Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The days after Gojo’s death were a blur.

Megumi couldn’t remember how many nights she had gone without sleep, how many times she had torn her nails bloody against old scrolls and half-burned texts, searching for answers that didn’t exist. Sukuna’s laughter haunted her every time she closed her eyes. And Gojo—Gojo’s smile, his warmth, his voice—were gone, cut short because she had been too weak, too careless, too willing to let herself be swayed by the wrong kind of love.

It was her fault. Everything was her fault. All of the deaths. Gojo–

The grief hollowed her, and the guilt rotted whatever was left. But she refused to let it end there. If she couldn’t save him in this world, then she would find another way.

The ritual she pieced together was unstable, incomplete, the sort of thing no sane sorcerer would attempt. It would rip her through the seams of time itself, body and soul. But she didn’t care. If it killed her, then so be it. If she lost herself, it didn’t matter—so long as Gojo lived.

She whispered his name when she carved the last sigil.

And then the world tore itself apart.

Jujutsu High looked so similar, Megumi was certain she had failed. 

But then the world slowed to a crawl.

Megumi had dreamed of this moment, had begged for it in the darkest corners of her mind, but no dream could compare to the reality of seeing him alive again.

Satoru Gojo.

The last time she saw him, his body had been cut cleanly in two by Sukuna’s hand. His blood on the ground, his smile gone forever. But here—now—he was whole. Tall, radiant, untouchable. His sunglasses caught the light, reflecting it back like twin stars. His laugh—easy, careless—carried across the courtyard, sinking claws of longing into her chest.

Alive. Her age, or at least close.

And already out of reach.

She stared, unable to breathe, every part of her aching with grief and desperate love.

And then his voice cut through her reverie.

“You’re staring.”

Sharp, amused. His head tilted just so, lips curved into a knowing smirk. He didn’t need to ask why—of course she was staring. Everyone did.

Megumi’s mouth went dry. She flinched, caught in the act, her heart pounding loud enough she thought he might hear it.

Gojo stepped closer, adjusting his sunglasses with a casual flick of his finger. “Don’t look so guilty. Happens all the time. I am easy on the eyes.”

Heat rushed to her face. Her throat locked up. It was Gojo, but it wasn’t her Gojo. It was clear from the way he looked at her that he didn’t share the same memories she had. She prayed that some benevolent deity would strike him with all the same love and emotion he’d felt for her in the future - that his face would fall and he'd grab her, hold her as if she was the only thing that mattered. 

“Come on, Satoru,” Shoko drawled from his side, her hands in the pockets of her uniform jacket. “Don’t pick on the new kid.”

“Yeah,” added Geto, smoother, the corner of his mouth curving upward as he slanted Gojo a look. “Try not to bully the underclassmen. Makes us look bad.” His tone was light, teasing, more about needling Gojo than actually defending her.

Gojo scoffed, brushing them both off with an easy shrug, but his smirk only deepened. His attention lingered on Megumi, amused and unbothered, like a cat toying with a mouse. “Sure, I’ll be nice,” he told his friends, though his eyes never left Megumi. The Six Eyes, still not fully developed, took in every inch of her face. The haunted green eyes, the dark circles beneath them, her pale face framed by unkempt, dark hair. Those eyes had seen every inch of her a thousand times without ever finding a flaw. But now, “She’s just really not my type.” 

He said this directly in her face, hovering only a few centimeters from her, before smiling and pulling away, going back to join Shoko and Geto, as if he’d already forgotten she existed. Megumi could only watch him go, her body trembling under the weight of seeing him again, so completely alive, and also with something else. How had she forgotten what an asshole he was?

Megumi didn’t remember leaving the courtyard. One moment, his voice was in her ear, cruel and close, and the next she was stumbling through the quiet back corridors of the school, her chest tight, her throat burning.

She pressed her back against the cold wall, breathing hard.

What was she expecting? That he’d look at her and know? That he’d see her grief and reach for her like he always had in the future? That he’d be kind, protective, the man who’d carried her out of battles, who’d laughed with her when the world was too heavy, who had died in front of her eyes?

