Chapter Six: Not A Coincidence

2014 – Winter

Over the years, Natsumi had gotten pretty good at pretending. When she was in elementary school, she pretended she didn't notice that her parents loved her brother more. When she was in middle school, she pretended that it didn't bother her. When she was in high school, she pretended that she wasn't broken by it all. Pretending she did not see Getou Suguru's name in a file of curse users, had seemed easy when she compared it to the rest.

Their interaction in the first place was entirely by chance. The subsequent times were pure coincidence. Natsumi wasn't good at statistics (or really any kind of math) but she had a feeling it was statistically impossible she would ever see him again. She did not look at the file, she did not confirm if she hallucinated, and she did not look for him in public (not that she would see him again).

She had been able to resist for a full week, and she was feeling quite proud of herself when Mimiko called her.

The conversation had been uneventful, and Natsumi had been determined to not look into it. She would listen to the girl, and it would be fine. Mimiko asked about Sumiko, talked about the music she had been listening to, and complained about Nanako stealing her clothes. It was nothing, a perfectly normal conversation and she could go on pretending she didn't know anything at all and it would be fine.

Natsumi flipped open that file the minute the girl hung up.

It just didn't make sense to her, how that teenager smiling in that photo, a smile that radiated warmth could turn into… Getou. The hatred that burned in his eyes and the way his muscles locked up as if it was all he could do to keep himself from being violent. The way his eyes had emptied as if he had not even been a person while he stared at her in the middle of the night. The way that stare had made a hot summer night feel chilling.

The more times she read the file, the more the Getou she had met that night at the drugstore… fit. It took a special kind of rage, a degree of insanity that he clearly possessed, to kill 112 people in a single night. The boy in the photo didn't have that hatred, and she wondered when that had changed, how it changed.

Natsumi did something truly unlike herself that day. She started researching as much as she could about the incident (something she had barely done in high school), in front of the computer looking up names and dates. It took a while, but eventually, she found a barely mentioned news article that lined up with the dates in the file. It was one of the barely disguised coverups Sumiko had taught her to look for in the news. A village plagued by disasters and frequent deaths was decimated in one night by a rampant fire. A tragic horrific tragedy at the end of a long line of tragedies. Most of the dead were accounted for, with only a handful of bodies that were too charred to be recognizable. Among the names of the deceased were Hasaba Nanako and Mimiko.

Getou killed 112 people in a single night.

Getou killed 110 people and then raised two little girls that people thought were dead.

The girls would have been… five, maybe six years old when it happened. At about seventeen years old, Getou killed over a hundred people and then raised a couple of twin girls.

Why?

Natsumi had been twenty-one and hesitated to raise her own niece, and Sumiko was already eleven. Why would an eighteen-year-old special-grade jujutsu sorcerer raise a couple of random twins from some no-name village? If she hadn't met Getou, hadn't seen the way he was so fiercely protective of those girls, hadn't seen the way they used puppy dog eyes to get him to stay an extra hour at a mall.

Killing 112 people was evil, and yet… Getou had never struck her as evil. Unhinged? Maybe. Anger issues? Probably. Dangerous? Absolutely. Evil?

It was such an odd thing to trust a gut feeling, illogical even, but Natsumi's gut feeling hadn't been born out of intuition. She had developed it out of necessity. Through the experience of interacting with men who were evil. Men who lured teenage girls to their homes with pretty words and the promise of making them feel better. Men who gave teenage girls drugs and promised they would be okay. Men who laughed at teenage girls who were too drugged out to say no. Men who put girls in a position where they had no where else to go but with them.

Natsumi knew evil men. Evil men had helped ruin her life (helped was important because even while she told other girls it was never their fault, it was hers, it was always hers).

She had kept herself from thinking of Getou. She had been able to pretend she hadn't seen and didn't know, but the moment that Mimiko called the dam was broken and she couldn't stop thinking about him.

