chapter 18: all he wants
cw: unhealthy possessive thoughts, manipulative behavior, a lot of toxic masculinity and unhealthy approach to relationships. for the millionth time, please do not idolize any behaviors of any characters.
September 1, 2009
To: Getou Suguru
[10:11] This is a joke, right?
[10:12] The Higher-Ups fucked up big time.
[10:58] Suguru, seriously, reply me. Yaga says it's true.
[10:59] Just tell me it's a joke.
[17:38] Suguru. What the fuck.
[18:11] Fucking reply or pick up the phone.
[18:15] At least let me know you're alive.
September 04, 2009
[03:43] You're such a fucking coward, I don't even know what half the shit you were talking about meant, were you fucking high or drunk or at least give me a fucking reason
He deletes the message.
[03:45] Fuck you Suguru why didn't you at least tell me what you were planning or how you were feeling? Weren't we the strongest pair, we did shit together, how the fuck did this just come out of fucking nowhere
It didn't, Shouko's voice says, the signs were all there. We just ignored them.
He deletes the message.
[03:48] Fuck you fuck you fuck you
Message deleted.
[04:16] I'm sorry, Suguru
Message deleted.
[04:35] Why didn't you even give me a chance?
His fingers hover over "Send." He reads it over and over and over again.
The Honored One sneers at him. Satoru deletes the message.
"First Suguru, now sensei, what the fuck has gotten into everyone?"
Shouko looks up from her textbook tiredly. It's not clear if the bags under her eyes are from lack of sleep or just smeared mascara or both. In the shadows of her flickering lamp, with her grimy hair and distinct body odor of whiskey, formaldehyde, and nicotine, she resembles a feral raccoon crawling out of the depths of the gutter. Everyone else is wise enough to steer clear of her these last few days, but Satoru is a ticking time bomb himself. He would not mind blowing all of Jujutsu High and its inhabitants to pieces, only for Shouko to curse them all in the afterlife. It seems like an ending befitting the first and last class of Tokyo Jujutsu Technical College comprised of Special Grades that so far has beaten the thirty-three-percent mortality rate (never mind the thirty-three-percent-could-potentially-be-higher Turned-to-the-Dark-Side-Curse-User-Conversion rate).
"What's next? You gonna leave me too?" Satoru pops the bubble made from his gum. Shouko winces at the noise and glares at him.
"Sure, beats being stuck with you until the end of time."
"Shouko," he whines.
"I'm going to medical school next," she says, "so that's sort of leaving."
"Only after we graduate, right? And you'll still be in Tokyo."
She shrugs. "I guess. What will you do?"
"What do you mean?"
"After we graduate." When Shouko is this tired, she blinks painfully slowly, as if she has to consciously command her brain to then transmit the signal down to her muscles. "You just gonna dick around as the Gojou head? Your parents pick out brides for you yet?"
Satoru blanches. "Brides?"
"C'mon, you can't be serious." She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands and lays pressure to her orbital bones, alleviating her headache by instigating pain elsewhere. "You never told them about Suguru, right? Not that it'd matter. You're turning eighteen soon. They're gonna want to start talking about it."
He scrunches his nose. "Ugh, gross, I'm Head, can't I just ignore them?"
"They might not recognize it unless you at least have a fiancée. Fixed plans to progeny," she adds, sarcastic.
"Disgusting. As if I'd know how to do jackshit with kids." He lies back on the floor of Shouko's bedroom and kicks his legs up the side of her bed so that his feet sprawl obnoxiously over her open textbook.
"Satoru," she sighs. She pushes his feet off the pages but there is the telltale sound of one of the pages ripping. "Fuck you."
He fiddles with his glasses and moves his legs out of the way, the damage already done, him entirely unrepentant.
"What about you? Wanna marry me, Shouko?"
She gags. "I would rather die."
"You'd rather die than do most things that living requires," he shoots back.
"Yup."
"What about Utahime?" he offers.
"Please ask her," she says, deadpan. "Please, I beg you. Gods know we need something to laugh at nowadays."
"Maybe I'll do it as a prank when she visits next week. And the joke will be that I'll really ask Mei instead."
