#we don’t about Shibuya

[antisociallilbrat]

This is only going to be relevant for a small group of people but I need to state that I have not been so excited about a Poly Ship such as Yuji x Megumi x Nobara since the days of Poly!Losers Club.

[lavenderjewels]

i love geto i find his completely embarrassing behavior and inability to live to his full potential or win fights to be charming

[regallibellbright]

You know, I have to imagine if the rest of the TWEWY cast and such DO exist in the Kingdom Hearts universe in some form, KH!Minamimoto was pissed to hear some duck used Zettaflare before he could.

This assumes KH!Minamimoto is unerased, of course, but let’s assume he is, if we ever DO see them back again it’ll almost certainly be Neo looks so he can hang out with the Wicked Twisters.

[gojonanami]

❝ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐍𝐄 ❞

❝ SATORU GOJO IS THE HONORED ONE - AND HE'S MORE THAN HONORED TO BREED YOU ! ❞

✧ pairing: gojo satoru x sorcerer!reader

✧ summary: it's your duty as the wife of the clan head to help your husband get dressed -- even for battle. but that didn't mean he couldn't spend some time undressing you. aka fucking gojo in his shinjuku showdown outfit

✧ warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, canon compliant, feral gojo, Ijichi featured, dom!gojo, breeding kink, dirty talk, oral (f), fingering (f! receiving), sex (p in v), mirror sex, clothed sex, creampie, implied multiple rounds, multiple positions, swearing,

✧ w/c: 7,946

✧ now playing: feature one of sab's kinktober

“Perfect,” 

The word slips from your lips without a second thought as you slip the haori over his shoulders, snow locks against the coal colored silk, slick as steel and light as a feather, yet carrying the heft of expense. 

Just as your husband did. 

Little words could describe Satoru Gojo — the most common being the strongest — unmatched strength that matched his flawless appearance and even more unsullied skill set. Curses would sooner exorcise themselves rather than face him, and those who didn’t, well, they did not have long to linger on their mistake. 

But you didn’t think of him as the strongest. No, your husband was so much more than that. A teacher. A mentor. A friend. An idiot (but he would insist that he was your idiot, and he very much was). And he was perfect. 

A remark you knew many would balk at,  and even now — as you dressed your husband, at his insistence, fingers helping him pull the fabric over his body, before smoothing it over his muscle and the word fell from you without a second thought — you caught glimpse of a grimace on Ijichi’s face in the mirror. 

“Ijichi, you should go before I slap the shit out of you for your expression,” Ijichi squeaks in horror before slipping from the room, quiet click of the door welcoming silence, only for a moment, “what was that again, sweetheart?” 

You roll your eyes, “should I really indulge you in making your ego any bigger? You may defeat Sukuna with just the sheer size and weight of it,” you tease, fingers smoothing and adjusting his haori. 

“Think that would be a victory either way, sweetheart,” his fingers find yours, weaving with your own — miraculously soft even with bearing the weight of the world in his hands alone, “but I don’t want to win in such a boring way, especially to Sukuna,” 

“And why’s that?” His lips curl. 

“Because I have to look cool in front of my precious students, don’t I?” you see a hint of sadness linger in his gaze — and you hear the unspoken words, especially Megumi, but the smile slides back on as usual,  “I can’t have myself embarrassing myself can I? You’d never let me live it down,” 

“Oh, no I wouldn’t,” your fingers slide up to cup his cheek, “but you’d expect nothing less from your wife, now would you?” 

And he grins, just as he did the day he had proposed to you, at the classroom at Jujutsu Tech where you first met, deep reds and oranges flooding the wood paneled room, painting it as it only could in the evenings, but even the sun paled in comparison to Satoru on his knee, lips curled in your favorite smile — the very one he gave you every day. 

“My wife,” he hums, and you have to stop yourself from biting your lip and tense your muscles so you didn’t jump him then and there. 

“What about it?” he runs the back of his fingers over your cheek. 

“Just glad I convinced you to let us get married early,” not that it took much convincing at all — only a single look after he was unsealed and several minutes of making out later, and he had gotten Ijichi to get the registration and paperwork for him — the very papers Satoru had prepared before Shibuya, “because now you’re stuck with me, wifey,” 

You chuckle, your fingers finding his as they brushed your cheek, turning your head to kiss his fingers, “I’ve been stuck with you from the moment we met,” 

And you had been — you hadn’t known peace since he had thrown that Jujutsu Tech classroom door open all those years ago, with a welcome party prepared for you and the other first years, microphone in hand as he introduced each of you. And it wasn’t his strength or his skill or even his stupidity that charmed you — but the goddamn smile on his lips. 

Funny, how everyone was so preoccupied with his eyes, when every inch of his was just as captivating— 

“Think you’re going to lose me now, Toru?” You rub your thumb across the length of his cheek, “don’t know if I could ever live without you,” 

“Oh yeah?” he wraps his arms around your waist, his warm form enveloping you, “no regrets?” 

“Only one,” and he tilts his head, blues gleaming with the low light of the room, catching like sunlight against waves, as your fingers traced down to the smooth silk of his clothes, “that we never got married in a formal ceremony,” 

“If I recall, you were in just as much of a rush as me,” his lips graze your jaw, threads of heat slipping up and down every inch of your body, a kiss pressed to the soft skin behind your ear, “you barely wanted to even have the small ceremony we did,” 

“That’s because someone kept touching me while I got ready,” and he did, as you changed into a dress you selected for the small ceremony — or rather you tried, as his warm palms slid up your body, his mouth covering your soft gasps and protests, “or do you forget that you nearly fucked me against the wall right outside the room we were going to marry?” 

“It’s not my fault my wife is so tempting, they say my technique is deadly, but you yourself are far more dangerous,” he hummed, another kiss against your cheek, as his thumb and forefinger cups your chin, forcing you to meet his gaze in the mirror,  “why the want a formal ceremony anyway? If I remember, you said formal ceremonies were only for the attendees rather than the couple,” 

“Well, maybe I saw something that changed my mind,” or someone in something—

“Oh? And what could change my incredibly stubborn wife’s mind?” 

You hate him — hate the teasing glint in his gaze because he knows exactly why, as he noses the hollow of your neck, lips grazing your flushed skin, “You know why,” and he does, he sees it in the way your gaze lingers across his body, the way you shiver when his palm slips down your hip only to squeeze, and in the soft sound that leaves your lips when his fingers trace down your chin to the valley of your chest. 

“I’d like to hear you say it, sweetheart,” he presses himself flush to your back, heat seeping through the fabric, just as his breath warmed your skin, “don’t tell me you forgot how to use your words,” 

“You’re the worst,” and his chuckle reverberates against you, sending a shiver up your body, his hands sliding down the front of your shirt until he reaches the hem, fingers toying with the fabric. 

“And what does that make you since you married me?” 

“A fool,” your lips curl, his eyes meeting yours, “but a very smart one,” and he clicks his tongue. 

“So smart and yet she can’t answer a simple question,” you sigh, and his fingers, finally, slide underneath against your bare stomach. 

“You just want me to stroke your ego,” and he grins at you in the mirror, robes nearly engulfing your form now. 

“Oh, that’s not all I want you to stroke,” your snort is cut off by a gasp as his palms slide under your bra, “I’ll just keep teasing you until you break,” and his fingers tease your pert nipples, a wave of heat headed straight for your cunt, “and y’know I can, wifey.” 

~~~

“Hngh, Toru, please—” 

Satoru doesn’t know what he loves more — the sound of his name on your lips, desperation on your tongue, the same tongue that he had tasted again and again or the sight of you below him, spread out on his desk, papers and books long crumpled and pushed onto the floor — but he doesn’t need to choose a favorite thing when it comes to you. 

Because every single thing is his favorite. 

“If you want me to stop, you can try, sweetheart,” he presses a kiss to your thigh, teeth grazing the soft flesh, another mark blooming among the rest, a field of reds and purples he could spend hours exploring, “don’t know how far you’d get,” 

His fingers press your thighs further apart, with the barest hint of strength, and you’re still utterly restrained under his touch — a lovely butterfly pinned for his viewing — and what a view it was. 

“Fucker,” you pout at him half-heartedly, your kiss ruined lips and fucked out gaze doing nothing to help your case, “we were supposed to be getting you dressed for—“ 

“Then there’s no problem,” his fingers tug your blouse over your head, your bra askew from his eager fingers, and his hand reaches around to undo the clasp. But he doesn’t pull it away with his fingers, but instead bends down to  away the intruding garment, “because you’re the only one getting undressed, sweets,” 

There was something about the thought — and the sight — of you completely bare for him, at his mercy naked and vulnerable, while he stood clad in the clothes meant for battle. His cock twitched, he supposed this was a battle of kind — as he pushed his sleeves up — a battle of how many times he could cum inside you. 

“Satoru—“ you squeal as he nearly rips away your panties, leaving you bare for him, your thighs closing on reflex, only for him to press them back apart, “fuck—“ 

“That’s what I’m trying to do, sweetheart,” he clicks his tongue, bringing your soaked panties to his nose to smell, before pocketing them, a grin on his lips, “a good luck charm,” 

You gape at him, half horrified and half amused at the thought of the Gojo elders somehow finding out that the Gojo clan head’s clothes had been defiled by your underwear — though you were sure they expected nothing less from Satoru Gojo.  

But even so, you can’t bring yourself to complain, “You don’t need luck to win,” and he scoffs lightly, his warm palm sliding up your thigh, lips pressing hot kisses up your shin, right to your knee, “you just need to know I’ll kick your ass if you don’t make it back in one piece to me,” your fingers run through his soft locks, before tracing over his cheek. 

“I know, and the thought of you waiting for me is all I need,” he turns to your hand, lips pressing a kiss against the cool metal of your wedding ring, “and it wasn’t for that,” and he’s shifting, settling fully between your thighs, lips inches from your sopping pussy, “it’s for making sure I can breed you right,” 

His fingers brush against your fluttering walls, index finger tracing the outer walls with the very tip, pulling and tugging until you were spread out completely, messy pussy on display just for him. You couldn’t squirm under his the wet squelch making your cheeks burn, “S-stop teasing, just—“ 

You moan as he sinks a thick finger into you, knuckle deep and fast, “So needy for someone who was whining a second ago about stopping,” it doesn’t take long for a second finger to join, stretching out your perfect pussy, warm walls pulling him deeper each time he pulled out, his wrist and palm drenched in your juices, “but y’know I can’t stop, wifey, it’s our duty, right? Duty to produce an heir, but more importantly,” And a third finger sinks inside, as he peers up at you, lips parted in a sweet moan that makes his cock throb, ready to bust without a single touch, because he doesn’t need touch — not when it’s you under him, “my duty to fuck and yours to be fucked,” 

And your cunt squeezes his fingers at his vulgar words, a coil growing tighter in the pit of your stomach, heat building, as you can’t help moan his name, “and how will we fulfill our duty if I don’t prepare you, huh? Gotta make sure you’re ready, hm?” 

His thumb rubs over your aching clit, the lewd noises of your slick nearly white noise to your ears as pleasure builds, every muscle taut underneath his touch. He’s pumping faster and harder, nails dragging over your walls, until his fingers find that spot you love — the one he knows how to hit again and again, and he does. 

Your head lolls back against the desk, pleasure ripping up your spine, “I’m—“ 

And that’s the only warning you give before you cum, name on your lips as your back arches, as he fingerfucks you through your orgasm, working you down from your high. You're panting, chest heaving as he slowly eases his fingers from you, the emptiness making you whine. 

Your eyes flutter open to the sight of him licking his fingers clean of your cum, tongue darting across his lips, a glint in his eyes.

“You’re so sweet I can never get enough of you,” and he lifts a finger to your lips, letting you taste yourself on his digit, obediently closing your mouth around it, until he’s dragging it out, pulling at your bottom lip, “you’re dripping from both lips aren’t you?” 

“That’s your fault,” god, you’re too fucking cute, thighs twitching as he leaned down to your soaked cunt, a pretty flushed pink, “you made a mess,” and his tongue licks a stripe up your leaking walls, sparks blooming from the hot muscle flicking against your hard clit. 

“Then I guess it’s my responsibility to clean you up,” 

Satoru Gojo is always too much — it’s too much the way his tongue drags over the seam of your cunt, it’s too much when his nose bumps against your clit when he buries his face in your pussy, your fingers curling in his white locks, and it’s too much when you feel his grunts and moans resonate against your drenched folds. 

It was too much. 

“How are you so soft?” He mumbles, words whispered against your puffy clit before he kisses it, “you say I don’t play fair but you were unfair from the moment I met you,” he reaches down, palming at his erection, “and I knew you’d be mine,” Your eyes find his lips less than an inch from your pussy, chin and lips shiny with your cum and his spit, “you and this sweet pussy,” 

And he’s slurping every ounce of your essence you give him, greedily lapping at you as if he’d rather drown in your juices than breath real air, “fuck, Toru, slow down—“ toes curling as you 

He clicks his tongue, your head rolling back as your nails dig into his scalp, “You shouldn’t lie, sweets, not when this pretty girl is so honest,” the only sound being the wet squelch of your 

“Satoru Gojo!” A familiar voice rings out followed by several knocks, “how long do you expect to keep us waiting?” 

Fuck. And there was the reason you two were getting sresssd to begin with — a showing before Gakuganji and the Gojo clan before the battle with Sukuna. A showing Satoru agreed to undoubtedly to fuck with them — and you, now, for that matter, as he sucks at your clit again, your hand flying to cover your mouth. 

“Didn’t know you were waiting. Thought keeping you waiting would have sent you the right message,” Satoru replies, words said nearly against your wet cunt, breath warming your folds, a shiver working it’s way up your spine, “do you all need to see me in my clothes for battle that badly? I’ll have to start to suspect other motives — and while I’m flattered, with how flattered I can be from a bunch old geezers, I am a married man—“ 

“You insolent brat—“ his tirade falls on deaf ears as you try to urge Satoru off, but he doesn’t, only pinning your hips in place, hands locked under your knee, as he tugs you closer. 

And he only grins, “Don’t tell me you’ll let this old coot distract us, sweetheart? Gonna make me insecure, does my wife not like this as much as her pussy does?” He groans his fingers, spreading your walls apart, parting them to see your cum and pre leak, only for him to lap it up, “because you’ve gotten wetter, haven’t you?” 

“T-Toru, I swear to god, I’ll—“ you half whisper, half hiss, and he sinks two fingers inside your needy walls, his tongue and fingers doing nothing to keep quiet as the squelch of your folds only grows louder as he drags his fingers inside every inch of you, while his tongue busies itself with your clit. 

“You’ll what, wifey?” he hums, making you whimper, “leave? You know you don’t want that. We could make a show of it, should I open these doors and let everyone see how needy you are for me,” and you can’t help the gasp that parts your lips, walls clenching around his fingers, “maybe then those geezers will see why I chose you,” 

“Satoru! Are you even listening?” 

“You can say whatever you want to me here,” Satoru sinks a third finger inside, teasing your clit with chaste kisses, “I’m not leaving this room for the rest of the night,” 

Gakuganji pounds at the door, but you barely hear it, heart pounding in your ears, as you barely muffle your moans behind your clenched fist, “Disgraceful, do you think this is anyway to behave—“ you’re so close, too close, ready to cum as he pumps his fingers once, twice, three times — hitting your sweet spot again and again—you feel yourself reach that peak—

Only for him to stop. The whine that leaves your lips is a little too loud, just as his smirk is a little too wide. 

Fucking asshole. 

Satoru chuckles, teasing you open with his fingertips, just carding your folds barely open at all, pulling small gasps and moans muffled against clenched fingers, “Aw, c’mon, you don’t think being sealed up in that box taught me anything? You should know it only made me take what I want,” Satoru pulls his fingers from inside you, licking up the side of his digits,  “and what I want is right here,” he leans back down, “so tell me and leave,” 

“Even so, I need to speak to you alone,” 

“It’s only me and my wife. You can tell her anything you tell me, she’s the more responsible one after all,” he punctuates it by his teeth grazing your clit, making your hips jerk underneath him, his hand covering your mouth, your fingers curling over his. He grins down at you as he kisses your thigh, “My wife is indisposed at the moment,” 

You don’t hear what Gakuganji says as his fingers sink back inside all at once, fingers rough as they fucked you open in earnest, but you hear Satoru scoff nonetheless. 

“Get your mind out of the gutter, you old geezer — she’s just lying down,” and he adds with a whisper, curling his fingers just right, “and getting her brains fingerfucked out,” and your pretty eyes are full of tears, cries muffled against his fingers, spit soaked, as he feels your walls clamp around his fingers, “what do you think? Should I let him in, sweetheart? Let him see how you well you get fucked by me, hear you scream my name when you cum for me?” 

Nerves on fire from his touch, he’s just adding fuel to the fire, and you’re bucking into his fingers, wanting his fingers deeper even a little—

“No, I don’t think so,” his lips curl as he leans down, cerulean glinting in the low light, as your walls give that tell tale flutter, “because this pretty cunt is just for me,” and he sucks hard at your clit, just as he pulls his hand away, “cum.” 

And you do, pleasure ripping through every inch of you as your back arches upwards into his touch, as he holds you against his face, cumming against his fingers and lips. 

It’s heaven, buried in your sweet cunt as you cum, hot release against his tongue that he laps up greedily, the wet squelch of your pussy along with your lips crying out his name again and again. doing nothing to ease the throbbing between his thighs. 

And when he finally does pull away, licking his lips and chin clean of your release, he watches you coming down from your high — eyes fluttering open slowly as your chest heaves, pussy split open just for him, your cum staining parts of his pants shirt and haori. 

Fuck, he’ll have to see everyone off like this — your cum on his clothes — and his dick twitches, as he leans down to press kisses along your body, with you shivering as he does. And he wants nothing more than this moment to last, with you beneath him, the taste of you on his lips, and the sounds of your soft pants filling his ears. 

That is until, you flipped him, back hitting the plush of the mattress, “sweets—“ 

“Did you forget? It’s a wife’s duty to serve her husband,” and your fingers are as deft as they are possessed — grazing over the bulge in his pants, a hiss before pulling the drawstrings apart, “isn’t that right, husband?” 

Fuck, he bites his lip as he watches you tug his trousers down, his erection slaps his stomach, hard and leaking through the fabric of his boxers, a large dark stain of precum from his weeping tip. 

Fuck, your cunt ached at the sight of him — no matter how many times you saw his cock, you couldn’t get over just how long he was — it was a miracle you were able to take him without breaking your cunt, though he’d gotten far too close. 

“And I thought you said we couldn’t undress me,” his cock twitches as your fingers trace over the dripping slit through the drenched material. 

Your eyes don’t meet his, still fixed on his hard on, “if the clothes are on you, does it even count as undressing?” 

And your fingers dip into the elastic of his boxers before snapping it against his skin, making him jolt, “should I stop then, oh honored one?” You rub your thumb over his slit harshly, a gasp falling from his lips as his head lolls back, “maybe I should go get Gakuganji, let you have your meeting,” 

“Playing dirty doesn’t suit you, sweetheart—“ and you pull his boxers down, pooling around his knees just as his pants did, cold air hitting his cock making him hiss. 

“Like I said,” your palms slide up his body, from his waist, and under his shirt, to his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs, “should I stop?” 

He looks up at you, lungs filled with heat instead of air, lips hovering an inch from his leaking erection. 

“Fuck no.” 

~~~

You’d be the death of him. 

There was no mistake about it. 

Satoru Gojo only had one weakness—and you were sitting on top of him. Your hair disheveled with your fingers running through them, lips kiss bitten and ruined even as your teeth grazed your bottom lip, and your gaze molten and only for him — just for him. 

And you called him perfect. 

A groan leaves his chest as your tongue flicks against his slit, salty precum swallowed by eager lips. He’s hypnotized by you, fingers reaching for you, as his thumb drags down your puffy bottom lip, parting your mouth for him, tongue darting out to lick the pad of his finger. Fuck, your mouth is so sweet, but how is it so wicked all the same? 

“Fuck, sweets, how do you look so good on your knees f’me? S’not fair,” and your forefinger traces his pretty veins from base to tip, running over every curve and inch that would be buried in your tight cunt soon enough, his hips jumping against your touch, “g’nna make me cum before you even touch me,” 

“If you’re gonna cum anywhere, it better be on me,” your lips curl at the shiver that runs down his body, your fingers sliding up his thigh as your fingers slide the pre down his length, fingers slowly pumping him. 

“Fuuuuck, just like that, can’t wait to bury myself in your sweet pussy, wifey—“ your lips kiss his slit, sucking as your fingers toyed with his balls, feeling far too tight from your touch, a moan cutting off his words. 

“G’tta find a way to shut you up somehow, Toru,” you spit on his cock, pressing teasing kisses up and down his begging length, “or maybe we can find a gag,” 

You’ll kill him before he even gets a chance to fight Sukuna, and he’d die a happy man. 

His precum drips down your chin, painting your lips, tongue darting out to lick it off your skin, “s’fucking good for me,” the praise sending a wave of heat right to your cunt, hot cum slipping down your thighs — and you finally let his cock slip past your lips. 

A whine leaves his throat, his head lolls back, your pretty mouth wrapped around his dick, soaking his length, hips jerking against your mouth. Half muttered apologies, he couldn’t look away from the sight of you on your knees for him — mouth stuffed full of his cock with glassy eyes from the soreness of your jaw as you bobbed your head up and down his length. Just watching his dick go and in out of your pretty fucking lips, drenched in your spit and his pre, was enough to make him want to cum then and there. 

But he wasn’t the only one. 

Small whimpers and moans reverberate against his cock, tongue flicking against his veins, when his eyes flicker down, nails nearly digging into your scalp as he sees you two fingers deep in your cunt, the wet sounds of your pussy mixing with the squelches of his cock in your mouth. 

“Fuck, such a nasty girl I married, huh?” He runs his fingers through his hair, entranced by the sight of you fucking yourself open with your fingers, your mouth growing sloppily as you do, “does fucking my dick turn you on this much? You’ve soaked the sheets,” he chides, wide smirk undercutting any iota of scolding, while you meet his gaze with a glare, “Aw, what? Can’t take it—“ 

His words are cut off as you take him deep, too bumping against your throat, and his fingers curl in his locks. 

“Shit—“ Your fingers graze his balls again before squeezing, hard, he nearly busts them and there, but he can’t, not yet — his fingers weave into your locks to slowly pull you off, strings of spit and pre connecting your — not when he hasn’t fucked your pretty cunt yet. 

Your eyes are dilated, dark with pleasure as his gaze meets your own, a mix of his pre and your spit slipping from the corner of your mouth, “You haven't cum yet—“ and his fingers wrap around your wrist and pull your fingers from inside yourself. 

You yelp as he flips you over in an instant, hitting the mattress with a bounce, large palms sliding up your thighs, as he presses your knees to your chest. 

“The only place I’m cumming, sweetheart,” as he drags the swollen head of his cock against your needy folds, watching his precum smear against your twitching folds, before lifting your soaked fingers to his lips, “is inside your sweet cunt.” 

“Toru—please—“ and you’re so needy, just for him, your fingers finding the front of his scarf before tugging him close, a gasp chased away by a grin as he sees the pure desperation in your eyes, “I need you,” 

“I’m right here, sweets,” and he’s leaning down to dot sweet kisses down your body — against your neck, the bridge of your collarbone, the swell of your breasts. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” 

“Fucker,” he laughs. 

“Now you’re getting closer,” and he does too, bumping the head of his weeping erection against your puffy clit, as your folds feel as if they’ll part for him in an instant, “this pretty girl is more honest than you are,” he’s parting your folds with his tip only to pull out. 

A whine turns to a scowl, as you tug him even closer by his scarf, “I swear to god, if you don’t fuck me, I’ll strangle you with this—“ and he sinks into you. 

Fuck, you swear you feel every goddamn inch, vein, and curve as he works himself into your tight cunt, walls fluttering as if beckoning him deeper—and he was only too happy to oblige. 

“Toru, s’too big,” your whining only makes his cock throb inside you as he bottoms out inside, “s’too much,” 

“Too much? No, sweets, this dick was made to fuck you,” he grunts, taking every iota of his self control not to thrust into you and bury his cum deep in your womb — no, he wanted this to last, “and this pussy was made for my cum,” he rolls his hips against you swallowly, his tip brushing against your cervix, as both of your heads roll back. 

“How are you so tight? Pleasure rips up your spine as he begins a steady pace of fucking you, sounds of skin smacking together ringing in your ears, “you’re fucking wet and yet you have me in a vice grip,” his clothes rub against you, your slick soaking through the fabric, “should I go meet with the elders like this? Let them see the Gojo clan’s haori soaked by your juices,” fingers pressing your legs apart wider and higher, divots in your flesh from his touch. 

Your walls squeeze at his words, mouth falling open wordlessly as he grunts, “F-fuck,” you can only manage to say, chest heaving as you grasp at the front of his haori, pulling him needlessly closer, “f-faster—“ and he grins. 

He was more than happy to oblige. 

He rails into you at a pace impossible for anyone but Satoru Gojo. And your gasp fades into a drawn out moan that makes him only want to fuck you harder and faster — he needed to bury himself in your cunt until all you remembered was how to moan his name. 

“You take me so well, so deep,” his hand laces with yours and guides it to the bulge in your stomach, “see how deep you take me? Good girl,” the praise makes you keen, sending another wave of pre to soak his dick, and he chuckles, “gonna fit my baby so well too,” 

Your mouth falls open as his dick ruts against you, bullying your pussy open, “W-what?” 

“Y’think we’re gonna leave this bed before I’ve filled you up?” And he punctuates his words with each roll of his hip, “nah, this cunt is all mine tonight,” his thumb drags down your lips, pressing against your tongue, spit leaking out as you groaned, “and so are you,” 

And you’re sucking at his thumb, teeth grazing it before brushing it away to lean up to meet his lips in a bruising, messy kiss — all spit and teeth and tongue, as your hips meet his thrusts, tip finally finding that sweet spot that has your back arching and your eyes rolling back. 

“Toru, fuck, I’m g’nna—“ and you’re cumming, hard, orgasm hitting every inch of your body at once, nerve endings shot with pleasure as he fucks you through it — fucking relentless (or should you say limitless?). Satoru grunts as your walls clamp down on him, the wet squelch of your pussy only growing louder among your pants and moans. He watches the white ring of cum wrap around the base of his cock as it split you open, and all he wanted to do was cum inside you. 

He needed to. 

But he’s pulling out suddenly, a gasp ripped from your lips at the emptiness, before he’s pulling you into his lap, your back pressed to his chest, an arm around you to keep you from squirming. 

“What are you—“ your sentence cuts off as he teases your far too sensitive entrance with the head of his cock, “T-toru,” 

And his other hand snakes around to cup your chin, forcing you to meet your own gaze in the mirror. 

You’re a mess — sweat slicked and naked, your skin littered with blooming red marks dotting up and down your body, your nipples pebbled and hard under his touch, and your cunt on full display, his fingers slipping down to spread them, as if to show you where he just was. 

And he was — hulking behind you, his whole form enveloping you as his cock pushed against your needy entrance. His haori disheveled and his hair askew from your fingers running through it, skin shiny with sweat, skin beautifully flushed, and his eyes filled with lust and his smile far too pleased with himself as he watched you squirm. 

Your eyes squeeze shut, “Don’t wanna be the only one to watch me cum inside you, you should enjoy the view too,” he’s finally sinking to you again, body falling back against him as he sheathed himself in you fully again, “look at how well you take me,” 

And his fingers are cupping your chin, spit slipping from your mouth, as he forced you to look again, see the bulge in your stomach as he slowly began to fuck you, his grunts and moans hot against your ear, “y’know, I’m beginning to really believe you were made for me, sweets, the only one for me,” and he’s emphasizing it with a thrust, “you’re the only one I can even imagine wanting, even just thinking of you is enough for me,” his words do nothing but make you grow tighter as he fucks upwards into you, as he spots your eyes shut again, “c’mon baby, watch me fuck you,”

So you do, watch as his cock slides in and out of your cunt, the wet noises and squelch almost too much for you to bear, the all too familiar knot in your stomach growing ready to snap. His fingers slide up your body to pinch and tease your sensitive nipples, already flushed from his attention. He’s murmuring sweet words, but you don’t hear any of them — you’re gone, lost in the pleasure, in the sweet stretch of your pussy around his cock, unable to look away as he fucks into you. 

“S’good for me, sweets, I’m close,” and he’s pulling you down flush against him, cock buried to the base as his tip brushes against your g-spot with every thrust, his lips pressing needy kisses to the side of your neck, “fuck, g’nna cum—” 

“Cum inside me, fill me up, Toru,” and he groans your name, turning your head to find your lips in a sloppy kiss, tongue wrapped around yours just as his cock hits the deepest part of your tight cunt and his fingers rub against your clit. 

And you’re squirting, gushing over his lap and cock, pulling your lips from him as you moan his name, as he rails into you through your orgasm, until he notches himself as deep as he can before he’s cumming too, hot release painting your walls as he fills you up. He’s fucking his cum into you. 

You both grow slack as he slows his movements, relaxing against his body, murmuring soft praises as he slowly pulls himself from inside, clicking his tongue, as he watches his cum slip out of you. 

“Sweetheart, how will you fulfill your duty if you let my cum slip out like that?” he kisses your cheek, before he’s gathering the cum on his fingers to stuff it back inside, drawing a gasp from your lips, “maybe I’ll just fill you up again, hm?” 

His softening cock twitches at the thought, as you lean into him, shifting as you feel just how wet you’ve gotten him…and his clothes. 

Fuck. 

“Toru, how are you going to fight in these clothes tomorrow?” you cover your burning cheeks, “it’s drenched,” 

“It’ll dry,” you snap your head to him to glare at him, and he pouts, “what? It’ll be like you’re fighting with me—” 

“I swear if I have to live with the knowledge you fought the king of curses with my cum all over you, I’ll kill you—” 

“And if I’m not alive—”

“I will bring you back to life, just to kill you,” and your palm slides against the slant of his cheek, “and you’re not going to die, I forbid it,” 

He chuckles, his lips leaning down to meet yours in a sweet kiss, “Then I better not now, huh?” 

~~~

“You’ll come home to me, won’t you?” 

It hadn’t been a question, not until now, now when you’re faced with the reality of the day pressed against you as day breaks over December 24th. Daylight seeped into the bedroom, his thumb tracing a lazy circle against the divot of your hip, a soft smile on his lips, with his arms wrapped around you. 

Atlas long having shifted the sky to your husband’s shoulders, from the second he existed in his world — but for a moment, you feel it too. Not like him — never like him, even when you tried to bear it with him. But you never could understand, no matter how you tried to.  

But you tried — his fingers lacing with yours, engulfing yours with his warmth, as he lifted your intertwined fingers to his lips. 

“Where else would I go, sweets?” And you didn’t want to think of the other possibilities, to say the words out loud and manifest them as some cruel jujutsu god’s intention. Because when were these gods ever kind? “I only belong in one place — two if you count the mochi place in Sendai,” 

But he doesn’t earn a smile out of you, frown still firmly fixed to your lips, “ouch, not even a pity half smile?” he tilts his head, “sweetheart—“ 

“You said it yourself that the ten shadows is the ultimate counter to infinity,” you hate the words that leave your lips, filling in your mouth like bile, unable to do anything but spit them out like acid, “that and Sukuna’s technique, I’m worried—“ 

“Worrying won’t change the outcome, baby, and I’m not planning on losing,” 

“If you aren’t, then why did you agree to give Yuta your body?” your words were quiet, his movements still, muscles tense as if he had already given up his autonomy to another, “and you didn’t tell me,”

He’s careful with his words, tiptoeing between buried mines— “I didn’t want you to worry about something that wouldn’t happen—“ but still managing to step on one all the same. 

“Bullshit. You thought it would be better for me to find out if push comes to shove?” you laugh, a bitter noise, but all the anger leaves your body, and only fear is left, “I can’t lose you, Toru,” 

“Baby—“ 

“I can’t. I won’t,” you’re being petulant, you know are, but he’s the one person you’re allowed to be childish about, just as he is with you. 

“You won’t, huh?” He wasn’t used to be treated like this — as fragile, as something that’s fleeting, that could slip from fingers as easily as everyone else did. Even as you touched his, fingers tracing the curve of his jaw with the most delicate of touches, as if he’d shatter under your touch, “I don’t think we get a say in that, sweets, unless you had secret meetings with a god I don’t know about,” 

“Satoru—“ 

“Don’t worry I won’t get too jealous—“ and you cover his mouth, yanking him close by his scarf, your forehead pressed to his shoulder. 

“I love you, you absolute idiot, you know that right?” And you feel his lips curl ever so slightly against your fingers, before he presses a soft kiss to your palm, easing it from his mouth, “I love you, I love you so much,” 

“I love you too,” he presses his forehead to yours, “I’ll come back to you, but even if I don’t…I’ll always be with you, you can’t get rid of me, even in death,” 

“Promise?” And he kisses you, soft and languid, thumb rubbing back and forth against your speak. 

“Promise.” 

And Satoru Gojo was never one to break his promises. 

