be complicated too, though,” Mimiko mutters, and Satoru sighs, tilting her chin up and he searches for words to say, inevitably only coming up empty. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, thumbing over her cheek, letting go to brush a few strands of hair behind her ear. “But they’re in the middle of fixing things that used to be broken, so there’s nothing you have to worry about. No one is going to take you away, okay?” 

Mimiko tenses then, and he knows he hit it on the head. “Okay,” she whispers, lower lip bitten and big eyes less fearful than before, stepping close into a hug Satoru willingly gives, squeezing her tight for a long moment. 

“Go brush your teeth,” he chides, though gently, giving her a small push out the door when she lets go. “Give Tou-chan and I a minute to talk, okay?” 

Mimiko’s eyes narrow, but it’s from a smile more than a frown, a knowing look in them no eight year old should be able to possess, and yet she does anyway. “Thanks for breakfast,” she says, and then she’s pacing away, following after Nanako with no doubt every intention of playing mole. 

Well, he sighs, good, because that is technically exactly what he wants. ‘I must have been a saint in a past life to deserve such good kids,’ Satoru thinks, wry, and it’s funny enough it makes the corners of his lips curl up, even when he turns back to Suguru- melted into his own little puddle of misery.

“Don’t even start,” said puddle rasps, head in his arms on the kitchen counter. 

“I didn’t say anything!” Satoru sputters, and it earns him a weakened, wheezy chuckle. “Really, Suguru,” he continues, sidling closer, smoothing a palm down long, dark hair. “It’s gonna be okay-”

“Okay?” Suguru barks, head jerking up, a put out snarl of a scowl on his face, contorting his lips into harshened lines and his eyes into sharpened slivers. “Okay?! Mom flipped when she found out we bought a house. She’s gonna explode when she finds out we bought living, breathing children,” he hisses, eyes piercing as he glares, panic turning him prickly. 

A darkened chuckle worms its way out of his throat as Suguru slinks back up, supporting himself with palms flat on the counter even as one rakes through his loose hair. 

“Okay,” he mutters, sardonic smile melting into something pained, “that’s fucking hilarious, Satoru.”

“So it’s going to be a gigantic fucking mess,” Satoru caves, agreeing because he knows it’s true. “We’ll deal with it together.” He says nothing more than that as he places one hand on the counter, edging it closer to Suguru’s own until he can nudge his pinky. 

“I know,” Suguru whispers, roughened. “I just- I thought I had dealt with it all, you know?” And god, Satoru does. He swallows thickly when dark eyes finally find his own, darker head turning to look at him, gaze a little wet and a whole lot helpless. “I thought that maybe taking in Tsumiki and Megumi helped it.” He laughs again, pained and wry, pinky threading into his own and too hot hand sliding down a face warmed to copper. 

“I’m such a fucking idiot, Satoru,” Suguru whispers, staring out of the window over the sink, so lost sounding for a moment, Satoru forgets that he isn’t lost, too. 

“...It’s not like I got better overnight,” he murmurs, catching one dark eye when it flickers up, watery and red at the edges. “These things take time.” 

“It was better, though,” Suguru admits, wretched into the empty bowls and plates of dirty dishes. “It was starting to get better and then, and then it all fell apart again.” 

Before the twins, he means, probably the day Satoru came home after seeing Akemi, and the weight of the air between them changed. After them too, he knows. It was only after them that the heavy thing playing piggyback on their shoulders started to fracture again, to twist, to re-warp into that broken shape it had been and then was starting to uncoil from. They’re only mortal. It’s perhaps the most terrifying concept on earth.

“So did I,” Satoru promises, squeezing Suguru’s pinky as they stand together, hip to hip, panicking over a very near future. “And we’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” He doesn’t let his voice waver when he says it, because it’s true that he believes it but it’s also true that he’s a little scared. 

They’ve been living a very different life in the past five months from the one Getou Emiko and Getou Isamu left them in. He’s not entirely sure if they’re going to want to be a part of it still when they find out.

The rest of the week is nothing short of a nightmare.

“Of course I’ll pick the kids up from school,” Shoko scoffs, arms crossed and affronted he’d even had to ask when Satoru does. “Who do you take me for? I’m the best aunt in the entire world, thank you very much.” She sniffs, haughty, and then guffaws for a good minute or two while the both of them praise her laurels. 

Explaining it to the kids is harder, because they’re just kids, even though they’ve all gone through way too much for their ages. Surprisingly, Nanako and Mimiko take it well considering, curious to see Tokyo’s tech college, and Megumi turns out to be the stickler. He pitches a giant fit about getting booted to Shoko’s care for an unknown number of hours Thursday afternoon, up until Shoko pretends to be offended, and then and only then does he calm down and kick at the floor with a socked foot. Complacent, if not happy about it. Only Tsumiki is.

Suguru can’t blame him. They don’t know if the kids will be shooed off with Shoko through Friday or not, considering it depends on his parent’s reactions to…all of it, which for the moment at least impacts their weekend, and at minimum Megumi’s grouchiness for missing even part of it. Saturday’s are usually the best days of the week, because they try their hardest to get the day off completely, and the mornings are lazy and unhurried. Calm enough, even, that he’s been pestering Satoru to look into getting a TV for the living room so the kids can watch cartoons. 

‘You just want to rewatch Akira again,’ Satoru had teased, to Suguru’s shrug and stuck out tongue, forever attached to his endless, ever-going reruns played relentlessly on cable television. Neither of them ever mention the reason he’s so attached aloud.

“So…game plan?” Shoko asks, Wednesday evening spent frantically cleaning up the house, sat on the couch with Megumi in her lap, Panda in Satoru’s. He makes a face. 

“Be normal,” Suguru mutters, manically sweeping by with a dust cloth, “be so, totally normal.” Tsumiki laughs, loud and hard at that, and earns herself a dust cloth flicked in her face. 

The kids leave for school the next morning to be picked up by her after, laden with many promises that they’ll see each other Saturday morning at the very latest, and that things will be fine, and not to get on her nerves too badly. Alone, they don’t explicitly talk about it, cleaning like mad men, careful not to leave a single toy or childlike item in sight to kickstart a war before they can quell one. Making everything normal, so very, very normal.

Suguru’s almost glad that they’re not with them for the coming day, even if he’s missing out on watching Shoko ultimately dump the responsibilities of looking after them on Utahime. They have no idea what normal means. They have no idea how painful it truly is.

They stand shoulder to shoulder on the platform of Tokyo’s main train station, fidgeting in silence. 

Suguru sniffs, Satoru reshuffles. People mill about, unbothered with them and the fact that they’re paying for parking by the hour at the meter. It’s expensive, Suguru grumbles, even though Satoru doesn’t care about a measly few hundred yen. 

“...This is awkward right-” Suguru finally starts, breaking the silence, and Satoru interrupts him with a groan before he can finish the sentence.

“So awkward,” he complains, and then they’re silent again, soaking in the thing neither of them will call misery because honestly, it’s probably closer to some potent concoction of anxiety, disgust, and the feeling of being caught red handed walking away from a murder scene. All of it can very eloquently summed up by one four lettered word named fuck.

“Satoru,” Suguru muses, hands in his pockets and wearing a masquerade of relaxed posture, “is it too late to change our names and move to the countryside.”

“You used to live in the countryside,” he retorts, watching the train pull up onto the tracks, grinding out a halt with a mechanical squeal, sleek and shiny and not at all the kind of bullet train he’d learned to get used to. “You hate the countryside.”

“Nuh uh,” Suguru mumbles, “I love the countryside. I could be a- potato farmer. Or something.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to kill me and make off with my bank account?” He asks, tugging aimlessly at one piercing, four sitting shiny and itchy in his ears. He forgot to wear any for the past few weeks, so the little gemstone hoops he put in caught on the edges of the holes and now they feel irritated.

“Well, yeah,” Suguru agrees, maudlin as he sighs. “But then I wouldn’t know which stocks to buy. How am I supposed to cheat the financial sector without my time traveler?” Satoru finally chuckles, a snicker hidden behind teeth locked into a grin, and when he looks, there’s a curl of amusement in Suguru’s eyes, ringed with stress. 

“It won’t be that bad,” he promises, and watches as that gentled stare sinks into stone. “Fine,” Satoru admits, puffing out a huge exhale with rounded cheeks. “This is going to fucking suck.”

They both stand there in the crowd, waving, wearing fake, fake smiles when Isamu and Emiko appear between the thick of the people milling place to place. Their luggage is light, just a suitcase each for a trip that shouldn’t be longer than three days, and Satoru wonders if it’ll end up staying three days at all.

Suitcases left in the car borrowed, not stolen from the school, they go to a cafe first. 

“It is not procrastination,” Suguru hisses, elbowing him as they putter to a table, silently arguing as they jostle. 

“Is so,” Satoru spits back, and then the both of them straighten like Yaga whacked them with a ruler when Emiko sighs, “boys,” with a contrite thing stretched into her voice.

“Suguru, did your hair get longer?” Isamu asks, when they’re all sat and waiting on lunch, breaking the stuffy sort of silence that’s settled after the chastisement.

“Oh, yeah, it uh…it did,” Suguru fumbles, face flushing with inhuman heat, clearly thinking of what actually happened and yet being unable to say.

“I like how you’re styling it,” Isamu continues, either unbothered or undeterred by the stiltedness of the sad, sad conversation, and Satoru’s estimation of the poor man ticks up by another ten degrees. “It suits you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Suguru mutters, and it’s genuine, if quieter than it should be. 

The silence that blankets again is beyond unpleasant, Satoru thinks, a smile copy-pasted onto his face and unwavering as he sits and shreds a napkin in his lap, sorely wishing for the blindfold. ‘Maybe that idiot had a point,’ he thinks, sure if it was some shitty shoujo manga where he was meeting the parents for the first time, there’d be a single, sparkling tear trickling down his cheek. Monkeys, such an uncouth insult. God it would be so much easier to have in-laws that were sorcerers. 

“So!” Emiko blurts, clearly tense. “How’s work been?” She tries, leaning over the small table on the patio of a quaint cafe, smile just a touch forced. Without a word, Satoru leans over and takes a sip from his water. The ice clinking in his cup is the loudest thing at the table.

“Fine,” Suguru says, and he jumps with a loud, jostling bang to the tabletop when rose thorned fingers slither down onto his inner thigh, grab, and squeeze. 

“Busy!” Satoru squeaks, choking on the water he’d drank, face reddening in an effort not to cough. Under the table, he gives Suguru’s shin a nice hard slam with his dress shoe’s heel. 

“Very busy,” he rasps after, smile a little wobbly. “Uh, there was actually a whole- thing. The uh, the CEO got replaced. Did I tell you that? I don’t think I told you that.” Satoru laughs, the sound tittering and nervous riling up against the memory of killing Elder Kaito, and then he quiets, lips zipping shut when everyone only stares.

Beside him, Suguru feels about as stable as a pressure cooker, judging on the twitch of one dark eye that refuses to look at him. If Satoru didn’t know better, he’d say steam was trickling out of his ears. As it is, it’s only a trick of the light. Hopefully. Serves him right for inadvertently bringing up the shit they did to Kaito, he supposes.

“...Okay,” Emiko sighs, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose when none of them say anything. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Suguru barks, reeling back like he’s offended, and Emiko only rolls her eyes, red lips shifting into a purse. “Mom-!”

“Oh dear,” Isamu mumbles, placid as he sips at his latte. 

“Something is clearly going on! I mean look at you, you’re about as tense as a board!” She exclaims, hands throwing up into the air, to Suguru’s elbows thunking down onto the metal table with a clang, hands clamped to his head.

“What, am I not allowed to be tense now?” He seethes, reeling, fingers violently scrubbing his hair back. When Satoru meets Isamu’s eyes, he’s only greeted by two, dark eyebrows raising very, very slowly. 

“I thought we were done with the white lies, Suguru,” Emiko jabs, palm slamming down on the table top. “Didn’t we already go through this? No one can help you if you don’t say what’s wrong-!”

“Nothing is wrong!” Suguru yells, practically tearing at his hair. 

“...Um,” the server squeaks, a tray filled with their lunch held in her arms. “I can come back later?” 

They eat in silence.

“This is unbelievable,” Emiko gripes shoving into the house, fuming a black cloud for all that she’s not the one with Jougo’s technique. “I can’t believe you. We just wanted to give you a nice surprise and this is how we’re greeted-?”

“A surprise?” Suguru hisses, hands flying wide and whole face rigid in a scowl as he blows right past Satoru and his father to follow her, so caught up in the plume of anger he barely registers to hold onto his temperature. “You call dumping an impromptu visit on us a nice surprise?”

“I haven’t seen you in half a year!” Emiko spits, whirling on her low heels as she points, tapping him square in the chest for all that Suguru has almost a foot and a half of height on her now. “Sue me for thinking it might be appreciated!”

“Maybe if you called me about it first!” Suguru blusters, smacking her hand away with his own, feeling the heat of flame at the back of his throat. “I’m not your fucking child anymore- you can’t just dump your plans on me! I’ve got a life of my own!”

His mother reels, face twisting in an ugly sort of emotion as her red lips dimple with a familiar sort of fury. Her hair swishes as she scoffs, black as ink and where he gets his from. Her eyes are sharp when they narrow.

“Not my fucking child?” She repeats, slow and utterly, abysmally offended. Suguru has enough dignity to wince, knowing well enough he’s just misstepped pretty harshly. “Who raised you to speak to me like that? Who raised you at all?” 

“You did, Mom,” Suguru mutters, dragging a hand down his face as Emiko makes another scoffing noise, madder than the last. He thinks harshly and bitterly that it was absolutely her.

“Clearly not! I mean, what the hell, Suguru?” She crosses her arms, leaning back on one leg, brows knit down in a deepend valley. She gives him a look over, one up and down, fuming. “You haven’t been like this in years-”

“Been like?” He hisses, only absently hearing Satoru audibly wince behind him, eyes flaring as he latches onto that part of the sentence and that part only. “Been like what, Mom?” He asks, looming over her as close as he dares, squeezed fists just begging to light into sparks. 

There’s a guilt that gnaws at him seeing Emiko’s face immediately freeze, a spark of genuine regret or fear or both in the flinch of her eyes pulled tight. Except that, just like he’s always remembered, Getou Emiko pulls herself together flawlessly and without struggle, easily holding herself steady to meet him right where he stands, boiling.

“Angry, I’d say,” she says, steel in the fibers of her voice, and he knows without having to ask that she means his person, and not his current emotion. “It’s almost odd. I haven’t seen this Suguru since before two-thousand and six.”

The year he met Satoru, she means, but which neither of them will say.

She is right, and beneath the impulsivity trying to get his tongue to lash freely, he knows she is. He was angry as a kid, but with a certain right to be for all the shit he was put through. For a shortened second, he wonders if she looks at him stood before her in the foyer of their new home and only sees a Suguru that is fourteen years old, clutching an empty pill bottle and as desperate as he’s ever been. Wonders if she sees him, burner turned on high, and understands that it’s her own fault.

“Maybe,” he grits, struggling to keep his tone level, “it’s because you haven’t seen me much at all since then.” His hands twitch. One sparks. Behind him, his father draws in a sharp breath.

His mother stares him down, the corner of one lip jolting just enough to clue him into her actual emotions, her face slated in stone. Her nose flares, frown thinning in an effort to hide her only tell, dark eyes shiny with hurt and anger alike. They never once really talked about it. Not in any winter or spring or summer break he went home, and pretended to be fine. Why would he have? Back then, he was fine.

“Alright,” Emiko mutters, lifting her chin as she forcibly shutters away. Her shoulders set back, and maybe he’s grown taller, she feels bigger than him. “You want to play this game, Suguru? We’ll play this game.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me-” Suguru breathes, only to stop, sighing something explosive as he turns away from her, stomach twisting violently. He raises a hand when Emiko makes to bark something snappish at him, feeling his eyes burn in a way that has nothing to do with flames.

It’s not Nanako and Mimiko’s fault that it’s all catching up to him. It’s not Tsumiki or Megumi’s, either. Except, now, he has spent almost half a year trying his best to raise them, and not once in any of those months has he ever succumbed to his own frustration when he’s mad with them. Every time he tries, he reminds himself that they’re just kids, and decides not to.

Never, he thinks, heart splitting in two, would he say something so callous to them.

“How the hell can you say that?” He admonishes, fighting to keep the anger from showing up in flowers and flames, unable to keep from spinning back to face her in a burning glare. “What’s so wrong with you that your first instinct is to blame me?!”

“What’s wrong with me?” Emiko spits back, hackles raising high as they only spark each other worse, and Suguru can’t help it when he flinches at the sound of her bitter, barking laugh. “Me? I tried everything to help you, Suguru! Fucking sue me if I’m not perfect- I just wanted to make it better!”

“You can’t!” He shouts, lips jagged enough in his snarl to show the flushed gums above his teeth as the words rip from his tongue. “You fucking can’t! You’ve never understood that! It’s not something you can just fix!”

“Only because you’d never let us-!” His mother throws back, the pitch of her voice rising as her volume picks up to match his, and Suguru loves her, loves her so much, but he hates her, too.

“You can’t fucking fix what you can’t see!” He shrieks, and the flowers finally slip from his control, blooming and spilling down his hair in swathes of reddened spider lilies. Emiko jerks, all her anger smearing away in an instant in favor of a sharp sense of shock, her dark eyes wide, red lips parted with something like fear. 

“You never fixed me because you never knew me!” Suguru continues, the curl of a sob hiding in the arc of his straining voice as it fills the room like a whip crack, the heat of a fire brewing in the pit of his stomach. “You have no idea who I am, what I am!” He yells, hating the way the tears spill over, sizzling away into steam as soon as they tip over the lip of his waterlines. 

“My problems would kill you! My problems are monsters! And you know what?” He laughs, but it sounds more like a sob as he stares at her, struck speechless for the first time since he was fourteen years old.

“I’m a monster too,” he says, the breath in his sternum wavering with the clench of his teeth to hold back tears he can’t keep from falling. One of his mother’s manicured hands raises to cover her mouth, her second following soon after, and she shakes her head in a tiny movement, eyes still so wide. So focused on her, he doesn’t bother to remember his father standing in the foyer behind him, Satoru beside him. All he sees is her.

“You have no idea who I am,” Suguru confesses. The truth is featherlight leaving his lips, heavier than steel as it sinks into the air between them. Another spider lily falls from the ends of his hair, joining the steady growing pile at his feet. This is a death, he thinks. The death of the son she thought she knew, the death of the stranger Suguru shed three years ago.