"Mei would probably do it if you paid her enough."
"She's too smart for that," he says honestly. "All finances are under the Gojou head's name. She won't control any of it, and she'll never go for that."
"Wow, you really have given this some thought."
He really hasn't. Most of his thoughts are full of Suguru, the unsent texts, the questions he'll never get answers to because Suguru hadn't even thought he was worth posing the questions to in the first place. The Honored One is disgusted with his pining, but they share the same disbelief—how could Suguru not deem him worthy of his dreams? If Suguru had genuinely asked, had genuinely wanted to wipe the face of the earth of non-sorcerers, why hadn't he asked Satoru of this wish, prayed to his nearest god, relied on his deepest faith?
(Because, Satoru realizes much, much later, after he kisses Yuna for the first time, Suguru worshipped Satoru as much as Satoru worshipped Suguru, which is to say not at all or maybe all too much.)
"I'm not getting married." Satoru spits out the gum that has gone stale in his mouth and sticks it underneath Shouko's bedframe. "Fuckin' useless tradition."
"What are you gonna do then?"
Satoru sits up and rests his chin on the edge of Shouko's mattress. She looks at him seriously. If Satoru's Eyes are the ever-shifting galaxy, Shouko's are a black hole, devouring all light Satoru emanates into nothingness. He wonders if Shouko finds it as ironic as he does, her ability to grant back life to others when she teeters so finely to take her own away. Satoru sneaks his hand across the mattress and takes her small hand in his.
"You're not gonna leave me too, right, Shouko?" he mutters into the sheets.
Shouko's expression softens imperceptibly. "No, dummy. I won't."
"Good. 'Cause I'm gonna change the fuckin' world, and I want you to see me do it."
She rolls her eyes, but the movement is so lethargic, it looks like her eyes get stuck in the back of her head. She squeezes his hand back.
"It's just us two then. Guess I really am stuck with you to the end of time."
He grins at her, even though the raw ache inside him gapes horribly. He misses Suguru. They both do.
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
"Leave her alone, Gojou-senpai."
Satoru bites on his lollipop. The crack sends a sharp bite up his temple, but Reverse Cursed Technique soothes the pain instantly, leaving behind only the artificial taste of blueberry on his tongue.
"How are you not mad at her?" His Six Eyes zoom in on the soft silhouette of marigold across the riverway. The Cursed Energy pulses strongly amongst the masses at the fish market, pausing here and there at various kiosks, mimicking the way she always paused before speaking. It infuriates Satoru that Yuna ruthlessly abandoned him and still has the peace of mind to be doing something as mundane as buying groceries.
Kento shrugs and wraps his scarf around his neck tighter. The winter chill has arrived early, but ever since Suguru defected, the mission volume had finally dissipated, as if proving that Suguru's fucked-up theory actually has merit. Kusukabe and the other fourth-years were actually granted a protected week for job search and jujutsu licensing. The others had been sent on individual missions and had decided to meet in Edogawa for a quick dinner and break. Kento is, of course, on time; Shouko is five minutes late. After waiting twenty minutes for Satoru, they are about to leave when Satoru warps right in front of them, narrowly missing landing on Kento's foot. He ignores their obvious displeasure with him ("If you can fucking teleport, you have no reason to be late") and instead surveils the area, because you never know where Suguru could really be hiding, only to find Yuna instead.
Her Cursed Energy is hard to ignore, and while not necessarily unique, is atypical. Most Cursed Energy is dark or cool on the color spectrum—Shouko's a deep indigo, Kento's a royal blue. Suguru's had been a wild, rich crimson. Satoru's looks like light refracting through a clear prism, splitting into all rays, though it favors ultraviolet. Yuna's is therefore hard to ignore: bright and blaring like a hazard sign, or the mid-afternoon sun on a summer day near the koi pond. Satoru is livid; how dare she, right when Satoru had sought her out, right when he'd maybe even needed—
"It wasn't her fault," says Shouko, tugging Satoru's arm. He remains rooted on the spot, eyes transfixed. "Come on, Satoru. She needed a break."
