#Tokyo Club Crawl

[dzvelinaskebiyars]

Tokyo Revengers Headcanons

・❥・Mistuya Takashi・❥・

✶ He is literal dream boyfriend for sure. He's handsome, cute, kind, stylish and whatnot. Who wouldn't want him? I mean, there already are many girls in his school simping for him.

✶ Of course, despite that, he only has his eyes for you.

✶ He proves that he loves you through actions and words. He's always sincere when telling you how much you mean to him.

✶ His sisters love you so much! They always ask him to take them at your place, or if he bring you with him.

✶ He loves kissing your forehead.

✶ He's not bold enough to flirt with you in public or anything. He just holds your hand, talking or listening to you.

✶ He loves riding his bike with you! Tho he can't often ride with you when it's late, considering the fact that he has sisters to take care of.

✶ He makes sure everyone in his school, especially in his fashion club, knows that you two are dating.

✶ He takes you to home, to school and to literally anywhere you want.

✶ He loves choosing outfits for you and you also ask him for help when you don't know what to wear and my god, he never disappoints.

✶ He takes you on dates literally every time he can.

✶ He never involves you in Toman business and rarely takes you with him when there's a meeting. He HATES involving you in type of gang stuff. That's because he doesn't want you to get hurt.

✶ Of course he introduces you to his friends. Mikey, Draken, Baji, Hakkai, Yuzuha, Takemichi, Nahoya and Souya, Pah and Peh..You're especially close to Yuzuha and Hakkai tho.

✶ He loves going on shoppings with you.

✶ He's the most supportive boyfriend someone could have.

・❥・Chifuyu Matsuno・❥・

✶ Let's get the priorities straight, you love Peke-J and Peke-J loves you so much.

✶He often sends you cats memes/videos. Like he's such a cat lover.

✶We all know that he's not very good at date ideas. He always surprises you with his silly things he thought about but it's actually so cute to see him so determined to surprise you and make sure you enjoy the date.

✶He's so interested in fighting and all, so he often talks about it and Toman. Ofc his entire personality isn't based on that tho.

✶When I say that he has most silly yet best ways to cheer you up, I mean it. This guy will immediately make you smile, no matter how bad your day will be.

✶He loves seeing you in his clothes. Like he LOVES it when you wear his jacket or hoodie.

✶Since Takemichi has a girlfriend, Chifuyu sometimes finds himself asking him for advice. Other times, he's taking ideas from mangas.

✶Oh and you two literally just cuddle, blanket over you two, popcorn in hand and watching animes with so much interest.

✶He's not really jealous type but I can see him getting jealous sometimes. He'd be all pouty at that time, trying to brush his jealousy off.

✶He was shy at first but he became bolder as time passed by.

✶He confessed first. (Dare I say that he had to practice for 36354th times with Baji, Takemichi and probably even asked Draken/Kawata Twins for help.)

✶He loves when you fall asleep on him.

✶When you two finally gathered courage to kiss each other, that's exactly when Peke-J crawled on both of you.

✶He NEVER forgets important days such as your birthday, white day, valentine and etc. And he has very...Interesting ideas for gifts<3

[uzurimisery]

like real people do. / kageyama tobio / nsfw

wc: 5.5k

Warnings: Kageyama is autistic, smut, fingering, reader has nipple piercings, reader works in A&R for music, reader used to live in brazil, friends to lovers, awkward sex

A/N: experimenting with more awkward/realistic smut and I love my autistic blorbo Kageyama

thank you to @peachyminx and @dervngedgf for beta reading

Kageyama never did understand the way that conversations worked, or were supposed to work. They were winding, circuitous, jumping from place to place. Unstable like a fault line, bursting from tension. The older he got the more he began to have a loose grasp on them. One so faint it slipped from his fingers if there was too much deviation. It hadn’t been easy to get to this point. It took years of failed attempts at making friends, three failed relationships, and a PR manager to get here. 

Hardly a gentle climb into social know-how. 

There was a script that worked in most situations. The gym, interviews, the grocery store, casuals and quick conversations weren’t altering his normal routine in any major way.  He liked things being the normal way.

So why the hell was he in a club? A place that went so far against the normal?

It had been Hirugami’s idea, he said that the team needed to bond more. Kageyama knew it was just a thinly veiled excuse to get drunk on the team’s card.

 It was awful— the drinking.

Conversations were bad enough while sober, small talk, social cues being a forge in language, and alcohol just made him feel worse about them. The script was thrown across the room and given to an AI generator that made something worse for him to spit back out. 

The pounding music, early 2000s rap, split his head with each drum beat feeling like it was played against his skull. He could smell everything, the foreigners easily able to be picked out from the crowd. The buttons on his navy blue dress shirt had started choking him early so it was now half undone, which he hated. Shirts were meant to have only one, or two, buttons undone depending on the level of formality of the event attending. How many were appropriate for a club? At four buttons down the curve of the underside of his pecs could be seen. 

He felt out of place, out of his element, and like a child sitting at the grown-ups' table for the first time and trying to seem mature. 

“Tobio!” Nicolas shouted at him from across the booth. “When are you going to bring them around again?” 

His face scrunched up. “Why?” 

“Because if you’re not going to make a move I am!” Nicolas’ laugh was grating and sharp. “They used to live not far from my parents. A shame it took until now to meet.”

“I thought you were working things out with Maria?” Kageyama had stopped bringing you around after one too many comments on how he was in love with you and afraid to make a move. Something Nicolas harped on him for and took every opportunity to flirt with you in front of him. 

“Por que não ambos? Maria doesn’t have to know.” Kageyama hated the smirk that spread across the Brazilian's face. He knew that Nicolas was teasing him, just like he knew Nicolas wasn’t interested in you in the slightest, but it always drove him up the wall.

Wakatoshi cut in, voice steady and flat, as always. As much as Kageyama struggled with conversations he knew Wakatoshi would be right there with him. “I believe we have discussed many times that Kageyama-san has stated he is waiting for a better opportunity to discuss his feelings with them.” 

“That’s what he said last week and three months ago and then six months ago.” Sokolov chimed into the conversation now, monkey-like as he usually was, followed by Heiwajima.

“You really should talk to them about it. Either way, you need closure to get past your emotional constipation.” 

Kageyama wanted to crawl into a hole. It was bad enough having to figure out his feelings but having them discussed in front of him made him want to jump off the side of Tokyo Tower. His feelings were complicated. Tangled and messy, blending into each other. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to separate them let alone tell you about them.

“Guuys chill, chill,” Hirugami was back with another round of drinks. “Tobio will get to it when pigs fly.” The team busted out laughing. It was humiliating no matter how many times they all poked at him about it. The only way that he’d ever get them to stop was to confess to you.

“Fuck you guys.” He was grumpy now, grumbling into his drink as he took a swig. 

The chorus all said they just wanted the best for him, that there was no way you didn’t feel the same way, that it was all in good faith, all stuff to make them feel better about teasing him. He hated being teased. 

Maybe if he just told you they’d finally leave him alone about it. You might get distant for a bit but he had faith that you could be friends again down the road. 

“If I tell them tonight will you guys leave me alone about it?”

Nicolas’ sly look managed to get worse. “You tell them tonight and I’ll give you ten thousand yen.” 

“Deal.” 

Slipping his phone out of his front pocket and pulling up your contact information had never felt so stressful. He didn’t need the money, he just wanted to be left alone about this. 

To: Best Brazilian

Can you meet me outside Playa Del Sol? 

From: Best Brazilian

You’re at a club?

To: Best Brazilian

I wasn’t my idrea 

Typing was hard. The heat of all the bodies in the room made his hand slippery. 

From: Best Brazilian

Lucky you, I’m just down the street at a gig

>You think you’d be fine to hang out for that? Local band

To: Best Brazilian 

As long as it’s not Sean Paul 

From: Best Brazilian

Kk see you in 10 

Kageyama was, as usual, grateful for your friendship as he excused himself from the group and headed outside to wait for you. More often than not you served as a refuge for him. One of the few people in the world who truly understood him. You didn’t question his mannerisms and need for routine. 

Once he had asked if you thought he was weird, as flawed as he felt, and you had looked at him as if the question was stupid and gave a simple ‘no.’ 

Meeting you had been a deviation from the norm in the best way. Hinata had been visiting and when they were out they bumped into you, surprised since you had been a manager at one of Hinata’s favorite jazz clubs back in Brazil. 

Kageyama got lost in the conversation as Hinata and you bounced between English, Portuguese, and Japanese when speaking. You had corrected and steered the conversation to Japanese, seeing Kageyama’s confusion. 

Your Japanese was clunky back then, and your mouth still struggling with the syllables at times. More than that, your understanding of pitch accent back then was abysmal.

But that meeting had changed his world, shifted its axis. 

Eventually, Hinata’s two-month vacation ended and he left, and Kageyama expected you to leave his orbit too. But you didn’t, you stayed around. It’s been three years and you were still around. And it's been a year since he realised he loved you. 

When the night air had started to sink in, sweat from the club finally drying, he saw you round the corner. 

Every time he saw you he thought he’d get used to how beautiful you were but he never could. You were bright as the sun, warming him, the rays of your light brushing across his skin promised growth, comfort, and shelter. 

Your braids had been half pulled back in some sort of half-updo, two ponytails at the top of your head. He has watched you do them the other week. Or he had been watching before you made him help you since he was sitting there. He didn’t know how to braid at all, but you made him learn. Told him your continued friendship was dependent on it.

He was glad you made him learn though. It gave him an excuse to be in your space, close to you, for hours on end. To touch you without worrying if the amount of contact was normal or not. 

“Tobio!” His name always sounded so perfect coming from your glossed lips. There was a twinkle in your eyes. You had done your makeup for “special events” as you had once explained it to him. Instead of a normal cat eye, you had graphic black eyeliner. He never understood why you wore makeup but he knew that it was something you enjoyed doing. 

He stumbled a bit as he moved towards you, wetting his lips with his tongue as he said your name.

“Whoa careful there big guy! How much have you had to drink tonight?” 

Your arm grasped his bicep, his heart stuttering at the contact.

“Three double vodka cranberries and one beer.”

Your brows raised. “Rough time in there huh?”

“You have no idea.” Kageyama launched into recounting what had happened. 

One of his favourite things about you was how you didn’t press on topics he didn’t want to talk about. You left the conversation shift onto the gig you dragged him to and about the band. His second favourite thing about you was your willingness to unabashedly talk about your interests. Your job as an A&R at Sony meant you were always talking to him about a new band or artist. Before meeting you he wouldn’t consider himself someone who cared about music much. It was just something to help him keep pace while running. He didn’t understand why people liked it. But by watching you he started to dissect the reasons. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision, no grand realisation listening to a recommendation from you. It was a gradual shift. He started listening to more things, trying to pick out ones you’d like and he could send them to you. It was only after Wakatoshi had pointed out he was humming one day that he clocked the change went beyond just you.  

When you got to the venue, you flashed your Employee ID at security and pulled Kageyama in behind you.  It was just as dimly lit as the club but the smaller venue made it less obstructive. You had dragged him here before for a folk singer-songwriting you signed after the show. He had no idea what he was about to listen to but he knew if it was you, it’d be good. 

You led him to the middle of the standing-room area. You preferred a more central location so you could observe the artist’s dynamics and stage presence. While he would normally want to be on the outskirts, he didn’t mind being in the middle. It was crowded though so you were stood in front of him. Someone walked past and knocked you back against him. 

“Sorry!” You knew that he didn’t like physical contact much, so you created space as soon as you could. It pained him. 

“It’s okay. I don’t mind if it’s you.” When you smiled up at him, he felt like he was going to short-circuit. “Who are we discovering today?” 

Another person bumped you into him, shifting your balance and almost causing you to fall. He wrapped his arms around you to stabilise you before he even knew what he was doing.

You muttered under your breath something about expecting better from the crowd here. “You remember Hozier?” 

He knew who Hozier was. You had forced him to listen to Hozier’s entire discography one day. He liked Hozier. In another world maybe he would be as good with his words as the singer was. He could write you poems and sonnets, tell you all the little things about you that made him feel right. As much as he might try now, he couldn’t so he hoped that you wouldn’t hold it against him.

“Yes. You made me listen to his entire discography.” His throat felt dry. “I don’t believe I understood all the metaphors but he has a good voice.”

“Well, imagine Hozier if he was Japanese. And he blended traditional instruments, taiko drums and all that, with a raspy voice and great lyricism.” 

“I see.”  His gaze shifted, watching you adjust in his arms. He wondered if he should release you if he was supposed to have let go three seconds ago or held on longer. Now he was scared to move and make it weirder by moving.

“Sorry, should I let you go?” He was nervous, anxiety creeping, edging him out of the buzz he had from drinking earlier and into harsh sobriety. 

“No, it’s okay. I’m kinda cold and you’re really warm.” 

“Okay.”

The conversation between the two of you died down and Kageyama wanted to make a clone of himself and shake it around. What the hell was he doing? Under the dim lights, the first few chords starting to play, cradling you in his arms, he felt so nervous. 

The opening band started to fill the room with an instrumental. Their first two songs went by quickly enough at least. You would sway along, occasionally bobbing your head to the beat. Your eyes were focused on them as they performed. Someone might look over and think you were a long-time fan of the opening act, enraptured by their performance, but Kageyama knew you. You were appraising them, seeing if they had potential.

As their set drug on, he found himself watching you more than the band. Your brows would twitch, pulling together in the middle for a split second, every time they did something you considered to be a technical miss. You had told him that bands were like a team of volleyball players. 

When you explained it you said that singers were like aces. The powerhouse that made a team stand apart from their opponents. Drums were the setter. They set the tempo, and the flow, of the song Guitars were like hitters, driving down the point. Keys or synths were liberos, not always on the track but essential for making a good song, and basses were middle blockers, getting a perfect read and keeping the team grounded. So far it seemed like the band was winning their set. 

He liked watching you like this, seeing you the most in your element. It hurt his heart, made it tight in his chest from how your eyes darted across the stage. It felt like ripping off a bandage. Diving without a kneepad and your skin tearing on the polished floor of the court.  Like hand sanitiser in a superficial wound. Painful, but knowing that the pain was a sign of growth, of healing. 

The lighting changed, hues of pink and red, as the frontman started talking about their next and final song. He was telling the crowd to grab their lovers, pull them close, and sway along with the music. Kageyama nearly choked when you turned to face him and wrapped your arms around his neck. 

“Well hello lover.” you giggle at the last word, joking about your relationship. While didn’t like the joking nature of it, he wanted it to be real, he liked you calling him it. Your fingernails scratched at the nape of his neck, tangling in the hairs there.

He had had too much to drink and feeling your chest against his own was making the blood rush from his head and straight to his groin. He felt like a teenage boy, unable to keep himself from growing hard. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he swore he could feel your nipples. 

His breath hitched as he went to respond, low and raspy in your ear. “Hello.” Kageyama wanted to say something better, more suave and flirtatious, wishing for a second that he could embody the same way with women Nicolas had. 

“How much did you have to drink?” 

“Not enough.” His cheeks were flush, he needed something in this moment. To pull you closer against himself or to push you away so you didn’t catch on to his growing hard-on. 

Your heartbeat against his own in the confined space, slower than his rapid one. The music drowned out, turning to background sounds as he stared into your eyes. Eye contact was normally so forced for him, constantly having to remind himself to make it. It felt so much more intense with you like you could see through him. He loved your eye colour and the way the corners of your eyes crinkled when you smiled. 

Your lips curled up into a smile as you gazed at him, coated in a shimmery gloss that smelt like vanilla. Your tongue poked out the wet your lips, something you always did when you needed to reapply the lip gloss. He wanted to know what it felt like against his own. If it was as sticky as it looked. If it’d pull into fine strands as you separated. 

“What are you staring at so intensely? I feel like you’re dissecting me.” 

He felt loose and sappy from the drinks earlier, more willing to take risks.

“You. I’m staring at you.” 

“Me?”

His eyes shifted up to meet yours again. “You.” You chuckled a little bit at him before replying. 

“Why?”

“I want to kiss you.” The words slipped out of him before he could stop them, once again putting his foot in his mouth. You were going to reject him, tell him off for violating your boundaries. He’d have to text Hinata tomorrow that he fucked up with you and that everything went wrong. 

“Kiss me.” The first time you said the words it didn’t compute in his brain. 

“Tobio, kiss me.” He stood frozen, short-circuiting, he had been so set on an outcome that a change in path threw him off.

The trance was broken when he felt your lips against his, sticky from the lip gloss as he imagined. You were soft, like a feather brushing across his kiss, gentle and tentative. When you pulled away from him it felt like he could breathe again. You tasted sweet, no doubt partially from the lip gloss but also just you. He wanted more.

Kageyama leaned in, one hand tentatively reaching up to the side of your face to cradle it. His lips met yours again it started with pecks, gentle like you had been, before building in intensity. It felt like Kageyama had been starving for years, the sensation unknown and accepted as just a part of living, but as your mouth opened and his tongue met yours he realised that his hunger, his craving, his desire, had been an aspect of himself so far removed from his understanding until this moment. He understood want and need now that he had tasted you.

The heat of your breath melting with his own made his nerves alight as you parted for air. 

“I’m in love with you.” Your forehead met his shoulder and you laughed. 

“Tobio I know,” it was like the lights in the room knew to shine down around you giving you a halo. “You’re not good at hiding it.”

“I’m sorry.”  You tucked your head under his chin and he let his hands slip down from your waist and into your back pockets, feeling emboldened by your actions.

You swayed with him to the beat of the song as the transition music into the main act’s set began. 

“If it’s any consolation I found it cute.” Your lips met the side of his neck and you tilted upwards to his ear. “I’m in love with you too.”

He joined you in shifting side to side, enjoying the moment as you murmured against his skin, voice warmth with honesty. He didn’t understand it all, but he understood you in this moment, the shared feeling of love between you. One old and ancient, but never weathered by time, still steadfast in its stature. Unending, unshifting. 

The “Japanese Hozier” stepped out onstage and Kageyama let you turn to face the stage, moving to take his hands off you only to find them being wrapped around your waist again, guided by your hands.  He wouldn’t remember the set list, or the singer's performance, too entangled in you and feeling you in all his senses to care about anything else. 

───※ ·❆· ※───

You had brought him home after the show, still humming some of the songs as you puttered around. He had changed as you made a midnight snack for the two of you. His hair hung in clumped damp strands as he played sudoku on his phone waiting for you to finish up. You hated when he got in your way in the kitchen. 

With a plate full of mini pancakes you plopped down on the couch next to him, your makeup removed and hair up. He liked you the most like this, relaxed and human. Sometimes he worried you were an angel sent down from the heavens to make him believe in god but instead drove him to sin.

He took one off the plate when you moved it closer to him. Chewing on it slowly, watching you nibble on yours. 

“You wanna talk about it?” His eyes were peeled on your lips. 

“Only if you’re comfortable.” 

“I’m fine…” you moved and placed the plate on the coffee table. “Good, actually. Great even.”

“I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “For what?”

“I don’t know.” He felt so many things right now it was difficult to verbalise any of them.

You pulled your knees to your chest and faced him. A braid fell into your face and you tucked it behind your ear. Every time he looked at you he understood poetry and prose, songs of admiration, why men would go to war over their lovers. It was nonsensical, to think you could see stars in someone's eyes, but you reflected the lights of the room like a planetarium. He thought that he might die before he found the words to express his thoughts and feelings to you, to get his point across, but he knew with you he didn’t have to. He had never had to. 

His hand encompassed your own, interlocking his fingers with yours. They fit together like puzzle pieces, you the last piece needed to complete the puzzle. Simple connection, conjoining of spirits. 

Kageyama tugged on your hand, pulling you towards himself, making you come to rest on your shins in between his legs. He kissed the back of your hand, softly, tenderly, still afraid that there was something he was missing. But the ball never dropped, the tower never crumbled, and he led you further forward, your free hand resting at his chest before slithering up the back of his neck. 

He couldn’t tell if it was you or him who moved first, closing the distance between you, your lips meeting again. It felt more tentative than the first ones had. Careful and measured, aware of the space, the boundaries, the dynamic you had had. Of how that was shifting, changing, as the pretences you had were changed. 

Kageyama dropped your hand in favour of wrapping his around your waist, guiding you to manoeuvre into his lap. Your ass rested against his groin. The longer he kissed you, the more he felt himself growing hard, aided by your hips grinding down on him. Once on a night out with the team, you had danced with him and it was then that he learned of how fluid you were. Tonight you were water, dripping down on him, swirling around him, wetting his skin. 