~~~~

Except now. 

The slice cut through the silence of the battlefield with the wet squelch of flesh and blood, followed by two thumps, one soon after the other. 

No, no. This wasn’t true. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. 

It couldn’t be. 

He promised he would come back. He promised he’d live. He promised. 

He can’t leave like this. No, he can heal himself, he can save himself, couldn’t he? RCT like he did before with Toji. And for your eyes flickered around the room, no one could meet your gaze, none except Shoko, who saw the question in your eyes and only frowned before shaking her head, lit cigarette snapping in half as he held it too tight. 

“No, no—“ you didn’t even realize you said the words out loud before you felt everyone’s eyes on you suddenly, before you felt something, a flicker of his cursed energy and you snapped. 

“Ui ui, take me with you,” Kashimo was already on his way to the battlefield, a lightning flash to death’s door, with no fear. 

Yuta says your name softly, “I don’t know if that’s a good—“ your eyes snap to his hard. 

“You have your plans, Yuta, and I have my own, this isn’t a matter of discussion,” you step over to Ui Ui, seeing Yuta’s hands curl into fists, vision averted, “I’m not ready to give up on him,” 

And in a second, you’re in the middle of the battlefield, dust clearing as the distant noises of fighting rings in your ears, but you barely register it, no, not when wind rolls and you see him. 

“Satoru,” 

You’re at his side in an instant, your fingers running over his cheek, the heat leaving his body, cold creeping in, but as your fingers graze his, a quiet murmur of his name, and you see his eyes flutter. 

And it’s immediate. You look to Ui Ui, as your hands are placed on either side of his split body, palms spread against his body, “Take us to Shoko, he’s alive.” 

~~~~

Satoru Gojo was never one to lose. 

But he supposed if he had to lose to anyone, it might as well be the king of curses. But he knows he didn’t really loose, as he watches the snow fall above him, wondering if the cold against his skin was the snow or if it was something else entirely. 

Was this what it was like for Suguru? Is this what he saw? The winter sky, or was it him knelt beside him as his life left his body. 

Maybe he’ll ask him when he goes back, when he sees everyone again. 

And then he hears it — your voice, the quiet murmur of his name, and the brush of your hand against his.  

No, no, he can’t leave. Not if he can help it. Not when you’re here. 

He feels your cursed energy flood his body, the flow of cursed energy through every inch of him, as it keeps his heart beating and his brain alive — a gasp caught in his throat. 

If you want to start anew, head north. If you want to return to your old self, head south. 

There’s only one option. 

He had to head north — even if it meant — he closed his eyes — losing everything, but himself. 

But he’d have you — and that would be more than enough. 

~~~

“Are you enjoying the view?” 

Your lips curl as you stand in the doorway of your bedroom, leaning back against the doorframe, watching your husband dress himself. 

“Always do,” the floorboards creak lowly as you cross the bedroom to your husband’s side, “why do you think I married you?” 

He chuckles, “and here I thought it was because of my incredible personality,” and you snort, as your arms wrap around his middle, your fingers adjusting the obi belt around his waist, “feels like you laughed at that a little too hard, sweetheart,” 

“I just imagined how your students would react at that,” you laugh softly, as you finish adjusting his belt, only to grab his haori, a deep sky blue, as pretty as he is,  “pretty sure they’d disagree, especially after the stunt you pulled—“

And of course, the stunt you were referring to was him coercing you push a box out to his students, only for him to pop out. 

“How many chances would I have to do that? Plus, it was hilarious — did you see their faces?” And you scoff, shaking your head, “Plus, I figured it would be less shocking this way. Surprising them this way changes the focus from what happened to right now,” 

You helped him pull the haori on, guiding his arms in one sleeve and then another, “I think you just being alive was enough of a shock,” you kiss his palm, pressing it against your face. 

And his lips curl, “Well I made a promise didn’t I?” His other hand reaches for you, finding your waist and tugging you close, “and I never break a promise, especially when it comes to my beautiful wife,” 

“Can you call me that yet? We still haven’t had the ceremony yet,” he shakes his head. 

“This is only a formality, something to appease the elders and keep the idea of a clan war at bay,” he scoffs, shaking his head, before shrugging, “but it isn’t so bad,” 

“Why’s that?” And he smiles.  

“Because now we can have no regrets,” and your fingers trace upwards over his face, the scars from his battle bumpy as your fingers run over his soft skin, fingers reaching the blindfold over his left eye, before pushing it up — his cerulean blue eye now a milky white, “except maybe being able to marry you with both eyes,” 

“Like you said, we were already married,” your thumb runs over his shut eye gently, “this is just a formality,”

He leans into your touch, nuzzling your hand, before his arms pull you flush against him, “Then can we be late?” And his lips lean down to press a heated kiss to your neck, voice reverberating against your skin, “because I’d like to enjoy my wife before I have to share her with everyone else,” 

“Toru—“ a soft gasp cuts you off, as his hands slide down your sides to cup your ass, fingers squeezing, “we can’t—“ 

“Oh what will they do? Start without us?” And your resistance is waning as his lips start trailing kisses down your neck, tugging at your kimono if only to pull the fabric down your shoulders, “I promise I’ll be fast,” 

“Last time you promised that, we didn’t even make it out the door—“ and his fingers are already undoing your obi, before sliding up and underneath the silk material, thighs parting under his touch, “god—“ 

“You don’t have to call me ‘god,’ sweetheart,” and his fingers toy with your panties, “look at my wife,” and he’s tilting your gaze to make you look at yourself in the mirror again, “perfect,” 

“Just like my husband,” and his lips curl. 

“Even now?” And your fingers cup his cheek, forcing him to meet your gaze — no longer the look of the strongest or the gaze of the six eyes — just the eyes of your husband, Satoru Gojo. The very gaze he’ll use to look to the future. 

“Especially now.”  

✧ a/n: welcome to the first kinktober fic!! sorry it took a bit T_T. i've been super busy with work and i keep getting sick in weird ways. last week i got hives and this week, my stomach is being a jerk. but i hope you guys enjoyed :) i think the next fic may be 'a cult classic' or 'scream (only for me)' so look forward to that!! thank you to @coffee-and-geto and @gaylatteart for betaing!

✧ taglist: @risuola , @riamallow , @montilyetron , @saccharinesatoru , @notgoodforlife , @aerithsthingss , @satorusmochis , @silvarys , @oracle014 , @jimabenamara , @seijakuu00 , @erwinawesomeness , @staryukis , @idiotgojo , @torubug , @theshylittleelfgirl , @mitsuristoleme , @forest-hashira , @aishies-stuff , @midnaamethyste , @fiannee , @paperstarsthings , @satosuguwifee , @kachntos @meow-satoru , @rowaelinsdaughter , @emonaculate , @hojoslutoru , @strawberry1042 , @fairiesthrum , @shoyosdoll , @gladiatorgladiator , @tojis-ball-sack , @astraecea-silversin , @sleazymac-n-cheesy , @wakashudou , @cstandsforchaos , @yuminako , @zetianzz , @dazailover1900 , @sunamatic , @euphorism , @satowooo , @hawkwithsocks

[tariah23]

They’ve been tearing yuuji apart on twitter for the last 2 days now

[screampied]

“. . do you . . know what happens after death, sweetheart?”

the words that slipped out of nanami’s lips struck you right in the very depths of your heart.

it stung—a sharp prod that made the very crevices of your mouth twitch. his hands, his once warm and loving hands started to grow abnormally cold. frigid to where you even started to adapt to his chilled temperature.

“no why….” you started, feeling your throat tighten. “why are you asking me that, kento?” you sniffle, tightly interlocking your fingers with his.

he stares at you with a warm smile spreading across his lips.

regardless of his current position, peacefully resting his back against the ground—his inevitable fate had finally caught up to him.

nanami’s breathing patterns changed significantly. everything was so loud, all he could make out through his peripherals was splotches of blur and your pretty worried face. “. . because,” he continues, and his speech was so slow. you could tell he was trying to get every word out, every syllable, every vowel. just for you and only you. “i’m about to find out, my love . .”

your irises focused on him. nothing else, no one else—just him.

you’ve never seen him like this. so pale, so weak, so . . . scared.

his pure emotion, it showed in his eyes. his perfect brown eyes that you never failed to get lost in. for the first time in what was probably forever, nanami felt…scared. he tried his best to conceal it in front of you though. but even his best wasn’t enough, because you probably knew him better than you knew yourself.

“don’t say things like that, kento,” you mutter, already feeling that annoying plump knot rise up in your throat. your breath was shaky, tremble after tremble. “you’re fine. you can get up. we can get up.”

he knew when you said we, you implied that you’d both be walking away together — hand in hand, like in those stupid cheesy movies you’d watch with him every sunday after he gets off work. but alas, reality was quite harsh to face. an even more incredible tough pill to swallow. nanami knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

it was irksome, you had to squeeze your eyes shut to prevent a single tear to roll down your cheek.

nanami’s eyelids were hanging on by a thread, just barely open. he was trying—trying so hard to hang on, a small pout curls against his lips before he huffs out a single breath.

“ah . . forgive me, you’re right,” he says, his thumb swiftly stroking the front of your hand. a single tear escapes past your lower damp eyelid. even his voice sounded different. a voice you grew to love, so sweet and protective. it now sounded incredibly tired. you could hear a slight wheeze between breaths of his. “hey, don’t cry. don’t do that, look at me.”

his voice was so soft, you sniffled—despising the irritating tears that started to run down both sides of your temples. if it was anything nanami couldn’t stand, it was that he couldn’t stand to see the love of his life shed such sweet pitiful tears for him.

you looked at him, watching his eyelids struggle to stay open for you. everything ached, his body didn’t even feel like his own anymore. it was an indescribable feeling from when he got struck, laying against the slick cold floor of the shibuya train station.

“. . d-don’t leave me,” was all you managed to say, your lips was trembling, your heart pounded and you didn’t wanna say goodbye just yet. “kento, i need you.”

“hm? what are you mumblin’ about, sweetheart? ‘m right here.” his voice, it sounded happier.

you furrowed your eyebrows, now finding yourself buried into nanami’s bare chest, damp chin pressing against his pecs and all.

you were here safe and sound, snuggled up all against him, as you should be. it took you a long while to calm down, he’s staring at you with a soft loving gaze—a brief look of concern before you mumble out a, “..kento? are you okay?”

“why wouldn’t i be, baby?” nanami hums, a soft thumb stroking your back. with a relaxed breath, he leans in to plant a gentle kiss near the very tip of your forehead. his touch was forevermore soothing, a touch you never wanted to forget.

you let off a jittery sigh of relief, finally coming to the conclusion that it was another one of your horrid nightmares. you had nothing to worry about.

he was fine.

you were fine,

everything was fine.

. . is what you kept telling yourself.

nanami never told you those words, he didn’t kiss the tip of your forehead or stroke your back lovingly whilst staring into your eyes. the only true unbearable truth was that nanami was gone.

he was gone, and his last words weren’t even “i love you,” or “i’m sorry.” on his fatal dying breaths, nanami’s last words to you while squeezing your hand, sliding a ring into your palm, he rasps out a breathy, “will . . you marry me?”

but before you could tell him yes, he was already gone.

[sheyfu]

"𝐦𝐢 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐚, 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞"

》 𝗉𝖺𝗂𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀: 𝗂𝗍𝗈𝗌𝗁𝗂 𝗌𝖺𝖾 𝗑 𝖿𝖾𝗆!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋 (all characters featured are aged up!!)

》 𝗀𝖾𝗇𝗋𝖾: 𝖿𝗅𝗎𝖿𝖿, 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝖾𝖽𝗒, 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍 𝖺𝗇𝗀𝗌𝗍?

》 𝖼𝗐: 𝗌𝗐𝖾𝖺𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀; 𝗌𝖺𝖾 𝗀𝖾𝗍𝗌 𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖺𝗌𝗌𝖾𝖽 𝖻𝗒 𝖺 𝗐𝗈𝗆𝖺𝗇 (𝖾𝗋𝗆); 𝗌𝖺𝗂𝖽 𝗐𝗈𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝖻𝖺𝖽-𝗆𝗈𝗎𝗍𝗁𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎; 𝖺𝗅𝖼𝗈𝗁𝗈𝗅𝗂𝗌𝗆; 𝗈𝗅𝗂𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝖺𝗂𝗄𝗎; 𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗌 𝗈𝖿 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝖽𝗌; 𝗋𝖾𝗉𝖾𝗍𝗂𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾 𝗉𝗁𝗋𝖺𝗌𝖾𝗌; 𝗅𝗈𝗇𝗀 𝖻𝗎𝗂𝗅𝖽 𝗎𝗉 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖺𝗇𝗍𝗂-𝖼𝗅𝗂𝗆𝖺𝖼𝗍𝗂𝖼 𝖾𝗇𝖽𝗂𝗇𝗀; 𝗈𝗍𝗈𝗒𝖺 𝖾𝗂𝗍𝖺; 𝗍𝗋𝗂𝖾𝖽 𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗈𝗋𝗉𝗈𝗋𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗆𝗒 𝗀𝗈𝗈𝖿 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗂𝗍 𝖽𝗂𝖽𝗇’𝗍 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗄 𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗌𝗈 𝗇𝗈𝗐 𝗂’𝗆 𝗌𝗍𝗎𝖼𝗄 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝖺 𝖼𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 :(; 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁𝗍 𝗈𝖼𝖼𝗎𝗋𝗋𝖾𝖽; 𝗌𝖺𝖾 𝗂𝗌 𝗉𝗋𝗈𝖻𝖺𝖻𝗅𝗒 𝗈𝗈𝖼 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗐𝗍𝗏; 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗉𝗋𝗈𝗈𝖿𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽; 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝖺 𝖻𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋 (𝗌𝖺𝖽) 😓😓

》 𝗐𝖼: 1064 (longest piece of dookie i've written)

you were currently with itoshi sae attending, in his words, “a stupid clout chasing event for influencers to leech on footballers”, listening to shidou ryusei ramble about how he and otoya eita randomly bumped into beyoncé in the shibuya train station, when you suddenly felt the need to go to the lavatory. just when he was getting to the good part. silently excusing yourself, you let go of sae’s hand as you made a beeline towards the venue’s bathroom. 

meanwhile outside, while shidou was telling the group about how beyoncé called him a sweetheart after getting his shirt signed, a young woman approaches the football stars’ table and sits down beside sae, interrupting whatever the loudmouth was going to say next. the whole group looks at her with question marks above their heads as she makes herself comfortable beside the prodigy. 

excuse me but, who are you? isagi yoichi was the first to speak up, eyeing the woman with a raised eyebrow. “oh! my bad! forgot to introduce myself, whoopsies!” she said with a laugh so annoying, sae almost physically winced. “i’m kento mirai! but you can call me mai for short!! i’m currently modeling for abibas!! oh also! i’ve worked with sae before, you could say we have a lot of chemistry together, right sae darling?” her high-pitched voice rings in sae’s ears as he tries not to roll his eyes at the woman. 

it’s not a lie though. but it’s not exactly true. yes, they’ve worked together for the brand but the chemistry she was talking about was simply a tale—they had no chemistry at all. everyday at the scene, she was always either beside sae or looking for sae, and even forcing herself into his personal space. it had gotten so bad to the point that sae was very tempted to call the project manager and drop it. but of course, his manager talked his ear off saying if he did decide to call mister PM, he’d reduce the player’s consumption of his beloved ichibo steak to only once a month—what a jerk. 

anyways. 

his trance is cut off by the thing beside him, talking her ear off. my head hurts. sae grimaces as he looks around the venue to look for you, spotting you by the bar ordering some drinks from him and you. perfect. just at the right time, mi amor. 

he stands up but just as he was about to go to you, a harsh grip on his wrist is enough to tear his eyes away from you. he looks down to his captor’s hand with a raised eyebrow. “what do you want, woman?” he jerks his arm away from her yet she doesn’t let go. he looks again at your direction and he sees that you’re gone. he panics. yet for some reason, he can’t get away from this woman’s grip. “saeeee.” she whines. “don’t leave yet! I’m not yet done talking to you!”

now. sae isn’t a fan of hurting women—he’s a fan of women! they’re really amazing, yeah. but at this moment, he suddenly wants to abandon all his feminism and push her off a cliff. tch. 

“hey man, d’ya think we should ya know, ask her to leave?” sae hears chigiri hyoma’s worried voice whisper to oliver aiku. please do. sae inwardly pleads to the gods above as he side eyes the pair. “nah, ‘s getting ‘ntresting.” aiku slurs, clearly under the influence. damn fuckin' traitor. sae feels a harsh tug on his arm, almost dragging him down to the couch. what a strong woman. she whines again. fine. if you want to do it the hard way, then i’ll give you hell. sae thinks.

“let me go, please.” he cringes at his use of words. “i have a wife to look for and if you don’t let go of me now i’ll have to call the security.” he says, hoping for her to get the hint. 

she does.

but just not in the way sae hoped.

“your wife? oh! that y/n l/n? oh please! i don’t even know what you see in her! i mean, she’s nothing but a lowlife! clearly using you for money! i’d be so much better for you, my sae.” erm. okay. what the hell. sae’s hella conflicted now. he doesn’t know if he wants to take the risk and run away from her or beat the living shit out of her. 

he feels her body hug him from the back and before sae knew it, he pushed her away and let out everything he wanted to say to her.

“listen here, woman. my wife is the kindest and purest soul there is on earth. she brings heaven to me and lights up whatever emo shit is inside me. everything she says and everything does makes me all giddy and shit. and unlike you, her and i actually have chemistry. so i suggest you get the fuck out of my sight before i call security to feed you to the tigers or something. also, she's the only one who can make me giggle and kick my feet up in the air. fuck you.”

okay, maybe that was too much. but at least he defended your honor. common sae w. he thinks as he turns around to search for you, only to find you in front of him with the dopey smile he’s loved for eternity. he hears the cheers and snickers of the table, and even someone saying “oooh he popped off” (probably bachira meguru), yet the only thing he really cares about is you. 

“so, my dear husband.” you say with a smirk on your face. “i light up the emo shit inside you”, huh? how romantic.” sae flushes and grabs his drink from your hand, chugging it and putting the glass on the table. 

shut up. it's cuz you took too long in the washroom. did 'ya take a shit or somethin'? he says as he drags you to the exit of the venue. you hurriedly chug your drink and say your goodbyes to the rambunctious group of boys. 

and as you enter the car, sae’s next words surprise you,

“i won’t lie though, i kinda ate that shit up a while ago. maybe we should attend more of these events. what d’ya say, mi vida?” 

what a goofball of a husband you have. 

HELLOOOO i hope this was enjoyable for everyone ahu ahu 😓😓 unfortunately this is NOT a banger and my experiment of adding my goof into a piece failed erm 😓😓 still, thank you for reading!! hopefully, i'll post more bangers once i get out of my silly sad mood ahu ahu 😓😓 as always, reblogs, comments and likes are very much appreciated!!

[konigbabe]

PERISH

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x gn!reader Word count: 1.6k Tags/warnings: no y/n; manga spoilers (post Shibuya timeline); canon-compliant; angst; death; emotional breakdown; hurt/no comfort; loss; grief Summary: For the first time in a long time, Satoru Gojo, the epitome of strength, breaks. Happy start of JJKS2 writing week.

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November 2018 8 minutes until Satoru Gojo’s unsealing

"Don’t worry, I’ll make it on time. I’m right behind the corner."

"We can wait," Yuji’s voice carries through the car, the static of the Bluetooth speaker occasionally cracking.

It feels like years have passed since you last saw him. Sealed away in the prison realm, Gojo’s state remains a mystery. There’s no telling how being locked in a place where time and space don’t exist can affect even the strongest minds.

That’s what worries you. What if he’ll break? What if he goes crazy on all of you? What if he explodes; wipes you all out with his technique? An endless sea of ‘what if’ swirls inside your mind as you take another turn, the mountains on your left with an ocean view on your right.

"Don’t," you reassure the youngster, "don’t wait any longer."

"You should be here, though," Megumi jumps into the conversation, "You’re closest to that idiot. He’ll want to see you."

His words draw a smile on your lips. It’s finally happening. The sleepless nights are coming to an end with the arrival of your lover.

"Then I’ll just opt for a dramatic entrance while you keep him busy," you respond before tightening your hands on the wheel. A familiar feeling washes over you; sudden knowledge of a new presence. Heart picking up, your eyes search the road for the source while the car’s speed slowly drops.

32 seconds; that’s how long it takes you to locate the source. A curse spirit manifestation stands in the middle of the road, blocking you. Its small hunched build stands a mere meter above the ground; four arms decorated by translucent fins hanging by its body, the prehnite skin glistening in the last rays of today’s sun, giving off a wet, moist appearance.

"Boys," you announce, stopping Yuji’s and Megumi’s bickering while still keeping up the cheerful, light voice in an attempt to not raise suspicions about your current predicament, "don’t wait any longer. Unseal Satoru and stop worrying ‘bout me. It’ll be fine."

Bringing the car to a slow halt, Yuji’s tone shifts into a more attentive one as your name seeps through the speaker before you hang up after one more reassurance.

As you step out of the vehicle, the curse's malevolence engulfs the air, almost tangible in its intensity. It clings to the atmosphere like a poisonous fog, penetrating your senses with a pungent sulfuric odor that threatens to overwhelm you.

Your hand slips inside your jacket to retrieve a carefully preserved seal, reserved for such precarious situations; just like this one.

"I’m sorry," with every footfall, the curse seems to shrink in size, yet its malicious nature grows stronger, the smell of sulfur almost suffocating, "but I’m in a hurry right now and you," pointing the parchment paper towards the spirit, "are in my way."

Swift and precise, your movements carry an aura of practiced precision. With little effort, you firmly press the seal upon the spirit's head, causing it to stumble momentarily before dissipating into thin air, vanquished by the power contained within the sigil.

Yet, the energy lingers.

Stronger than before. Stronger than a second ago. Its absent defense, non-existent attempt to fight or flee…it all makes sense now —

A powerful grip; a strong hand adorned with talons as keen as the finest blades dig into your shoulder as an inhuman force pushes you to the side.

As you're thrust aside, your vision catches a subtle glimmer of chrysolite, a hue that seeps into your perception; its scales are sturdy, each edge honed to a dangerous sharpness. Driven by instinct and the will to protect yourself, you reach out, your hand making contact with the curse spirit’s scaly hide.

The jagged edges of its scales cut into the delicate flesh of your fingers, leaving trails of crimson in their wake.

— it was a decoy.

Your body collides with the unforgiving side of the mountain, back meeting the rough and unyielding surface. A symphony of pain resonates within your bones, their structural integrity compromised as multiple cracks reverberate through your form.

Gasping for breath, your body instinctively seeks solace, but find none amidst the terrain. The curse doesn’t wait either. Swiftly moving forward, it lunges at you. Unforgiving. With a clear intent to strike. To kill.

During Satoru Gojo’s unsealing

There is no pain. The moment the curse’s hand breaches the barrier of your chest, you expect it. Expect some kind of visceral reaction. But there’s none — a gentle pinch, akin to a fleeting touch when the sharp claws first pierce through the protective layers of your breastplate. A slight discomfort upon the feeling of having a foreign object that’s found its place within the confines of your ribs. The barrier of your rib cage offers minimal resistance, yielding to the relentless advance that seeks to reach the very core of your being. The heart.

It all feels confusing.

"Kenjaku sends his regards," it whispers, the words slurred by the razor-sharp fangs that protrude from its mouth.

October 31, 2018 — 8:09 PM

"What’s the worst that can happen?"

Satoru saunters around the corner of the table, his presence punctuated by the audible slurping of juice from a small cartoon container. All while your palms rest on top of the said furniture, fingernails tapping at the surface.

The news has spread fast through the jujutsu community, faster than wildfire. Whispers of an unknown curtain cast around Shibuya an hour ago, trapping all non-sorcerers, innocent civilians, inside its insidious grasp with only one demand: Bring Satoru Gojo.

"Don’t say it like that, Satoru," you turn to face the man whose casual and dismissive demeanor only adds fuel to the worries setting inside your bones.

"They’re a bunch of curses," his hand finds its place on your hip bone while placing the empty container away, "Some special grades, yeah, but they’re weak compared to me. I’ll deal with them, save some people in the meantime, and bam," he snaps his fingers loudly, "We can go home. Get that sunset date you’ve been babbling about. Life is good," he finishes with a kiss on the crown of your head.

Life is good.

You watch the sun dip below the horizon behind the curse spirit’s back, indulging the sinister being in a halo glow.

Yeah. In the end, life was good.

2 hours and 48 minutes after Satoru Gojo’s unsealing

For a moment, he stands still. Unable to look down; frozen in time. The weight of it all seems to bear down upon his shoulders – now that Sukuna’s taken over Megumi’s body, Nanami’s and Yaga’s death, Suguru’s body being used as a vessel, the slow crumbling fall of the Jujutsu world – and now you; being gone.

Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer of the current time. Yet even his immense power proves futile as the people he loves keep dying on him…because of him.

A burden that threatens to crush him beneath its insurmountable gravity.

The air around him hangs heavy with sorrow, as if the very essence of grief has manifested itself in the atmosphere. A storm of emotions swirls within him; a combination of disbelief, anguish and a gnawing ache that gnashes at the core of his being.

He clenches his fists, fingers trembling with a mixture of sorrow and determination. In that agonizing moment, he finds the strength to finally lower his gaze, to confront the devastating truth that lies at his feet.

Everyone holds their breaths, the weight of his misery echoing in the silence as his eyes meet the lifeless visage of the one he holds dearest.

Of you.

Hand reaching out, his fingers graze the once-soft flesh of your hand; now cold and stiff. It serves as a confirmation of reality. There’s no getting you back, no way Shoko can nurture you back to health with her technique.

You’re gone.

And in that harrowing instant, the façade crumbles. The walls he built to contain his pain come crashing down, and Satoru Gojo, the epitome of strength, breaks.

Crumbling down on his knees, the vulnerability that spills forth from his broken form is raw and unrestrained. Only a handful of those closest to him stand behind to witness the symphony of torment that pierces the silence. Tears stream down his face, each drop carrying the weight of a thousand unspoken words, moments you two could’ve spent together.

One hand covering his mouth to silence the guttural sounds, the other reaches out to you, tenderly cradling your lifeless head upon his lap. He clings to the fragile hope that if he could provide just enough warmth and love, you might return to him.

Yuji looks around the room, at the people who silently observe their friend fall apart. Taking a step towards the hunched man, a soft grasp stops him mid step; Kiyotaka shakes his head, pushing his glasses back in place as Shoko looks down. For the first time, she’s unable to figure out her classmate, her childhood friend, the man whose side she’s always stayed by.

"Gojo," Yuji doesn’t allow Kiyotaka to stop him. Believing in what’s right, he stands behind his teacher’s back.

Hand laying on the tense muscle of his shoulder, he doesn’t attempt to comfort Satoru with any words — no words in this universe would bring you back anyway. Instead, his hand just rests there. Unmoving. Gentle.

"Who did it," his words cause Shoko to look back up as Satoru, stone-faced and stoic, speaks in a firm, devoid voice. Imagines of unspeakable horror flashes in his mind as he stands up, towering over the wide-eyed Yuji.

"Tell me now," his eyes search Kiyotaka’s, voice filled with undeniable authority, "I’ll kill them, kill them all."

[sashisuse]

okay so what we’re not going to do is villainize shoko.

jjk 261 spoilers, thoughts, and a brief analysis of shoko. (and touching on some sashisu stuff. more specifically the sash part.)

i see a lot of people bashing her for not having a reaction to the body swapping plan and that satoru was like ���i’m mostly surprised shoko didn’t object’ SO. here’s what i’ve got to say.

shoko didn’t object because she was fully under the belief that satoru was going to win. that it wasn’t going to happen. it was literally the worst worst worst WORST case scenario. she had SO MUCH faith in satoru.

let’s rewind back to the shibuya arc. what we knew about shoko at that time regarding her use of cigarettes was that she had quit five years (iirc) prior to those events. her smoking habits literally revolve around satoru’s wellbeing.

mind you this was after she and yaga learned satoru had been sealed. she heard the news and immediately began smoking. why? because shoko is a person who masks her emotions and she does it well. she’s not the type of woman to break down in tears. she’s going to hide it and instead light up a cigarette.

we saw this with her interaction with suguru. she acted very nonchalant about his defection and the massacre he committed on the village and his parents. but when we fast forward ten years and go to jjk0, it’s made abundantly clear that she still cares about him. during the meeting where yaga declares they’re going to kill suguru — i’m pretty sure his words were ‘exorcise the curse that is geto suguru’ or something along those lines — shoko leaves. she flat out walks out. and during the night parade of 100 demons, we have a moment where see the most emotion out of shoko that we have for the majority of the series. she’s angry. she’s hurt. she has these thoughts of something along the lines of like ‘you sure made a mess for us’ regarding suguru. and it’s especially prominent because it’s the first time we’ve ever seen her like this and only time. the closest we get to seeing that again is during the sukuna fight.

she literally cares so much but she’s just emotionally constipated and doesn’t know how to show it 😭 it’s an issue both she and satoru have. they deflect. they mask. they move on and yet the carry it with them somewhere deep inside them.

so we go back forward to satoru and sukuna’s fight. where we do see emotion from shoko but what’s most important to note is the panels she’s in. when they focus on her, she’s either smoking a cigarette, lighting a cigarette up, or we see her surrounded by cigarette butts.

we see her genuinely fearful at this point. she had full confidence that satoru was going to win. that’s why she said ‘do what you want’ and didn’t object. because in her mind, it wouldn’t happen.

it’s very important to remember that sashisu, whether you see it in a romantic or platonic way, was a group that cared so fucking deeply for one another. their bonds were deep. their love for their found family was deep. it’s part of the reason why suguru defected in the end. which i can get it into but not at this time. but at the end of the day, sashisu had ass communication skills and failed to properly understand one another.

and that seems to continue on with the satoshoko side of that, which was left after suguru left. and after he died.

also, it’s really important to remember that shoko is not like satoru and suguru. she’s a healer. that’s it. that’s all she does. she doesn’t get to fight or be on the front lines like they do. she’s the one who gets to wait behind and wait until the damage is done to do her job. she’s been doing this since she was (probably) 15, maybe even younger since we don’t know her backstory. she’s going to be emotionally detached. also, keep in mind this page:

specifically her first piece of dialogue. ‘it’s more like we have to do it.’

and that’s the bottom line.

whew. this was rough. shoko ieiri you will always be loved by me.

[mononijikayu]

i love you so — nanami kento.

