.
05: crisis of faith
maybe when we're ready, we'll meet again
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Sayuri would find herself thinking about death more often than she ought to. It was usually brushed off as an inevitability in their line of work, an unfortunate afterthought whenever she leaned too closely into its embrace. The sweet scent of its decay would linger for days. Like a persistent ache in her belly after sinking her teeth into rot-infested fruits, corpse flowers strewn all around her.
Sometimes she could smell it on his skin, woven into every strand of his moonshot hair. In every petite mort where she lost herself to the maddening climax of his tongue and fingers between her legs. When their bodies were entwined as one and his name was a feverish prayer on her lips in the throes of self-immolating passion. Yes, she thought, death was always imminent whenever she was within Satoru's arms and her lips pressed against his.
When she had officially enrolled at Kyoto Jujutsu High at first (mistakenly, thanks to her naïveté), they had issued her a student card with the rank of Special Grade. At the time, she had no idea what that meant though she had an inkling that it was somewhat connected to her lineage. She had only ever used two techniques throughout her entire life as a consequence of living in the blissful ignorance of self-exile.
Yaga had been easy on her in the beginning though that quickly changed due to the shortage of sorcerers, especially Special Grade ones. She could still remember her first real mission with perfect clarity, serving as a test of her prowess. It had been the night she realised how truly inadequate she was. In the presence of both Satoru and Suguru, she paled by far in comparison to their excellence.
Always two steps behind, always considered the weakest link, the image of their backs seared into her retinas. Despite the fact that she had unlimited reversed cursed energy at her fingertips, heavenly weapons at her disposal and the protection of divinity itself. She was always engulfed within their shadow, left behind in their dust.
Stepping foot into that derelict church, she had a feeling of intruding upon sacred grounds herself. The towering statue of the maiden mother stood over them by the empty altar, unseeing eyes that wept with false compassion for the trespassing deceiver. Sayuri had never given much thought to religion, though her family would observe the Shinto traditions and ceremonies. The concept of faith was oddly foreign to her despite it being the human condition to ponder the meaning of love, death and morality.
(Though she would later come to worship a certain blue-eyed god whom she placed on an altar of her own making and held frenzied rites to in the dead of night. Holy sacraments to anoint herself with his seraphic grace and seal her devotion with parted lips gasping for penitence. Dousing herself with carnal sin in a baptism of fire and partaking in his sacred flesh.)
"Why do only curses and fears materialise as spirits?" she had questioned later, staring at the familiar ceiling of his room. The song of cicadas spilt forth from the open window as her bare body relished the night breeze after an hour of ardent lovemaking. "What about hopes and wishes?"
His fingers trailed lazy circles across her skin, his hot breath tickling the length of her neck. He mumbled back, "Maybe they become something else."
"Like what?" she pressed and he hummed back in a chivalrous effort to entertain her late-night musings. It was almost four in the morning but it was the weekend and they had plans to visit Akibahara to buy a new Nintendo DS.
("Digimon Lost Evolution is out!" Satoru had happily announced earlier that afternoon. She preferred Pokemon but it wasn't in her nature to disappoint him so.)
His muffled voice against her hair was nonchalantly apathetic as his brain surrendered to the advent of sleep instead. "No idea."
She turned to him persistently. "People pray every day as much as they curse the world, why is there no energy from that? Why do we have to reverse cursed energy instead?"
Bleary azure eyes opened to peer at her through a thick veil of fatigue. "We can ask Yaga about it next time."
Her mind continued to churn for answers. "Don't you think it's strange? There are monsters lurking in every corner yet not a single angelic being to be seen. Not even a tooth fairy."
"That's not true," he objected and she hummed back in question. Her eyes bore into his languid face as she waited expectantly for him to enlighten her. The moon caressed his cheeks with its lustrous glow, gentle sighs tumbling from parted lips. She leaned forwards to touch him with feather-light fingertips, admiring the angled strokes of his jaw and pastel flicks of his lashes. Sea-glass eyes opened once more as he whispered, "Sometimes, hopes and wishes can be other people too. To me, you're like a waking dream."