"She told me to fucking go to Hawaii. As if that would solve the giant mess Suguru left behind. She just ditched us."
"She was barely hanging on by a thread that last year," says Shouko. "Suguru just pushed her over the edge."
"The last two years was shit for all of us," Satoru snaps. "You don't see any of us fucking just losing our shit and running—"
Both Kento and Shouko arch eyebrows at him, and the sentence hits Satoru belatedly. He scowls.
"Fine."
"I was mad," Kento admits in a surprising moment of solidarity with Satoru. He naturally takes the victory away immediately. "But I get why she left, just like…I kind of understand what Getou-senpai did."
"Careful," mutters Shouko, glancing around them to make sure there are no ears planned by the Higher-Ups. Satoru knows there's not; he scans for them unconsciously each time he searches for Suguru. (It is unclear if he'd stop the Higher-Ups or help them, Satoru hasn't decided yet).
"Besides," Kento continues, "she has still been helping us in her own way."
"Oh?" Shouko takes out a cigarette and lights it. She has already announced she'll quit when she starts medical school. "You too, Nanami?"
Kento nods. "Yes, she reached out to me last week to put me in contact with a college counselor."
"What?" says Satoru sharply.
Kento looks at him blankly, as if he expected Satoru's reaction. "For post-graduation, Gojou-senpai."
"Is there some sorcerer college I don't know about?"
"Well, technically, we're called Jujutsu Technical College too," notes Shouko unhelpfully.
"I want to explore other options," says Kento. He shuffles on his big dumb boots and brushes his wispy blonde hair out of his face. "I don't think it's so bad to explore a non-sorcerer job that won't surely get me killed before age thirty."
"You're gonna be a Grade One Sorcerer by graduation," snarls Satoru. "You're not gonna die, Nanami, you don't have to be so scared. You're strong, you're not like Haibara—"
"Satoru," cuts in Shouko, eyes like black holes threatening to swallow him alive, but the damage is done. Kento's face hardens. He has so many more lines on his face than Satoru does even though he's a year younger, and he has mastered a look of utter disdain that should be reserved for the middle-aged.
"Fuck you, Gojou."
"Maybe you should," says Satoru, impenitent, "then you'd realize what a great fucking lay I am and not fucking leave like everyone else did."
"Not everything is about you!"
"Yeah, it kinda is, because in case you haven't noticed, I'm a fucking big deal!"
"Not everything is about you, but you're certainly not a reason to stay!" Kento is nearly yelling at this point. His hands are balled into fists and his eyes bulge a bit with each word. Maybe getting together for a meal was a bad idea; they don't know how to be together anymore. "How did Getou-senpai's leaving not teach you that already!"
Satoru's hand twitches. Shouko exerts the most physical effort she has in years and jumps to smack them both upside the head.
"All right, stop it," she says wearily, because being angry takes too much out of her. "You've both each said one terrible thing to each other. Let's call it even before you hurt each other more."
"I'm not hurt," insists Satoru.
"Just shut up, Satoru, and let's go get food. I'm starving." Shouko takes a deep breath in of her cigarette and pulls Kento forward by his scarf right as he opens his mouth, probably to announce that he's leaving. "Don't bother, Nanami. Just give it a rest. We only have each other now." She grabs Satoru by the elbow and pulls him away from the bridge that he wants to cross. "Let's try not to make each other miserable."
To: Getou Suguru
[00:18] What's the name of that pasta place sensei took us to that one time
Satoru presses the "Delete" button like it is an unwelcome ant that needs squashing until the message is completely erased. He's getting better. He starts texts to Suguru only once every couple of weeks now, and he rarely sends them. He ignores the message history (one-sided on his part because Suguru doesn't deign to reply the long strings of dick emoticons or giant compilation of symbols that composes a fist with the middle finger Satoru sends when he's particularly bitter) and exits out of their chat. He lets his phone fall onto his chest and stares up at the ceiling of his room, alone.