One evening, as you watched the sunset together from your porch, Kento spoke, his voice filled with a sense of finality and peace. "I didn’t think I’d live long enough to retire from all of this." he admitted, the hint of a smile on his lips. "But being here with you… it feels like we’ve made it." You rested your head against his shoulder, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. "We did," you whispered. "And now, we can live the life we always dreamed of." Kento’s arm wrapped around you, pulling you close. "I couldn’t have done any of this without you, sweetheart." he said quietly. "Thank you… for staying." You closed your eyes, the sound of the waves crashing softly in the distance. "There’s nowhere else I’d rather be."

GENRE: Alternate Universe - Canon Convergence;

WARNING/s: Post-Shibuya Arc, R-18, Smut, Oral (F! Receiving) P to V Sex, Romance, Friends to Lovers, Husband and Wife, Friendship, Husband! Nanami, Reader! Wife, Fluff, Drama, Comfort, Falling In Love, Flirting, Fix-It, Humor, Domesticity, Family Life, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Idiots In Love, Light-Hearted, Slice of Life, Pining, Nanami Being A Great Husband;

WORDS: 6.8k words.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: this is was in a queue. i remember having a bad stomach ache writing this and just really giving up on writing because i really was not having a good day. this is not the last we'll see of sorcerer nanami. and god, we deserve a lot of fix-its for the ending. i'll give it to yall once the exam era is over. the upcoming stuff will be from queued up stuff. but thank you for being patient. i love you all!!! enjoy <3

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safe and sound | i love you so

next: say so.

YOU WERE GLAD THAT YOUR HUSBAND WAS LIVE. From this moment on, you knew that there was nothing but relief now. Sleepless nights in recovery as he gets better, staying by his side most days as he tries to get himself better every single day. You yourself halted any production on your upcoming book, taking leave despite the amount of workload that you have to deal with. None of that mattered.

You just wanted to be there for your husband. Everything else can wait. Every little bit of the world can stop. You just wanted to be here with your husband. He was your everything. You did not want to miss a single thing. Because the gods know you were only happier, more relieved, knowing your husband is alive. Kento was here, and that was all you were happy about. 

As you sat by Kento's bedside, the room was quiet, save for the occasional beep of the medical equipment. His chest rose and fell in steady, rhythmic motions, a reassuring sign that he was slowly, but surely, recovering. You held his hand tightly, feeling the warmth of his skin, and that alone was enough to soothe the ache that had been gnawing at your heart for weeks.

"You're still here." Kento's voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but it carried the weight of both surprise and gratitude. “Sweetheart, I was going to be out later today. They would have called you.”

"Of course I am." you replied, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead. " And that hardly matters. I’m not going anywhere."

Kento gave a small, tired smile, his fingers curling weakly around yours. "You should be working on that book of yours… your editor—"

"She can wait. None of that matters. You know that." you interrupted gently, squeezing his hand. "You’re more important."

He sighed, a blend of relief and exasperation. "You’re going to get in trouble."

You shook your head, a soft laugh escaping your lips. "Let them be mad. I’m not missing a single moment of this, Kento. I almost lost you." Your voice trembled slightly, betraying the depth of your fear. "I don’t care about anything else right now. Just you."

His eyes softened as he looked at you, a quiet understanding passing between you both. "I’m sorry, sweetie." he murmured, his thumb brushing over the back of your hand. "For worrying you."

"You don’t have to be, my love." you whispered. "You’re here. That’s all that matters. And I’ll be here every step of the way. Every appointment, every session with Ieiri–san, every movement therapy… I’ll be there."

Kento closed his eyes briefly, the weight of your words sinking in. "Thank you," he said after a long pause, his voice thick with emotion. "For everything."

You leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. "We’re in this together." you whispered. "And I’m not going anywhere."

Months passed, and with each day, Kento grew stronger. The slow but steady process of recovery, while challenging, had brought you even closer. You watched with quiet pride as Kento regained his strength, the grueling hours of movement therapy gradually paying off.

His once rigid, exhausted frame was replaced by the poised and determined man you had always known. There was a renewed warmth in his smile, one that hadn’t been there for so long—a smile that reflected the inner peace he was beginning to find.

Shoko's treatments had been a blessing, and the relief of hearing the doctors say that Kento no longer needed constant hospital visits lifted a tremendous weight off your shoulders. The news that he only needed to check in every few months was like music to your ears. He was coming home, truly home.

As you stepped through the door of your house, Kento at your side, it felt like you were walking into a new chapter of your lives. The space felt different now—warmer, more alive.

You could already picture your mornings together, the sound of soft footsteps as Kento would sneak out early for his morning ritual of visiting the neighborhood market. You imagined him returning with a fresh loaf of bread tucked under one arm, and a bottle of fresh cow milk in the other, his face calm and content in the simple act of shopping.

On the first morning he was well enough, Kento insisted on preparing breakfast. You tried to offer help, but he gently waved you off, a small smile on his lips. "Let me take care of this," he said, his tone warm but firm. "You've done more than enough for me."

You watched him move around the kitchen, still a bit slow, but determined. The smell of fresh eggs and toast filled the air, mingling with the quiet hum of morning. The way he set the table, with such careful deliberation, made your heart swell. It was perfect. Simple, but perfect.

Breakfasts became a cherished part of your daily routine, something so small, yet filled with an endless sense of joy. Kento would tell you about the sights he saw at the market, or the latest book he’d started reading at the park nearby.

The two of you would sit by the window, the sunlight spilling in, and laugh about little things, about nothing at all. It was in those moments, you felt time slow down, allowing you to savor every second.

There were no more looming threats, no more hospitals or sleepless nights. Just the quiet, steady rhythm of life together, a life you had both fought so hard to protect. The weight of the past, though never forgotten, had softened into something you could live with.

"You know," Kento said one morning, his voice cutting through the soft clink of breakfast dishes, "I never thought I’d be able to do this again. Just… enjoy the small things."

You looked up from your cup of tea, meeting his eyes. "It’s the small things that matter most," you replied gently. "And I’m just happy that we get to enjoy them together."

Kento nodded, his gaze lingering on you for a moment longer. "I wouldn’t have made it without you," he said, his voice full of quiet gratitude.

You reached across the table, taking his hand in yours. "We made it through together. That’s all that matters."

In the silence that followed, the world felt right. No grand gestures, no dramatic moments. Just you, Kento, and the simple joy of being together. Nothing felt more right than this. Your husband let his own cup of tea rise towards his lips. As he took a sip, he put it away to the side.

"Do you remember what I told you about Malaysia?" he asked, his voice low, but filled with a calm certainty.

You nodded, already knowing where this was going. "How could I forget? You always spoke about wanting to settle there, once everything was over."

Kento glanced at you, his gaze thoughtful and tender. "Well, now that I’m officially done with Jujutsu… I think it’s time." He looked away for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. "I’ve always dreamed of living somewhere quieter, where we can have a little peace. No more exorcisms, no more danger." He paused, his eyes meeting yours again. "What do you think?"

The mere thought of a life far from the chaos of Tokyo made your heart ache with hope. "I think it's perfect. A fresh start, just the two of us." you replied softly, your hand finding his. “And I can work from there. My job isn’t going to be a problem, my love.”

Kento squeezed your hand gently, his expression one of contentment. "You’ve been by my side through everything. Now, I want us to live for ourselves. To finally have that peace we both deserve."

A few weeks later, after countless preparations and farewells, the two of you found yourselves on a flight to Kuantan, Malaysia. As the plane descended, the sight of lush greenery, the vast ocean, and the golden sun made you both smile. It felt like the promise of a new beginning.

Once settled in a small, cozy house near the beach, Kento seemed more at ease than you had seen him in years. His once-tense shoulders were relaxed, and his usual seriousness was softened by the tranquility of your new surroundings. You spent your days walking along the shoreline, enjoying the warm breeze, and talking about everything and nothing.

One evening, as you watched the sunset together from your porch, Kento spoke, his voice filled with a sense of finality and peace.

 "I didn’t think I’d live long enough to retire from all of this." he admitted, the hint of a smile on his lips. "But being here with you… it feels like we’ve made it."

You rested your head against his shoulder, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. "We did." you whispered. "And now, we can live the life we always dreamed of."

Kento’s arm wrapped around you, pulling you close. "I couldn’t have done any of this without you, sweetheart." he said quietly. "Thank you… for staying."

You closed your eyes, the sound of the waves crashing softly in the distance. "There’s nowhere else I’d rather be."

EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT LIKE THIS. The days in Kuantan unfold with a rhythm that feels almost surreal after all that you have been throughMornings begin with the soft call of birds and the gentle hum of the ocean, a sound that soothes the remnants of tension in both of you.

You often wake up before the sun rises, taking comfort in the sight of Kento beside you—his expression unguarded, his brow no longer furrowed in worry. The air is warm, yet fresh, carrying the scent of the sea into your room.

The two of you have created a ritual of watching the sunrise together. Wrapped in a light blanket, you step out onto the balcony, where the sky slowly transforms from deep indigo to a golden hue.

The sight of it never fails to bring a sense of calm, especially as Kento stands beside you, his arm slipping easily around your waist. There’s something about the quiet mornings that feel intimate, as though you’re the only two people in the world, basking in a new life that finally feels your own.

Breakfasts are leisurely affairs, often consisting of fresh tropical fruits and steaming cups of coffee. Nanami has taken to savoring the local flavors with surprising enthusiasm, showing a side of him you hadn’t seen before—one of curiosity and delight in the simple pleasures of life. He’s no longer the man burdened by duty, but someone who has learned to slow down, to breathe.

After breakfast, the two of you wander into town, where the locals have already come to recognize Nanami’s stoic figure and your frequent visits to the markets. Kuantan's streets are bustling, but in a way that’s gentle and inviting, not overwhelming. 

The sea breeze follows you wherever you go, and the chatter of vendors becomes a comforting background noise. You notice how Nanami’s posture is relaxed, his eyes softer as he greets familiar faces or stops to buy ingredients for lunch.

He’s taken up cooking more often, and you enjoy watching him experiment in the kitchen with local recipes, his focus now on perfecting the blend of spices rather than wielding his cursed energy.

One afternoon, while you’re walking through a hidden path surrounded by lush greenery, Nanami suddenly stops. You look up at him, sensing he has something on his mind. His hand slides into yours, firm but gentle, a touch that speaks volumes of the man he is now—steady, grounded, and deeply content.

“I didn’t think I could ever feel this way, sweetheart.” he says, voice low but clear in the quiet of the jungle trail. “There was a time I thought peace was a luxury I’d never have.”

You squeeze his hand, knowing exactly what he means. The life you’ve built here is worlds apart from the chaos and danger you once faced together, but it's the very contrast that makes it so meaningful.

In the afternoons, you often visit the beaches. Teluk Cempedak has become your favorite spot—a place where the white sand meets crystal-clear water, and the two of you can walk for hours without encountering a soul.

Sometimes you swim in the sea, the cool water refreshing against your skin as Kento watches you with a fondness that never fades. His laughter, rare but heartfelt, comes more easily now, especially when you tease him about letting go of his suit in favor of the casual attire of your new coastal life.

It’s in these quiet, intimate moments that you notice the little changes in him. His guard is down, his movements less calculated and more relaxed. He no longer feels the weight of being a sorcerer, of having to constantly protect or fight. Instead, he’s allowed himself to simply be—Nanami Kento, a man enjoying the peace of a life he’s long deserved.

Evenings are your favorite part of the day. You sit on your veranda, facing the open expanse of the sea as the sun sets, casting brilliant hues of orange and pink across the sky. Nanami often sits beside you, a book in hand, though he rarely gets far in his reading. He’s more focused on the sound of your voice as you talk about your day, or simply enjoying the stillness that surrounds you both. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, you’ll put on soft music, and the two of you will dance slowly in the fading light, your bodies swaying in perfect harmony to a rhythm only you can hear.

One night, as you lie together in the gentle darkness, the sound of waves crashing in the distance, Nanami turns to you with a question of his own. “Did you ever think we’d make it here?”

You’re silent for a moment, reflecting on the years that led to this—of all the pain, the battles, the near misses, and the impossible choices. But now, with his arm draped across your waist and his steady breathing beside you, the answer feels simple.

“I always hoped we would, my love.” you whisper, your hand resting on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. “It was always a dream, to just go away and be happy together. Being together was always enough. Life exists to be lived when I have you, you know?”

Kento’s lips curl into the faintest of smiles as he pulls you closer. “I know. I feel the same way.”

And as you drift off to sleep, lulled by the sound of the sea and the warmth of Nanami beside you, you know that this peace—this life—was worth every struggle. Here, in Kuantan, you’ve finally found your sanctuary, a place where you and Nanami can truly be free.

The following weeks in Kuantan seem to melt together in a peaceful haze, each day blending into the next in a rhythm you’ve both come to cherish. The routines you’ve settled into feel like second nature now, but they never lose their charm.

Every shared meal, every walk along the beach, every quiet evening under the stars feels like a gift—a stark contrast to the fast-paced, dangerous life Nanami Kento had once lived.

You decide to explore your new home a little deeper as time passes by. Kuantan has more to offer than its beaches, and as much as you love the ocean, there’s something exciting about venturing further into the local culture.

You both find yourselves at the Sungai Lembing Mines, a historical site nestled amidst lush greenery. The air is cooler here, the dense forest canopy providing shade as you explore the remains of the old mining town. Kento, ever the thoughtful observer, takes in the details of the place with quiet interest.

As you walk through the narrow tunnels, dimly lit by soft lights, Kento surprises you by taking your hand, his thumb brushing over your knuckles. You glance at him, his face calm but focused as he guides you through the mine. The place seems to bring out a reflective mood in him.

“I used to think life was about surviving, you know? To come home to you.” he says, his voice echoing slightly in the enclosed space. “I never imagined I’d find a place where I could live—really live. Free from everything, from the pain.”

You smile at his words, understanding the weight behind them. For so long, both of you had lived on the edge, where peace seemed like a distant dream. But now, in this quiet corner of the world, you’ve found a way to truly live, just as he said.

“I’m glad we found it together, my love.” you reply, squeezing his hand gently.

Kento looks at you, his eyes softening with affection. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Later that afternoon, you visit the bustling Pasar Besar, the central market in Kuantan. The vibrant array of fruits, vegetables, spices, and street food is overwhelming in the best way.

You laugh as Kento samples unfamiliar snacks, his face betraying a rare look of surprise when something unexpected hits his palate. It’s moments like this—his subtle humor, the small ways he lets his guard down—that make you fall in love with him all over again.

You spot a stall selling batik cloth and decide to browse through the colorful fabrics. The intricate designs catch your eye, and soon enough, you’re holding up pieces, wondering which would look best as a gift. Nanami, standing beside you with his arms crossed, watches with quiet amusement as you deliberate over the choices.

“You’ll make the right decision, sweetie.” he says, his tone teasing but warm. “You always do.”

“I know I do.” You mumble back to him. “But what if I can’t decide?”

“Then buy as many as you want, sweetie. I’ll pay for it.” He grinned at you, kissing your forehead as you pouted at him. “Go on. Get as much as you like.”

Back at your home by the sea, the evenings continue to be your sanctuary. Tonight, the sky is clear, and the stars are brighter than ever. Kento is in the kitchen, cooking up one of the local dishes he’s learned to perfect—a spicy sambal to go with freshly grilled fish.

You sit at the table, watching him move around the small space with the same precision and care he once applied to missions and battles. There’s something comforting about seeing him this way, so at ease in the simple task of preparing a meal.

When he’s done, the two of you sit on the veranda, plates in hand, enjoying the quiet symphony of the night. The ocean breeze drifts through the air, and the sound of the waves creates a steady, calming backdrop to your meal.

Kento sits across from you, and though his expression remains composed, there’s a softness in his gaze as he looks at you—one that speaks of contentment, of having finally found his place.

As the night deepens, you both remain outside, not wanting to leave the serenity of the moment. The conversation flows easily, dipping into memories of the past but always returning to the present. You talk about everything and nothing—the little details of your day, plans for tomorrow, and the quiet joy of simply being together.

At one point, you catch  Kento standing on the porch, gazing out at the sea. The moonlight shimmered across the water’s surface, casting a silver glow that matched the contemplative look in his eyes. You quietly approached, leaning against the railing beside him, sensing he was lost in thought. His profile was softened by the pale light, yet his expression held a depth of reflection you hadn’t seen in a long time.

For a while, neither of you spoke. The sound of the waves rolling in gently filled the space between you, creating a calm, soothing rhythm. Finally, Kento broke the silence.

“You know, sweetie...” he began softly, his voice low and distant, as though he was speaking more to the sea than to you. “There was a time I didn’t think I’d ever end up living this life with you."

You turned to him, surprised by the vulnerability in his tone. He continued, still looking out at the endless horizon. "I mean, we had a lovely life in Tokyo. But I wasn’t sure I’d survive long enough to have this—to have you and well... this peace."

There was a long pause as he struggled to find the right words, his hand tightening slightly on the railing. "I thought I didn’t deserve it, you know?" he admitted, his voice barely a whisper now. "Especially with all the things I’ve done… the lives I’ve seen lost." He exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping under the weight of memories you knew he still carried.

You stepped closer, gently slipping your hand into his. His grip was warm, yet tentative, like he was grounding himself in this moment. You feel a lump form in your throat at his honesty. Your beloved Kento has always been pragmatic, a man who understood the brutal realities of the world, and hearing him speak of those doubts only makes the peace you’ve found more precious.

"And I... I still feel guilty," he continued, his voice thick with emotion. "Letting the kids do what I should be doing as an adult, as the one who’s been through it all. It feels like I abandoned them, like I took the easy way out by choosing this life with you."

The rawness in his confession made your heart ache. You squeezed his hand, feeling the depth of his inner turmoil. "Kento, my love….." you began softly, kissing his hand. "You didn’t abandon anyone. You’ve given so much of yourself to that world... to those kids. No one deserves peace more than you."

He turned to face you then, his eyes reflecting not only the moonlight but also the deep well of emotions he kept hidden. "But how do I live with this peace,sweetie?" he asked quietly. "How do I do it when I know others are still out there, fighting?"

You looked at him for a long moment, choosing your words carefully. "Because you’ve earned it, Kento. You’ve given your life, your time, your energy to protect others. Now, it’s time for you to live. And the kids... they look up to you, not because you’re out there fighting, but because of the wisdom you’ve shared. They’ll carry that with them. They will go on and be stronger because of what you taught them. Okay?”

He fell silent again, but this time, there was less tension in his posture. The guilt and doubt, though still present, seemed to soften in the wake of your words. He sighed deeply, a breath that felt like the release of a burden he'd been carrying for far too long.

"You’re right." he murmured, almost to himself. "I just need to let go." His gaze returned to the horizon, but this time, there was a quiet acceptance in his eyes.

You leaned your head on his shoulder, the two of you standing there in the quiet night, the sound of the sea a constant, gentle reminder that you were here, together. In that moment, you both found peace—not in the absence of guilt or regret, but in the choice to live for the present, for each other.

"I’m just glad you’re here, my love." you whispered, your voice barely audible against the sound of the waves.

Kento turned his head slightly, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head. "I’m glad I’m here too." he replied, his voice full of quiet gratitude.

“You’ve done all you could, my love.” you say softly, reaching across the table to take his hand. “Take your rest. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. Live, okay?”

Kento looks at you, his gaze filled with a tenderness that takes your breath away. “Together.”

Your lips echo the happiest smile you could ever give him. “Together.”

The night stretches on, and as you both sit in the comforting silence, hand in hand, you realize that these quiet, intimate moments are the culmination of everything you’ve been through. You made it. You were here at the finish line.

And here, in Kuantan, you’ve found a home not just in the place, but in each other. And for the first time in what feels like forever, the future seems bright, filled with the promise of many more peaceful nights like this one, together.

THE SUNSETS WERE ONE TO LOOK FORWARD TO. Everything about it was ever so breathtaking. You both couldn't understand what beauty was until you both saw the sunset for the first time. Somehow, the world had only come to make sense when you saw Kuantan's wonderous sunset for the first time.

The beach is bathed in the soft hues of the setting sun, the sky awash with shades of pink, orange, and purple. The gentle sound of the waves crashing against the shore forms a soothing backdrop, but it’s the heat building between you and Kento that holds your attention. The sand beneath your skin feels cool, a sharp contrast to the warmth radiating from his body as he hovers over you, his presence grounding yet electrifying.

His lips find your inner thigh first, a featherlight kiss that sends a ripple of anticipation through you. His breath is warm against your skin, and with every slow, deliberate movement, Kento teases you, heightening the tension that has been simmering all evening. His large hands caress your hips, his touch gentle yet firm, as if reminding you that you’re completely his in this moment.

He hums lowly, the vibrations of his voice traveling through you, sending shivers down your spine. His lips finally move to your womanhood, his touch both reverent and commanding.

You gasp softly, your fingers curling into the sand as his tongue brushes against your most sensitive spot, teasingly slow, savoring every reaction you give him. Each flick of his tongue, every press of his lips, is intentional, calculated to drive you wild.

The soft crashing of the waves matches the rhythm of his movements—slow, steady, and completely overwhelming. You feel your body respond to him in a way only he could elicit, the pleasure building slowly, winding tighter with each stroke of his tongue. He groans against you, the sound deep and satisfied, as if relishing the way your body reacts to him.

Your breath hitches, a soft moan escaping your lips as he pulls you deeper into this intimate dance. His pace remains patient, never rushing, drawing out every second of pleasure as if time itself has slowed down for just the two of you. He knows exactly how to work your body, how to make you feel cherished and consumed all at once.

“Kento…” you whisper, your voice trembling, but all you can hear is his deep hum of approval, his lips never leaving you, his focus entirely on your pleasure.

The intensity of the moment swells with the colors of the sunset around you, the world narrowing down to just him and the sensation of his mouth on you, guiding you toward the brink of bliss.

Nanami’s mouth moves with a calculated intensity, each flick of his tongue deliberate and unhurried, savoring every reaction. His grip on your hips tightens slightly, holding you in place as your body instinctively tries to shift from the overwhelming pleasure building inside you. The sun sinks lower, casting golden light across your skin, but you barely notice anything beyond the sensations Kento is pulling from you.

Your fingers twist into the sand, grasping for something solid as waves of pleasure roll through you. His tongue circles your sensitive nub, the rhythm maddeningly slow, before he pulls back, teasing you with a gentle kiss to your inner thigh. His breath is hot, mingling with the cool ocean breeze, sending a shiver down your spine.

He hums again, the low sound reverberating through your core as he returns his attention to your aching center. His tongue presses against you, swirling, as his fingers trace soft patterns over your thighs. The contrast of his teasing pace with the tight coil of need inside you is almost too much to bear.

"Patience, sweetie, hm?" he murmurs between movements, his voice low and teasing, the same words he used earlier still dripping with that calm authority that only Kento carries. Your body responds to him instinctively, hips bucking ever so slightly toward his mouth, seeking more of him, needing more.

“Kento… please, my love.” you moan, your voice barely audible, but full of raw desire. He smirks against your skin, clearly enjoying the way you’ve surrendered to him completely.

Instead of responding with words, he increases his pace just enough to push you closer to the edge. His tongue moves with a newfound fervor, flicking over your clit with just the right amount of pressure, drawing another soft moan from your lips. The sensation builds, the pleasure tightening low in your belly, curling and winding like a spring ready to snap.

Kento’s grip on your hips grows firmer, holding you steady as your body begins to tremble beneath him. You feel his fingers digging into your skin, grounding you as you teeter on the brink of release. His mouth works you with relentless precision, his movements growing more intense, more focused.

Your breathing becomes shallow, your heart racing as the tension inside you builds, each flick of his tongue sending you closer to the edge. The cool night air mixes with the heat radiating from your body, and with one final, perfect stroke of his tongue, the dam breaks.

A wave of pleasure crashes over you, your back arching as your release floods through you. You cry out his name, your fingers grasping at the sand as your body shakes with the force of your orgasm. Kento stays with you, his tongue moving slowly, gently, drawing out every last drop of pleasure until you’re left breathless and trembling beneath him.

He finally pulls away, his lips brushing your thigh one last time before he crawls up beside you, wrapping you in his strong arms. His breath is steady, calm, a stark contrast to the wild thrum of your heartbeat as you come down from your high.

The two of you lie there in the soft glow of the fading sunset, your body still humming with the aftershocks of your release. Nanami presses a soft kiss to your forehead, his thumb tracing lazy circles on your arm.

"You’re incredible, sweetie." he whispers, his voice full of admiration as he holds you close, the sound of the waves lulling you into a state of perfect contentment.

Kento’s strong arms around you feel like the safest place in the world as you lie there, his warmth radiating against your skin, contrasting with the cool breeze of the beach. The remnants of your release still pulse through your body, leaving you relaxed and utterly content, the sound of the waves adding to the peaceful rhythm of the moment.

He pulls you closer, resting his chin on top of your head, his fingers still tracing soft patterns along your arm. There's a quiet satisfaction in the way he holds you, as if he’s savoring the moment just as much as you are. The sun has dipped fully below the horizon now, and the sky is painted with deep purples and blues, the stars beginning to peek through the night’s curtain.

You shift slightly in his arms, tilting your head to look up at him. His eyes are soft, reflecting the dim light of the fading day, and there's a small, content smile tugging at the corners of his lips. In the stillness of the night, you can see the depth of his emotions in the way he looks at you, like you’re the only thing that matters to him at this moment.

“Kento…” you whisper, your voice soft, still breathless from the intensity of what just happened. There’s something unspoken in the air between you, something deeper than just desire.

He tilts his head down, brushing his lips gently against yours in a kiss that’s slow and tender, filled with the love and care he always shows you. It’s a stark contrast to the raw intensity of just moments ago, but it feels just as intimate, just as consuming.

“I love you, sweetheart.” he murmurs against your lips, his voice deep and full of warmth. “More than I could ever put into words.”

You feel your heart swell at his words, the sincerity in his tone making your chest tighten with emotion. It’s moments like this that remind you just how deeply you’ve fallen for him—his strength, his patience, the way he always knows exactly how to make you feel cherished.

“I love you too, Kento. More than you know.” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper. You nuzzle closer to him, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your cheek as you rest your head on his chest. His hand comes up to gently stroke your hair, his touch soothing as you lie together in the quiet.

“Fuck me, my love. Please.” you whisper breathlessly, your voice laced with need. “Need you, Kento.”

The playful edge in your tone catches him off guard, and a smirk dances on his lips. He raises an eyebrow, looking down at you with a mix of amusement and desire, his eyes glinting in the soft moonlight.

“Is that so?” he replies, a teasing lilt in his voice. “After everything we just did?”

You nod, biting your lip, feeling that familiar heat pooling in your belly again. The way he gazes at you ignites that fire within, the hunger mirrored in his own expression. There’s a magnetic pull between you, a need that feels insatiable.

With a low chuckle, Kento shifts, moving to hover over you once more, the cool sand beneath you feeling inviting as the warmth of his body envelops you. The playful teasing in his eyes remains, but there’s also a seriousness in the way he leans closer, his breath mingling with yours.

“How wanton. My precious sweetheart is wanton.” he murmurs, echoing his earlier words but with a different tone. He’s still in control, yet you can sense the excitement building in him as well. He brushes his lips against yours, a soft yet electrifying connection, before trailing kisses down your neck, each one igniting your skin.

Your body responds instinctively, arching into him, craving more of that sweet friction. You can feel the heat radiating from his body, your pulse quickening as he teases you, his hands exploring every inch of you, igniting every nerve ending.

“Tell me what you want, sweetheart.” he whispers, his voice low and gravelly, a hint of challenge lacing his words. The intensity in his gaze makes your heart race, the way he watches you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters.

You meet his eyes, determination swirling on your own. “I want you, Kento. Now.”

With that, he smiles, a wicked gleam in his eye, and his hands grip your thighs, pulling you closer. The anticipation hangs in the air, thick and intoxicating, as you both lose yourselves in this moment, ready to explore the depths of your desires once again under the fading light of the sunset.

Kento’s own gaze darkens with desire, but a small smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. "Patience, my dear sweetheart. I told you before." he murmurs, his tone low and teasing. His fingers move with deliberate slowness as he lowers his shorts, pulling down just enough for his thick, veiny cock to spring free. The sight of him makes your heart race.

He doesn't rush. Instead, he takes his time, rubbing his cock between your wet, needy folds, coating himself with your arousal. The sensation is maddening, and every time he slips his cock in just a little before pulling back out, you whine with frustration. You’re desperate for more, for him to fill you.

"You drive me crazy, sweetie." he growls, his large hands gripping your hips firmly. In one smooth motion, he pushes himself inside you, stretching you out in a way that feels so deliciously overwhelming. You gasp, your back arching off the sand as his cock fills you to the brim. He’s big, so big that even just the tip feels like it’s splitting you open.

"So big, Kento,oh—" you moan, your fingers digging into the sand as your body adjusts to the feeling of him buried so deep inside you. His groan rumbles through the air, the sensation of your walls gripping him tightly nearly sending him over the edge.

His hips press forward, and you feel the bulge in your tummy as he nestles himself even deeper into you. His thrusts are slow, controlled, and purposeful, driving you wild with the sweet agony of wanting more.

"You're squeezing me so tight, sweetheart." he grits out, his voice strained as he struggles to maintain his composure. “Too tight.”

Your husband’s slow pace remains deliberate, each slow thrust making you feel every inch of him as he stretches you so fully, so deeply. His hands grip your hips tighter, fingers digging into your skin as he pulls you against him, forcing you to take him completely. The sensation is overwhelming—his thick cock filling you, stretching your walls in a way that makes it hard to think of anything but him.

Your moans mix with the sound of the crashing waves, and the setting sun casts a warm glow over both of you, illuminating the scene in a soft, golden light. The contrast between the cool breeze on your heated skin and the fiery pleasure building inside you sends shivers down your spine.

“My love, please. Please….Oh, oh….” you beg, your voice barely a whisper, strained with the need for more. You can feel him twitching inside you, his control faltering slightly as your tightness drives him closer to the edge.

“Let me work you up, a little, hm? Patience, sweetie.” he rasps again, though the way his breathing grows more ragged tells you he’s not far from losing it himself. His cock glides in and out of you with a torturous rhythm, teasing you, keeping you right on the precipice without giving you the release you crave.

Desperate, you rock your hips against him, trying to take more, trying to force him deeper. The movement earns a low groan from him, and suddenly, his grip tightens, his control slipping as he slams into you harder, burying himself completely.

Your body arches beneath him, a sharp gasp escaping your lips as the intense pressure of him filling you sends waves of pleasure radiating through your entire body. His pace quickens, the lazy tease of his earlier movements replaced with the primal need to claim you, to make you feel nothing but him.

“Fuck, sweetie.” he growls, his voice deep and rough with lust. “You’re taking me so well—so tight, so fucking perfect. My little wife. Mine, mine. Only mine.” He thrusts into you harder, his cock dragging against your sensitive walls, hitting spots that make your vision blur.

Your hands grasp at the sand for stability, but it does nothing to ground you as pleasure builds inside you, coiling tight in your core. “Kento, I can’t—” You can barely get the words out, each thrust pushing you closer to the edge.

He leans down, his breath hot against your ear. “You can, sweetheart. You’re mine. Let go.”

His words, his voice, the feeling of his cock driving deeper and deeper—everything hits you all at once. With a cry, you fall apart beneath him, your body trembling as waves of ecstasy crash over you. Your walls clench around him, pulling him deeper as your orgasm takes over, leaving you breathless and shaking.

Kento groans, the tightness of your release pushing him to the brink. His thrusts grow erratic, his grip on your hips bruising as he chases his own release. With one final, deep thrust, he spills inside you, filling you completely as his body tenses and shudders against yours.

For a moment, the world stands still—the only sounds are the soft crash of waves and your labored breathing. Kento slowly pulls out of you, his cock still throbbing as he collapses beside you on the sand, pulling you into his arms.