It did occur to her to tell Gojou. It was the most logical next step to take. She wasn't sure what he could do about it after the fact, but she should say something. It should have been easy, she hadn't done anything wrong, and it wasn't as if she had known anything when she met him and said nothing. It was, objectively, the right thing to do. It's what she was supposed to do.

She couldn't do it. She held that phone in her hands ready to call him and she could not do it.

She thought of two twin girls who called him Getou-sama. She thought of Getou in a drug store late in the night, tampons in his basket having no idea what he was doing. She thought of puppy dog eyes and rage on their behalf. She thought of a dead man unable to hurt little girls anymore. She thought of the softness on his face when he looked at those girls.

'They have no family, no one else to care for them.'

If she did say something, where did that leave them? Alone?

Natsumi talked herself out of saying anything at all, and by the end of it, she had decided it was a good thing. Gojou and Getou were both special-grades, and Natsumi didn't understand much but she understood that one of them would wind up killing the other. There was no guarantee that Gojou would live and if he died that meant Megumi and Tsumiki would be alone. Best case scenario they all lived with Natsumi. Worst case scenario Megumi and Sumiko ended up with the Zen'in.

She still felt guilty, because she should say something. She should let Gojou determine if he could handle it or not but… Gojou was so confident, all of the time, and in every story, she heard about him from the kids, he did something reckless. What if something happened to Gojou? Not because she cared about that obnoxious idiot, of course not. Of course, he hadn't grown on her over the past couple of years. Of course, she did not think of him as the friend she hadn't wanted and didn't ask for. But if something happened to Gojou, it would affect Sumiko.

Natsumi wouldn't say anything, not now, there was no point. She would, she told herself, if she ever saw him again (she wouldn't, of course, she wouldn't), then she would call Gojou and let it be his decision.

Natsumi tried to go back to pretending she didn't know Getou, and even better that she had never met him in the first place. She was mostly successful after a little while, only interrupted by the occasional call from Mimiko. It was no small effort that she did not ask about him, but she needed to pretend.

It got easier to pretend the closer they inched towards the end of the year.

In only a few months, Sumiko would turn fifteen, and a month later she would be starting high school. Natsumi was terrified. In all this time she had hoped Sumiko would change her mind, that she would decide not to be a sorcerer. She should have known better because Sumiko firmly believed in doing the right thing. It was something Natsumi should have expected, but she had still hoped.

They still had a few weeks before the end of the year and Sumiko had (again) talked Natsumi into letting her spend another weekend with Gojou and Megumi. She had been tempted to tell her no this time, but it gave Natsumi time to shop for Christmas. It was getting close, and she still hadn't decided on what to get Sumiko. It couldn't be something that Gojou would just invite himself to, maybe jewelry? Or clothes? Something new to wear in high school because she didn't know what uniforms Jujutsu High handed out but even the best uniform was still a uniform.

She had decided against the mall because it was very unlikely that she would run into Getou or the girls, it was better not to chance. She should at least make an effort to avoid them, avoid any areas she had seen him. It was easier just to go to one of the shopping districts, there would be a lot of people and Getou didn't seem to enjoy crowds (unsurprising given the whole curse user criminal situation).

As expected, the streets were crowded but Natsumi had always felt more comfortable in a crowd. It wasn't so crowded she couldn't breathe and there were pockets of empty space here and there. She wandered in and out of stores without any real direction, keeping a lookout for anything good. She had yet to buy any of the kids a gift, but she had always been a last-minute shopper. If anything, she was shopping a little ahead of schedule this year.

Natsumi had always liked this time of year, the cold, and the snow. It hadn't snowed yet, but it wouldn't be far off, if it didn't snow by Christmas, it would be by New Year's. They had always been her favorite holidays, even if it meant taking a trip out to the country to see relatives that she didn't like. It was the time of year when her parents tried their hardest to pretend that they didn't have a favorite. They never admitted out loud that they did have a favorite but they hadn't been as good at pretending as Natsumi was and so it always showed through. Except at Christmas.

