chapter 7: infinity and oblivion

in which yuna sees a realm of possibilities and believes in none

tw: explicit sexual content, mentions of infanticide, toxic relationships (romantic, paternal, etc), tonal dissonance

Barcelona, Spain. April 2013.

Even though Satoru is clearly borderline manic from lack of sleep, Yuna wakes to the sound of him shuffling out of her bed before dawn breaks. She blinks groggily, the sight of his crumpled T-shirt blending in with the soft linen sheets, a sea of white down to his hair. They'd left a window open, perhaps optimistically, as the early spring night is too chilly. Yuna feels the loss of Satoru's body heat acutely and wonders if this loss is what woke her in the first place.

His back faces her, but the glow of his cellphone is enough for Yuna to guess what had roused him. She lets him type silently, seeing if he will return to sleep, but minutes tick by and the tapping of his fingertips against the glass screen only grows more furious.

"Gojou-kun."

He stiffens and turns around, eyes as bright and cold as the light from his phone. "Hey. Sorry. I can go outside."

"It's okay. Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Just Yaga. My parents are giving him shit, so he's giving me shit. Just letting him know I'll take care of it when I get back."

Yuna hums in response. Satoru arches an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just feel bad for Yaga-sensei sometimes."

Satoru snorts. "I don't. He just cares about his own hide. I'm not Suguru, but even I know the system is shit. Yaga doesn't even try to fix it."

"That is not true. He tries in his own way. He simply does not have the power or leverage you have."

"Yeah, right." He turns away from her as he resumes texting. "Only thing he has over the Higher-Ups is he'll at least look kid soldiers in the face when he sends them off to die."

Yuna sits up and inches closer. Satoru is the source of the majority of Yaga's headaches, but rarely has Satoru expressed this kind of animosity toward the principal.

"He does what he can to protect the students."

"Really? 'Cause all I remember from school is you finding ways to give us our birthdays off and taking the mission Yaga gave me a week after I got stabbed in the face."

The vitriol in his voice is so potent, Yuna nearly winces. It is incredibly unlike Satoru to…complain like this, even though "complain" is such an unfair term. Satoru has every right to complain, but he rarely does in this way, acknowledging the disproportionate burden placed on his shoulders, not when he is so blessed otherwise. Some jobs can only be completed by him, and in the end, complaining accomplishes nothing: either Satoru must complete his duties, or he turns into Suguru.

Even though Satoru is angry, it has been a long time since Yuna has been actively frightened of him, and it is not just because of the binding vow. She scoots close so that she is right behind him and cranes her neck so that it rests with some effort on his shoulder. He jolts a bit at the contact, as if he didn't expect it, as if he isn't the one who had to let down Infinity.

"Let me see?" She curls her arm around his and taps gently on his forearm. He grunts and hands over his phone. Yuna rests her head on his back as she reads it, and Satoru keeps her other hand trapped in his while she does.

From: Yaga Masamichi

[02:28] This is exactly why I said you're not ready to be teaching.
[02:28] You're still this impulsive.
[02:29] Unaware of the consequences.
[02:29] Unaware of the messes you make OTHER people fix.

[03:15] What do you think they'll do to Yuna, huh?

[03:23] I don't know what you really think of her but
[03:24] I know you care
[03:24] You can't kill Suguru, I get it
[03:24] but don't get Yuna killed to cover up for it.

Yuna glances over Satoru's reply, an insult-laden, indignant, blistering paragraph that sits unsent in the "Reply" bar, before she deletes it. Satoru's grip tightens around her fingers, and she flips her palm in his so that she can hold him back. She is touched that Yaga is so concerned about her well-being and that Satoru is reciprocally insistent that he would never let anyone lay a finger on her, but the argument is unnecessary.

She calls Yaga. The line rings twice before he picks up with a livid, "Satoru—"

"It's me, Yaga-sensei," she interrupts, forehead resting on Satoru's back.

"Yuna? I thought he went to find…where are you?"

"Spain," she replies. "Gojou-kun explained the situation. I will not marry him. He is free to use the announcement however he wishes, but I will have no part in it."

"Good," says Yaga, a little stunned. "That's good."