No. This was not that man.

This was Satoru Gojo at eighteen years old. Arrogant. Untouchable. Popular. Surrounded by friends. So far from the Gojo who had raised her that she almost wanted to laugh.

Her hands shook as she covered her face, forcing herself to breathe through the ache in her chest. She had begged the universe for this chance, and now she had it. He was alive again. His future wasn’t written yet. If she did everything right, if she stopped her father from ever attacking him, if she kept Geto from straying—then maybe she could rewrite everything.

But what was she supposed to do in the meantime? How was she supposed to endure being this close to him—her Gojo, the man she had lost, who didn’t know her, didn’t care, and thought nothing of shattering her with a smirk and a throwaway insult?

Her nails dug into her palms.

She had no right to cry. She had chosen this.

Megumi straightened, swallowing her tears. She couldn’t falter now. Every moment mattered. Every word, every step. She had to be careful—because as unbearable as it was, Gojo’s life depended on her being able to stomach his arrogance.

She would endure it. She had to.

From somewhere in the distance, she heard his laugh again—carefree, golden, utterly alive. It pierced through her like a blade and left her breathless.

Megumi sat stiff-backed in the classroom, her borrowed uniform still too crisp, her pen clenched tightly between her fingers. The blackboard was half-covered in scrawls from the morning lesson, but she couldn’t focus. Her gaze kept sliding to the boy one row away—him.

Gojo leaned lazily in his chair, legs sprawled, sunglasses tipped just low enough to flash a glint of blue beneath. He wasn’t paying attention. Of course he wasn’t. He was tossing bits of paper into Shoko’s hair while she ignored him, staring out the window with the patience of someone long used to his antics.

Megumi forced herself to look back at her notebook. Just endure this.

But she could feel his gaze before she even heard his voice.

“Oh, she’s taking notes,” Gojo said loudly enough to draw every eye. By the time she looked at him, his attention had already shifted to Geto. “You owe me dinner.” Gojo looked back at Megumi after saying that, feigning a look of embarrassment. “Sorry, Suguru thought you were one of those like, special needs kids they let in to get the school more government funding. I just thought you were a loser. Guess I win.”

Laughter rippled through the room. Heat rushed to Megumi’s face, embarrassment mixed with a desire to grab him by the ear and smash his head into his desk. The Gojo she knew had always had a soft spot for her, but she was getting the typical Gojo treatment now. It was no surprise he didn’t have any friends in the future. 

She looked away from him, back down to her notebook, her lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m just trying to listen.”

Gojo grinned, the kind of grin that said he’d already won. “Aw, cute,” he teased. Megumi shifted her attention back to him for a second and he immediately made a face. “Oh god, not like that. Don’t get excited.” 

“Knock it off, Satoru. You’re insufferable,” Shoko finally sighed, tossing her chalk at Gojo’s head.

He ducked the chalk easily, laughing. “Admit it—you’d miss me if I stopped.” His attention never returned to her during that class. 

Megumi Fushiguro had been born into an era of war. Orphaned before she could even read or write, raised by the very person who had killed her father, she grew up in a world full of curses, blood, and death. High school had been no different. Every day demanded vigilance, every interaction was measured, every misstep could cost her more than embarrassment. It was nothing like the carefree adventures portrayed in the movies.

Satoru Gojo, by contrast, had grown up in a very different world. Peaceful, easy, full of privileges he seemed almost offended to be born into. If he were a character in a story, he would have been the lead in some high school drama—the effortlessly cool, impossibly popular jock who could stride down a hallway and make everyone else feel like they didn’t even exist.

To Megumi’s dismay, she quickly realized that in the movie of Satoru Gojo’s high school life, she had been cast as the awkward, nerdy loser.