He palmed at the waistband of the sleep shorts you had changed into, desperately wanting to remove them but unwilling to force you into something. You pulled away from kissing him to remove your shorts, left in just your underwear and oversized shirt. Kageyama quickly stripped off his shirt before kissing you again, this time letting it evolve into making out with you.

One of your hands moved to his lower abdomen, brushing against his happy trail, making him shiver. He felt you palm at his length through his sweats, slow and sensually. His dick was bigger than you thought it’d be. Average girth but one or two inches longer than expected.  

“Can I touch you?” 

“Yes.” His response was quick, jumping the gun, eager to have you take him in your hand. 

When your skin met his Kageyama swore he might cum from it. His emotions were high-strung, making him more sensitive. He whimpered as your thumb crossed over the tip. 

Your hands felt like velvet against him, smooth and soft, your touch gentle but firm, supplying the perfect amount of pressure as you began sliding it up and down his shaft. His stomach muscles tightened as you went along, pulling him in on himself. It should be criminal that you made him feel such a way from something so simple, reducing him into a schoolboy being touched for the first time. 

He wrapped a hand around your wrist to stop your movements, separating from kissing you to speak. 

“I’m going to cum if you do that too much.”

“That’s the goal Tobio.” 

“Yes, I know, but I would like to make you cum before I do.” 

You gave a small smile, butterflies flitting around in his stomach as you did. “Well, who am I to stop you?”

You crossed your arms as you took off your shirt. When you changed earlier you must not have put on a bra. The curve of your waist he knew already to be temptation incarnate, but the swell of your chest would turn any many into a sinner. 

Your nipples were hard as they were exposed to the cool air of your apartment, small silver balls catching the overhead light. 

“You have your nipples pierced?” 

You cupped your breasts, pinching your nipples. Tobio’s eyes were locked in, focused on the way the silver complimented you. “Yeah, I’ve had them for ages.”

“Can I touch them?” He wanted to pinch at your nipples and feel the cool metal beside them. Your nod was all he needed to do so. 

His touch was hesitant at first, afraid of damaging the piercing somehow. When he squeezed down harder on them he could feel the bars going through your nipples. It was interesting to him, the modification, he wondered what made you get them in the first place. 

As he pinched and twisted your nipples slightly, a soft whimper snuck out the back of your throat, going straight to his already painfully hard erection. 

If you were sensitive to this he wanted to know what it would do to you if he took them into his mouth. It was in the name of science that he did so, leaning forward and wrapping his mouth around your left nipple. 

The metal met his tongue, cold and sharp, constructing against the warmth of your chest. He was cautious not to use his teeth as he played with your nipple in his mouth. You gave out small moans and gasps, hips stuttering against his own, as you threw your head back. Ever since you had gotten them pierced your nipples were more sensitive than ever. 

Kagayema stared up at you. He wondered how he got so lucky in life. He’d have to go to the shrine on New Year with his mother to thank the gods for letting him have you like this. 

He wanted to make you feel more, to know his touch in ways you never had before. 

His free hand not ding at your waist trailed down your side, tracing the outline, as he dragged it down to your core. When he met your underwear, the fabric a simple micro-fibre, and slipped past it he was certain that he’d need to go to the shrine every holiday. You were wet, drenched even, allowing his fingers to slip through you easily. 

Kageyama was not a virgin, he’d had sex before and he was thorough with it. His thumb met your clot, going over it in slow circles, while his pointer and ring finger started to tease your hole. 

When he was able the press both fingers into you and pump them in and out of you, he released your nipple that he had ever so diligently been sucking on to swap for the other one. He bit down it ever so slightly making a shocked gasp and whimper of his name escape you. 

“Be gentle jackass!” Your speech airy, escaping as an exhale. 

It was cruel the way how you said his name made his dick jerk as if he was going to cum, the muscle in his abdomen flexing tight. He’d be dammed if he came before you though, his teeth grazing over your nipple again, tongue swiping over the bar. 

His fingers picked up in speed, pressing against a spot that made you squeak almost. High-pitched and short. Like you hadn’t expected him to hit it. 

The pressure building kept building as he did so, making you get lightheaded as it went on. He was so close to making you cum. Like an itch, you scratch just next to it, the edge. 

His thumb kept toying with your clit as he kept his pace steady, matching the tempo. You could feel yourself tightening up as he worked your body. The noises in the room turned pornographic as more liquid gushed out of you, lubricating his hand, making it easier for him to thrust his fingers in and out and in again. 

Kageyama detached himself from your chest and moved to kiss along the side of your neck and ear.

“You’re so pretty…” he trailed off before biting your neck and sucking hard to leave a hickey. 

You came with a start, the orgasm rolling through you as he bit down, his name coming out a broken moan. Your muscle winding right before snapping under the pressure, eyes screwing shut. It made your head spin, feeling your heartbeat in your skull and down to your toes. The force of it made you clamp down so hard on Kageyama’s fingers that as he tried to pull them out, he couldn’t. 

A minute passed before he was finally able to slip them out of you as you whined for him to keep them inside. When you finally opened your eyes you were met with Kageyams face being entirely red.

“You okay?”  You propped yourself up on your elbows to get a better look at him. 

He licked his lips before speaking, trying to wet them. “I just came.” 

“Oh.”

Things were still for a second. 

“Is there, uh, anything I can do to help?” 

“No. Just give me a minute.” This was the most embarrassment he had felt in a long time 

“Okay.” You cupped his face with one hand. He turned a kissed your palm “We can stop here if you want.”

He contemplated for a few moments in his head, his boxer briefs now feeling sticky. The sensation was grossing him out no matter how badly he wanted to continue.  

“Tobio,” you flicked his forehead “Get out of your head, you’ve got that scrunched-up look on your face.” 

He grumbled against your palm as he spoke. “I like you and I’m embarrassed.”

“Well, I love you and we can always go for a second round.” 

He stilled, humming under his breath. “Could we shower first?” 

“Of course.” 

───※ ·❆· ※───

Out of the shower, where a second round had happened, along with telling you about the bet, Kageyama felt unsure of what to do next. It reminded him of leaving a court at the end of a game, his adrenaline high and heart pumping. The adjustment to reality was strange and foreign. He was sure this must have been how you felt after a concert ended. Lost, unsure what to do after as he cuddled with you in your bed. 

“What happens next?” 

You laughed and it shook your body as you lay on top of him, tracing patterns on his chest.

“You buy me breakfast in the morning.” 

“And after that?” 

“What about after that?” 

“Well,” you started. “We keep doing what we’ve always done. But when we go out to eat we don’t call it hanging out, we call it a date. When we sleep at the other’s place, we sleep in the same bed. Only the little things change between us, the big things stay the same and we get to kiss now. When an interviewer asks if you’ve got a girlfriend, you get to say yes.” 

“You’re my girlfriend?” 

“Well, I thought that was the point of the confession, well along with winning a bet, unless you don't want me to be?” 

“No, I do.” 

“Good.” 

It was silent for a moment as he intertwined his free hand in your own, bringing it closer to his mouth so he could kiss it. You settled further into him, filling out the space where he was the most empty both physically and metaphorically, humming ‘Like Real People Do’.

A Venmo notification cut through the peace. 

Nicolas Romero sent you ¥10,000 

“Atta boy Tobio” 

©️ uzuzrimisery

[satoruhour]

a/n: fluff today! about 1k <3 domestic mornings (afternoons) with satoru always my fav to write about. pls support this as much as my smut works ty 💟 !! / @crysugu @hyomagiri @satohruu @shotorus @greycaelum

by now, it’s late in the afternoon so much so that you’re sure the blinds are hot to the touch from the harsh rays of Amaterasu and her blessings of another bright, hot day. it’s normal in tokyo to wake up to warm sheets and a throat desperate for some water but you’ve learned to avoid it by setting an earlier alarm — take a morning shower, make some tea and grab a book.

satoru, not so much.

he likes to whine a lot when he first stirs, a plethora of sounds that leave him at how he can’t feel your warmth in his arms (“you’d be complaining even more about the heat if i was, you idiot.”), sometimes about the morning being too bright (“mister, it is twelve thirty-four right now.”) and mostly about sweat. today he decides to do all three.

gojo mumbles something incoherent when you accidentally nudge your legs into his, a childish whine how he missed you. “baby, i’m right h��”

“yeah, but . . oh, jesus christ,” his voice is awfully loud when he complains about the rays. “why is it so bright?”

“sun—”

and like always, in classic gojo satoru fashion, he never really lets you finish.

“oh eeewwugh . . i’m so sweaty,” your boyfriend has reached full consciousness by now and if it wasn’t the morning perhaps you’d think he was drunk from how dramatic he was being.

“you literally live in a penthouse, stupid, just go take a shower in one of your bathrooms.” and you go right back to your story. at the corner of your eye you can hear him pouting, crawling up to you and resting his chin on your thighs as he reads the synopsis of your book. satoru blows a raspberry, which you can feel on your hand and the spittle from his mouth makes you sigh; you think it’s due time to give your boyfriend some attention.

“story sounds boring,” you roll your eyes and put it to the side and the reveal of his stupidly cute face almost makes you cave. there’s a deep frown on his face because you’re insulting him so early in the morning and thinking your book is better than him, when really you’re just trying your best to reach your quota before book club saturday. eventually, you do give in after reading the starting sentences of chapter 18 over and over again and frankly digesting nothing, thinking only now of his body wash on your body.

it hasn’t exactly sunk in how you manage to be dating the gojo satoru, with all his cheeky smiles and inappropriate jokes (and timing too), that you are the only one to see him like this in the morning: all not what people says he is and yet he doesn’t hide it one bit from you. why is there any need to?

it’s you.

“don’t frown, ’toru,” you mumble, fingers that were previously turning pieces of paper now smoothen out the furrow of his eyebrows and the tautness of his expression. they’re soft against his skin, and while he’d like to commend it to the body wash he uses he thinks it’s just because it’s you. every inch of you is soft but not without good measure. you still stand up for yourself and sometimes your feet walk a little too much and he can feel the callouses on the balls of your feet when you accidently shock him under the duvet.

you are soft in the way you feel against him, whether it’s when you ask meekly for a kiss and when you hum under the scorching shower water as he lathers your body. you are soft when you laugh loudly and you have to squeeze his hand as you slap his back with the other, and other times soft as you chastise him for buying yet another big stock of your favourite strawberries.

soft is strong, attractive in satoru’s book, because even when your love resembles the first breath of hypnos, it still pulls and tugs and yanks at his heart to drown in you like a siren luring a sailor; right into the depths of the darkening sea where he’d let you take him anywhere even if it meant travelling blind.

“done sulking?” you asked as a mutter, hands now cupping his cheeks that possibly hold all of gojo’s cracks and insecurities and feelings together. they bring him up gently, sweaty back now quelled momentarily with a strong draft from the windows and it’s like his soul reaches the highest point of existence like he did eleven years ago.

you kiss him gently, lips moving in tandem with his as your hands lose themselves over his body and you huff in surprise when he straddles you. long body hunching over yours as you chase his lips like riko after stingrays and you both after suguru and him after a reformed jujutsu society and—

“whew.” is all he says when he pulls away and you’re equally out of breath and gojo swiftly switches your positions. there’s a big grin on his face from the attention you finally give him, “you love me, huh?”

you roll your eyes again at the stupid, harmless comment, shutting him up effectively when you lean down again and kiss him rougher this time, feeling his wet palms span the expanse of your back and up your shirt. gojo sits up and you follow like choreography, moaning softly when he tugs you closer and suddenly you think you should’ve made yourself a cup of cold tea instead.

“i love you,” it’s a whisper against your lips and you have influenced so much of satoru that he is also soft, “i love you so goddamn much.” you nod back, pulling away lightly and you swear you see okinawa again in his irises. they look just as beautiful as the day he lost his youth and gained wisdom and you still love him the same.

“i love you more than my book, promise.” you quip, forehead against his and eyes mapping out each lagoon to pond to sea in the multiplying blues of his eyes — they seem only to do that when he’s with you.

“you better!” he laughs softly into your mouth and he can taste the tiramisu from yesterday on your lips, and you can taste his intoxicating smile. the absence of you, the sunlight and the heat doesn’t matter much to satoru now, and will settle for being soft in the sheets of cloud nine. satoru will make you forget about the tea you’ve woken up early to make and all the nuances of the characters of your book and maybe the slowly rotting strawberries (you might still eat them).

“you better . .” it’s like a plea the way he repeats it but his doubts are silenced once you mumble i do against his skin like a promise, a vow, and satoru then decides he cannot wait to see you from across an aisle.

yeah, soft laced white would look terribly beautiful on you.

♡

[blessedbucky]

we tried the world, good god, it wasn't for us! (part 3)

pairing: autistic!satoru x suguru x autistic!reader

word count: ........14k? oops?

summary: a glimpse at your first year in tokyo jujutsu high

tags: autistic!reader, autistic!satoru, bisexual!reader, bisexual!suguru, ableism, internalized ableism, mentioned child abuse, light bullying, satoru has some identity issues, actually EVERYONE has identity issues here, jealous and protective boys, JJK typical violence

beautiful people who asked to be tagged 💕: @ichikanu, @iceheartsice, @anders-is-being-a-simp-again

author note: um.....so....this was meant to be all three of the high school years in one chapter........but i lost control of the plot. and here we are...FOURTEEN THOUSAND WORDS LATER...and THIS WAS ONLY THE FIRST YEAR of them in high school? help me.

translation note: jiheishō is the japanese term for autism

chapter links: ONE, TWO, AO3

[YEAR ONE.]

Graduation comes.

Finally.

In the months since you and Suguru were offered scholarships with Jujutsu High, word slowly spread around the school. Suguru and you have to sit on the roof for lunches to escape your growing popularity. You have no idea why these people have started to crawl out of the woodworks, but Suguru said he kind of expected it. It’s not only you two that want out of the village and you two are going to live the life that everyone else dreams of. They think they can worm their way into your lives now and leech off any future success or have an in inside Tokyo.

Still, you can’t believe how many addresses and phone numbers you’re given. There are a few that you keep, people from the art club that you joined who have always been cordial enough to you. You felt a little obligated because they pitched in to buy you a relatively nice art supply kit to continue your craft in Tokyo. The rest of the contact information is tossed in the trash, some right in front of their faces out of spite.

Meanwhile, Suguru is almost suspended.

No one can prove that Nakayama Izuru was attacked by Suguru, though. It’s not possible for a human to leave the claw marks on Nakayama’s arms. You can only imagine that saccharine smile that Suguru was wearing when he told the school staff that he saw a tanuki attack Nakayama. The only crime he committed was not getting help sooner and, for that, he apologized. Nakayama himself even admitted that he didn’t see anything or that Suguru didn’t put hands on him, but he knows Suguru was responsible somehow.

You, obviously, know better.

“Idiot,” you hiss when you and Suguru are at your usual afterschool hangout spot by the river. “That wasn’t very heroic of you. It could’ve costed you your scholarship if word got back to Tokyo.”

Suguru rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t even that bad. A cat could’ve done more damage than I did.”

You sigh. “I know we’ve always teased people with your collection, but we’ve never drawn blood. You don’t like him, never have, but I didn’t think it was that bad.” You throw a rock, trying to get it to skip across the water, but it just gives a sad plop and sinks. “What happened?”

“Remember when you and Endo got in that fight a few months ago?” You nod slowly. “It was something like that.” He’s not looking at you, but his rage still lingers. He’s usually good at skipping rocks, but not today. “Which means you can’t judge me because if you knew how to fight, you definitely would’ve. Don’t even try to pretend you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, but I suck at keeping my mouth shut and can’t control my emotions for shit. I know I’m gonna struggle when we start high school because of that.” This isn’t a scolding. You’re just really worried because, “You’re good at letting that stuff roll off you.”

Suguru’s frown deepens. “Not about you.” If it wasn’t so quiet here, you’d have missed him whisper, “Never about you.”

“People have made fun of me before.”

“It’s different.” He presses a thumb against his forehead. “Can we drop this?”

“Well, I kinda want to know what he said. I told you what Endo said, didn’t I?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Suguru,” you sing. “I’ll keep asking. Don’t I have a right to know?”

“I was trying to be polite.” His eye is twitching irritably. “He said that he never noticed until now how nice your tits are. The nicest in our class.” You burst out in a fit of laughter. A vein throbs at his temple. Maybe this is why he didn’t want to say anything. “It’s not funny, Squid. It was disgusting. He tried to act buddy-buddy with me while I was waiting for you to get done with art club. He wanted to know if you were still a virgin or not.”

You shake your head, wiping a stray tear from your eye. “Nakayama thinks because his father owns the biggest farm that he’s worth something. Not even Endo would date him and she’s the most popular girl in school.” You crouch down to rummage for some skipping stones. “Hey, if we’re still virgins by the end of high school, want to take each other’s virginities?”

It’s like all the fight rushes out of him, the way Suguru sighs and how his shoulders slump in defeat. “You shouldn’t say things like that.” His neck, the tips of his ears, his entire face…it’s all so red. It’s rare to find, but there are some things that go too far. You open your mouth to apologize, but he interrupts. “You promise?”

“I promise.” You give one of the stones you find a few tosses, making sure it’s light enough. “I kind of always thought it would be you, anyway. Now that we’re leaving the village, you’ll get super popular at this new school, so I doubt you’ll be single by the time we graduate, but this is on the off chance that you are.” He tilts his head back, staring up at the skies. That’s his existential crisis face. “I’m sorry. Was that too far?”

“I always thought it would be you, too,” he admits quietly. “I guess…you’re making it sound so transactional.”

Right. Girls say that the first time is supposed to be special. “I can try to make it special for you, if it happens. I don’t really understand what special means, but I’ll try.”

Suguru shakes himself out of his thoughts. “I’ll make it special, don’t worry.”

“Don’t think about it too much. You’ll definitely get a boyfriend or girlfriend.”

“It could be the other way around, y’know.”

You scoff. “Where we’re going…seeing the spirits is normal. So, everyone there will be normal. That’s when my weirdness is really going to shine. You’re used to it. Do you think someone is willingly going to deal with my stupid habits and quirks? How do I even explain to another person that even seeing cotton balls makes my teeth hurt?” You shake your head. “I’m already high enough maintenance for you and you’re my best friend. It’d be worse for a boyfriend or girlfriend, wouldn’t it?”

Suguru says your name. You look over at him and he’s sad. “You’re not high maintenance.”

“You’re my best friend. You’re obligated to say that.”

“No, I’m not. You know I’m honest with you. Would you like an example of my honesty? Here’s one—you’re so blind that, sometimes, it amazes me.”

You throw a rock at the vicinity of his feet. He moves to dodge it. “Rude.”

***

Non-sorcerer students are required to move on campus two weeks before school starts. There will be some informal classes on the most basic of jujutsu basics to give you somewhat a foundation. In yours and Suguru’s cases, Yaga lies to both your parents and has someone come pick you and your things up three weeks before school starts.

At the nearest relatively big city, Yaga makes the driver stop. He practically shoves food down your throats, lecturing the entire time about the importance of eating to make up for the massive amounts of energy that you’ll be burning by using cursed energy and fighting spirits.

Then, he forces you both to choose cell phones.

You and Suguru, obviously from very humble means, protest. None of them are cheap. Yaga shuts you down and declares this as yet another requirement. Essentially, you’ll always be on-call, especially as you become a more seasoned sorcerer. You need a way to communicate with others and be communicated with in return. Yaga mutters something under his breath before he heads outside to take a smoke break with the driver.

“He’ll probably yell at us if we go for the cheapest thing,” Suguru mutters as he looks around the store.

“Something in the middle, then,” you agree.

In your defense, you do get something that’s not the most expensive. There wasn’t any mention about the design or color. It called to you, okay? You could take or leave the color, but the almost metallic shine of it. It’s so sleek and smooth. The number keys are nearly flat and it’s satisfying to run your fingers over the slight bump of them.

Yaga doesn’t even bat an eye when you hand over the hot pink flip phone. He simply takes what you’ve chosen, takes Suguru’s chunky option, and goes to the counter to pay for them and set up your new numbers. You and Suguru stand there, almost with bated breath.

It’s hard to believe that the school is investing so much money into you both already. Yaga didn’t even mention this coming out of your monthly stipend. A stipend, by the way, that you and Suguru weren’t aware of until you were on the road. You’d asked if you needed to tell your parents because that seemed like a pretty important thing for Yaga to forget. Yaga had shrugged and, casual as anything, said, “it’s your money now. Tell whoever you want about it.”

And, as easy as it was then for him, it is now because Yaga hands you your phones back, numbers on some paperwork, and that’s it. He walks out of the store and gets in the car. You and Suguru share a look of disbelief before you scramble to follow after him and climb in the back of the car.