"Yes. I hope the prospect of marrying me is so horrible that when Gojou-kun returns from this vacation and declares that he has changed his mind, the Higher-Ups will be so relieved, they forget about everything else for a while."

"Right." Yaga pauses. "And Satoru's…good with this?"

"Yes. He still has his work cut out for him."

"And you're…good with this?"

"Yes."

"And you know why this came up in the first place?"

He means Suguru.

"Yes. I am aware." She bites her tongue, but the words come out regardless. "Love is a terrible curse, Yaga-sensei. Even Gojou-kun is not immune."

Satoru lets out a sound embarrassingly akin to a squawk. Yuna gives a half-laugh even though something abruptly aches inside her chest.

"He'll be here with me for a few days," she says. "He needs a break. Please handle what you can without him."

"Right. Okay." Yaga lets out a sigh, clearly relieved. "Thanks, Yuna. Good to hear from you. You're reliable as always."

They bid their farewells and Yuna hangs up, feeling like a fraud. Reliable. As if that word can truly be used to describe her, in bed with her old student, the god of the jujutsu world, a boy barely past drinking age holding her hand in his like it's the only thing keeping him from drowning. She shouldn't have let him in her bed, should've asked him to sleep on the couch, but that's an argument Yuna gave up on years ago. (He's too tall for the couch, and how cruel is it to push him away when he has traveled so far just to find her, and sometimes she needs to give Satoru what he wants too—)

Satoru lets go of her hand and turns around to face her. His expression is odd, contemplative, even mottled grateful.

"See?" he says with a tone as mixed as his expression. "It's always just you."

"What does that mean—"

She glimpses his eyes briefly, blazing and determined, before he kisses her. It's different from the kisses on the patio, pointed and prim. It's hot and open and heavy now, his palm cradling her neck, his other hand pulling aside the blankets wrapped around her waist. She kisses him back, feels his tongue brush against her lower lip and lets him in, the muscle flicking against hers as he leans her back against the pillows.

Yuna knows better than to do this, that in the map of choices in her life, neither letting Satoru kiss her nor kissing Satoru back is a good one, but none of that really matters when she realizes how much she has missed being touched. Though she and Satoru have kissed and more, they have not crossed this line. Besides Yuki, she has not let anyone touch her intimately, and Yuki has been more entertained by local attractions recently. Satoru appearing now feels almost like divine intervention, because Yuna had planned on telling Samuel, who had made his interest and intentions clear, her condition about binding vows after dinner.

Satoru pulls the blankets free from her and finds the drawstring of her sleeping shorts, tugging it loose, before he reaches underneath her shirt and rests his palm flat against her stomach. The touch makes her jerk into him, but he keeps her head in his grasp and doesn't let her pull fully away.

"Satoru," she gasps into him.

"Let me touch you," he pants, palm like a brand against her skin. "I won't…it's not for me, I just wanna…do somethin' for you."

"You don't," even though her arms are wrapped around his shoulders now, and she hates herself for even trying to be reliable, "need to."

"I wanna." He lies her back fully and rolls so he hovers over her, propped on one low elbow. "Let me."

She swallows, even though her mouth is fully dry. Her head spins. It's suddenly so hot. She's tired. She wants to sleep, but as Satoru's fingers slip underneath the elastic of her shorts and then trace, just barely, over her clothed core, Yuna is seized with the singular belief that she will never sleep again unless Satoru gives her release.

"Yuna." His voice a rumble, restrained, his fingers a bit more insistent, eyes the hallowed entrance to the soul. "You have to let me."

"Okay," she whispers because any louder and it'd certainly be a whimper, "okay, you can. Yes."

He kisses her like a sigh, and his fingers push her underwear aside, his index tracing over her slit gently. Yuna moans into Satoru's mouth, unprepared for the sensation even though she'd agreed, because god she'd forgotten how different men's hands could feel, larger and thicker and calloused. It takes very little for her to get wet enough for Satoru to prod her lips apart and enter one finger in her carefully, just up to the first knuckle.

"Fuck," he breathes against her, eyes alight like sunbeams on holy water, "you're tight."

The observation—breathless and a little awed—makes Yuna tighter.

"Fuck," says Satoru again, his finger retreating. "You need my mouth?"

Her face heats. "You don't…"

He grins, cocksure. "Relax. Nothing I haven't done before."