She had never been bullied before—not in this way. On the battlefield, she had been targeted, hurt, and forced to defend herself. But she had never spent her days painfully self-conscious, waiting for someone to comment on the way her hair fell, the slight crease in her uniform, or the faint stain she hadn’t noticed. At Jujutsu High, every day seemed to bring a fresh, perfectly aimed jab, a reminder that in this world, survival wasn’t about curses or monsters—it was about not being the easiest target.

Megumi’s first real moment of relief came during physical education. The boys and girls were separated, at least for this class, and she could finally exhale a little. The gym was full of movement and noise, but she felt safer here among the girls. Familiar faces dotted the room—Shoko, Utahime, even Mei Mei—and a few others she didn’t know. The class sizes in Gojo’s time were far larger than in her own, and the energy was almost overwhelming.

“You doing alright, Fushiguro?” Shoko’s voice cut through the din, gentle but firm.

Megumi glanced up, meeting Shoko’s eyes. Even as a teenager, she carried that same poised aura she remembered from the future. She had always been near Gojo, clearly a friend, but never once had she joined in the teasing, unlike Suguru Geto.

“I’m fine,” Megumi said, and this time, part of her really did mean it. The teasing, the childishness, even the bullying—it was still unpleasant, but compared to the horrors she’d left behind in her own timeline, it felt almost normal.

Utahime leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Gojo from across the gym. “That asshole’s really got it out for you, huh?” she said, nodding toward Megumi. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him target one person this much before.”

“Lucky me,” Megumi muttered, forcing a small, tight smile.

A few of the other girls giggled softly, glancing back toward Gojo as he laughed with a group of boys. “Ugh, he’s so cute,” one whispered, leaning toward Mei Mei.

Utahime scoffed, shaking her head. “Cute? Hah. He’d be cute if he wasn’t such an asshole.”

Before anyone could respond, a basketball flew across the gym, slicing through the air with alarming speed. Megumi barely had time to duck, the ball skidding off the wall just inches from her.

“Oops,” Gojo’s voice called from across the gym, grinning as if nothing had happened. “My bad—didn’t see you there.”

The girls exchanged glances. There was nothing accidental about that throw.

Mei Mei leaned closer to the group, voice low enough only they could hear. “I swear, he just wants your attention,” she murmured to Megumi and Shoko, tilting her head toward the boy with a knowing smirk. “He’s just too stupid to ask for it properly.”

Shoko gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod, as if confirming the thought without needing to say it. Megumi tried to look composed, to act as though nothing had happened—but her heart was betraying her, beating just a little too fast.

The basketball incident—as the girls insisted on calling it—had earned her something unexpected: friends. Shoko, Utahime, and Mei Mei had welcomed her into their orbit, cautiously at first, but warmly enough that she found herself in Mei Mei and Utahime’s dorm room that evening, preparing for a party off campus.

“God,” Mei Mei muttered, circling Megumi like a hawk inspecting prey. “You can’t seriously be planning on showing up looking like that.”

Megumi tilted her head, confusion flickering across her face as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “I look the same as I always do,” she said, genuinely baffled.

Utahime laughed, tugging her over to sit on the edge of her bed. “Exactly,” she said, grinning. “That’s the problem. You might be fine with looking like … that during classes, but come on. It’s a party. People notice things.”

Megumi sighed, slowly beginning to understand the subtle, unspoken rules of female friendship. Compliments came disguised as critiques; criticism was always wrapped in the illusion of help. She folded her hands in her lap, trying not to let herself react. “I don’t really know how else to look,” she admitted quietly.

The girls exchanged a conspiratorial smile. Shoko rolled her eyes in the background, looking unimpressed as usual. “You pick out her outfit, I’ll take care of the rest,” Utahime said, as though Megumi had no choice in the matter.

Before she could protest, Megumi was eased into a chair—Mei Mei’s usual desk chair—and Utahime got to work. First, the hair. Her black, perpetually untamed mass was brushed, separated, and molded into gentle curls that framed her face. A pink headband—something cheerful, undeniably girlish—pinned her bangs out of her face. Megumi felt like she was being dressed in someone else’s version of herself.