“Suguru,” she whispers, stark. “Suguru, I- we can- it’s…” She trails off, eyes roaming over him like she’s never seen him before. “We can find a way to deal with this,” she promises, terrified, and something fragile hiding away in his heart finally breaks.

His face twists, pinching as the pain overflows to the point he can’t bear it, and so he turns. 

“Suguru-!” His mother calls, urgent as she reaches out to grab him when he only turns on his heel and makes to walk away.

“I don’t want to hear it! Just leave me alone!” Suguru shouts, not proud when his voice breaks, stuck on the concept of better sitting woozy in his head. He hears Satoru move just behind him, feels it like a blow to the stomach when the sound of a palm circling flesh caresses his ears. It’s not at all like Kenjaku. It’s soft, instead. 

“Let him go,” Satoru murmurs, steel behind the unassuming wool in his voice, and Suguru is grateful even as he storms away.

Their bedroom door is loud slamming shut, loud slamming all the sights and sounds of the living room out from his vision. It does nothing to hide the sound of of his stuttering inhales though, so he snuffs them out by himself. Doesn’t let his head make noise thunking back onto the wood of the door. Doesn’t let any noise escape as his lips break into a sob. 

It makes a lot of sense now, why he’d been so miserable after he’d given up playing silent, obedient wraith. Once he’d finally let himself snap and spit into angry, destructive demon. How many fights had there been, how much yelling, how many chances for her to look past the fact that he was angry and try to understand why? 

How many times had his mother looked at him when he was hurting, Suguru wonders, and hadn’t had enough empathy to bother to learn the reason? Why, he wants to wonder, why does she look at him in the rawest sort of truth he can possibly manage, and think it’s something wrong? Why can’t she just look at him and love him the way he is.

Maybe becoming a parent himself was the worst decision he could have made, because now, he can’t look at his own the same.

Chapter Text

The slam of the door is like an echo ringing in his ears, and Satoru sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face as he lets go of Emiko’s wrist. Her eyes follow him as he moves, something shocked flaring them wide and slightly cautious.

‘Suguru was right,’ he thinks, maudlin breezing past her to pick up the small flower vase on one of the shelves that fell when the door was yanked shut. ‘This does fucking suck.’

Thank god the kids are with Shoko. This would have set Tsumiki back by months.

“So,” he starts, quiet in the sudden silence. Satoru stares at the vase, hesitating in setting it down. Tsumiki picked the flowers, but Suguru grew them. They’re carnations, like his tattoos. “We’ve…got a lot to talk about, I think.”

“...Do we?” Isamu hedges, still cowering in the front hall when Satoru turns. 

“We?” Emiko stresses, gobsmacked. “No- this…this is a problem between Suguru and I.” She swallows thickly, hands trying to wring even though she keeps them separate exhaling hard to hide the terror staining her face wane. “I’m sorry you’re in the middle, Satoru.”

He tilts his head at that, eyes narrowed in thought. He does love Emiko- she’s a kind, caring woman who’s done more for him than his own family at times. She’s quick to take things in stride, whether they scare her or not, and he knows she always means well, but he also knows that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe Suguru’s not plotting genocide, he’s not happy hiding away in their bedroom, either.

“It isn’t,” he refutes, calm. The vase makes a delicate clink when he sets it back on the shelf. “Maybe it started there,” Satoru muses, not a speck of dust left to be seen in the living room, “it’s bigger, now.”

“...I’m afraid you’ve lost me, honey,” Emiko says, stiled and tense, and Satoru wonders if she can see the age written onto his face when he turns his head to look at her. He feels ancient enough.

Instead of replying, Satoru only waves them along with him as he steps around the furniture. The shoji doors slide open under the force of his hand rather than Blue like he’s taken to doing more often, the fusuma doors after them when he decides he wants to feel the balmy summer breeze. 

“Sit,” he says, quiet as when Suguru left, refusing to really look at either of their faces. “I’ll make us tea.”

He doesn’t want to topple two people he loves off their podiums quite yet.

Just because he and Suguru agreed to having the conversation doesn’t mean Satoru actually wants to have it. He promised though, and right now, it’s his turn to bear the weight. So, Satoru sighs, righting himself into the picture of perfect, elegant clan heir, he will.

“When Suguru was younger,” he starts, thumbing at the rim of his glass, green tea warm in his palms. “Didn’t he ever do anything or say things that were…odd? Out of place?”

“...What do you mean?” Isamu pries, eyes narrowed and clearly thinking of several things in particular by the way it looks like his meager cursed energy jumps. Beside him on her own cushion, Emiko frowns.

“Maybe he never grew out of saying there was a monster in the closet,” Satoru offers, eyes flickering back up and eerie backlit by the outdoors. “Maybe he got in trouble at school for getting into fights, or skipping class, or playing make believe outside of recess.”

“What exactly are you getting at?” Emiko blurts, concern knitting her dark eyebrows together and wrinkling the crows feet at the edges of her eyes. Satoru hums, dismissing it for the moment, because the truth is a delicate thing and letting it shatter before it’s set could be unpleasant. 

“Did you notice that there were only ever one set of footprints in the snow every winter break?” He asks, amused when Isamu’s face flushes and seemingly without realizing, he nods slightly. “What about Suguru taking things out of the oven without a hot mit?”

“Well- Satoru, you can’t seriously-” Emiko starts, glass clutched too tight in her hands, only to be spoken over by her husband.

“It wasn’t the closet,” he says, words near a rush with the dawning understanding in his widened eyes. “It was always under his bed.” Emiko seems slightly startled turning to look at him, but Isamu only seems to be excited. “We thought he just had bad anxiety when he was a child, except I thought what he talked about was too consistent to be made up sometimes.”

“We’ve already been over this, Isamu,” Emiko snaps, the knuckles of her fingers bloodless in how tightly they squeeze around the body of the teacup. “The psychologists said it was schizophrenia. Nothing more.” Oddly enough, her pupils are small with fear.

Satoru winces at that. Second hand stories don’t really compare to the real thing sat in front of him, for all that the poison Suguru’s spoken of in sparing moments still left goosebumps on his skin when he listened to it. 

“It wasn’t a disorder, Okaa-san,” Satoru murmurs, gaze sharp as he watches the two of them turn back to him with very different expressions. Isamu’s face opens up into a shocked kind of affirmation when he flicks two fingers up, a nanoscopic particle of Blue drawing a large bubble of his tea from the surface of his cup.

Emiko’s, however, falls into a silent, wide eyed thing. One that’s sharp, defensive, almost familiar. 

‘Curious,’ Satoru thinks, waving his fingers to ripple more tea into the air around him, placid at the small but monumentous display of sorcery. It’s not, not really. Suguru is a sorcerer, so it isn’t unlikely to say there’s a genetic link somewhere buried in his family line. If he had to guess, he’d hazard Emiko has something she’s hiding.

He was told enough about Suguru’s family history by Suguru himself to understand that his uncle died when he and his mother were children, though that’s all he ever knew about the man. Isamu’s family were immigrants from China, and therefore lost to misfiled records in the sixties. Occam’s razor, and all.

“It’s called jujutsu, or sorcery,” Satoru explains, letting the loose tea spill back down into his cup. “It’s genetic, so the traits passed down are hereditary. My family is actually almost exclusively sorcerers, which is why we’re one of the oldest clans left in Japan, and one of the most powerful.”

“...Oh,” Isamu breathes, seemingly speechless. Until- “What was that? Over winter break I mean,” he stumbles, and Satoru sorely resists the temptation to snort at the overt excitement making his eyes shine. “You never left footprints. Is it like superpowers?”

‘I knew it,’ he thinks, mentally pumping a fist. He’d had a hunch the Marvel comics he’d found once strategically buried under a stack of papers in the study hadn’t been Suguru’s. They’d been too close to their real life to be enjoyable. ‘Nerd genes are real.’

“I guess,” he says, and holds a hand palm out. “Try to touch me,” Satoru offers, amused when Isamu stumbles forward to do so. Just like everyone else he’s done this to, his father-in-law’s hand stops a good two inches from his own, seemingly never getting closer the more he struggles to push even though technically, he never stops moving.

“That’s incredible,” Isamu sputters, his typically soft spoken tone barreled over for once. “What- how many- I have questions,” he settles on, nodding decisively as he settles back into a seiza, so dad-ish that it almost makes Satoru slip a smile.

“Now- hold on,” Emiko finally pipes up, something panicked making her eyes dart between them restlessly. “You can’t just expect- that isn’t a reason.” She stills, forcing her breathing to suddenly even, her tea shaking slightly when she sets it down on the tatami mats. “Magic isn’t-” real, she probably wants to say. “It couldn’t cause all this. Isn’t it a little far fetched,” she grits, hands fighting to stay relaxed on her lap as she talks, “to explain everything away like that?”

Satoru doesn’t respond immediately, only able to look at her for a long moment, stuck dissecting exactly why she must be so resistant to the idea. Emiko was the parent who pushed it all. Suguru said it was always her leading the campaign to fix him- that his father was usually too meek or quiet to fight against it after a certain point. 

After all the holiday’s he’s spent with them, it isn’t hard to believe. Getou Emiko was always the first person pushing, asking, braving the stairs to find him when he’d hidden. Sat here specifically, across from two people as good as his own parents, Satoru sees it far clearer than he’d like.

Suguru’s childhood was different from his in that all his suffering came because people only wanted the best for him. It failed so miserably because they didn’t know what was best, sure, but Satoru knows desperation when he sees it. Knows half truths and ultimatums where they lie behind other words. Knows a monster when he is one.

There had to be something, given the way his mother-in-law’s hands are tight around her glass, her eyes pinched with stress. One thing that had pushed her over the edge, warped her, changed her just enough she was willfully blind to her own son’s terrors. The worst curses always come from family. Satoru’s never met any of Suguru’s besides his parents.

Eyes narrowing, mind turning, fingers restless trying to tap, he wonders just who it was.

“Wait here,” Satoru finally says, collecting her tea with him as he stands, silent as he wisps away out of the small dojo. 

The shoji doors he shuts behind him with another curl of Blue, sure it will make Emiko jump before he actually sees her do it behind the door, veering first into the kitchen to set the cups in the sink and second to their bedroom door. It’s petty, but in the moment, he doesn’t try to help it.

“...Suguru?” Satoru murmurs, unable to stop the stabbing lance of pain that fills his chest with an ache to see him hunched over on the other side, head in his hands and still crying. His energy stutters, like he’d spoken only to choke silent, and it’s enough of an invitation as he’s going to get, he supposes.

With a step and a quaint folding of space, he blinks and he’s stood in their bedroom, plucking the backup of Tsumiki’s spares out of one of their desk drawers. Case palmed and pocketed, Satoru turns, unable to keep from cringing at the sight of Suguru even though it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.

He looks awful, curled over his own knees and wet with tears, the heels of his palms shoving up his bangs as his shoulders shake, face hidden. Maybe it’s only because Satoru’s in the room, but one of his silent breaths catches, a single note of a sob escaping. 

Maybe it’s not new, it still hurts, he thinks, every time he sees it. Suguru should only smile. He should never have reason to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru whispers, sinking down onto his knees just in front of him. When he reaches out, his palms wet cupping Suguru’s face, drawing him up and out of his knees. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, watching the only person he’s ever loved soundlessly sob, unable to do a thing to make it better.

At the very least, Suguru only falls into him without a word, hands twisting into his shirt and tears hot on his skin like the feathery touch of flames when they drip down his neck. There is no coaxing, no fear, no hesitation. Just them, together, alone with their sorrows. 

“I’m gonna tell them everything,” he whispers, smeared against the high of Suguru’s cheek. “You don’t have to say anything to them but what you want, okay?” The promise is barely more than a breath, tepid air among body racking sobs, and maybe Suguru only cries harder because of it, Satoru knows him well enough to understand it’s because he’s grateful to be cared for.

He lets himself have a few more precious moments alone with Suguru before he has to go, kissing his temple and settled in that if everything else does, they don’t have skeletons to rest. He can live with their pains, as long as they have that.

He leaves Suguru with another wetted, salty kiss, vanishing away again to deal with the one mess he can’t. Appearing from thin air just about gives Emiko a heart attack, though it startles a laugh out of Isamu. It’s a good thing Satoru’s long since gotten content with not being a good person, because a piece of him he’ll only ever acknowledge with Suguru hungrily admits she deserves it and worse. He loves her. It doesn’t mean that some moments now, he wants her to burn. He hates himself for it.

Hatred, he thinks, pulling Tsumiki’s spares from their case and drawing the only people he’d ever call parents out into the yard to see the ambient curses that linger, is a fickle thing.

Isamu looks contemplative sat on the couch, digesting the creatures he’s just seen behind enchanted glass and slowly putting puzzle pieces together.

Beside him, his wife throws back another shot of the heinous liquor they keep around for Yaga, and Yaga only.

“I don’t know what to say,” she rasps, and Satoru watches from his perch on the armchair as Suguru scowls at the window, sulking leaned up against the kitchen’s closed fusuma doors and red eyed. 

“I’ve got a couple things,” he offers, glowering, and Emiko flinches as if she’s been struck.

“...Suguru,” Isamu begins, mouth open as he finds the words he wants and bespeckled eyes trained on the nice Persian rug in the living room. “I…want to ask why you never said,” he explains, ever soft spoken, words twisted just slightly from that old Mandarin accent. “But you did, didn’t you? Hundreds of times.”

When he looks up, Suguru’s no longer bothering with suppressing Jougo’s flames, the pit of his sternum glowing with dragon’s fire and bright, bloody spider lilies spilling from his hair. His brows are drawn low, the backs of his eye sockets lit in an eerie glow as he glares, and he looks like what mortals used to say the gods did back before they fell into obscurity, Satoru decides. He looks angry. Pained. Inhuman in his beauty and his wrath.

“Nobody listened,” he mutters, flat in the way that means he’s struggling hard to reign his own temper in. “I stopped bothering when I turned eight.”

Isamu’s shoulders fall, sinking with the rest of him, his wrinkled eyes sad. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and Suguru roughly snaps his head to the side, scowl twisting rigidly. 

“I don’t wanna fucking hear it,” he spits, though he’s just as quiet as his father is, and Satoru remains quiet sliding off the arm chair. He’ll step in when it escalates again, but this isn’t his trauma to deal with.

“No, you’re right,” Isamu agrees, defeated but accepting, too, and those dark eyes swinging to him have him freezing where he makes to slink out to the backyard. “We couldn’t give you what you needed. But Satoru did, didn’t he?”

It’s almost hopeful when it’s asked, a lackluster plea that there was some good to be found, even if it wasn’t good they made. Sparing a look over his shoulder finds Isamu looking between him and Suguru, Emiko still staring down into the depths of her tumbler as she says not a word.

“He’s the same. Meeting him…helped. Didn’t it?” Isamu wonders, hushed, desperate in a similar way to Emiko earlier and yet so different, too. Suguru shifts, clearly uncomfortable, but the flowers steadily blooming and falling from his hair abruptly change from spider lilies to bluebells. Death, turned to everlasting love.

“...It did,” he admits, and the only eyes he bothers to meet are Satoru’s own. Isamu nods after a belated moment, hands fisted slightly at his sides, before he makes a short, decisive sounding noise.

“Good,” he says, and then a few beats after, “do you two want to have a beach wedding, like in the fancy American magazines? I could pay for a beach wedding. If you’d like a beach wedding.”

Despite himself, Satoru snorts. It’s an ugly sound with an ugly history, money in favor of love even though he knows that’s not why Isamu offers up his moderately cushy salary as a gift. Suguru’s father is a simple man. He enjoys his fantasy novels and his religiously difficult work. He says little when others say a lot, and he prefers the simple joys.

So, Satoru gives up on ducking out and turns on his heel for the couch. Suguru groans, scrubbing a hand down his face even as Satoru sits next to his father with a rough bounce of the cushions, eyes stinging. He knocks his head into Isamu’s shoulder, ribs twisting, because the fool only said it because he wants them to stay together be it for Suguru’s benefit, his, or both of theirs combined, and a ring means they probably will.

A gnarled, stiff hand wraps around his back and pats his side, aged with arthritis and too many years behind a desk. There’s a lot that won’t be forgiven today. He’s glad for what little can be.

“...I did this to you,” Emiko whispers, sudden in the stilted silence. She doesn’t once look up from her glass, drained for the third time of its whiskey and the bottle rapidly draining where it waits on the coffee table. One of her manicured hands lifts to her lips, both trembling and painted a pristine red. “I- I just wanted you to be happy.”

How hard is it to swallow, knowing another’s destruction is your fault, Satoru thinks. He doesn’t need to wonder.

“Didn’t we all,” Suguru responds, sardonic and low. Emiko sniffles harshly, her hand curling over her tremoring lips.

“My mother was right,” she mumbles, and a stray tear spills over when she blinks. “When you were born, she told me you might be like him, and I- I swore you wouldn’t. It didn’t matter you looked just like him, or, or sounded like him- I was so- so, adamant,” she chokes, clipping on her unsteady words. “I was so adamant that you wouldn’t be like Hibiki that I- god I made you just like him.”

“What,” Suguru starts, head suddenly picking up from where he’d slouched, but Emiko only stumbles on, either pouring the words out because she won’t if she stops, or because she can’t now.

“She warned me not to do what I did but I’m such a fool,” she cries, breathy and whistled, beautiful even in tears as she slams her tumbler down on the coffee table. Wiping at her eyes, Emiko laughs, wretched and sad. “I did it anyway.” She hiccups, covering her eyes in the heels of her palms.

“I’m sorry, Suguru,” Emiko sobs. “This is all my fault.”

The living room is silent for a long few beats, the dull whir of the air conditioning suddenly kicking up when Suguru’s temperature rises higher. His eyes are wide, his face slack in a piercing kind of scrutiny. When he moves, pushing off the wall and stalking for the coffee table, Satoru watches a singular, large petunia flower bloom just above the twintails tied at the back of his head. It’s as black as his hair.

‘Anger,’ Satoru thinks, melancholy, not curious so much as interested when Isamu only sags like he already knows the story Suguru’s about to demand to hear. He can guess at the tale. All of them are the same, in the end.

“Hibiki?” Suguru asks, low and urgent, eyes wide where they fix on his mother as she messily wipes at her eyes. “Your younger brother, Hibiki?” Lips pressed into a line so they won’t waver, she nods, eyes glossy. Suguru’s brows draw down sharply, something like betrayal cutting across his face. 

“Was he like me?” He utters, and there’s a precipice hiding in those words, one that could mean a forever kind of canyon if the wrong ones are spoken in turn.

Emiko’s face pinches under threat of more tears, even as she shakes her head. “I- I don’t know,” she cries, choking in an inhale as she sniffles, forcing herself to try and calm, even if she’s not very successful. She laughs, weak and helpless- hopeless, really. “We never knew.” 