Limitless remains on indefinitely now, and it insulates him from feeling anything: the frosty air, the soft touch of snow as it floats outside, all exchanged to filter out the bite of the cold. The mantra that there is beauty in pain or suffering is a dumb one except when it's true, and Satoru hasn't figured out how to finetune his Infinity to select for only the beauty. (The miniscule poetic part of him suggests that things are only beautiful if there is pain for contrast, but the Honored One howls in laughter at that and devours up the sentiment until there's nothing but hollow neutrality left.)
Satoru tugs the blankets up to his chin, even though he is not cold. This is fine. He has been eighteen-years-old for eighteen minutes. Birthdays are dumb because they set the expectation that he is supposed to feel different on this day, at this specific time, when in reality, no one consciously feels time pass until they recognize the weight of large swaths of it. He feels no different than he felt nineteen minutes ago. He is not sad, nor is he expecting anything. He's supposed to set out for a mission all the way in Miyagi early this morning, some question of a Curse User who has taken out a retired Grade One. It sounds like an overrated mission; anyone would be able to kill some eighty-year-old retired sorcerer with their eyes closed.
His phone buzzes, and Satoru's dumb heart leaps a little bit, only to drop like a bird shot down from flight once he reads the notification. It's the Gojou investigator Satoru had instructed to look into Zen'in Toji and his supposed son. There is no record of a Zen'in child floating around without the Zen'in family's knowledge, so of course he must have a different surname. The investigator attaches a copy of a marriage certificate to a Fushiguro Mitsuko, mother to a Fushiguro Tsumiki and Fushiguro Megumi, neither of which sounds like a son, but he promises Satoru that he will track all these Fushiguros down.
Satoru doesn't reply, just drops his phone back to his chest.
Minutes tick by, he has now been eighteen for more than twenty minutes, and still nothing feels different. The Honored One perches on the forefront of his mind and reminds Satoru that he is an adult now, it is therefore time to become who he has always been destined to be, especially when all his efforts to be something otherwise have failed so spectacularly to keep the humans he wants near to him.
I want to save them, he thinks.
The Honored One scoffs. You want them to worship you.
That's not true, but it doesn't matter. Either way, stupidly, no one around him wants to be saved, even when Satoru is so willing. How else is he supposed to keep people around him then, when his strength is all he has to offer?
His phone buzzes again. Satoru lets it sit there, resigned to more pointless updates about a kid he doesn't even know what he's going to do with. Kill him, maybe. Trick him into swearing a binding vow so that he'll have to serve Satoru for the rest of his life. That'd be hilarious. The Zen'ins would love it.
Or maybe it's Satoru's mother, sending yet another picture of some nameless girl from some nameless clan, asking what he thinks. They're all the same: pretty, doe-eyed, eager to please, and Satoru doesn't have the heart to snark back that unless they've recently been announced in the jujutsu underworld to be the new head of a cult, have silky black hair and washboard abs, he's not interested.
His phone vibrates repetitively, and Satoru groans as he picks it up, ready to smash out a scathing reply to whoever the fuck is incessantly texting him past-midnight.
From: Morimoto Yuna
[00:34] Happy birthday, Gojou-kun.
[00:40] I know it has been a while. And you are not pleased with me.
[00:42] But I hope you are well.
[00:45] I made a reservation for you at that Italian restaurant you like.
She sends the address to the pasta place, as well as the time.
[00:55] You can bring two others, if you'd like.
[00:56] Though I have grown to enjoy eating alone.
[01:00] Happy birthday, again.
Satoru watches the last message appear and reads them until his screen goes to sleep on its own. When his room lapses back into darkness, he kicks off his covers, pulls on his newest pair of Jordans and scrambles outside. When he's outside the torii gates marking the boundary of Jujutsu High, he teleports twice until he arrives in Edogawa, across the river where he'd spotted Yuna's Cursed Energy that one time. His Six Eyes zoom in and out over the derelict apartments but there is no spot of bright yellow.
He doesn't even know what his end-game is. Does he hate Yuna? Does he want her to know just how her leaving made him feel? (That sounds pathetic). Maybe he'll just show up and announce that her hiatus is over, that she needs to come back to the School, because in case she's forgotten, Satoru fucking owns her. "So much for Shanghai," he'll say, "we all knew you were lying to Nanami anyway. What the fuck are you doing here, wasting away? You were already a pretty shit teacher, but now you're really useless, running away like a coward."