"Wow," she breathed out a sigh of awe. "You're a genius and a poet, Satoru. A genius poet."
"Yes, I am." His lids fluttered shut for a brief moment. "Why are you still awake? Did I not satisfy you enough?"
He rolled himself on top of her and she laughed while attempting to push him off. "Get lost, I can't sleep."
"I know a way to tire you out," he murmured against her ear. His hands started to move beneath the sheets, calloused fingers sliding down the inside of her thigh. She relinquished her contemplations to the pleasure of his touch, vespers painting their lips and ardour mingled in their breaths.
Sayuri thought about it often; how love and death were one and the same.
.
.
The way Ieiri's lackadaisical expression lit up at the sight of her would always make her feel warm inside. The hug that would soon follow, the excited glimmer in her eyes as her voice grew a little louder than usual. Sayuri had always cherished the friendship she shared with them, the troublesome bonds that clung and snared at their joints as they would say. She had picked up a few bad habits from Ieiri throughout the years they had known each other. Little practices that Satoru would often disapprove of whenever he saw them together.
("Why are you corrupting her like this?")
As if he and Suguru had never exchanged their share of lewd pictures and provocative whispers in the corner of the room while they weren't looking. All the times that Ieiri had snuck them into a nightclub after currying favour with the VIP customers, or returning with free concert tickets from her industrious connections. The drunken escapades in dodgy karaoke rooms that ended in ungodly stupors and hangovers the next day that would last them an entire lifetime. Perhaps that was the reason Satoru despised the idea of alcohol so much. Ieiri could be a force of nature to be reckoned with when she wanted to be.
Huddling together behind the medical building, Sayuri and Ieiri lit up their cigarettes with nostalgic smiles. The scent from her brand was softer, mixed with citrusy notes that reminded her of summer and piña coladas, while Ieiri had always been the stauncher of the two. She liked her coffee black with no sugar (to keep her awake) and her Marlboro cigarettes red as blood-tinged fingernails.
"Satoru isn't here," she informed. Sayuri noticed that she had grown her hair out, hanging below her shoulders as she bent over. It made her look more mature.
"That's fine," Sayuri replied. After graduating as a full-fledged sorcerer and assuming the responsibilities as head of the Gojo clan, Satoru had become a very busy and important man. An unavoidable consequence for being the strongest one-man show in the whole of Japan. A god who walked amongst men. "Is it a mission or a business trip this time?"
"Business trip to Hokkaido, I think." Smoke curled and faded into the wind. The skin beneath Ieiri's brown eyes was bruised with sleepless nights and mountains of paperwork. Sayuri wondered what kind of life she would have led if she had the freedom to choose from all her possible prospects. She heard that Nanami had taken up a job as a salaryman in some investment firm and Suguru was now a fugitive in hiding doing who knew what.
Her lipstick stained the butt of her cigarette and smeared against her nailbed. She would have liked to open a speakeasy bar in Shibuya. "I should ask him to buy a souvenir."
"Wait, didn't he tell you?" Ieiri questioned and Sayuri paused, looking up to the skies. It was impressive how she knew them better than they did themselves. Dark brown eyes observed her every minute movement, the held breath in her chest before it released the puff of nicotine-fueled cloud into the air.
"I forgot about that," she finally said with a bashful chuckle.
"As if you could forget anything he told you," Ieiri retorted with a knowing smirk. She shifted her weight to her other leg as she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone. Always with a keen sense of humour and an even keener intuition. Slim fingers hastily went to work on the keypads and Sayuri leaned her head back against the wall.
"That's not fair," she complained. "You're such a snitch, Ieiri."
"That's what friends are for," she responded in kind. "To stop you from doing anything potentially stupid."