“Knew what? If he was a sorcerer?” Suguru pushes, though Emiko only smiles bitterly, finally looking up to meet his eyes.

“How he died,” she explains, old sorrow buried in the lines on her face. “He was always…different, in a way. He used to make up all these fantastical stories, and I loved him so much, but he was bullied. Like you were.” She’s quiet as she speaks, dulled at the edges. Silently, Suguru sinks into a kneel, hands fisted tight on the table top.

“His body was found in a creek,” she murmurs, tired as she shuts her eyes, probably reliving the memory. “The police ruled it a suicide, because he had every reason to, and well…” She trails off, wringing her hands, indecisive. 

“He was only fourteen,” Emiko whispers, hanging her head like there’s a noose tied around her throat. “It was- easier, to blame myself for not taking better care of him, than to- to, I don’t know. Try and blame some mystical nonsense that we couldn’t even prove?” She laughs again, rubbing her reddened eyes, tears dribbling between her fingers. 

“Our mother wouldn’t hear it,” she continues, in the sucking absence of air in the quiet of the house, still as if a vacuum. “And I just couldn’t help but keep thinking. I was three years older than him. I should have looked out for him more. Maybe then, if only I’d just been better, he’d still be alive.” She sniffles, nose congested roughly, refusing to look up and face any of them.

“And then- and then I had you, Suguru,” Emiko breathes, a prayer in the admittance and in how she finally raises her head, dark eyes the same color as Suguru’s own when they meet. “And I loved you so much more than I can explain, and you were just like him, down to the things you used to say when you were learning to speak.” 

She smiles, though it’s warped into a grimace, her hand trembling when she reaches out to cover her son’s. Her nails are stark against the inhuman flush of his skin.

“I know it’s not an excuse,” she whispers, a terror woven into the shake in her voice, “but it terrified me, and I just thought that- that maybe, if I could fix it for you, you wouldn’t turn into him.” 

“...But I did, didn’t I,” Suguru answers, hollow. Emiko looks away.

“You did,” she agrees, like the last of herself is draining dry. Like she’s got nothing left.

Satoru wonders what it is the two of them think of, though it’s less of a guess and more of a certainty. A bottle of pills. Messy hair and angry eyes. The clatter of plastic to their kitchen floor and the dark of a late evening or early morning. Desperation is a heady sort of smell.

Part of him is glad he can only imagine, that he’ll never see it. Once was enough.

“...It’s my fault,” Emiko mumbles, a sad, small realization the same as just earlier. “I made you into him. My mother warned me and…and it’s all my fault.” Suguru shifts, eyes sliding away, and there’s a grimace on his lips that speaks miles for how uncomfortable he is. 

A glance to his right proves Isamu is just as miserable, a quiet mourning in the tight line of his shoulders and the press of his lips. He doesn’t speak, though. 

“Maybe,” Suguru says, quiet even though the single word swallows them all whole. “You…you really hurt me, Mom,” he admits, a fear shiny in the violet stain of his eyes when he raises them. “I never wanted you to fix me. I just wanted you to try and understand me.”

Emiko’s eyes squeeze shut, another dribbling tear escaping down her nose. 

“I’m sorry.” She sniffles again, squeezing Suguru’s too hot hand too tight. “I’m- I’m so sorry.”

“...Yeah,” Suguru sighs, shoving an unwanted tear off his own cheek. “I know.” He pauses for a moment, contemplating, and Satoru knows that look well enough to match it when it finds him. A flick of Suguru’s fingers, ‘think so?’ without real words, and he nods. Yeah. He thinks so.

“All things considered,” Satoru pipes up, somber with the general atmosphere, still somber when he’s only about to make it worse, “Suguru did get fairly lucky.” When he looks up, both Emiko and Isamu have their eyes on him, slightly shocked.

“You made mistakes, sure, but you also love him,” Satoru continues, looking away from the both of them to find Suguru, instead. He looks tired, raw and worn out, but even his cursed energy is more settled than before. Still hurting, still angry, but less than earlier. “That’s not so common with shaman kids,” he explains, tilting away from Isamu so he can sink into the back of the couch. “Most die before they even hit double digits because they’re killed.”

“What,” Emiko gasps, taken utterly aback, and Satoru only shrugs. 

“People don’t like what they can’t control,” he murmurs, solace enough to be found in the small pull to the corner of Suguru’s lips at their twisted inside joke. “Our world is pretty brutal. That’s just how it is for anyone outside of a clan.”

“And what about…in a clan?” Isamu hedges, the weight of his concern heavy when they both know the answer to that question, and Satoru only shrugs.

“Yeah they hit me. What about it? I’ve got you guys,” he says, flippant to wave it off since he doesn’t want to talk about it now when it’s Suguru’s moment, and instead gets up from the couch. 

The faint brush of memories is choked down with the opening shaa of the kitchen’s fusuma doors, the sight of his own blood staining the tatami matting beneath his gasping mouth shoved aside in favor of staring at the bulletin board full of photos. He doesn’t hear the crack of the canes anymore so much as he thinks about them. He thinks Suguru himself might hear the crack of a plastic pill bottle on tile, if not the shatter of ceramic. It doesn’t matter.

The pins unstick from cork without a sound, the two polaroids he pulls off of them shiny with smiles. Now, he hears the camera shutter going off when it took them, instead. 

“We…get assignments to exorcise curses. The monsters Satoru showed you earlier,” Suguru explains, tone halting slightly and thick still, but more open as Satoru turns back around, photos tucked in his palm. “That’s what we really do.” 

“...Okay,” Emiko starts, slow as she digests it, despite her husband’s simple acceptance and poorly hidden interest. “Okay. So my son fights monsters for a living. Okay.” Suguru cracks a lopsided grin as Satoru settles down next to him, shifting to entangle their legs without a thought.

“It could be worse,” he offers, some of his snark returning with the worst of the storm passed by. “I could hunt shit that isn’t real.” Isamu chuckles. His wife only sets her face in her palm, but there’s a wry smile on it.

“On one of our more recent missions,” Satoru starts, hesitating to set the polaroid of Mimiko and Nanako out onto the table just yet. “We were sent out to the boonies to kill something that was murdering people in a small town.” His lips thin at the perturbed thing sliding over the both of their faces, exchanging a glance with Suguru before he opens his mouth to talk again.

His mother wants to change. That’s what matters. Regardless, they link pinkies anyway, together even if it goes bad, together still when it goes good.

“They’d put two little girls in a cage and asked us to kill them,” Suguru says, blunt and heavy as his face ices over, hand tense on the table top. “They were different, like Satoru and I, so the village thought it was them doing it.”

“...Oh,” Emiko breathes, eyes wide and a hand slinking up to cover her mouth. Beside her, Isamu is still. “Oh,” she repeats, the meaning of their words finally sinking in. How the world isn’t kind to them, how Suguru really is lucky to be hurt the way he was.

Silent, Satoru sets the polaroid down onto the coffee table, imploring as the both of them lean forward to look at it with wide eyes. It’s a cute photo- Nanako and Mimiko stood on either side of where Suguru kneels, all three of their cheeks squished together as they smile wide mid-laugh. He’d taken it barely a few days ago.

“You-” Emiko blurts, head snapping up, and the only thing that keeps her from panicking is probably the chagrined pleading on Suguru’s scowling face. “I, uh, so…what are you saying,” she wonders, weak. 

“They were going to kill them, Mom,” he says, something wet hiding in the back of his throat. “If we didn’t take them, they would have been murdered. They’re only eight,” he stresses, wrung tight, and Emiko’s whole face crumples like a crushed fruit.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hadn’t done something- and you’d love them, you know? They’re adorable, and Nanako reminds me of you sometimes even- the blonde. Her sister is Mimiko, they’re fraternal twins, see?” He rambles, pointing down at the two of them captured in a photograph. “They love bunnies, and pancakes, and Nanako has a modern technique like Yu’s, and I swear that no other kid besides maybe Megumi is cuter-”

Satoru huffs out a breath, slouching over one elbow as he watches on in a sickening sort of fondness as Suguru just keeps talking, pouring all about how Nanako and Mimiko are the best kids to ever grace the earth. His mother only watches him, speechless, but the longer Satoru sits and observes the mess as it unfolds in front of him, the more he can see her expression smoothen out into a tentative joy. It’s something he imagines he might have seen if they’d done this the normal way, and handed her a newborn instead of a polaroid.

It’s only when Suguru finally shuts his mouth with a loud click, breathing hard, does Isamu pipe up, pointing to the remaining photo in his hand.

“Who are they?” He asks, and Satoru shares a glance with Suguru, happy to see the stark relief on his face as all the remaining fight drains out of him when none comes.

“Mine,” he answers, finally setting the photo of Megumi and Tsumiki down on the table. They’re sat together tangled on the stairs steps in it, fighting over the DS, both of their tiny hands on each corner and clearly yelling loudly. “Megumi and Tsumiki.”

Emiko whispers a nonexistent touch over it like she did with the first, a quiet awe in the lines crinkling her eyes as she takes it in. Isamu seems similar hunching over the photographs, a quiet, curling smile that shows off dimples surrounded with age lines.

“Their father was disgraced from the Zen’in clan for not being like other shaman, and when Megumi was born with the Zen’in’s main inherited technique, he sold him off to them because he’d have a higher station in the clan,” Satoru explains, quiet. “The highest, actually. He’d have become clan heir.”

“Like you,” Emiko tones, conclusions slowly drawing together. Hands steepling together, Satoru nods. It’s got an eerie mirror like quality to the first time they sat at this small table, talking clans.

“Like me,” he agrees, and it’s heavy when it lingers. “Tsumiki isn’t a shaman at all, and they were abandoned when I found them,” he says, leaning into Suguru’s side when he presses closer. “If the Zen’in’s had gotten them, they’d have left her to die.”

“...It was just chance the both of them came in sets?” Suguru throws in, when the silence stretches too long. Emiko snorts, wry, and though she looks flustered and slightly uncertain, she doesn’t yell at them, or shout immediately. 

“Are they happy?” Isamu asks, as close to impulsive as he ever gets when he’s so soft spoken. “Are you?” 

“Yeah,” Suguru says, gaze dropping to the table and his hand squeezing where they’ve linked them together. “Yeah I- we’re really happy.”

“Then it’s good enough for me,” Isamu declares, and reaches out to pat Suguru’s head, absently plucking a stray camellia flower as he does. “This does seem new though, I must admit.” Suguru sighs, but it’s fond.

“I…” Emiko stutters, holding both of the photos and brows knit together when she looks up, almost slightly lost. “This is why you’re- you’ve been distanced, isn’t it,” she says, because she’s not asking a question, and silently, Suguru nods.

“Parenting is pretty hard,” he admits, shrugging something small. “I’ve had a couple moments that I’m not proud of. But I-” He looks away, fidgeting restlessly. “It all got worse for me, after the twins.” 

“Worse?” Emiko echoes, and Suguru shifts into himself. 

“Worse,” he repeats, staring down at his hands, “because maybe it’s been- hard, it hasn’t been like what I grew up with. And maybe that’s because I’m like them, or they’re like me, I don’t know.” He sighs, and Satoru doesn’t speak but he thinks of what worse really is- the worse that Suguru’s parents will never see. Each tear, each gasping breath, each moment spent aching in a way that couldn’t be physical but feels so real.

“It’s just made me think about it all,” Suguru stumbles, rattled. “I’m not repeating the mistakes you made, and it’s really been getting under my skin, because-” He breaks off, expression pinching, guilt gnawing his shoulders down.

“Because what?” His mother asks, softly, coaxing, and Suguru caves.

“Because it’s been so easy not to,” he whispers, staring down at the floor rather than her.

“Oh,” Emiko hushes, something Satoru can’t place writing itself all over her expression. He wonders, for just a moment, if damnation can be a sound.

“I…wanted to hate you,” Suguru spills, like a trickle of water from a crack in the dam as he stares at nothing so important as his hands. “I wanted to hate you so badly for a long time.” Both his parents shrink at the admission, cowed. “But no matter how much I tried,” Suguru murmurs, shrunken right along with them, “I never could.”

He shudders in an inhale, shoving his bangs out of his eyes, leaving them there after- maybe just to hide from everyone else. 

“I couldn’t even hate you after we rescued the twins from that horrible place,” he continues, the story torn from him like petals off a flower, ever more blooming in his hair when he’s let his tightly held reins loose for the moment. “God I fucking wanted to, because what you did to me was just another part of the stupid problem, but even then I couldn’t.” He laughs a single note, embittered and sour.

“I couldn’t hate you. I could try for all my life and I would die, never being able to,” Suguru whispers, like it’s the heaviest burden he’s ever tried to bear. “Maybe I could pretend, but it wouldn’t be real. And sometimes, I hate myself for that.”

Emiko flinches. Isamu looks away, down to the hands clasped tightly in his lap.

“Maybe I shouldn’t forgive you,” Suguru mumbles, meek in a way he shouldn’t be, “considering everything you’ve done. Maybe you don’t deserve it. Maybe I don’t, given all the things I’ve done.” He pauses again, stilted, breath stuttering in his lungs as his cursed energy ripples, the painful shred of acceptance wavering it like a candle flame.

“But I want to forgive you,” Suguru says, “I really want to.” He finally looks up, eyes darting between his parents with something akin to desperation in them. Fear for change, fear for no change at all. “But I think I need time. And- and I need you to be different. It can’t be the same.”

“No,” Isamu echoes, “of course not.”

Maybe Getou Isamu is a simple man, he’s also a very genuine one. He only says what he means, and he doesn’t lie. There’s a reason his wife married him, Satoru is wholly aware.

“...Right, right that makes sense. We can do that,” Emiko murmurs, before she jolts slightly, panic slicing neatly across her face. “Oh- but- if you need space, we can give you space! I- we can leave, today. Or now. I just- Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she moans, dumping her whole face down into her palms, flushed ruddy with all sorts of tormented emotions. Satoru smiles wry as Suguru shoves his hair back in a useless move to calm himself down, his huffing exhale loud in the barrage of guilty rambling.

“No, don’t leave,” he asks, finally slinking back up, and Satoru lets him pull away when he goes. “If you leave, you won’t get to meet your grandkids.”

“You want me to-?” Emiko gasps, shocked, but just like only a mother would, she still seamlessly opens her arms when Suguru collapses into her on the couch. 

“Yes,” he presses, roughened spoken into her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have told you about them if I didn’t. You’re sorry. That’s all I wanted to hear. Of course I want you to know your family.”

“Oh, Suguru,” his mother chokes, and just like that, they’re back to the water works. 

It’s kinder than he thought it would be. For that, Satoru is grateful. Swallowing down everything else, he decides that is all he will be.

Chapter Text

He feels lighter than he has in months now. 

Suguru is exhausted, in all truth, and he really kind of just wants to go take a damn nap, but he feels better than the poisonous thing he was even hours ago. Somewhere after the twins, thoughts about his parents all became laced with arsenic, and it’s only now that they’ve finally drawn the toxin from the air that he feels like he can breathe.

“Suguru,” his mother murmurs, low beneath the simmering noise of Satoru calling Shoko to bring the kids back to the house. Her delicate fingers brush another strand of hair away from his brow bone, her scent the same as he’s always remembered it to be when she never buys more than three specific perfumes. 

He hums, refusing to open his eyes and leave the moment, because he feels more like a kid sat here pressing his face into his mother’s stomach than he has in almost a year. It’s nice, something like a delicacy, even though the thin carpet doesn’t do much to cushion his knees where he kneels, and his arms are stiff from wrapping around her middle. He doesn’t care at all. It’s kind.

“I have a gift for you, later.” She strokes through his hair again, the mesmerized motion of her fingers still the same as the first time she plucked a camelia blossom from it. “Remind me to give it to you tonight.”

“Okay,” he agrees, and sinks further into the moment, the closest to peace he’s gotten in a long while.

Shoko and Utahime are bringing the kids back via school car, so they won’t be back at the house for an hour or two, they’re informed. Yaga decided to tag along, since he was already there when they took the car. Naturally, Satoru tells them, Kento and Yu also decided to hitch a ride because to quote ever grumpy-I-am-not-a-grouch Nanami Kento, ‘I fucking hate the dorm’s kitchen and you’re rich so yours is better no I’m not sharing dinner.’ Everyone knows he’s sharing dinner.

“Oh my,” his father exhales, peering into Nanako’s room, eyes straying immediately to the parted fusuma doors leading into Mimiko’s. 

It must be some sort of sight, irrefutable proof of just how rich Satoru really is. God knows he’d struggled just doing Megumi and Tsumiki’s rooms the first time. ‘Scratch that,’ Suguru thinks, tilting into the sidewall as his parents look but carefully don’t touch, ‘the kitchen was the worst.’ Did he love decorating it? Yes. Did he perchance have a meltdown or two over the price tag? Also yes.

“This is…kind of incredible,” Emiko mumbles, struck speechless as she looks around. At least the money thing is probably genetic.

The twins’ rooms are certainly a sight to behold, though at present, they don’t hold a real candle to Tsumiki’s. Nanako’s is a calm, mellow yellow, her bed a light walnut wood at the back of the right wall next to the window. It’s a mirror opposite to Mimiko’s, since they put their beds facing each other to have a larger combined room. 

They each have a large cream rug on either side of the sliding doors, making it look like one large rug when they’re partially open. Nanako’s desk and wardrobe are both similar woods to her bed, and most of her decorations so far have turned out to be some degree of orange. In contrast, her sister has fully settled into the dark wood, purple theme her walls absolutely ooze. There’s purple for her bed, for her pillows, for way too many of the clothes in her closet, since she got the slightly bigger room and thus the walk-in wardrobe. 

“Nah,” Satoru clucks, turning on one heel to lead their wide eyed party to the other hallway. “Come look at Tsumiki’s. That girl has been driving me nuts recently with how she just needs every book she sees.”

Suguru follows along, their hands ever clasped together since realigning into orbit, and he’s content to feel kind of akin to a wayward moon chasing after his earth. Satoru’s there, Infinity a brush along his skin like the cool wash of water. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing can hurt them.

They talk for a while after, carefully steering clear of anything truthfully heavy- easy enough when thirty minutes pass easily as his mother gushes her heart out over how cute the kids’ rooms are. 

“How the hell did you afford all of it? I know you’ve got money, but dear god some of that furniture is expensive,” she gapes, having winded herself into silence, and next to him, Satoru only grins.

“Oh, you know. Facebook stocks are pretty lucrative right now.” His smile looks a lot more sharkish than Satoruish. Suguru rolls his eyes and half-heartedly gives him a kick underneath the table.