Next came her face. Utahime worked with quiet concentration, covering dark spots, evening out her skin tone, and carefully applying a subtle foundation. When she reached for her usual, slightly bolder makeup, Shoko’s voice cut sharply across the room. “God, you’re going to make her look like a clown,” she said. “She’s too pale for that color.”

Utahime paused, hand hovering in midair, and surveyed the girl in front of her. With a nod, she switched tactics. Soft pink replaced the bolder tones—faint blush brushed along her cheeks and the tip of her nose, lips glossy and lightly tinted, just enough to bring a gentle flush of life to her pale skin.

Megumi opened her mouth to protest when Mei Mei presented a bright pink dress, but the older girl’s look shut her down immediately. “No arguments,” Mei Mei said firmly, sweeping the fabric dramatically. “You’re wearing it.”

Megumi stared at her reflection in disbelief. The dress was undeniably pink, undeniably … loud. She felt a pang of self-consciousness, convinced she looked like a half-chewed piece of bubble gum someone had carelessly left on the pavement.

“Don’t make that face,” Utahime said, inspecting her work. “You look good. Trust me.”

Megumi blinked at herself again, trying to reconcile the unfamiliar reflection with the person she saw every day in the mirror. Her hair curled and shiny, her skin smooth and even, the dress screaming “look at me”—it was all alien. And yet somehow, she could feel the faint, exhilarating pulse of being noticed, of belonging, that had nothing to do with curses or battles.

For the first time that day, she allowed herself a small, uncertain smile.

The confidence Megumi had built up during the preparation with her friends evaporated the moment she stepped into the party. She’d never been to one before, and it was… overwhelming. Music thumped through the walls like a living thing, bodies pressed and swayed against each other, laughter and shouting filling every corner. Some were stumbling drunkenly, others laughing too loudly, eager for any form of contact.

Megumi felt a sinking weight in her stomach. She would’ve rather faced the Culling Games again than this chaos of teenage energy. Her friends didn’t seem to notice as she slipped away, quietly maneuvering through the crowd toward the doorway. “I’ll be right back,” she muttered, hoping the words sounded casual enough.

The cool night air hit her like a balm when she stepped outside, giving her a momentary sense of control. She leaned against the railing, trying to calm her racing heart, when a quiet voice broke the silence.

“That didn’t last long.”

Megumi flinched, instinctively straightening as her eyes found Suguru Geto lounging on a nearby bench. He sat with one arm draped across the backrest, cigarette dangling lazily between his fingers, but the faint curve of his lips suggested amusement. She took a breath, forcing her panic to subside. This wasn’t Kenjaku. This was Geto—the real one. Not evil. Well … not yet, at least.

“Hey,” she said softly, so quiet she almost thought he wouldn’t hear her.

Suguru tilted his head, regarding her with that same careful scrutiny he always carried. Her dress—short, bright pink, tight enough to make her fidget nervously—caught his attention immediately. Hair no longer fell in a curtain around her face, revealing features he hadn’t truly seen before.

“You’re beautiful,” he said casually, but the weight of the words surprised her nonetheless.

Megumi blinked, taken aback. “What?” Her voice caught slightly. “I mean … you really think so?”

A low, amused chuckle escaped him, entirely without cruelty. “Sure.” He leaned back further, as if letting the night and the breeze do some of the talking. “Trying to get his attention?”

Megumi’s cheeks flamed. She opened her mouth to deny it, then shut it, irritation mixing with embarrassment. “Not everything is about him,” she snapped. “No matter how much he thinks it is.”

Suguru’s expression softened into a knowing grin. “I’ve been telling him that for years,” he said, eyes glinting with amusement. “But you knew exactly who I meant without me saying his name. Kind of sounds like it is about him.”

Admittedly, she existed in this world now only because of Gojo—because of that impossible, infuriating bond between them. But she couldn’t admit that, not to Geto. It would be … uncool. And Suguru Geto was undeniably, infuriatingly cool. He radiated a calm confidence that drew attention without demanding it. Megumi wasn’t surprised he had wormed his way into Gojo’s heart—the one person Gojo trusted, the one person whose friendship mattered more than anyone else.