The thought of that makes her face even hotter. She doesn't want to know who, or when, just shakes her head. "No, it's okay." The thought of him seeing all of her mortifies her even more for some reason, even though she's already at the brink of dying from embarrassment. "Just…been a while."

This seems to delight Satoru. He leans close, forehead resting against hers, and he presses his lips to her nose. "Okay. I'll go slow."

His finger re-enters her slowly, and to help, his thumb searches for and finds her clit. Yuna kicks her legs out unconsciously when he brushes against it, biting back a noise by burying her burning face in Satoru's neck, but he laughs at her anyway. His thumb presses a bit firmer, tracing circles, and Yuna's hips tilt against the pressure, seeking friction and naturally forcing his index finger further inside her. Her arms are looped around his shoulders, fingers clawing into his T-shirt, she can't believe they're like this, Satoru so close, Satoru inside her even though she wouldn't marry him, she is the most horrible woman in the world, maybe the most ungrateful too, because how could she let Satoru in like this—

He nuzzles her face back against the pillows so he can kiss her again, just as he slips in another finger and she moans into his mouth, bucking against him. Her hands slip down, touching the bare skin of his arms, tracing lines of muscle, pulling up his shirt, he's hot too, sweaty, burnt orange. His fingers pump faster, easier, the slick now slipping down her thighs, and his thumb is pressing hard now, a little teasing, a little cruel—

"Satoru," she gasps.

"Yeah?" he grins. "Close? Think you can fit another?"

"I-I—don't think—"

"Yeah," he cuts her off, "don't think. Just do it. You gotta, if you're gonna fit me."

Yuna freezes. "What?"

"Why're you surprised?" The Six Eyes flicker like a shower of stars. "What'd you think was going to happen on our wedding night?"

"What?"

The room dissolves, the old paint and the scent of lemon trees dissolves into dark wood, tatami mats and shoji screens, candlelight casting wide shadows from incense sticks, Satoru hovers over her in a dark montsuki, she in a virginial white shiromuku. She wants to jolt up, but her mouth is lead, her mind disembodied.

"How many kids are we gonna have, Yuna?" Satoru asks. "How many do you think will be enough to keep them happy?"

"I…"

"Can't say I care," he says, "but let's start with one tonight."

She blinks, it takes only a second, it takes a million years, and then she is in splendid gardens deep in the Gojou estate, geraniums in the air, sunlight striking a babbling creek. She is shaded under a weeping willow, nursing a babe swaddled against her breast, hair the color of ash, eyes that of the brook.

She wants to scream, but she can't. She turns, or she doesn't, she isn't sure, but it doesn't matter as geraniums bleed into roses, and day becomes night. She sits on a fountain, next to a stone rabbit statue that has watched her bleed before. This is the Zen'in gardens, the night is cool and starless, the child in her arms has jet-black hair, green eyes.

"Hummingbird," says a voice she has not heard in a decade, she has forgotten everything about it except the way it makes her hurt. Fushiguro Toji steps beside her in formal garb, the Zen'in crest on his haori. Megumi is beside him, grown and lanky and matching his father in Zen'in attire befitting the head of the clan. Behind him is Maki, sharp-eyed and brimming with power, a broad Cursed blade with a fur hilt in her hand, its tip dripping blood. Yuna stares back at Toji, whose collar is embroidered with the bold, black character "Hei." He is here, back with the Zen'ins, but he's proud, he's happy, he belongs, and somehow she does, too. Toji reaches for her, she looks down, the child is gone, it's just her hand in his, she has forgotten the hurt, remembers instead each tiny scar on Toji's skin—

"Yuna-chan!" Sunlight bursts into her vision, sand fills the crevices between her toes. Yuki is a sun goddess in a bright orange bikini, thrilled as she chases waves on a surfboard. "Come on, don't just sit there, you gotta try!" A wave crashes into her from behind, throwing Yuki off balance. She tumbles into the sea, but resurfaces a brief second later, blonde hair matted and glistening. She beams at Yuna, laughing, "Fuck, yes, the world is so fun!"