The sun dips below the horizon, casting the last of its golden light over the two of you. Wrapped in his embrace, with the warmth of his body still lingering between your legs, you close your eyes, content in the quiet aftermath.

“I love you, Kento. So much. More than you know. ” you whisper, your voice barely audible above the ocean breeze.

He presses a kiss to your temple, his voice soft and tender. “I love you too, sweetheart. But I love you more.”

You laugh softly. “I won’t win against you, aren’t I?”

Kento smiled back, leaning forward to kiss you. “Hm, no. I love you too much, sweetheart. I think I’m willing to fight for the title.”

“Hm….then I will too.” You kiss his jaw, grinning at him. 

He laughs. “We’ll see, sweetheart.”

[augustinewrites]

cw: jjk manga spoilers (up to 221), blood, sword fights heh + note: it's finally here, and somehow it's worse than shibuya!

“is he gonna be mad?”

“satoru?” you snort lightly, taking another bite of your frozen yogurt. “he’s just going to ask if you won. he might try to take the sequel of that new book set you got as punishment— but i’ll see what i can do.” 

across the table, megumi huffs, leaning back into the plush booth. you’d picked him up early from school today, the reason being yet another suspension. his second since he’d started the school year. you suppose that’s the reason for his sullen disposition and existential crisis. 

“am i a bad person?”

you glance up at him in acknowledgement, but take a moment before answering. he stirs the frozen yogurt around in its cup, looking rather glum.

there’s a delicate way of going about these types of things. children (especially teenagers) are complicated creatures. they’re still at their most malleable, your words and actions shaping their very future.

“i don’t think you’re a bad person, megumi,” you answer softly, setting your spoon down. 

“but i…i keep doing bad stuff,” he argues dejectedly. “and— and i was mean to tsumiki—”

“hey. no one’s born wanting to do bad things,” you tell him. “and when they do…it’s usually more complicated than we think. there are bad situations where sometimes we have to do bad things. even if we don’t want to. even if we’re not proud of them.” 

“but how do you know that i’m not?” he asks again, and your heart aches. 

“because i know you,” you smile. “i’ve known you for eight years, megumi. yeah, i think you could afford to try using your words instead of your fists once in a while, and be a little nicer to your sister…but i know everything you do comes from a good place.”

megumi doesn’t reply, staring out the window with that pensive frown of his. all you can do is wonder if you and satoru have done right by him. if you’re doing right by him now. (such is the life of a parent, you suppose.)

all you can do is hope. 

“hey,” you grin, holding your hand out to him. “promise me something?”

_____

you stumble backwards, narrowly avoiding being gutted by a sword. gasping, your fingers fumble with the hem of your shirt, the material sliced right above the small, almost imperceptible bump of your stomach. 

your megumi would never hurt you. your megumi, your sweet, gentle boy who still muttered the song about bunny ears as he tied his shoes. who always offered his sister the last bite of cake, even though you knew he wanted it for himself. who cried the first time his shikigami were injured in battle. 

but this isn’t megumi.

you barely dodge the blade again, ducking and sending your demon dogs out to slow him down as you sprint down the alley. your heart shatters at the sound of a high-pitched whine, but you can’t stop, you can’t look back—

“going somewhere?”

you skid to a stop in front of him, staggering back as quickly as you can. 

megumi— no, sukuna stands in front of you now, holding a sword you’d taught his vessel how to make, how to use. 

“please,” you beg, thinking of tsumiki’s body a few blocks away. thinking of gojo in the prison realm. you can’t lose anyone else today. “please let him go.”

“i don’t think so,” he grins, sick and twisted as he slowly makes his way towards you. “if only he’d unlocked his full potential sooner. if only you had.” 

“he’s just a child.” you say, voice trembling. you look around. there’s no use in running. he’s gotten much too strong.

but you’re not ready to die either.

he wasn’t patient, lunging first and taking the offense. it’s a struggle to meet him at every swing, deflecting blows that send tremors down the sword’s point of impact and reverberate through your arms. 

playing defence is the smart move. you’d wait for an opening or a drop in his own defence. then your goal would be to disarm him and attempt to grant yourself an advantage. 

(in theory, at least.)

when your swords lock once more, he forces them to the side, kicking you square in the chest. the impact knocks you onto your back. before you can get up, he’s on top of you, driving his sword into your shoulder.

the pain is so blinding, so white-hot and tortuous that you almost immediately pass out when he pulls it free and tosses it out of your reach. 

sukuna is in your face now, lips peeled back into a smirk as he laughs, the top of his finger slowly dragging down your face.

“putting you down now would be letting this brat off too easy. doing it slowly, however—”

“get off her.”

your heart skips a beat. that voice. 

there’s a flash of recognition in megumi’s eyes. just a for a second. 

“satoru?” 

“is that any way to treat the person who washed your underwear for almost ten years?” he tsks, hands in his pockets as he steps into the alley, quite literally kicking the king of curses off of you.

he sweeps you off the floor as gently as possible, your stomach flipping at the familiar sensation of being teleported.

you’re not in the alley anymore, you’re up on the roof of a building. as soon as satoru sets you on your feet, you look up, studying his face. the eyes you love so much stare back at you. 

the emotions you’d kept bottled up since he’d been gone pour out at once. proof of your heartache, anger, pain, and loneliness spilling over your lash line.

suddenly there’s too much space between you and you tentatively take a step forward. 

“it’s you,” you breathe. “it’s really you.” 

he says your name softly, and arms you’d longed for envelop you. you feel safe, if only for a moment.

“you need to get to ieiri,” he whispers, a hand cupping your cheek gently. “go. i’ll stop him.”

you both close your eyes, as if the words hurt.

_____

“promise me you’ll always be good.” 

megumi sighs, but places his hand in yours, squeezing it tightly.

“i’ll see what i can do.”

[yanderederee]

Perfect

ctw: Yandere themes ~ explicit nsfw midway

part1 … part2 … part3 … now~ … part5

“I’m just worried about you!”

“You shouldn’t get so close, yaknow…”

“He’s going to hurt you one of these days!”

Mikey really couldn’t stand your friends sometimes.

They thought they knew the whole picture. Some goody two shoes who fell head first for the bad boy who never came to school.

It’s not like they bothered to acknowledge how you two genuinely got to know one another, how you helped get him back on track with school, how you looked at him like he held the world in his hands, or how deeply he cared— really cared for you.

All they wanted to acknowledge was how you never had any free time anymore. ‘He’s so clingy’ this, and ‘can’t we talk alone?’ That.

Sure, maybe Mikey hated when you looked at someone other than him for longer than ten seconds. But that didn’t make him a bad boyfriend!

“What’cha guys talking about?~” Mikey smiled innocently when he came up behind you. The girls surrounding you gasped, and backed away immediately.

Mikey was so friendly, how could they reject him so harshly? Maybe it was the death glare he burned into their skin, or the threats he made to them days prior for trying to fuel your head with all this nonsense to begin with.

“Morning, Manjiro~” you smiled back, placing your hand softly on the arm he slung over you protectively.

You never cared how other people saw you, even if you were dating the most notorious delinquent in Shinjuku and Shibuya alike.

And that same indifferent nature was just another reason you had him wrapped around your finger.

One of your friends clicked her tongue, and glared at you. “Whatever, don’t come crying to us about it later.”

You were a tough cookie. It took a lot to get under your skin. Yet somehow, that did.

Little by little, anyone who you used to interact with would suddenly give you the cold shoulder. No more friendly smiles or casual waves. If you even were acknowledged, it was with strained levels of respect, addressing you only by your family name, or curt bows.

No doubt from Mikey’s influence.

Still, if no one else, you had your Manjiro. His undeniable presence of security and words of comfort… he had only ever meant to give you the world, and in secret, punish anyone who would dare separate you.

“They don’t know nothing,” Mikey waved off your friends before hugging you close. You didn’t bother to point out his grammatical mistake. “You know I’d never make you cry, right?” He asked with his watery puppy eyes.

Smile so pure, you ruffled the mess of hair on Mikey’s head. “Course not.” You agreed.

He loved when you agreed with him. Validated his delusions.

“I can’t wait for our next study session~” Mikey sighed in contentment, a soft blush hanging over his features. Your face too caught heat at the taboo mention, in school no less. “T-that was..” you tried coming up with the words that could properly display your thoughts on yesterday, but Mikey loved finishing your sentences for you. “Heavenly. I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to heaven in my life, than I had then…”

Mikey nuzzled the bridge of his nose into the crook of your exposed neck, regretful he hadn’t left any long lasting love bites behind, like he intended. He was too enthralled in other sensations, but tonight, he’d make sure not to be so negligent.

“You’re so cute,” you giggled at his words of sentiment. “But don’t get spoiled now.”

Mikey narrowed his eyebrows in a pout. “Not fair~” he whined into your shoulder, unfazed by the looks of shock or ridicule classmates around you were giving at the public display of… affection.

Turning your head, you kissed your Manjiro’s scalp lovingly. “Fine fine~ just be patient. After school, okay?” You affirmed in a soft spoken tone.

Mikey smirked.

He loved how easily you gave in to him.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈ nsfw below ┈┈┈┈ ┈┈┈┈

“M-ma—! Manjiro..!” You yelled desperately, feeling your legs tense so harshly, you began to shake uncontrollably. “Pl-please, I-I’m—!”

But your voice only fueled the desire that flooded Mikey’s senses.

The feeling of your soft thighs against his hands. Your smell. The way playing with you made you scream. It was surreal, like nothing he had ever experienced. The adrenaline of doing these things for the first time only amped his speed further.

Ever since you showed Mikey how to pull back your clitoral hood and exposed your most sensitive parts, he’s been infatuated.

Exploring his tongue over the bundle of nerves, he tried everything, til his hearts content. Shallow licks, slow at first, until he crescendo’d the movement into a quick zig zag motion. The first orgasm he got out of you was evident and loud.

He was so glad he moved his room to the shed, lest his grandfather kill him for his inappropriate actions.

Yet still, even when you twirled his locks into your gentle fists to pull him up, he hurried himself deeper into you. This was heaven, like he said before. How could you take what away from him?

With a more broad sweep of his tongue, he made sure to slowly taste all the wetness you’d produced from your first orgasm. So sweet.

Just as slow as he started, adding pressure from the tip of his tongue, he started from your exposed clit, down til he felt the inward dip of your fluttering hole.

Your moan was soft and low, the movement perfectly easing you down from sensations just seconds ago. But he wanted to keep going, see what sounds you would make by sucking on you.

A drawn out whine escaped your throat when he’d done this. “I-I’m sensitive..! You can’t-“ you tried reasoning with him, but his lazy hooded gaze spoke for itself: he was having the time of his life.

With another hard suck, you whined loud, and threw your head back. “Ahh!—“

God, your cries alone could render him into a horny mess. More, he decided. He wanted to hear more of those sounds. Putting in the extra work, the grip he had on your legs slid up til your hips were under his strength. Pulling your hips upward, he pressed his tongue unbearably closer.

You always gave him just what he wanted. Louder; his name escapes your lips like a mantra. Mikey couldn’t get enough. Just as the muscle of his tongue and your squirming hips met a comfortable rhythm, it was only a matter of minutes before you felt that familiar tension building inside you again.

“M-Mikey! Gonna’..” you made weak attempts at warning him of your oncoming release, but the release overtook your senses before you could do so. A moan more pornographic and sincere soon blessed Manjiro’s eager ears.

You were heaven. It was obvious now, all his blessings in this world was squirming right under him. Your essence. Your angelic cries. The way your thighs cradled him impossibly closer— the way your toes curled and shaking body rattled the frame of his bed.

You were his euphoria.

It was a shame your head was thrown back. He tried getting a good look at your face when you cried so sweetly, but couldn’t.

Enjoying the last few involuntary thrusts your body released, Mikey finally release your core with a loud sounding pop.

His lips were red from friction, but he’d never been happier. Attentions all about you, he slowly rose to his knees on the bed, trying to see your face. His hands stayed glued to your hips as his fingertips traced the curves of your body.

“Manjiro…” you breathed out quietly, turning to reveal your glazed over eyes. Mikey smiled wide, feeling his heart skip a beat at the sight of you.

“You’re so perfect.”

You would never be able to leave Manjiro. For years to come, you would faithfully remain his. Lest the taste of death come between you.

[stellamancer]

beyond the unending night (reader + satoru gojo)

notes: it's finally here. the long awaited halloween fic. yes, i know it's march, but i did start working on it in september. haha. there's so much i could say, but i will leave it at that this fic is, in every sense, a fic that i would not normally write. and yet here we are.

contains: f!reader (no physical description or gendered language is used), no explicit romantic pairing (though you don't have to look hard to find the reader x gojo implications), major character death (played with), semi-graphic depictions of death, blood and violence, minor suicide ideation, canon retelling (lines of dialogue are pulled from the jjk english dub because i'm a dirty dub watcher). opening poem is from higurashi no naku koro ni (minagoroshi-hen). fic title is from giga's beyond the way.

please note that this is a time loop fic and, by nature contains repeating scenes (particularly from canon). please do not read this fic if you do not like that sort of thing.

wc: 21,883 read on ao3 (account required) || playlist

Please tell me what happened in this night. It's like the cat inside the box.

Please tell me what happened in this night. You don't know if the cat in the box is dead or alive. Please tell me what happened in this night. The cat in the box was dead.

The first time, it is instant— you don’t even know what’s happening.

The second, it is by flame, but you barely realize it, barely feel it— a second of mind numbing heat before nothing.

The third time, it is something slicing across your throat; you see the blood spilling everywhere, then the pain follows— a moment of pure agony before nothing.

The fourth time you realize what’s going on; what’s really going on.

You realize you’ve been dying.

You think your head is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because the subway platform is crowded, insanely so— there are hundreds of people shoved into this space alongside you, packed like sardines in a can. You’ve never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you live in Tokyo. For the most part, you’ve learned to accept it, but even this crowd is a little much and you wish you hadn’t listened to your friends when they said you should go party in Shibuya for Halloween; you don’t even like partying.

There’s a sharp pain in your temple followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone is screaming it at you through a megaphone positioned right next to your ear.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

For the eighth time.

Before you can even question the thought, images flash in your mind’s eye, blurry at first before they come into focus. The platform gates open. Chaos ensues. People dropping onto the subway tracks— spontaneously bursting into flame— their heads, necks sliced off, stomachs cut open—

Bile rapidly builds up in your throat, and you clamp your jaw shut, trying to force it down. Not here. Not now. You try to focus on something else, anything else happening outside of your brain. There’s a pair next to you musing about the people standing on the subway tracks, wondering what the two (the four?) of them are talking about. You blink back tears as you look. You can only see two: a freakishly tall man with white hair dressed in all black, and another man, dressed in strange, yet more traditional looking garb. Are those costumes too? You don’t have a lot of time to think about it as another image forces its way into your brain.

Your corpse— lifeless on the ground.

Your corpse— burning to ash.

Your corpse— bleeding out.

You can’t hold it in any more. Every fiber in your being screams at you to get away from the subway tracks, but instead you rush toward them, shoving people left and right as your hands desperately reach the stability of the gate. You grip it like a lifeline as you retch over the side of it, the contents of your stomach spilling all over the subway tracks.

There’s a quiet murmur of disgust behind you but you can’t be bothered to respond. You need to get out of here. You need to leave. You need to do it before—

The gates open and the crowd starts to move like a tidal wave, pushing and shoving their way through the gate. You’re swept away, vomit long forgotten as you and a few dozen others tumble onto the railway.

Alarm bells go off in your brain, loud and deafening. A voice in the back of your head screams for you to get off the track! Get off the track now before—

The platform erupts into a cacophony of screams, drenched in horror, saturated in fear. You are surrounded by people, by corpses— beheaded, sliced open, bursting into flames.

Your terror roots you to the ground as the carnage ensues around you. It’s only when another person, another corpse, dressed in a magical girl costume collides with your body that you can finally move. But it’s too late, you realize, despaired and helpless, as your bodies fall to the ground.

It’s too late.

You die an eighth time.

You think your chest is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because it’s so hard to breathe, frustratingly so— there are hundreds of people squeezed into this space alongside you, packed like cattle for slaughter. You've never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you’re in Shibuya. For the most part, you’ve come to accept it, but this crowd is way too much and you wish you had just stayed home and ordered a pizza; though honestly, the thought of pizza kind of makes you sick.

There’s a dull throbbing in your forehead, followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone’s hollering at you from a loudspeaker that’s been installed in your brain.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You think it's the ninth time now.

Behind you, you hear a woman screaming, her voice crazed and terrified. You turn your head automatically to look at her and when you see her you realize you recognize her yellow and white magical girl costume. You can say with certainty that you’ve never seen her before and yet—

Before you can ruminate more on it, images— memories assault your mind’s eye with a clarity that is absolutely sickening. That woman colliding into you, your bodies slamming into the subway tracks before you both— Your stomach churns violently,

and you feel like you’re going to puke, but you force it down— can't afford to right now. Instead, you make your way over to the woman.

Her head is in her hands as she mutters over and over again about how everyone is going to die. People around her figure that being stuck in here with the crowd has probably gotten to her. You, however, know better.

“...hey,” you say softly.

Her muttering comes to an abrupt halt and slowly she raises her head to look at you. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes and she grabs you violently by the shoulders. “You! You know, don’t you? That we’re going to die?”

If it weren’t for the fact that you have indeed experienced death here eight times already, then you would have thought she’s lost her mind. Slowly, you nod and she seems relieved by it, her grip on you loosening.

You can’t help but feel a little relieved too— glad to know that you’re not the only one experiencing this nightmare. There’s a voice in the back of your mind that’s confused though. Why is she only remembering now? But then again, it took you a few times before you realized yourself.

Around you people start to gasp, and you glance back toward the railway to see an abnormally tall man with white hair and dressed in all black jump down from the atrium onto the railway. He lands rather gracefully for someone who jumped at least one floor and starts to converse with the other three people (you think they're people— two of them are in some pretty wild costumes) on the track.

Wait. Isn’t it supposed to be just two people: the tall man and the one in the traditional clothes? Where did the other two come from?

“We have to get out of here,” the woman says. “Before they kill us.”

Her grip shifts from your shoulders to your arms and she starts to shove at everyone around you, trying to force her way through. She seems to know, just as well as you do, that any second now the gates will open and the crowd will start spilling onto the railway, littering the tracks with bodies and ash. Neither of you can let yourselves get swept up with the rest. If you do and you end up on those tracks, you’re as good as dead.

People move aside at a snail's pace, many of them too focused on trying to see what is going on on the subway tracks. This isn't good. You need to move faster or else—

The collective sound of the gates opening echoes in your head, a metallic hiss that makes your stomach fold into itself. Before either of you can stop yourselves, you both whip your heads back to look, to confirm, but it’s a mistake.

The briefest lapse in attention is enough to pull you both into the current of people, and try as you might to fight against it, the crowd splits you and the woman apart as it swallows you both whole. You’re both spat onto the tracks at the edge of the platform and your head collides with the metal rails of the track. It feels like your skull is about to crack in two, and it takes every fiber in your being to scramble to your feet. You're close enough to the platform that if you can just climb up it, then you'll be—

“Help! Help!”

It’s the woman’s voice. You turn to see that she ended up a couple meters away from you. She’s staring at you, eyes brimming with fear filled tears as she extends her hand in your direction. You take a step toward her, reaching out.

And then, her entire body is engulfed in flames, the skirt of her magical girl costume a ring of fiery death around her.

Her blood curdling scream is the only thing you can hear, her burning flesh, the only thing you can see. You don’t know what to do.

You can’t save her.

There's something touching your back. You can barely feel the pressure, but it's hot, scorching hot, mind numbingly hot, painfully hothothot.

You know this sensation. You have felt it before. The scent of burning cloth, burning hair, burning flesh clogs your nostrils. It's too late, you realize, helpless, despaired as the flames eat at your body— your soon to be corpse.

It's too late.

You die a ninth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the tenth time.

Your head hurts, but you ignore it. There’s something more important that you need to attend to. You immediately make your way to the woman you met during your last round, the one you watched burn to death. Her costume is still pristine, unmarred by fire and death.

For now.

She’s not screaming this time and while there’s a little voice in the back of your mind that’s concerned by this, you try to ignore it.

“Um, excuse me?” you say when she doesn’t acknowledge you as you approach.

The woman turns to look at you. You’re taken aback by the distinct lack of recognition and it feels almost as if the woman you encountered previously and the one before you now are two separate people. In a way, they technically are.

“Do I… know you?” she finally asks when you don’t say anything.

Your mouth is dry. How do you even answer that? You don’t know her. You just watched her die twice. You know her. She begged you for help. You couldn’t save her.

If you explain all of this you know she’s just going to think you’ve lost your mind. Maybe you already have— you’ve died nine times after all.

You give her a weak smile. “I… just wanted to tell you that you think your costume looks great.”

She blinks, taken aback by your words. There’s no doubt that she wasn’t expecting you to say that. It’s the truth though, her costume is nice; she’s dressed up as a character from a magical girl anime that was popular a couple years ago.

“Thank you! I made it myself!” The woman breaks out into a genuine smile and your heart hurts. In a few moments she’ll die and the costume she worked so hard to make will be nothing but ash on the subway tracks.

“Sorry,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

“For?”

For watching her die. For not being able to save her.“...I just kind of came up to you all of a sudden…”

She laughs. “It’s okay.”

It’s not.

You consider telling her that she should try to move. That if she stays here she will die. You don’t want her to die. Again. You can still hear her screaming in your ears as she burned to death. You want to tell her.

You don’t.

“Stay safe, okay?” you say. It almost sounds like you’re begging.

She gives you another smile, kind and gentle and you think you’re far too undeserving of it for not telling her what fate will soon befall her. “You too.”

“I’ll try,” you say and move away from the woman just as the gates open and the crowd surges toward the railway. You do not fight it as you are swept up into the crowd and despite what you said, you do not try, this time, to stay safe.

You die for the tenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the fourteenth time.

There’s a slight ache in your head, but it’s subtle enough that you can ignore it. The pain you feel lessens with each round and you think it’s a sign that your body no longer feels the need to remind you of the precarious situation that you’re in.

Or maybe you are just becoming numb to everything: your death, the death of the people around you, the death of the woman in the magical girl costume—

You try not to think about it too much as you reach into your bag to check the time on your phone: 8:37PM. There’s not a lot of time: you need to move.

At the very end of your last attempt to escape this nightmare you realized something. You need to know exactly what is going on around you so you can plan accordingly: where to not stand, where to not go. Up until now, you’ve relied almost solely on the knowledge gained from your previous failures to try and survive, but obviously it’s not enough to keep you alive. You’re not sure why you didn’t realize this earlier. The panic, maybe? The fear?

Maybe you really are becoming numb to all this.

Unlike previous iterations, this time you elect to move closer to the gate, positioning yourself somewhere against it where you’re unlikely to be pushed off the platform in a couple minutes when they open. You take great care to place yourself where you can see the ones responsible for the slaughter very clearly. At the beginning, you could only see one, the one who looks the most human, but with each repetition, the other two have become more and more clear. You wonder why. You don’t have time to think about it.

Murmurs nearby alert you to the arrival of the fourth major player involved in the night’s events. You look up and see the white haired man dressed in all black descending upon the platform like an angel from the heavens. This is your first time really looking at him and you realize there’s something almost inhumanly attractive about him. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it occurs to you that you shouldn’t even try; you don’t have the time to be drooling over some handsome stranger.

You’ve naturally never taken the time to try and listen to whatever the conversation the man and his opponents have before all hell breaks loose on the platform, but you try and lean closer to listen. It’s hard to hear over the dozens of conversations going on behind you, but you try anyway. There might be a clue to what’s actually going on— or better yet, a clue on how to get out of it.

It’s obvious that you’re missing context from what bits of the conversation you do manage to hear, but honestly it all sounds like stuff out of a shounen battle manga. There is one part of the exchange that you manage to hear with a startling sort of clarity. It feels almost as if your heart stops beating as your blood turns ice cold in your veins.

“If I run away, you’re just gonna kill everyone here, right?” the man in black asks.

There’s a pause, and if your heart was still beating it’d be long enough for just four heartbeats.

“If you run away?” The monster with cane repeats, the sadistic grin spreading wide across its features, displaying its charcoal black teeth. The gravelly sound of its voice sets fire to the blood in your veins, your stilled heart thumping wildly, in fear, in anticipation. Soon. It’s happening soon. You brace yourself. “We’re going to do that even if you don’t!”

You die a fourteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the seventeenth time now.

Things are going surprisingly well, even as the people around you tumble onto the tracks. You manage to hold on, desperation keeping you from falling into the abyss. This is good, you tell yourself, despite the fact that it’s not the first time you’ve achieved this. Every little victory is worth celebrating, but you have to remain vigilant. This is yet another information gathering loop, and while you know that maybe this time you’ll be lucky and live, there’s still a chance, a big one, at that, that you will die again.

You have to make the most of each and every death.

It’s such a morbid thought, but the ends justify the means, or so you tell yourself. If you have to die a few times to make it out of this unending nightmare, then so be it.

The spot you’re in is a good vantage point; it’s easier to see everything happening below you. It’s so good that it’s actually sickening. You watch as the monster with the cane and one with what looks like branches for eyes slaughter the people on the track, mowing them down, setting them aflame. In another life, in another many lives, that was you down there, and for what feels like the first time in forever, you feel like you’re going to be sick. You feel like, at some point, you likened the scene before you to some kind of shounen battle manga, but you think that was wrong.

This is borderline horror.

Everything plays out before you like a scene out of an action horror flick. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were just an extra on set, but you know the reality is that you’re just an extra to whatever phantasmal battle is taking place in front of you. The monsters and the strangely dressed man all try to attack the man in black, but he manages to block every hit effortlessly, as if he is protected by some sort of invisible barrier. When it seems the two monsters are about to hit him, he merely jumps out of the way and the two monsters seem to collide, the force of their combined strength sending a gust of air throughout the crowd. The man in black neatly lands on a nearby platform half wall and says something about curse users, whatever those are, to the monsters, before he starts to mock them, pulling down his strange blindfold in the process.

And this, you’ve found, is where you start to get in trouble.

You clearly remember thinking, at some point, previously, that there was something attractive about this man. You still don’t know what it is. You haven’t had the time to try and figure it out, but there is one thing that you do know: you can’t keep your eyes off of him.

He drops back down onto the tracks, antagonizing his opponents in an arrogant tone as he approaches. When he comes to a stop between the two monsters, the second round of their fight begins. They try to hit him, but he dodges still, gracefully, fluidly, like the three of them are embroiled in some sort of passionate, yet violent dance.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he cruelly rips off one of the arms of the one-eyed monster.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he brutally kicks the branch-eyed monster in the abdomen, sending them flying to the other side of the platform.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he effortlessly hurls the one-eyed, now one-armed monster in the same direction, sending them smashing into the wall.

Only when the man in black seems to fly to the other side is the spell over you seemingly broken. Still, your eyes give chase, and your body too, rushing from one side of the platform to the other. You can’t lose sight of this fight, you tell yourself, settling in a spot you recall being safe during your last round. Doing so could mean another death, another loop, another October 31.

You watch as the man in black acrobatically dodges what looks to be vines or roots that the monster with branches for eyes seems to have summoned from the depths of the Tokyo metro. He lands on the monster’s shoulders, balancing on them as he uses its branch-eyes for leverage. The look in the man’s eyes is so crazed that you can see it from where you’re standing. He says something to it and then—

With a feral and sadistic smile, he rips their eyes straight out of their skull.

Your heart is pounding wildly in your chest as you watch the fight unfold. It is horrifyingly, disgustingly violent, yet still you watch as people on the track are killed by the human-like person, blood raining down as their freshly beheaded skulls go flying into the air. He and the one-eyed monster launch their counter attacks against the man in black and the blowback is so intense the power goes out causing everyone to scream.

There’s a faint glow where the man in black is standing that starts to grow brighter and brighter. You can make out his form turning to face the wall, and it seems almost like he’s slammed the monster that had branches for eyes against it with some sort of telekinetic power. Despite the panic from the people around you, you manage to hear him, chuckling like a mad man as he draws closer and closer to the monster.

The one-eyed monster yells out a name, a name you think must belong to the man, but he doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as he extends his hands out toward the eyeless monster, exerting some kind of force that you can’t really see. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as the eyeless monster’s entire body is vaporized in a flash of blue light. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster, as the lights flicker back on revealing a smoking crater stained with purple blood where the eyeless monster once stood.

But you do.

Satoru Gojo.

You make sure to remember that.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And this is the eighteenth time.

You watch as the man called Satoru Gojo stalks through the crowd of people on the subway tracks, chasing after the one-eyed fire monster. It throws people at him, in a clear attempt to slow him down.

It does not work.

Satoru Gojo climbs back onto the platform in a way that you can only describe as inhuman, and the people nearby shriek and move away from him, out of terror, out of fear. You, on the other hand, draw closer, refusing to lose sight of him.

He is relentless in his pursuit of the one-eyed monster. It continues to throw person after person at him, but he does not stop and the people float there, suspended in midair before they are gently lowered to the ground by some unseen force and scramble away.

No one dares get close to Satoru Gojo, everyone on the platform seems to know that doing so means certain death, yourself included. But you still feel the need to keep an eye on him. The monster and the strangely dressed man are focusing more on him than the crowd— anyone in between is just collateral damage.

But not you.

Especially since you’ve made it this far— you’ve never made it this far before.

A voice echoes throughout the platform; you realize it’s the automated announcement.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You can hear everyone’s relief coming from all sides. The train is coming! The train is coming! A ripple of hope makes its way throughout the crowd. With the train comes the chance to get off the platform and the senseless violence that’s been happening here. Some of the people around you are talking excitedly and others are running toward the gates, toeing the yellow line they’ve been instructed to wait behind. And you, you should be excited, you should be hopeful.

All you feel is dread.

It eats at your stomach, at your chest, at your mind. Clawing and gnawing at you in a way that leaves you paralyzed on the platform. There’s something wrong here. You can’t be sure because you’ve never made it this far, never survived long enough for the train to come, but something is just not right.

No.

You must be paranoid. The train coming is a good thing. It has to be a good thing. You are just paranoid. It’s normal. It’s natural. Dying seventeen times would do that to anyone— rob them of hope, condemn them to an existence full of fear.

It is not lost on you that the thought of dying more than once, much less, dying seventeen times is not normal or natural in the very slightest.

But you need hope, you crave it, wildly, desperately. The hope of freedom, of escape is the only thing getting you through this unending nightmare. Every time you die, every time you wake, it is with the hope that maybe, just maybe this iteration will be different, maybe this one will be the one where you make it out, make it back to your friends who must be waiting for you, make it back home where you can be safe and sound. You need the hope to keep going. Because without hope, what will you have left?

The train screeches as it pulls into the station and the people around you laugh in both disbelief and relief. They start to push and shove toward it, fighting to be able to board because there’s no way everyone here will be able to get on an eight car train and being left behind at this point is practically synonymous with death. Unable to decide if you believe in the train as a symbol of hope or a new layer of fear, you are pushed along with the crowd toward it.

The doors of the train cars slide open and the current passengers all rush off as they disembark. You as well as everyone else on the platform can see with a horrifying clarity that the train is filled to the brim with monsters. Monsters that reach out and grab anyone their hands can reach. The woman to your left. The person to your right.

You.

Hope is gone.

What do you have left?

You die for the eighteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is probably the twenty-sixth time now.

If there is anything this entire ordeal has taught you, it is that you are resilient. Whether it is some innate trait that you never had any reason to uncover before or just a byproduct of being trapped in an unending cycle of being dead and not dead, you don't know. What you do know, though, is that even if you no longer have hope, you at least have your resilience.

Whether you want it or not.

You check the time. It’s 8:35PM. Something flickers in your chest, like a faint light in a sea of darkness, but you ignore it. You don’t have time right now.