They sit around, have tea, wait for the knock on the door, and Suguru breathes, and Suguru is okay. It’s kind of a novel feeling, he muses, sipping at lukewarm tea from the cups Satoru bought forever ago. It reminds him a little of the hours after their trial two months back, of coming home, sitting down with Yu and Kento, talking about nothing. Looming beneath the inevitable of what they’d done and yet not feeling pressured by it.

Feeling free, instead, because nothing could possibly make them bow. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go lay down?” Satoru asks, nose bumping along his cheek as he leans close where they’re sat next to each other, and Suguru only hums, eyes persistently keeping shut. “Suguru,” he whines, gently turning his face to the side with a hand on his chin. “You look so tired, though.”

He does let his eyes slip open then, just a sliver, enough to roam over the buoyed concern on Satoru’s pretty face. How his lips slant, how his eyes narrow. You look tired, he says, but he can see the way those blue eyes map his soul, and so he knows Satoru isn’t talking about his face.

“I’m fine,” Suguru assures, though he’s quieter than normal, worn down even if he won’t admit to it. He’s exhausted, and with good reason. There’s been a growing pressure of tension he’s been carrying since that chilly night in early May, maybe even long before it. It’s only been broken now, after weeks and weeks of carrying it. Of course he’s tired.

“If you’re tired you need to go lay down,” his mother interjects, that demanding concern he got so used to while growing up raising sparks along his hackles. “What if you get sick, or you stress yourself? You have to take care of yourself, Suguru.” She opens her lips to admonish something more, but Suguru never hears it.

“Okaa-san,” Satoru tones, pitched low in his throat and a honey warm warning. He smiles, placid and chilly. “No,” he says, barely shaking his head. “This won’t work until old habits die, will it?”

Isamu sips loudly from his tea, a gesture Suguru has always partly loathed, partly loved, because he always times it to be incredibly awkward for whoever is getting the dressing down of the night. In his father’s favor, it is usually directed at his mother.

“...Oh, r-right,” she stutters, a wobbly smile matching the flush suddenly riding high on her cheeks. “...Sorry, Suguru. I guess I’ve, uh, got a few to break, huh?”

He hums, noncommittal, easing back from the tension his shoulders want to strain with as Satoru smoothes a palm down his lower spine. “As long as you try,” he murmurs, more tired than he thinks he might have ever been before. 

Deft fingers take the cup from his hands, and even if he knows Satoru’s next words, he still fights the weight to his heavy eyelids. 

“Come sit on the couch with me,” he says, soft in the molasses silence. “You’ll still be right here when the kids arrive, that way.” Blue crinkles as Satoru smiles at him, amused even though to his parents it probably looks sickeningly sweet. With a put out sigh, Suguru rolls his eyes, but he gets up anyway.

“Fine,” he mutters, because it is what he wants, and it does mean he can doze guilt free. He’s happy to jostle when Satoru immediately follows him, knocking their hips together and leaving their parents to catch up eventually when their worldviews finally recalibrate. 

It’s only as they settle that Isamu moves, leaving Emiko sat at the kitchen table to observe as he takes the cushion over from where he stretches out on most of the sofa, using Satoru’s lap as a pillow. He and his father almost immediately strike up another inane conversation about the physics of his technique, and Suguru shuts his eyes, content to listen. 

His mother doesn’t move for a while, simply watching on. Suguru doesn’t fault her for it. He learned how to change once, too, so he knows it’s hard. 

As long as she tries, he thinks he can be okay.

“He’s been sleeping badly,” Satoru explains, when Isamu gestures to Suguru, deep in a doze not even ten minutes after laying down. “We’ve kind of got a lot going on you two don’t know about.”

“Clearly,” Isamu jokes, wry but fond. “Does it have anything to do with the winter you came home hurt?” His eyes are dark, oddly knowing, so like Suguru that for a moment, Satoru forgets and glosses over how it’s said- you came home. Like it’s his, too.

“Not exactly,” Satoru stumbles, words tripping slightly as he recalibrates, always giddy when something like it slips out of one of their mouths, a shifting discomfort warring with the joy over it anyway. “I suppose it’s similar,” he muses, unsure how closely he wants to allude to Kenjaku to Isamu when any knowledge is dangerous knowledge. 

His father-in-law opens his mouth, maybe to ask more, maybe to let it go, and is royally interrupted, because naturally, that’s when Yaga knocks on the door.

‘Perfect timing,’ Satoru thinks, sardonic when he’s relieved to have the conversation cut into.

“We’re home!” Sensei calls, gruff voice carrying loud as he unlocks the door with his own key- first time for everything, and all. “Kento and Yu tagged along.” Satoru turns to watch the party pour in through the front door, shielded from his non-synergistic sight by the wooden walls of the front hallway. “Where the hell is my agreed bourbon, Satoru?” He grumbles, heavy gait preceding him as he all but stomps into the sitting room, a small bag hanging from one hand.

Behind him, Shoko and Tsumiki laugh, Utahime scoffing like she’s not an absolute lightweight. Careful to set Suguru’s head down gently, he pries away from him to stand, giving both Isamu and Emiko a wink as he rounds the couch.

Yaga grinds to a halt when he sees the both of them in the house, Panda asleep in his arms and a hot flash of blush burnishing his skin darker. “That was not the first impression I wanted to make,” he mutters, mortified, and Satoru laughs loudly amid the dual squeals Tsumiki and Nanako shriek with when they see him. 

“Tou-ru!” They yell, running on socked feet to come barreling into his legs, and he only grins wide, dropping to his knees to scoop them up in a welcome hug.

“My favorite girls!” He crows, catching Shoko’s unimpressed grunt with glee. “How was your aunt’s?” Satoru asks, leaning back to actually look at them. Nanako is excited, clearly having had a good time, though Tsumiki sorely puts her to shame nearly vibrating in place.

“So much fun!” She bursts, like she just can’t contain herself. “We did so much stuff, it was so cool, Utahime-ba taught us scales and Ba-chan let me do a DNA experiment on an onion!” She rambles, gasping for breath like she’s just run a mile. 

“Wicked,” Satoru responds, pinching her cheeks to stretch them out since he won’t ruffle up her perfectly styled pigtails and ruin them. “What about you, Mimiko?” He asks, looking up to where she’s stilled against Utahime’s leg, eyes on their visitors with obvious uncertainty. 

“...I had fun,” she murmurs, quiet where she’s wary, and following her train of sight, both Nanako and Tsumiki fall still in suit. 

With a mild clatter, Emiko shoves out of the kitchen’s doorway, clearly giddy at the sight of the kids in person considering how cute they are, but nervous, too. Isamu stays firmly planted on the couch, one hand on Suguru’s shoulder and expression fondly curious as he watches on.

“Who’s that?” Megumi blurts, only brave because he’s still sat in Shoko’s arms, something defensive on his face as he both cowers into her and defiantly shoves his chin up.

“That,” Satoru begins, drawing Nanako closer when she starts to fold in on herself, “is Suguru’s mom and dad. Getou Emiko and Isamu. They’re your grandparents.” 

“Really?” Tsumiki pipes up, the only kid genuinely unafraid of strangers. She peers around him like he’s a doorpost, hands on his shoulder as she nudges closer. “You didn’t say they were coming,” she whispers against his ear- kid whispers, considering it’s loud enough for everyone to hear it.

“We didn’t know,” Satoru replies, “but we’re happy they’re here. They’re excited to meet you four.” And it’s as simple as that.

“Uhm- Hi!” Tsumiki chimes, taking a few steps from him as she holds out her hand like she’s seen Suguru do when he greets Tamaki, big brown eyes wide and hopeful as she barrels ahead. “I’m Gojo Tsumiki. Yaga’s my ojii-chan too, you know. It’s, uhm. It’s nice to meet you.” 

Without a word, Emiko covers her lips with one palm, slow as she sinks to a crouch. Like she can’t quite believe what she’s looking at is real.

“It’s so nice to meet you, too,” she says, voice wavering as she smiles, delicate and wobbly as she clasps Tsumiki’s hand in both of her own. “I’m Emiko. But, you could call me Baa-chan, if you’d like?” She offers, tentative and hopeful, and Satoru is ever grateful for Tsumiki and all that she is when she only lights up like she was just given the world.

“Tou-san!” She exclaims, turning from Emiko to look at Suguru where he groggily sits up from the couch cushions, eyes squinted. “Look! I have two grandparents now!” 

Abruptly, he snorts, covering his face in one hand as he sorely laughs. “Guess so,” Suguru muses, hanging over the back of the couch as Tsumiki all but skips over to him. Guilessly, she throws her arms up, and without even a word Suguru swings her up with him, seemingly content pressing a kiss to her forehead and absent mindedly smoothing the hem of her dress like it’s an ingrained sort of habit. 

“Yaga Masamichi,” Sensei says, voice quieter off to the side as he introduces himself to Emiko, his handshake ever too firm even holding Panda- thankfully swaddled enough in blankets his face isn’t immediately visible just yet. “I was the boys’ teacher throughout highschool. I’m deeply apologetic Satoru let our first introduction be so terrible.” She laughs a little, clearly amused as much as she’s overwhelmed. “It’s good to meet you, Getou-san.”

“Oh, please,” she says, amid Tsumiki loudly introducing herself to Isamu, and Shoko bickering with Megumi about being put down to go see Suguru. “Just Emiko is fine.”

Yaga dips his head, and pointedly doesn’t comply.

“Will they like us?” Mimiko asks him, having sidled away from Utahime while Tsumiki was talking, and Satoru hums.

“Yes,” he says, definitive, with no room for doubt. “They loved you the moment we showed them a photo. They’ve loved me since I was a child.”

Nanako and her exchange a glance, one that’s packed with unspoken words and experiences he’ll never know the names of. They seem to come to an agreement, because they each take one of his hands, trying to look brave even though they’re not. 

“I wanna meet them,” Nanako hushes, and Satoru gives her hand a squeeze where she’s white knuckled onto his own. On his other side, Mimiko nods.

“Okaa-san,” Satoru calls, and Emiko looks away from Yaga to look at him, surprise washing over her features even though she’s quick to hide it at the sight of Mimiko and Nanako squished into his sides. “These are the twins, Nanako,” Satoru introduces, tugging on Nanako’s hand, “and Mimiko,” he finishes, tugging on hers. 

“Hello,” Emiko greets, trying so hard to be tentative when it’s clear to him that she’s about to burst from how excited and relieved she must feel. “It’s so nice to meet Suguru’s daughters. You’re both so identical!” She tries, and Satoru almost wants to laugh, because it makes the twins absolutely preen.

“You think?” Nanako asks, shy, and Emiko nods.

“Yes. I can only tell you apart by your hair,” she lies, when they aren’t identical in the slightest save their noses. 

The front door slamming shut makes them both jump, Kento’s loud yelling only intercepted by Shoko’s obnoxious laughter. “-swear to god!” He shouts, glaring over his shoulder at where Yu is probably hauling things for him. “I said I’m not making fucking donuts. You know I hate the fryer grease-!”

“You two idiots-!” She jeers, cackling like a moron amid Megumi’s loud demands for the swear jar. Kento shoves through the mild crowd in the hallway, only to come to an abrupt halt, a stand mixer of all things held in his straining arms and eyes widening in panic when he realizes he has an audience.

On the couch, Suguru’s face flames red with his effort not to guffaw, and Satoru is the first to admit he’s no better watching Kento tuck his proverbial tail between his legs and haul ass for the kitchen with ears burning red. 

“H-how did you fit all of your asses in one car?” Satoru wheezes, breaking into snickers even as he hollows to let the twins suction cup to him. 

“Took the SUV, dipshit,” Utahime mutters, clomping past him in her socks, though not without a rough cuff to his head. “Hi,” she simpers, extending a hand to Emiko, and then to Isamu over the back of the couch. “I’m Iori Utahime, Shoko’s girlfriend. It’s nice to meet you.”

“...Shoko is a very lucky lady,” Emiko says, faint, and Utahime only flips her hair with a pretty smile before she’s breezing away into the kitchen to help Kento set up for whatever nonsense he’s planning to make for dinner. The one that he’s definitely not sharing with anyone.

“Why isn’t Kento yelling?” Haibara asks, lugging a bag with him that’s probably full of kitchen utensils or something as he shuts the door and peers around. “He’s been in a mood all day, you know.”

“Ken’o owes me twenty hundred yen,” Megumi announces, his intentional mispronunciation of Kento’s first name absolutely meant to irritate him, even all the way in the kitchen- successful, evidently, by the accidental clanging sound. “He said fuck eight times on the way here.”

Isamu’s eyebrows crawl up his forehead. Next to him in Suguru’s lap, Tsumiki argues loudly that it’s her money, not his, and Suguru himself claps a heavy palm to his face.

Satoru only grins.

Megumi doesn’t immediately warm up to the newcomers, but he doesn’t hide from them either, so Satoru willfully takes it. He figures they both understand when they raised grumpy Suguru. 

Yaga sits with them on the couch and gossips like an old crone while their kitchen is commandeered, Shoko kicked out and Satoru himself pulled in, under the vague irritated explanation that, “she sucks, you suck marginally less. Now come help me.”

So he goes, leaving Shoko and Suguru with Isamu, Emiko and Yaga while he helps out Kento, Yu, and Utahime in the kitchen. 

The kids split between it and the living room, with Megumi choosing to get underfoot and into things he’s not supposed to while the girls mostly sit on the couch. The twins are quieter in conversation, not surprising when they’re still acclimating, but they warm quickly. Tsumiki barely gives them a moment to know her name before she’s rambling off to them, her new favorite people when they haven’t heard her exhaust every single topic known to man yet. 

Two hours later sees setting the table as a messy, loud endeavor, but Satoru smiles wide and laughs louder through it, because it’s chaotic and crowded and full of lively chatter and fond insults. They don’t have enough chairs, and so the table ends up being more of a buffet as they spread out around the living room, careful with bowls and napkins as most everyone enjoys Kento’s impromptu menu change to feed so many people.

“These are delicious,” Isamu muses, holding up a dumpling to examine it, eyes squinted. “Did you use jiaozi dough?” He asks, to Kento’s beet red flush. He nods, still mortified from earlier.

“Sort of,” he answers, reedy. “I took inspiration. My mother was Danish, so…I…mhm,” he says, clamming up and red dusting his cheeks bright when Isamu only looks on in pleased curiosity.

“They’re delightful,” he says, and pops another entire dumpling into his mouth.

“Kento’s a bit of an aspiring chef,” Shoko drawls, a low smirk on her lips as she seamlessly dodges the jab of his pointy elbow. “He might even open up his own restaurant someday. Who knows.” Beside her, Kento tries to disappear into his coat collar.

“Definitely better than Satoru’s cooking,” Utahime jabs, and he gasps, slapping a palm to his chest. 

“I’m a great cook!” He sputters, to Suguru’s unrestrained snickers, jostling Mimiko where she sits lopsided in his lap with Megumi to snap his chopsticks at her. 

“Maybe in cavity land,” Utahime replies, prissy and succinct. “You drown everything in sugar.”

“In my house, in my living room, eating my food,” Satoru admonishes, easily catching the thrown dumpling between his utensils with ease. “Shoko!” He snaps, to her full bellied laugh.

“All of you are terrible influences,” Yaga glowers, mouth drawn down into a scowl when Panda follows suit and tries to chuck his milk bottle. He catches it before it finishes its arc off the couch and dumps all over the floor, no less than three distinct lines wrinkling his forehead in aggravation. “Remind me again why I willingly spend time with hooligans.”

“Me, obviously,” Tsumiki pipes up, affronted sandwiched between him and Emiko on the couch. 

“Right,” Yaga tones, serious and dower, “of course.”

Panda, at least, had been taken relatively easily by both Emiko and Isamu. A quick and short explanation from Yaga, along with one blink of those big brown eyes, and they’d adapted quickly. Emiko had even held him, lasting about five seconds before she’d melted and begun treating him exactly like she would a human newborn.

The two of them watch on as they all bicker and laugh together, trading the day’s stories as much as they’re able. Isamu looks content watching Suguru smile, laugh, as he encourages Nanako to eat a little more when she stops and conspires with Megumi to steal food from Satoru’s plate. He looks relieved more than anything.

Emiko seems sadder watching on, her eyes a little wet even though she smiles wide. It must be gratifying, knowing that Suguru finally has everything she’s ever wanted for him, but also deeply painful knowing that none of it was because of her own doing. That she herself was more of a detriment than any help. Satoru catches her surreptitiously wiping her eyes more than once, and doesn’t fault her. She’s happy they’re happy, and she’s trying hard to keep it to happy, and happy alone. He knows it’s difficult, and even among other emotions, he loves her first.

“If he’s Ojii-chan,” Tsumiki announces, maybe an hour after they’ve all really finished dinner but which no one has started cleaning up yet, “then you gotta be something else.” She levels her pointer finger at Isamu, smile bright with a challenge. “Like Tou-san and Tou-ru.”

“Good point,” Shoko muses, ever the vessel for chaos, even though Isamu only blinks, unperturbed. 

“I’m afraid I’m not the most creative with nicknames,” he admits, with a small, sly smile to Emiko. “You did pick Guruguru, didn’t you, dear?”

“Stoppp,” Suguru moans, hands dragging down his face as Utahime latches on with a vicious squeal.

“Guruguru?!” She crows, just as evil as her girlfriend, and Satoru is truly an instigator at heart, because he only eggs her on.

They settle on Ojii-ji, because it’s cute for the kids and it makes Mimiko laugh. Isamu even cracks a smile, warm and fuzzy right alongside Emiko’s, full of pearly teeth whenever she’s called Baa-chan by the kids. When Megumi mutters it, apprehensively asking to touch her hair to see if it’s like Suguru’s, she looks all but over the moon.

It gets late quickly, though, and the kids have to go to bed by ten to make it on time to their last day of school, so the party gets wrapped up by nine. 

“Wait,” Yaga interrupts, just before they can make to get up. He sets his glass down on the side table, rummaging instead for the small bag he brought with him on his way in. “I have a present for the twins.”

Suguru catches his eye just as Satoru looks at him, the both of them puffing up with excitement. Megumi and Tsumiki’s bears have certainly been well loved in the last few months- ripped, dunked in juice, grass stained, and forever able to help put them to sleep throughout it all. They’ve been an absolute godsend for getting rid of nightmares.

“For us?” Nanako asks, blinking wide as she shuffles closer on the couch, Mimiko moving to hang off of her shoulder. Tsumiki abruptly squeaks sat on Yaga’s other side, eyes lighting up like she’s also figured it out, though Megumi only squints in suspicion.