Megumi felt like she was drowning under the weight of his gaze. It wasn’t anything like meeting the full brunt of Gojo’s Six Eyes. No, this wasn’t about power, or intimidation. Those heavily lidded eyes, his head tilted back as he watched her closely. Megumi would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking. “I just wanted to feel pretty,” she told him, holding his gaze with her own. The words were heavier than she expected; social pressures and whispered judgments felt almost as sharp as a curse’s strike on the battlefield.

Geto tilted his head, ever so slightly, his attention on her never wavering. “And do you?” 

Megumi hesitated, then nodded, her voice barely audible. “Right now,” she admitted, glancing toward the house as if its chaos might pull her away from this rare, quiet moment. “I probably won’t once I go back in there.”

Suguru watched her silently for a moment longer, the faintest flicker of amusement passing through his expression before he brought the cigarette back to his lips. The implication of her words hung between them, unspoken but unmistakable. Out there, in the cool night, under his gaze, she felt beautiful. Because of him. 

Megumi forced herself to return to the party. She hadn’t come here for nothing. She hadn’t spent all that time being primped and preened to stand on the street corner underneath the street lights. 

The music pounded inside the house, bass rattling the walls, and Megumi felt every beat in her chest. She stayed close to Shoko, Utahime, and Mei Mei, but even their presence couldn’t entirely soothe the nerves twisting in her stomach. This world—the music, the lights, the careless closeness of everyone around her—was foreign, dizzying.

And then she felt it: eyes on her.

Gojo.

“It’s a party, Fushiguro,” he called out, voice carrying easily over the music. His gaze swept over her, deliberate, teasing, lingering just long enough to make her nerves coil. “Why’s your heart racing like you’re being hunted?”

Of course he could see every reaction of her body wit the Six Eyes. But Megumi wasn’t supposed to know that, so she pretended that she didn’t. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied.

He smirked, pushing off the wall with that effortless, infuriating confidence, closing the space between them until she could feel the warmth radiating off him. He stopped just a breath away, looming over her, and for the first time that night, he didn’t grin or mock. His attention was sharp, focused, almost painfully intense.

A stray strand of her hair fell across her face, and without hesitation, he brushed it back behind her ear. His fingers lingered at her cheek, brushing lightly against her skin, warm and deliberate. Then, ever so subtly, he tilted her jaw up, forcing her eyes to meet his.

Megumi’s heart stuttered. The air between them thickened, electric, charged with anticipation. Every instinct screamed at her, and yet she couldn’t look away. His eyes dipped to her lips, just inches from hers, and her pulse thudded painfully in her chest.

For a suspended heartbeat, it felt like he could kiss her. She felt the tiniest, most daring pressure from his hand on her jaw, a teasing intimacy that made her breath hitch. Time slowed. The room, the music, the chaos of the party—all of it disappeared.

And then—suddenly—he pulled back, a laugh escaping him, merciless. “God,” he said, shaking his head, stepping back into the crowd. “You’re going to have a stroke before your nineteenth birthday at this rate.”

As Megumi stared after his retreating form, she began to experience a horrible premonition. Her mission, her entire reason for being here was going to fail. She wouldn’t save him. She wouldn’t save anyone in her timeline. The truth was clear. 

She was going to kill this version of Satoru Gojo her damn self. 

Chapter Text

Megumi Fushiguro was a lot of things, but a quitter wasn’t one of them.

So what if she wasn’t Gojo’s “type”? She refused to be cast as the awkward loser in his high school years. Whether or not he noticed, she would recast herself as someone else entirely—someone worth looking at.

She sighed, checking her reflection one last time. Not the full Utahime-level makeover from the party, but a step up. A sweater that fit, a skirt that wasn’t rumpled, a full night’s sleep smoothing the shadows under her eyes. She looked softer. Fresher. Like she belonged here, instead of bleeding her way through the ruined future she came from.