With a nimbleness born from your previous failures, you weave your way through the crowd. You’ve done this enough times to know where the gaps are— who will yield and who won’t. Your destination is the escalator that leads off the platform and up to a higher part of the station. You’d noticed previously that the escalator along with every other entrance onto the platform will eventually be blocked by vines or roots of some sort (the work of the branch-eyed monster probably). It’s not a perfect plan because you don’t know what happens on the other side, but whatever it is has to be better than whatever is happening on the side that you’ve been on.

You’d tried to get to the stairs during your last two rounds, but you’d just missed it. You hadn’t been fast enough and had gotten caged and slaughtered along with the rest. But this time, this time you have more time. It’s just one minute, but it’s enough. You know it is.

The flickering in your heart grows stronger. Hope. You try not to pay attention to it— you don’t want to be disappointed yet again. But you want to so badly. A voice in the back of your mind tells you to focus on the good, tells you that if there was truly no way out of this endless nightmare, then why would you get more and more time with each round to escape your fate?

With that thought in mind, you break out into a run, recklessly rushing through the crowd, shoving anyone who will not yield to the side. Out of the corner of your eye you can see the stark white of Satoru Gojo’s hair as he descends upon the platform.

You need to get up those stairs.

Now.

If you remember correctly, the roots and vines don’t close off the area the moment he touches down, but a little after they start talking, so you think there is probably some time, but you can’t leave it to chance.

The stairs are packed, and for some reason no one is moving. The escalator right next to it is just as full and the power doesn’t seem to be working. You don’t have time for this. You clamber onto the escalator’s rubber handrail, ignoring the weird feeling that passes through your body as you do so. You don’t have the time to worry about whatever that is. The people around you start exclaiming around you, but you don’t care, you don’t listen. You wobble as you try to balance yourself and when you think you’re steady you try to run.

But you trip.

And you die for the twenty-sixth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This marks the thirtieth time.

And you have, finally, finally made it up the escalator, up the stairs with barely a second to spare. You pause, glancing back as the roots or vines or whatever the hell they are seal off the entrance to the platform. You notice that the area where the plants come down is actually fairly clear, despite the crowd. It seems weird, but you don’t dwell on it.

A strange feeling envelops your entire body and your legs turn into jelly. As you sink to the floor, you realize what you’re feeling is relief as all the tension, maybe thirty iterations of Halloween 2018 worth, seeps from your being. You don't remember the last time you felt anything other than fear and dread; it’s weird, but not unwelcome.

That voice in the back of your mind tells you that you can't relax just yet: October 31st isn’t over. Even though you have repeated this night again and again, burning the events that play out on the platform into your memory, you do not know a single thing that happens over here. It would be smart to scope everything out.

Legs still shaky, you rise to your feet and start walking. You think it’s probably for the best to try and head up to the surface and you make your way up to the next floor.

It’s packed with people here too, but relatively peaceful, especially when you compare it to the pandemonium taking place beneath your feet. Still, you can make out the undeniable hum of displeasure resonating throughout the crowd. People complaining about how uncomfortable their costumes are, people complaining about how much they want to go home, people complaining about how much their nights have been ruined because they couldn’t meet up with their friends and—

A thought hits you like an eight car train.

You were supposed to meet up with your friends.

That’s why you were on the platform in the first place— you were waiting for them to arrive, but then the trains stopped working, and people just started pouring into the station out of seemingly nowhere (you think you heard some people say they’d come from the crossing?). Soon after that is when everything went to shit.

You check your phone, though, for once it’s not to look at the time (8:56PM). Instead, you open LINE to check your friends’ group chat. There’s no signal here, for whatever reason, so if there are any new messages, you haven’t received them. The last one was from Kei, mentioning he was enroute, but as far as you know, you’re the only one who made it to Shibuya before the trains stopped.

Did one of them maybe make it here though? Surely, you would have run into them if—

The image of a woman in a magical girl costume fills your vision, burning to death before your very eyes as her screams echo in your ears. It is the first time in what feels like forever that you’ve thought about her and your stomach churns violently. You couldn’t help her, you can’t even help yourself, so how could you even expect to do the same for your friends if they were here? The mere thought of having to watch them die over and over is almost enough to send you over the edge. You don’t know if you could do it.

Would you even have a choice?

No. You can't think like that. You have choices. You've had choices. If you didn’t then, you would still be down below, among the fire and brimstone. Dying, if not dead already. However, instead, you are up here, where, for the moment, it is quiet and peaceful.

That thought, in of itself, is enough to give you a shred of solace, a glimmer of hope.

You take a deep breath and fiddle with your phone a little more, changing your lock screen to a picture you and your friends took at a photo booth not too long ago. The four of you are huddled together, faces squished as if you're all struggling to fit in the frame, despite there being plenty of room. You're mid-laugh because it's the first time you've been in a photo booth in years, Mio and Shin are grinning mischievously and finally, Kei is smiling, but only just slightly, the embarrassment clear on his face. It's probably only been a few months since you all took this picture, but the fact that it feels like it's been years makes your heart ache.

You press your forehead to the screen, like a prayer, like a promise.

You will make it out of this nightmare.

No matter what.

A shrill scream yanks you from your thoughts and you are instantly on your feet, alert as your eyes flit around frantically to identify the source. It doesn't take long for you to find it and when you do, you think you might have stumbled upon a new layer of horror to this nightmare.

It’s not the corpse, dangling by a noose, that terrifies you— by now you’ve seen dozens upon dozens of dead bodies that the sight of just one more doesn’t faze you in the slightest. The thing that’s the most mortifying, that’s the most disturbing is that right next to where the body is tied are two girls, two teenage girls still dressed in their school uniforms.

You can accept monsters and weirdly dressed men being responsible for the carnage tonight, but children too? Both girls look like they’re barely in high school and try as you might to rationalize things, to chalk it up to coincidence, you cannot ignore the ominous energy radiating from them.

The very notion that these two children could have killed someone here is a hard pill to swallow, but so is the fact that you’ve died.

And you’ve had to swallow that pill thirty times now, so what’s once more?

“Listen up!” one of the girls yells over the crowd, but she is mostly ignored; you don’t think everyone here has noticed her and the corpse dangling from the rafters. She scowls and turns to the other girl and says something quietly to her. The other girl nods and almost instantly she’s stringing up another person, another example. You want to look away so badly, and yet you cannot bring yourself to and you watch the poor soul choke to death.

“I said listen, you dumb monkeys!” the girl shouts, and this time she’s caught most of the crowd’s attention. “If you don’t want to end up like these two, you’ll listen to what we have to say!”

There is clear dissent among the crowd, people dismissive as they utter their disbelief. Some seem to think it’s a prank, but you know better. It takes two more examples before the crowd goes silent before the two high schoolers.

“About damn time!” The girl roars and then points toward the atrium, which is currently covered by roots and branches. “All of you move over there!”

You have a bad feeling about this.

Still, you comply; the girls have made it abundantly clear that failure to do so will result in death, though, at this point, you're almost certain this iteration is a bust and death is all but imminent. You try to keep positive— thinking you can at least gather information or, who knows, maybe there's a chance that this one is the one.

Yet when you step onto the mound of vines and branches that cover the atrium it feels as if you've crossed the threshold into hell. Your footing is stable… but for how long?

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

It's faint, but you can hear the announcement from below. The liquid in your stomach curdles at the sound as you recall the train and, in particular, what is on board. Soon enough, those monsters will be swarming the platform, massacring everyone in reach, guzzling down their blood, feasting on their flesh—

It dawns on you that the people on the platform are the monsters' first course.

And you, and those around you here in the shrubbery, are the second.

As you realize this, the branches and vines disintegrate beneath your very feet and suddenly you are mid air— falling, falling into the abyss below.

You die for the thirtieth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You've done this nearly sixty times now.

After countless failures, you've decided that you're just not going to go upstairs any more. No matter where you try to go, you still end up herded onto the death trap above the platform where you ultimately fall to your death. You've tried positioning yourself in the same spot, tried bracing yourself for the drop— but nothing seems to work: upon landing, assuming you manage to land without hurting yourself or dying in midair (which has happened a couple times) you get grabbed and killed by one of the monsters from the train. It's probably not impossible, you just don't have the physical prowess or reflexes for it.

If anything, you can try again later, but you sincerely hope you don't have to.

It's 8:32PM, and you have plenty of time to get to your chosen spot for this loop— it's close to the stairs, in the very center of the platform. Here, there's little risk of getting pushed off onto the tracks when the gates open. You'll probably have to move when the train comes, or even before (assuming you survive) to avoid the monsters, but you'll get to that when it's time.

You can't really see the fight once it breaks out after Satoru Gojo arrives, but you still try to keep track of it as best as you can. You see when he hurls both monsters across the platform and you're not sure if it's muscle memory or what but you have to fight the urge to move to the side and watch. It's been a while, yes, but you've seen the fight countless times before— it doesn't change. Satoru Gojo will give chase. He will rip the branches from the branch eyed monster's skull. He will use some kind of power to eviscerate them.

You don't need to watch, but there's something in you that wants to.

It doesn't make sense, you've seen it all before; if you're unlucky you'll see it all again.

The lights go out and people start screaming; Satoru Gojo is ending the life of that one monster. Soon enough he'll be back on the platform, in pursuit of the other. You think at that point it would be good to move, reposition yourself as far from the incoming train as possible.

When he rises from the tracks like a demon straight from hell, you realize it's the first time this loop that you've actually gotten a good look at him. You remind yourself, again, that this isn't the first time you've seen this man, this scene. You can't help but watch, but stare at Satoru Gojo as he stalks through the crowd in pursuit of his prey. His expression is an eerie sort of calm that's at odds with the acts of violence you've seen him commit— his eyes an unnaturally bright blue.

He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

The sound of the announcement sends your heartbeat into a frenzy, snapping you out of your little trance. The train is coming and you need to get moving. As you dart to the edge of the platform, the thought occurs to you that even if you avoid the initial wave of monsters, it's likely you will inevitably be caught by them and killed. It wouldn't be impossible for Satoru Gojo to turn his attention to them instead of the two he's currently facing, but he's just one man— can he truly defeat all those monsters?

You can see the train pulling in and you brace yourself, praying that it'll work out somehow.

The doors hiss open and the screaming starts again as the monsters come bursting out of the train, biting and mauling anyone they can get their hands on. Those who were lucky enough to not be at the front start to scramble away and the monsters give chase. Your body is taut, ready to try and dodge any that come your way.

Out of the corner of your eye you notice something moving through the air. A person? With blue hair? You take the risk to look— they're attacking Satoru Gojo. He tries to punch them but they fly away from him to dodge— disappearing into the crowd.

You hear a loud cracking sound over the cacophony of the crowd and your stomach twists; you know what that sound is. The roots above the atrium disintegrate and bodies from above start to rain down onto the platform.

And then, you're not sure what happens— it's so quick that you only manage to see what looks like an explosion of blood surrounding Satoru Gojo. Corpses litter the ground around him and even from here you can tell he is shaken by the carnage.

The monsters have finally reached where you're standing, and you duck under one as it lunges at you. Although it's big and scary, you realize it's moving kind of slow. Right after it another one comes at you and you take a side step to avoid it; this monster is kind of slow too.

Maybe you can do this.

As soon as you think that a strange feeling courses through you. Every hair on your body feels like it's standing on edge and the voice in your head is telling you to look at Satoru Gojo. You don't understand why because you think he's the least of your worries right now, but you do it anyway.

He's in some sort of stance, one hand raised to his face, fingers bent in some kind of gesture. There's some sort of aura, oppressive and frightening emanating from his form.

Satoru Gojo is doing something.

You just can't tell what.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are utterly confused.

Barring your first few loops when you weren't fully aware of what was happening, you have very distinct memories of how each of your previous iterations of this night have gone— of each and every one of your deaths. But for your last round, the last thing you remember was feeling the immense power radiating from Satoru Gojo's body, but that's it.

You do not remember dying.

In fact, you don't think you did.

And yet, here you are again, back at the start: it's 8:32PM and the monsters and strangely dressed man are standing on the subway tracks waiting for the arrival of Satoru Gojo.

You don't understand what's going on; you didn't die but you're still stuck in this damn loop. Up until now, your death has served as the trigger to restart the loop. It's not impossible that maybe you suffered a quick and painless death but you're almost certain that isn't the case.

Something else must have happened.

Something having to do with Satoru Gojo.

You have to find out what. If you don't, you won't know how to avoid it, and if you can't do that, then you really might spend an eternity stuck in this nightmare. And so you take great care to repeat the steps of your last round. You need to make sure to survive to the same point you made it to last time.

Miraculously, you do.

The moment you feel that sensation again, a prickling sort of feeling that envelops your entire body, your eyes are on Satoru Gojo— trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. His eyes are crazed with a desperate kind of focus. You see his mouth move— he's saying something. A spell? A prayer? A curse?

You don't know.

You do know.

Your brain feels like it's going to explode.

Again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

Again.

You do not know how many times it's been the night of Halloween in Shibuya: you stopped counting around the hundredth loop. It feels like it's been a while since then. Or maybe it hasn't? You don't know any more.

What you do know is that this night ends up going one of two ways before you are forced to repeat it. Either you die, in some way, shape or form or something happens just after nine that forces you to reset. You still don't know what it is exactly; you only know that Satoru Gojo is responsible for it.

You do prefer it to dying— it's far less painful.

But if anything, you wish you could just die permanently and never have to repeat this night ever again.

Unfortunately, you know better.

The only good thing you’ve noticed about all of this is that you really do seem to keep waking up earlier and earlier. The last time you checked, it was at around 8:30. It might take hundreds of thousands of loops, but eventually you’ll certainly wake up early enough to avoid this damn entire mess.

But by the time that happens… will your sanity still be intact? Will you really be able to go back to a normal day to day life after living the equivalent of hundreds of years, repeating the same night over and over again? You don’t even know how you’ve managed to stay sane all this time and as much as you want to believe you could do it…

There has to be a breaking point.

For both your mind and this time loop.

If you’re lucky, you’ll reach the latter first.

There’s a dull ache in your head that feels foreign yet familiar. Your mind is foggy, all your thoughts hazy as you try to recall what the word for this feeling is.

Groggy.

It feels as if you’ve woken up from a nap and you blink the sleepiness away from your eyes. When was the last time you took a nap? It’s been a while… You think you maybe tried once or twice, but you were too nervous, too on edge. Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter because, either way, you were doomed to repeat this nightmare.

As you think this, you realize that something is different.

You’re used to how the start of each loop feels like waking up suddenly and abruptly and it becomes clear to you that you haven’t looped. This is completely uncharted territory.

You need to find out what’s going on.

The first thing you notice is that it’s quiet. Almost eerily so, especially when the last thing you remember was screaming and chaos. You glance around you and find that it looks like all the monsters from the train are dead, the ground littered in their bloodstains and corpses. There were so many of them, you don’t know how someone could have wiped them out so quickly… Could it possibly have been Satoru Gojo’s doing?

More concerning than the complete eradication of the monsters is the fact that nearly everyone else on the platform is standing stock still, their mouths ajar with blank expressions on their faces. It’s almost as if their souls have completely vacated their bodies…

Were you like that too before you woke up?

You hear voices, and your body immediately goes tense as you turn your head in their direction. A little ways ahead of you, you see a man dressed as a monk conversing with the blue haired person from earlier and before them is—

Your heart nearly stops: it’s Satoru Gojo, restrained and on his knees.

Honestly, you can’t make heads or tails of the conversation they’re having; it’s more shounen battle manga nonsense. Satoru Gojo doesn’t seem to be enjoying their conversation either, and he interrupts them, clearly annoyed.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he asks. “The view sucks and I’m just kinda bored.”

“I wanted to enjoy this sight for a little bit longer, but you are right,” the monk says. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen— gate, close.”

When he says that, Satoru Gojo’s restraints move, the weirdly shaped cubes at the ends of them closing in around him, trapping him in a giant red cube. It starts to shrink until it’s small enough to fit in the monk’s hand.

You gulp and hope they don’t notice that you’re awake. The fact that they haven’t slaughtered the rest of the people standing around you is a good sign, but you don’t want to find out what happens if they know you’re cognizant.

It’s not hard to play the part of a living statue, especially when you compare it to everything else you’ve had to suffer through on this night. You watch as the monk’s allies, the ones who had attacked everyone on the platform, wake up, but before they can do or say anything, the box holding Satoru Gojo slips through the monk’s fingers and makes a dent in the concrete. The look on the monk’s face makes it clear that it’s a problem he wasn’t expecting.

You don’t know a damn thing about Satoru Gojo, but you feel like this kind of thing is the norm for him.

The blue haired person suddenly looks in your direction and you nearly stop breathing. Have they noticed you? It takes everything in you to keep perfectly still, in hopes that maybe they didn't, that maybe they’re looking at something else. They raise their arm and it extends, their hand acting like some kind of projectile. You almost shut your eyes and brace yourself for impact, but their hand flies upwards and hits something on the ceiling, destroying it.

Inwardly, you breathe a sigh of relief— you’re still safe.

For now.

You listen to their following conversation and while you still don’t fully understand everything, it’s clear they’re talking about what to do next since they’ve taken care of Satoru Gojo. Something having to do with someone named Yuji Itadori? The group seems split on what to do about him but it’s clear he’s their next target.

Eventually, everyone but the monk (you heard the blue haired person, who is apparently named Mahito, call him Geto?) runs off, probably to find this Yuji Itadori person. Once they’re gone, Geto speaks and, at first, you think he’s talking to you, but it becomes clear he’s addressing someone else. “Those cursed spirits are actually smarter than the two of you.”

“Give him back!” a voice hidden among the crowd hisses. Your blood runs cold at the sound. You recognize it; it’s one of the high school girls from the upper floor.

“We cooperated with you fully and kept dropping monkeys for you,” says another voice; it must be the other girl that was with her, the one who hung all those people.

“Now give us back Master Geto’s body like you promised!”

“Don’t toy with Master Geto any further than you have!”

You blink in confusion. Isn’t the monk named Geto? The way the girls are talking it sounds like they’re talking about someone else… Is it possible that the body is ‘Geto’ but the person they’re talking to is someone else possessing it? It sounds kind of crazy, but then again, so is every single thing you’ve experienced tonight.

Your suspicions concerning this ‘Geto’ are confirmed only seconds later as he says, “Now begone, or is it your desire to be killed by this body?”

One of the girls vows her revenge and you hear shuffling somewhere else in the crowd as they scurry away. Now you think it’s just you and whoever it is that’s puppeting Geto’s body. You see him plop down in front of the box (the prison realm, you think he’d called it) that’s holding Satoru Gojo.

“You can come out, you know,” he says after a while.

You freeze. The rest of the platform is completely silent. This time you think he might actually be talking to you.

“I know you’re there,” ‘Geto’ adds, his voice casual. “If you’re insistent on hiding, you should know that I’m not afraid of using whatever means necessary to smoke you out.”

Given everything his allies have done, there’s no doubt in your mind that he’s serious. You were hoping to hide out among the crowd until he decided to leave, but it looks like you won’t be able to now.

Looks like this loop is a bust after all.

Your heart starts to race as you weave your way through the crowd. In every single one of your loops, you were always treated like a bit character, never noticed or singled out by any of the major players of the night. Although this is your first time encountering this ‘Geto’ it’s clear to you that he’s involved with everything that’s happened here and honestly, you get the feeling he might actually be the mastermind behind the massacre.

That makes you even more nervous.

You come to a stop in the place where Satoru Gojo was once kneeling before he was put in that box. Now that you’re out in the open, ‘Geto’ looks you over with some sort of nonchalant curiosity.

“You’re…” he starts, sounding thoughtful, "not a sorcerer, are you?”

Sorcerer. You heard that term thrown around by him and his group a few times. It’s what they’ve been referring to their enemies as. It probably wouldn’t be smart to lie and say you are one; you get the feeling he’d see through your lie anyway. “I’m not.”

He hums. “How interesting.”

“...what do you mean?” you ask before you can help yourself.

“It’s just you have an abnormally large amount of cursed energy for a non-sorcerer,” he explains. “Though, I suppose that all just sounds like gibberish to you."

You nod and look down at the box lodged in the floor. It has eyes, big creepy looking eyes. "...are you going to do the same thing to me as you did to that man?"

He laughs, "...fortunately for you, the prison realm only holds one person at a time and I need him sealed away more than you."

"...does that mean you're going to leave him in there forever?"

"If I'm feeling nice, I might unseal him in a hundred years or so."

One hundred years? At this point, you've probably lived roughly that amount of time through your loops alone, but for Satoru Gojo… "Won't he die first?"

"Only if he decides to," 'Geto' says, looking completely and wholly unbothered. "Time doesn't doesn't flow in the box, so when I unseal him, he'll be the same as he was just now. Physically anyway. Who knows how deteriorated his mind will be after all that."

Time doesn't flow in the box.

The words echo in your mind over and over. Time doesn't flow in the box. In other words, that means time has stopped in the box, and if that's the case then—

"Anyway, rather than worry about him, shouldn't you be more worried about yourself?"

You look at 'Geto' and he's smiling at you, it's friendly, but ominous. There's no doubt what is going to happen next, though you had already resigned yourself to this iteration being a bust; it was only a matter of time.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I was thinking I might keep you around, even if you aren’t a sorcerer, your wealth of cursed energy would serve my plans well," he muses. "But… it would be too much trouble trying to teach you how to use it in time."

As he talks, you realize this is probably the first time your death is intentional— every other death you've suffered has just been a byproduct of the ongoing slaughter. You were just another casualty, a victim, never a target.

You're scared.

Even though you know that once he kills you, once you die, you'll just loop back to around 8:30 again. You'll be on the platform again. And you'll play out some sequence of events before you eventually die again. And again and again.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I'll be nice, though," 'Geto' says, raising a hand and another monster appears out of nowhere. You don’t even bother trying to figure out from where. It doesn’t matter, especially since this monster will surely be the one to end your life. "I'll make it painless."

"...I appreciate it," you say and close your eyes hoping that he's not lying about it.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

He didn't lie.

You die again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you're trapped.

You don't know how and you don't know why, but you are stuck in a time loop— forced to suffer through the horrific events of the night before you die and begin it all again. It's been a long time since you stopped counting how many loops you've gone through, but if you had to guess, it's probably somewhere in the hundreds now.

You are so very tired.

But it doesn't stop. It won't stop no matter what you seem to do. You are stuck. You are trapped. You are doomed.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

Ever since that first loop where you heard whoever is possessing Geto's body say that, the words have been stuck in your head, playing on loop.

You finally realize why.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

It's 8:25PM when you wake up; that should be plenty of time.

You need to find Satoru Gojo.

After hundreds of loops you've come to a singular conclusion: you need to prevent him being sealed in the prison realm. You've witnessed it enough to know that you won't be able to do it alone; you'll need his cooperation.

You rush upstairs as fast as you can, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine as you step onto the stairwell. According to your previous loops, Satoru Gojo arrives on the subway tracks at 8:40PM. With how crowded the upper floor is, you don’t know if you’ll have the time to intercept him and talk to him, but if you can at least figure out where to find him, then you can try and talk to him during a subsequent loop.

When you reach the fourth basement floor, however, you don’t know where you should even start. He’s pretty tall so you think you could spot him in the crowd, but… there are still so many people. It occurs to you that maybe it would be better to try and look from a higher vantage point so you head to the stairs that lead up to the third basement floor. You check your phone again. It’s 8:35PM; you need to hurry.

Luckily for you, you find him very easily on the third basement floor.

The only problem is that he’s in a hard to reach spot— squatting above a sign hanging over the crowd.

You check your phone again. It’s 8:38PM and he’s starting to move, presumably to meet with those waiting for him on the subway tracks. It’s good that you found him, but there’s no doubt about it.

You’re going to need more time.

The moment you wake up, you immediately bolt toward the stairs. It's taken many, many more loops, but you've finally brought the time you wake down to around 8:15. You're still not sure if it's enough time, but there's only one way to find out.

You barrel your way up to the next floor and zig zag through the crowd to get to the next flight of stairs. By the time you get to your destination, you're completely out of breath, your chest heaving as your lungs clamor for air. You’ve done this so many times, yet your body acts like it’s always the first. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You slow to a brisk pace to catch your breath and check the time. It’s 8:27— a new record. Hopefully it’ll be enough.

The goal is to catch Satoru Gojo before he moves to his lookout point above the crowd. While not impossible, it would be difficult for you to follow him there. You eye the safety barricade that blocks off the area where he’ll be moving in just a few minutes warily.

Yes, getting over there would be extremely difficult.

You don’t want to think about it right now; you’ll deal with it when the time comes.

Especially since Satoru Gojo has now entered your field of vision.

Your heart starts to race at the sight of him and it feels like it’s beating a million times a second. There isn’t a lot of time. You need to talk to him, but your legs only wobble, your feet planted firmly to the ground. This is not good. You need to move. You need to move.

Finally, after what feels like both an instant and an eternity, your feet finally budge, propelling you in Satoru Gojo’s direction. The beating of your heart only grows louder as you make your way toward him, mingling with the single thought that’s echoing throughout your mind right now: will he even hear you out?

You need to make him.

“Excuse me!” The words nearly come out in a stutter as you realize that you are actually talking to Satoru Gojo. You have watched this man at a distance for so long that it almost felt like he wasn’t real, like he was just another fixture in this nightmare that you’ve been living for far too long. And yet, here he is, right in front of you, in the flesh.

And his attention is on you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is actually a little overwhelming. Your mouth is dry and suddenly you don’t know what to say, but you need to say something. You need to say something before he thinks maybe you bumped into him by accident and just walks away without a word.

“I need to talk to you!” The words just burst out from your mouth and something about it is just absolutely embarrassing. You’re not sure if it's desperation or the fact that you haven’t really talked to anyone other than the existence occupying Suguru Geto’s body in nearly forever.

Satoru Gojo’s lips slowly start to form a smile, “Oh, yeah?”

The sound of his voice makes your mind go blank. There’s something different about it right now; more playful, amused even. Maybe it’s because he’s talking to you, a harmless human being and not a monster trying to kill him. It’s almost kind of jarring, but you know, with certainty, what Satoru Gojo’s voice sounds like. And the fact that he’s actually talking to you right now has you kind of excited. You nod, doing your best to not show how thrilled you are that he’s not ignoring you.

He hums thoughtfully, “Sorry… but unfortunately I kind of have some business to attend to right now.”

“I—” You start to say that you know that he’s headed down to the platform below to fight with…Choso and Jogo, you think their names are— you don’t know the name of the monster with the branches for eyes. “It’s— it’s really important!”

Gojo tilts his head a little, clearly thinking. You should probably say something else, something to try and convince him to stay a little longer and hear you out, but your mind is both full and blank. Where do you start? From the beginning? Or do you start with what is most important? Maybe you should say what you think will get his attention. You’re not sure, and you realize you really should have thought about this earlier because you’re running out of time right now.

“...mind handing me your phone?”

You stare at Gojo, completely and wholly confused, but he just holds out his hand expectantly. When you don’t move, he wiggles his fingers a little, a silent gesture telling you to hurry it up. Without thinking, you reach into your bag and unlock your phone before handing it to him.

“Kind of sucks that cell service isn’t working right now,” he remarks as he types something into your phone before handing it back. “But! Here's my number.”

You look down at your phone and, sure enough, Satoru Gojo has added himself as one of your contacts. He’s even added a little star to the end of his name. That’s… a little unexpected. Why his number though?

“Are you… hitting on me?” you mutter in your confusion.

He laughs, “Well, you said you had something really important to talk to me about, right? So just give me a call when you get home or some time tomorrow and we can talk then!”

You’re not going to make it home, or even to tomorrow, and neither will Satoru Gojo. As you start to tell him this, he steps past you. Desperate, you try to grab him, but somehow, for some reason, you can’t. You remember he did this with Jogo and the other monster, made himself untouchable.

This is not good.

He gives you a little wave, cheery as he says, “I’ll talk to you later!”

You watch, helpless as he hops over the barricade beyond your reach.

Gripping your phone tightly, you take a deep breath. It's fine, it's not like you didn’t expect things to go well anyway.

You'll just have to try again.

Every time you’ve tried to solicit help from Satoru Gojo, it has gone the same way. He just won’t give you the time of day, and in some ways you can’t blame him; he’s clearly here to deal with the monsters down on the platform. You’re fairly certain that he probably thinks that whatever is going on with you is a much lesser issue in comparison.

Plus, it probably doesn’t help that in the times that you’ve approached him, you haven’t been able to articulate yourself particularly well. Once you start talking to him, you just get hit with something akin to stage fright and the connection between your mind and your mouth just stops working. It’s gotten better with each attempt, but…

It’s just so frustrating.

It is interesting that Gojo has given you his number every time, star symbol and all. You’re not sure what kind of person you were expecting him to be, but after witnessing him literally and viciously rip monsters apart, you’d figured he’d be a little more somber. However, in the fragmented conversations you’ve had with him he’s come off as far more friendly and playful than you would have thought. Is he the type of person to get more serious when the situation calls for it? You can’t help but wonder, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.

What really matters is that you’re able to convince him to help you.

You have to convince him.

“Excuse me!” you say, stepping in Satoru Gojo’s path. You don’t stutter this time, and your voice is more sure. This is good.

“Yes?”

His head turns in your direction and you gulp. Gojo’s gaze, despite that blindfold of his, still feels just as overwhelming as it did the very first time you approached him. You have no doubt that he’s sizing you up, but there’s just something about it that makes you feel like you’re being picked apart.

You take a deep breath and step closer to him, hoping your voice sounds firm enough as you say, “I need your help. I’m trapped.”

He chuckles a little, “I know, but yours truly is on his way to go beat up the bad guys keeping you all trapped here, so soon enough you’ll be all free to go on your merry little way.”

Right. You were so caught up in your own plight that you nearly forgot that technically you’re not the only one ‘trapped.’ Satoru Gojo obviously knows that everyone else is confined to this station, but you doubt he knows that you’re confined to this night alone.

“That’s not what I mean!” you sputter.

“Then what do you mean?” Gojo asks. Should you tell him that you mean that you’re trapped in a time loop? You’re honestly not sure— in the movies and manga you’ve read about time travel, revealing that sort of thing risks creating a time paradox which seems to be a bad thing. If you have to tell him, you will, but— “Oh, I get it.”

You stare, bewildered. Did you maybe just spew all of that aloud?

Gojo gives you a mischievous smile. “You’re hitting on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” The word comes flying out of your mouth. You can’t deny he’s attractive— you’ve thought it all this time, but that is not what’s happening here.

“No need to be embarrassed,” he continues, ignoring you. “I totally get it, so if you want, I’d be happy to give you my number!”

Again? There’s really something odd about how he keeps giving you his number. Part of you wonders if he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, but you haven’t thought too deeply about it. There are way more important things going on.

“I don’t need your phone number,” you say. “I need to talk.”

Your response seems to give Gojo pause. Did you somehow manage to get through to him? No way. Your suspicions are all but confirmed when he gives you that familiar apologetic smile.

“Like, I said, I’m sort of in the middle of something, but…” Gojo reaches into his pockets and rummages around until one hand fishes out a folded up piece of paper. The other hand keeps digging around in his pocket and when Gojo seems to give up on whatever he’s looking for, he turns his attention back to you. “Got a pen?”

What?

Gojo tilts his head. “Well?”

“I do, but…” You trail off, unsure why he’s asking.

He holds out his hand waiting for you to just hand him the pen. You still don’t get it, but you reach into your bag’s front pocket and pull out the pen and hand it to him. Gojo looks almost like an excited child when he takes it from you, quickly scribbling something onto his paper before shoving it and your pen back into your hand.

You look at the paper; it looks like a receipt. For a disturbing amount of mochi that Gojo bought earlier today. The amount of money he spent is almost sickening; way too much to be paying for mochi. More importantly, you notice something juxtaposed over the receipt’s print.