“For you,” Yaga repeats, his smile soft and amused as he pulls two stuffed bears out of the bag, and Satoru wants to squeal, because they’re adorable.

Just like Tsumiki and Megumi’s, the bears reflect the kanji of the twin’s names. Mimiko’s is a rich brown, only a few shades lighter than her hair, a tiny tiara set on its forehead, the same as Nanako’s- a golden bear in turn, with a little leaf sprout embroidered onto its forehead, the placement the same to signify that they're twins.

As both the girls take their bears, Satoru catches the small kanji characters each sewn into a foot- darling and zucchini, which makes him laugh behind the cover of his hand. No wonder Yaga wanted to see their certificates so bad.

“Name them whatever you like,” Yaga says, leaning over to pat them both on the head, fond as can be when he sounds sweet as honeycomb. “They’re yours. They’ll keep you safe from dreams.”

“They’re like Harbor and Blessing,” Suguru explains, moving around the kotatsu table to kneel in front of them, setting a palm to each bear’s back to fill them with cursed energy. Both Nanako and Mimiko reel slightly as the toys begin radiating calm, Yaga’s incredible technique like the flicker of a candle. Even Emiko’s eyes widen, her lips parting in shock when she feels it, sat close enough to. 

“I- I wanna call mine Nini!” Nanako blurts, eyes big and watery. “For zucchini!” 

Satoru finally laughs, clapping a palm to his face as he doubles over, giggling. Suguru is much better than him, offering only a sweetened smile and soft words, “that’s a great name,” like he’s not losing it behind his placid adoration.

“...I like Darling,” Mimiko murmurs, her eyes heavy with thoughts staring down at her bear’s embroidered foot, glassy and wet like her tiny smile.

“These are- incredible,” Emiko stumbles, peering over the girls to look at the bears, Isamu similarly interested just behind her. “How on earth did you make something like this?”

“Trade secret.” Yaga winks, offering no more than a dimpled smirk. Shoko snorts, flinging a hair tie at him he only catches and pings back at her.

Gifts aside, it’s still late though, and the twins look even more overwhelmed than before, though he knows it’s a happy kind of overwhelm. Still, they’ll be tired in the morning if they don’t sleep now, and they’ve got things to do.

“Why don’t we take Nini and Darling up to bed, huh?” Satoru suggests, to Megumi’s sudden pout where he sits wriggling in his arms, trying to weasel out to look at the new toys. “You can try ‘em out tonight.”

Both Mimiko and Nanako nod, their excitement plain on their faces. It gets him a bunch of protesting from the other two- loud, obnoxious as they are about bedtime, but Satoru has a dreaded parent-teacher conference to deal with tomorrow, so Megumi can be squirrely about going to sleep as much as he’d like. He’s going to be well rested if it kills him.

“Say goodnight to the elders, squirts,” he teases, Megumi tucked under his arm like a football as he makes a scene flailing, complaining though he’s not listened to. Tsumiki groans, but she’s more polite than her brother, so she at least doesn’t try to kick him in the ribs.

“Goodnight,” Emiko says, waving as the twins pass her by, Tsumiki’s whining loud enough to distract her from it. “We’ll see you in the morning?” She asks, and Mimiko pauses, forcing Nanako to bump into her from behind. 

She nods, hands wringing, before she gestures slightly with one palm beckoning her closer. Emiko leans down, and up on her tiptoes, Mimiko whispers right up against her ear. 

“You’re really pretty,” she says, quiet enough Satoru has to strain to hear it where he wrestles Utahime’s shirt from Megumi’s fisted hands when he grabs it passing by. “I want my hair to look like yours one day.” Then she pinkens, flushing from head to toe as her fingers dig into Darling’s artificial fur, before she’s sprinting off for the stairs in mortification. Nanako calls after her, never to be separated for long, and then they’re both thundering up the steps, bears clutched tightly in arms. 

Never one to be left behind, Tsumiki calls a breathless, “goodnight everyone!” Before she’s bounding after them, newly distracted. Then it’s just Megumi, complaining still.

“But I don’t wanna,” he grouses, pouting something fierce. “I’m not tired!” Satoru pokes out his tongue, before also poking little nose with his index finger.

“You see Shoko and Jii-chan all the time,” he soothes, “and the sooner you go to bed, the sooner you can get tomorrow over with. Then you get two whole months off.” Megumi scowls, but he quits trying to stay up longer, small arms crossing in a fume even though he leans up against his sternum with little protest when Satoru reshuffles him. 

“Fine,” he mutters, tiny and absolutely aggrieved. Satoru smiles over his head, exchanging a bemused look with Suguru where he gives his own goodnights to Yaga, Shoko, and Utahime. 

“Say goodnight to grandma, grandpa, and gramps,” Satoru teases, lifting one of Megumi’s hands to wave it for him when he only sulks harder. 

“Goodnight,” he seethes, and behind him, Yu snorts.

“Whoever’s staying, there’s a futon in the linen closet. Old people get the guest room- and that’s not you, Yaga!” Satoru announces, glancing over his shoulder to see Kento and Yu start to clear dishes as he climbs the stairs, Suguru hot on his tail to help with teeth and tuck-in’s. 

“Unbelievable,” he grumbles, to both Emiko and Isamu’s chuckles. 

The kids go down relatively easily despite the party, since the excitement was a lot for even him, Suguru thinks, resisting a yawn. He’s glad for it, since he might have just dozed off in the middle of a temper tantrum if one had happened. At least Shoko and Utahime take the SUV back when they leave, so though Yu, Kento, and Yaga all decide to stay for the night, they only have to find one extra bed.

“Goodnight,” he whispers, smoothing a palm down Tsumiki’s hair first, Nanako’s second, amused to see both of their eyelids already drooping. “I love you.”

“Night, ‘Tou-san,” Tsumiki mumbles, clutching Harbor close, “love you too.” Next to her, Nanako hums something similar, squeezing Zucchini tight and buried in her sister’s pillows. She’s practically glued to Mimiko where she sleeps on her other side, getting her own tuck in from Satoru as he gives both her and Darling a goodnight kiss.

He says something quiet Suguru doesn’t really hear, sat on the edge of Tsumiki’s bed where all the kids decided to dogpile to let Kento and Yu take Megumi’s room for the night. He fixes the sheets around Megumi and her, sappy as can be. It’s soft, soaked in honey, and in the dark of Tsumiki’s bedroom buoyed by the warmth of a fairy themed nightlight, he wonders not for the first time if they’ll always find solace here. 

Unlike himself, Suguru knows. Where he’ll always find his childhood bedroom as smothering, suffocating, he hopes they’ll come back to theirs with nostalgia, fondness. That they’ll only ever carry thoughts of safety when they sit clutched in the palm of these four walls.

“Sleep tight,” he murmurs, kissing both of their foreheads one by one, unhurried and heavy, because they’re still children, still young enough to need him. They’ve never fought, haven’t had a world shaking argument yet, have never said cruel words to each other they don’t mean, and there’s something buried in him that demands wretchedly that it stays that way forever. It’s a damning wish, wanting them to stay small and helpless forever. It isn’t one he wants to be granted.

The brush of Satoru’s fingertips over his shoulder draw him back, the curl of them around his wrist pulling him from the comforting dark of the room like a lure. 

“They’ll be okay,” he promises, whispered with barely a breath against his lips as they silently close the door, and Suguru listens, and he tries to believe it. Satoru only watches him though, because he knows his mind inside and out, and so Suguru doesn’t bother to try and hide the shadows curling in the crevices of his face and heart.

“Go talk to your mom, first,” he asks, wispy like a faint breeze skimming fingertips down the line of his jaw. Blue eyes slant low, fixed on his lips more than his own. “They’ll still be here.” They finally flick up, scattering between his left and right, the ten centimeters Satoru has on him making him feel as small as he had earlier.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Suguru admits, lost in the patterns speckled throughout endless irises, heart squeezing in his chest like it’s been grabbed by a fist.

“It doesn’t need to,” Satoru replies, feathery and soft against his ear as he leans close, hands snaking up his wrists to find the line of his waist. “Acknowledge it, Suguru. Let it be, and then let it go.”

Drawing in a shattering inhale, Suguru listens. 

They’re probably codependent, considering neither of them can function without the other, but when Satoru leans over him, holds him close, whispers in his ear and shields him from the rest of the world, Suguru can never bring himself to mind. They were broken long before they met each other by different people, different families, different lives. He doesn’t care if it’ll be their very downfall one day, because together, just maybe, their broken pieces might make a whole. And Suguru? Suguru can be okay with that.

The kids are right there, his family right there- they’re not leaving, not hurting. They’re fine, breathing, happy and well fed and sleeping peacefully through the night. Right now, they have no enemies. 

Satoru is still peering down at him when Suguru opens his eyes, waiting until he’s exhaled and loosened his hands before he leans in. Lips soft with gloss, smearing shimmer and peach onto his own, he doesn’t care at all if one day they’ll topple because of it. He fell in love with their broken pieces too long ago to try not to now.

“We’re together,” Satoru promises, two words that mean the world. “You’re not alone.”

“I know,” Suguru says, and truthfully, he believes it.

His mother is still downstairs when he finds her, her hair loose and her shoulders calm as she sits cross legged in the open dojo, summer breeze stirring strains of inky black.

For a second, it gives him pause. Is this what Satoru sees when he looks at him? Elegant shoulders, night dark hair, sleek like an oil spill or stars dotted in an ink pot? He’s always had his problems with his family, but the reason he decided to grow his hair out at all was to look like her. 

‘That’s not such a bad thing,’ Suguru thinks, and he’s not scared of what she might say like he would have been, once.

Emiko doesn’t move when he sinks down to sit next to her, her manicured hands relaxed in her lap as she stares out at the yard, a heavy sort of serenity weighing down her beautiful features. They’re silent for a long few moments as they sit and watch the greenery. The gentle roll of the trees, the hum and chirping of wildlife, the frogs in the pond and the creak of the crickets. It’s something he’ll always find joy in, no matter how many times he looks at this simple plot of land. 

“I…haven’t always been what you’ve needed,” Emiko finally speaks, her voice barely louder than the noise outdoors, though not thin for it. She stares out ahead into the ripple of the nighttime shadows, as if it’s easier to confess to her own sins when she doesn’t look at him.

“No,” Suguru agrees, tangling his fingers in his lap, content at least not to meet her eye while they speak of this. “But you couldn’t give me what I needed anyway. You let me go.” He shrugs, thinking of the day that courrier had scouted him and come to talk to his parents, and desperate to get him out of a town that was smothering him, they’d agreed to give him up. “That was something I needed you gave me.”

“...I suppose so,” Emiko sighs, rubbing over her eyes for a long moment. Her shoulders look like a burden she can’t bear, slumping over too far. “I am sorry, though. I’m…so sorry. I shouldn’t have let my own fears influence how I raised you.”

‘No,’ Suguru wants to say, ‘no, you shouldn’t have,’ but that would be flogging something dead that’s already been beaten more than enough.

“I love you,” Emiko continues, head tilting slightly as she shrugs a tiny movement, “I love you more than you know, and I think…I think it was easy to be blind to who you really were as a kid. It made it easy to justify doing things that I think have harmed you, more than they ever helped you.” The admittance isn’t bitter, necessarily. Troubled would probably be a better word. Suguru shifts, staring at the graceful profile of her face, the wrinkle lines only now beginning to grow stark as she ages.

“I can’t change our past,” she sighs, reaching up to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I wish I could take away all the pain that I must have put you through,” she concedes, tired as her eyes finally fall to the smooth wood of the engawa below them, and Suguru remembers.

Remembers the pills, the appointments, the harsh words and the desperation to pretend that nothing was wrong. The utter opposite, in fathoming issues where there weren’t any because the ones that nobody knew the names of couldn’t actually be fixed. How he spent so much time swimming in molasses, moments and memories lost to drugs he didn’t need. How a lot of his early life was spent pretending he couldn’t hear the neighbors whispering about the Getou family’s disturbed child, pretending like the other school kids’ words didn’t hurt him when they called him strange, pretending that he needed nothing and no one when not a soul made a thing better. 

He remembers pain. He remembers a lot of it.

“I wish I could at least do that,” his mother says, a raw thing in the single desire, “because you never deserved to suffer for my own insecurities, but I don’t think I would change our past, even if I was able.”

There’s an irony to those words, only felt by him. Satoru has changed the past, or a version of it, and Suguru is glad that he did. The idea of becoming the kind of monster his mirror was is far less preferable to being the monster that he is now. He finds himself twisting into a wry kind of smile because of it, and it must catch his mom’s attention, because only then does she look at him. Her dark eyes are weighted with all sorts of things Suguru could intimately name, but which he refuses to. There’s a pit waiting for him if he tries, so he won’t.

“I believe that you- you made something good from something bad,” Emiko hushes, so earnest it hurts. “I’m so proud of you, because you gave yourself what we couldn’t, and if none of it had happened, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here,” she wonders, absently trailing her fingertips down rickety tatami, her eyes scattering everywhere, nowhere, always settling on him. “You’ve made a beautiful home, with adorable children, and…” She pauses, waits for Suguru to look back up before she goes on.

“If none of it had happened, maybe you might not have Satoru, and for you to have him?” She smiles, melancholy and tired, the pull of her red lips wrinkling the crows feet at her eyes. “I think for you to have him, any pain must be worth it.” 

“Oh,” Suguru breathes, chest aching, and looks away, down at his callused palms, because he knows what she means. He knows what they think of now when they think of Satoru.

They see him, and they must want to worship him like all the others, because Satoru was the catalyst that changed him. Changed them. One that left their family better than before, that left Suguru happier than before. They don’t- worship him. They’ll never worship him, and maybe that’s why Suguru can never hate them more than he loves them, because his parents see someone even more damaged than him, and they only want to love him.

‘They’re good,’ Suguru thinks, swallowing down the thickened thing shining his eyes with saltwater. ‘They’re good. Maybe it wasn’t always, but they’re good.’ Everyone’s a monster. Including him. Including them.

His parents saw him, damaged in ways they couldn’t explain, and he knows they’ve only ever wanted to love him. It’s the exact sort of monstrous thing he’s chosen to live with.

“I don’t believe in soulmates like your father does, Suguru,” Emiko whispers, tilting his chin up with one knuckle, leaning forwards on her knees and a small, velvet box cupped in her other hand close to her chest. “But some people are special. Like you. And I would be a fool not to tell you to hold on as tight as you can to the one you found,” she implores, almost pleading as she speaks. 

“That boy loves you,” she whispers, like it’s raw pain scraping up her throat, and Suguru can’t breathe, because he’s never seen this side of her before. “He’d do anything for you, Suguru.” Her eyes look a little like coals, so dark as they are and yet so similar to his when he’s lit up like a matchstick, and ‘oh,’ Suguru thinks, ‘oh, oh.’

“So I- I want you to have these,” she says, and the feathery touch of her hand disappears from his chin in favor of curling up his wrist. She sets the box down in the palm of his hand, pressing it into his bones with her other as soon as he closes his fingers around it.

“Mom-” He starts, alarmed, because there’s a visible strip of untanned skin on her ring finger that he’s never seen before, and he’s worried from what he already knows, but she only smiles and shakes her head. 

Opening the box with fingers that want to tremble proves his too confident suspicions. Her engagement ring sits front and center, simple in a plain silver band and three small diamonds adoring it. He’s not surprised about that. 

His parent’s wedding rings have the breath punching from his lungs, all the words choking in his throat. 

They’re as simple as her other ring, just plain gold bands with short, loving inscriptions in the inseam, but they mean so much more than anything extravagant would. Their wedding date is engraved into the metal, always against skin, and Suguru has never once seen either of them ever take them off.

“Even if I wasn’t at your wedding, even if you don’t want me there now,” Emiko says, trembling and quiet as they kneel together in the shell-shock of the silence, “your father and I agreed- we always wanted to offer. You don’t have to use them if you’d rather not, but we just-” She fumbles, and when Suguru looks up, it’s a struggle to see past the burn stinging his eyes.

She’s always just wanted to love him. How monstrous a desire.

“Thank you,” he gasps, unable to help from squeezing her too tight when he throws his arms around her, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder like he’s still little. “I- you don’t, thank you,” he breathes, choking on it, too.

“You gave yourself happiness,” Emiko warbles, and Suguru can only huff a teary laugh when she sounds close to them already. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. I’m so proud of you, Suguru.”

He shuts his eyes, not to pretend like he can’t feel the tears tracking down his nose, but to revel in the feeling of them. 

“I thought you didn’t drink?” Yaga asks, one brow raised high as he grabs and drains the tumbler of his horrible bourbon right from his hands.

“I don’t,” Satoru rasps, throat burning.

Sensei only grunts an unimpressed noise at that, hands free with Panda snug in the silk sling around his neck they got him for his last birthday, sound asleep after sitting through a very loud dinner. Brown eyes watch him carefully as Satoru dumps the melting ice from Yaga’s stolen glass into the sink, grabs the bottle, fills it another inch, and downs it again.

It’s only when he makes to throw another excessive shot back that a tan, callused hand pins his wrist and the cup to the counter. 

“That’s enough,” Yaga tones, and petulant, Satoru yanks both his hand and the glass out of his grasp. When he makes to move like he’ll wrestle it from him, Panda be damned, Satoru gives up and jams it in the sink with the last of the dishes that wouldn’t fit in the washer. Another kickback and he’d be drunk, anyway. Shame.

“That’s so unfair, Yaga,” he snarks, hunching over his arms as he sets them on the counter top, glaring at uncaring granite. “You don’t stop Shoko from her alcoholic tendencies.”

“Because Shoko can handle her liquor,” Yaga tosses back, palm tentative when it rests on his forearm. “That bad?” He asks, and Satoru shrugs.

“Not really.” His swallow is thick, his tongue fuzzy. It wasn’t, not at all. It was actually fairly good, considering they still have parents and not distant relatives. He has nothing to complain about either- he didn’t spill a word about his real traumas, and Suguru got his closure. By all intents and purposes, he should feel fine.

“Hm,” Yaga hums, carefully neutral, and Satoru doesn’t fight when the palm on his arm drags him up enough he can rest his eyes on large shoulder if he hunches. Yaga’s technically an inch shorter than him now, but he feels bigger because he has more mass, taller because he wears boots with heels. Sometimes it’s nice, leaning against him, not lording so much as cowering.

“You know,” he starts, when the silence drags on, “you can use my first name. It’s not a taboo.”