The first Christmas after she left… she had thought about going back, about calling or showing up or something. But she couldn't, she'd been gone for so many months at that point and she was… She hadn't known how to ask for help, too ashamed to even admit she needed the help. Ichiro had called her, not that she had answered, but he had left her a voicemail. He didn't ask her to come home, but he told her she could, that he loved her, that he missed her. She had deleted the message years ago, angry and jealous and feeling especially petty. Natsumi couldn't even remember why she had been so angry that time, but she knew she had been.

She wished she still had that message. She wished she had gone home then. She wished she didn't have to call him in the middle of the night six months later.

Natsumi shook her shoulders, trying to shake it off because there was nothing she could do to fix it now. It didn't stop the feelings of guilt or regret from twisting inside her, didn't stop her from the thoughts of what could have been different if she had just called him. If she had just let him be there for her like he had wanted to be.

She stared at the books in front of her, trying to focus on finding something for Megumi instead of obsessing over things she couldn't change. It was impossible to go back and fix it, but she could try to move forward, she could do better.

Megumi had been into reading lately, nothing fun, it was all mostly biographies and history books. Of course, he couldn't be into anything normal like movies or games. He was the hardest one to shop for and it made it harder because of his birthday being so close to Christmas. It meant she had to try to find two gifts, though usually one of them ended up being cash. It shouldn't matter so much, it's not like he would complain about it or be especially excited. He wasn't an ungrateful kid, he just… wasn't very expressive, if anything a lack of complaint was akin to jumping around the room.

She found a couple of biographies she thought he might enjoy and a book examining the history of ghosts and superstitions in Japan. At this point, she knew most ghost interactions were some form of cursed spirit or another, so it was most definitely bullshit but she couldn't help herself. It would only be mildly irritating, and she would give him some cash too so it would all even out.

Natsumi left the store with a grin; the rest of them would be easy to buy for now that Megumi was done. She was onto the next, trying to remember what movies Tsumiki didn't own. That girl was really starting to become a cinephile. Maybe she should get her a few real movies and a joke one like for Megumi? Or maybe some movie posters? Maybe she should wait to buy Tsumiki's gift until she double-checked her collection. Oh, she could ask Sumiko, she would –

"Matsuda-san!"

She twisted because surely that wasn't – but it was. Mimiko was standing right next to her, a soft smile on her face and a gentle wave, though her eyes darted around a little as people bumped into them both to get around. She was a few inches taller now and her dark hair just a little bit longer, but she had the same large dark eyes. The girl still wore dark clothes, wrapped up tightly in a navy coat and dark blue skirt.

All the effort she put in to avoid them, and yet here was Mimiko.

"Mimiko?" Natsumi looked behind the girl, but she couldn't see Nanako or Getou in the crowd. Maybe she was alone, maybe she snuck out and maybe, maybe, she wouldn't have to call Gojou. "Are you alone?"

The girl shook her head, "No, we were shopping but I saw you in the window so I ran over to say hi. Is that… okay?" Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was coming in small puffs of white in the chilled air.

She blinked slowly. "That's… fine, I don't mind. I'm just… surprised. Is it just you and Nanako?" She wanted it to be just them, praying to gods she didn't believe in.

"No," she pointed behind her at the store across the street. "Getou-sama is still in there with Nanako. He's probably freaking out."

Maybe the universe wanted to see her struggle, maybe she was the star in some shitty game show where she didn't know the rules. Natsumi sighed, "Okay, lead the way. I'll walk you back."

Mimiko smiled a little brighter and turned, leading her to one of the trendier clothing stores across the street. Natsumi raised an eyebrow, it was aimed at teenage girls and there was no way Getou didn't look like an absolute pervert. She knew that he wasn't, but no one else would.

He was standing in the entrance of the store, Nanako's hand tightly in his while he looked through the crowd. His brows were pulled together in concentration, but she saw his face relax when he caught sight of Mimiko, his jaw unclenching. The soft expression in his eyes was short-lived when he caught sight of Natsumi, his eyes widening in shock before he gave Mimiko a sharp look.