It’s Satoru Gojo’s name and number.

He even drew a little star next to his name.

“If you change your mind later, just give me a call!” he tells you cheerily. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while!”

You gawk at him. He cannot be serious. You literally just told him that you didn’t need it and yet he still gave it to you. He must want you to contact him later, but you can’t even begin to understand why. It can’t have been something you said or did, right? Unless, he’s actually—

“Later!” Gojo’s voice cuts through your thoughts and you notice him walking off with a wave.

You can’t let him get away.

Again.

You crush the receipt in your hand and rush after him. Despite the crowd, Gojo seems to move through the people with ease and it almost seems like they are yielding to him naturally. It’s good for you. Makes him easier to chase.

“Wait!” you yell, but Gojo doesn’t even look back. Bastard. Your muscles strain as you try to run faster. You know you won’t be able to grab him if you get to him, but there has to still be something you can do to stop him. Circle around him? Cut him off before he—

Satoru Gojo reaches the barricade.

“Wait!” you yell again. “Satoru Gojo, wait!”

He does not even acknowledge you.

You’re almost there though. Almost. If you reach out your hand, then maybe, maybe you can grab him. Something in your head tells you that it’s useless; you’ve never been able to touch him. But, you don’t care, you don’t care because you have to try. You stretch out your hand, desperate and hoping, but just as you do, Gojo effortlessly jumps over the barricade, moving to survey the crowd.

Due to your momentum, you almost collide into the barricade, but you manage to stop yourself. You stare at Satoru Gojo through the glass. He watches the crowd for at most three minutes. Is this just another bust? Is there really nothing you can do? There must be a way you can get his attention. Is it possible to climb over the barricade? No, it’s too high. There’s nothing you can grasp onto or use as footing either.

This fucking sucks.

Another minute or two and Gojo will be on the move again, and there will be no way you can follow, no way you can get his attention. You press your hands against the glass, pushing against it. Naturally, it doesn’t budge. Why would it? If only you could get it out of the way. If only you could break it. This stupid barricade is the only thing between you and Satoru Gojo and there’s no way you can climb it, but if only you could break it.

If only you could fucking break it.

Suddenly, the glass feels warm. Satoru Gojo’s image starts to look a little distorted as the warmth beneath your fingers grows. Something is happening. The glass starts to vibrate and shake. Violently. The tremors grow stronger and stronger. You should stop. You should back away.

You don’t.

The barricade starts to crack and fracture and soon the sound of shattering glass resounds throughout the entire room. Everyone starts screaming. No one knows what’s going on— not even you. But you don’t care. It’s gone. The barricade is gone.

You take a step forward, toward Satoru Gojo. He’s on a beam that’s about a two meter drop from where you’re standing. That’s fine. That’s okay. You can make it. You have to. Without a second thought, you jump—

And you land on the beam. You look up and Satoru Gojo’s attention is back on you. He’s finally, finally turned toward you, face twisted into an expression you can’t decipher or even comprehend, but—

Something’s wrong; your world is turning on its axis, but—

Satoru Gojo is looking at you, and—

Up is very quickly becoming down, and—

Satoru Gojo is coming closer, but—

You’re slipping—

But he’s right there, and—

You’re falling, but—

He’s trying to catch you, but—

It’s too late. It’s too late.

The last thing you think you feel—

—is Satoru Gojo’s arms around you.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are causing a commotion.

“Shit! Fuck!” you curse loudly. The people near you start to shift away but you barely notice; you don’t really care.

You were so close, so fucking close and yet… yet here you are again. It’s quarter past eight and you are back on the goddamn platform. You don’t know what happened; you remember falling and thinking you were going to die, but you are absolutely certain that, once again, this time, you didn’t die.

Is Satoru Gojo at fault again? Did he do something? Like he did all those other times you looped without dying? When you think about it more, you don’t think so. You don’t know what happened; all you know is that you tried to get to him, but you slipped.

And he caught you, you definitely remember that.

You still don’t understand why you looped, but there’s not much you can do about it now; it’s not like you can go back anymore. It just sucks, because you think he might have actually listened if you’d talked to him.

Or he would have come after you for… whatever happened with the barricade. It could have been taken as an attack on the crowd… But if he thought you were doing that, then why would he catch you?

You don’t know.

All you know is that you have to try again.

The only problem is that you don’t know how you managed to shatter the barricade. You think about it as you make your way up to where you’ll find Satoru Gojo. There is the possibility that it wasn’t you and something else happened to it instead, but that feels way too coincidental. It had to be you. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You just can’t figure out how you did it outside of wanting, wishing, praying for the barricade to break. It’s not like you have supernatural powers like Satoru Gojo and his enemies.

Despite your mind being completely and wholly occupied by trying to figure out how in the world you managed to break through that barricade, you still manage to make it to the second basement floor of Shibuya Hikarie by 8:25PM— a brand new record. Satoru Gojo doesn’t show up until around 8:34PM, so that gives you almost ten minutes to try and figure out what you need to do to try and replicate shattering the glass barricade again.

Except—

Except Satoru Gojo is already here.

The thought that maybe you’re mistaken flashes in your mind before it’s quickly dismissed; there’s no way you’d mistake anyone else for him. There is absolutely no denying it: that is Satoru Gojo. Bewildered, you double check the time on your phone. Maybe you misread it and you’re actually late but sure enough you read it right— Satoru Gojo is here early.

What the hell is going on?

Of the thousands of times you have experienced this night, this hell, this sort of thing has never happened before. Everything happens at a specific time, as if adhering to an unseen schedule. It’s likely that what happened in your last iteration did delay Satoru Gojo’s arrival onto the platform, but other than that there has never been a deviation to the time table.

And yet, here Satoru Gojo is, nine minutes early now.

You realize that that’s not the only thing that’s strange: he’s not moving. In previous rounds, when you encounter Gojo here, he’s walking to the lookout spot beyond the barricade. But, right now, he’s just standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. It almost looks like he's waiting for something.

Or someone.

This unexpected turn of events has you rooted to the spot. You’re not sure what you should do. No. This shouldn’t change anything. You need to talk to him. As concerning as a change like this is, the extra time it gives you should be a good thing. Despite knowing that, your feet are still firmly planted to the ground.

The crowd shifts and you see Satoru Gojo start to move. Toward the barricade? No. He’s not heading in his usual direction, rather he’s—

You stop breathing.

He’s headed toward you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is absolutely mind numbing.

He comes to a stop before you, lips curled up to form an amused sort of smile as he says, “Soooo, you needed to talk to me?”

You try to answer but no words come out of your mouth. Are you dreaming? You have to be, right? There's no way that this is actually happening. Could it be that, after thousands of loops, you’ve finally lost it? Your mind shattering along with the glass of the barricade at the end of the last one?

Gojo tilts his head, indicating that he's still waiting for an answer. When you open your mouth, at first, nothing comes out, the words stuck in your throat. You force them out, your voice cracking, “...how did you know?”

He smiles, looking almost mischievous as he reaches up and lightly taps the side of his head. “I remembered, of course!”

All you can do is stare at Satoru Gojo. He remembered? How is that possible? From his perspective, this is the first time you’ve met and while it shouldn’t be possible for him to remember there’s something in your mind that’s keeping you from completely dismissing the possibility.

Gojo laughs, “I take it from the look on your face that you’re not used to this sort of thing happening. Is this the first time?”

“No.” The fact that the word is out of your mouth before you can even really think about it surprises you and you really have to think. Your face scrunches together as you try to remember. Is this really not the first time? Then, the memories assault you, overlapping as they replay simultaneously in your head— a woman in a yellow and white magical girl costume— begging you for help as she burns to death— smiling as she tells you she made her costume herself. “...it happened just once a long time ago.”

“‘A long time ago,’ huh. Sounds like you've been at this for a while now.”

“...unfortunately.”

Gojo hums. “So when you said you didn’t need my phone number…”

“You’d already given it to me a few times,” you say, figuring that’s where this conversation is going.

“Really now?”

Does he not believe you? Or is he just being an ass? You’re not sure, but since you had taken the liberty of memorizing Satoru Gojo’s phone number you recite it back to him to prove your point.

Just when you think you may have stunned Gojo into silence he starts to laugh, obviously finding something funny about the fact that you know his cell phone number. “Seems like you've got quite the fascinating technique there.”

Technique? What is he talking about? Your confusion must be plain on your face because he adds, elaborating, “The time travel.”

You continue to stare at him. You don't think you'd consider what you've been going through time travel, because traveling implies moving from point A to point B, but you've been stuck walking in circles at point A for a long time. What really gets you is… “What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“You mean you don’t— oh. I get it; no wonder you’re trapped.”

That does not answer your question in the slightest. “Can you please explain what you're talking about? What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“Right, right… So basically, a technique is like a special sort of power,” he finally explains. “Like I said, your technique seems to be a kind of time travel. Whenever you activate it, your mind is sent back in time.”

What he's saying makes sense, but… “How come you were sent back too?”

He laughs again. “Isn't it obvious? Think back to before— do you remember that I caught you as you were falling?”

You nod slowly. The memory of his arms around you is almost embarrassingly vivid. “...is it because we were touching?”

“Ding, ding, ding! That's correct! Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!”

Something about his tone annoys you, but you try to ignore it. He could have just told you rather than make you guess. “How do you know that for sure?”

“Well,” he continues. “You’ve done your little time loop a bunch of times, right? If your technique affected everyone, or even a few people in a select range you would have noticed for sure. And if it affected only just you then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, now would we?”

When you think about it, you do think that the woman in the magical girl costume might have bumped into you before the loop where she remembered.

“That’s honestly just conjecture, but I've got pretty good eyes, so I’m hardly ever wrong.”

Gojo gives you a grin and while you do think that his reasoning is sound enough his confidence is a little grating. More than that, though, you’re glad that this conversation is actually going really well.

“Either way,” he says thoughtfully. “It doesn’t look like you can control your technique. Usually a person’s technique manifests when they’re a kid, but you seem to be a special case… in fact, I bet your technique activated for the very first time tonight— probably under some pretty extreme circumstances, too.”

“...dying counts as an ‘extreme circumstance,’ right?”

“Oh, absolutely. Or legitimately thinking that you’re gonna die, but it seems like your body has been unconsciously activating your technique as a sort of defense mechanism. Which is why you’re trapped.”

“So, if I could control it I���d be able to make it out of this time loop.”

“Yeah, but in this case it probably wouldn’t end very well for you,” he points out with a chuckle. “It’s not like you actually want to die, right? I mean, if you did, then your technique wouldn’t even activate in the first place.”

You don’t; what you want is for this night to finally end. To be free from the endless cycle of dying over and over again and again. You don’t think death is quite the answer; even if you were to learn how to control this supposed technique of yours, there’s no guarantee that you would just unconsciously activate it when the grim reaper comes knocking on your door. No, the answer is…

“Anyway!” Gojo’s cheery voice cuts through your thoughts. “I highly doubt that you’re the type that makes a habit of jumping off ledges for the funsies, so the fact that you’ve been dying tells me that some pretty gruesome stuff is about to go down, so, tell me what happens tonight.”

The sudden drop of his voice sends a shiver running down your spine. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve seen how serious Gojo can get, the sudden shift in demeanor would probably freak you out a bit, but it doesn’t. This is the Satoru Gojo you’re familiar with.

You do have one concern though. “That… won’t create a time paradox or anything, will it?”

“Nah,” Gojo shrugs. “You wouldn’t cause one with the way your technique works, besides, if you’ve only been going back at most an hour or two in time it’s hard to believe you’d be making a really big impact… unless you really believe in the butterfly effect.”

You’re still not quite sure.

“Trust me, it’ll be fine.”

His voice sounds strange. Gentle. Kind. It's the most soothing thing you've heard in a long time and it makes you want to believe him.

“...okay.”

Anxiety is still gripping at you, but you try to dispel it, taking a deep breath before beginning your explanation. For the sake of brevity, it’s probably best that you’re as concise as possible. There isn’t much need to really get into the nitty gritty of things unless he asks specifically.

Naturally, you begin with his arrival onto the platform and how soon after a fight breaks out and how the crowd is unfortunate enough to be involved. Gojo’s expression is passive for the most part, but he does crack the faintest hint of a smile when you mention how he manages to eviscerate one of the monsters.

It disappears once you tell him about the arrival of the train. Between the dozens upon dozens of people being dropped onto the platform by those two high school girls and the hoard of monsters disembarking from the train, everything devolves into pandemonium.

“Wait,” Gojo holds a hand up and you pause. This is his first interruption since you started recounting the night’s events for him. “Everyone is able to see the monsters?”

You stare at him. What a weird question. “...yeah?”

His mouth twists and it looks like he’s thinking about something. You can’t even begin to imagine what. Finally, he comments, “Makes sense.”

It does not, but you don’t ask him to elaborate. Surely if it was important he would have just done so.

“Anyway, in the middle of all that, you… you do something.” Your brows bunch together as you remember the stance Gojo took, the crazed and desperate look in his eyes, the feeling of your head about to explode. “I don’t know how to describe it. At first, it would just force me to… activate my technique, I guess. But now, it just knocks me out for a few minutes.”

Gojo frowns and he rubs at his chin, obviously thinking about what you’ve said. Eventually, he raises a hand and bends his fingers into a familiar gesture. It’s the one that preludes whatever he does on the platform. “Do I do this?”

“Yeah.”

He hums. “Interesting.”

You wait to see if he’ll explain. He doesn’t. Great. Even if he doesn’t think you need to know, it certainly would be nice to. It’s annoying otherwise, but you ignore the feeling and continue. “I can’t tell you what happens when I’m knocked out, but when I come to everyone is basically a zombie and all the monsters from the train are gone. I think you kill them.”

“I probably do,” he says casually. “But what about Volcano Head?”

“...you don't…get a chance to kill him,” you say slowly. Gojo tilts his head, waiting for you to elaborate, but you hesitate. You have to tell him, you know you do, but…

You have seen the interaction so many times and though you don't know the exact nature of the relationship between them, you can tell that seeing Suguru Geto (or rather seeing his body) shook Satoru Gojo to his very core.

There's no doubt in your mind that he will not take this news well.

“Come on now,” Gojo's tone is light-hearted, unaware. “Don't keep me in suspense here.”

It's as if you're withholding the punchline to a joke. In a way, you suppose you are, but you don't think he's going to find it funny.

You take a deep breath. You need to tell him. The worst thing that could happen is that he doesn't believe you, but if that's the case… you'll probably just end up repeating this all again until you find a loop where he does.

Having made it this far, you'd like to avoid all that.

“Before you can get Volcano Head you get restrained by something called the prison realm,” you say slowly, “by someone calling themselves… Suguru Geto.”

The second the name leaves your mouth, there is a clear and obvious shift in the air. Gone is Gojo’s laid-back and frivolous demeanor, replaced with something more somber and almost frightening. The tension grows more and more palpable to the point that you think it might almost choke you.

You almost wish that it would.

“You can’t be serious,” Gojo finally says, once your words have fully sunk in.

“I—” You start to speak, but come to an abrupt stop when you see him shove his hand into his pocket to yank out his phone of all things.

The both of you know full well that there’s no reception here, but you don’t think that he’s planning on making any calls. Gojo scrolls and scrolls on his phone before he stops and shoves the screen in your face. It shows a picture of three people— a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth, a younger, happier version of Gojo sporting a pair of round sunglasses and—

“When you say ‘Geto’ is this who you’re referring to?” Gojo demands, using his other hand to point at the third person in the frame— a handsome young man with long dark hair pulled up into a bun.

“Yes, but—”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be him,” Gojo interrupts, his voice firm, cold even. “He’s dead.”

There’s a note of finality in his words that is definitely meant to leave no room for argument. It doesn’t stop you, though. Instead, you glare at Gojo’s stupid blindfold and say, “...being dead doesn’t mean a damn thing! I’ve died hundreds of times and yet I’m still fucking here, but—”

“Your situation is different,” he interjects, the temperature of his tone hiking up, his words like heated hissing. “I killed him almost a year ago. There's no way—”

“You didn't get rid of the body properly!” You cut him off, raising your voice in hopes that he'll take even just a second to stop and listen. It seems to work and you add something you remember ‘Geto’ saying. “You should have had Shoko Ieiri get rid of it, but you didn’t and now some… some kind of gross brain thing is possessing the corpse!”

The air between you both is silent as the grave. Though you can't see it, you can feel the weight of his gaze pressing down on you. He’s definitely having second thoughts about everything you’ve said so far. There’s a chance he might even think you’re his enemy now. You stare him down though, refusing to look away. You’ve made it this far, you can’t— you won’t back down.

“...you’re not lying, are you.” Gojo’s words are more of a statement than a question. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows the answer, and yet he’s still asking. You wonder if maybe he’s clinging onto some vain hope that maybe, just maybe this all a sick, cruel joke that’s gone way too far.

“I’m not.”

Gojo holds your gaze for a second longer before he lets out a curse. “Fuck!”

“...I’m sorry,” you say quietly, mostly because it feels like the most correct thing to say at this moment. You don’t know the whole story, but it seems like they were close. If so, then it must have hurt Gojo a lot to have killed him, and must hurt even more to know that someone is desecrating the body. You hate that you, a complete and utter stranger, happened to be the person to tell him, but…

It had to be done, for the sake of getting past this unending night, it had to be done.

Gojo runs a hand through his hair and lets out a ragged sigh. “Okay. What happens after that?”

You give him a rundown of what follows; he gets sealed, the monsters wake up and all but ‘Geto’ leave in search of their next target. When you mention the high school girls demanding the brain give Geto’s body back, Gojo snorts loudly.

“Fat chance of that,” he says derisively.

You nod in agreement. It was clear to you that the brain parasite has no intent on giving it up any time soon. “After they leave, he… talks to me.”

“Probably couldn't ignore all that cursed energy you have,” Gojo remarks offhandedly.

You stare at him, expression twisted in a way that shows that you have absolutely no clue what that means. It should be fine for you to ask this one question; it actually concerns you after all. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, though… probably doesn't make much sense to you, does it?”

You give him a pointed glare and all Gojo does is laugh.

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“...Like in a video game?”

“Exactly!” Then, Gojo tilts his head, clearly thinking. You don't bother asking; you don't feel like he'll explain.

“He does ask me if I'm a sorcerer, whatever that is. Is that why?”

“Probably. Ordinary people don't have even a fraction of the energy you're packing.”

‘Ordinary people’ he says as if you’re not an ordinary person who got caught up in all this supernatural sorcery bullshit. Or at least you were, but if the time loops are really a product of your own doing…

“Does he kill you when you answer?” Gojo asks to get the conversation back on track.

“Not right away. What happens next kind of varies,” you answer. “He usually lets me have a question or two before he kills me; I've asked him a couple different things.”

“Really taking advantage, aren’t you?” Gojo says and you're not sure what to make of his tone. Is he mocking you or is he easing back into that laid-back persona of his?

“If I’m doomed to repeat the same situation over and over, I might as well make the most of it,” you respond flatly.

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.”

He’s definitely gone back to acting almost completely unserious— all signs of his earlier agitation are nearly gone.

“So what did you learn?”

“Well, the prison realm only holds one occupant. Once they’re sealed, time stops for them and the only way out is if the bearer unseals them or if they choose to kill themselves.”

“I see… And what about our body jacker?”

“He didn’t go into detail but he said something about… striving toward the evolution of mankind?” You frown a little at the memory. He didn’t explain further because he said that you wouldn’t understand.

“Huh. Interesting. Wonder how he was gonna go about doing that.”

“I don't know, but I can't imagine you'd like it since he goes out of his way to seal you into that box,” you say. “Said you’d get in the way because you’re too strong.”

Gojo shrugs his shoulders and grins a little. Cocky. “Well, I am the strongest sorcerer around, you know.”

You would think him overconfident if you hadn't seen the magnitude of his strength first hand.

“Anyway, that's as far as I ever go. When he's decided he’s done talking to me, he kills me and I loop back.”

“So, in short, what you want help with is getting past that point, right?”

“More or less.”

“And all I have to do is avoid getting caught by the prison realm?”

You nod.

“What’s it look like?” he asks. “A big cage with a bunch of metal bars?”

Now that you think about it, you haven’t woken up early enough to see it before it traps him, but you can’t imagine it looks that much different. “No.. It’s a small box with eyes… It gets big enough to fit you in it, though.”

“Huh.” He stretches his arms out above his head as if he��s trying to emphasize how large he actually is and shoots you a grin. “Should be easy enough then. I bet our body snatcher used the shock of seeing Suguru to trap me but since I'll see it coming, avoiding it'll be a piece of cake.”

Gojo makes it sound so easy, and maybe it really is as simple as that, but you can't help but be worried still.

“Don't tell me you don't think I can do it,” he says, tilting his head.

“It's not that,” you admit. “I'm just concerned I might die before we can get to that point.”

Truthfully, since you know that will just result in another loop you're less concerned with dying itself and more worried about losing the progress you've made in convincing Gojo to help you. Even though it's been clearly proven you can loop him as well, there's no guarantee you'll be able to make the physical contact needed to do it upon death.

“You've made it pretty far on your own, though, right?”

“Yeah, but… I’ve messed up plenty of times.” More than you can even count. “There's also the possibility that taking the time to talk to you might have thrown things out of whack.”

Speaking of time, you check your phone. It's 8:39PM. You curse.

Gojo leans over to check your phone. “Let me guess, I'm supposed to be somewhere right now.”

“Yeah, this is when you’re descending down onto the platform.”

“You know where I am down to the exact minute?” He asks and you tilt your head back and forth a little. It’s not exact per se, but it’s close enough. Gojo chuckles a little. “Man, I didn’t realize that you were actually that into me.”

That earns Gojo a glare from you, but he just laughs it off. “I doubt being a few minutes late is going to make a big difference.”

You certainly hope so.

“Don't worry,” Gojo says and you notice he's using that tone from earlier. “You won't die.”

It’s hard to argue with him when he uses such a reassuring sounding voice and yet, you still open your mouth to try— to voice your doubts, but what he says next silences you before you even can.

“I'll protect you.”

You think your heart stops beating in your chest and your words dissolve in your throat.

He grins at you. “Did you fall in love with me just now?”

That catches you a little off guard. You're willing to admit he's hot, but surely he must be joking. “How could you even think of something like that at a time like this?”

Gojo laughs again. “Well, since someone is so worried about their time table being all messed up, I better head down there; can’t keep Volcano Head and friends waiting, right?”

You blink. Is that it? “Wait, shouldn’t we make a plan or something?”

“Isn’t the plan for me to not get caught in the prison realm?”

Yes, but… “But what about me? Is there anything I can do?”

Gojo stares at you, or at least you think he does. “...I don’t know, is there?”

You’ve seen the encounter between Satoru Gojo and those monsters so many times and you try to picture a version of it where you intervene and… all you can see is yourself getting in his way. You’re no fighter, no… sorcerer, or whatever he is, you’re just some ordinary person that was unfortunate enough to get all caught up in this mess. The most you can probably do is kick the prison realm out of the way when the time comes, but otherwise… “...no, I guess not.”

His expression turns sympathetic. “You’ve done plenty by telling me everything that happens. So just wait up here, and let me handle the monsters.”

You almost nod. Almost. But then you remember what transpires up here above the platform. You know it sounds safer up here where you’re less likely to get involved in the carnage, but… “Wait, no, if I stay up here then I’ll fall to my death when those girls—”

Gojo laughs, interrupting you. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“I…” It’s hard to. After everything you’ve gone through it’s hard to trust in anything, to believe in anything. Even though you’ve made it this far this time, the worry that something will go wrong and that you’ll have to do it all again still lurks in the back of your mind.

Despite all that, you want to believe.

You want to believe that you can make it past this unending night, that one day you’ll wake up and it’ll no longer be October 31, 2018. And the first step towards that is trusting in Satoru Gojo.

“...okay,” you say quietly. “Okay.”

Gojo chuckles then asks, “Anything else before I head off?”

You start to ask if there’s anything you should say, in case things don’t work out, but you stop yourself. You’re choosing to trust him, to believe in him— you can figure out that stuff later if things end up going south after all. So, instead you give him a smile and it feels a little weird because you don’t remember the last time you did. “Good luck!”

For a split second, Gojo looks almost surprised, but then he laughs again, beaming widely at you. He starts to move past you and reaches out to give you what you think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and then he’s off. You turn to watch him go, the crowd, once again, parting almost naturally for him.

When he reaches the barricade, he pauses, raising his hand as if he’s giving you one last wave. Then he jumps over it onto his little perch and then less than a minute later he’s gone, descending to the platform below.

Now, all you can do is wait.

You check your phone again and it’s 8:44PM. If you remember correctly, the high school girls start threatening everyone right before 9PM. With Gojo’s arrival being shifted back almost five minutes, does that mean that they’ll be shifted back too? It would make sense, but you’re not too sure.

Out of habit, you keep checking your phone and at nearly 9PM, you hear the shrill voice of one of the girls over the crowd, commanding everyone to do what she says, her partner stringing up bodies until everyone listens. Everything plays out just as you remember it, which is mildly comforting, though you know that the events that happen up here are more or less independent from what happens below.

Surely, just as Gojo said, a few minutes aren’t going to change anything, but—

No.

You agreed to trust him. To trust that everything would be fine.

When the girls start to demand that as many people as possible climb onto the roots and vines covering the atrium your heart starts to hammer in your chest. In just a few minutes, all the foliage will disintegrate beneath you, and you and everyone else here will fall into the abyss below.

You are afraid.

There isn’t a single loop where you’ve really survived this fall. If you don’t die in midair, you die right after landing. It’s a death trap, and that’s why you’ve stopped coming up here. There’s a part of you, the part that knows what’s about to happen, that wants to try and run back onto stable footing. But you can’t, because you know if you do then the girls will kill you for sure; you have to stay.

It’ll be fine, you tell yourself, it’ll be okay.

You just have to trust Gojo.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You hear the announcement faintly below you. It’s almost time. You brace yourself and try to stay calm. Gojo said he would protect you, that you wouldn’t die. You don’t know how he intends to keep that promise, but all you can do is believe in his words.

It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.

The vines and roots start to crack and the ground beneath you starts to give out. You squeeze your eyes shut as that sickening weightless feeling overtakes you. It occurs to you that this is actually quite literally a trust fall— will Satoru Gojo really be able to catch you?

As you fall, you realize almost instantly that something is different.

You’ve experienced this fall dozens of times and so, even though it has been a while since you’ve gone this route, you are very familiar with what it feels like. Something is different. You’re falling faster. The trajectory is changing. It’s like some force, other than gravity, is pulling at you.

Is this Gojo’s doing?

Just as your body collides with the ground you hear the sounds of mutilating flesh meld with the screams surrounding you. Blood and severed limbs litter the ground, but you try to ignore it. You need to focus on your own survival right now. Quickly, you scramble to your feet scan the area around you; you’re on the platform right now and right in front of you is—

Right in front of you is Satoru Gojo.

His back is turned to you, his focus currently elsewhere. Looking at him you realize you recognize this scene, though it’s much closer and at a different angle. He’s about to do that thing, that thing that knocks you out.

Something in you tells you to move closer to him, after all, he used his mysterious powers to deliberately bring you closer to him, right? You rush toward him and as you do something he said earlier pops up in your mind.

Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!

Whatever he’s about to do… Is that his ‘technique?’ And if it is, would it work the same way as yours? If so, there’s only one way to find out: you need to touch him. You dodge monsters and other people as you run toward Satoru Gojo and—

A monster still manages to grab you, its large hands wrapping around your wrist. You try and yank it free, but it's much stronger than you are.

“Shit!” you hiss as the monster starts to pull you toward it and away from Gojo. What do you do? Your other hand is still free, should you try to punch it in the face? Or—

Before you can do anything, something blasts the monster’s head clean off. Shocked, you stare as the monster’s body slumps onto the ground, its grip loosening on you instantly. You whip your head around to find that while Gojo still has his back to you, his arm is bent back in your direction, his palm open as if he fired some invisible blast from it.

Then you feel it again, something pulling at you, but this time it's more forceful. Your body is yanked toward Gojo and the second you feel his hand press against you, you see him make that gesture with his other hand.

“Domain Expansion,” he whispers in a strained voice. “Infinite Void!”

Something happens and your vision flashes for a fraction of a second. And then—

The room is enveloped in an eerie stillness; all the violence and bloodshed coming to an abrupt stop. Monsters and humans alike stand like the living dead, unconscious with their eyes wide open as if they are staring into an infinite abyss. You recognize this scene, you’re familiar with it because it’s similar to the one you wake up to after being hit by Gojo’s ‘domain expansion.’ The only difference is the presence of the monsters, who are all but gone when you regain consciousness.

The pressure from Gojo’s hand is gone and he says to you, his voice still low. “If you’re squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, it might be best for you to close your eyes.”

And then he’s gone.

You do not take his advice. You do not close your eyes. How many loops were you unable to witness what’s about to unfold? A few hundred? A few thousand? And if all goes to plan, then you will never get another chance again: there’s no way you could possibly look away.

And what you see unfold before you is that Satoru Gojo was right.

He is the one to kill all the monsters.

It’s not as if you really had any doubt, after all, it seemed like the most logical conclusion to come to and yet…

There’s a difference between knowing and seeing.

All the violence resumes and the platform is engulfed in the sounds of carnage and slaughter once more. The lack of terrified screams makes everything more disconcerting— without them, all you can hear is the squelching echo of mangled flesh and blood splattering all over the place. You can’t really see him, but you can tell where Satoru Gojo is in the crowd as he leaves dozens upon dozens of decapitated heads soaring in his wake. Once or twice, he leaps out of the crowd and even from where you stand you can see the crazed glow of his inhumanly blue eyes as he massacres monster after monster.

Even though you don’t think you have anything to be scared of, you are still terrified: Satoru Gojo is no longer a man, but violence incarnate. You want to move closer to where Gojo gets trapped, but you’re afraid to. What if you get in his way? What if he kills you by accident?

Dying again when you’ve made it this far is definitely not ideal, but isn’t being killed by Gojo the best case scenario? Because then the two of you would probably loop together again and—

No.

Gojo said you wouldn’t die.

He said he’d protect you.

It’s hard to believe when he’s in the middle of a massacre, slaughtering monsters left and right, but you remind yourself yet again that you have to believe in him.

You take a deep breath and start moving, taking care to keep an eye on where Gojo is. You don’t know how long this is supposed to take, but you do know where he ends up when he’s just about done. The closer he gets to that spot, the sooner the prison realm will be unleashed upon him.

There’s a small group of zombified people nearby and you settle yourself among them. It’s not super close, but you think it's close enough that you'd be able to run over and kick the box away from Gojo if you have to. You do a quick survey to see if you can spot the body snatcher, but he's nowhere to be found. Hopefully, he hasn't noticed you moving around, or, if he has, he's more concerned with Gojo than he is with you. Given that you always seem to be the last thing he acknowledges, you'd like to think that he doesn't consider you a threat.

Which you're not, not really anyway.

The sounds of slaughter start to die down and you look to see Gojo approaching the spot where he gets caught. He looks beat, his eyes unfocused and his breathing heavy. You do another quick scan around him and notice a small box a few meters away from him, wrapped in what looks like paper charms or seals or whatever they're called. That has to be the prison realm— though it looks different than what you saw before. Gojo seems to notice it right after you do, his gaze honing in on it, examining it with some measure of bewilderment. Then, some invisible force slices through all the paper seals covering the box and it expands, the corners of the box floating up in midair to reveal what looks like a large sheet of dark red flesh with a large bloodshot eye stapled to the middle.

Disgusting.

If Gojo didn’t realize before, he seems to now, because he takes a step back, away from the grotesque thing. Good, good—

“Hey! Satoru!” Your blood runs cold at the sound of the body snatcher’s voice. He emerges from the crowd, smiling widely as he gives Gojo a wave. “Long time no see!”