“Isn’t it?” Satoru mumbles, before the words register, and he falters, picking his head up with his brows furrowed and his lips pouting. He makes to retort something to shove away how it has him wanting to stumble off kilter, only to come up short with nothing, leaving him looking up and not really having any words. A name would be closer than Yaga ever let them realistically get before. Closer than he’s ever let Satoru get, before.

“No,” Yaga refutes, holding him steady in place when Satoru tries to slink away by a hand on his spine. “Satoru,” he rumbles, low and calm, free hand leaving Panda’s baby sling to tilt his chin up. “After all these years, you still call me by my family name. Why?” He presses, nothing so harsh as a calm question, and he doesn’t really have an answer anyone would like.

“I never really had anything else to call you,” he mutters, trying for impotent so he doesn’t have to have this conversation, so that Yaga gets annoyed and gives up. He knows well enough he’s not so lucky. 

It only earns him keen eyes unimpressed with understanding, the hand on his chin lifting away to smooth down his hair instead. He hates it, because it’s calming, comforting, because it makes all the walls want to shove down and away, and it only gets hard once the walls are gone. 

He should know. He tried maybe once, maybe twice, maybe a million little times and only ever learning each one that Yaga wasn’t perfect. That he wasn’t undamaged enough to accept it, that Satoru wasn’t worth enough for him to try. It was okay, because he had his walls to fall back on, and maybe Suguru’s loss fractured him, that was what resolidified the steel between him and everyone else. So it was okay. It taught him how to be alone.

Even despite that, Yaga’s always been his one constant, distracted or not in the first life, trying so hard to learn to care again in the second. He doesn’t want to think about that, but the two glasses of heavy alcohol have his thoughts sliding slippery and slick from his hands, and so it just keeps tumbling in the spaces between seconds. How Yaga did change this time, how he’s been trying to do better- how he has done better, how he’s never quite been alone anymore.

It’s an action heavy with unspoken things when Yaga lets their foreheads tilt together, and Satoru stares at the counter, because he can’t snuff the thoughts out he normally hates to think and he doesn’t want for the meanness to leak out of him.

“Your daughter calls me grandfather for a reason,” Yaga Masamichi tones, low in the gravelly baritone of his voice, thrilling for more reason than one when the only thing Satoru’s ever yearned for is love. It’s a spear to the stomach for the very same reason.

The palm on his head swoops down, draws his chin up again when Satoru refuses to move. 

“Why don’t you?” He asks, like it’s so simple, and he watches those steady brown eyes, and he thinks there’s an avalanche happening inside of his ribcage.

“Don’t you think I tried that already,” he mumbles, bitter, unable to keep the sour from his voice and off his tongue with the pool of warmth sloshing in the pit of his stomach. This is why he doesn’t drink. He metabolizes it too fast to handle.

“Maybe,” Yaga agrees, a regret staining the lines of his eyes, “but not with me. I’m sorry for whatever he did, or didn’t do,” he says, and it’s genuine, sincere. “I’m not that version of him, though.”

“I know,” Satoru whispers, and lets his head drop back down to broad shoulder. “I know it’s not fair.” Warm palm rubs between his curved shoulder blades as Yaga only hums, Panda fuzzy and soft squished between them, itchy goatee settling on top of his head when he stays there. 

“He didn’t-?” Yaga tries to ask, but Satoru is sharp when he cuts him off.

“No,” he snaps, quiet. Fingers card through his unruly hair, brushing along his scalp, and he feels the guilt sharply. It’s not fair. He knows it, and yet he won’t admit it. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you do,” Satoru offers, weak as it is under the rush of alcohol turning him rougher than he means to be.

“Me too,” Yaga agrees, voice a vibration in his sternum. “I’m sure, Satoru,” he says, words hidden near his ear for him alone, “that whatever grief he was probably dealing with, he loved you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, jamming their sockets into the bone of Yaga’s shoulder, refusing to cry over something so simple that really, is not so simple at all. He hates it, because it’s exactly what he wants to hear. It’s a rattly breath of sheer relief, because maybe he’s always sort of thought Yaga could fill that role, only made worse in the here and now where he has been, he hadn’t once. There’s a shaking sort of respite to know he isn’t just chasing after ghosts again. There is a want, of him and for him, and maybe that’s the thing that destroyed him, in the end. One he’ll let destroy him again, even.

Because it’s different from Suguru’s parents. Emiko and Isamu are everything to him, but where Suguru’s always had them, Yaga’s always been his.

“If you think I’m gonna defer you any genuine respect-” Satoru snarks, joking because if he doesn’t he’ll probably cry worse, and if he jokes, no one looks too hard at the glaze over his eyes or the salt on his face.

“You wouldn’t be you if you did, punk,” Yaga cuts in, clearly rolling his eyes by the motion of his head. “I don’t expect respect from someone with no concept of it.”

“Good. Cause I’m not giving you any,” Satoru says, sniffing hard to hide how it’s really just a sniffle. In his head, he tries it out first, rolls it around between his teeth and makes a face at how odd Masamichi tastes compared to just Yaga. “Your name is weird,” he mutters, nose scrunching, and can’t help but relax when the huff is exhaled into his hair.

“I’ll be sure to send the complaints along to my mother,” Masamichi says, and it’s so odd, because not in any life has he used it.

“...Masamichi,” Satoru mumbles, rolling the syllables along the roof of his mouth in curiosity, “Masamichi, Masamichi…” He squints, shoving his head to the side so he can stick his tongue out. “That’s a terrible name for a baby.”

Yaga actually snorts. Masamichi. Masamichi snorts. “You don’t have to use it,” he offers, palm stroking over his hair again, dark eyes crinkled in mirth. “But I do happen to agree.”

Satoru shrugs, unsure. He closes his eyes instead of deciding immediately, content to bask in the card of hand over his hair, the weight of his own exhaustion. He doesn’t get a lot of chances to. Never had a lot of chances to, before now. 

“Yaga,” Satoru asks, barely a real note as he says it, regressing to his last name because it’s what’s familiar, “do you think I’m unlovable?”

“Now why would you think that?” Is tossed back just as quickly as he didn’t pose the question, the hand on his head sliding down to squeeze the back of his garishly scarred neck like it needs an assurance he’s fine.

“Just ‘cause,” Satoru drawls, dragging his head up so he can hook his chin on Yaga’s shoulder rather than jam his nose into it. He can feel his face flushing, probably red with blush, can see Suguru and his mother calm together in the dojo, can see Isamu settling into the guest bed upstairs. He can see another life entirely where no one loved him or bothered to try.

“Sorry,” Satoru drags out, fingertips twitching towards the counter and the bottle. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Did you?” Masamichi tones, the skepticism present enough in his voice that Satoru doesn’t need to see his face to see the lift of his eyebrow.

“No,” he promises, lazily walking two fingers down the granite countertop. “I know a lot of people love me. Suguru does. And so do the kids.” He pauses, contemplating, all his thoughts so easy to slip into his mouth to let roll off his tongue. The thoughts he keeps to himself most times. The thoughts he’s never spoken aloud.

“I can be palatable. But do you think there’s a reason I ended up alone? Was I not good? I know I’m not good, but was I not good before I knew I wasn’t?” He rambles, poking the glass of the bourbon bottle to get it to tip and wobble.

“Satoru-” Masamichi cuts in, but Satoru only stumbles over him, fingertip hooking into the rim.

“Maybe it was my real personality. You know I tailored a fake one? Of course you know. My real one was worse, so I wore a fake one a lot, but a lot of people hated that one, too. That was intentional though.” He talks, spilling all the ever twisting things that rack up rent in his head, tugging expensive, patterned glass up with the hook of his finger. He could just use Blue. That would be boring.

He chugs it, refusing to flinch at the searing burn of liquor, because he’s felt things that are so much worse and a little alcohol is not the thing to best him.

“Motherfucker,” Yaga mutters, when he finally catches on and makes to grab it, but by then it’s too late and there’s not a drop left in it that isn’t sitting in his stomach.

“You ever wonder why my own mother didn’t love me? I do,” Satoru rasps, giving reversed cursed technique a careful spin- just enough to speed up his body’s absorption rate. He reels as the full effect hits him at once, actually seeing the light intake increase as his pupils blow out and feeling his sense of balance suddenly implode. He laughs, bubbly and bitter, limp slumping on Yaga’s shoulder as his brain depresses.

“Isn’t it funny?” He wonders, breathy and flowery as hands clutch tight over his back and side, panic obvious in Yaga’s movements when Satoru’s never done something like this before. “I would give everything to have parents like Suguru’s. How fucked up is that? That I want what they did to him?” He hiccups, feeling his eyes sting. “Why did I have to die to be loved.”

“...I’m sorry,” Masamichi murmurs, sighing, and Satoru squeezes his eyes shut as the world suddenly tilts, his feet leaving the floor for no action he does. The bottle clatters to the counter as he sways away from it, arms like spaghetti noodles hanging over Yaga’s shoulder. The footsteps jar him only slightly, rhythmic and steady as they walk.

“Suguru,” Yaga calls, stopping in front of the open dojo for a moment. Both he and his mother turn, their expressions slackening slightly when Satoru wheezes, all the blood rushing to his head and popping sparks in his blurry vision. “I’m putting him to bed.”

“...Shit,” he replies, thick like he’s been crying. “I can-”

“No, I’ve got him,” Yaga promises, and Satoru wishes he could plug his ears, not listen to it. He feels guilty for it already- this is Suguru’s day to be a mess. He’s just making himself a nuisance by doing this. “Stay with your mother. Let me deal with it.”

“Okay,” Suguru sighs, though Satoru does see him get up off the tatami, even behind his closed eyelids. “Thanks, Yaga.” He raises up onto his tip-toes, and there’s the nonexistent sound of a closed-lip kiss to the cheek, the rustle of fabric and a babyish coo as Panda is lifted from his silken sling. Fire warm fingers skim through his hair after, the weight of dark eyes heavy when they settle on him.

“Thank you,” Suguru whispers, tilting his head to the side to kiss him, and Satoru lets his eyes slip open, lidded just enough to catch Suguru’s melancholy smile as he steps away to rejoin his mom out on the engawa. It’s late. Satoru knows he’s tired. It must mean more to him to talk to her like this than to sleep.

He jostles with Yaga’s footfalls as he pushes open their bedroom door, watching through no sense of real sight as Suguru settles back down with his mother, head on her lap and Panda cradled in his arms. He looks more content than Satoru’s seen him be regarding his parents in a long while. The jealousy feels like the burn of liquor coursing through his veins and pooling in his heart.

“I’m sorry this has been hard for you,” Yaga tones, low as he slips their door shut to a sliver, absently nudging a pile of books out of his way as he treks for their bed, one of Suguru’s cardigans after it. 

“It’s not though,” Satoru protests, the breath punching out of his sternum slightly when he’s flipped over his own head by hands that take care to cradle his skull, his spine meeting familiar mattress softly even as the world tilts and swims dizzyingly. He groans, eyes screwing shut.

“Right,” Yaga replies, sardonic, and Satoru jams his face into the pillows to get the light out of his eyes. Deft hands pull his socks off, nudge at his arms to thread his sweater down them second. “So you’re not drunk right now, sir I don’t drink.”

“Nope,” Satoru groans, curling up on his side when the last tug of the sweater sleeve leaves him jostled, shoving the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. 

“Well,” Yaga sighs, trudging away to hang his sweater up in their closet like a good mother hen, “at least I can thank you for giving me one normal teenage experience.”

“Why did I do this,” he bemoans, the beginning threads of a migraine poking at him like needle heads. 

“I don’t know, Satoru,” Yaga says, and the bed dips next to his back, a large palm sitting heavy on his ribs after. “Why did you?” He huffs, lips curling, the swim of the alcohol still fuzzying his mind.

“It’s selfish,” he whispers, hands melting down his face, curling around his stomach, both the wall across from him and time itself a liquid, dripping down reality. “I don’t wanna be selfish. Suguru needs it tonight. I’m not trying to be selfish.”

“About what?” Yaga presses, leaning over where he curls up like a clam, one thumb settling over his jugular to count out his pulse. 

“I don’t wanna think of them badly,” he admits, staring at nothing, at everything, wishing he was different so that there weren’t ghosts following him, wishing Suguru was so he didn’t have to meet any. “I know it’s selfish, but they were- they were the first to be kind to me. It’s already ruined, but I don’t want it to be ruined,” he spills, the truth sticky falling past his lips. 

“Why’d we have to go through this, Yaga,” he whines, wretched at the unfairness of it all. Suguru is hurt, Satoru is saved by the same people that hurt him. It’s too complicated, and none of it is any sort of fair. “Why’d I have to get what I did. How can I be jealous and relieved at the same time? It’s not fair.”

“...It’s not your fault your family treated you badly,” Sensei murmurs, stroking a palm over his hair, sturdy where their bodies press together in the dip his weight makes on the bed. “It’s not Suguru’s fault his parents are good people that made mistakes, either.”

“I hate it,” Satoru complains, senseless and useless. More childish than he’s let himself be in a long time.

“I know,” he says, and then, maybe the one thing he does want to hear, “and that’s okay.”

Satoru sniffles, eyes burning, pliant like taffy when Yaga turns him over. He stares blearily at where he can make out the colors of oaken skin, dark facial hair, brown eyes catching the light of the living room when it creeps through the crack left ajar by the door. 

“All the adults in your life failed you,” Yaga says, plain as a fact, and Satoru hates the way his face screws up with the threat of tears. “Me included. And I’m sorry it happened that way.” Palms snake under his back, hefting him so he’s sat upright, and he spills like hot wax into the arms they’re attached to, already waiting to take his weight. 

“But it won’t happen to your kids, and even if it doesn’t heal you, I hope it can help you,” he continues, achingly sincere, and Satoru clutches onto the back of his shirt like a lifeline, because he thinks he might need one. The three years he had to be a kid didn’t really feel like enough time.

Clumsily, because under the influence his control is shit and his nerves dulled numb, he tugs on the threads of reversed cursed, sloppily kicking it into gear to speed up his metabolism again, something he couldn’t do when he was originally fifteen after his first beer. The vestiges of a migraine clear away as the fog lessens, though it lingers like a haze. He still feels thick like molasses, syrupy like toffee.

“You’re not scared of them?” Yaga asks, or maybe Masamichi, he hasn’t decided yet. It takes a minute, but Satoru shakes his head no, still shoved into his sternum. “Then it’ll pass. The dust just needs to settle for a while.” Satoru doesn’t say anything to that, busy clinging as he tries hard to shove every last thought out of his head until it’s empty.

Steady hands ruck up his spine, hold the back of his skull close, the press of fingers finding the bolts holding plates of it together as they sit there, stewing. 

“...I’m sorry,” Satoru mumbles, guilty as ever. “For pitching a fit.” Yaga grunts, tugging on the cartilage of his ear in admonishment. 

“As much as you two act like adults, you’re not even twenty yet, and we’re all only human,” he muses, gloomy. “Parents are hard.”

Satoru shrugs, hiding away, and wishes not for the first time he was born to different people. How kind would it have been, to be regular? Average? Someone without a destiny, unburdened by fate?

“Will you stay,” he asks, small as he’s ever been, fingers leaving indents in Yaga’s shirt. “Tomorrow? I don’t want to be alone.”

Suguru will have his parents- the good and the bad and all the forgiveness now layered in between. They’re Satoru’s too, will be officially in the eyes of no law that applies to them whenever they get around to marrying, already are in just their own eyes, but they were Suguru’s first. He loves them. Hates some of the things they’ve done. Wishes they were his, too.

Yaga is, though. Masamichi. The only person who might have been anything close when he grew up without the presence of parents at all.

“If you want me there,” Masamichi says, weathering his childish anger and seasoned pains without complaint, “of course.” The best thing he ever had to a father. The best thing he’ll ever be able to call his own.

“Thank you,” Satoru whispers, and it doesn’t feel so big anymore.

Chapter Text

By seven in the morning, Tsumiki and Megumi are rushing out the door, backpacks lugged on their shoulders and grumpy and excited in turn. 

“Remember!” Satoru calls, leaning out of the front door as he waves them off. “I’m picking you up today, so don’t take the train!” 

Megumi moans loudly, clapping his hands up to cover his ears as obnoxiously as he can when it’s his fault, though Tsumiki only laughs. She raises her hand high as she waves, a bright grin on her face as she calls goodbye. Megumi will survive his very lackluster parent-teacher conference this afternoon, since as far as Satoru’s concerned, it’s mostly going to be a convenient opportunity to drop off their new paperwork- and a nice cathartic excuse to grill whatever idiot let him sit in a classroom with a fever all morning.

The dojo’s shoji doors slamming open behind him have him turning, Kento’s bedhead on full display as he glares down at where Masamichi’s sprawled on the spare futon with Panda, still snoring. 

“Get up,” he orders, bluntly kicking the side of the thin mattress, scowling when Masamichi only snorts and ignores him. “You have to take us back for class today.” Slowly, deliberately, Sensei rolls away from him to face the other doors. “Yaga!” Kento snaps, stomping a foot.

“Don’t be so mad so early in the morning,” Suguru complains, making a face as he lightly shoves at Kento’s head, breezing past him into the kitchen. He whirls, sulking, and only stands there when he realizes nobody cares.

“Everyone here sucks,” Kento announces, and Satoru scoffs.

“Oh please, I’ll take you back after we eat, drama queen,” he says, ruffling at his mussed hair. “Isn’t Yu still asleep, anyway?” 

Blond hair swings when Kento turns his head and crosses his arms, brows scrunching in a glower like he does every time he pretends like he doesn’t enjoy the little brother treatment, before he smells the coffee pot starting and ditches him in favor of caffeine. ‘So grouchy,’ Satoru thinks, unable to resist a sly grin as he replaces his spot in the doorway as he leaves, looming over Masamichi where he tries desperately to go back to sleep.

“I,” he grumbles, voice gravelly, “am not getting up until eight.”

“Suit yourself,” he replies, and makes to find out what’s going on in the kitchen since so far, they’re the only ones awake. 

“-get a french press. They’re quicker, and it’s better coffee,” Kento says, explaining the intricacies to pressing grounds to Suguru, eyes squinted with exhaustion but clearly listening as he nods along. 

“I’ll look into that,” he contemplates, jaw hooking into a yawn that strains the muscles in his back, bare to leave all his tattoos on display since it’s been too hot for him to sleep in much since May ended. “Satoru, your wallet won’t mind, will it?” He simpers a smile, tongue poking out between his teeth, and Satoru rolls his eyes, latching onto warm shoulders.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he toys, wrapping his arms around Suguru’s waist. “Depends on who’s cooking breakfast.”

“Kento?” Suguru asks, batting his lashes like an idiot, the imploring look on his face only eighty percent a joke.