"He's mad."

"No, he's not," she said. "He was just scared."

"Getou-sama doesn't get scared."

Natsumi rolled her eyes, "You didn't see his face a second ago then."

When they made it through the crowd, Getou nudged Nanako back into the store. "Go with your sister, I'll be in there in a second," he told Mimiko, his voice tense.

"But I wanted to ask Matsuda-san if she would – "

"Mimiko."

Her shoulders hunched and she followed after her sister, the bell from the door chiming as it closed behind her. Getou turned his eyes on Natsumi, eyes narrowed with such intensity she could feel the heat spreading across her skin. "Are you following me?"

She spluttered, "Excuse me?"

"Are you following me?" he repeated.

Natsumi resisted the urge to laugh. As if she would even be able to keep track of someone like him. "No. I'm not, I was just doing some Christmas shopping and Mimiko just sort of… ran up. She wanted to say hi." It would be so easy, to slip her hand in her pocket and dial Gojou.

His jaw clenched, "I don't believe in coincidences."

At this point, neither did she, but she shrugged anyway, feigning indifference. She'd always been good at pretending. "Well, you should start because it really is a coincidence. Who knows, maybe we've passed each other a bunch and just… didn't notice." She couldn't imagine not noticing him, not when he was as attractive as he was. It really wasn't fair, did all sorcerers have faces like this? Even without the sharp intensity in his eyes and the beautiful dark hair, he had a handsome face and too sharp a jawline not to be noticed.

"I doubt it."

"Well, I'm not following you," she assured. "I have no reason to follow you." Natsumi did, however, have plenty of reason to avoid him, but the voice inside her telling her to walk in the other direction was easily ignored. Hadn't she gone out of her way to be on another side of town? To be in an area where she hadn't seen him?

He stared into her eyes as if he were looking for something like he could decipher whatever her plot was. Natsumi stared back, and she should have been afraid (because 112 was a really big number and really it had just been the start), and part of her was because he was terrifying (that was part of what made her stomach flutter the way it did), but… he wouldn't hurt her here, in the middle of a crowded place with the girls here (110 + 2 dead girls who were very much alive).

Getou's jaw unclenched, and his shoulders relaxed as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Did this man own only one pair of pants? Or just too many pairs of the same loose pants? He nodded and turned around, entering the store as if nothing happened.

Natsumi knew that she should call Gojou because it was one thing not to have said anything after the fact, but it was another not to do anything now. All the reasons before had seemed like good reasons and two dead girls who weren't dead should never outweigh the 110 who were actually dead and so she should call. It was the right thing to do, all she had to do was pull out her phone and send one text because he could teleport, so it didn't even matter where they were and –

"Are you coming or not?" He was looking over his shoulder, irritated by her hesitation and she hadn't even noticed he was waiting for her to follow him.

"I… what?"

He jerked his head in the twins direction, "Mimiko wants you here. I can't fathom why, but she does. Are you coming, or not?"

"Uh… yeah."

Natsumi left her phone in her pocket and hadn't even reached into her pocket because those two lives shouldn't matter when you compared it to the 110 (and counting). It mattered because those lives were gone, they were dead, but these two were still here. Whatever Getou had done, these girls did not deserve more loss and Natsumi would not be the one to take him from them.

She listened to the girls' chatter and took their advice on what Sumiko might like for Christmas, pretending that she didn't know what Getou had done, for all their sakes.


Christmas Eve

"Sailor Moon is a masterpiece and you are an uncultured piece of shit."

"Fuck you, Sailor Moon sucks."

"Oh, and Digimon is better? The power of fucking friendship?"

"Sailor Moon is just a bunch of lesbians."

"That's the best fucking part."

"Were we even alive when that came out? At least Digimon is relevant."