Satoru Gojo’s entire body goes rigid. Shit. You told him, you warned him about what was going to happen, who he was going to see, but was that not enough? It’s possible that no amount of warning would have been enough to mentally prepare Satoru Gojo for the sight of the man he said he killed a year ago. After all, you know that there’s a stark difference between knowing and seeing. Even then, if Gojo doesn’t gather his wits and move now then he’s going to get caught and you can’t let that happen.

Your body moves before you can even think about it.

You scramble out from your hiding spot in the crowd and throw yourself in between Satoru Gojo and the prison realm. There’s no way you can kick it away from him now, not when it’s in this form, but maybe, if you get between them you can at least keep it from capturing him.

The eye quivers erratically, as it flits from Gojo to you. Every hair on your body stands on end as it watches you, the pupil dilating and contracting uncontrollably. You can’t look away from it, your own gaze fixed to your image reflected in the black abyss of the pupil. Something in the back of your mind tells you to stop, to get away, it’s dangerous, but you keep your feet firmly planted to the ground.

A second, or maybe even a minute passes and the prison realm shifts, its fleshy form morphing to restrain you.

The body jacker looks at you, his frown tinged with disgust. “Don’t you think you’re being rather rude by butting into what could have been a touching reunion?”

You scowl. Is he still trying to play the role of Suguru Geto?

He sighs and looks past you at Gojo. “Satoru, I thought bringing lesser sorcerers to fight alongside you was more trouble than it was worth?”

You hear Gojo snort from behind you, “It is… but this person here isn’t a sorcerer… Just like you aren’t Suguru Geto.”

The faker almost pouts and presses his hand to his chest as if Gojo's words have wounded him. “Satoru, I’m hurt, how could you say such a thing to your best friend?”

“Cut the bullshit,” Gojo snarls. “You can’t fucking fool me. You might be in Suguru’s body but I know with all my heart and soul that you’re not him.”

The corpse snatcher stares at Gojo, expression blank before he sighs once more. Then, his gaze shifts back to you, his eyes narrowed as he looks at you with sheer disdain. It feels as if you’ve been drenched in ice cold water. There's no smile this time but you already know what's going to happen.

He’s going to kill you.

“I intended to deal with you later since you seemed harmless enough,” he says, raising a hand to summon a monster— the same one he always uses to end your life. “But you’re in the way. So, I think it’s for the best if I just get rid of you right now.”

Instinctively, you try to take a step back but the prison realm’s restraints keep you in place. Not that it would have mattered much, even in the loops where you’ve tried to escape the faker’s monster, it still kills you, too fast and too agile for an ordinary human like you to avoid. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the monster to kill you. At least, it’s always painless.

Something touches your back.

Your eyes shoot open.

Before you is the monster, wiggling and writhing only mere centimeters from your face. It gurgles and snarls at you, desperate to fulfill its master’s wishes and kill you but it doesn’t move any closer. You stare at it with wide eyes, unsure of what to do.

Someone behind you clicks their tongue— Gojo. You try to turn your head to look at him, but your movements are too limited, the most you can do is turn your head to the side. The sounds the monster is making start to change, sounding more frenzied, almost as if it’s in pain, and you flit your eyes in its direction just in time to see its entire body explode. The monster's guts and bright purple blood fly off in every direction, getting on the floor, the ceiling, the zombified bodies of the people unfortunate enough to be nearby, but not on you.

This is Satoru Gojo’s doing.

He steps in front of you, half turned towards you as he moves in between you and the body snatcher. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he loudly says, “Did you really forget about me?”

You’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the body snatcher.

Past him, the imposter scowls, raising his hand once more, probably to summon even more monsters, but Gojo’s quicker, and it almost looks like his eyes are glowing even brighter, the blue looking almost white as he whips his head in the faker’s direction. The sound of mangling flesh and breaking bones echoes throughout the room as Gojo, using that mysterious power of his, seems to break the faker’s arm.

The body snatcher hisses loudly and despite the fact that his face is twisted in very obvious pain, he tries to shoot Gojo a mocking smile. “Do you really think you can kill your best friend again?”

“I already told you,” Gojo turns to fully face the monster inhabiting Geto’s corpse. He tilts his head a little to the side and some force starts to squeeze at the faker’s neck. “You’re not Suguru.”

You hear a loud crack as Gojo telekinetically snaps his neck.

The head rolls onto the ground and you almost look away, but then you notice his eyes still moving, looking around. Is he still alive? Then you remember: the thing possessing Suguru Geto’s body was some kind of parasite. “Gojo! Wait! The brain!”

He reacts almost instantly, head turning and in an instant the skull is crushed and all that remains is red splotch on the ground.

You almost relax. Almost.

But the body is still standing.

Horrified, you watch as it quivers violently before falling to the ground. Then what looks like dozens of black spirits start to erupt from the corpse and the entire room is engulfed with a shrill howling.

What the hell is going on?

“Those must be all the cursed spirits he consumed,” Gojo explains uselessly, voice barely audible over the screaming. “Guess he was empty before.”

You don’t bother asking what he means. There are bigger problems right now. “What do we do?”

“No choice to exorcise them,” he answers plainly.

For him to exorcise them, he means. You both know that there’s not much that you can do. You still can’t move and honestly, you don’t even know if it’s possible to get out of the prison realm’s restraints. Not without dying. And if you die now…

Everything will have been for naught.

You’ll reset time and have to do this all over again— assuming you can even get to this point again.

There has to be something, you just have to think outside the box.

Or rather—

“Gojo!”

He glances back at you.

“You need to seal me in the prison realm!” you exclaim. He turns to face you fully, looking bewildered and you start to explain as fast as you can. “Those things are going to attack any minute right? I can’t move or try to hide and I can’t expect you to protect me the entire time and if I die then I’ll end up looping time again, but— but, if you seal me in the prison realm then that won’t happen.”

Gojo frowns, looking conflicted. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“Wouldn't it be easier if you didn’t have to?”

He tilts head and you think he’s conceding your point.

“Please,” you beg, staring at him desperately. “We don’t have much time. The other… cursed spirits will wake up soon too!”

You don’t have to explain that you mean Volcano Head and friends.

It takes only a second for Gojo to consider the very few options you have. “...how do you seal it? Do you know?”

“I think so,” you answer. “There’s no guarantee it’ll work but I think that if you say ‘prison realm, gate close’ it should seal me inside.”

If anything, it’s worth a shot.

Gojo nods. “Do you know how to break the seal?”

“I… don’t,” you confess. You never asked, and you don’t think the body snatcher would have told you even if you did. He only told you that it holds one and that…

That time doesn’t flow in the box.

“...you don’t have to break the seal.”

Gojo frowns, “Wait a sec—”

“Even if I make it past tonight… What if this all happens again? What if I inadvertently trap myself in another time loop?” you ask. “I… I don’t want to have to go through all of this again. It’s better for me in a place where time doesn’t pass.”

You don’t know for sure if it’ll be better, but right here, right now, it seems like the best option.

It feels like an eternity passes before Gojo says anything.

“...fine,” he agrees and you don’t quite know how to feel about it. The howling around you all grows louder. You wonder why the cursed spirits haven’t attacked yet. Maybe Gojo’s power is holding them at bay… for now anyway. You both know that he can’t ignore them forever.

“...before I do, though, mind if I ask you just one thing?”

You blink. “Not sure what I can do for you in this state…”

He laughs. “I just want to know your name.”

What an odd request. Though, now that you think about it, you don’t think that during this loop or any other loop really, you’ve ever told him your name. It only seems fair to tell him, since you’ve known his for longer than he’s known of your existence.

You tell him your name.

He nods, looking as if he’s committing to memory. Probably easier to remember than his phone number. “Any last words?”

You try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind and you just shake your head.

Gojo takes a deep breath, “Alrighty then… Prison realm, gate close.”

Just as it did the many times you’ve seen Satoru Gojo sealed away, the boxes and restraints around you vibrate a little before they start to close around you, growing large enough to fit your body as they approach.

You won’t see it, but once you’re inside the box will shrink and become small enough to fit in the palm of someone’s hand.

Will it be quiet inside?

In your final seconds, some words, some last words come to mind, and you say them, hoping that he hears them in time. “Thank you, Satoru Gojo.”

You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.

And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black.

It’s November 30, 2018— morning on the campus of Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School.

Satoru Gojo strides through the school grounds, casually tossing a small silver box with eerie blue eyes known as the prison realm up and down in his grasp. Walking at his side is Shoko Ieiri, a pretty woman who’s been unfortunate enough to have been Satoru’s friend since high school.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Shoko asks, twirling a few strands of her long brown hair.

“What do you mean?” Satoru responds nonchalantly. “All my ideas are good ideas.”

Shoko hums in clear dissent, but doesn’t say anything more. Even she knows better than to try and waste her time trying to argue with Satoru. “I’m just worried about their mental state. Didn’t you say that time doesn’t flow in the box?”

“I’d be worried if it was some normal person,” Satoru says. “But after what they’ve gone through I think they’ll be fine.”

“...well, if you say so.”

The two arrive at their destination: the largest training area on the Jujutsu High grounds. Satoru places the prison realm at the center and takes a few steps back with Shoko standing behind him, in case anything happens.

He doesn’t think it will, but it’s always good to take at least a few precautions.

“Gojo, are you sure we should be doing this?” Shoko asks again. “Didn’t they want to remain in the box?”

“Of course I am,” Satoru says with his usual air of confidence before looking back at the prison realm nestled in the grass. He grins and then—

“Prison realm, gate open.”

if you made it this far. thank you. it's my sincerest hope that you enjoyed the ride.

[gojonanami]

ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD - NANAMI KENTO

✴︎ summary: aka nanami is totally fine and alive. after shibuya, nanami lets you tend to his burns and have an honest discussion about what happened there and what it means for your future. ✴︎ contents: hurt/comfort, fluff, spoilers/discussions of what happens to nanami in shibuya, and of course he survives, he's fine (copium), nanami being a girl dad (b/c you know he would be the best dad - i mean he is already). ✴︎ wc: 1,469

Refusals came first when it came to Kento. 

“Ieiri can take care of it—” 

Especially when it came to taking care of him. 

“But I want to, Kento,” you say softly, burn kit prepared by you and Ieiri in hand, your fingers curling tighter around the handle, “I don’t want to push you to do something you’re uncomfortable with, but I want to help,” for all of the times that you couldn’t. 

It has been a month since Shibuya. A month since Gojo had been sealed. A month since all hell had broken loose. 

How has it only been a month? 

And it had been only two weeks since Kento had been allowed home, to rest, allowed to be extracted from Shibuya from Shoko’s treatment area. His eye was unsalvageable — destroyed in that octopus special grade’s domain, and his body — burned severely by that volcano special grade. He would have to wear an eyepatch for the rest of his life. And reverse cursed technique only did so much, but they couldn’t heal burn marks.

Half of his body is wrapped in bandages — if you hadn’t been lucky enough to get Kento out of that situation with the curse you now knew as Mahito — you don’t know what could have happened. 

You were lucky. Lucky to have found him after being split off. Lucky you knew how to get to Shoko quickly. Lucky that she was able to save him. 

Luck. Luck. Luck. 

Was this really luck? To make it out half burned and half alive? Was it luck that you saved him or would it have been kinder to leave him? But you couldn’t. You wouldn’t. You were selfish — you needed him, you wanted your future with him, you wanted him to live. 

You couldn’t let him go. Not yet. 

It wasn’t time. It wasn’t his time. 

He only sighs at your words, “Okay,” he relents, sitting up on the bed. 

“First we have to remove your bandages, and then I’m going to inspect the burns to make sure they haven’t been infected or—” 

“You don’t have to tell me everything, sweetheart, I know what you have to do,” he says softly, and you swallow thickly, nodding.

Your fingers are gentle as you undo the bandages, first starting with his hand and arm, before moving to his shoulder, and then finally his face. Nasty raised burns marred his skin, raised and ruined marks that clawed over his smooth flesh. The marks ravaged half of his body — the other half he was barely able to protect with cursed energy. 

You hid your frown as you looked at them — why was it him? That question kept replaying in your mind. It was pointless to ask. It was asking why tragedy struck one person rather than another — it was chance, it was happenstance, it was fate. 

But you wished fate had chosen another — hell, you wished fate had chosen you. 

Your hands are washed and gloved as you examine him for any signs of infection — discharge, abnormal discoloration, and the last sign — warmth, “I’m going to just check some areas of your skin for any warmth — okay?” and Kento nods, his gaze downward. Your fingers are gentle — a featherlight touch as you check, fingers tracing his hand and up his arm, across his shoulder blade and back, until you reach his neck and face. Your fingers end up caressing his face, cupping it as you stare at him. 

He’s so beautiful. 

Each scar is a reminder of how hard he fought — even against monsters beyond any of any sorcerer’s imaginations, defended his comrades, protected students, and somehow had never given up. Even when it would have been understandable to do so. He still stood on his two feet, unwavering in his determination to live — and it wasn’t even for himself. Sorcery was an individual sport, sure, but sorcerers pass the baton all the time, and they choose to fight for one another, as well as themselves — if only to make the next fight easier for their fellow sorcerers. And you knew he was fighting, fighting to come home to you. 

How did you ever get so lucky?

“I understand,” Kento says, drawing you from your reverie, “I understand if you feel differently about my appearance — it will be harder for me to be mobile, the burns could constrict me and my eye as well. I understand even, even if it changes how you feel,” his tone was forced evenness, but he couldn’t hide the slight waver from you — Kento only ever wavered when it came to himself. 

You pause for a moment, “It does change how I feel,” and his eye slides to meet yours, hardened and accepting, “it makes me only love you more,” and Kento blinks, ocean blues filled with water, “Kento, these scars, your injuries, they show how much you fought to come back to me — how much you fought to protect our students — how much you sacrificed just to keep fighting,” your voice cracks, “how could I ever see you as less than for that? I love you so much, Kento — I just wish I could have done more for you,” 

His fingers find yours, curling around them, “Done more? You saved my life—” 

“Did you want to be saved?” and your question makes him pause, and your words tumble out of you, a confession you never wanted to make, “Yuji heard you — heard you say how tired you were — asking yourself if you’ve done enough, did I just put you in more pain by making you stay—” 

And he’s covering your mouth gently with his palm, making you stop, your tears streaming across his knuckles as you cried, “I never wanted to stop fighting to come home to you. I’m grateful you saved me,” he said softly, “every moment of pain is worth it, worth it because I get to be here with you. I get to have more time with you, with Itadori, with Ino, with everyone else,” he gives a terse chuckle, “I am tired, tired of jujutsu, tired of risking my life, tired of seeing those I love risk my life — but I came back for a reason, and I came back for you,” his lips curl into a smile, “and you, I could never be tired of.” 

You can’t stop crying now, tears falling from your eyes, as you wipe them, “I’m going to have to change my gloves now,” and he laughs, pressing a kiss to your gloved hand. 

“Change them, I’ll be here,” and you have to hold yourself back from hugging him — you need to put his ointments and lotions on and then bandage him up, and then — then you could hug him. But for now you settled with pressing a kiss to his cheek, and then cupping it. 

“I love you,” and you didn’t know, but he knew, he knew then, more than ever, that he wanted to marry you. And he would ask — but not now. 

So he smiles instead, “I know, I love you too.” 

“We’re going to be late!” you wait outside, arms crossed, “Kento?” 

“Don’t worry, we’re here,” and he’s stepping out, daughter in his arms, as you raise an eyebrow, “Mio wanted me to carry her.” 

“You’re going to spoil her rotten,” you roll your eyes, walking over to your husband and one year old daughter,  “she’s going to be daddy’s little princess at this rate — aren’t you, baby?” you kiss her cheek, as Kento watches you. 

“Like mother, like daughter,” and you gape at him, as his lips curl, as he carries his daughter to the car to strap her into her carseat, “are you coming?” 

You step over to the car, standing as he finishes buckling Mio in, and he turns to face you — the scars on his body remained, but healing with each day — his other eye hidden away under an eyepatch, but he still looked just as handsome the day you met him at Jujutsu High for the first time, if not more so (it was definitely more so, you often teased him, that emo haircut was definitely not attractive). 

“Sweethe—” he raises an eyebrow, before you lean up to kiss him, wrapping his arms around his neck, and he melts into the kiss, brow furrowed as you pull away, “what was that for?” 

And you shrug, “Just because, now come on,” you climb into the seat beside your daughter. 

“If we’re late for this meeting at Jujutsu Tech, it will be because of your kiss,” he warns, catching your eye with a smile in the rearview mirror as he starts the car. 

You only grin back, as your fingers find Mio’s tiny ones, “Don’t worry, we have time.” 

And you did — you had all the time in the world. 

✴︎ a/n: so this is some hardcore copium that @laneysmusings claimed i owed after the five times nanami fic. and who am i to deny? but also nanami is fineeeee. just a little scratch.

✴︎ tag list: @ghost-with-a-teacup, @itsseaberri, @himboelover, @sampam0260, @tiredkitten, @angelltheninth, @kateshappyplants, @neon-crow, @akaashi-todorki, @juniperjunpei, @what-the-stories-have-foretold, @purplecandygerl, @trenchcoat-idiots, @crimsonstarrr, @tirouxdreemurr, @dazaifungus, @the-apple-rose, @just1nee, @weirdanddorkyrambling, @goatlings-world

[mikanotes]

Hiii

Chishiya x reader that takes place in the first episode (season 2) when the king of spades starts shooting everyone and Chishiya protects reader in his own Chishiya ways 🙏🏻 And they both don’t get in the car with arisu & the others so they go off to find somewhere they can stay. Maybe established relationship & from chishiyas pov

TyTyTy ❤️

— GUNS AND SPADES

chishiya x gn!reader | ? words

genre: established relationship, slight angst

warnings: s2 spoilers, shooting, guns, blood, death, mentions of fainting, kinda spoilers for chishiya’s past, aib stuff… badly written might edit later idk

synopsis: Surviving in the Borderlands was something you’d been forced to get used to. Getting shot at for absolutely no reason when no game was ongoing was something else entirely.

author’s note: thank you for requesting! hope you like it!! to be honest i struggle with writing about chishiya this way a bit so this isn’t nearly as good as i wanted it to be. also i have no idea where i was going with this. nevertheless i hope it’s nice to read!

The sound of shots was clear. People scrambled around Shibuya Crossing, running for their lives without a care for one another’s. When faced with Death, people showed their true selves— Or whatever.

It would seem that, as per usual, your true self in this situation was to start running away before cursing at Chishiya and pulling him so he’d follow. Sure, he would start running eventually either way, but he certainly took his time.

“Chishiya, seriously.” you scoffed.

Thus the run began.

Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, you, and Chishiya were all lined up hiding behind an underground subway’s stairs entrance, crouching behind the wall and checking through the glass for the unknown shooter.

“Is this a game? Where are the rules?” Usagi exclaimed through panicked breaths. Arisu shook his head immediately.

“There’s nothing. This is just mass murder.”

“Seriously.” you mumbled, checking through the glass, “More people are coming this way. We should get moving.”

You all started running away in a group before realizing there was no point. Arisu yelled at everyone to split up and you all did. Running through a crowd of scared people, all confused and fearing for their lives— It was never a good feeling.

“Ah!”

Especially when some were too rushed in their run and tripped over, resulting in you falling along with them.

“I’m sorry!” the man yelled, scrambling to get up.

You laughed dryly, jumping up to your feet with ease. “You should be.” you breathed out, before ducking and running to the nearest corner. You turned and ran and avoided people and ran and it felt like hours of your breathing getting progressively worse and more heavy before you finally ran into a familiar face.

“[name]!” Kuina exclaimed, stopping in her tracks before you two could run into each other, “Come with me!”

She grabbed your wrist and ran to a car nearby, quickly pulling you to sit down behind it along with her. You exhaled a heavy sigh, your chest heaving up and down and your head spinning.

“You look tired.” a familiar voice spoke casually. You lifted your head up only to see Chishiya look at you with an easy smile, waving his hand from his seat on Kuina’s other side. You deadpanned.

“Yeah. And you don’t.” you scoffed, “Are you two okay?”

“I’m surprised I don’t have a single wound, honestly.” Kuina sighed, head hitting the car’s door in exhaustion, “Seriously, what the fuck is going on?“

You glanced at Chishiya and he gave you a slight nod, affirming that he was okay. You nodded back before looking over your shoulder. “There’s people on the other side of the road. Usagi and Arisu, I think.”

Kuina furrowed her eyebrows before moving her head to the side, signaling you to move over and switch places with her. You did, as discreetly as possible, and let her check whatever it is she wanted to. Chishiya waved two fingers in front of your face and brought your attention to him.

“You good?”

“Yeah.” you sighed, “Just tired. I knew things weren’t over but I expected a little break after the hell that went down at the Beach, at least.”

“The hell continues, I guess.” he said casually, smiling.

You could only sigh.

“You have to stay focused if you don’t wanna die!” Kuina suddenly yelled. You looked over to her and jumped at the sound of shooting right at the road the car you were hiding behind was parked on. Chishiya grabbed your shoulder to pull you back when he did, only relaxing when the shots stopped. Kuina scoffed, “Where the fuck are they shooting from?”

Just as she sat back down properly, an airship of sorts appeared over everyone, creating a looming shadow that did nothing to reassure the players. Chishiya hummed. “The King of Spades.”

“Great.” you commented. There were probably hundreds of pieces of fabric tied together to form a giant King of Spades card floating in the sky, attached to the bottom of the airship. You wondered just how much more of this hell you would have to go through before you could return to the comfort of the hell you knew. The normal world.

Chishiya leaned forward and handed Kuina something. It looked like a can and… Oh. You’d seen him make this back at the Beach one day. He’d made three. They were small bombs but they could definitely help out if you ever needed it. His words. He handed you one as well and you inspected it. “Here you go. A good luck charm.”

“What’s this? A bomb?” Kuina asked.

“Use it when you’re in a pinch.” he said casually.

“You have questionable hobbies, Chishiya.” you hummed, spinning the object in your hand before putting it in your jacket, “Thank you.”

“I second that. Thanks.” Kuina chuckled.

The sound of shots rung in the air as well as several running footsteps along with it. You checked Kuina’s side and saw Arisu and Usagi hide behind the car directly next to yours— Just a few meters away. Kuina tilted her head, “Are you hurt?”

“Did you seriously stop to try and save someone?” you followed after glancing at the dying boy they’d seemingly carried all the way there, and Arisu looked at you with wide eyes, before looking away and grimacing. Nothing new, you thought.

Shots fired again but the sound didn’t drown out the clear, loud honking of a car. You thought you’d imagined it, honestly, because logically speaking there was no reason for anyone to not only show themselves so obviously with a moving car but also announce themselves by honking.

Yet when the entire group looked over to the road there was, indeed, a car waiting. Ann and Tatta. Your eyes widened. “What?”

“Hurry up! Get in!” Tatta yelled.

Usagi and Arisu were the first to run into the car, closely followed by Kuina. Chishiya, irritating as he could get, refused to take his hands out of his pockets to run. You were a bit behind, careful, and caught up to him quickly. “What part of hurry up are you missing?!” you exclaimed.

Chishiya stopped and stared at the ground. You were about to question why he wasn’t going into the car despite standing right in front of it but followed his gaze.

A grenade.

“This is bad. Run!” he instantly yelled, pulling you back and moving to start running away, “Get going! Drive!” he told Tatta, knowing there was no point in risking getting into the car anymore.

“[name]!” Usagi yelled.

Kuina seemed just as worried, “Chishiya!”

The sound of their voices were quickly drowned out when your head hit the hard concrete of the sidewalk as you and Chishiya jumped as far away as possible from the bomb. The explosion went off before your senses could start coming back and just as the car started driving away. You covered the sides of your head with your arms and felt Chishiya’s arm wrap around them.

Everything was spinning. For a moment, you weren’t sure you were alive. Then Chishiya’s voice brushed that thought away.

“We have to move.” he tried to speak over all the noise. You nodded faintly and got up on your feet to the best of your ability, before running away with him— Bullets following you closely.

To Chishiya, this would’ve been fine if you hadn’t been there.

If he had been alone during that shooting, even including the part where he fails to get in the car because of a grenade— it would all have been fine because Chishiya Shuntaro is used to dealing with whatever hellish cards the Borderlands hand him. But that’s where the problem lies;

You’re there.

Chishiya met you before the cruelty of the reality of the world stripped him of his empathy— Forced him into the stoicism of a person suppressing their own emotions. He met you before his job ruined a part of him, and his feelings seemingly didn’t waver one bit at that. The importance of your wellbeing had been something he cared about before but even with attempts at erasing his emotions he couldn’t erase the quickening pace of his heartbeat if he heard you weren’t doing well.

Chishiya made the mistake of letting himself fall for someone back in college (though he claims fall is too ridiculous) and now has to deal with the pains of feeling like he needs to protect said person. You were good at dealing with things yourself, too— Sure, but that didn’t mean anything to the instinctive worry that held him by the throat.

So he watches you, unconscious due to the amount of things that happened in a few seconds, lying on the ground of some empty apartment complex— With something anyone could easily mistake as disdain. It used to be easy dealing with complicated things when he was alone. He was also sure playing games would be so much more simple if you weren’t by his side. All he would have to care for would be his own survival and that would just be it. Now he had to fear Heart games and count you into every calculations he made to get himself out of a deadly game of chess.

It was almost infuriating how much you unconsciously forced him into changing his ways, even after all these years. He figured that was just how things went when you loved someone.

When you shift in your sleep and start sighing, eyes slowly blinking to force yourself awake, Chishiya doesn’t feel the smile form on his lips. “You’re lucky we found this place before you decided to pass out.”

“My God.” you grumbled, sitting up with some effort. “Have you just been sitting there? I’m surprised. Were you watching over me, or something?”

Even in situations like this, you just didn’t miss an opportunity to try and tease him. It’s not like it ever worked, but the attempts were amusing.“You weren’t out for that long.” he spoke as calmly as usual, “Sleep fine?”

“I dreamt of fireworks at Shibuya.” you said, and your voice dropped to a silent low. The shift from casual to slight anxiousness was barely noticeable, but very obvious to Chishiya. You cracked your neck and stretched. “Guess my head decided to make people yelling and loud sounds seem more happy than how it really was.”

“At least your mind’s version of the events that just transpired is less disturbing and nightmarish. Glad to know you slept well.” he said, pushing himself up to stand. “We should check the game nearby. I don’t like the idea of us standing there waiting.”

“Less chances of getting shot by that Kind of Spades, I guess.” you sighed, following him to stand up, “Just as many to get killed, though.”

Chishiya held his hand up and you looked at it, then at him, and a small smile pulled at your lips. You high-fived him and then you both wrapped your fingers around the other’s hand.

“Not if I’m there.” he claims, smirking a little. You scoff lightly and Chishiya knows you feel slightly better. It’s enough for now. The feelings of anxiety are pushed back far away enough for you to focus during games. Enough for you to play properly and keep yourself alive. Chishiya nodded a bit, “Let’s get going.”

“Alright.” you tightened your hold on his hand and you both walked towards the game near where you were staying at— Steeling yourselves for whatever the Borderlands had prepared for you.

[catopoliscat]

next time / kento nanami/fem!reader.

who would have thought that kento nanami was a virgin? not you. not after this long. perhaps he was saving himself for someone. perhaps he was waiting for you.

tags: nsfw. 18+. fem!reader. afab reader. penetrative sex. alcohol. dry humping. virgin!nanami. mutual pining. friends to lovers. creampie (wrap it kids). unprotected sex. touch-starved!nanami. canon!verse. you've known nanami since school. tinges of angst. nanami wanted you bad lmao. it's love babey. reader has experience. no use of y/n or any other placeholders. ever. wc: 7.7k. a/n: i kind of fear nanami's a little ooc here lmao, but i've spent too long on this so fuck it we ball he deserves this

also how mad would you be if i said this was set a week before shibuya arc be honest

mdni.

You’re a bottle and half of zinfandel deep when Nanami tells you. 

Although you’re both a little warm, tipsy perhaps, you didn’t think either of you were quite drunk enough for this conversation just yet. It was a regular occurrence for the two of you to share a drink on a Friday, or a bottle in more pressing times. 

There were more bottles than glasses, lately. 

It was just two old friends, catching up. Talking. Complaining--usually about Satoru. Often you’d reminisce on easier times. Warm summers in the Jujutsu High courtyard, the cold tin of a soda in your hands, a bottle of water in his. Quiet talks of dreams and eventualities. Ignoring the gaping absence of a third at between you. 

Tonight though, you’re not sure when the topic had changed. Somewhere between the last dregs of the first bottle and the beginning of the second, the conversation had grown more sombre than usual. Talk of love and relationships always seemed to make the air heavier around the two of you, for different reasons. A stark air of loneliness that not even the most tart of white wine could overpower.

You had offhandedly mentioned turning down one of the windows you had met on your last mission. He had been younger than you, still full of life where the holes in yourself had long since emptied it out. You had shaken your head, flattered, but tired. There were better options for a man like him, still full of hope and vitality, a whole life ahead of him… when you knew any day yours could be cut deftly short. 

You had told yourself it had little to do with the fact that the man’s bright smile had reminded you of another, so many years ago.  

In the quiet of Nanami’s living room, swirling the last drops of your wine in your glass, you had mentioned that you had no real desire for relationships anymore. Other than sex, of course, but only sexual. A temporary release, one of the few you had left. Nameless faces and hurried touches. Sometimes clinical, sometimes primal. Always quick, and never the same person twice. 

You know?

To which Nanami had replied, “No.” 

Misunderstanding the gravity of what he was saying, you had raised an eyebrow, a curious smile playing at your lips. “Not one for one-night stands?” 

It occurs to you distantly that you don’t know a lot about Nanami’s romantic life. Close as you two were, or so you liked to believe, he had never really mentioned it. And you had never asked. 

Nanami had shook his head in response to your question, and you had nodded. It aligned with his character, you thought. As cold and stoic as he liked to act, you couldn’t imagine a world where he would use and discard someone. He felt too much, cared too much. He would love too much too, if given the chance. If he gave himself the chance. 

In your musings, you had almost missed what he had murmured next. 

“I’ve never had sex at all.” 

Kento Nanami. A virgin.

The confession has your lips parting, your eyes blinking. Once, then twice, akin to an owl. You glance down at your wine glass for a moment, as if it had been the slightly smeared glass that had been speaking to you instead, and not the esteemed stoic sorcerer you had known for the better part of ten years. 

You look over at Nanami on the couch, but he’s staring at the carpet, his expression contemplative, almost pensive. His brows are drawn taut, a small knit on his forehead. His lips are drawn into a thin line, a slight crease in his chin. There was a specific emotion dancing in his eyes. You almost dared to use the word vulnerable.

It seems… ridiculous. Nanami? Attractive as he was? Kind, considerate, hard-working, to a degree. A woman’s dream. In another life, perhaps your dream too.

Had it not been for Nanami’s serious demeanour, and the fact that ‘joke’ and ‘Nanami’ rarely went together in the same sentence, you might have thought he was pulling your leg. A joke between friends. 

But he wasn’t. He very clearly wasn’t. 

“That’s… fine,” you finally say after a small moment, fearing you had let the silence linger too long. “There’s no rush for these things.” 

Nanami’s hum is short and clipped. Gruff, almost. He still refuses to meet your eye for now, and you make no move to change that. You get the distinct feeling that this newfound vulnerability doesn’t stem from him never having sex, but rather, the reason why he’s denied himself - because you know for a fact it has little to do with opportunity. 

You had lost track of how many women you had watched Nanami turn down, clipped and short, yet always polite. 

The silence is heavy between you. In the other room, you can hear the hum of his refrigerator, the buzz of the bulbs in the lights. Nanami’s apartment has always been quiet, but this silence feels suffocating. Paired with the wine, your head feels thick, your tongue thicker. 