It’s still a drive to a train station that will take you the rest of the way to Tokyo. The driver turns the music up. You and Suguru immediately duck your heads down, heads knocking together, voices hushed as you marvel over your new phones. You can’t stop rubbing your thumb over the smooth surface. Suguru isn’t the type to get distracted by something like texture, so he’s already clicking through it to add your phone number.

“Add me,” he demands. “What? Were you blinded by that gaudy color?”

“Like you have room to talk,” you shoot right back at him. “That’s got a MP3 built into it.”

“Are you the only one here that can be an enjoyer of the arts?”

“You could’ve kept using the radio.” You’re already a little sad. It’s a favorite pastime—you and Suguru, sprawled out on the floor, listening to the radio. Maybe you can save up for one. “Whatever. You better share the headphones whenever you figure out how to put music on that thing.”

“You better use your phone as a SOS if we’re ever lost.”

The only response to that is your harrumph and grabbing your backpack off the floor. Suguru goes back to his phone as you pull out your pencil and sketchbook. It’s a bumpy road. You already have a sketch of Hong, but maybe you’ll just do another rough one to fill the time. You flip through the pages upon pages of new and old cursed spirits that Suguru now holds, trying to find an open spot. There’s not much room left. Mother hates to buy you sketchbooks, seeing it as indulging your abnormality.

“You’re a talented artist,” Yaga commends. You pull the sketchbook against your chest instinctively. Yaga doesn’t acknowledge the action. Just asks, “Are those the cursed spirits that you’ve seen?” You lower the sketchbook back down in your lap, nodding shyly. “May I?”

You usually hide your sketchbook away from the eyes of others because classmates and adults were easily disturbed by what they thought were figments of your imagination. It’s going to take time to get over this surrealism that comes from everyone seeing the things you can and treating it as if it’s normal. So, you hesitantly hold out your sketchbook for him to take. You’re nervous as you watch him flip through the pages.

“These notes…you study them?” Yaga correctly assumes.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Um…they can’t see me unless I want them to,” you explain slowly. “I can make them calm, too.”

“How have you been destroying them?”

“We don’t,” Suguru answers on your behalf. “I eat them.”

Yaga’s eyes widen. “You…eat them?”

“Maybe a better way to say it is that I absorb them,” Suguru corrects. “After that, I can summon them whenever I want.”

Yaga tries to hide it, but he seems…shaken. He glances back down at your sketchbook, quickly thumbing through the pages. “Is this all that you’ve taken down together? Is this how many you’ve swallowed, Geto?”

Suguru takes the sketchbook back from Yaga. Suguru is a lot more familiar with your sketches, but he skims through the pages once again. “I think this is about right,” he finally answers Yaga. “There might be more in my arsenal. Sometimes, we find spirits on our own or she doesn’t want to sketch whatever we find.”

“Right.” Yaga is nodding to himself. “We’ll explore your individual techniques more when the term starts.”

***

You’re allowed a few days to unpack and acquaint yourselves with campus before you’re taken to be fitted for your new school uniforms.

“Whatever I want?”

The tailor nods. “It’s important that you be comfortable and be in clothes that are easy for you to move in. It goes without saying that you’re a representation of the school, so you can’t be indecent, but that is your only condition,” she explains. “I’ll check-in with you after your first assignment to make sure your uniform doesn’t need any further adjustments. Also, the uniform expenses aren’t deducted from your stipend. This is on the school’s budget.”

The second that the tailor shows you the standard uniform, you turn your nose up at it. You rub the fabric between your fingers, examining it critically. The fabric, you think you could deal with, but if you can throw out the blazer then you’ll immediately jump on that chance. You’ve always preferred baggy clothes, so you shop a size or two too large. Your mother never complained because that meant your clothes lasted longer. So, you think about your wardrobe. Think about what your go-to clothes are when you’re not in a stiff school uniform.

After giving it some thought while your measurements are taken, you decide on a skirt, thin tights, and a hooded sweatshirt.

It’s an outfit that you can justify. The skirt will allow for freer movement. Tights, if they’re thin enough fabric, don’t really bother you because they’re like a second skin. The sweatshirt won’t have the same restrictive sleeves that the blazer does. Lastly, if you’re overwhelmed after assignments then you can hide under your hood.

The tailor accepts the design and tells you that she’ll call when the uniform is ready.

You’re thankful that Suguru is so tall because you’d have panicked otherwise if you stepped outside the tailor shop and couldn’t see him in front of a shop across the street. Your brows raise when you see that it’s a small tattoo shop. Outside the door, there’s a binder on a stand that must have their services and examples from their portfolio. Suguru isn’t looking at the tattoos. No, he seems to be carefully considering the section with ear piercings.

And, honestly, you’re not surprised.

“That school trip to Osorezan really left an impression on you, huh?”

It’d been the first year of middle school that your class went on a trip to Osorezan, believed to be the entrance to the afterlife. It was a religious, historical, and scientific field trip all wrapped into one since the Bodaiji temple is inside the caldera of an active volcano. The high amounts of sulfur gave the waters varying shades of blue. The land was gray and barren. But there was also a hot spring. Statues were littered around the area to represent the souls of the dead.

Just going off the limited knowledge that Yaga gave you, it makes sense that there were so many cursed spirits there. It’s a place of reverence, sure, but people probably go there out of desperation, too. On some level, it might be feared—whether because of the lore or the volcano near it.

It was an overnight trip. You and Suguru hadn’t slept a fucking wink. It was amazing. You’d adored it because of the nature and science. Suguru fell in love with the history and spirituality.

“Shut up.” The tips of his ears are red. “The tailor said there’s no dress code. Yaga said the only rule is to not bring too much attention to the school.” He rubs at his ear lobe. “It looks really cool, doesn’t it?”

“I think you’re being a stereotypical smalltown kid that’s going wild in the big city,” you deadpan.

“Well, I’m doing it. If it bothers you so much then stay out here,” he says primly.

You’ve started to flip through the pages of piercings. “No, no.” There’s one thing that caught your eye. You touch the picture of a tongue piercing. “Just think it’s a little funny that as soon as your feet stepped down in Tokyo, you went running.” Do your eyes glaze over when you think about running the little metal ball of a piercing across your teeth? Maybe. “I want this one.”

“Eh? I’m just getting gauges. You’re getting way wilder than me. You understand that, right?” Suguru is grinning as he grabs your wrist. “Let’s go.”

***

A week later, your tongue has healed enough that you finally learn to talk around it. Just as you suspected, the urge to roll it between your teeth is hard to pin down while you let it fully heal. It’ll be another three to five weeks. Yaga never said a word about it when you both showed up to a classroom the next day. All he did was throw some textbooks at you both and got to lecturing.

You guess you need to start thinking of him as sensei.

Suguru talks about you being a huge nerd, but he’s the one that’s in the school library, trying to dive deeper into…everything that you’ve learned, basically. Despite the fact that you’ll be spending the next three years gaining more knowledge about the jujutsu world. He’s always been like that—impatient when he’s eager. Well…maybe he picked that up from you.

Anyway, you left him behind to enjoy the weather and view. If you’re not with Suguru, you’re enjoying the view. The campus is nestled on a mountain outside Tokyo. It’s got the kind of scenery that inspires a person. This is the first time, probably ever, that you draw things that are not cursed spirits. That’s what you’re doing now. You have an urge to draw the contrast of the bright red torii gate against the lush, green foliage.

You almost lose your art supplies to gravity when someone rushes in front of you. Not that you’d say anything, but you can send them a shitty look. You’re a little more forgiving when you see their vision is blocked by a big box. Another person follows with another equally big box follows after that person. You blink and look in the direction of where they’re coming from.

A group has made their way to the top of the staircase that leads up to the school.

They are…very bright.

Almost everyone in the small group has blinding white hair and blue eyes. Not only that, but they are also dressed in traditional clothes that you know are expensive. The colors are vibrant. Just from here, you can tell just one of those kimonos probably costs more than your childhood house. Every woman in the group has a gold kanzashi in their hair with a dangling charm in the form of a…is that a dragonfly?

Off to the side of this group, though, is a boy your age. Same white hair and blue eyes, yes, but he’s dressed so casually that it’s almost obscene next to the rest of his people. Just a white shirt, pair of basketball shorts, and some sneakers. Thismust be one of your two classmates. Yaga said there would be another boy and girl enrolling. And…he must be moving on campus early. You wonder why. Clearly, those people are his family and they’re loaded. Why on earth would he want to leave home early?

The classmate stops and turns to stare at you dead-on. Don’t come over here, don’t come over here, don’t come over here, you silently plead. You weren’t prepared to deal with other people yet. It’s still a new place and new information is constantly getting thrown at you and you just don’t have the mental energy to deal with strangers.

Fate is not on your side, though, and your classmate closes the distance between you and him.

You’re wary when he’s right in front of you. If you weren’t desensitized by Suguru, this guy’s height would definitely intimidate you a lot more. You’re still nervous which could be because he’s really close to you physically. Your body tenses, instinctively preparing for unwanted touch.

“Show me around.”

“Huh?”

“Show me around,” he repeats.

Okay. You’re not sure what you expected. Normally, people give a little context when you question what they say. “I’m new, too. Our sensei is here, though. His name is Yaga.” You tilt your head slightly. “I can go grab him instead.”

“I asked you. You’re one of those shy types, right? Probably not good with talking to hot guys? I figure you won’t talk while we walk around the place.” He says all that…so casually. “I’ve had that hag back there in my ear all day. I got a headache. If you wanna keep talking, though, I’ll just go find someone else.”

“The only other person here will tell you to fuck off if you go around making demands like this,” you state bluntly. Actually, you wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up punching this guy in the nose. “Look, I come off as rude, too, but you should maybe think a little longer before you speak.” Oh, no. You sounded like Suguru just now.

The guy squints at you. “Who the hell are you? Where you from? Do you not know who I am?”

Oh. Yaga warned you and Suguru about this in a roundabout way. The jujutsu world is super traditional. There are these three clans that have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, so they’re really respected. They’re competitive with each other and try to pump out more talented sorcerers. They tend to turn their nose up at people like you and Suguru who have no hint of sorcery in your family or ancestry.

You give him your name, the prefecture you came from, and then answer with a curt, “No, I don’t know who you are. Should I?”

He clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. “So…you’re a hick. That’s what your deal is?” Hmm, well, he’s technically not wrong about that. “Whatever. I’m Gojo Satoru. You can ask the Yaga guy about how important I am later. Can we go now?”

You could not follow Gojo when he walks past you, but his…family or whatever is taking up the space that you were going to use for your art. Also, you can sympathize with needing an excuse to get away from a large group of people, especially when you’re overwhelmed. Not saying that Gojo is, but he did mention a headache.

So, you and Gojo take a stroll.

It’s quiet, aside from the sounds of nature and your footfalls. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his head turn in your direction. What? Is he shocked that you respected his wish to be quiet? You don’t want to force a conversation.

After maybe half an hour of walking, you declare, “I think we’re far away enough that you don’t need me anymore.” You point at the bench in front of a pond that you purposely led yourselves to. “So, I’m going to do what I was going to do.” You give a polite half-hearted bow. “It was nice to meet you. I look forward to working with you in the future.”

Suguru texts as soon as you sit down, asking where you went off to. You’re terrible with directions, so you send him a shot of the pond and the building closest to it. You don’t mention Gojo. You’ll tell him about it later. Your fingers glide over the hard cover of the new sketchbook and the fresh, crisp, blank page that you turn to. You treat this sketchbook carefully because it’s the nicest you’ve ever seen.

Yaga said that it was very important to nurture your curiosity in understanding cursed spirits, so it was a more than worthy investment to get you sketchbooks. The more knowledge that you gain about the jujutsu world, the deeper your understanding of them goes, and that can be helpful to the jujutsu world. No one has ever had an ability like yours that he knows of, Yaga had told you privately. Knowledge of cursed spirits is only gained in the heat of battle or the aftermath of death. Your pacification abilities allow the study of cursed spirits without the bloodshed.

In that meeting, you’d tried to make Yaga see some sense. You’re some nobody from nowhere with a weird fixation on drawing the cursed spirits. He has all these big aspirations for you, but you highly doubt that you can live up to them. It wasn’t even about the sketchbook at that point. Suguru’s technique is the one that will change the world.

With you and Suguru, I think your techniques have skewed your worldviews. Suguru has shown me some of his higher-grade spirits. Exorcising those would be bloody work for anyone else. Your technique is more suited for a supportive role, yes, but don’t dismiss your power. It’s a trickle-down effect—you’ll save the lives of fellow sorcerers who will go on to exorcise spirits that saves the lives of current and future non-sorcerers.

You’d definitely cried after that conversation with Yaga. No one has ever wanted to…foster your interest like this. Setting aside how disturbed they were by the content that you drew, they saw no use in it. It was fine as a child, but in the past year or so, they had outright started to scold you for not putting the pencil down. You were the daughter of farmers and would never be famous for your art, so you needed to invest in better skills. Even your art teacher wanted to censor you and told you that any drawings needed to be school-appropriate.

More dedicated than ever, you’ve been almost obsessive with drawing.

“Oi.”

You’ve literally only drawn the rough shape of the pond. You try not to sigh or let your irritation at being interrupted show on your face when you tilt your head up. “Yes?”

“What if I did want a tour?”

It was obvious from the get-go that Gojo is a blunt person, so you don’t lie out of politeness. “I still get lost, so I’m the wrong person to ask. Like I said before, go ask Sensei.” You drop your attention to your lap and start sketching again. “Besides, I’m not good at talking to people.”

“It’s not like we have to chat. Just tell me the buildings.”

“Didn’t you say you have a headache?”

“Yeah, but I always have a headache.” That’s…alarming. You look back up at him, concerned. He shrugs and says, “Six Eyes,” as if you have any idea what that is supposed to mean. “Ugh. Right. Small town girl or whatever.” Then, he tries to dismiss it all with, “It’s a Gojo clan thing. I have special eyes that make my technique better, but the cost is migraines.”

Oh. It’s like Suguru’s technique, then. In the sense that there’s a massive blowback. Suguru has told you about the taste of curses and how disgusting doesn’t even come close to describing how awful it is. He tries to pretend that the taste is the only bad thing about it, but there’s a reason why he would wait until night to eat them where he could lay down immediately after. He’s even admitted that he would eat them to make his body forget about its hunger.

You’re sympathetic to the sensitivity. There are days when an overcast is still too bright. You bought a pair of sunglasses while you were out with Suguru, but…you can always get more. You have a whole monthly stipend now. Also, you got your uniform and you’re wearing it, so you can use the hood if the light is too much.

“Here.” You pull the sunglasses from where they’re perched on the top of your head. They’re a simple pair with thin silver frame and blue, circular lenses. Gojo looks between you and the sunglasses that you have held out. You hesitate. “What? Are they too girly or something?”

“Uh…no. I…” He looks genuinely perplexed. “You don’t know who I am. Why are you giving me these?”

“My senses are stupidly delicate, too. I know what having a bad day feels like. I don’t need these today, so you can have them. I can go buy new ones if I need them.” Oh! You remember something important and inform him, “I’ve worn them inside and Yaga doesn’t care, so you’re good on that front.”

Gojo takes the sunglasses from you but doesn’t put them on yet. “Inside?”

Oops. “Sorry. I forgot that people are weird about sunglasses inside.” You tap your pencil against the sketchbook, trying to figure out how to say what you want to. “I don’t really understand what the issue there is. Sunglasses are designed to help when it’s too bright. Inside can be as bright as outside, so I’m just using them for their intended purpose. That’s how I see it.” Oops again. You started rambling. “I’ll take them back if you don’t want them. You didn’t seem like the type to care about the opinions of others, is all.”

“No, I want them.” He yanks them away when you try to take them back. “I—”

“Hey!”

Suguru’s normally soft voice raising like that makes you yelp and jump in your seat. You whip your head around to see him storming toward you, fists and jaw clenched. You’re alarmed to see him so visibly angry. You scramble to stand up and meet him in the middle. “Suguru?”

“Aren’t you too old to be picking on people?” Suguru asks with narrowed eyes. He’s looking over your head, at Gojo. “Give those back to her.”

Oh! Now, you understand. To someone else, it would look like Gojo stole your sunglasses and is trying to keep them away to be a bully.

“Suguru, no. It’s okay—”

“Heh!” Gojo’s cocky laugh makes you angle your body so you can look between them both. He smirks smugly and makes a show of putting on your sunglasses. “Who are you? Mommy?” Gojo shoves his hands in his pockets, feigning nonchalance. “I didn’t steal them, so calm down, mama bear.” Gojo points at Suguru while asking you, “This the guy that’s gonna tell me to fuck off if I don’t find some manners?”

“I’m certainty thinking about it right now,” Suguru sneers. His anger simmers back down and he goes back to his polite yet cool indifference. He ignores Gojo’s obvious baiting and moves his attention to you. “Is that true? Did you give those to him?” You nod. Suguru frowns. “You just bought those.”

“I was trying to be nice to our new classmate.” Suguru’s brow twitches in irritation—probably over the knowledge that this is one of your two classmates. Gojo has not made a good first impression, to say the least. “It’s no big deal. I can buy some new ones when we go to the konbini.”

“Eh? I want to go!” Gojo whines.

Suguru forces a polite smile. “You should stay here. I’m sure that Sensei will have some things to go over with you.”

“I don’t know how to get back. Sketch here was showing me around.”

“Sketch?” Suguru and you repeat, in unison.

“Yeah! Sketch!” Gojo motions towards your sketchbook that you left on the bench. “Because you’re an artsy girl.”

“You should know someone longer than an hour before you go giving them nicknames,” Suguru lectures.

Gojo cocks his head to the side, genuinely confused. “Should you?”

“Yes. Otherwise, it’s just being presumptuous.”

“Ask the lady, then.” Gojo hunches over, prowling toward you with a mischievous grin, getting very close to your face with his. “You don’t mind it, do you…” He lifts his head, purposely baiting Suguru when he adds, “…Sketch?”

Now, you may not be the best at social cues or reading the room, but even you know that whatever you say is going to be the wrong thing. Do you actually care about the nickname thing? No. Also, is Suguru forgetting that he literally gave you the Squid nickname only after a week? Sure, you were both six and he forgot your name, but the point stands.

“I think I’m in the middle of a dick measuring contest,” you muse aloud. Suguru sighs in exasperation while Gojo gives a delighted laugh. “I’m going to walk away now.”

“Yes. We should go,” Suguru agrees through gritted teeth.

As you and Suguru are walking away, after you’ve gathered all your things up, Gojo loudly asks, “Aren’t you gonna introduce yourself?”

Suguru understands, on some level, that it would be beneficial to get along with your peers since there’s only going to be four of you in the whole class. That’s why you’ve indulged Gojo’s…neediness? Entitlement? Whatever it is. And Suguru won’t be as nice as you—which is ironic because he’s usually the polite one—but he does turn around and introduce himself with a curt, “I’m Geto Suguru.”

“Gojo Satoru,” Gojo shoots back cockily. “Aren’t you going to tell me how much you look forward to working with me?”

“No.” Ah. Suguru’s patience has reached its end. “We’re leaving now.”

***

It’s not until about a week later, one week before the term starts, that you actually see Gojo on campus. This isn’t to say that you’re not painfully aware of what Gojo has been up to. Because what his purpose in life seems to be right now is to dig his way under Suguru’s skin. While in separate rooms, they still share communal spaces—kitchen, showers, laundry. Suguru tries to stay in his room, but they’re bound to run into each other, and when they do…

Well, you learn that there are alarms imbued in the protective barrier around campus that blare when a cursed spirit is detected within. Spirits from Suguru’s collection are no exception. That unexpected noise had you in a panic. Suguru and Gojo had an extremely long lecture and were forced to clean the already pristine classrooms as punishment.

You’re making your rounds on the track. Sensei recommended it since you’re not nearly as in shape as Suguru. He was trusted to work in the fields back home way more than you were. The most that you were trusted to do was wash picked crops. You weren’t even allowed to pick out the bad crops because you took too long. You’re a perfectionist and kept questioning if you should let a crop slip through or not.

Gojo plops down on the stone staircase that leads down to the track and field. You feel like you should ignore him out of loyalty to Suguru, but you can’t do that here. You have to try and get along with your classmates. You leave the lectures to Sensei and hope that Suguru’s temper will cool down with time. Also…Gojo is waving a second popsicle in the air to get your attention and it’s really tempting. Too tempting.

You wordlessly take the popsicle and examine the flavor. It’s red bean. You’re instantly wary. “Did you get the same?” Gojo flashes the reddish tinted popsicle in answer. He shoves it back in his mouth before you can get a good look. Fine. You’ll just ask outright. “Does it have pieces of red beans in it?”