He wanders for nearly half an hour in the snow, appearing and disappearing on rooftops, until he finally glances toward the river itself and spots a flicker of gold on an abandoned wharf, next to a set of half-sinking rowboats. It's Yuna's Cursed Energy for sure, though it's oddly unsteady, as if she is injured.
He teleports behind her, his feet never touching the rotting wood of the wharf that would surely groan under his weight. Yuna's hair is long and tied back in a low ponytail, and she's wrapped in a thick gray jacket. On closer inspection, he spots a stream of metallic green Cursed Energy emanating from her waist, where gold bleeds into a bed of ivy. She's wounded; a Cursed Weapon is sucking her dry somehow, but Yuna makes no movement to dislodge the weapon. She sits as still as stone, her legs dangling above the frozen water, her phone and a ceramic sake bottle nestled against a fresh dusting of snow at her side.
Yuna does not hear him approach because Satoru makes no noise to hear. He is about to announce himself when she suddenly speaks.
"I told you already, Getou-kun."
Satoru freezes. Could Suguru be close? Impossible, Satoru would've recognized his Cursed Energy instantly.
"I should've known. I should have reached out to you sooner. I'm sorry." She pauses. Satoru cranes to listen if there's a reply, but he hears nothing except for the slosh of waves against ice.
"I know," Yuna says quietly, contritely. "I'm sorry to you too, Haibara-kun."
Satoru glances around. She must be drunk and seeing things, or it must be a property of that weapon sticking out of her gut. Satoru is fairly confident that Haibara is dead.
He steps forward. "Sensei."
She turns to him, her eyes glazed, skin flushed like she has a fever despite it snowing outside. She has the audacity to not even look surprised at the sight of him. Instead, she just nods, a bit dazed.
"There's not a knife sticking out of your throat this time, Gojou-kun." She pats her waist, where the Cursed Weapon is lodged. "I suppose that's an improvement."
"What are you talking—" He cuts himself off when it hits him: the fact that she is not surprised means she is used to hallucinating him. All the rage and indignation Satoru had armored himself with crumbles away with this realization that perhaps Yuna had not abandoned them as absolutely as he'd thought, though in a completely counterproductive manner.
"You don't even have to say it. What's the point of a dinner reservation when I owe so much more?" She half-laughs though it sounds like she's about to collapse. "It was the best I could do. It's a blessing you could reach eighteen at all."
Satoru sits down beside her gingerly and doesn't say anything. He should take her back to campus. Yaga can figure out what's going on with her—she's sick, some Curse User had attacked her and who knows how long she's been like this. Satoru can help her, he can save her, and once he does, surely she will stay.
"What's wrong, Gojou-kun?" Yuna turns to him, her face so close to his that he can see every pore, every fleck of dried mascara even without his Six Eyes. The beads of sweat shine like translucent pearls on her sallow skin. "Don't you have something cruel to say?" The way she talks to him is different from the way she spoke to the Suguru and Haibara Satoru cannot see. It's bitter but lacks no bite, a resentful animal lying belly-up for their hunter.
He just shakes his head. Yuna hums, clearly exhausted, and rests her chin on his shoulder. Satoru takes care not to stiffen—she has never willingly touched him, except for when he'd nearly died, and maybe again on that one summer day when he'd admitted he wanted her close. Her palm cradles his cheek and her fingers find a strand of his bangs.
"What's wrong, Gojou-kun?" Her whisper, a question more to herself than to him, emits a puff of mist in winter air. "It's a silly question, when the answer is everything."
Satoru wants to hold her, but Yuna's touch roots him in place. He lets her touch his skin, even though it is freezing. He sits in silence, her nightmare solidified, until Yuna lets out a breath that is sweet and sharp like plum sake and leans away. She reaches underneath her jacket and grips the hilt of a solid obsidian blade.