A few moments pass, and as the revelation of his virginity settles into your stomach like seltzer water, you realise… it makes sense. Nanami wasn’t the type to use someone for sex, even if eager. He’d only have sex with someone he was in love with. Someone he trusted at the very least. 

And Nanami, as he had told you and a few others before, refused to entertain the thought of love whilst he was a sorcerer. No one with two working brain cells needed to ask why. He wasn’t alone in that choice, either. 

You toy with the stem of your wineglass whilst you toy with a reoccurring thought in your mind, one that you entertained often, but had yet to voice aloud. 

“You shouldn’t keep depriving yourself, Kento,” you say quietly. The use of his first name, rarely used in your adulthood, garners you a glance from him. It’s a small sign that you’re taking this seriously. 

“I’m not deprived of anything.” 

You scoff at that, small and quiet. “You deprive yourself of a lot, apart from pain,” you drawl, setting your wine glass down on the coffee table. Like always, the wine and Nanami’s masochistic tendencies have your tongue loosening more than it should. “I understand not wanting to have sex with anyone you’re not in a committed relationship with. It’s kind of… admirable, and definitely you.” You fold your arms across your chest, fixing him with a stare that he still refuses to meet head-on. “But why deny yourself the chance of love?” 

In the back of your mind somewhere is a voice chanting ‘hypocrite’, but you ignore it. Nanami, however, does not. 

He finally turns his head to face you, the lines underneath his eyes seemingly heavier in the dim light of his apartment. An eyebrow arches. “And meaningless sex is different?”

You scoff again, louder this time. “It’s not meaningless just because I don’t love my partner.” 

“Or even know their name?” 

You raise a sharp eyebrow, your own lips now pressing into a thin line. A part of you wants to retort, to snap, but you remember the vulnerability in his face from a few moments ago, and you just about hold your tongue.

With an exhale, you grab the half-empty wine bottle off of the coffee table instead and gesture for Nanami to hold out his glass. He does, and the glug of the wine fills the space between you.

“You ever thought about it?” You ask, filling up your own glass. In your peripheral, you see him sit quietly for a moment before he nods his head. 

“I’m only human.” 

You hum. “You should experience it,” you add. You swirl the wine in your glass once before bringing it up to your lips. “Even once. Even if it means nothing.”  

With one glance, you can tell immediately that the idea doesn’t sit right with him. It was easy to forget sometimes how rigid and traditional he could be. Formalities that few seemed to care about these days. Always on the things you least expected. 

“I couldn’t,” Nanami replies, shaking his head. 

Oddly, you feel the desire to insist. Days of a sorcerer were short, and getting shorter every year. Younger than yourself and Nanami had already died long before they would ever have the opportunity to touch another, kiss another; to feel the warmth of a body against your own. They would never know what that distinct pleasure was like, even if they desperately wanted to. Time was infinite to the young, until it wasn’t.  

It occurs to you quickly that you’re thinking of Haibara, and everything you and Nanami had experienced that he never would. 

Something must show in your expression because Nanami raises an eyebrow at you. You swallow, before setting your glass back down on the coffee table with a dull clink. You look at him, your face surprisingly collected and casual for what you’re about to ask. 

“What about me?” 

Nanami’s questioning look only deepens for a moment, before something passes by his eyes. His lips part, his version of a falter. You know he knows what you’re implying, but still, he asks, “…what about you?” 

“What if we had sex?” You say without hesitation. “You know me. You trust me.” 

Nanami falters further. He straightens in his seat, his glass resting on his thigh, the thick muscle straining against his slacks. His whole body is thick with a tension you usually only see before a fight with a particularly highly graded curse. A vein protrudes from his neck.

His eyes flick between your face and your own glass, clearly wondering if it is time to call this night done, but you rise from your seat before he can, taking a small step toward the couch he’s sitting on. 

You sit down next to him, a little closer than you usually might. He doesn’t move away. Your thigh brushes against his, and this close, you can hear his breath hitch in response. 

“I’m not going to push this any further, Kento,” you say quietly, “but I’m letting you know it’s an option.” 

Although you and Kento were hardly affectionate with one another like most friends, you decided to take a chance tonight. You had already taken several, what was one more?

Reaching out, you take his glass from his hand and set it next to yours on the coffee table. Hesitating only a moment, you place your hand on top of his, your fingers curling around until your fingertips touch his palm.

His hand is stiff and warm underneath your own. The bones and knuckles press against your skin.

Something in the back of your mind is wondering why you’re pushing this at all. Would it matter if Nanami died without experiencing the pleasures of the body, really? Would the world stop turning for either of you? You know if Nanami really wanted to, if he felt the want, the desire - then he could leave this apartment right now and find someone willing, someone other than you. He could have done so years ago, during those few years he had masqueraded as a normal human being with a nine-to-five. 

You were risking a friendship over… what? The implied hopes and dreams of a dead fifteen-year-old? Haibara was dead. It didn’t matter to him whether Nanami experienced the things he never could. 

Nanami’s gaze flickers between your eyes for a moment, and this close, you can see the faint traces of the wine staining his lips. Your gaze must linger for a touch too long because his tongue swipes across his bottom lip. The pink skin glistens with the faint glimmer of his saliva.

When you look up, you see his eyes trained on your own lips, before they quickly flick back up to meet your eyes. 

“We’re friends,” he murmurs, his voice low, slightly thick. 

“And we always will be,” you reply.

He glances down at your hands. Somewhere between your own thoughts and Nanami’s reiteration of your friendship, your hands had interlocked, fingers intertwined like vines. He was gripping your hand a little too tightly to be comfortable, but you didn’t flinch. 

You’re not sure whether it had been your subconscious doing, or his. 

“I… can’t,” Nanami mutters finally, closing his eyes for a moment. “Not like this. Not… now.” 

Something clenches in your heart at his rejection, although you had expected it. You’re not sure if it’s because he’s denying you, or himself. 

You smile softly nonetheless and nod. “If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me,” you say quietly, going to pull your hand from his grip and give him some space. 

Only he doesn’t let go. If anything, his grip tightens slightly. 

Your eyes flick between his hand and his eyes, still trained on your face. You raise an eyebrow, your lips parting to speak, but he beats you to it. 

“But I’d like to kiss you.” 

Something resembling a very quiet ‘uh’ pushes past your lips in a long exhale.

You’re not sure why the idea of kissing him felt more… intimate than the fact that you had offered your body to him only seconds prior. You’re not sure why there’s a prickle of heat at the back of your neck or your lips burn with a sudden need.

“Nanam-“

As if remembering himself, he shakes his head slightly, blinking away whatever stupor had just possessed him. He looks away, his grip on your hand loosening, but not quite pulling away. 

“I… don’t know why I said that,” he mumbles. “You should go-“

Your free hand is already gripping his chin, turning his face toward yours a little too sharply. A subtle grunt leaves his throat as he looks at you, his gaze foggier than usual. From the wine, you, or the whole situation? Who knows. 

Fingers against his neck, feeling the quickened thrum of his pulse, your thumb brushes against his chin, pulling the skin until his lips naturally part. You feel Nanami’s shaky exhale against your lips as you lean forward, warmth breath mingling with yours, the scent of wine heavy on the air. 

You close the distance slowly, giving him time to stop this, to pull or push away. To draw an end to this nonsense before it went any further. 

Instead of pulling back or pushing you away, he closes the gap so quickly your noses almost bump together. 

The first press of his lips against you feels hurried and unsure. It’s off-center slightly, barely hitting the corner of your mouth, but Nanami is quick to correct it. He slots his lips against yours more firmly the second time, his lips parting to capture yours fully. You feel a rush of air against your cheek as he exhales through his nose. 

The kiss is unhurried, curious almost, yet there’s a subtle urgency in it that surprises you. Your free hand moves from his chin to his jaw, fingertips softly caressing the sharp curve of it. The sound and feel of his sigh against your lips makes you shiver, and you become enamoured with it. 

Enamoured with him.

You part your lips further, your tongue swiping against his bottom lip, finally tasting the remnants of the wine that you had spotted earlier. An odd sound builds at the back of his throat before his mouth parts too, his tongue brushing against yours. 

Something changes quickly then. His hand, larger than you ever really noticed, cups the back of your neck, his calloused thumb pressing against your jaw, drawing you closer. Your other hands, still intertwined, seem to tighten around one another like a snake's coils. The wet smacks of your lips grow louder in the quiet of his apartment, just about overriding the sound of increasingly ragged breaths, borderline panting. 

Your head feels thick. Dizzy. The kiss is indulgent, almost sloppy now. Nanami’s tongue is in your mouth, exploring every crevice, tasting you with an eagerness you hadn’t thought he was capable of. Every time you brush your tongue against his, your taste buds wetly sliding against his own, a small sound rumbles in the back of his throat, somewhere between a groan and grumble. 

After a moment that feels like an eternity too short, you pull back slightly, just enough to see his eyes as you open yours. Nanami denies you this, however, because when you open your eyes, his are still closed, almost scrunched. A faint frown tugs at his brow. 

He leans forward until his forehead rests against yours. The heat of his skin against yours feels searing, your noses softly brushing against one another’s. He sighs deeply, as if pulled from the back of his chest. It almost sounds like defeat. 

“Kento-“

“I want you,” he breathes out, and your voice almost hitches as you feel rather than hear his voice. It’s a deep, husky sound, more rumble than syllable. But there’s a crack in his tone belying a raw vulnerability that you weren’t familiar with. Not from him.

His eyes finally open, looking up at you from underneath his brow. His hazel eyes are almost black, you realise, the familiar colour you’ve always admired swallowed up by a sea of coal. You wonder if yours are the same. 

He’s trembling too. You can feel his fingertips shake where they press against the nape of your neck. 

“I thought you didn’t want… this,” you murmur. ‘Sex’ suddenly feels too…

“I changed my mind,” he replies, a touch too quickly for you to believe that he was thinking clearly. 

But God, did you want him too. You want him so fucking bad it almost makes you ache. Your feelings toward Nanami had always been friendly, respectful. He had been your closest friend, your ally, your confidant. You had been through so much together. You liked him, every part. 

And somewhere along the way, between the four years apart as he pursued a different life and the first time you had hugged him when he finally returned, Gojo grinning over his shoulder… you think, that like had changed to love.

It quickly occurs to you that you weren’t pushing Nanami to experience sex for fear of him missing out. That was you. You were scared of missing out on him.

It’s that revelation that makes you pull back slightly, and Nanami’s eyes widen a little, some of the hazy fog clearing. His hand slides from the back of your neck, falling limply against the couch next to your thigh. 

“I… I shouldn’t have put you in this position,” you mutter, glancing away, staring at the two wine glasses on the coffee table before looking back at him. “It’s your choice. Your first time should be on your terms, not because I think you’re missing out or depriving yourself.”

You go to remove your hand from his, but once again, his grip tightens, but there’s a tenderness to it this time. A gentle squeeze, almost begging you not to go. Not yet. 

He looks serious now, staring at you squarely, as if about to deliver a mission report, and its the first familiar expression you’ve seen on his face thus far. He swallows thickly, the only thing belying his hesitation. 

“I said I couldn’t have a one-night stand.” 

You frown. “And th-“

“I don’t want this to be a one-night stand.” 

Some of the breath flees your lungs as you look at him. His lips are still pink and slightly swollen from kissing, his cheeks still slightly flushed from the wine and your touch. You become distinctly aware of the scent of his cologne, faded but warm from his skin. It’s soft, smoky almost. You have the urge to bury his nose in the crook of his neck and breathe.

You know what he’s trying to say, what he’s trying to ask. You know what he wants because you want it too. You realise you’ve wanted it for a long damn time. 

Words fail you. They feel… inadequate to describe what you’re feeling, what you desire, what you’ve always desired buried down underneath the guilt and trauma. 

But you still can’t bring yourself to say it out loud. Not here. Not yet. 

And neither can he.

You’re not sure who makes the first move, all you know is that your lips are pressed against his and he moans into your mouth as if something had finally let go. It’s like a cork had finally been released, a lifetime of pent-up feelings pouring out in one gush. 

His hand is back at the nape of your neck, holding you tightly this time, unwilling to let go. His lips part more readily with every press, his tongue seeking yours with a pinpoint determination. You skip his jaw this time altogether, aiming straight for his hair that you’ve been dying to touch since… you don’t know when. 

The hand that had been holding yours hostage finally releases, only so his fingers can brush against your waist. His fingers brush against your ribs through your clothes, tugging you closer until you’re rising up onto your knees on the couch just to oblige. He’s tilting back, his broad shoulders bumping against the couch cushions behind him - and it’s only distantly you register it’s because you’re pushing him back against it. 

Something shouts at you in the back of your mind to take your time, to savour this, to savour him. You may want each other badly, but this is Nanami’s first time. It should be done carefully, respectfully, the way he would treat you if this position had been reversed. 

But then Nanami’s hand has moved from your waist to your thigh, blindly grabbing it as he pulls it over his lap. Before you know it, you’re straddling his hips with a huff against his lips, and something like a sharp, pained groan leaves his lips. 

You pull away from his lips with a ragged breath, concern knitting your brow until you realise what the cause of his groan was. 

Straddling him, you can feel the pulse of his desire underneath you, the hard ridge of the bulge in his pants pressing insistently against your core through your own clothes. One hand is grabbing your hip tightly, almost too tight, as his forehead rests against your shoulder. The other hand is on your thigh, his thumb digging into the plush flesh there. 

His breathing is ragged, extremely so. Hot puffs fall against your skin. You weave your fingers through his hair softly, and you watch with reverence as a strong shudder rolls down his spine in response.

“We can stop, if you’d like,” you murmur against his ear, going to rise up on your knees to give him a little breathing room.

“Don’t,” he grunts, the grip on your hip and thigh quickly stopping you. He exhales again, a shaky sound as he keeps his forehead stamped against your shoulder. His voice emerges again, barely audible, slightly pained. “...I’ve wanted this for so long.”

Your grip in his hair tightens in response. In a flood, memories of him rush through your mind. A thousand different glances, subtle touches, small clues. Even in school, the way he would linger, a touch closer every time Suguru or Satoru would appear. The hand at the bottom of your back in a restaurant. The way he would lean in to hear you in a crowded place. 

The way his arms had tightened around you when he had returned after four years away. I missed you too, almost inaudible against your ear. 

Nanami didn’t want a one-night stand. What was the point of sex at all, if it wasn’t with you? 

The thought has you rolling your hips down against his before you can stop yourself, feeling the firm length of his cock grind against your core. A moan leaves your lips, and something guttural leaves his. 

The hand on your thigh moves up to your other hip, pulling you down tighter against him as if he could slide inside you right now. “Don’t tease,” he hisses between clenched teeth. He turns his head slightly, his lips brushing against your neck. He leaves a searing, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse point. “Not now, not after this long.” 

“You think you’re the only one who waited?” You pant as you grind again, firmer this time. His hips buck against yours in response, a muffled groan leaving his lips, imprinted against your neck. You can feel his cock throb against you, twitching against the fabric that separates you. 

“…you wanted this too?” He breathes out after a moment. 

You nod, though you doubt he can see it from the way his face is buried against the crook of your neck. “Since you came back. Since you hugged me back and said you missed me.” 

His hands move from your hips to wrap tightly around your waist as if he couldn’t bear for a single slither of space to be left between you two. His hips jut up against you once again, a ragged breath leaving his lips. It seems the idea of you wanting him for so long the same as he had the same effect on him as it had on you. If not more. 

He holds you a little tighter, running the sharp point of his nose along your throat as he tilts his head up. Finally, finally, he breaks free of your neck to look up at you, lips parted, eyes almost desperate. 

With a thick swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing, he goes to say something but falters, and murmurs your name instead. His dark eyes flick between your eyes and your lips. His cock twitches underneath you. 

“Please,” is all he can croak out, and the moan that almost leaves your lips would have been primal. 

You nod your head, giving his shoulders a small squeeze, pushing him back slightly. He seems reluctant to let go, but finally relents after a little insistence, reclining back against the couch. His arms unwind and his hands drop to your hips. He looks up at you, clearly waiting for your lead. 

You sit back slightly on his parted thighs, the muscles firm and supportive underneath you. Letting your hands fall from his shoulders, you drag your fingertips slowly down over the expanse of his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through his wrinkled shirt. As your fingers skate over his abdomen, you feel the muscles flex and roll. Nanami looks at you readily. 

“We should do this properly,” you murmur, your eyes trained on the lower buttons of his shirt, near the waistband of his slacks. “In a bed.” 

Nanami, to your surprise, shakes his head quickly, giving your hips a small squeeze. “We’ve waited long enough.” 

You raise an eyebrow but don’t disagree. Despite the need, the ache, the pulse of your own core, you can’t help but think of if the positions were reversed. The image of candles, roses and soft music fills your mind, Nanami’s guiding hands and murmured praises. It would be slow and romantic. Perfect. 

“Nanami,” you breathe out, almost chastising. With the way his cock is pressing against you, you have no doubt he’s not thinking clearly right now; the thought of having what he had wanted for so long within his grasp clouding rational thought. 

He shakes his head again, a lock of his mussed hair tickling his brow. “Next time.” He shifts, sliding down the couch a little more and spreading his thighs - and in turn, spreading yours. He grips your hips tighter, pulling you a little closer until you’re seated right on top of him. “Next time,” he repeats in a groan. “We’ll go slow. I’ll explore every inch of you, taste you. Now, I just want…” He exhales an unsteady breath, sounding like your name. “I just want you.” 

Your fingers linger near his shirt's lower button, and one of Nanami’s hands unclasps itself from your hip to gently grasp your wrist. He guides your fingertips to the belt buckle, the metal cool against your hot fingers. 

You meet his eyes once more, and his gaze is a paradox of firmness and vulnerability. He’s nervous, you think, but ready. Almost desperately so. 

Without another word, your other hand reaches down to join your other one, and your fingers are surprisingly deft as you slide the leather through the metal. Nanami watches your hands with rapt attention until the belt is loose. Your fingers slide over the metal button of his slacks, and you don’t check in this time. You pop it open before sliding his zipper down, the crackle of the metal teeth as loud as a gunshot between you.

A small sigh of what you think is relief leaves his lips as the fabric parts, giving you a small glimpse of the dark boxers underneath, straining over his cock. A small wet patch blooms at the top, wear his tip would be, and a shudder runs through you. 

Your fingers tuck into the waistband of his underwear, lingering for a moment. You look up at him at the same time he looks up at you. Without a sound, Nanami lifts his hips and you rise up to your knees. 

With a few firm tugs, you manage to inch his slacks and boxers down enough to free him. A small huff leaves his lips as the cooler air of the apartment hits his overheated flesh, and you watch in rapt attention as his cock twitches, the flushed tip glistening already.

It’s longer than you expected. Thicker too. Uncut. A prominent vein runs up the underside of it, and you have the sudden urge to follow it with your finger, or your tongue. 

Nanami shifts underneath you, and you realise you’ve been staring a touch too long.

You pull your eyes away from his cock to meet his eyes, and his breathing seemed to have quickened. Anticipation is making him stiff, almost antsy, a rare sight on a man you’ve rarely ever seen anything of other than composed. 

It’s endearing. 

Reaching down, you satisfy your own urge and run your fingertip up his shaft, following the vein, feeling it pulse steadily to the rhythm of his heart. Nanami’s hips twitch, his eyelids fluttering. Dark eyelashes tickle his cheeks.

When you curl your fingers around him, gripping him firmly at the base, his eyes shoot open, snapping to the sight of him in your palm. You give him one pull upwards, and a bead of pre-cum wells in the divot of his slit. 

“Fuck,” comes out in a very quiet, gruff choke. Your eyebrows rise in surprise, a small smile on your lips. Nanami didn’t always curse, and especially not like that. 

“Language, Nanami,” you tease, and his eyes flick up to you, something indignant and impatient in his eyes. You usually weren’t one to tease, and he wasn’t one to be teased. 

You continue to stroke him slowly for a moment, rubbing your thumb against the sensitive tip. You fingers quickly become tacky, the glide of your hand more fluid, until the lewd wet noise starts to rise to the same level as Nanami’s breathing. He grunts with every upward stroke, his hips twitching underneath you. Had it not been for your weight on top of him, you get the distinct feeling he’d be bucking up into your palm a little more eagerly. His head falls back against the couch, lips parted, his eyes fluttering closed once more as he relaxes more into the sensation. 

It occurs to you that you’ve seldom seen Nanami this relaxed. 

“Are you sure you want to do this here?” you ask, “with me on top?” 

He nods but doesn’t open his eyes. His hands run up from your hips to your waist, a soft caress. “It’ll be… easier for me- hah-“ Another choked groan leaves his lips as you give the head of his cock a small squeeze, and Nanami’s hand flies to your wrist in a blink, stopping you from making another move. 

You feel his cock throbbing in your grasp, and Nanami’s straight-up panting now, his eyes slightly wild as he tilts his head up to look at you. It’s an arousing reality to know that you had just pushed Nanami dangerously close to the edge without even meaning to. 

“I won’t last,” he murmurs, looking up at you, his eyes shining.

 You realise quickly that he’s actually asking a question. Are you sure? 

“This time,” you reply with a small smile. With his hand still around your wrist, you give his cock another squeeze, and he grits his teeth, that vein in his neck protruding once more. You can see the taut muscles in his abdomen flexing from where his shirt has bunched up. 

As much as the idea of making Nanami cum, right here, right now, appeals to you, you relent for now. You’d love nothing more than to watch him spill into your palm, to see the euphoria and bliss play out on his face… but that was for another time. The next time, perhaps. 

You release his cock, letting it fall back against his lower stomach with a dull smack, making him hiss through his teeth. Leaning forward, you brush your lips against his throat, nipping at the skin softly. 

You guide his hands to the waistband of your own bottoms, and he wastes little time in following your unspoken order. The press of your lips against his throat clearly distracts him, but he manages to pull down your clothes enough to leave you in your underwear. You kick them off the sofa haphazardly, not leaving his neck for a single moment. 

He catches you off guard when his hand immediately dives for your sex, cupping your heat through the dampened fabric. You stutter against his neck, gripping onto his shoulders for support in response. 

Your eyelids close, goosebumps erupting across your skin as you feel just how wet you are. “Nanami,” you gasp.

“Kento,” he whispers quickly. Once, then twice, he rubs his palm along your clothed pussy, something guttural building in the back of his throat as you buck down into his touch. “You’re… so wet.” 

The wet spot on the fabric clings tightly to your folds, doing very little to dampen the sensation of his touch. His fingers are exploratory, a tentativeness that belies his lack of experience with this, but his touch, the fact it’s him, here and now, makes up for it all. 

You can’t remember the last time you enjoyed a touch such as this. Not like this. 

Despite toying with Nanami’s cock until he almost burst, hypocritical impatience gets the better of you, and you remove your hand from his shoulders to tug down your own underwear, kicking it off to join the growing pile on the floor. Bare from the waist down, Nanami’s eyes roam over the exposed skin almost hungrily. 

Both calloused hands run up your thighs, pressing into the soft flesh slightly. You see his hand move for your pussy once more, but your fingers are curling back around his cock again before he can distract you. 

Next time, keep parroting in your mind. Next time you can both endure hours of foreplay; touching, kissing, tasting, the whole nine yards. You promise to make him cry out before he even sinks inside you, to run your tongue along every inch of his skin until you’re sick of the taste of him. You’d know he’d do the same. 

But you two had waited long enough. 

Gripping the base of his cock again, you brush it up against your heat, your own slick smearing across him. Nanami’s eyes almost roll back into his head, but he closes his lids before you witness it. You’re faring little better, the mere sensation of having him against you like this, the tip of his cock rubbing up against your clit sending you dizzy. You angle your hips, and just feeling the thick head press against the tight, slick ring of muscle is enough for a moan to already tumble past your lips. 

Something flickers in Nanami’s gaze as he opens his eyes again, honing in on the sight of you braced above him like this. He grips your hips, his touch light, merely supporting you for now. You look back once into his eyes, and go to check in just once more, but he leans forward, capturing your lips in a kiss that’s little more than teeth and raw need. 

His lips pressed against yours, you sink down, the wider head of his cock slipping inside you. Your lips part in a soundless gasp against his mouth, swallowing the ragged groan that leaves his throat. The stretch is slightly more than you’re prepared for. Distantly, you think, skipping foreplay wasn’t the wisest idea, but desperation, need, pushes you forward regardless. 

So you sink down further, inch by inch, and as he slides deeper and deeper, his grip on your hips grows tighter and tighter, until the force of his fingers dulls the ache of his cock kissing your cervix. 

“Oh, fuck,” you gasp as you finally bottom out, hips sitting on top of his. You realise you’re breathless, and that cowgirl might not have been the best position for taking someone of his size. Certainly not in one go, like you just had. 

Nanami is fairing no better. His mouth is agape, his biceps trembling where he clings to you. He seems dazed, winded, panting into your mouth as his arms wind against you. He pulls you forward, and you both moan as his cock seems to slide just that little bit deeper. 

You’re dizzy, strained, stretched out far more than you can ever remember being before. Your eyes are scrunched closed, your forehead knocking against his. Everything feels distant and muffled. It takes you a moment to realise Nanami’s muttering something repeatedly in fragmented gasps.

When you open your eyes, he’s looking at you almost panicked, his eyebrows knitted upward. His teeth are bared, gritted - and it’s now you notice that you’re clenching around him so tight that you’re not sure if you’re causing him more discomfort than pleasure.

You swallow thickly, trying to catch your breath. You’re flushed, prickly heat blooming across your chest and neck. You shift a little, and something pained rumbles from the back of Nanami’s chest in response.  

“Do you want me to stop or-“

“Don’t,” he grunts, his fingers shaking against your back. “Don’t move.” 

The throb of his cock inside you is insistent, and it takes everything in you not to clench tighter around him in response. You know he’s close, dangerously close, and as much as you want to rise up on your knees and slam yourself down on his cock until he’s begging you to stop, you clench your jaw and relax. 

You bury your face in the crook of his neck, kissing his skin softly; small pecks and affectionate touches. He shivers, and his cock still pulses, but slowly, muscle by muscle, he relaxes too, ragged pants dissolving into hot, muted breaths. His arms around you loosen, holding now, not gripping. 

“Tell me when you want me to move,” you whisper against his ear, pressing a small kiss to the lobe. 

He nods, brushing his cheek against yours with a soft sigh. His hand moves from your back upward, until he cups the back of your head, drawing your lips back to his. It’s a soft kiss, loving; slow and sensual slides of wet skin mingling with gentle exhales. Before you know it, and before he says, you’re rolling your hips greedily, just grinding against him for now. 

A guttural sound leaves his lips. His forehead feels hot and sticky pressed against yours like this, a strand of his hair tickling your cheek. 

You feel his thighs shift, widening as far as the slacks still around his thighs can allow, feet planted more firmly into the carpet. The first roll of his hips is disjointed, off rhythm with your own, but the slight drag of his cock against your walls has you moaning brokenly. The second roll, a little more confident, has you pressing your hips down to meet it, and your back arches like a cat.

“Fuck yes,” you moan, your voice thick and throaty. You moan his name, wait for the third shallow thrust, and meet it. “You feel so fucking good.” 

He looks up at you like you hung the stars, his eyes widening at the sound of his name tumbling past your lips like a fractured halo. He loses his rhythm, but you soon pick it back up for him, starting to use your thighs to slide more eagerly down his cock. It’s still shallow, Nanami’s arms around your waist preventing you from really going for it, but you’re unwilling to part from the closeness for now. 

You bounce a few inches at a time, the dull clap of your hips and the lewd squelch of your hot cunt wrapped tight around him filling the air of the apartment. With each bounce, a grunt pushes out from his chest, hot breath fanning across your face. 

Nanami, though inexperienced, starts to let his body guide him. His hips buck up to meet you more confidently, and the growing force of his movements has you keening, fingernails biting into his shoulders. 

You look square into his hooded eyes, breath mingling, and see the flush across his skin, his lips glistening with saliva. You moan again, higher pitched this time, and Nanami’s next thrust has you jolting up a little, nose bumping against his. You clench around him again, and his brow knits together. 

“S-Shit,” he pants, his hips starting to jolt more readily, pushing a little too forcefully into you, quickly losing his rhythm. “I’m not… I’m not going to last…” His movements quicken, grow more erratic, and you’re not even sure he realises. “… you’re so fucking… tight.” 

The last part is little more than a throaty whisper, his voice cracking. You stop meeting his thrusts and instead, widen your stance, tighten your core, and let him take what he needs. The movement, though small, isn’t lost on him, and he looks up at you, emotion swimming heavily in his dark gaze. 

He thrusts up grow more erratic, sloppier, something like a grunt leaving his mouth with every dull thwap of his hips against your ass. His arms tighten around you, fingertips pressing into your skin. A groan, a hiss, and a swallow. The couch creaks and strains. 

“N-Next time - hah - next time… I want t-to feel you cum around me,” he pants, his arms starting to shake. “I’ll give you everything, anything, fuck, I-I’ll keep going until… until… God-“ 

He’s barely pulling out now, a mere inch is all he’s moving, the head of his cock bullying against the soft spot right next to your cervix. Choked, high-pitch moans are the only sounds you can make, and you distantly note you’ve never sounded like before. Not ever. 

You’re getting there, you realise. Not quite close, and definitely not as close as him, but the way his cock fits inside you, the slap of his hips against you, the way he’s looking at you… it’s pushing you there fast. 

But it’s not quite enough. 

“I’m close,” he gasps. “I… where…” 

“Inside,” you reply without hesitation. Something passes by his eyes, a small flicker of concern, perhaps, swimming in the sea of lust and arousal. You try to find your bearings enough to tell him it’s okay, you wouldn’t have taken him inside if you weren’t protected-

-but then his cock is twitching inside you, and Nanami is shaking, shaking underneath you, his thighs jolting, nearly bucking you off his lap altogether. 

With one last slam of his hips against you, buried as deep as he could possibly ago, a long, primal groan leaves him. It’s deep, visceral, easily mistaken for something pained - and it might be the most divine fucking sound you’ve ever heard in your life. 

He buries his face against your throat as his hips buck involuntarily a few times, and you shiver as you feel that familiar warmth bloom inside you. He’s giving you everything, or what feels like it. Your pussy flutters around him, and his fingertips press into you so tight you wouldn’t be surprised to see bruises. 

His heart is hammering against your chest, the thump pounding even in your own chest. Ragged pants and a heavy quiet settles over the living room. His cock continues to twitch inside you, growing weaker with every thud of his heart. 

Nanami doesn’t pull his head from your throat for a long while, his nose pressing into your skin as he pants against you. 

After a moment, he finally swallows. “… I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I… I should have made you-“ 

“Shut up,” you murmur against his warm hair, breathing in the faint scent of sweat and his shampoo. He seems to get the picture, of what you were trying to say. He always did. “Next time,” you add anyway, just to be sure. 

He lifts his head from your skin, looking up at you blearily. You smile fondly as you see his face again, the harsh lines on his brow and his eyes smoother now, no longer creased as they always seemed to be. He looks… so much younger, you think, like this. Relaxed. Sated. 

You brush some of his sweaty hair out of his face, and his eyelids flutter at the brief contact. He seems exhausted, you think.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs as he looks up at you. “I don’t want this to…” His palm moves against your back, sliding down your spine. “I want you. Properly. I always have.” He swallows. “Always.” 

Your eyes soften. He looks at you expectantly, almost vulnerably. 

“You have me,” you murmur in reply, finally. “Properly.” 

A small smile tugs at his lips, and it’s warmer than you’ve ever seen before. Genuine. Light. It’s as if a decade of weight lifts from his broad shoulders, if only briefly. 

He pulls you close once more, his lips pressing against yours softly, lovingly, and the world seems to fade away. 

For now, of course. 

masterlist.