Gojo scowls. You think you’ve offended him for asking too many questions about his gift, but it turns out that he’s actually upset about something else entirely. “No! Ew! What am I? A heathen?” His nose scrunches up in disgust. “Dude, that’s so gross. Who like chunks in their ice cream? The whole point is for it to be creamy and smooth!”

You almost sigh in relief. “I think sprinkles are okay, but…yeah. Everything else is too much.”

“Ugh, no. Sprinkles are too chalky. They leave this…eh…it’s like a film kind of feeling on my teeth. I hate it. I have to scoop it off any desserts which pisses me off more because I love whipped cream and I’m losing it to fucking sprinkles.”

You nod sagely. “A waste of good food.”

“Thank you! You get it!” Gojo sighs dramatically. “You’re so much cooler than your boyfriend, Sketch!”

“Because I agreed with you about dessert preferences? Also, Suguru isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my best friend. We’ve lived in the same village all our lives. There was no one else like us. People that could see cursed spirits, I mean.”

Gojo is still wearing the sunglasses that you gave him. You can’t tell that he’s looking you over until he allows them to slip down the bridge of his nose. “Really? He acts like a possessive boyfriend, though.”

You rub the back of your neck. “We’re protective of each other because of…other private stuff.” You know not to put Suguru’s relationship with his parents on blast. “Oh, and he says he’s not, but I think he’s protective because of my diagnosis.”

“Diagnosis?”

“Jiheishō,” you answer casually between licks of your popsicle. “I was always weird as a baby and a toddler. Then, I talked about seeing things, and that pushed my parents over the edge. They took me to a doctor, and I got diagnosed.”

“Huh. What’s that like?”

“I don’t know. It’s who I am. How do you explain being?” You pause. “I would say that you could ask Suguru since he’s on the outside looking in, but…you’re being an annoying dick to him.”

Gojo cackles. “But he makes it so easy!”

“I’m not one to assume because it’s hard to know what people think or I don’t understand them the right way, but…have you ever tried to make friends before? If I didn’t already know that you have to go to a school, I’d ask if you’ve even been around other people your age. This isn’t how you get along with your peers.”

He scoffs. “Why do I need to get along with my peers? Why do I need friends?”

“Because it’s lonely and miserable without them?”

“Ha! You ever stop to think that it’s lonely and miserable with them?” There’s a bitter twist to his mouth. He nudges the sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose, hiding his eyes away. “I mean, you said it, didn’t you? It’s such a chore to figure out how other people work and what they’re thinking. Normies are too…normal. Clan kids are only sucking up because my clan is the most powerful. It’s stupid and complicated. Why bother?”

Oh. That’s…sad…and also way too relatable. Your expression softens. “Those aren’t friends, though. You know that, right? I guess my opinion might not count because I only have one friend, but…he’s made my life better. I like to think that I’ve made his better, too.” He sticks his tongue out in disgust. You shrug. “It’s true. He’s been the only person that listens to me when I can’t shut up about art styles or cursed spirits because I’m really interested in those. I can be me around him.”

“You’re probably not as annoying as you think you are,” he dismisses. “Now, I’m annoying. I can’t shut up about Digimon.”

“You’re probably not as annoying as you think you are,” you repeat mockingly. He flips you off and you smirk in response. “Do you want to talk about it with me? I’ll listen. It sounds like you’ve been around shitty people that don’t want to hear about things that make you happy.”

Gojo is actually…hesitant. That makes you even sadder. You know this all too well. “I yap a lot. Seriously.”

You make yourself laugh past the hurt you feel out of sympathy for him. “I’ve got my sketchbook with me. I’ll show you what real yapping is.”

It’s the right thing for you to say. Putting a competitive spin on it makes it easier for Gojo to be open, it seems. “Oh, you are so on, Sketch.” He rises to his feet with a renewed excitement. “You should come help me finish unpacking! I have a lot of Digimon stuff, so it’ll be easier to explain everyone with that!”

“Eh? Are girls allowed—”

Gojo doesn’t hear you. He snatches you by the wrist and you stumble to keep up with him. You’re halfway to the boys’ dorm before he finally listens when you tell him that he left your sketchbook behind. You watch him sprint back toward the track, still trying to figure out how the hell you ended up here.

Suguru loves to read, but not manga. There was only one television in your house that your parents always had control of, so they never let you watch anime. Obviously, you know that Digimon is a manga and anime. It’s big like Pokémon. You know there are little creatures, but that’s about the extent of it.

Gojo changes that.

It’s a little confusing, sure, but you like hearing people talk about the things they like. Maybe it’s because you’re so used yourself to the rejection of being shut down because you’re boring people by talking about the same thing or overwhelming them with talking too much or liking weird things. You don’t want other people to feel like that. It was obvious from Gojo’s demeanor that it’s something he’s experienced, too.

As you look at all the figurines and manga and plushies, you wonder if his family threw money at this thing he likes and left him alone with it all. You don’t think he would be so cynical about other people if he had support from his family. Would you be okay if you parents paid for the most expensive art supplies in the world and left you to it? You prefer to be alone, but…isn’t this special interest more special when you can share it with someone?

“Squid?”

You and Gojo are both in the middle of his room, on the floor, and currently have your faces shoved against his little plushies that are shaped like the first evolution of the original Digimon set. It’s so soft and squishy. Gojo is really proud of finding them and you can’t blame him. It’s cool that he’s not afraid to have cute things like this like a lot of guys are.

“Oh. Hey, Suguru.” You look over your shoulder at him, a little nervous. Before he can grill you about being alone with his unofficial rival, you quickly explain, “I’m getting informed about Digimon.” You spin around on your ass, shoving the plushy out. “Come feel this. It’s so soft.”

Suguru scowls. “No.”

“No is right!” Gojo loudly agrees. “He’s not allowed to the nice stuff!”

“Girls aren’t allowed in our dorm,” Suguru says more to Gojo than you.

“It’s fine until dark. I already asked Yaga.”

Suddenly, there’s a tension in Suguru’s shoulders. His jaw clenches and his eyes narrow at Gojo. “Why do you know that?”

“Shouldn’t you be happy about this news?” Gojo shoots back, a clear deflection. “You can hang out with her now.”

Suguru presses a thumb to the center of his forehead. He holds that position, trying to calm himself down. When he does, he moves his attention back to you. “He didn’t pressure you to come in here, did he?”

Before Gojo can open his mouth, you swing the plushy back to hit him. The way he sputters and Suguru’s proud smirk is a sign that you hit him right in the face. “I can make decisions on my own,” you tell Suguru which wipes that little smirk right off his face. “We’re doing a show and tell��kind of. You should bring your headphones and let us listen to your music!”

“I didn’t consent to this!” Gojo complains.

This going back and forth is a little annoying, so you angle your body to face them both. To Gojo, you say, “Okay, that’s your call. This is your stuff, after all.” To Suguru, you ask, “Um…I’ll meet you in an hour? We can listen to your music then. Does that sound good?”

Gojo groans. The excitement to share outweighs his need to annoy Suguru because he concedes with an exasperated, “Fine! He can come hang out!”

“Fine,” Suguru agrees with the same amount of annoyance.

But, hey, a win is a win.

***

The last of your class moves in a few days before the semester starts. It’s early in the morning when she does, so the noise in the hallway startles you awake, and you go stumbling out of your room without a second thought to how you’re dressed. Your door opening catches your roommate’s attention and she’s looking in your direction when you walk in her line of sight.

Both of you stare wordlessly at one another. There’s a beauty mark under the corner of her eye that catches your attention before anything else. Her brunette hair is cut short, barely past her chin, and her bangs are swept to the side. You’re watched by curious, brown eyes. At first glance, you think she’s got a cigarette in her mouth, but it doesn’t have the filter on the end. It might be one of those chalky candy sticks.

“Oh! You’re so pretty!” You blurt the words out before your sleep-addled brain can catch them. Heat crawls up the back of your neck and the tips of your ears. “Sorry!”

She laughs good-naturedly. “What? Should I be offended by a pretty girl giving me compliments?” And how…do you react to that? No one has ever called you pretty before. She unintentionally throws you a bone by moving the conversation somewhere else with her name. “I’m Ieiri Shoko. Nice to meet you.”

You give her your name, bow, and the same polite, “Nice to meet you, too. I look forward to working with you.”

“We’re living together now. You don’t need to be all formal.” It’s a force of habit. You learned quickly as a child that the world revolves around politeness and manners. “Sorry for waking you.”

“That’s okay.” You hesitate. “Do you need help?”

“Please. My parents bailed. I’m lucky they even had the time to drop me off. Not sure how they even had the time to pop me out with how busy they are at the hospital.”

You’re rolling up your sleeves as you walk over to her door. “They’re…doctors?”

“Surgeons, yeah,” she answers casually. “Makes sense that I ended up with the technique that I did, even if no sorcerer in our family has ever had it. We’ve always been big on healing, or so my parents have told me.”

“What’s your technique?”

“Reverse Cursed Technique, but I can use it on myself and others. It’s rare to extend it to other people.” Your blank expression has her chuckling. “You’re from a non-sorcerer family, huh?”

Your face is back to being hot again. “Sorry. Sensei…um…I don’t think he went over that yet.”

“I’m not sure that he will. It’s advanced. Even among the best, strongest sorcerers, it’s a rare skill. Baby sorcerers only know about it because it’s a thing to aspire to, y’know?”

Whoa. “What is it? You must be really powerful, right?”

Ieiri laughs. “No way. Reverse Cursed Technique alone is healing yourself. Like I said, I can take it further and heal others. Oh, and I have this…ability to find disturbances in the mind and body.” Then, she puts her ability in practice. “I know you got your tongue pierced.”

Your fingers fly up to touch your lips. “And you think that’s not powerful?”

“Flatterer.” Between all your back and forth with her, you’ve both gotten all the boxes inside her room. She flops down on the bare mattress. “What’s your technique?”

“Nothing as cool or useful as yours, I think.” You rock back and forth on your feet nervously. “They don’t see me unless I want them to. Also, I can pacify them. Nothing more than that. I only make them calm.”

“Guess we’ll both be saving lives.” There it is again. Someone can see more purpose in your technique than you can. Your brain just can’t compute with that. You’ll just…stand there and pacify spirits. It seems like so little to save actual lives. “Are our other classmates here yet? Have you met them?”

“Yes. One of them is my best friend, actually. His name is Geto Suguru. We came from the same village and he’s from a non-sorcerer family, too. Please be patient with both of us. And our other classmate is Gojo Satoru—” Ieiri groans loudly. You smile meekly. “I guess you know that his family is important?”

“If you have even a hint of sorcery in your family, you know about the big three clans, so, yeah, I know. My parents have never been active sorcerers, but they’re in the know of the community. No one has been able to shut up about the Gojo heir since he was born. I think my parents said it’s been…hundreds of years since someone was born with the Six Eyes?”

You nod. “Right. He said something about that. They’re special.”

“That’s an understatement.” There’s a lull in the conversation and, in the silence, you hear a familiar noise. It didn’t come from you. Ieiri laughs, no hint of shame at her stomach outing her. “I guess since I woke you up that you haven’t had breakfast. Want to grab something to eat? My parents didn’t give me time to eat.”

Your brows furrow. “They’re doctors. Shouldn’t they be more worried about your nutrition?”

Ieiri just starts laughing.

***

The school term starts.

Suguru and Gojo still aren’t getting along well. It almost seems worse because when actual schoolwork starts, they’re essentially tied on their marks. In regard to their techniques, while Gojo has more cursed energy, Suguru has more refined control. Suguru also takes to martial arts extremely well and Gojo, who you’re sure has been touched even less than you have, is almost always overcome when they spar. Gojo is faster than Suguru and is learning to use that to an advantage.

As for you and Ieiri, you hope that she likes her as much as you like her. It’s…easy to be around her. You admit that you had a lot of issues with her deadpan sense of humor, but she seemed to catch on quickly and now will usually tell you if she’s joking or being sarcastic. There are also some hiccups with food because you two share cooking duty, but she starts learning what textures you hate and which you love.

In your studies, you do okay, but you’re last in the class. If Ieiri wasn’t so lazy, she’d give the guys a run for their money. You are a lot more in shape than her despite your larger size and you lay her out flat in sparring. Yaga declared that you and she would be mostly non-combatant sorcerers due to the nature of your techniques, but he insisted that you and she learn martial arts for self-defense. Actually, you’re more in shape than Gojo even. Suguru is leagues ahead of you, obviously, because he’s so much more coordinated and stronger.

About a month in, you’re given your first assignment.

And by you what you actually mean is yourself and Gojo.

In the last few years, the number of cursed spirits has been steadily increasing. There are two separate incidents with relatively low-level curses and all the higher-grade sorcerers are occupied with higher-level curses, so you and your classmates are split up in teams of two.

Suguru was not happy about the pairings, but Yaga said that you and Suguru know how to work well together already. Then, kind of bitchily, Yaga explained that if Suguru and Gojo got along better then Yaga would’ve simply had them handle both batches themselves. Later, you try to reassure Suguru by reminding him that there’s going to be a more seasoned sorcerer with you—the newly graduated Kusakabe Atsuya. You don’t think it made him feel better.

Kusakabe will meet you there. On the way to meet him, you ask Gojo, “Should we…come up with a plan?”

“Why?”

You fiddle with the metal aglet on the ends of your hooded sweatshirt’s drawstrings. “I would feel better if we did.”

“We don’t even know the layout of this place,” he points out.

“Right,” you mumble. You’d forgotten about that, honestly. “You’re right.” You slip the aglet in your mouth and chew on it nervously.

Gojo huffs. “You stop it. I blow it up. Simple as that.”

“Can I draw it first?”

“Hah?”

You squirm uncomfortably. Hesitantly, you show him your old sketchbook. You kept it in case you come across a similar cursed spirit and need to compare notes. You’ve also got your new, blank sketchbook to start a new, more official record. “I like to study them,” you explain timidly. “It’s…kinda like my Digimon…I guess…”

Gojo takes the sketchbook from you, casually flipping through the pages. “Why cursed spirits, though?”

“Why’d you pick Digimon instead of some other anime?” You shrug nervously. “It’s hard to explain. At first, I thought some of them looked really cool. I made myself get better at art so that I could draw them, in case they were exorcised somehow. Then, I wanted to know how they got those shapes. It became about their behavior next. I’ve always loved mythology and animals, too, so maybe that influenced the interest a little.”

“Hmph. Alright. I’ll try to hold off on blowing it up.” Before he turns his head away, you notice a pinkness on his cheeks. “You can talk about them with me, if you want. Like…how I talk about Digimon and stuff.”

You duck your head, face hot. “Thank you.”

The assignment doesn’t take long at all. It may take more time for you to sketch the spirits than it does for Gojo to blow them away. There were a lot of them. They all took the same form which was vaguely pufferfish shaped. You know that the weaker, tinier spirits tend to group up, and these were no different.

Their behavior around Gojo was the odd thing, though. Unless the spirit is a higher grade, spirits never reacted to Suguru when you were around. It’s not like that with Gojo. He’d held back to let you sketch, but when he stepped toward you, the group started to shift restlessly in their places. Then, when he got too close, they shot their spines out. If Gojo hadn’t dashed forward and tackled you to the ground, covering you with his Infinity-lined body, you would be a porcupine.

“It was fascinating!”

Suguru looks faint as you recount your assignment to him over dinner. You made sure to pick up something light for him since eating curses fucks with his stomach. You got him some onigiri for the morning when he’ll be ravenous, making sure to mark them as yours before you tuck them in the communal fridge. Hopefully, it’ll succeed in tricking Gojo because you have no doubt that he’d eat them to antagonize Suguru.

“I wonder what it is about Gojo that freaked them out like that,” you mutter to yourself. “You’re as strong as him. Do you think you have some sort of calming effect on them because of your technique? Or what if they can sense the spirits inside you and it confuses them?”

“No more thinking tonight, Squid,” Suguru declares and closes your sketchbook. “We have three years to figure out both our techniques.”

“Fine.”

“Well, now you just sound like Gojo with that bratty attitude.”

“It’s not bratty! It’s called being a nerd.”

Suguru gives a shake of the head as he laughs. “You can be a nerd and a brat at the same time.” You watch him start to clean up the empty food containers. His face is doing something…weird. You can’t pinpoint this particular emotion. “Squid…are you up for touch today?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Can I hold you?” Suguru, uncharacteristically vulnerable, goes on to admit, “I was worried about you today.”

“If anyone was worried, it was me. You didn’t have me there to calm the spirits down.” You two ate while sitting in the floor, so you hold your arms out to him like the brat that he accused you of being. “C’mon. I never get Suguru hugs anymore. I really miss them.”

He smiles, a little shy. “Brat.”

“No. I’m Squid, remember? You never let me forget.”

For some reason, your brain replaced hold with hug. You’re fully expecting him to help you up and give you something quick, but he doesn’t do that. He drops in behind you, wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you back between his open legs. You squeak at the manhandling and your heart starts to beat faster. When your back is against his broad chest, he slips both his arms around your middle, and leans his chin on the top of your head with a happy sigh.

“Oh,” you whisper unthinkingly.

Suguru mistakes your tension with overstimulation. “Is this okay still?”

“Yes.”

Why are you so nervous? You’re not being bombarded by stimuli, so it can’t be because of that. Actually…it feels really good to be in his arms. He’s always so warm. You feel as if his arms are all-encompassing. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. And Suguru should be feeling that way, too, so you need to push away this weirdness inside you. You twist around in his arms, putting yours around his waist, shoving your face against his hard chest.

“Squid hugs are the best hugs,” Suguru whispers.

***

“Do you know how to help with a broken nose?”

You’re in the library when Sensei appears in the doorway and asks that almost ominous question. Slowly, you put the book back on the shelf, eyeing Sensei warily. He simply looks back at you, exhaustion seeping from every pore. The resignation you see in him is familiar, too. The pieces quickly add up. The air around Sensei paired with the cryptic text that came from Suguru with only a simple apology…

Oh, no.

“I can plug up the nosebleed and make an ice pack,” you answer with an equally tired sigh.

Sensei nods and gives a curt thanks. Before you and he go your separate ways, you sheepishly ask if you can talk to Suguru before he does, but Sensei shuts that idea down immediately. You’re then held up by being given a quick yet scathing lecture about needing to let Suguru face the consequences of his own actions and to stop coddling him. You bow profusely in apology as he’s leaving the room.

Ieiri is away on a research trip of sorts. Being taught the human body and putting her technique into use. Thankfully, she said she’ll be back today, but not until later tonight. Gojo is stuck with your shabby patchwork until then. So, you grab a first-aid kit, fill up an ice pack, and meet him in the classroom that Sensei told you he’d be waiting in.

Gojo has an arm against his face, likely trying to stop the bleeding since it’s stained. You wordlessly get to work. Unfortunately, you have experience with nosebleeds and broken nose. Noses? Can a nose be broken twice? Suguru’s nose still sits crooked from his father’s rage.

“Pinch,” you order softly after you take Gojo’s hand and move his fingers to the bridge of his nose. You reach for his face, pausing as he flinches when you get close. You give him a moment to prepare before you guide him to tilt his head back with gentle hands along his jawline. Blood is smeared all across his lower face and still dripping down from his nostrils. You cringe at the sight. Suguru got him good. “This might hurt,” you warn before you pack his nose with gauze.

“No lecture?” Gojo’s voice is high and nasally.

“You don’t think you’ll be getting one from Sensei?” You grab a damp, warm cloth and start wiping away the blood. “Besides, whatever you did, you got a broken nose for it. What else do I need to say?”

“Might prefer the broken nose over your disappointment,” he says with a pout.

“I’m not disappointed.” You pause. “I don’t think I am, anyway.”

Gojo leans his head back even further, sighing dramatically. “Your BFF is scary when he’s angry.”

“Suguru does this thing where he’ll hold all his emotions close. They sit there, building up pressure, and then one day, he’ll just explode. So, yeah, that’s a little scary. Not so much for me, though. I only worry.” He pouts more. “What’s that face for?”

“No worry for me?”

Your hands hesitate. “Maybe kind of?” Should you say what you want to? Eh. Gojo rarely cares. Why should you? “I’d love it if you two could get along, so I worry that this might keep that from happening forever, but…you probably pushed him. I could be wrong, but you probably deserved this.”

Gojo throws his clean arm over his eyes. “Yeah…I did…” Oh? That’s certainly a change of heart. “No one has ever touched me like that before…” There’s a redness on his cheeks now that doesn’t come from the blood stains. Is he embarrassed that he lost or something? “Why aren’t you and Suguru scared of me?” He tries to lean his head back down, but you keep him in place with a hand gripping his chin. “See? See! Not even my family touches me so casually!”