Sayuri smiled sadly as she put her cigarette out in the portable ashtray, recalling the view of the sea and the countryside from the cliifsides of her home. She really was a lousy friend. Standing up, she brushed the dirt from the back of her skirt before burying her hands into her jacket pockets. The maple leaves swirled in the wind, once again meeting a premature death in its momentary beauty. She could smell the musky-sweet rot of the season, reminding her of moths and amber and the crisp vetiver in the space between his jaw and ear.
"Autumn is a nice season to do something stupid," she reasoned as she opened a gate. The flood of reversed cursed energy soaked the area.
"Don't do it," Ieiri warned. "He's on his way."
Just as the words left her lips, Satoru appeared within the blink of an eye like the immortal deity that he was. An image of a sun-soaked god exalted above all others, with his snowy hair and blazing empyrean eyes that seared her heart before it drowned beneath the waves of zealous martyrdom. She erected effigies in his likeness only to burn them down with her own hands, sung gospels in his name only to offer herself for ritual slaughter. With an infuriatingly poignant smile of self-condemnation, Sayuri stepped through the gate.
The stark contrast between surroundings made her slightly disoriented as she walked across his office. Crimson eyes darted around the walls in search for her prize and her fingers quickly pried it off the wall. Even the mere memory of its former owner sent chills running down her spine while simultaneously causing her blood to boil.
The familiar sensation of Satoru's cursed energy licked at her skin. She wondered if his eyes could see through the walls as easily as it could glimpse into her very soul. Whether he could penetrate her thoughts and unravel the foolishly desperate scheme she had conjured within a moment of frenzied despair.
"Sayuri." His voice, like the whistle of an arrow piercing the air to find its mark in her sternum, paralysed her. "What are you doing with that?"
She bowed her head, clutching the inverted spear of heaven in her hands tightly. If she looked at him, she might lose her resolve and forfeit every remnant of sanity that she had left. Whether it was a battle of wits or raw strength or cursed techniques, she would lose without a shred of doubt. The only thing she could do—the only thing that she's ever done—was to run away.
Praying, begging the heavens for mercy. If any gods existed within those vaulted halls, whether they heeded her desperate pleas, she would continue to cry out to oblivion until her voice cracked and shook the stars out of place.
"Satoru..." she whispered and even the sound of his name sent her shivering with the desire to have him touch her once more. "I'll always love you... in this life and in every life thereafter."
"Stop it," he implored softly. "Stop finding reasons to leave me."
To her chagrin, his tone was tender and compassionate. It cleaved her heart into two to hear him sound so defeated, so ready to go down on his knees before her. She expected cosmic fury, exploding supernovas and the gravitational collapse of an event horizon. It was what she deserved; she was never worthy of his mercy or love. It would have been better if he despised her. She, the great pretender, who poisoned the gardens of paradise with her lies and deceit.
(She was a fool; their destinies had already been carved into the very heavens.)
Sayuri opened another gate, weaving and connecting each path together so that even if he followed her, he wouldn't know which one she took. She caught one last glimpse of him, searing the memory of his face into every atom of her being so that she could never forget him. For her soul to remember him no matter how many times they would need to be reborn until the day they would meet once again. She hoped that then, the summer sun would never set.
They fell through the void at the same time, fingertips reaching out for one another. The anguish inked onto his brows, the sorrow captured in his interstellar eyes. When her knees crashed to the ground on the other side, she was alone. With hands grasping her aching chest and tears spilling across her crumpled cheeks as she sobbed cacophonously to the skies. Telling herself over and over that it was the right thing to do, despite how much her heart revolted against the very notion. She could only persuade herself of the bitter falsehoods she had spun with her own tongue.
Sayuri finally understood why hopes and wishes could never manifest into existence. Like the transient nature of their beings, streaking across the plains of life in one breath of exquisite brilliance. Falling stars and blooming flowers, burning tanabata and purest love.
All good things eventually came to an end.