"It came out in 1992 asshole, and Sailor Moon is totally relevant," Natsumi whispered. It was late, and Natsumi was sure if she checked the time, it would technically be Christmas day. The kids had been asleep for a few hours, usually, she was by herself during this time. It's how they had gone about it last year and the year before, but this year Gojou had decided to stay the night with the kids. He had been invited to stay the other years, but he usually went to some party with his family. Natsumi wasn't sure why it had changed this year, but Natsumi understood avoiding family, so she let it be.

"I don't even get why you like Sailor Moon. It doesn't match you, at all." They sat on the couch, with him taking up more space than any person had the right to do, his legs splayed wide while he leaned his elbow on the arm of the couch.

"Oh, I didn't like it, I was obsessed with it. I dressed up like Sailor Neptune one year for Halloween and I had all of the manga." Her eyes were currently glued to the movie, she had put it on to occupy herself because Gojou knew she smoked but it was another thing to do it in front of him. "Sumiko's dad bought me a lot of it, I think it's all still in my old room," she knew that it was, she'd had to go in there to grab the movie. Pretended she didn't see all the shelves line with the things she left behind, pictures of people she didn't know anymore, people that were dead.

She hated that room, hated this whole house but most of all that room. When they moved into her childhood home, she had half expected her childhood bedroom to have been turned into a guest room, but her parents hadn't touched it. They had left it the same as when she'd left home and a peek at her brother's old room told her it was the same. Natsumi didn't know what that said about her relationship with her parents, she tried not to dwell on it. It didn't change anything.

Natsumi thought it would be a terrible idea, to put Sumiko in either of those rooms, she stayed in her parents' old room instead and turned her father's old office into Sumiko's room. It was easier that way.

"You don't talk about him much."

She didn't look his way, "I talk about him enough."

"Why don't you?"

"I don't know, why are you at my house instead of with your parents?" she snapped at him, still not wanting to look his way. Natsumi could barely look at him some days, because she should have called him and she didn't call him. It still wasn't too late to say something, she could say something about not being sure. Instead, she stayed quiet.

Gojou laughed quietly, "You can act like a bitch all you want, it doesn't bother me."

"Whatever."

"I'm not asking to be obnoxious."

She rolled her eyes, "Sure."

"I'm not," he said. "I'm asking because the only time you do bring him up is to talk about what a great person he was, and Sumiko is just like him. She already wants to... She's already so naïve and idyllic, and you're making it worse."

"What, me trying to give her a decent role model is a bad thing? Someone to look up to that was actually a decent person? Because we sure as fuck both know it's not either one of us."

"It's going to ruin her life."

Natsumi snorted, "Trust me, that's not going to happen. Sumiko is good, she's kind and smart and she can make good choices – "

"I've seen it happen," Gojou spoke too softly. Even when he whispered, there was this… cockiness, this boisterous attitude just underneath it. Now he sounded… sad, worn down. "I've seen someone like her turn into something so unrecognizable it doesn't even feel like them. Someone so different it feels like they died."

"That won't happen to Sumiko, she's too… she's too good. She wants to save the world and –"

"It might," his voice too low, barely heard over the TV. "That special-grade curse user, he was good too. He wanted to save the world too, he thought that it was our purpose as sorcerers to protect the weak. He thought there was some beauty in it, in protecting non-sorcerers. Some deeper meaning or something, I thought it was bullshit," he rambled on, "I still think it's mostly bullshit but he was so obsessed with doing the right thing and having a purpose that it broke him.

"He almost died, and we lost so much and it changed him. Sometimes I wish he had died because it would be easier to deal with than what he's done," Gojou shook his head, as if he still couldn't believe it was true. "He still wants to save the world, he's just changed his mind on who's worth saving. So don't… don't put all that… goodness shit on her because it could break her. The jujutsu world will break her, it either kills you or it breaks you."

A chill went down her back, her head filled with Getou staring blankly reminiscing on a too hot summer evening. A night eerily close to the anniversary of killing a village full of people when he was seventeen years old. A boy who had wanted to protect the weak until he decided they weren't worth it anymore. A boy who had a smile that was so warm and a man who was so cold, so angry. Broken and twisted and wrong.

Two little girls, who didn't have anyone else.