Stepping into the classroom early, she faltered. Gojo and Geto were already inside. Every instinct screamed at her to retreat, to disappear into a corner. Pride rooted her in place. She crossed the room and slipped into the desk just behind Suguru.

“Good morning, Geto-senpai,” she said casually, though warmth threaded through her voice.

He turned slowly, deliberate, eyes glinting with amusement. He knew exactly what she was doing. Clever move—Gojo turned everything into a competition. It wouldn’t surprise him if Satoru made this one too.

“Morning,” Suguru replied, smooth, unhurried, as though he had all the time in the world to notice her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Megumi caught Gojo shift, a sulk settling into his shoulders. He said nothing, but his silence was loud. For Satoru Gojo, being ignored was intolerable.

Suguru leaned back, then forward, resting his elbows on her desk. The closeness sent her pulse stuttering. His head tilted, dark hair spilling forward until it almost brushed her hand. In his fingers, a cigarette smoldered lazily.

Without a word, he held it out to her.

Megumi hesitated. She’d never smoked, never thought of it. But when Suguru Geto extended something, it felt less like an offer and more like a challenge. Her fingers brushed his when she took it—warm, startling.

She brought it to her lips. Heat scorched her throat instantly. She coughed hard, shoving the cigarette back, eyes watering.

Suguru’s laugh was low, genuine, free of cruelty. He plucked it from her hand with ease, tapped off the ash, and inhaled himself. The smoke curled past her shoulder in a slow ribbon. His gaze lingered on her, sharp and deliberate, the weight of it leaving her bare.

“First time always tastes bad,” he murmured. His eyes dragged over her face, pausing at her mouth. “But you didn’t look half bad doing it.”

Her heart slammed hard, loud in her chest.

Suguru exhaled slowly, the haze between them curling like a secret. “Dangerous habit, though,” he added, tone deceptively casual. “You might get addicted.”

Her throat tightened. He wasn’t talking about the cigarette.

Holy shit. He was flirting with her. Suguru Geto: future cult leader, war criminal, mass murderer. Flirting with her. He wasn’t the kind of man you brought home to make your mother proud—though, Megumi thought bitterly, the same could be said for her father. Maybe bad taste in men ran in the family.

And God, he was pretty.

Megumi leaned back a little, trying to play it cool. His presence was intoxicating, his nearness hard to think through. “Kind of seems like it might be bad for me,” she said.

Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Only one way to find out.”

In front of them, Gojo finally shifted with a loud sigh, slouching in his chair like a child denied attention. He threw Megumi a glance—half glare, half pout.

Suguru leaned just a fraction closer, his voice pitched low enough for only her. “Ignore him,” he said, tone smooth, intimate, coaxing. “He gets loud when he’s jealous.”

“She isn’t even pretty.”

Megumi froze, her hand on the doorknob. The voice was familiar—too familiar—and she didn’t need to ask who he meant. Her chest tightened as she stepped back from the door, pressing into the cool plaster wall. She didn’t have half the armor it would take to walk in after hearing that.

Suguru’s laugh followed, low and easy, carving straight through her. “That’s the third time you’ve said it, Satoru. I heard you the first.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Gojo shot back, voice edged with something sharp. “You’re still giving her attention.” Jealous?

“You know, just because she isn’t your type doesn’t mean she isn’t pretty,” Suguru replied.

“You think she is?” Gojo’s voice rose, prodding. Testing.

“She’s cute.”

“She’s desperate,” Gojo countered instantly, quick as a blade.

Suguru chuckled again, softer this time. “A little,” he admitted. “But that makes it easier.”

Megumi’s stomach lurched. Heat prickled across her skin, shame rushing hot to her face. Easier for what?

“Megumi?”

She startled, whipping her head to the side. Shoko stood down the hall, cigarette dangling from her fingers, brows drawn together. Utahime slowed at her side, tilting her head in question.

“Why are you out here?” Utahime asked. “Class is about to start.”