“Oh I see how it is,” Kento grumbles, but in truth, there’s minimal amounts of complaining compared to usual as he rolls his shirt sleeves up and strides around them to rummage in their cabinets for the skillet. Satoru watches on, glued to Suguru like a leech, amused at how into his hobbies one Nanami Kento is finally getting. He can’t wait until Kento graduates and he can see the look on his face when he gets his gift.

After, the morning is mostly spent sitting around waiting for everyone else to roll out of bed when they smell the grilled fish and miso, trying to figure out what to do for the day and not particularly concerned with hurrying to figure it out.

“It’d be nice to go back to the flower gardens in Tokyo,” Suguru suggests, tapping a pen against their small notepad, back to the door where he boxes Satoru in on the countertop. “Since they weren’t in bloom last time.”

“That sounds nice,” Satoru agrees, playing with his hair- braiding it into as many tiny pleats as he can where it hangs loose around his face. He bounces his heels along the cabinets, shivery when Suguru taps his fingers along the scars on his hips, hidden under his shirt. “We could do lunch after? Nanako and Mimiko might be able to stand it if both us and Masamichi are there.”

“I like that idea,” Suguru hums, scribbling it down with one hand, happy to tilt his head when Satoru reaches around his neck for more inky hair.

“Are we taking Panda back, then?” Kento pokes, the short overhang of his bangs having grown a little longer in the past few months. They’re almost past his eyebrows again.

“Probably,” Suguru says, shrugging. “We’re kind of going to have our hands full.” 

“Fair enough,” Kento sighs, but it’s not very convincing. They both know he loves babysitting Panda, though whether or not that’s because he loves watching Yu lose his mind over how cute Panda is or Panda himself is up in the air.

“We get to steal Panda?” Said fixation asks, yawning behind one hand as he trudges into the kitchen, trailing after the scent of breakfast. “Sweet.” Kento fondly rolls his eyes, shoving a small bowl he ladles full of broth into his palms, another smaller bowl of rice second once he grabs it.

They chatter inanely for a long handful of minutes, discussing the mundanities of logistics and scheduling, and it’s nice how familiar it is. Kento and Yu sit around in their kitchen and eat like they’ve always done it, like it’s nothing more complicated than habit, and it’s a warm feeling, seeing the personification of domesticity through more than just his life entangled into those he cares about.

“Good morning,” Emiko greets, almost slightly shy as she steps into the kitchen, clearly not entirely sure of what to make of their small crowd. 

“Breakfast is on the stove,” Kento mumbles, ears automatically turning red when he still hasn’t quite recovered from yesterday afternoon. Suguru snickers, only for the sound to die in his throat as Satoru watches him realize where his mother is staring.

Like clockwork, Isamu bumbles right into her where she’s frozen in the doorway, eyebrows just about touching her hairline. He frowns, squinting as he readjusts his glasses and peers around her. His mouth parts in surprise, his eyes widening slightly, something impressed drawing up his expression before he dismisses it like it’s nothing much. His steps are slightly clumsy circling around his wife for the stove where Kento left fish, miso, and rice warm to plate, probably not particularly shocked after the revelations yesterday had brought.

“I…didn’t realize,” Emiko stutters, blinking like she can’t believe what she’s seeing is real, and Suguru unceremoniously shoves his face into his palm. 

“It was my graduation gift,” Masamichi interrupts, and Emiko all but jumps, scooting aside in the doorframe for him to pass, though he only offers a tiny, smirkish smile. “I drew it for him.”

“Oh,” she tones, voice ticking up as she jarringly rearranges her thoughts. “It’s big- beautiful,” she panics, sort of tripping over herself. “I mean- of course it’s beautiful, I just didn’t expect-” She breathes out, her exhale harsh as her eyes lift to the ceiling for a long moment. 

“It’s nice, Suguru,” she sighs, her smile just slightly marred with wrinkles when she offers it. “It fits you well.”

“...Thanks, Mom,” he replies, face tucked halfway behind his shoulder, many lines of unwinding braids spilling down his skin and Rainbow Dragon’s gaping maws. 

“Is it real?” Isamu asks, setting his bowl and plate down on the table and then turning back to peer closer. Suguru shifts to let him, pulling his shoulders straight so it’s flat on his back. 

“Yeah,” Satoru pipes up, cracking a small smile. “We call it Rainbow Dragon ‘cause it’s literal.”

“Incredible,” his father-in-law mumbles, fixing his glasses like a total nerd to look at it closer. 

At the kitchen table, both Kento and Yu make eye contact with twin, cringing expressions. 

“That’s not the only rainbow thing around here,” Yu whispers, a snickering tease up against Kento’s ear, and his snort is so violent miso goes up his nose and then right back out. They break loudly as Yu cackles and Kento coughs up a hysterical storm, though Suguru only sighs at the mockery, halfheartedly throwing a warped paper clip at them. 

“They think I’m cool,” he drawls, wry and fond, “don’t ruin it for me.”

Yu only laughs harder.

They dress the twins up in adorable matching dresses, to their poorly hidden joy. They’re cute, spinning around in the front hall in white, poofy skirts and identical hairclips as they laugh and ask Emiko and Isamu to try and tell them apart. No one has the heart to ruin it, even though they probably well know they’re not identical. 

They’re shyer once they leave the house, teleporting to Hamarikyu gardens where they brought Suguru’s parents over winter break. Mimiko sticks close to his side, Nanako to Suguru’s, their parents and Masamichi trailing after them and absently trading stories.

It’s serene, calm and eye searingly vivid with colors brighter than what Satoru thinks is reasonably possible for nature. Maybe it’s just him and the Six Eyes, maybe life really is so beautiful, but either way he can’t bring himself to care much. It smells like sweet pollen and small conversations scatter on the feathers of a cool breeze, gentle along his ears and steady as he walks, hand in Suguru’s own.

The gardens are beautiful enough the twins don’t stay put for long, drawn to the vibrant rows of flower beds even if they deliberately round far away from any of the other tourists. Nanako sullenly glowers at a boy a few feet away when he picks a flower against sign rules, stood halfway through the exhibit, her tiny scowl enough to make Satoru laugh when it already looks just like Suguru’s does.

He grows two nanohana flowers to place in their hair as they walk through the yellow field, a bloom of his own appearing at the top of the braid tied at the back of his head alongside a secretive wink and a smile.

“I always admired him,” Isamu murmurs, a few feet back in stride with Masamichi as they talk. “My son is many things I wish I could be. But I must say, I think I envy this the most,” he chuckles, when Suguru seamlessly turns to kneel and presents a giant nanohana bouquet, bloomed from the palms of his hands.

“Satoru,” he purrs, Mimiko clinging to his shoulders and Nanako dancing around him with a grin, impish and giggly when she stumbles into Emiko, and her grandmother only steadies her and strokes a lock of her wild hair behind her ear. 

Satoru stands there longer than he’d like to admit, face flushing red and ozone thickening around him as his heart pounds at the sight of Suguru on one knee. He’s beautiful, small smile and narrowed eyes, cattish and coy as he holds out vibrant yellow flowers. 

“Will you get lunch with me today?” He asks, sly as anything, and Satoru sputters out an exhale as he takes the bouquet just to whack him with it. 

“I hate you,” he spits, bristling like a cat as yellow petals spill into the breeze, though Suguru only laughs. 

The ring box burns a hole in his pocket as they meander along the path leading to tiny little Kyu-Inao shrine, the plum trees decadent around them fallen back to plain leaves and bark now that March has long passed by.

He didn’t mean to chicken out, or get smacked by his own flowers for that matter, Suguru muses, just slightly chagrined. But Satoru had looked like he might have cried with the way he’d stilled, breath catching, white lashes rising high like the puffy clouds above. A part of him had burned anyway knelt in the yellow nanohana beds, perfectly in sight of anyone else when Suguru is truthfully a possessive bastard at heart. He wants to keep every piece of Satoru he gets to himself. He’s never been able to put that little voice to rest, doesn’t think he’ll ever not hear that crow of mine, mine, mine. It’s alright. He wouldn’t have it any other way, now.

Tsumiki and Megumi hadn’t been there besides, he thinks, looking up from the worn, grassy path when he feels a faint touch to his arm, and they should be there for that. He’d just wanted to know what it felt like, first and foremost. 

“Next time,” his mother promises, a knowing thing in her dark eyes, narrowed in something amused. Her crows feet crinkle as she smiles, a small divot by the side of her lip deepening the same as his own does. “You’ll get it when it feels right.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Suguru murmurs, reaching up to take her hand in his own, content to swing them as they walk, Mimiko and Nanako jeering behind them as they rush past in a fluttery blur of white dresses. Suguru jostles when Yaga runs past just after, scooping Nanako up as she shrieks a loud, giddy laugh, just missing Mimiko by a hair. 

“The panda man got you!” Mimiko yells, stumbling over a root as Yaga tosses Nanako over a shoulder like a sack of rice, her face bright and teeth gleaming in a smile as she circles around them completely to run herself right into Isamu’s legs. “Save me,” she gasps, tugging at his shirt as she hops in place on the balls of her feet. “You gotta save me from the panda man-!”

“Ah, Mimiko-!” Satoru calls, maybe to tell her not to climb on their grandfather for his swollen joints or weak arms, but his father surprises him again when he only stoops enough to haul Mimiko up onto one hip. He visibly strains, weaker than either of them when he’s never done worse labor than from behind the wood of a desk and the graphite of pencil and protractor, but he smiles anyway.

“Let me take her-” Satoru flusters, but Isamu only shakes his head, Yaga pooling to a stop in their small circlet of people, Nanako flushed-face sat on his shoulders, arms wrapped around his head like a crown. 

“She’s fine,” his father decides, even though they can all see the way his hands are stiff with arthritis, his posture slightly stooped. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to hold someone so cute,” he teases, Mimiko’s whole demeanor shying as she blushes, tucking her face along the curve of his thinning shoulder, his rectangular glasses flashing with the afternoon sun. “Let me enjoy it, my son,” he says, like it’s just the first thing that comes to mind, and Suguru watches Satoru visibly melt like taffy. 

“Okay,” he agrees, like an absolute love sick fool- Suguru would know. “Just don’t strain yourself, Otou-san.” Isamu smiles, wide and neat, and he thinks he’s more than content with it all.

“Well now I feel left out,” Emiko pouts, and Suguru can’t help his bark of a laugh, holding up their hands in disbelief. 

“What am I?” He asks, bemused, sticking his tongue out at her when she lets go to trail red nails through his hair, her arms already beckoning for Nanako. 

“This is nice, isn’t it,” Satoru pipes up, sinking into place at his side as they watch Yaga, or Masamichi now, he supposes, lift Nanako from his shoulders to set on Emiko’s instead. She says something fond or adoring to her, red lipstick wide in a smile, and Nanako looks about over the moon resting her head atop black hair, small hands curling into dark strands. He catches something about nail polish, but he’s not listening more than he’s looking.

“Yeah,” Suguru agrees, their hands entwining again without a thought. “I’m glad we have this.”

“Well,” Masamichi cuts in, leaning over the both of them with his cargo effectively stolen, “there is a shrine right here. For superstitions, and all.” 

Suguru snorts, enduring the fond ruffle of his and Satoru’s hair with a grin and the roll of his eyes, but he breaks away anyhow. One tan hand tugs on his gauges as he goes, Masamichi’s silent support since he definitely knows what Suguru’s going to pray for, talking with Isamu all afternoon like a total gossip. He’s heard things here and there, small words exchanged in favor of others, relief that Suguru had Yaga, gratitude that Isamu raised such a good son. It’s been devastating in how kind it is.

Bowing to the shrine, he lets his hair fall from his shoulders, sifting like silk parting around his neck. He’s not superstitious, not really, because only those without power or money are superstitious and Suguru is neither, but he is a believer in luck, and so far, his has been pretty good.

‘Please,’ he prays, quiet in the warmth of the summer, his parents only steps away as they play with his children, loving and accepting and willing to change, just for his sake. ‘I want to marry him now,’ Suguru asks, fully content in the rings sitting heavy in his pockets, really just to ask, ‘and then I want to marry him again.’  

He knows Satoru’s got something he’s probably sitting on when his family’s got more money than god, no thanks in part to the stocks he’s rigging like an absolute kleptomaniac. Whether it’ll be useful isn’t really important. It’ll happen if it happens, it won’t if it won’t, and maybe he’d like to have that flimsy paper, that official seal, Suguru can be content without it.

A wedding will still be a wedding without a certificate, he decides, raising from his bow to watch on as his family meanders the small park in front of the shine. 

Mimiko and Nanako giggle and shout loudly like they don’t know what fear is, Masamichi lingers with Satoru, an arm around his waist and pride in his touch, Isamu and Emiko hold their girls and love them better than they even loved him. He sighs, bemused, happy, osmanthus flowers crowning his dark hair in bright gold. He’s glad he has this. He’s more glad that it all happened, because if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have it like this. 

‘A little pain,’ Suguru thinks, wry, hopelessly in love watching the sun catch Satoru’s black glasses, the bright thing of his smile as he laughs. He sighs. His mother is usually right, and she’s always understood him, even if sometimes it wasn’t always helpful. It’s helpful now. That’s all that matters.

“Sure, of course we’ll watch them,” Emiko assures him, as Satoru shoves on his shoes again and reluctantly readies to leave so he can go ream out Megumi’s teacher. She resettles Nanako in her arms, too big to be carried when her frame is so small, though Emiko certainly doesn’t let it stop her. “You go do what you have to.”

“Megumi’s not in trouble, right?” Nanako asks, biting at her nails, the only worry on her face for her brother’s supposed penance. Satoru scoffs, leaning closer to press a kiss to her forehead. 

“Nah,” he tones, buzzing a raspberry to her cheek that has her smiling and shrinking away like a turtle. “We’ll bring back ice cream or something.”

“But Tou-ru,” Mimiko complains, flat on the floor in the living room where she dumped herself down after they got back, in the full swing of a food coma. “I can’t eat more. I’ll pop.”

“A child?” Suguru gasps, jerking a hand up to clutch at his heart. “Turning down sweets? What has the world come to?” She giggles, wheezy, dragging her chin up to sit flat on the carpet. He pokes his tongue out, amused, patting her back slightly because she does look a little sick from cramming no less than an entire basket of fried chicken into her stomach.

‘I’m never going to have a single child that doesn’t just eat fried chicken,’ Satoru had bemoaned, to Emiko’s utter delight, because apparently, Suguru had been exactly the same.

He doesn’t bother to get up to kiss him goodbye, choosing instead to obnoxiously blow one Satoru’s direction as he turns to leave with an eye roll. Masamichi shoves one hand into the center of his back, a bemused, “have fun,” spoken alongside his gentle push, and then he’s gone, falling through space.

‘Yeah right,’ Satoru thinks, rematerializing a block from the school.

“Gojo-san?” The receptionist asks when he steps into the office, Tsumiki holding onto his hand and gushing about his tales to the flower garden, though Megumi only scowls holding his other. 

“That’s me,” Satoru responds, and wordlessly shoulders Tsumiki’s backpack, handing her their dog eared copy of her most recent bedtime story to entertain herself with. “We’ll be done soon,” he promises, tugging on her ear. “Tell me where you leave off so we can pick up there tonight.”

“Okay,” Tsumiki says, eyes crinkled in a smile before she lets go, giving the back of Megumi’s head a gentle flick as she walks away to the uncomfortable office chairs. “Don’t look so gloomy, it’s fine.” It only earns her a stuck out tongue, but Tsumiki’s already got her back turned when Megumi does it.

“Ah, Gojo-san, Megumi-chan, you can follow me,” the same man from the afternoon Megumi was sick offers, gesturing to a side door of some office or another. Satoru follows, debating just picking Megumi up when he tries to trudge his feet and trip them.

“I have some updates to their files,” he explains, dropping off a manilla folder with their new, fake document copies in it with the receptionist as he passes. “It’s all in there.”

He doesn’t listen to her response, busy peering down at Megumi when he deliberately kicks his heel. ‘Yeah, no,’ Satoru thinks, bending down to scoop him up, to small, irate anger as Megumi whips his head around to face him with a dirty look. 

“Why are you mad at me? I’m not mad at you,” Satoru chides, giving his cheeks a squish between one hand as he ducks into the small office. 

“‘Cause,” Megumi grumbles, fuming even though he melts back into his chest, maybe feeling safer where he can’t be reached or touched by other people. 

“Great reason,” Satoru snarks, and sits down in front of a small desk, the little conference room brightly lit with a window.

“...I’m sure you know why we called you here?” No-name teacher asks, and Satoru hums, finally looking up to take in his face. It’s bland, black hair and black eyes, a little boxy on the jaw but stereotypical man in every notion of the word. He seems severe, if not for the crows feet at the edges of his eyes. 

“Megumi got in a fight, yes?” He simpers, and No-name who definitely introduced himself last time offers a small sigh.

“Yes. There was an altercation with his classmate, Suzuki Sanemi, during recess a few days ago.” He pauses, fingers tapping on the desk, a frown on his face that makes Megumi try to sink a few inches sitting in his arms. “He punched the other boy unprovoked, hard enough his nose bled. He had to be pulled off him.”

“Unprovoked?” Satoru repeats, lifting one brow. No-name flushes, probably remembering their brief introduction in the office right before he tore Megumi out of the school to puke his guts out down the sink.

“He threw the first punch,” No-name says, almost like he’s doubling down, “and Wanatabe-sensei says he’s seen some antisocial behaviors from Megumi before.”

“They’re toddlers,” Satoru blandly states, shuffling Megumi so that he’s held slightly tighter when his tiny heart starts to pound, though his face stays ever blank. “Megumi was sick that day, and from what I’ve been hearing this school year, he doesn’t like the Suzuki’s kid because he bugs him when he doesn’t want to play.” 

He pauses, letting it sink in for dramatic effect as No-name frowns, searching for words before he opens his mouth. 

“Tell me, why do you think Megumi punched the kid?” Satoru asks, just as he finally does, watching black eyes crease under drawn brows at the slight, like he can’t quite tell if it was intentional or not. 

“W-well, it doesn’t matter. Violence shouldn’t be the first inclination. He should have gotten a teacher,” No-name insists, and Satoru supposes his point stands- with non-sorcerer kids. Tough luck trying to tell a kid raised on violence not to use it.

“And we’ll work on that,” he promises, airy, not really intending on keeping it. He looks down at Megumi, hard pressed to be stone faced even though his eyes shine and his hands are balled tight into fists hidden under his arms. “What do you have to say?” Satoru prods, catching green eyes as they dart up, the only break in Megumi’s careful mask. “Why’d you hit him?”