"Then why are you letting Megumi be part of it? Why did you encourage Sumiko? Why not just… you could have just left us alone," she accused him because it was easier to turn it around on him than to confront her part in this. She wanted to bury the temptation to come clean. To pretend she hadn't seen Getou just a few weeks ago and hadn't called Gojou. Pretend that she hadn't talked to Mimiko just yesterday. Pretend that no matter how many times she told herself she should say something, that she wouldn't and whatever reason she told herself would never be good enough.

Gojou let his head fall against the back of the couch, "Because I want to fix the world too, I just… I don't think protecting the weak is the way to go. I never did. I think if we make the weaker sorcerers stronger, then maybe it will be enough, eventually. And Megumi…."

"What about Megumi?"

"If he gets strong enough… he could become head of the Zen'in. His technique is just as rare as mine, the fact that we both exist at the same time," he shook his head again, "you can never understand what that means for the jujutsu world, for the entire world. If we're both head of our clans… If two of the three great families are working towards something better. Do you even know how much could change? Maybe teenagers won't have to watch each other die while fixing a world that shouldn't be their problem to fix in the first place."

She never realized how deeply he cared about the world. Gojou cared about his students, he cared about the kids he was raising, and he would never admit to those things, but she knew he did. He wasn't earnest, he wasn't open like this, not ever and she had doubts he would ever say anything like this again. "Sumiko says they call you The Honored One, that you're the strongest sorcerer there is, but you've… you've never seemed like you wanted to do anything real with it."

"I don't want to," he said, and he sounded tired, too tired for someone so young. They were all just kids still. She was barely twenty-four and he had just turned twenty-five and they were too young. Too young to be raising teenagers and too young to be making decisions that affected so many people. "I thought I would just do whatever I wanted to do, just run around exorcising curses, killing curse users. I thought… I thought it would be me and him, but… he left me behind to go kill all the non-sorcerers."

"You were really close." It wasn't a question, because she had never seen Gojou be emotional and for him, this was pretty close.

"You have no idea."

Natsumi turned back to the screen and watched the credits roll. "I lost someone really close to me once," she spoke softly, just as he had before. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears and she clenched her hands tightly, digging the nails in the skin. She didn't talk about it, didn't tell anyone, and her family had known her friend died but that's all they thought she was, her friend.

"Yeah?"

"She went missing," she mumbled, "and then… I was angry, I thought she left me behind. I did… I messed around with this shitty guy, because I was pissed and the only person who understood me left me. It's... It's why I ruined my life, if we're being honest."

Gojou looked over at her, "She ever come back?"

"No," Natsumi answered, "They found her body around the time I graduated. I found out she died and it broke me... I don't want Sumiko to end up like us, I don't… I don't want her to break." She didn't just mean her and Gojou.

"Me either."

"Promise me again that you'll keep her safe. I don't… I don't care about the jujutsu world, just Sumiko. If you have to choose between them… choose her, please."

"Well," he drawled and he sounded like himself, the cocky pompous bastard and not the wounded exhausted boy he'd been a moment ago. "I am the strongest, so if anyone can keep her safe then it's me. You know, I should talk to Mei Mei about pricing, I really should be charging you for my services."

Natsumi threw the TV remote at him as the home screen of the movie played through, the song repeating over and over and over again. The remote bounced off nothing and landed on the floor. Bastard. "Then maybe I'll start charging you for my nanny services every time you leave a kid on my doorstep."

"That's fine, I can afford it," he grinned, his too-bright teeth flashing in the darkness.

Natsumi rolled her eyes, "Gojou."

"Natsumi-chan."

"I need a cigarette."

He stood, groaning and crying about how disgusting it was and how even Shouko had managed to quit, but he followed her outside. They sat in the cold and watched the snow and argued about Digimon, and Natsumi really did like Digimon, but it was easier to argue with him. It was easier to sit and pretend than to stew in her inability to make a good choice.

Because she should have called Gojou, but she hadn't, and she knew she never would