"Isn't it?" says a voice behind her, and the beach shifts into another traditional Japanese tea room, lit by low lamplight. Blood drenches the tatami mats, there are two bodies in front of her, facedown, still, and Suguru stands in the corner of the room, watching her, expression pleased. "It gets easier, I promise, sensei." Blood films over her fingertips, congealing like it's doused in starch. "Good job for your first time. Congratulations."

"Seriously, congratulations," says Shouko, voice thin but smile genuine, "been a long time coming." They're in her morgue, Shouko holds out her phone to Yuna so she can read the announcement: Morimoto Yuna, promoted to Grade One Sorcerer. "You should be proud. Yaga's gonna throw you a feast."

"Yuna!"

She hears a sharp inhale, a broken gasp, the first breath of someone re-surfacing from the depths of the sea and realizes belatedly that it is her. All the scenes fade away, the visions, scents, the hope and pride and hurt and want, as the senses of her reality slowly return to her. It is nighttime. Below her, Barcelona's nightlights flicker and fade. Satoru's arms are around her waist as the two of them float on nothing. He holds her tight, and the call of her name registers faintly as panicked.

The memory returns slowly, an unenergetically re-rolled spool of thread. They were in her apartment in Barcelona, Satoru had woken up in the dead of night, Yuna had spoken with Yaga, Satoru had said, "Let me touch you," but Yuna would not let him, and so after huffing, he'd asked,

Can I show you something?

And he'd taken her up into the night sky, arms wrapped around her, as he'd explained excitedly, I finally figured it out. My Domain.

"Yuna?" Satoru says, voice breathless by her ear.

"I'm here," she answers, dazed. "I…what happened? How long was I…how long has it been?"

"Just a couple seconds. I was showing you my Domain but…I guess I haven't figured out how to make it so that you can experience it without it affecting you. I…shit. Sorry. Are you okay?"

Yuna nods, mind still catching up to her. She isn't sure what she just saw, experienced, if they were real or not, and as every second pass, they slide away like rain on windshields. She had been so inundated in sensations that she cannot possibly process everything. She does not think she wants to.

"What is it?" When she blinks, she sees snapshots superimposed over the landscape of Barcelona's lights—some child calling out to her—Megumi—a bank account—a hummingbird tattoo. "The Domain?"

"Infinite Void," says Satoru. "Whoever's in it gets so overloaded with information that they can't process anything and become catatonic. Then I just…y'know. I'm sorry. I thought just touching you would be enough so that you wouldn't be affected by it, like how I do side teleportation. But…"

"I'm the first then?"

"Y-yeah. Sorry."

Yuna turns to him, careful when she shuffles even though Satoru touching her should be enough to prevent her from falling. He looks guiltily at her.

"Are you okay?"

She looks at him and faintly remembers his body in hers, a child between them, but she blinks and she forgets everything. "Are you?"

"Huh?"

"Our binding vow."

He blinks. "Oh. Damn, I didn't even think about that. No, I'm fine."

"Then I'm fine too. Though maybe when I said 'yes' to you showing me the Domain, that was enough for consent."

"Right."

She wants to chide him more. That he needs to think about these things, that this is why she'd never wanted him to swear the vow in the first place because what if his Domain innately applied Maximum Blue to everyone inside, and Satoru had died by ramifications of the binding vow?

Instead, she says,

"It's a remarkable Domain."

Satoru lights up. "Right? Cool?"

"Yes." She remembers glimpses of it, an ever-expanding galaxy, atoms colliding, the essence of the universe. "It's very different from mine."

"Really? How so?"

She thinks, words still coming slow. "Mine is much emptier."

"Can you show me?"

Yuna nearly laughs. "I don't have that kind of Cursed Energy to spare, Gojou-kun."

"Oh, right." He grins cheekily. "Not as cool as me, huh."

"No, of course not. It is a unique, devastating Domain." She buries her head in his chest, exhausted. "You really are the Strongest, aren't you?"

He holds her back carefully. "Weird."

"Hm?"

He kisses the top of her head. "Just don't like it when you say it."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Don't like you thinking of me that way."

She hums and does not say what she believes, that it is hard to think of him otherwise, not when his Domain is the infinite of the universe, and hers is literally nothing.

Tokyo, Japan. 2017.