“What? Is your family actually scared of you?”

“Yeah. Always have been, even if they pretend not to be. They treat me like a god to hide it, but I learned. Everyone is scared of me. Maids apologized for touching me by accident when I was a kid and needed help getting dressed.” Your incredulousness must make him self-conscious because he shrugs. “C’mon, you’ve been around long enough now to pick up on this, Sketch. I’m the jujutsu world’s weapon.”

Normally, you’re immune to being shocked by Gojo’s directness. Not this time. “It’s stupid if you believe that.” Ugh. You’re so pissed off right now. You want to punch someone. That was his mother on the first day that he came to campus, right? Can she come back? Does she have Infinity? “You’re bleeding and breathing right now, aren’t you? Weapons don’t do that. Gods don’t get migraines because of their special eyes. You’re a human. You’re Gojo Satoru.”

“But who is Gojo Satoru if he’s not those things?”

“A sugar-addicted brat who pushes when he shouldn’t,” you intone. He giggles, taking it as the joke it’s supposed to be. “Aren’t you too young to be having an identity crisis? I can’t tell you who you are. I’m not even sure I know who I am. Don’t they say you’re supposed to figure that out in high school or something?”

“Dunno,” he mumbles.

The blood is cleaned from his face. You reach for the icepack but falter. You don’t feel like you’ve said anything helpful. If anything, you feel like you’ve put him in a bad spot. So, you try to reassure him. “It’s okay to take time to figure out who you are, Gojo—”

“Satoru.”

“Huh?”

“Call me Satoru…please…”

“Ah.” You can understand why he wants to be so informal. If he wants to distance himself from his stupid family, you’re more than happy to oblige. “Okay.” He yelps when you press the icepack against his nose. “Let’s all try to get along from now on, okay…Satoru.”

Later, you have Suguru’s big hand in yours while you carefully dab antiseptic on the cuts all over them. You know that this isn’t solely from punching Satoru in the nose, but you don’t press Suguru about it. He hasn’t spoken since you knocked on the door to his dorm room and you’re okay with that. You’ve been through this routine before. It’s what you two do. You patch each other up, being a silent and steady presence until whoever is upset wants to talk.

When you’ve cleaned all his cuts, you try to clean up all the pieces of paper from the band-aids, but Suguru stops you. He slips his fingers through yours and your entwined hands hover in the air between you two. You watch as he intensely studies your hands, so you do the same. When did his hands get so much bigger than yours? How do your hands feel to him, you wonder, because his are so rough. You like the difference, though.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru finally apologizes. “I broke the sunglasses you gave him.”

You huff in amusement. That’s what he’s worried about? “It’s okay.”

“They were your first purchase in Tokyo.”

Ah, you sometimes kind of hate how well he knows you. You do tend to assign some importance to seemingly unimportant trinkets. “I think I’m more attached to the piercings that we got together. I’ll probably keep this somewhere when I finally have to get a new barbell.” You stick out your tongue, as if he’s forgotten the piercing.

“I would’ve given you that first set of earrings if that was the case,” Suguru grumbles. Shoko had used you and Suguru as guinea pigs for her technique and healed your piercings, so Suguru quickly started the process of stretching his ears. As he said, he’d thrown away that first set of earrings.

“I know it’s weird to ask that sort of thing.”

“It’s you, Squid. Nothing is weird anymore.”

“Hmm, sounds like a challenge. I need to find something to disturb you.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’ll be nice for now because you had a bad day.”

“Bad day doesn’t even begin to cover it.” There’s a tired slump in his shoulders now. “He was playing around too much. Instead of exorcising the curse or letting me absorb it, he kept taunting it. The spirit threw me out a window trying to get to him, so I got pissed. I absorbed it and punched him in the face.” He pauses before lowly confessing, “I punched him a second time when I saw the sunglasses broke because I thought they were special to you. I was upset at myself for losing my temper and mad at him for not being careful with them even though it was my fault.”

You hum. “Is that guilt, Suguru?”

“Guilt for the sunglasses.”

“Right.” Again, you’re not pushing, but you doubt he doesn’t feel bad in some way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be as melancholic as he is right now. “I’m going to let you sit on this, but…I think Satoru actually feels bad, so he might apologize. I didn’t tell him to, by the way. Just like I’m not telling you to forgive him. But I thought you should know.”

Suguru’s brow twitches. “You’re on first name basis with him now?”

“Yeah.”

“Ugh. He’s just doing it to piss me off.”

You’re the one to feel a flash of irritation now. “Doing what exactly? Being my friend? Are you saying that he can’t actually want to be my friend without some ulterior motive?”

Then, he rolls his eyes. Rolls his eyes! “Squid, you’re just reaching now. You know that’s not what I’m saying—”

“What are you saying, then? Has he said something bad that I don’t know about?”

The corners of his eyes are tight. Through gritted teeth, he answers, “No.”

“Okay. So, what’s the problem?”

“I just don’t trust him around you, okay?”

“You just said that he hasn’t done anything shady other than wanting to be my friend.” You yank your hands away from his, baring your teeth. “Am I not allowed to have those? Are you going to say that you don’t trust Shoko around me either?”

Then, he has the audacity to look hurt. “No! That’s not what I’m saying at all! You’re allowed to have friends!”

“Okay! Satoru and Shoko are my friends, too!” Are you overreacting? Tears prick at the corners of your eyes which makes you feel even more stupid. Why are you about to cry? Stupid, stupid, stupid brain. “I’m going back to my room. I’ve got blood under my nails and I fucking hate it.”

“Squid, I’m sorry—”

“Save it, Suguru.”

When you’re woken up by tapping against your window at one in the morning, you seriously debate shoving a pillow over your head and ignoring him. There’s a part of you that wants to let him stew in his guilt. You can’t keep forgiving him as soon as he comes running.

This seems like an insignificant thing to stay mad over, though…

After you take a deep breath, you roll out of bed, walk over to your window, and open it up for him to climb through.

Suguru genuinely does look miserable. More than punching Satoru or breaking your sunglasses made him. When he apologizes, you accept it. And when he shyly asks if he can sleepover, you let him. It’s been years since you guys have shared a bed, but your parents aren’t around to send him home.

Suguru said your hugs are the best hugs, but you have to disagree. You know you’ll wake up in the morning, skin slick with sweat, because he’s a furnace, but you’ve missed this. It’s always been so easy to let Suguru touch you. It got to the point where even the touch of your parents would make you wince, but not his. He asks, but you always say yes. You’re never overwhelmed by the way his big body curls around yours.

“I’m sorry,” Suguru apologizes one last time before you both fall asleep. “I’m scared to lose you,” he slurs sleepily.

“Never,” you mumble right back. “You’ll never lose me.”

***

Five months into the term, it’s time for the annual Goodwill Event.

This year wasn’t the best for Tokyo recruitment, so it’s only your class in the entire school. It’s not the same for Kyoto. They only have one person in their third year, Iori Utahime, but the rest of the years have more students. Normally, first years aren’t allowed to compete, and Tokyo would simply forfeit this year, but because of Suguru and Satoru’s strength, an exception is made.

Kyoto brings a total of eight students—three girls, five boys. Two judges come with them, too—their principal, Gakuganji, and a Grade 1 sorcerer, Mei-Mei.

It’s been about two months after the big Suguru-Satoru Blowout. As you predicted, they apologized to each other not long after the incident. Dare you say, they might be more than simple acquaintances now. Dare you say, they might actually be sort of friends. They’ve really bonded over being assholes, actually. They’re still stupidly competitive and bicker, but it’s no longer malicious. They can exist in the same space as you and there’s no more awkwardness. You spend time with them together and it’s so much fun.

The Goodwill Event reminds you of that deep-rooted fear of Suguru’s, though. A fear that you had before you left the village, you remember suddenly. It finally happens. Suguru is adored. Fawned over. Truly seen for the first time in your lives. The same is done to Satoru, too, but you banked on that happening. And, technically, it makes sense. Guys want their power and girls just want them period.

It was stupid to pretend that your school exists in a bubble. In the back of your mind, you’ve known that you’d eventually have to meet other sorcerers and that not everyone will like you. You’ve prepared yourself for that, haven’t you? It shouldn’t bother you that the Kyoto students barely even acknowledge your existence when you’re in the same space as Suguru and Satoru. You get it, right? They’re admirable. Shoko is awed at for her technique, too, and that’s great! It’s wonderful!

Just four days, you remind yourself as you’re sitting under a tree by yourself and shoving food in your mouth. Four days, and then the Kyoto students will be gone. It’s okay, you chant to yourself. No one noticed you leave, but you wanted some air, anyway. And, hey, you even made a friend! Sure, Shoko had to introduce you to her and break the ice between you two, but Iori has a sharp tongue and awesome sense of humor. A senpai to truly look up to. If you can get along with one new person then you can get along with the rest.

“Yo! Sketch!”

You pause right before you take a bite of your tamagoyaki. “Satoru?” Fruit sando and melon soda in hand, he easily flops down next to you at the base of the tree. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s exhausting dealing with all those brown nosers.” He takes an aggressive chunk out of his sandwich. “Ugh. I can’t believe we’re gonna have to share a dorm with these assholes for four days. I don’t need a bunch of strangers in my business.” His lip curls in disgust. “Suguru lecture you about playing nice?”

“Yes.” You take a grumpy bite out of your tamagoyaki. “I’m trying not to stress about it, but they were already talking about breakfast, and I can’t imagine the mess they’ll make.” It’s a struggle not to snap your chopsticks from the death grip that you’ve got on them. “Suguru says that I need to learn how to handle my routine being interrupted better.”

Satoru huffs. “Easy for him to say.”

Well, it makes you feel a lot better to know that someone else understands your pain. “All we can do is our best.”

“Or we can make their lives hell.”

You duck your head, trying to hide your smile. “It wouldn’t kill you to play nice with others, Satoru.”

“Naw, I think it actually would.”

“You’re nice to me.”

“Sketch is different.” Heat explodes in your cheeks. You outright turn your head away, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing how much he flustered you with that. Since he doesn’t tease you, he didn’t see. “We should stay in a hotel. We could do one of those capsule hotels, y’know?”

“And have my knees and elbows bumping against the sides? No way.” You stick your tongue out in disgust. After the third bump of a limb, you know it would drive you insane. Besides, “Would you even fit in one of those?” Ah. Wait. Were you supposed to take that seriously? “Were you joking?”

You look back over at him and he’s scratching the bridge of his nose. “Not really.”

“Ha. Okay, so, a couple of things—I think we’re too young to book a room, and a girl and boy in the same room? Scandalous.”

He gives an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”

Sympathetic to his plight, you reach over to pat his knee. “Hang in there.”

These days, it’s a little easier for you to pick up on the kind of mood Satoru is in. It’s the second day now, early in the morning, and you’re dragged by Shoko to the designated gathering spot of Tokyo and Kyoto students. Just by the way that Satoru lashes out at people, purposely baiting them with taunts and cruel bluntness, you can tell that he’s in as bad a mood as you are. And you can’t blame him.

The other two girls on the Kyoto side are Ota Juri and Takata Tenka. They cleaned up after themselves, but they moved everything around in the kitchen and didn’t put it back in the original spot, so you got pissed off trying to find where something went. You could live with that, but they’re also…invasive. After they went looking for Suguru and Satoru yesterday and found the boys with you, their attitude toward you quickly changed. They think they’re slick, subtly probing about your friendship with Suguru and Satoru. They try to act familiar now, getting touchy, thinking that’ll warm you up to them faster.

To say that you’re on a wire’s edge today would be an understatement. You don’t know which one suggested it, but you want to deck whichever one of these girls suggested shopping as a way to build comradery between the sister schools and the people you may be working with in the future. They just want to experience the Tokyo scene like they probably couldn’t get permission to ride a train here on any other day.

At the mall, Ota and Takata take the lead. They have very domineering personalities, so their classmates allow the girls to drag them along. You try to sneak away, sometimes with Shoko and Iori behind you, but Ota and Takata hunt you down—probably trying to show off how caring they are to Suguru and Satoru or something. Eventually, you stop trying. You shut up and linger at the back of the group.

You try to do that, anyway.

Shoko, as equally over this trip, drags you into the beauty store because if she’s going down, you’re going with her.

“Aren’t you going to get anything?” Ota questions as you’re just passively glancing over products. You almost miss the question because you’re teetering on the edge of overstimulation. Why do beauty stores have to use so much fluorescent lighting? You forgot your fucking sunglasses.

“I’m not big into makeup. I don’t like how it feels on my face.”

Ota laughs obnoxiously. “You’re just using the wrong product, silly.”

You force a smile. “My mom already tested a bunch out with me. I just really don’t like any of it.”

Takata has been eavesdropping. She takes up Ota��s side, smiling as predatory as Ota is now. “Was it the foundation? I know the liquid can be heavy. Have you tried powder?” You lose control of your temper a little and roll your eyes. Don’t these girls know how to take no for an answer? “Don’t be like that,” Takata scolds. “Look, you could stand to use some makeup. We’re trying to help you.”

“Help how?”

If Satoru hadn’t spoken up ahead of time, you’d probably tip over when he practically drapes himself on your shoulder.

Ota and Takata perk up at his presence. You can almost see the hearts in their eyes. “Satoru!” Takata chirps.

“Oi, oi, oi, you’re getting awfully familiar there. Who gave you first name privilege, huh?”

Her syrupy sweet smiles falter. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought—”

“Don’t hurt yourself. Steam might start spewing from your ears. It’s obvious you don’t have a lot going on up there.”

Takata deflates at the insult. “Sa—Gojo—” her gaze flickers to you. Pleading for you to intervene. When she gets nothing from you, she scrambles. “I’m sorry if we offended you somehow—”

“Not me you should be apologizing to.” Your eyes widen. Is he doing this for you? “Y’know, Sketch, it’s good that someone has some sense around here. Make sure you don’t get attached to these idiots, okay? They’ll be so busy thinking about makeup that they’ll up as bloody smears on the wall pretty soon.”

You frown as you look up at him. “What if I do want makeup?”

He brightens. “Can I buy you something?”

Try to make the favoritism less obvious, you think with a twitch of the brow. “Find an art store and we’ll talk.”

“Eh? I already did,” he says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world that he would go scouting for art supply stores. “Can we leave now? I’m bored,” he whines. You hope you’re not gawking when you nod. “Awesome! Let’s go! I found a shop that sells sweets, too!”

Suguru is hovering at the entrance of the store, brows furrowed in concern, but he steps out of the way for you and Satoru, who is practically dragging you out with a grip on your wrist. Suguru isn’t allowed confusion or shock because Satoru is snatching his hand on the way out.

“Satoru, you’re going to rip my arm off,” Suguru complains when the other students are out of sight.

Satoru stops dead in his tracks, so sudden that you and Suguru almost crash into him. He looks over his shoulder at you both. The angle you’re in allows you to see the wideness of his eyes. He still hasn’t let go of your wrist. Actually, his grip tightens, which makes Suguru get huffier.  

“Satoru,” he calls out exasperatedly.

Oh.

You’re not sure if Suguru has realized it himself, but he’s using Satoru’s given name now. No wonder Satoru is stunned. It’s so odd. What changed between this morning and now? Because Suguru was definitely referring to him as his surname earlier. You won’t ask because Suguru might clam up and this peace may shatter.

“Oh. Uh. Sorry,” Satoru mutters as he finally releases his hold on you and Suguru.

On the fourth and final day of the Goodwill Event, something…weird happens during your individual match.

Tokyo easily won the team battle. The individual battles are where Kyoto can even the odds. The thing is that Satoru and Suguru are going to win their individual match. As much as you adore her, you expected that Shoko would lose hers, and she did. You couldn’t hear what was happening, but you think that she flirted with Iori more than fight, but Iori didn’t allow herself to get too flustered, and took the win.

You think that Kyoto expects you to lose your match because plans were already made about the tiebreaker. There would be a random draw for one last individual match to decide which school wins the day. There was no word on what would be done to break the tie if each school has their own point.

So, your win is an upset.

If you’re honest with yourself, you didn’t think that you’d win, either. It didn’t look good. It was your luck that you were pitted against the biggest guy on Kyoto’s side. Not as tall as Suguru and Satoru, sure, but the guy is built like a literal tank. During the team battle, if Suguru hadn’t summoned a cursed spirit in time to cushion the blow, this guy would’ve knocked him out with a single punch.

You didn’t stand a chance at winning, you’d told yourself as you were running through the forest, but after the whole mall fiasco, you wanted to try to last long enough to not be the laughingstock of this year.

As soon as the siren sounded, you went running. Your opponent supplemented his lack of technique with shikigami use, so you had time while he channeled energy into an intermediary to summon his shikigami. You’re trying to think of a plan on the fly, not sure what to do since your technique is useless against people.

This would be easier if there weren’t still so many fucking cursed spirits left in the forest. You’re pacifying them, obviously, but you still have to duck around them. Ugh, why can’t you control them like Suguru can? No, at this point…

I wish you would just die, please. Bloody and painfully would be preferred.

And, as soon as you have that thought, the big curse that you were dashing past moves. Your body freezes on instinct. The spirit shouldn’t be moving around you. Your technique is still active. At the most, this curse is Grade 3. It raises a clawed hand, and you throw your arms up, ready to protect yourself from a whole new problem.

There’s a sickening crunch and the curse screeches in pain. Purple blood splatters across the front of you. When you drop your arms, confused as to what attacked the spirit and saved you, you watch the gruesome scene of the curse slowly ripping limbs away from its body. It still has that dead-eyed look that spirits get when you’ve pacified them, but it moves with an urgency to tear itself apart.

Once the curse has only one arm left, it proceeds to push its arm through its own chest, grabbing its heart. That heart is thrown at your feet. Then, as its final act, it slowly twists its head around until it’s the opposite way, pulls its head off, and the curse finally crumbles to pieces.

What the fuck happened?

From your left, there’s more of those crunches and high-pitched screeching. A curse in the shape of a centipede is trying to crawl toward you between picking legs off with its pincers. At your feet, the curse keeps gnawing at itself, screeching in pain every now and then, until it, too, finally dies and crumbles.

If you didn’t hear the loud roar of your opponent’s shikigami, you’d still be standing there in shock. Your mind runs faster than your legs. That’s not normal behavior. Self-preservation is ingrained into a curse…unless it’s forced like with Suguru. You asked them to die. Moreso, you wanted it to be bloody and painful. The curses listened.

You purposely seek out another spirit now. Die, you mentally scream at the first spirit you see. Unlike with the others, this one doesn’t take time to mutilate itself. It tears its head clean off and that’s it. Blood splatters across your shoes briefly before it fades away with the cursed spirit.

A plan slowly takes shape.

Didn’t you and Shoko stumble across a pack of fly heads yesterday? You’d split up because you knew Kyoto would try to follow Satoru’s presence and get to the winning Grade 2 before you. The fly heads weren’t a bother and the bell had rung sounding your win, anyway.

Where were those? By the river, right? Yes!

You’re getting tired from running and burning cursed energy. You’re pretty sure that you only have one shot at this because you’ll either pass out from exhaustion or get your ass beat by a shikigami. So, yeah, you need to make this count.

The fly heads haven’t moved far.

Kyoto Guy and his shikigami aren’t far behind you.

Just as they’re running out of the tree line, you look at the pacified fly heads. Protect me, you plead them, but that’s too much to ask. It was a test. The fly heads don’t move, but you’re forced to when the shikigami lunges. That thing is sporting some nasty fangs that catch on your arm as you narrowly dodge it.

You play this game of cat and mouse, luring the shikigami away from the sorcerer. All you need is for Kyoto Guy to get close enough to the fly heads. He’s an asshole, laughing cruelly as he watches you scramble away from his shikigami, getting bloodier as you get sloppier from fatigue. Iori was gossiping with you and Shoko, and this guy has a crush on Takata. You figure he’s not happy about Satoru’s cruelty which was a result of him defending you.

Explode! You plead the fly heads when Kyoto Guy steps in their range. Explode, explode, explode!

They do.

The shikigami immediately drops the fight with you, thinking the fly heads are the more immediate threat. Like little paint bombs, the fly heads splatter their blood across Kyoto Guy when they force themselves to combust. There are so many of them that he’s continually being splattered.

While he’s blinded by the blood of cursed spirits, you pour cursed energy into your fist. Sprinting past the shikigami that’s snapping at fly heads, you give this asshole a ferocious kick to the balls to get him to hunch over.

You slam your fist square in the center of his face. There’s so much force in the punch that he goes flying back, landing in the shallow river with such a painful sounding thud, and he doesn’t get up. You’d think you killed him if it wasn’t for the subtle rise and fall of his chest.