Megumi gripped her bag strap tighter, throat dry. She scrambled for an excuse—any excuse that wasn’t the truth. “I—”

Before she could finish, Gojo’s voice cut through the door, loud enough for the whole hall to hear.

“Desperate and boring. Worst combination.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Shoko’s eyes flicked to the door, then back to Megumi. Utahime’s frown softened, recognition settling over her features.

“…Ah,” Shoko muttered, exhaling smoke like the situation explained itself.

Megumi stared down at her shoes, wishing the floor would open and swallow her whole.

Then a warm hand slipped into hers. She looked up to see Utahime smiling, soft and deliberate, her fingers laced between Megumi’s. “Come on,” she urged. “It’s just because you’re new. They’ll move on soon.”

Shoko added her hand at Megumi’s elbow, guiding her toward the door. Megumi considered resisting. She could outrun them both easily—out of the school, out of the city, back to her own timeline where these assholes were long dead.

Deciding that was maybe an overreaction, she let herself be pulled inside.

She found a seat as far from them as possible, while Shoko went back to her place beside the boys. On her way past, she whacked Gojo on the back of the head with her notebook. “Asshole,” she muttered.

“Huh?” he turned, rubbing the spot with an exaggerated pout. “I didn’t even do anything.”

Megumi sank into the rear row. For a moment, she thought she was safe. Too far away to draw notice. Invisible again.

Until the teacher announced they’d be partnering.

“Fushiguro,” Suguru called across the room. Gojo snorted, stifling a laugh. Heat rushed to Megumi’s face again.

“You’re with me.”

Megumi had faced special grade curses and survived. She’d watched her best friend, her mentor, the man who raised her die—and she was still standing. High school bullies, no matter how frustratingly handsome, were not going to break her.

“Why would I want to work with you?” she asked coolly, meeting Suguru’s gaze head-on. “I’m not that desperate.”

Gojo burst out laughing, loud and delighted, fully aware of what she’d overheard. But Suguru didn’t smile. He didn’t smirk, didn’t tease. He only studied her, steady and unreadable.

For a beat, she caught it—the restraint in his eyes. No mockery. No amusement. Just the quiet acknowledgment that she had heard something she wasn’t meant to. That she was seeing him in a way he did not like.

The first thing Megumi looked forward to at school was combat practice.

This Gojo — the teenage version — hadn’t developed RCT yet. The Six Eyes were still rudimentary, and Infinity remained inconsistent at best. No matter how naturally strong he was, he wasn’t a fraction as untouchable as the Gojo she knew from the future. This Satoru Gojo was vulnerable. And Megumi, if allowed to use her cursed technique, was fairly certain she could absolutely wreck him.

But she wasn’t allowed.

The Ten Shadows were far too infamous. Legendary. The hallmark of the Zenin clan. She wasn’t a Zenin — at least, she wasn’t supposed to be. She was a Fushiguro: a minor sorcerer, a background player, someone meant to fade quietly in a school overflowing with prodigies and geniuses.

And Gojo, she knew, would recognize her technique the moment it appeared. Even if he didn’t, Naoya Zenin would. She’d glimpsed her uncle on campus a handful of times, always slipping away before he noticed her. At this age, he hadn’t started dying his hair yet; with black hair and sharp green eyes, Megumi worried any proximity might make people notice the family resemblance. She didn’t need the extra attention.

So here she was, stuck in her head, weighing every option. How could she absolutely, positively destroy Satoru Gojo without giving away that she was a Zenin, let alone the Ten Shadows’ bearer? Every potential strategy bounced around her mind, each one more impossible than the last.

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted. A training ball slammed into the side of her face, bouncing back into Gojo’s hands. She winced, touching her cheek, and looked up at him. He was standing there, head tilted, smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, entirely amused.

“Focus up, Fushiguro,” he drawled. “Just because you’re weak doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention.”

Megumi’s jaw tightened. Weak. That one word stung, and she swallowed the impulse to snap back. 