"I suppose that's enough for today," she sighs, closing her eyes. A pulse of Cursed Energy shoots through the weapon and the blade ejects from her body to rest on her lap in an open palm. Satoru recognizes the weapon—Nightmare's something, Naoya had tried to hit him with it when they were younger. The demon's face at end of the red cord strung through the hilt gleams horribly bright in the moonlight. Marigold stabilizes and Yuna lets out a deep, bone-weary breath, crystallizing molecules suspended in cold.
By the time Yuna opens her eyes, Satoru is gone. He is back outside Jujutsu High, feeling nauseatingly guilty. It is not the same kind of guilt that consumes him when it comes to Suguru. He'd been dumb with Suguru, and he certainly wouldn't have won any awards for best boyfriend-not-boyfriend ever, but Satoru had never meant to hurt him. With Yuna, Satoru had gone to her with every intention to maim, knowing that she cannot and would not fight back. He'd gone, and he'd found, only to realize that Yuna was doing that job for him already—she hadn't been injured, she'd willingly stabbed herself with that weapon, and she sees Satoru every time she does, cold and cruel with a knife stuck in his throat, bleeding malice.
Shit, he realizes when he's back in his room, his disappearance lilting like a dream, I'm a fucking terrible person.
The Honored One claps slowly, sarcastically. Finally, you're getting it. You're not a person at all.
Much to the Honored One's chagrin, Satoru resolves to change. When he musters up the motivation to trek out to Edogawa again, Technique activated to pan for gold, he barges back into Yuna's life with the determination to be kind and forgiving. He will be the savior Yuna does not even know she's searching for—she longs for punishment but Satoru will dole no such thing, he will emulate his better half, the half that Yuna preferred too, Suguru-with-the-heart-of-gold before he'd been corrupted by monkeys. Satoru shows up in her home and asks for nothing but her presence, he will give her what he knows she wants (and will never admit that he wants the same from her).
He falls into a rhythm, not necessarily smooth or suave but it is at its essence peaceful because Satoru can do anything that he puts his mind to. He spends time in that shitty apartment in Edogawa and feels like a saint doing so: he sleeps on the couch that his feet dangle off the edge of, brings Yuna takeout because he has realized that food is a language she speaks, avoids talking about Suguru even though it's the one topic they share because he knows she can't handle it. Satoru gives, however minimally, because he tries.
Which is why, when the Gojou investigator feeds him news about Zen'in Toji and the son he left behind piecemeal, he ignores the signs until he cannot any longer, until he arrives in Saitama and finds Yuna's spell-work littering every sidewalk and telephone pole in a five-block radius, fucking blaring bright marigold that sears Satoru's Six Eyes and his blood with indignation. How dare she ignore Satoru's sacrifice, he seethes, and the Honored One agrees if not a bit smug, because wouldn't have this all been easier if he hadn't tried.
And so, it is with this context—of everything that had happened since Suguru left, of everything that Satoru had suffered through alone and every natural instinct he had gone against to try to not be—that Satoru stands in Yuna's kitchen in that shitty apartment in Edogawa. As spring sunset fades and the crickets sing and the water runs wastefully down the sink drain, the Honored One's hand, frozen and cold, wraps around Yuna's throat and squeezes, but it is Satoru who asks at long last,
"How the fuck did you know Zen'in Toji?"
He thinks it will go like this: Yuna will be stunned, frightened, she will beg for Satoru's forgiveness, she will plea with that blank face of hers, tears cracking that Noh mask, and Satoru will make her suffer until she swears a binding vow to him to never leave him, to never betray him, and only then will it be enough. Satoru has felt it too—she needs him, she wants him near. He knows. There are times when she beats him in Super Smash and he whines that his Six Eyes are a disability and she laughs a little at him. There was that time he'd brought takeout that may have been spoiled because Yuna got sick the next day and Satoru stayed to help her. There is time when it's just them, and Satoru does not feel the passage of time in this shitty apartment in Edogawa that is suspended in time and space. He will never give this up, and he will force her to never give it up with him.
But it does not go like this. Yuna is stunned, but she is not surprised. As the Honored One tightens his hold around her windpipe, rotten plum bruises sure to follow, Yuna relaxes. She brings a hand in pink rubber glove up to Satoru's wrist and taps it lightly—she does not struggle for air to breathe, but air to speak.