True geniuses are few and far in between. Too many people seen as geniuses are simply born into exemplary circumstances, with good pedigrees, the right nurturing, silver-spooned opportunities. In the world of sorcery, especially, there are no geniuses—there are simply those who are blessed, and no matter how blessed sorcerers are, the world of jujutsu sorcery does not allow them to be lazy, and so they become geniuses instead.

It is not a concept Yuna dwells on much. The line between blessings and curses was blurred horribly by Fushiguro Toji, one of the most powerful beings to exist in the modern sorcerer era only to be ranked lower than a dog. He'd said the same thing about her: that it was her torture that had granted her the blessings of jujutsu, as if being part of this world was something any non-sorcerer would give informed consent to. So no, Yuna does not think she is a genius, not when she is a Grade Two Sorcerer in perpetuity. She doesn't dwell on the label beyond knowing that there are people like Getou Suguru or Nanami Kento, born outside of jujutsu pedigrees who have a slight natural predilection for martial arts that allows them to be particularly adept at jujutsu sorcery. This would have been equally advantageous in the world of non-shaman professional judo.

Yuna has, however, always been a fast learner. It is a critical trait for those who struggle to survive, and though Yaga attributed the ease with which Yuna had adjusted to the rubric of the jujutsu world to natural talent, Yuna had simply learned the newest rules dictating her survival. Muddling through the patterns of curse theory was not fundamentally different from determining the patterns that made her ex-husband beat her, and so Yuna did as she always had done: she observed, studied, applied, and therefore survived.

It is with this foundational wealth of knowledge that Yuna stares at the curse-child—her curse-child that she had surely killed at its infancy—and puts together the explanation of its existence in mere seconds: this curse-child is purely curse, not any part corporal or human, because the child's corpse had been exhumed and examined by Shouko. Whatever is in front of her now, with its outstretched, withered hands and its horrible rattling Kaa-san, is a cursed spirit manifested from her child's corpse, because Yuna did not know how to control Cursed Energy at the time, and the final killing blow she had dealt must not have had Cursed Energy at all.

It was a mistake she could not have known to avoid, but fifteen years later, it has grown and metastasized, an asymptomatic malignancy threatening termination. Yuna stares at the curse, its skin green like wilted scallions, its eyes pointing opposite directions like a frog's, crying tears of tar. Its fingers are long and knobby, torturous branches, and its nails yellow like fungus, with the scent of sulfur.

She loathes it. Is repulsed by it. This thing born twice from her. This thing that is her, if she cracked open her ribs and fished out the deepest, loneliest, aching part of her, the stone that sits hot on her gut. Satoru calls her Cursed Energy abnormally bright, "marigold, the summer sun" but Yuna has always known the truth: this is her real self, her hummingbird heart, the amount of fucked up inside her Fushiguro Toji had seen with one glance, now held up like a reflection in a soothsayer's mirror.

"Kaa-san!" The curse swipes at her, but Yuna throws up Barrier, skin prickling at the thought of such a repugnant thing touching her, even if it is her. Behind her child, one of the bodies stirs; she had assumed they were dead, but now, she realizes that they are both barely alive, with wisps of Cursed Energy spiking intermittently the way non-sorcerer's Energy does when seized with the fear of death. The bodies are an older man and woman, dressed in old worn plainclothes. The curse that calls her Kaa-san pulls itself off the man, but it is the woman who stirs slowly, as if rousing from a deep sleep.

When she sits up and turns around, Yuna jerks back, more horrified than when she'd seen the curse.

The woman's hair is silver-gray, patchy at her temples, but wrapped in a long braid. Her jacket is thin and threadbare, and her front is stained in dried blood. When she looks at Yuna, her face is weathered and tan, with many wrinkles and spots from the sun that make her older beyond her years, but her eyes are large, dark as mussels. It is only the traces of tears streaking the downward turns that distinguish her eyes from Yuna's, because Yuna has not cried in nearly a decade.

"Please," her mother cries, scrambling over to the daughter she does not recognize. "You have to help us, we came here to the man named Getou Suguru but he is a fraud, h-he—"

Behind her, shoji screens slide open, and Suguru's Cursed Energy signature joins the room.

"I what?" says Suguru pleasantly but ice cold. His robes billow with his movements, his shadow wide and long against the shoji as it slides back closed. "I'd speak your next words with caution if I were you, Hiromo Youko-san." His tone changes completely as he waves to Yuna, smile plastered to his face. "Hello, sensei. Sorry to drag you here so late. You're hard to find, you know!"