The alarm sounds.

Tokyo wins.

Later, you’re walking out of the infirmary behind Shoko who proudly announces, “She gave him a concussion!”

Sensei gives you all a lecture on good sportsmanship after Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko break out into applause and cheers.

[haitanology]

big-shot ; hanma x fem!reader

warning: smut (mdni) ! oral (f receiving), face-sitting, degradation, sub!hanma, meandom!reader …

!!! note: this is a chapter of a wayyy bigger fic, with very heavy plot and lots of other characters as love interests. you can find it on wattpad under HAITANITE or ao3 as haitanology

Flickering lights and loud music, getting lost between many bodies swaying to the rhythm —invasive, breaking skin into light sweat.

A perfect formula for the remedy to a chilly summer night.

2017's been treating you well. You are successful, you can buy anything you want and have people answer to you in seconds.

Just like always. A fact meant to be.

Call it destiny, if you will.

Chugging down the rest of your drink, you leave it somewhere you won't remember and make your way to the dancing mass.

Your eyes dart around the room, flicking between different colored shapes that jump and blend in with the dark based club.

You don't spot one that stands out. Tall, a brooding presence who shakes you up by a mere appearance.

Your body begins to follow the flow of the beat, the song wrapping around you as your tongue recalls the lyrics. The words are lost among many, yet your hips keep syncing to the music, closing your eyes and leaving the rest to your heart.

"Your friend's looking for you outside." Somebody whispers behind you, breaking the symphony for he stops you from enjoying yourself.

Not taking a single glance around, leaving the male voice to his own doings, you become one with the crowd as you look for the exit.

Unnoticed, you leave the club.

You've never been there, ever.

A lone car rests outside, parked and tinted dark. You make your way with steady feet, opening the passenger's door and closing it just as quick. The car starts up, carrying the thud and the clicking of your seatbelt along with it.

"You know I can't be seen in public." Hanma's deep voice, playfulness lost with the years, comments.

From the corner of your eye, you watch as he drives with one hand, staring straight ahead. You rest your elbow on the side, supporting your head with your hand; you take a deep breath.

"I know." Your eyes dart to the view from the window, Tokyo's nightlife carried by its luminosity. "I also don't care."

Disinterest follows tiredness, just as silence follows death.

"I don't get why you wanted to meet up," He speaks up against the emptiness you've left. His next words are all over eachother, most unrecognizable. "not that I'm complaining."

Punishment follows sin, the same way sin follows punishment.

He sighs when he doesn't receive an answer. His fingers hold tightens around the steering wheel, the same way his free hand does over your leg.

Sex follows passion, much like passion follows desire.

"Y'know," The strained chuckle he heaves punctures through his chest. "I enjoy myself when I'm with you, I have fun, but it's different."

But does love always follow desire? The same way desire always follows love.

"Different, how?" You follow up, words longer than they should be. Hanma doesn't care, almost grinning at the sound of your voice.

Though, it's only a small smile.

Many things follow love, but love doesn't necessarily have to follow anything. Instead, emptiness fills in for the role; following after them.

Ironically.

"Different than Kisaki."

You grimace, lips twitching at the thought.

"Good," Tapping your chin with a single finger, you blink once. "glad to not compare to that weird ass specimen."

The car stops in front of one of the many business buildings in Tokyo. It stands high with might, most lights turned off due to the recent hours.

Hanma's hand crawls up to your nape, staying there. He turns his head to yours, violet eyes sizing you up before he closes them.

"I don't like when you talk about him like that." He gulps, violet now overshadowed by the darkness of his pupil. "But I'll let it go, just for tonight."

Love follows people, but love doesn't follow you.

Interest does.

Is this why you find yourself in Hanma's spacious apartment, lost in the contact of his lips against yours —tongue following a pattern with his own— as you bask in the slight roughness that comes with his kisses?

Yes, indeed.

In the best way he can, Hanma attempts to lead you to his bedroom between guttered groans that leave his throat everytime your lips move down to his neck.

He heaves a sigh, arm sliding across your waist and bringing you closer to his chest. Your ear presses against his heart, hearing the rapid bumping grow exponentially, in the same way his erection begins to poke your thigh.

Straying your eyes away from his body, they widen at an ajar door that hides an office inside. The light in them glows, your smirk stretching across your face before you are pulled inside Hanma's bedroom.

The cold contact of Hanma's fingers ghosting over your back, break your trance. They grasp your nape, tugging your face closer to his own, his breath caressing your parted lips.

Eyes set on his lips, you tilt your head, ready to taste them again. When Hanma leans in, closing his eyes at the touch of his nose with yours, his breath is cut short.

He gulps, finding himself laying on his bed with you on his lap. Both of your hands rest on his chest, one moving to grip his chin and bring it closer to you.

"I don't care how much power you have over Kisaki's lackeys." You mutter, turning his face around so you do so close to his ear. Your eyes narrow, fingers closing on his face. "You aren't gonna tell me what to do."

Your hand feels the vibration through his chest as Hanma chuckles. Passing one hand through his hair, observing the painted 'Sin' afterwards, his lips form a close smile.

Voice deep as ever, you stay still once you see the gentle smile that carves Hanma's expression. He calls you over, both his index and middle fingers massaging your cheek.

"It's you." He tugs on your bottom lip, dragging it down, fingers following a path to your collarbone. "If it's you, you can do all that you want to me. Use me, for all I care."

Hanma's brows shoot up, his fingers now moving through your trembling lips. His eyes burn, his entire body does, hips bucking into your clothed cunt as his clothes begin to strain him.

"I love being with you," He whispers, helping your hands undo his suit. "it's always so fun."

Words fall on your deaf ears, taking a deep breath before trying to forget who it is you are using.

Your chest hurts, it's tense. You purse your lips, shaking your head unnoticed by Hanma's shut eyes. Your mind shows you the office you've passed by, yet the light in your eyes only dims.

Gritting your teeth, taking Hanma's clothes off gets aggresive, throwing them somewhere along with your own. Taking his cock in your hand, you squeeze it, hearing a yelp from him.

"Shut up!" You bark out, same hand stroking his dick at a rapid pace, not giving him time to word out his thoughts. "Stop talking, just close your useless fucking mouth."

A drop of cold sweat runs down the side of your face, your mind shut as Hanma's groaning and cursing plays a loop in your brain.

"That's it..." You coo out, your voice barely audible. Not that he's paying attention to it, busy with the much needed attention you are paying to his cock, throbbing in delight.

A breathless laugh escapes your lips, smile growing.

"Stop making me feel pity for you, good job."

Swiping your thumb over his tip, wet from the precum coating it, you ignore Hanma's pleads to slow down. You keep pumping, eyes unfocused and pupils dilated.

"M'gonna..." Hanma calls out, biting his lip. "M'gonna cum soon."

Managing to listen to Hanma's slurred words, you blink and your hand stops, moving away from his pulsating cock.

"Huh?!" Hanma's eyes snap open, your hand over his mouth.

You glare down at him, lightly palming his dick, playing with it on your hand.

"You're dumb." Slapping his face without force as you utter each word, you taunt him. "So fucking dumb, it's unbelievable."

"Please—" With a single move of your index finger, now lifted, he stops. You place it over his lips, face hovering over his.

A moan suddenly tries to leave his shut mouth, eyes rolling back at the soft friction of your pussy over his cock. Itching for more, it twitches.

"How many girls have been in the position you are in, with you treating and using them like pathetic little whores?" You question, not expecting an answer; humming when you don't get one.

You take his hand, punishment staring right back at you. You raise it, slapping his face with it, not measuring the strength you used.

"You thought it wouldn't come back to bite you in the ass?"

Hanma's breath grows erratic, eyes close to sparkling at the sight of your pussy over his face.

"At least your mouth will be useful this way."

Unconsciously, his hands move to grab your waist, leading you down to him. A content sigh escapes from your lips when his tongue licks your slit, uttering a silent moan at the touch of your clit and the tip of his nose.

You close your eyes, your mind blank as Hanma's hands glide down to your ass, gripping it while his mouth works on your cunt —just like clockwork.

Grabbing the blonde and black strands of his hair, you tug on them when his nose hits the spot. His tongue laps at your folds, eating and sucking you out as if it's his last meal.

You lean your head back, Hanma's quiet mewling going straight to your pussy, causing you to bite down a whimper.

"I hate that you're so good." You hiss out, hips beginning to rock back and forth on his face —craving more of his tongue lashing out. "Fuck!"

A thrust of his tongue has you cursing out his name, thighs enclosing his head between them. He doesn't care, though, continuing to play with his mouth on your cunt —kissing it, worshipping you.

While your mind, now cleared out from the shock of Hanma's moves, doesn't let you forget why you are here; Hanma's only ongoing thought is how godly you taste, how he doesn't want to stop.

He's pussy drunk. Utterly and completely.

The tip of his tongue licking every crevice, moving a path through the slit to the clit, estimulated by his nose once you move in a certain way. It's all enough to send you over the edge, thighs closing in farther as your eyes roll to the back of your head.

Soon enough, Hanma's lapping at your folds like a cat, tasting your orgasm as his sturdy hands help you ride it out. He licks you clean, audibly gulping and leaving an open mouthed kiss on your cunt, letting you move back to his lap.

Through your panting, you barely listen to Hanma's sultry tone. His tongue passes through his lips, getting all the cum he can get, smiling at you.

"Best meal of my life." His blown out pupils take a look at your naked body that he didn't get to see before, salivating at the sight. "Did I do a good job?"

You run a hand down your face, covering the lower part with your palm. Your head's pounding, actively playing thoughts like a broken record.

There's a scratch, and you blink, hiding the light coat of water that covers your eyes. You curse, averting them away from Hanma's awaiting face.

"No, no you didn't." You take his hands, leading them away from your body and holding them together by the wrists. "It's infuriating..."

The words die out in your throat, mutter lost before Hanma can hear it.

"Wha—What?" He breathes out, panicked eyes growing bigger at the clicking of your tongue. Hanma can't stop the loud moan that breaks out of him when you sink down on his cock, shouting at him through short puffs.

"You're so fucking useless, it makes me sick!"

Hanma can't process what you spat out to him, busy writhing from the pleasure that rains down on him with the way you're riding him.

A single hand stops his own from moving, Hanma perfectly capable of breaking that hold, yet he can't. Your hips move up and down, rocking on him and sending a knot tempted to break at the slightest move through his body, washing down on him.

"S'good..." He mumbles, tongue poking out from his lips. "You're s'fucking good, keep—"

You moan when his tip hits the perfect spot, closing your mind from any intrusive thoughts.

Hanma joins you, begging for more.

"Faster, please—" Though you can't hear his pleads, nor the way he tells you he's about to cum, deprived of it throughout the entire night.

You are in bliss, squeezing your eyes shut and following the same pattern, letting the tip of his painfully throbbing cock send you to a state where you can't think, where your brain doesn't take over.

You keep chasing after your release, ignoring Hanma's still hips, who have stopped meeting your own; leaving you full of his cum, legs trembling before you from the harsh orgasm he's having.

You don't give him time to recuperate, bask in the aftermath, mercilessly pounding on his now softening cock to keep going. Hanma's brows furrow, the ache in his body increasing with your pace.

"S—stop, hey..." He trails off, not able to pronunciate correctly due to the fog that covers his brain. "Please, I—I can't take it."

Hanma's eyes widens when his hands are free, your hand now wrapped around the lower part of his face, not letting him continue. Through blurry eyes, a single tear running down the side to the pillow, he's able to see his own cum leaking out of you, followed by your own as you finally reach your orgasm —huffing out a broken sigh, your back arching ignoring the buckling of your knees.

Hanma groans, the pain subsiding and now able to rest. In a starfish position, missing the heat of your body as it leaves his lap, his sight begins to obscure.

He hasn't experienced something quite like this ever, not with any woman he's had a chance with.

He's said it before, you've always been something else. It explains why his heart can't calm down once you're with him, or why a strange heat burns through his chest everytime he thinks about you.

Because in all these years, he's never not thought about you.

He can't put a name to the feeling, yet deep inside him he knows.

He knows because, before passing out from the ecstasy of the sex, he has the strong urge to have you in his arms. Since he doesn't understand why so many tears are streaming down your face.

Is he not good enough?

He'll never get to know, sadly.

thanks for reading <3 as a reminder, you can find the full fic (my ordinary life ; tokyorev x reader) on wattpad (HAITANITE) or ao3 (haitanology)

[tg-headcanons]

Tokyo ghoul characters and what they’d wear for Halloween:

Hinami: Pirate, so she could go trick or treating with her bird. She can’t eat candy but she WILL have a good time and then give it all to Hide and Kimi

Kaneki: The Biologist from Annihilation. No one knows what it is, half the people he talks to think he’s not wearing a costume at all. And the other unfortunate half get the very long and convoluted explanation of the plot of the southern reach trilogy that he has locked and loaded

Hide: Hot Dog

Touka and Yoriko: Vampires. Touka never celebrated Halloween before, but Yoriko loves it and convinced her to let her dress her up. She ended up putting her in an incredible outfit and makeup, and she spent the night passing out the homemade treats Yoriko made to trick or treaters

Koma: he has worn the exact same Gorilla costume for the past ten years. So have the rest of his gang. They all dress like gorillas and terrorize the city

Irimi: bayonetta, she knows what she’s working with and is picking up 22 year old women at the club

Yoshimura: he didn’t have a costume so Irimi put cat ears on him and he let it happen

Nishiki and Kimi: morticia and Gomez Addams. He’s morticia and she’s Gomez

Rize: she would go in amazing cosplays. She had quite the talent for thrifting clothes and altering them for costumes, and it’s really easy to lure men away to be eaten when dressed as Misa Misa

Uta: He’s going Full rocky horror. He’s the best Frank N Furter the world has ever seen. He made the whole thing himself, he even made the leather out of human skin he flayed. Eco friendly king

Yomo: he just wears his ghoul mask

Tsukiyama: Hannibal Lector. He’s really mad that no one can guess it or thinks he’s not wearing a costume because he already dressed and behaved like that

Saiko: really shitty hatsune Miku

itori: INCREDIBLE hatsune miku

Urie: refuses to wear a costume so Shirazu tells everyone he’s going as a Virgin

Shirazu: he welded knight’s armor himself out of scrap from damaged equipment the CCG was throwing out. It keeps poking him and he had to clean blood off of it but it looks incredible. He wins 100 bucks in a costume contest and he’s so hyped, it’s worth the carpal tunnel

Mutsuki: He has a hidden talent for makeup since he’s been doing masculinizing contouring for a bit, and made an amazing zombie. After several drinks he had the time of his life scaring the shit out of other drunk people outside the club

Juuzou: he’s actually not wearing a costume but everyone thinks he is because he just dresses like that. His ass is trick or treating

Akira: cat. She has dressed as a cat every single year since she was seven and will not stop now. Her first purchase with adult money when she got her job was a high quality cat costume upgrade. She is committed and she’s not changing it now.

Seidou and Amon: they were planning on doing a couple’s costume of Deadpool and wolverine but when they showed up on Halloween they were both Deadpool because they thought they were the funny one in the relationship. Neither are correct

Arima: three hole punch Jim

Houji: to keep up professionalism but enjoy the spirit of Halloween, he went with Dracula because all it is is just adding a cape and fangs to his regular suit.

Tatara: when he met up with Houji to fuck nasty he wasn’t wearing a costume because he doesn’t care, but upon seeing Houji’s he ripped a branch off the nearest tree, sliced the tip a few times to make a stake, and said he’s going as Van Helsing

Naki: pumpkin head. He stole a Jack o lantern and put it his head and it was really funny until he couldn’t get it off

Eto: the cockroach from franz Kafka’s the metamorphosis, she’s operating the legs with her kagune and it looks so freaky. She’s getting on all fours and rat crawling around and genuinely looks like a giant cockroach. She’s making children and high people lose their shit

Furuta: playboy bunny

[naboman]

𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫

Chapter five: the uninvited. Description: The project is put into practice and, with it, some of the ghosts of the past reappear to torment the secretary. Warnings: None.

[Previous] [Next]

A figure in the darkness, looking straight at me

"Did you really find Tokyo Manji?! Creepy!" Tsubasa disconnected from the computer just to listen to my account, wide-eyed, as if she were hearing the account of a supernatural event from Ed and Lorraine Warren, and being a cynic, I took advantage of the moment to gloat.

'I deserve a bit'. I think with satisfaction.

"I know, I know," I agreed proudly, crossing my legs and slipping my arms behind my neck.

"And what do they look like? Do they have war scars? Severed limbs? " The boy's glasses were crooked due to his bad posture in the chair, he stretched so much that he looked more like a meerkat snooping around outside his burrow.

"Tsu-kun, they're all students, not former war fighters!" I waved my hands, trying to appease the boy, with a sigh escaping my lungs, as I could never have thought that my co-writer would be such a fanatic about hooligan groups. "They're just a bunch of bums riding motorcycles and committing crimes, does that answer your question?"

"I think it will."

"Good." I concluded, stretching my arms lazily in an attempt to rouse my muscles, not very successfully, but it'll have to do.

"It's impressive, I have to admit…" The treasurer muttered quietly with some disbelief, walking away with some papers in his hands, and I still haven't asked him what the hell this bastard is doing in the journalism club room.

Then again, Yuuma wasn't used to paying me compliments, so that brief mutter in turn inflated my ego like never before.

"By the way, what did you come here for?" I blurted out as soon as the opportunity allowed, "don't say you came just to see me…" I let my evil smile slowly form.

"The President wants your report, incompetent," He replied with no patience whatsoever, the scowl on his face showing that he'd had a bad night's sleep or that Yuuma was just in a bad mood.

"Thank you in advance, now you can leave, I have things to sort out!" I waved my hand dismissing him, he just frowned and quickly left the room with heavy steps, closing the door harshly behind him "goodbye!"

"Rude, as usual," Tsubasa commented, opening the documents tab on the computer.

"That's very subjective" I retorted with gusto, approaching the boy to finally start the week's report. Miyura was in charge of printing the newspaper, so we'd have plenty of time before she came back with piles and piles of paper on our desk ready to be printed with the information and distributed like fallacious political propaganda throughout the corridors of this school "Well, let's get started!"

"Right," He began, filling in the title with a commonly used heading, then patiently skipping a few lines to make room for the first paragraph, "so?"

"Well…"

I slowly recalled the issues surrounding Tokyo Manji, along with what I had discovered about the world of delinquency in school environments. My notes on discursive topics prepared evenings before, together with the materials from my research, gave us great material to discuss.

As I explained to Tsubasa what to do, my mind crawled deeper and deeper, until it returned to the night before, where I experienced what a youth biker gang was like live and in color…

19:20 AT NIGHT

"So you have a high position and you didn't even make a point of telling me? What a cruel thing to do…" I gave the boy a betrayed look, but used to my bad manners, Mitsuya quickly realized the sarcasm dripping from my voice like a mockery. "You know, I could never have noticed all your pomposity with my naked eyes."

"At least I can say that I do what my job requires," the young man retorted acidly, although there was a mean smile on his lips that made me clench my jaw rudely.

"What are you implying, sir?" I asked, looking at him minutely, with my arms crossed as I carefully stretched to look at his face properly.

"Nothing much, miss, nothing much… " He feigned naivety, averting his eyes, and yet the little smile gave him away.

I clenched my fists and sighed longingly.

"Imbecile, anyone can look after a bunch of useless if they handle them properly!" I grumbled loudly, "Don't think that what you do makes you a big shot."

"Your friendliness captivates me more and more, Miss [Name]" Mitsuya's smile disappeared at the onset of my unscrupulous arrogance.

We remained silent until the motorcycles stopped not far from us and a crowd of uniformed schoolboys, clad in black and gold, got off them. I didn't make any comment, and my muteness seemed to annoy Mitsuya, who glanced at me every now and then, as if he expected me to say something or at least show some reaction. But the only thing I kept on my countenance was a hard expression of lowered eyebrows and suspicion.

The headlights illuminated us in the darkness, and soon, with the light, we were easily identified near the temple. We were looking in opposite directions, so I can tell you that I was astonished when a very tall young man came up to Takashi with his arms open and a beaming smile, as if I hadn't seen him for ages. He had a shaved head and a design in the little that was left of his hair, if I may also add that the most distinctive thing about his appearance was certainly the cut on his lip.

It wasn't long before they were both greeting each other vigorously. I was a little surprised, I admit, because I had never seen Mitsuya with such a broad smile, like a child unwrapping a birthday present.

"You make it sound like you didn't see me the day before yesterday" My schoolmate laughed, numbed by the conversation.