Megumi squirms slightly, clearly uncomfortable, clearly with residual fears left over from his breakdown in the bath, maybe a little terrified he’ll get left on the curb with the rest of the trash if he answers wrong. It’s such a preposterous thing to think, if only it weren’t so reasonable, Satoru wants to bite, terribly bitter.

“...I don’t like Sanemi,” Megumi mumbles, guarded looking between him and No-name teacher. “He’s pushy. And he yanked on my jacket ‘cause I wouldn’t play with him and made me fall in the mulch.”

“Oh my,” Satoru gasps, fake surprised as he daintily covers his glossy lips with one hand. Opposite him, No-name flushes again, eyebrows raising in mild alarm. “How come you didn’t go to the teachers, pumpkin?” He asks, combing through Megumi’s hair, well aware he never fought for fun but for necessity, even if part of it had probably been fueled by his own staggering power imbalance whether he refuted it or not. 

The Megumi he knew was one that subsisted on rules- tightly bound contracts, and rankling fear. He fought because he felt like he needed to. He knows without having to think about it that even though it’s different now, that Megumi knows he’s safe, that wicked hindbrain always whispering the worst will say he’s not. 

Megumi shifts, sinking into his uniform collar, but he’s got a look in his eye like he might be starting to question the legitimacy of his own fears, how they promise things that won’t come true. His tiny lips purse, worming into something unsure, eyes raking over No-name with a sort of distrust. It’s not one directed at him, and for that, Satoru can be prideful.

“They only like the kids who are normal,” he says, spoken barely audibly under his breath. “Like Tsumiki.”

Satoru hums, looking around for a nameplate of a tag and finding none. ‘Whatever,’ he supposes, and is more than happy to lean into full dick mode when given the chance. Megumi never felt happy at school, reputation aside. He doesn’t have high hopes, but maybe it can be less miserable with a little help. At least, until he makes it to highschool and he can be miserable because he has people like him who will tease him mercilessly, anyway.

“So, Iki-sensei,” Satoru begins, tone a perfect balance of lazy and cutting as he channels every iota of his grandmother.

“Aoki,” No-name squeaks, and Satoru narrows his eyes a hair.

“Would you like to tell me why my child thinks his own teachers don’t like him?” He continues, like he hasn’t heard, feeling the sharp twist Megumi’s cursed energy does in its buzzing anxiety, stilling suddenly and abruptly like a shadow against a wall. Startling into realization as he finally sets to rest those terrible whispers.

“I-I’m sure I can speak with Sakurai-san,” Aoki stammers, a pained smile stretched thin on his lips. “The rest of his class is just so chatty this year, I’m sure it’s nothing, really.” It grows slightly, just enough to bare teeth, and Satoru hums a single, bland note.

“Well,” he tones, lower in pitch than he usually goes as he stands, “I think we’re done then.”

“What-” Aoki protests, though Satoru only talks right over him, not particularly interested in listening to him try and weasel Megumi into summer detention for something so petty. 

“Clearly, Megumi didn’t instigate like you told me,” he explains, laying it out plain and simple and certain to sound like he thinks Aoki is an absolute idiot for him having to do it. “And to boot, he didn’t feel safe enough to rely on his own teacher to treat him fairly.” He offers a chilly smile, feeling green eyes stare up at him like they’ve never seen him before. “I’m sure we’d all just like to move on and fix things internally, rather than get the principal on board, hm?”

Aoki’s lips scrunch like he’s bitten into a lemon, his nod stiff when he inclines it. “Sure, Gojo-san. Of course.” The Suzuki’s, he recalls, are a rather rich family donating particularly handsomely. If their son were to get a mark on his record, they can kiss that money goodbye.

Nevermind the money Satoru himself has funneled in.

“Lovely!” He crows, smiling wide, and gestures for Aoki to lead. “It was so nice to meet you, Sensei.” Aoki offers a wincing thing at the one-eighty personality twist, slinking from his seat and out of the door. 

“...You, as well,” he mumbles, cowed, pushing open the door and gesturing for the hallway. In his arms, Megumi swings big, green eyes up to stare at him, burning like a brand on his skin with the rippling containment of his shadowy cursed energy.

Tsumiki looks up from her book as soon as they step back into the office’s main room, her face falling as she whines. “Oh come on, I just got to the good part!”

“You can finish it later, you’ll live,” Satoru teases, coiling her ponytail around one finger to make it bounce. 

“Sir, your documents,” the receptionist says, handing the folder back over the countertop, and Satoru takes it with a sauve smile. “Congratulations, Gojo-san, Gojo-chan,” she says, winking down at both Megumi and Tsumiki.

“Thank you!” Tsumiki calls, bounding up from the chair with a wide grin, her hair swaying as she leads them out when Satoru makes for the door. “I’m gonna tell everyone to call me Gojo next year,” she continues, practically gushing and eyes bright even as she cranes to look up at him, “it’s gonna be so cool and mysterious.” Satoru laughs, hooking a hand under her arm to haul her up with Megumi, their backpacks slung over his shoulder.

“I imagine you’ll get some rumors going when the twins join the class above you next year,” he muses, fond at the thought of them still addressing each other as sisters even with different last names. 

Tsumiki squeals as he turns the corner and the world blurs, forest replacing the hustle and bustle of city as the front walkway up to the house solidifies under his feet. He sets her down immediately after, not surprised in the slightest when Tsumiki goes running for the dojo’s back porch where it’s been left open, probably eager to go inform Nanako and Mimiko of her latest maniacal plan where they sit in the yard with their grandparents. They must have finally broke out that washable tempera paint judging on the color he can see already staining the grass, twenty feet away.

“...You’re not mad?” Megumi asks, quiet and confused as Satoru strolls, an echo of earlier. He hums, shaking his head, carding his fingers through feathery black hair only just losing its babyish whispyness. 

“No,” he says, leaning his face down to breathe in the smell of inky cursed energy as small hands circle around his neck and hold tight. “You didn’t really do anything wrong, the school is just unfair.” 

The backyard is loud when he follows Tsumiki’s path and steps up onto the engawa, watching the chaos unfold. She and the twins are rapidly catching up on the last few hours, to Tsumiki’s ghastly complaints that she wanted to go, only soothed by Suguru blooming nanohara flowers in a crown around her hair, his hands completely covered in paint.

Masamichi and Emiko sit together on the grass, covered by a thin picnic blanket, several large sheets of Sensei’s far too expensive drawing paper spread out among the grass and wildly colorful. It looks homey, and bright, and domestic to a sickening quality down to the pitcher of lemonade left on the porch.

“Once you get to highschool, you won’t have to pull any punches,” Satoru promises, stepping up onto tatami matting and amused when Tsumiki immediately stakes out with the twins, rapidly listening to their ramble of what it is they’re painting before she’s reaching for one of the many filled palettes of paint herself. 

“If you try to stay out of trouble until then, great,” he says, chin tucked over black hair and voice low as he speaks, eyes falling away to look at Megumi rather than the chaos as he sinks down to sit cross legged, cool in the shade, little fists clinging into his shirt. 

“We’ll always bail you out, though,” Satoru promises, warm and fond, dripping with honeycombed insides when Megumi finally looks up, green eyes like emeralds catching the afternoon sun. “Even if you do get into trouble.”

Megumi stares at him for a long beat of a moment, eyes wavering between his own, something fragile seeming like it could finally be solidifying. 

“What if I hurt someone,” he asks, like a stove fire, energy snapping violently, eyes big and looming despite how small he is. Seriousness is too adorable to be heeded seen on his face. “Hurt them bad?”

“Depends,” Satoru muses, supporting Megumi up onto his chest as he flops back onto the floor, breeze ruffling both of their loose hair as the sun leaves dappled trails along the edge by the open doors. “If you did it for selfish reasons, maybe I’ll give you a lecture. If you did it for other reasons, maybe I’ll take you out to get ice cream.”

Megumi stares at him, a puzzlement darkening his eyes as he narrows them, small hands leaving his shirt to curl around his arms, held under his own as Satoru resettles him with a bounce. 

“Why,” Megumi tones, so sharp and yet so soft, the furrow of his black brows cutting a shadow down his rounded face. “Hurting people ‘s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Well sure,” he replies, whimsy and just slightly airy, shuffling his knees up so Megumi can lean back against them. He grabs at his feet after, tugging off his shoes and socks so he can go run around in the yard later without splattering them with paint. “It is. But there’s contexts to it, too. And we’re different from other people. Normal people,” Satoru says, the clatter of Megumi’s shoes hitting the floor loud, even among the his sibling’s shouts, their grandparent’s laughter. 

“Your dad and I paid for your freedom with murder,” he admits, not so tentative as to shy away from it when Megumi’s known since the night they came home sodden with red. “Our family’s. Mine.” He blinks, not terribly curious at how Megumi only watches him, not a trace of fear to be found in his fixed eyes, or the pouting slope of his lips. He knows why he’ll never find it. 

“Violence isn’t good,” Satoru decides on, reaching up with one palm to cup Megumi’s cheek, so small and yet so unfazed already, “but sometimes, it is necessary, and I’d be a hypocrite to tell you anything else.”

For a moment, he wonders what Megumi thinks of listening to what he says. If his mind trails over his brief visit to the Zen’in’s, if he thinks of that night on the stairs. Wonders if he even thinks of Toji, whatever memories he must have of him. Whatever it is doesn’t seem to rattle him at all, not when Megumi only tilts his head like the demon dogs do, blinking not so unlike a baby fawn, terribly vulnerable and so terribly trusting. Satoru has spilled so much blood, earning that trust. He’ll gladly spill more.

“Just don’t go punching random kids for the fun of it,” he snarks, breaking the tension like the lash of a whipcord, grinning when Megumi only scowls. “If it’s for a reason, then fine, but we’ll always get you outta trouble, baby. I promise.”

Green eyes study him again, contemplating hard, and Megumi must decide that all the trust Satoru’s won won’t break so easily, because he nods.

“Okay,” he mumbles, and his palms are so little reaching out to squish into his cheeks, peony lips pouting adorably. “What about a lot of trouble?” He asks, eyes squinted and not entirely unable to hide their amusement at smushing his lips together. “A lot, a lot of trouble?”

“Not a lot, a lot, a lot of trouble?” Satoru parrots, breaking into a smile when Megumi can’t stamp out a giggle, reaching up to cover tiny hands when they press into his cheeks. “What about a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of trouble?” He crows, more than proud of himself when Megumi’s whole face scrunches in an uncontrollable smile.

“Tou-ru!” He cries, not a single shadow of that sullen, terrified boy sitting lonely in that chair to be found, and Satoru lets him have his peace, blowing a loud raspberry to his neck to get him to shriek. He can have his lectures and obnoxious preaching about morals and jujutsu sorcerer’s duties and harm to the weak later, when it actually matters. He gets to be a kid first.

In the yard, Tsumiki, Nanako, and Mimiko jeer loudly as the sound of a plain slap resonates, to Emiko’s outraged squawk of indignance amid the ghastly orange handprint on her face. Isamu’s quiet chuckling and Masamichi’s throaty snicker follow immediately after the pound of her feet as she stands, footfalls thumping in the grass as she chases Tsumiki just to smear a streak of pink down her nose. 

The paper crinkles as Masamichi casually swirls one of his fancy oxtail paintbrushes, creating magic under his loose fingers, voice quiet as he teaches Isamu how to paint. It sounds warm. It sounds like home. 

Three days later sees them trekking out to the Tokyo school again, a heavy wickered basket in hand along with a checkered sheet, sun hats covering eyes and airy dresses bright among the foliage of the forest.

The demon dogs yip loudly running through the undergrowth, Nanako and Tsumiki smearing grass stains and mud all over the hems of their sundresses as they run around with them and fail to keep up. Mimiko follows more sedately, carrying one of Megumi’s tamed shadow bunnies and matching him for purple hair ribbons.

“Hey,” Satoru murmurs, as Suguru kneels behind him and begins to flare the picnic blanket out, the basket set on the grass spun jewel green in the peaking heat of summer. “Sorry it’s been a while.” The pale rock doesn’t respond, nothing but weathered limestone from a nearby creek, just out of place enough to mean something different. Her bed is covered in peonies and marigolds. 

“Tou-ru! I wanna have the watermelon first!” Nanako yells, right before she stumbles head over heels running into White, managing to smear even more dirt all over herself even though they’ve barely been in the forest longer than ten minutes. 

Suguru laughs, rushing over to help her sit up even though Nanako only huffs, face burning red, more from embarrassment than tears.

“We brought you your favorite,” Satoru explains, quiet and eyes crinkled in mirth turning away from the chaos for a moment, that old ache calming where it hides somewhere behind his sternum. It feels so different from the first time he knelt here, burying a bloodied talisman and putting old ghosts to rest. It’s all of Nobara’s hard earned peace, proof beneath his palms as he rests them among bright, beautiful flowers.

It takes him a moment to blink away, caught still on the gentle sway of marigolds, the soft hum he can feel as the talisman absorbs his emotions, careful to hide them away where they can’t form anything besides vague memories. 

“You’re gonna love each other,” Satoru promises, running his palm over the flower dappled grave. 

He sits up then, finally turning away, because he means it. He doesn’t need to see the future to know it’s true. 

“C’mere,” he beckons after, Nanako’s scowl adorably hilarious as she stumbles over with Suguru’s help, no real scrape to fix with anything more than kisses. 

They set up fairly simply, feilding petty arguments over who’s going to get the biggest watermelon slice, who’s sitting where, laughing over how the dogs run around like lunatics in the warmth of a perfect summer afternoon.

“No, cut it bigger-!” Nanako jeers, to Tsumiki’s louder arguing that it’s, ‘too big, Tou-ru, now they’re uneven,’ the two of them squabbling over it as if they can really eat an entire watermelon by themselves. 

They’re so diligently obnoxious fighting over who has a millimeter less that neither of them notice when Megumi shoves his hands into the basket, pulling the bao container out before anyone looks and splitting it even with Mimiko. By the time they do go to fish all the things out, watermelon plated evenly, thank you, and the rind chucked to the grass for the ants to have, they’re halfway through nearly eight with sauce smeared at the corner of their mouths and literally red handed with chili oil, eyes wide and cheeks stuffed like chipmunks.

“You two-!” Tsumiki exclaims when she can’t find it only to whip around and see them. They exchange a rapid side eye before they’re up and running, bare feet slapping on soft grass as Tsumiki chases after them, yelling to their guileless cackles. Nanako makes a mess of the picnic blanket in a bunching of fabric beneath her feet as she springs from his lap, the plastic plates in her hands forgotten as they go flying behind her as she gives chase, shouting all the while.

Satoru laughs so hard he cries setting two plated watermelon slices over Nobara’s grave, Suguru exasperated next to him dragging his hands down his face, as if it hides his massive grin any.

It’s just as fun once they calm down enough to actually eat, sitting and talking and laughing over stupid antics, gorging themselves sick on an entire watermelon and dreaming up all the things they’ll do that summer. The kids are happy, ridiculous, allowed to be kids as they eat too much too quickly only to play silly games in the willow clearing not minutes later, hands sticky and faces messy. It’s warm from the sun and quiet save for their cheers and chiming laughter, peaceful when there’s no monsters around to hurt them. The only monsters they have are the ones that’ll protect them, now.

“Satoru,” Suguru tones, soft in the dappled light dripping between the canopy, eyes like amethyst every time they catch it. “Open your eyes.”

“Hm?” He hums, blinking awake where he’d let them shut under the cool of the breeze, content to lie and listen until the kids got too tired to run around. The sky is a gem like blue when he stares for a moment, the forest green as he’s ever seen it, the picnic messy and homey as he sits upright. “What-?” He asks, only for the breath to halt in his throat, punching from his chest.

Suguru smiles as he settles on one knee, a velvet box in his palm. Satoru stares, mouth going dry, heart pounding a staccato in his sternum and eyes wetting shiny as he looks from it to Suguru’s face and back. Shaky, he scrambles to his knees, feeling fizzy like soda pop as he bites into his bottom lip to keep the tears from stinging.

“My mother said she doesn’t believe in soulmates,” Suguru starts, thumbing around the seam of the box with a melancholy in his gaze as it holds his own. “She said you were someone special, though. That I’d be a fool not to hold you tight.”

“Suguru,” Satoru whispers, hearing it only peripherally as the kids stumble to a halt in whatever game they’re playing when Tsumiki gasps as loud as humanly possible. The tear is hot on his cheek when it falls, eyes blinking rapidly as he fights to believe it.

“I think I agree,” Suguru continues, playful as his eyes crinkle, his lips dimpling in the smile that Satoru loves with everything he is. “But I do believe in soulmates,” he says, quiet as his own eyes shine, like his words aren’t an avalanche spilling from his lips. “The self-made kind,” Suguru echoes, so long ago now, and Satoru gives up on keeping it together and lets the wet breath escape like a cry.

“You made me,” Suguru murmurs, finally slipping the ring box open to reveal three nestled in soft, cream velvet. “And I made you.” He takes the silver, diamond ring front and center from it, setting the box down into the grass as he holds a hand out.

“So, Satoru,” Suguru asks, smiling so wide it looks like it hurts the same as the want desperately caught somewhere in his chest, “will you marry me?”

“Oh my god!” Tsumiki shrieks, only just louder than Nanako’s squealing as she holds onto her arm and shakes it, probably hyperventilating. 

Too choked up to speak, he rapidly nods, hand shaking as he holds it out and tries so hard to say yes past the tears he can’t control stealing away his voice. Suguru only smiles, ever gentle curling his fingers beneath his palm, slipping that beautiful, diamond engagement ring onto his finger with all the care in the world.

“Is that a yes, then?” Suguru teases, nose to nose and smiling wide. Satoru finally breaks, sobbing loudly as he makes an offended noise.

“Yes!” He shrieks, whole face wet as he grabs Suguru’s and cries as loudly as he can. “Yes, yes, yes I want to marry you! I want to marry you!”

Suguru grins pressing a kiss to his skin, snot dribbling onto his shirt as Satoru cries his heart out, the girls forgotten to the background as they gush together among Mimiko and Megumi’s less enthusiastic clapping. 

“Don’t cry, ‘Toru,” Suguru murmurs, tilting his chin up just enough to press a kiss to his lips. His eyes glint, shiny in their own right as they meet his own, the only thing he’s ever wanted. “I love you.”

Satoru sobs, and he sobs, and he sobs, because it’s the best day of his life, because he loves Suguru too.

“We’re getting married,” he whispers, sniffling something harsh, his grin giddy when it breaks over his face, beautiful ring warm on his finger. “We’re getting married!” 

“We’re getting married,” Suguru repeats, just as elated, just as breathless. 

He’s never been happier.