"What is the meaning of this?" says Yuna, Blast glowing at her fingertips.

Suguru holds up his hands in mock surrender. "I do not mean to harm you, sensei. If anything, finding your parents was my attempt to grant these monkeys one last chance."

The woman behind them startles. "What?"

"Ah, yes, trust a monkey to not even recognize her own daughter, though I suppose that's no surprise when you've evolved into the higher species, sensei," says Suguru warmly, as if the words out of his mouth aren't diabolical. "Such transformations are complete, body and soul."

"You…" Youko stares up at Yuna, eyes wide and welling, "Yuna?"

"Kaa-san!" wails the curse child, pounding on Yuna's Barrier and causing it to rattle.

She ignores both of them, because even though this is his doing, Yuna somehow finds Suguru the least hateful thing in the room. "Why did you bring them here?"

"I had a theory," he says brightly, "that your transformation was genetically linked, that the Kamo bastard chose you because he tracked your lineage to the woman Kamo Noritoshi tested on, the one who birthed the original Cursed Wombs. I thought if there was something in your bloodline that allowed monkeys to turn into sorcerers, there might be some hope for them after all. Isn't that benevolent of me?"

Yuna stares.

Suguru continues. "Of course, that was too kindhearted and optimistic. I tracked down your parents, which wasn't too hard because it turns out they were cursed all along." He points to the curse knocking on Yuna's door. "Powerful thing, that. Made me hopeful that perhaps your mother was some part sorcerer after all, since she could see that thing and brought your father to me to be exorcised. But no," he snorts, "dumb bitch has been feeding that curse this whole time and doesn't know a damn thing because she has no idea what emotion feeds the thing."

Yuna glances back at Youko, who looks upon her like she is just as ghastly as the two-headed, four-eyed curse that drained her husband into a coma.

"Kaa-san!" says the curse, "be proud!"

Suguru looks between the two of them, fascinated. "I didn't realize it was capable of speech. With as much Cursed Energy it has, it could be close to a Special Grade. It must be a common emotion, if it could grow so rapidly. Perhaps I won't absorb it immediately and wait until it unlocks its innate Technique."

"That will not be happening." She is relieved that Suguru has no recollection of the child whose body she'd killed and that Shouko had been right—still, she does not want Suguru to absorb this curse that is still surely part of her. She is not even sure he can.

"Ah, sorry, sensei, I didn't mean to get distracted with the curse. That was just a side benefit! The real reason I brought you here was to see if you wanted to kill your parents. Figured it might make you feel better!"

You're insane, she wants to say, You're actually insane.

The words do not fall from Yuna's lips, but they hit her as if Suguru had boxed them into her ears. She knows that Suguru is no longer the student she loved, proved over and over by his steadily up-ticking body count, but she now realizes that knowing is different from understanding. It is the pattern of the mad to repeat the same mistake and expect different results, and she realizes that maybe she has been blind or mad to Suguru even after all these years. The realization should not hit her as hard as it does, but it makes her eyes sting and her heart ache: there is no chance in this vein of the universe that Satoru can be with this man. No matter that Suguru is undoubtedly the only one who could have ever matched him, who could have stood on equal footing as Satoru and loved him as Gojou Satoru, twenty-six-year-old lover of sweets, little spoon by preference, not Gojou Satoru, the Strongest, the Messiah, the Honored One.

And she wonders if this is what happens to Satoru each time he meets Suguru—this is what he has gotten used to, what Yuna had not been subjected to in her years abroad—the reminder that the Suguru they'd both loved has long disappeared beyond their grasps, beyond hope of redemption. This reminder stares at Yuna with a smile that does not match the writhing brimming fire of rage over charcoal eyes, a reminder of pointed hopelessness and helplessness, a reminder that being Gojou Satoru the Strongest is not enough to change Suguru's mind, and being Gojou Satoru, twenty-six-year-old lover of sweets and little spoon by preference, is simply not enough.

Yuna understands now, the real reason why Satoru finds her abroad.

"I do not want to kill them, Getou-kun."