"I'm just excited," the taller one retorted hurriedly, "it's been a while since we've kicked some ass together, huh, Taka-chan?" His laughter infected the lilac-haired boy.

For a moment, his friend's gaze landed on me, but fortunately no comment was made.

"Mitsuya!" I heard a shout, a little further away, a blond man in braids with his hands stuffed in his pockets next to another blond man, this one much smaller, however, "come here!"

"Right! I'm coming!" He shouted back eagerly, breaking away from the tall young next to him to put his hand on my shoulder; for a moment, I wondered if he was trying to reassure me, "Come on."

"As you wish," I said dismissively, raising my shoulders as I entwined our arms, something that surprised Mitsuya, making him jump in his composure, but he continued walking with our arms linked without saying anything.

Until, at a certain point in our walk, the delinquent approached me to whisper in my ear:

"You're acting strange, what's wrong with you?" He asked hurriedly.

"You need to be a bit more specific." I moaning quietly, making a fool of myself.

"Are you… Are you…" He searched for words as I gave him a questioning look "docile!"

"Your words hurt my little heart, I'm not a dog, 'Taka-chan'" I pretended blatantly and he was embarrassed at the sound of the nickname coming out of my mouth "But, if you must know, I'm only doing this because I don't want to get too close to your strange friends. So do me a favor and be helpful."

Mitsuya couldn't say that I was being indecent in my precautions, he knew that himself, so he just sighed and kept walking.

"You're awful," he muttered one last time, to which I just thanked him with a little smile.

A few steps back, my companion's old friend asked him what the scandalous whispering was about, to which he just casually replied that it was a school argument.

"What do you know…" The tall blond looked proud, looking us up and down "aren't you going to introduce your girl?"

"You didn't say you'd bring a girl," the shorter one promptly added, nibbling on a soft, pink candy.

I wrinkled my nose a little at the question, but Mitsuya quickly responded.

"It was last minute" The boy in the black uniform next to me cleared his throat before stepping forward to continue, dragging me along with him "this is Kawaguchi [Name], we're working in partnership, so I thought you could bring her here without any problems."

"Did you rehearse that or did you just improvise?" I asked quietly, and he just ignored my comment, turning his gaze to the blond, who was now going up on the stone steps of the temple, looking at us curiously.

"It doesn't look too bad," shrugged the little blond, getting up from his seat and receiving multiple glances, "at least Emma will have someone to talk to."

Incomprehensible murmurs drifted through the air at the end of his speech. Soon afterwards, I was invited to stay under the care of said 'Emma' so that I wouldn't be in the middle of the gang members, something I accepted without objection. The girl was a little too friendly with someone had just met. Her questions were predominantly about my relationship with the leader of the second division, something that made me feel like a Shinjuku prostitute.

In the end, I managed to gather a lot of information about the relationship between gang members and their peers. I wrote it all down and then put my little notepad away.

"But come on," Emma snapped me out of my reverie, coming close to my ear, "are you going to tell me that you don't have even a little crush on him? Not a bit?"

"Not a bit" I clicked my tongue playfully, allowing myself to see the hypothesis in a comical way "I would never feel anything for a little lawbreaker. These relationships are a waste of time."

"How pessimistic," Emma replied with disappointment in her voice.

"Maybe so, but my thoughts led me to where I am today," I retorted indifferently.

"Well…" Emma paused silently, as if thinking through what she wanted to say, linking her arms behind her back and staring at the starry sky above "they're good people, believe me, even if it's not romantically, I still hope you'll change your mind about Mitsuya-kun."

"At this point, I think that's impossible," I replied, looking down at my own feet with a forced smile.

Soon, the meeting was over and the members were all saying goodbye to each other. I stood there for a few seconds, watching the crowd gather and chatting contentedly, wondering how these people got along so well when they were so different; while I was a little red dot standing out among my own kind.

I sighed, letting the thought fade away. I gathered my belongings and started down the temple stairs alone. I dialed the number on my cell phone, preparing to leave as discreetly as possible.

The cold touched my shoulders and knees, then I shivered, shivered with cold because my own body heat wouldn't generate enough to warm me up. I was startled when I reached the last step, and minutes of distraction later the cold was replaced by the warmth of a soft fabric, the temperature and smell were familiar, nostalgic, although I didn't recognize where from, but I remained frozen in the same place, in complete shock.

Someone was behind me.

"You have the worst habits, you'll end up dying of hypothermia."

The voice left me static and incredulous, sending me back to the past in less than a second as the air carried its lazy, rebellious sound to my freezing ears. I was breathless, wondering if it was a haunting making me question my sanity, which was no longer exactly stable.

After a while, I finally caught sight of a strand dyed yellow, which blended in with the black hair, and I was greeted by bright yellow eyes that stared back at me. Like the abyss that faces a man when stared at for too long.

"What are you doing here… [Name]-chan?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Hanemiya."

[lynnedrum]

NORMAL 4 GIRLS 4EVER - LYNNEDRUM'S "SOUND OF THE BEAST" MIX

A tribute to Baltimore and Jersey Club, classic trax deranged and rearranged. Performed LIVE for NORMAL 4 GIRLS 4EVER, Saturday, August 12th, 2023. ~ SETLIST BELOW ~

1.) Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman (Sartana & Finesse Jersey Remix)

2.) MikeQ & DJ Sliink - The Bitch (feat. Miss Jay)

3.) KRS-One - Sound of da Police (Baltimore Club) (*)

4.) Keiska - Lil Frkk

5.) Three6Mafia - Lil Freak (K-Deucez Rmx)

6.) Mariah Lynn - Once Upon A Time (I Was A Hoe) (DJ Taj feat. Panic Remix)

7.) UNIIQU3 - LSD

8.) Jen Lasher - I Felt

9.) REPRIISE - TEMPLE [Intense Trip]

10.) C.Z. - STUCK

11.) XTV$ x Narvi - Crazy Frog

12.) JAVASCRIPT - Pinky Ring

13.) Drippy Dolphin - ♡-I Need To Drip-♡ (A Trippy Turtle Remix)

14.) Snap - The Power (Kodat Remix)

15.) Jenn Morel - Ponteme (LUNY "Latin Club" Remix)

16.) Constantine - Pena Aberta

17.) PrepTheProducer - Naughty Girl (Jersey Club Remix)

18.) DJ K. Millz & Tokyo - Earthquake

19.) DJ Smallz 732 & Big Shaq - Mans Not Hot ( Jersey Club )

20.) KANDY - afreakin (Eight40Eight Bootleg)

21.) DJ K. Millz - Get Busy [Sean Paul 2k10 Theme]

22.) @hikeii - BBY (@HIKEII FLIP)

23.) Daft Punk - One More Time (Kodat Remix)

24.) FISHER - Losing It (KAYVIAN Club Remix)

25.) Soulja Boy - Birdwalk (Zora Jones & Sinjin Hawke Bootleg)

26.) Jam City - The Courts

27.) TLC - No Scrubs (BBM REMIX)

28.) Kyle Edwards & DJ Bake - My Back (Jersey Club)

29.) SOPHIE - Immaterial (Gangsigns Bootleg)

30.) UNIIQU3 & Dos Flakos - Shake the Room

31.) Outkast - B.O.B. (Cool Hand Lex, Lemi Vice & Action Jackson Remix)

32.) DJ DEVILLE - Kulikitaka Pica (Deville Latin Jersey Club Fusion Edit)

33.) Linkin Park - Crawling (DJ Hood Remix)

34.) Tre Oh Fie - Pop 2 Da Bass

35.) @hikeii - Panic! At The Disco: I Write Sins Not Tragedies (Hikeii Remix)

36.) Utada Hikaru - Simple And Clean (Jersey Club "Ray of Hope" Remix By KNMN)

(*) denotes a track that entered my life fully untagged and unsourced. if you know the artist of this remix, please let me know immediately!

Assets by MinaSheep

NORMAL 4 GIRLS 4EVER (08-12-2023) - OTHER SETS

JulianaNRG: https://youtu.be/l5y442f-uq8

MinaSheep: https://youtu.be/H-JKRNqxQA8

SWIMMY: https://youtu.be/AZkC4W-PP6s

[arlzuteni]

Lesser known tenifacts #3

All the tenifacts you don't need. Live from Seishun Gakuen!

on the day of the final match of the National tournament, lessons were suspended and all Seigaku students gathered in the school gym to watch a live broadcast of the match

a new school building has been under construction for over a year and is now almost finished

a member of the Seigaku swimming club called Saito, who is in the same class as Fuji and Kikumaru (3-6), won second place in crawl at the swimmer's Tokyo tournament

Today's tenifacts are again from pages 52-53 of the 40.5 fanbook.

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Month 2024, Day 27: Longing

Higurashi Month prompts archive: AO3 

Rika couldn't quite remember when she had started, but she was fairly sure that she got the idea from Irie.

She'd been waiting patiently post-checkup, she forgot which one, and in answer to some question about his research she'd also long since forgotten, he mentioned that the way to avoid getting frustrated by lack of progress was to focus on a hobby. His, unsurprisingly, had been something related to maids, but Rika had still gone back home that day deep in thought.

And so, her scrapbook was born.

It wasn't an evidence scrapbook, or anything like that. It was a memories-and-hope scrapbook.

The first thing she always did was tear out the calendar date and, if she was only a year or so old, crawl off to hide it until she was old enough to hold a pencil and have a notebook. Then she'd tear off the date marking that day, and paste both into the first page of her notebook.

As the years marched on afterwards, she would add little bits and pieces –flowers she and Satoko had pressed, an origami creature they'd folded in class, a scribbled score chart from one of the club's first games.

Akasaka sometimes brought her candy in June 1978, and Rika carefully flattened the wrapper and taped it into her ancient notebook.

In one of the worlds, he bought her a cheap plastic hair clip –a cute little black and white cat mascot– and when Rika awoke in the fragment after that, her first action was to scramble for the drawer where she kept her journal.

It was empty. Completely empty: bare wood, no notebook, much less that precious hair clip tucked away at the end of the first fourth chunk of the pages. Both notebook and hair clip were gone, as if they never existed. In this world, they never had.

Her parents had thought her breaking down, screaming and thumping the floorboards as she wept, had just been a three-year-old's typical baseless tantrum.

Rika had refused to speak to Hanyuu for a week afterwards.

She still kept patiently recreating and refilling her notebook, though. As the years went on, it became less of a hobbyist distraction and more idle daydreams; here was the page with Akasaka's candy wrapper, with age, no longer crinkly, and it was bordered on nearly every side with doodles and notes about what to do in Tokyo, what kind of person Akasaka's child might be, if Rika might ever get along with them.

There was the rudimentary origami she and the other children had done, flattened into the pages between two paper folds, with a list of maybe-future schools she might get into, what she wanted to learn, what she might plan to do when she grew up.

Here was the post-it note that labeled Keiichi's things on his first day at the Hinamizawa Branch School, carefully preserved amongst doodles of their club and what lives they might lead someday, when they all grew up, when they were all alive.

It was a tether that helped her from breaking down, these fantasies, but Rika still felt a sharp pang every time she opened a fresh notebook, remembering all the memories she had carefully curated, now completely erased from all history. Everything ran on the same path, but the world was full of random chance and change, and she couldn't save or keep anything. Not a single scrap of paper, not a single plastic hair clip.

But if this time –this time, this time, this time, this time– it was her final run, her final painful cycle, she would be devastated if she didn't have this collection of memories to warm her heart and ease her nostalgia moving forward into the future.

So every time, Rika Furude cracked her fingers, then crawled over with her toddler's body to snatch the latest page from the calendar.

[let-me-love-you-loki]

Everything Has Changed--Ch. 27

Chapter 27

Shaye

           Good God, it felt like my heart had turned inside out and clawed its way into my throat. For a moment—from the instant that he spoke—I couldn’t breathe. I was suddenly right back in that train station in Tokyo. On the steep-sloped trail along the side of Mount Tsukuba. Standing at the wide windows looking out over the sprawling Katsushida ward below. In the Bullet Club locker room in Osaka. In Central Park along the side of a pond.

           In Winnipeg, standing shivering in the dirt driveway of that house. Watching Kota Ibushi appear out of nowhere, knowing that I had just been kidding myself that Kenny and I would ever have worked out.

           And yet here I was… with him on the phone. The moment that I felt most alone, I’d turned back to the person who had broken me so thoroughly.

           “You’re still there, Shaytan,” Kenny’s voice said in my ear. It had an undercurrent of something that I couldn’t quite place. It made my skin crawl just as much as it made me wonder what might have been. “I can hear you.”

           It was like my whole body crumpled in on itself. I slipped from the edge of Damon’s bed to the floor. The force of the landing rocketed through my spine as I landed, knocking the breath out of my lungs. It rushed out of me in a gasp that caught in my throat.

           There was a sound like a soft hum that came down the line. I could see his face in my mind. A gentle smile on his lips as he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. It was past midnight in New York. In Tokyo it was early afternoon. Kenny would have been just coming back to his flat from his workout and lunch at the little hole-in-the-wall spot down the street from the gym. The image ran through me with a shiver up my spine.

           “What’s the matter, Shaytan?” he asked softly.

           Before I could stop them, the tears came. They came in a torrent that rushed down my cheeks, stealing what little breath I had left. An ache settled behind my ribs like a hook in my heart that yanked and tore and pulled.

           His voice lilted up and down with that sweet concern that he had. “Iki o sutte kudasai, koibito. Watashi wa koko ni imasu.” It had been so long since I’d heard or spoken Japanese. It took a moment for my brain to make sense of what it was hearing.

           Take a breath, sweetheart. I am right here. That hook in my chest twisted and yanked, feeling as if it were tearing my heart from behind my ribs. I sank forward, curling in on myself. Wrapping my free arm around my stomach as if I were trying to hold my guts inside me.

           “Damon…” My brother’s name caught in my throat. I thought of where he might have gone. What trouble he might be getting himself into. “I can’t… he’s gone… he ran off.”

           I heard a faint rustle on the other end of the line. I tried to imagine what he was doing. Was he walking through the quiet streets back to his flat? Was he still in the little restaurant in his favorite booth? Had he slipped a little and gotten another deep-fried Mars bar?

           “What do you want from me?” Kenny went quiet for a moment as if to let me think. “What do you need?”

           My lungs ached as I sucked in a breath. I knew the answer almost before he’d finished asking the question. But I hated myself for it.

           “You.”

Nick

           “Oh my God, Nick. Stop it,” Sam said from across the table. There was a whine in her voice that was part annoyance and part frustration. She kicked my shin underneath the table. She, Matt, and I were at our favorite table at Black Bear Diner with our usual spread between us.

           My phone sat face up by my plate. Every few minutes, I’d tap the screen, look forlornly at the glowing glass, and then heaving a sigh when there was nothing. All three of us knew what I was doing—checking for messages from Shaye. There was no denying it.

           It had been weeks since I’d heard from her. Every single day, I wanted to call her. I wanted to text her. Just to know that she was still there. It was hard to explain, and I knew that it was going to tear me up inside the longer I lingered on the thought. I could feel the ache starting deep in my chest, just behind my ribs. It sucked the breath out of my lungs and I nearly choked.

           “That’s it,” she said, reaching across the table and snatching my phone before I could get my hands on it. She hit the button on the side, holding it down until it turned off completely. Then she tucked it underneath her thigh.

           “Give me my phone,” I said, holding out my hand.

           Sam shook her head and went back to her food. She took a bite of her turkey sandwich and turned her attention to Matt. “When do you have to go to Reseda again?”

           “Sam, give me my phone,” I demanded. Frustration boiled just below the surface of my voice.

           She ignored me. “I have to do a showing this weekend for one of my classes.”

           Matt dug his phone from his pocket and opened up his calendar. He swiped through it before putting it away. “Next PWG show is Friday night. I guess you’re going to miss it, then.”

           “Well, it depends on where you are on the card. I might be able to swing it if you’re near the end of the show.”

           The two of them carried on their conversation as if they were alone at the table. My guts churned with jealousy and envy. Seeing them together made me miss Shaye even more. It didn’t matter that there had never really been anything between the two of us. I’d fallen in love with her in Osaka the first time I’d met her. That hadn’t changed just because she’d cut me out of her life.

           My patience snapped. “Samantha, give me my damn phone!”

           “Watch your tone,” Matt said, his voice sharp. “Calm down.”

           I rubbed my eyes hard with my fingers, trying to push back the tears that were threatening to rush to the surface. “Please, just give me my phone. I’m going home.”

           “Nick—”

           Sam put my phone on the table. I snatched it up and threw a twenty on the table. Sam drove us all to the diner. I called an Uber.

Shaye

           Despite myself, Kenny’s voice made me weak in the knees. All I could envision was the way he’d looked that first day in the Tokyo train station. How kind his eyes had been. How soft his voice echoed in my memory. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting nausea at the idea of calling him.

           “It’s good to hear from you, Shaytan,” he said confidently. The timbre of his voice conjured images of nights overlooking the streets of the ward with Kenny’s hands on me. “I’ve missed you.”

           My body ached with want and sadness and loneliness. “Don’t call me that,” I said softly. “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

           It didn’t matter that I’d called him. That I’d told him that I needed him.

           I could hear his smile when he spoke again. “You will always be my unmei no akai ito.” For a moment, I thought I sensed sadness in his voice. “It isn’t right without you. I’m not right without you.”

           Something burned in my throat. Bile and tears and self-loathing. “Stop. Just stop,” I gasped, trying to stop myself from breaking down into pieces. What had I done? How had I been so stupid as to call him? “You don’t get to say those things. You don’t get to be sad and upset and lonely. Because you did this. All of this is your fault. Everything that’s happened is because you did it. You and Kota fucking Ibushi ruined everything. Absolutely everything.”

           It went quiet on the other end of the line. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. Almost contrite. “It wasn’t what you think, Shaye. If you’d given me five minutes to explain, I would have told you everything.”

           “And what was that, Kenny?” Anger and hurt and hatred burned through my veins. “That you were fucking Kota behind my back? That you were going dark on me because you wanted to sneak away? Because that’s exactly what it looked like to me.”

           “Did it bother you at all that Nick came with you? That he was so willing to fly from California to Winnipeg just like that? Without a moment’s notice?” There was something bordering on fury in his voice. “It didn’t occur to you at all that he was a little too helpful?”

           It was the same thing he’d tried to convince me about when he’d called when I was in California. “Stop. Just stop. I don’t believe you. Don’t you dare lie about Nick that way! He was there when you completely broke me!”

           Kenny chuckled darkly. “You never asked him, did you?”

           I wanted to scream. My stomach churned. “Fuck you,” I said, my voice far less sure than I wanted. “I hate you!”

           His voice dropped into a whisper that I’d heard a thousand times before. “You called me, Shaytan. When you needed someone, you didn’t call Nick Jackson. You called me.”

_______________________

Tag List

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[stellatenuem]

here comes one (1) gremlin little sister for a hug! "hey... you know you've always got a place here, right? sojiro and i are always here for you cuz you know. we're family, right? and that's what families do, so... don't forget that. no matter what you're always going to be that. family. no one gets left behind."

MAKE MY CHARACTER FEEL LOVED.

When Ren woke up on his final day in Tokyo, he didn't know how he was going to make it through the day without crying. (A part of him wished he could just stay bed... Oh, if only not getting up to greet the day could stop tomorrow from coming.) They spent all day saying goodbye to everyone, the allies and friends they'd made... and very narrowly avoided bursting into tears when they received their farewell gifts. He was grateful for his glasses, that gave him means to obscure his eyes... and for those who perhaps saw but chose not to comment on how wet his eyes were.

His last stop had been Kichijoji. Muhen asked him about Goro outside the Jazz club, and the interaction left Ren with a tight chest. Grief rose like bile in his throat and got stuck there for a long time. Numbness stole away any feeling soon enough, and the world and it's people began to feel and appear strange. Their feet carried them back along the route home... They must have, anyway, because then he was standing at Leblanc's front door, and he was going inside.

Futaba was sitting at a table with Sojiro. Their sibling called them over enthusiastically, saying something about finally being able to eat dinner now that he was home. His body felt heavy, but the last thing he wanted to do was go upstairs and crawl into bed. Their train ride back to Inaba was only one sleep away now... Ren put their bag down and sat with his found family, the warmth of their company and the good food slowly brought him out of the cold. (He would have his memories of this night, and that would have to be enough to keep him warm in the coming months.)

When they finished eating, Sojiro asked Ren to lock up for him and left for home. Futaba asked Ren if she could take a look at the loot he raked in from everyone today... and Ren pulled out each memento to show her and Morgana.

❝It's... difficult to imagine myself going back there after... all this.❞ Ren confesses, ❝The life I had before was so... small? The one I found here is so... lively.❞ (It's full. The other one was empty.)