"May we sit on the couch as I tell you, Gojou-kun?"
His fingers unconsciously loosen. "Huh?"
"I'm tired. I would rather sit. You can kill me on the couch."
She ignores that he is semi-choking her and leans away to shut off the water faucet. She tugs her neck against his hold, in the direction of the couch. He lets her go. Yuna seems resigned and, if he has learned to read her better, relieved.
They sit on the couch, Yuna curled on the end closest to the windows, Satoru opposite her. The living room window is propped open with one of Yuna's old textbooks, welcoming in a fresh breeze. There is a breath of silence, punctured only by the sound of waves, but not long enough for Satoru's impatience to break it.
"I first met Fushiguro Toji as a favor to Yuki-san." She stares across the room at the blank television screen, where Satoru's video console blinks. "It ended badly, with him half-blinding me and me leaving him in an alleyway to die. This, of course, led to the trial debacle, of which the results you are familiar with."
Satoru blinks. "Hah? You injured him?"
She nods once.
Satoru remembers his fights with Zen'in Toji in ultra-definition, even if he doesn't want to. He remembers the way that man moved, like a riptide forced into a pond, against all laws and dominating all the same. He looks at Yuna, who is as still as stone, who would make no ripples when dropped into said pond if given the choice.
"How?"
She blinks. "He underestimated me."
"He could destroy you if he was blind, deaf, dumb, and had nothing but a pinky left."
Yuna ignores his condescension, no matter how warranted. "He did not know I could do a Domain Expansion."
Six Eyes bulge out of their sockets. "You have a Domain? How come you've never told anyone? How does no one know?"
"Nanami-kun does. I used it on the Special Grade mission. I asked him to keep quiet about it."
"Why?"
For the first time since she'd sat down, Yuna looks at him, and he feels the condescension reverse direction. "Because I am most powerful when people underestimate me, Gojou-kun."
Beneath all the disbelief, the simmering rage and indignation, he feels the faint but familiar pang of guilt. Satoru swallows it down, because there is no time or place for compassion—it is clearly Yuna who is in the wrong, not him.
"After the trial," she continues, looking away from him again, "I met with Toji-san again. I'd overheard the Zen'in head mention a ten-billion-yen deal for Toji-san's son, so I tracked his son down and used him as leverage to force Toji-san to swear a binding vow to me. He would protect me from bounty hunters and could never harm me without my consent. In return, I would hide his son from the Zen'ins until he was ready."
She takes a deep breath and lets it out. She waits, expecting questions from Satoru, but he doesn't have any at this moment. It seems so absurd, and honestly so stupid, and in a weird way, incredible. That Yuna had managed to do this with literally no one else's knowledge was remarkable. He'd always regarded her as boring, incompetent, someone so fundamentally straight-laced, there was no realm of possibility around her, but then that was her point. He had underestimated her too, and look where it had gotten him: months of playing some dumb house built on a bed of straw that was already aflame when he'd stepped in.
"I made a mistake I will never be able to pay for, Gojou-kun," Yuna says. "I trusted a man who should not have been trusted. I thought…" She swallows. "I thought that I—the vow—was enough, but I did not think he would harm my students. It was superbly foolish of me. And I recognize that everything with Getou-kun…and how he changed…originated from that." She picks at the edge of the couch, but the throw is new and stubborn and free of loose threads. "It does not matter what my intentions were. The damage has been done. He nearly killed you and Getou-kun. He changed Getou-kun forever. I…I can never be sorry enough."
"Yeah," says Satoru hollowly. "You can't."
Yuna nods, but says nothing else. Satoru can't take his eyes away from her: tendrils of hair curl behind her ears from which small white pearls dangle, deep eyes fixed ahead seeing a vision Satoru does not share, her body relaxed and knees drawn up to her chest like she will end the night reading a good book instead of dropping bombshells on Satoru. Her eyes are tired, resigned, but they are dry. She is sorry, he knows that to be true, but she does not ask for forgiveness. None of this is going how Satoru had predicted. He is no longer angry, but does not know how the anger had dissipated, how it has been supplanted by a great and terrible loneliness. It is as if he is at the top of a bottomless well, and the people falling through the well see him and still do not ask for his lifeline—
"Was that it?" he hears himself ask. The Honored One howls in his mind—just kill her already, what's the fucking point?