He cocks his head to the side, bangs dangling. "Why not? They sold you, didn't they? Everything that happened with Kamo happened because they gave you up. Why wouldn't you want to kill them?"

"I am who I am because they sold me," says Yuna.

Suguru's grin is crooked. "That's true. You are a more evolved being as a result. So you count it as a blessing, then?"

"No," the word is sharp and clear, even above the child's whines for attention and her mother's insistent apologies, "I said no such thing. I merely stated a fact. I will gain nothing from killing them. Neither will you. Just let them be."

"Seriously?" he complains. "That's so boring. I was doing something nice for you, sensei!"

"I never asked for this."

"Fine," he sniffs. "Don't kill them then. They'll have an hour to get the fuck away from this estate, or I'll kill them."

Yuna looks back at her mother. "Is that enough time?"

"Y-Yuna," Youko says desperately. At the utterance of her daughter's name, Cursed Energy leaks like from a faulty sieve into the outstretched mouth of the curse, who hums happily when it receives its meal. "You have to understand, we had no choice. The countryside is hard and we did not have the money to feed you—"

"Can you get out of here in an hour?" Yuna cuts in. Blast flares as brightly as a smoke signal.

Youko looks back at the still unmoving body of her husband. "If I have help."

"Give them three hours," says Yuna to Suguru. "That should be enough."

"Fine," he sighs. "I'm taking the curse, at least."

"Wait—"

Suguru stretches out his hand expectantly, but the curse does not budge. He frowns and tries again, but the curse just bangs against Yuna's Barrier.

"Kaa-san, be proud!"

Suguru had always been such a special student. Brilliant, gifted, even without the silver spoon of pedigree. It takes him the same amount of time as Yuna for the chips to fall into place.

"It's yours," he says, stunned. "It belongs to you."

"Yes," is all she says.

"You…" He looks between the two of them with renewed vigor. "How did you create a curse? You're a sorcerer."

Yuna does not answer. She lets down her Barrier, and the curse lunges for her, only to be held at bay by a spike of unbid Cursed Energy that pours out of Yuna's soul, a thrashing indigo-black. Suguru watches in horror as her Cursed Energy feeds the curse, Yuna's contribution a broken dam compared to her own mother's. Yuna does not try to quell the flow.

"You said you did not know what emotion contributes to it," remarks Yuna, her head level, cool, heart fluttering like it will burst as she watches her Cursed Energy pour into her child. "It is resentment. A mother's resentment for her child. To being a mother." She looks down at Youko and is seized with wild superiority. "I suppose I am your daughter after all."

"Yuna—"

"What is the meaning of this then?" interrupts Suguru. His voice no longer contains the unctuous warmth it had had earlier. He speaks to her like he would speak to Youko.

"You understand already," answers Yuna. "I was a monkey first. Perhaps I still am."

"I see." Suguru's eyes have gone wide and uninhibited. "What misplaced sentiment of mine, then."

Blood rushes through her head, her ears, her curse hovers above her shoulder, teeth chattering with the surge of Cursed Energy that suddenly builds beneath Yuna's skin, lighting every inked character alive. She remembers the first time she'd used this, in an alleyway next to a carton of daikon, head calm, hiding her hummingbird heart and this amount of fucked up in her—

"I suppose I could say the same." Yuna brings her hands in a seal and her index fingers hover. She thinks of Satoru, and her hummingbird heart hurts. "Domain Expansion: Oblivion."

free talk:

if anyone has watched everything everywhere all at once, i was trying to channel the everything bagel in the scene where yuna is in satoru's domain.

i have planned for this 'two-sides-of-same-coin' domain situation with yuna and satoru for a long time, so i hope it works. i also semi-apologize for the fake-out explicit scene (i also considered just deleting it entirely, lol, let me know if leaving it in being fake vs. just removing it would've been better)-but mainly wanted to show that a part of yuna wanted each possibility she saw to varying degrees, even if they were possibilities incongruent with the choices she has already made for herself.

i also hope the logic explaining yuna's fetus-curse, suguru's thought process, inability to absorb the curse, etc is canonically consistent. let me know if not.

thanks to all of you for being patient, reading, and supporting. i appreciate each and every one of your reviews. in a world that feels increasingly dark, i hope this story provides some distraction. take care of yourselves, stay safe, and keep up hope. xoxo