❝I don't know how...❞ (I'm going to be able to squeeze the person I've become into the mold I left behind in that family. They'll cut pieces of me away to fit.)

The younger must have seen the anxiety in the elders gaze... Futaba wraps her arms around Ren, offering them words of truth and reassurance. Ren has to try and blink away oncoming tears. (Always?) He wonders as he reciprocates the hug. No one has wanted him for always before. (To not be left behind, discarded or forgotten... that's the kind of family they always wish they had.)

❝ TThank you, Taddy... I,, really needed to hear that.❞

[unhingedselfships]

Kimi goes to a party without making sure anyone was available as a safety net, things go badly

(CW : sexual assault (off screen, referenced), spiked drinks/involuntary drug use)

Kenshi had called to tell her he'd be back in Tokyo in a couple days, that business was almost wrapped up, and she'd impulsively told him to stay.

She'd had to back track quickly to explain that she just meant that she'd come up to him, rather than that she didn't want to see him.

"I want you to show me around, that's all. I bet there's a lot to see. And I haven't gotten to explore Sapporo, much less the rest of Hokkaido, as much as I'd like. Is that ok?"

He'd agreed and she was meant to be flying up on Saturday.

She did know a few of her friends she rarely got to see were in the area, so instead she booked a flight for Friday afternoon. She'd hit a few clubs, crawl her way back to Kenshi's place, and they'd have all of Saturday until whenever she went back to Tokyo.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, things went wrong.

Her friends were great, until some other people they knew showed up. And things got… uncomfortable. They knew who she was, it wasn't exactly secret. And seemed a little too interested in the fact.

She'd texted Kenshi.

KW : Are you awake?

And a moment later

KW : Can you come get me?

But no answer.

One, two, three calls across the next hour. 

She hoped he was ok. 

Slipping back into her seat, she threw back the rest of her drink.

Surely it'd be fine. She'd be fine.

The wooziness, the way the world spun, told her she was wrong.

Everything after that was a blur, until it faded into nothing.

Later, she'd be kind of glad she couldn't remember.

…

"What do you mean you don't remember?"

She blinked at him, looking up from the release paperwork they had her filling out. She'd been thoroughly checked out and advised on what to do. Had a handful of scripts to pick up. 

tried very hard not to think about what that one specific one was for

"I mean, drugs tend to do that? Well. Some of them. Not that I knew I was going to be taking anything but-" she trailed off, before shooting a smile at him, forced and terribly fake, "Well shit happens right? My fault for being careless and stupid."

the good news is that the tearing is minimal

The examining doctor's words echoed in her head and she focused on breathing.

No one needed to know the details.

No one needed to know what happened.

She was going to be fine.

She was.

but we are still worried about the risk of infection and possibility of transmittable diseases

At least she was here, with Kenshi. He didn't want- Well. She wouldn't have to explain why she was saying "no" to him.

"What do you mean you didn't know? And what drugs? Kimberly-"

"I didn't plan on taking anything ok! It just happened," that made it sound like just a bad decision, right? "And I don't know. They'll tell me what it was when the bloodwork’s been ran I guess."

"You don't know? Are you stu-"

A half hysterical laugh cut him off, "Stupid? Yes. Very. You know this. Can we go? I'm done."

and of course there is the risk of potential conception 

She handed the papers to the woman at the desk with a forced smile, and the woman smiled back at her in sympathetic commiseration. 

Some things, well. You could just tell. Privacy laws be damned. Call it intuition if you must.

Kenshi kept side eyeing her, and the way she limped just so. She couldn't quite hide it entirely, despite her best efforts.

you should consider filing a report

"Just a little sprain, love," and she'd smiled at him, the lie falling a little too easily.

He hummed but seemed to accept that answer. 

"We'll swing by the pharmacy and get you home and off it then."

"Thanks, Kenshi. Really. I appreciate it."

He'd helped her into the car, and when they got to the pharmacy she knew he was irritated with her insistence on getting her prescriptions herself. 

"I'll be right back out, it's fine."

But well, pushing her was not the best thing right now and she knew he knew it, so with a bit of grumbling from him, she was in and back out on her own and they went home.

Picking her way slowly through the manor, the full brunt of exhaustion was starting to hit her. Tossing the bag of medications to the side, she made her way into a bathroom.

It hadn’t hurt this much to pee since she’d had Kichi. She tried not to cry, she’d done enough of that already. And she really didn’t want to let on how bad things actually were. 

With a shuddering breath she eased her way back out and into the room Kenshi insisted on settling her in, freezing as she spotted him.

He was so terribly still, a box she hadn't wanted to think about, about what it was for and what it meant, in his hands.

"Just a little sprain, was it, Kimberly?" his face was blank as he turned his head to look at her.

Swallowing hard, and lip trembling, she choked out a near silent "sorry" before her knees buckled and she dropped.

Everything she'd buried until that moment clawed its way up her chest and out her throat, great heaving sobs, as she broke.

She curled in on herself, trying to be as small as she could. Maybe if she curled tight enough she could disappear entirely. 

To go away and not hurt anymore.

"Alright alright, that's enough," as he tried to scoop her up off the floor, "let's at least make it to the couch, hmm sweetheart?"

It took effort but they got her moved and curled under the blankets in the pillow nest he'd built for her. 

"There. Now. Anything else I can get you?"

He seemed uncomfortable. He wasn't good at the nurturing thing like she was but well.

She needed him. He'd try his best.

Chewing her lip he saw when she withdrew, held herself back.

"None of that, tell me."

Sighing she finally met his eyes, "Would- um. Would you make me a grilled cheese? And 'mato soup?"

He blinked and sighed fondly. 

"Yeah sweetheart, I can do that. I'll keep my phone on me, call if you need anything alright?"

She hummed an affirmative and curled down into the bundle of throws and pillows. 

The thoughts, what vague sensation memory held, kept circling, and she needed a distraction. She couldn't focus enough to read. So she sang. Soft. No particular genre or mood. Just focusing on remembering words and tunes. 

She didn't know how long had passed, how many songs she went through. Couldn't be that many. Grilled cheese was pretty quick.

Still, it was long enough for her attempt to lose effectiveness.

Shifting slowly she grabbed the pharmacy bag and sorted through everything she'd been given. Most needed to be taken with food, so it was good that it was already on its way. 

Eventually she couldn't ignore the little box anymore. She tried not to think about the look the pharmacist had given her. Condemnation.

Like she'd chosen this.

Maybe it was her fault.

She shook, and wondered absently how such a tiny box could be so terrible.

Emergency contraceptive. Morning after pill. Plan B. 

Kenshi returned, unnoticed, and unheard over the keening, the soft whine she let out. 

His hands closed over hers and she jolted, looking up at him wide eyed, devastated.

"What if it doesn't work?"

"It will," his answer was firm.

"But if it doesn't?"

Pressing a soft kiss between her eyes, "We'll figure it out. Whatever you decide, sweetheart." 

He took the box from her hands and replaced it with a glass of cool water. Just under room temperature, the way she liked it.

Settling her up with a tray, and the comfort food she'd requested, "Eat, I'll get these sorted out."

Humming, she listened, slowly picking at the sandwich, cut into triangles the way she liked, soaking up the soup, slightly too peppered the way she loved, and when he handed her a handful of pills she obligingly took them. 

Setting the tray aside once she'd finished, he carefully caught her attention again.

"I have to pop up into my office for a bit. I won't be gone long, I'm just going to clear my schedule for the next week."

"You don't have t-"

"I'm going to. The weekend was mostly clear already, but I want to take a little longer than that anyway. I'm not going to leave you alone."

She sniffled, and let out a soft "ok" and he squeezed her hand as he rose.

"I'll be back soon."

She hummed and curled down into the nest, digging her phone out to find something mindless to do.

He slipped out of the room, and left her to her Pinterest or Reddit or whatever she was doing.

It had been maybe an hour, half of one perhaps, when the text came through.

DD : Don't go online, I'll do what I can to handle it

The text was odd, seemingly out of nowhere

DD : Phe is on her way

Why?

DD : Are you alright?

Did- Did they know?

She shot back a quick, I'm fine I love you, to her husband and promptly ignored his first text.

It didn't take her long to regret not heeding his warning.

…

As much as Kadokura Kenshi liked to present himself as a heartless bastard who didn't care about anyone but himself, that image would have been summarily destroyed by how quickly he moved when he heard her wail.

He'd heard her cry, she did it all the time. But this? What had happened? Was she dying? Was it one of the kids?

He found her not quite where he'd left her, but on the floor nearby.

Curled, rocking, and sobbing.

This was- he wasn't sure what to do. He found himself floundering.

He looked her over as he strode across the room, looking for new injuries but she seemed fine.

Well, no worse anyway.

Hesitating only a moment, he reached for her, and she quickly threw herself into his arms, trembling and so… broken.

Her phone lay nearby, carelessly discarded, but he didn't dare let her go to reach for it.

She gasped to catch her breath, and choked out a quiet, wavering, "they recorded it" and a chill shot down his spine.

Well.

First order of business was getting his Kimi sorted and settled again. 

Then.

He had calls to make.

[inabadancedcrazy]

[Link to previous part]

[Link to next part]

------------

Surviving this trip was already becoming a nightmare for Dario. The only reason he was even here was because his brother had gone and run away from school with his girlfriend. Now he had to go crawling the entire city looking for any lead. He was only in this club because it was exactly the kind of place a teenager would think was cool. He’d already searched through all of Tokyo by now, through every storefront and with every police department. If this didn’t pan out, he was going to have to start looking outside of the main city. His Japanese wasn’t good enough to navigate any rural dialects, so the farthest he could go was probably... what, Yokohama if he was lucky?

Jesus, why’d that kid have to go and get himself lost in a country like this? How could it be so small yet so big at the same time? That wasn't fair! At least back home the country was big and you knew that going in. Getting lost in Brazil was expected, especially for tourists. Dario was used to seeing them run around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was funny, even!

It felt a lot different to actually be that chicken himself.

A hand tapped his shoulder, scaring Dario out of his head. He turned quickly and threw his arms up in a defensive stance. He knew how to box, or at least throw a decent punch. The offender, a blond man with a sunny smile, held his hands up in the air, raised in front of him like he was pressing against glass.

“Hey there, I won’t hurt you friend. So defensive, I’d hardly guess what could have unnerved you so badly.”

“Nerves- I caught like, half of that. Do you speak language not Japan? You look like you probably know English, right?” Dario was about to try and ask the guy what he wanted in English when he clapped his hands in joy.

“Ah, Portuguese! A romance language for a good reason. Dialect is... Brazilian, if I am not mistaken?” No hint of an accent whatsoever. The blond man made it look as easy as breathing.

“You speak- Yeah, okay, sure. So what’s with the whole putting your hands on me thing?”

“Well, it was obviously to get your attention, but I have a feeling you’re asking me why I did so. I wanted to hand you this.” The blond reached into his pocket, bringing out a booklet. A simplistic lion was hand drawn on the cover, some scribbled nonsense in a foreign language underneath. It wasn’t Japanese, or Portuguese, or English even. “I understand you are looking for your brother? Your tale spoke to my heart, and so I compiled a series of accounts from the patrons here. Written in Japanese, for I hadn’t known your nationality beforehand. Please, take it.”

“Uh... Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Dario took a couple of seconds to flip through the pages of the book before realizing the obvious. How had this random stranger known about his own personal shit? Was the guy stalking him or something? He looked up from the book only to find that the man was gone, lost in the crowds of people that were becoming wilder and wilder by the second.

------------

[pescheta]

Today has come teeteringly close to being good. So far, I've:

Jumped into the pool at 6.30am with B (cold water immersion club ftw)

Listened to the new Binchtopia episode on my way to work

Worked 8-2 north of the city

I received my delivery of seaweed snacks <3

Went to Strange Grains bakery and bought a gourmet sandwich and loaf of bread on my lunch break with E

J got me my favourite kombucha on her lunch break

Picked up a reservation from the library (and about five other books)

Did two loads of washing and put washing away

Dusted and mopped the floors

Changed the kitty litter

Cleaned out the fridge

Went for a 35-minute walk to reach 10k steps

Unpacked by bag from last wkd down south

Organised plans to meet with a friend tomorrow after work

Discovered another Huberman podcast I haven't listened to

I still need to:

Prep for meeting with A tmr

Make lunch for work tmr

Book accommodation for Tokyo

The main reason today hasn't been Objectively Good is because I still haven't done any actual PhD work which is looming over me and making me want to crawl into a hole and die. I will make progress soon? I hope? Maybe? Fuck

[more-than-a-princess]

Oh, hell. Sonia regretted opening her mouth and sharing her dream as soon as she'd gone and done it. It really was ridiculous. Even her own school prided itself on fulfilling potential and making the dreams of success a reality: it was her issue that she saw little success in equipping the worst people in the world with weapons, the most vulnerable with gambling and schemes they would never crawl out of. Her mother, thank goodness, drew the line at drugs and sex trafficking (they were, by and large, far more demeaning to women than men, which was in conflict to how she ran the Borghese Family). The idea of family, that was as much of her own talent, her own future, that Sonia could truly get behind: it was far more rare than the tales of despair and destruction that came with associating with the mafia, but when a lost soul found a home with her family, even amidst all the crime and secrets and backstabbing, she could live with herself and her future for a little while longer. It was why she kept herself busy with all sorts of hobbies, ones that she even kept quiet from Manjiro Sano. They had just met, after all: she had enough trouble confiding in her most trusted friends and allies, in case they chose to use her words against her where her mother was concerned.

Still, something as banal as wanting to ride a roller coaster was likely not even worth mentioning to the Donna: she'd likely quip back that her underboss, her daughter, was unnecessarily putting her life in danger for the sake of something as inconsequential as fun. Nevertheless, it didn't make it any less embarrassing when he laughed the way he did, following her out of the club and back into the late afternoon light of Kabukicho.

It didn't make it any less surprising either, when he placed a baseball cap on her head and a pair of men's sunglasses on her face. The hat sat awkwardly on her hair and headband, but if she pulled it into a ponytail and threaded it through the back, it would show the purple orchid on the back of her neck that Sonia only put on display at the right time, for the right reasons. An amusement park, full of innocent children and families, was hardly the place to display her chosen flower, her family tattoo. "You want to take someone you just met, someone whose family business indirectly murdered one of your friends, to an amusement park?" She repeated incredulously. As far as she was aware, it was the style of Japanese street gangs to use their fists and feet, on occasion a blade, to handle their disputes, not string them up on the highest roller coaster and let the cars travel the length of the track. But it wasn't impossible for someone to have connections. The Invincible Mikey, surely, could be believed to have connections. "Believe me, I am very flattered and interested, but I cannot help but ask why. You certainly do not have to."

Not that that stopped her from putting a helmet over the baseball cap. Or waving off the subordinates in the car parked nearby, who waved and gestured and called out to her, to return to the safety of the car's backseat where she'd be taken home, to her penthouse condo in the glamorous, ritzy Aoyama neighborhood, where she had floor to ceiling windows of Tokyo, with all of its lights, its possibilities, and its loneliness, surrounded by a staff paid to look after her but not to be her friend. Or getting on the back of his bike, holding Mikey by the waist again as, for the first time in awhile, she relinquished control of her life willingly to someone else. If he intended to kill her, Invincible as he was, he would still encounter a fight in the process. Besides, he seemed quite proud of the whole plan, one she rather suspected had come together in the span of seconds in his head.

"You...are forever changed, I think. Once you kill someone for the first time," She replied quietly, before he started the engine. Even if they were in Kabukicho and near a club her family owned, that didn't mean it was wise to broadcast that sort of information to the world. To him...maybe, it would be all right. "I recommend avoiding it if you can. It does not stop, you know, when their lives leave them. It will haunt you." She spoke as if she had authority on the subject. Which she did. Which no one was supposed to know about. "But I think you are strong in more ways than one, Manjiro-san. You could have choked that woman to death today, and you did not. I do not think that is you growing weaker, I think that is you exhibiting strength in a way you might have not done before. Something new, that likely stretches and flexes muscles that have gone unused. It might ache afterward as it repairs and reflects upon itself, but it grows stronger. You...grow stronger. If you do not mind such words from a near stranger."

The two of them in place, the engine revved, Sonia smirked for a moment as it, as he, drowned out the protesting cries of her security team. It was short-lived, as he asked, again a near stranger, to do what most would deem the impossible. "If you lose all of your humanity, I will take you out myself." She called to him as they turned back into the street. She didn't know what amusement park they'd visit, she hoped he knew the way at least. For as much as motorcycles ran up and down the various streets in Tokyo's neighborhoods (not hers, though: the Minato ward cracked down on street gangs, but in her travels she heard them), she found it a reasonable expectation that he knew his way around. Still, it could be interpreted so many ways that she didn't mind shouting it over the sound of the motorcycle speeding up into traffic. She thought about mentioning her amusement at the prospect of him coming to rescue her, she was no princess, good and benevolent and stuck in a castle tower, waiting for a dragon to be slayed in order to free her, but she thought better of it. "Where are we going, what sort of amusement park is it?" She asked instead as they drove on. "Is it one of the places where you wear animal ears on a headband, and eat giant sweets from food stands? I have seen those on television! They look delicious, alongside all the other cozy foods and junk foods! Like diners, but made to walk around and enjoy them! I admit I have not been to one of those either."

Mikey watched the scene in disinterest, still staring at Trixie as if she was maggot, even as she lay slumped after he'd let her go. Lifeless, cobalt hues lingered on the hostess' slender fingers as she spoke of them, and he took a step forward. He had a knife in his pocket. He'd never actually used it or needed it: He was the invincible Mikey after all. His best weapons were his legs and fists. However, that pulsing darkness had convinced him a couple of years ago, that he would need the object one day, when he couldn't keep his urges at bay any longer...

Another step was taken. All he had to do was cross the distance between them once more. He would grab her hand this time and use his knife to slice off her fingers one by one, since they were so crucial to her, so she'd learn how it felt to lose something important. He would enjoy the way she screamed as he did it. She had just been in his grasp. Why had he even let her go?

Slowly, he became aware of another presence. It hadn't been that long since the other person in this room had spoken to him, but it already felt like forever ago. She'd managed to stop him already, but he'd been so close to losing to the darkness once more. He managed to tear himself away from the girl, just as the men filed in. He let the door close behind him with a loud click as he stared at the hallway wall.

Toman's leader tried to distract himself from the darkness, as his urges finally settled down. His mind wandered to Sonia once more. She'd managed to stop him this time, which was actually quite surprising. Takemitchy and Draken had been the only ones brave enough to attempt to stop him before, and he generally wasn't easy to talk down when he got that way.

The Borghese Princess was tougher than he'd given her credit for. He couldn't help but remember how sad she'd looked when he proclaimed he would free her. He knew full well how hard that would be. He'd been obsessed with gangs for his whole life, and he knew a ragtag gang of delinquents like his own was no match for a legitimate mafia. They would make an enemy of an entire country.

However, Mikey knew that this version of Toman wouldn't last for forever. Someday, he knew the darkness would win. His gang would no longer be a place for friends to have fun. It would warp into something twisted, not unlike a mafia family, where they would earn copious amounts of money, deal drugs, and silence any who got in their way. He hoped that his friends would leave before that happened, but either way, it was inevitable. He supposed that he would have the power then to rescue the princess, but would the dark version of himself even care to?

He was shaken out of his thoughts by her voice, and he looked up. Somehow, hearing her talk of her dream, as simple as it was, chased the rest of his immorality away. "That's it? An amusement park? Hah!" He gave her a small smile, gratefully following her out of the back entrance. "Let's make a pit stop then. Yeah, yeah I know, the mafia and all that, but lucky for you..." As they reached his bike, he rummaged through the seat's compartment, pulling out a baseball cap.

The blonde attempted to place it on Sonia's head. He also pulled out a pair of sunglasses, and handed those to her next. It was a simple disguise, yet Mikey seemed oddly proud. "Sonia? Don't know her. Hop on! We're going to ride the biggest roller coaster in the park!"

His grin faded when she spoke of his dream once more though. She had been able to stop him, so maybe he should tell her the truth. "One day I'm going to kill someone." He spoke the words plainly, and with acceptance. "Ever since my brother died, I've been fighting the darkness. After Baji, and now Satori... It grows stronger and I grow weaker." He smiled sadly, as he sat down on his motorcycle's seat, turning away.

"Once I kill one person, I'm not going to stop. That'll be the end of me. Just... hopefully I'll free you on the way out. And if I don't, you should use your family's connections to kill me. Promise me.. If I ever hurt my friends, that your family will wipe me out."