"What do you mean?"
"Between you two. Just the binding vow. The protection."
Yuna turns slowly to him. There is the slightest curl to the edge of her lips that makes Satoru dread what she is about to say next, as if Yuna herself knows this is the final nail to her coffin. "You are sitting in his old apartment, Gojou-kun."
Satoru jerks up from the couch like he's been scalded. He towers over her, eyes blazing, fingers flexed in the motion for Blue, and Yuna notices and simply nods in agreement.
"Very well."
He remains frozen. He's ready to do it. If she's not going to ask for forgiveness, if she won't fucking stay, then that's fine, Satoru can explode her into smithereens just like she wants, she can fall deep into the fucking well and Satoru can just watch while he holds the life-rope.
But as he stands there, suspended in time and space, he remembers how Yuna was before the failed Plasma Vessel mission. He remembers how she'd always have an excuse to be off campus the moment the weekend arrived, her cheeks a little tinged, her smiles a little more common, the way she'd laugh reading her phone but blame it on allergies. He remembered noticing that she was happy, because at that time, Satoru was happy too, and he remembered thinking that for once, maybe they shared something in common.
"Sensei," his voice is like sandpaper, "did I kill your boyfriend?"
Yuna's gaze sharpens. "It was not like that, Gojou-kun. You did not do anything wrong."
"I know that," he says, but it doesn't come out as defensively as he thinks it should. "He killed Amanai. He tried to kill all of us. He…"
It makes so much more sense now, how badly Yuna had taken the aftermath of the failed mission, how she'd fallen apart in a way that seemed to unravel her entire being. Satoru had done that to her. Satoru had taken that away from her. Satoru feels, he feels, he doesn't want to feel—
Yuna stands up and reaches for him. She presses one palm to his cheek and the other to his wrist and she pulls him toward her.
"You did not do anything wrong," she insists. "You had to kill him, there was no other option. I made the mistake. You can…" She forces herself in his line of sight, her eyes dark and downturned and Satoru has never seen her cry except out of happiness, and he thinks that is the only way he ever wants to see her cry. "You can kill me too, to fix that."
"I'm not," he croaks, releasing the sign for Blue, "I'm not going to kill you."
Fear flashes through Yuna's eyes. "Why?"
Satoru feels deranged. He doesn't want to feel. "Because I don't want to fucking hurt you, sensei, no matter how much you keep thinking I'm going to!" He takes the hand against his cheek in his own, pressing her touch deeper into his skin, feeling his soul yearn for more. Infinity selects automatically to let her in, the way it always does when he steps into this shitty apartment. He wants to throw up. He wants someone to hold him. He wants Suguru so fucking badly. He sinks back onto the couch, keeping Yuna's hand to his skin as he does, and rests his forehead on Yuna's stomach as she remains standing.
"Why don't any of you fuckers ever just give me a chance?" His voice is muffled into the soft blue linen of Yuna's dress, lips pressed as if in worship. "Why are you so eager to leave me too?"
Yuna is still above him, save for the movement of her chest that he can feel with every breath. He counts ten that pass by, focusing on the rise and fall meditatively to settle his own stomach, his own fluttering stupid emotions that the Honored One is in the corner of his mind trying to contain in a lockbox that should never see the sun. Satoru is so tired. He is trying, but the person who matters isn't even here to see him change, to see if Satoru is worth staying for.
Carefully but not hesitantly, he feels Yuna's other hand wrap in his hair. It trails to the back of his head, and she presses him closer to her body, closer than they've ever been, and she holds him there. Her fingers card through the strands, soothing and warm. She keeps the hand at his cheek, trapped between two surfaces of his skin.
"If you will have me, Gojou-kun," she says quietly, "if you can forgive me, I will not leave you." She strokes his hair and holds him close. "I promise."
A promise is a vow.
His grip around her hand tightens. He will take it, just as he wanted.