Gojo, bored with her lack of response, tossed the ball at her head again. This time, a wide hand intercepted it before it could hit her, and tossed it back at Gojo with enough force that the boy stumbled back a step. Gojo looked surprised by the intervention, before amusement quickly took over his features, his eyes following Suguru as he went to stand with Shoko. “Don’t feel too special,” said Gojo, shifting his attention back to Megumi and leaning in conspiratorily close, his breath hot against her ear as he whispered: “He’s always liked easy girls.” 

Before Megumi could respond, a resounding crack split the air. Heads turned across the training yard. She followed the sound, eyes wide, seeing the motion of everyone pausing, curious about what had transpired, before noticing all eyes were on her. On him.

Her gaze snapped back to Gojo — and then down to her own hand.

Her palm burned.

It registered all at once: she had hit him. She had actually slapped Satoru Gojo.

The field fell into a tense hush, whispers rippling through the other students as they processed what had just happened. For his part, Gojo seemed the only one more stunned than she was. He hadn’t moved, eyes locked on her, his cheek slowly coloring redder and redder. His usual invincible arrogance faltered under the weight of sheer disbelief.

“God, can you leave her alone now?”

It was Utahime, her voice sharp with irritation, rolling her eyes from across the field. Megumi’s attention snapped away from Gojo at last.

His gaze, however, didn’t follow. He was still focused on her, smirk returning only slightly, amusement lingering in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Mei Mei called lightly from the side. “Kind of looks like he might’ve been into that.”

Utahime’s expression shifted, subtle and almost imperceptible, though Megumi caught a flicker of something calculating. She approached, grabbing Megumi by the wrist and tugging her away from Gojo, careful to bump lightly into him on the way. A seemingly casual motion, but purposeful—attention redirected.

The bump seemed to draw Gojo’s attention back to the current time. His hand lashed out in a flash, grabbing Megumi by the wrist - gentle, but unyielding - stopping Utahime from dragging her away. “I don’t think we were done talking.” 

Utahime slid neatly between them, intercepting his stare. “Behave,” she said, her tone light, almost teasing, though her eyes flickered with something more complicated. “I think Megumi’s tired of putting up with you.”

“Is that right?” Gojo looked past her, gaze locking on Megumi again. His voice was low, measured, carrying more weight than she’d expected. “Was I bothering you, Fushiguro?”

“Nope,” she said quickly, biting the final consonant hard. She lifted a hand, tapping her cheek—the side still pink from the training ball’s impact. A mirror to his reddened skin. “I just thought we should match.”

For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then Gojo’s expression shifted, the corner of his mouth tugging upward in something that wasn’t quite his usual grin. It felt smaller, softer, as though he hadn’t meant for her to see it.

“Cute,” he murmured, just for her.

The word hung between them, heavier than it should’ve been. Her pulse jumped despite herself, and she had to force her hand down from her cheek before she gave anything away.

Utahime bristled at the comment. She pressed a palm flat to Gojo’s chest, shoving him back with more force than was strictly necessary. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt before releasing, the touch lingering just a beat too long.

Megumi caught the flicker of intent beneath the gesture. Utahime wasn’t shielding her. Not really. She wanted his attention pulled elsewhere.

Gojo leaned back under the pressure of Utahime’s hand, but even as the space widened, his gaze stayed locked on Megumi—curious, amused, and, for the first time, unmistakably interested.

God, high school really was complicated.

Megumi hadn’t expected her task to be simple. Every step depended on shifting pieces, unpredictable edges—most of them orbiting around her father, a figure she couldn’t track, couldn’t control. Gojo was supposed to be the easy part. Predictable. Manageable. Safe.

The train hissed to a stop, and the crowd spilled out until the car felt nearly empty. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, pale and sterile against the blur of passing city outside. That was when she saw him.

Suguru.

He was impossible to miss—taller than everyone else, moving with an ease that felt deliberate, predatory, like the space itself bent to his stride. Her pulse tripped as he crossed the aisle toward her.

“Let me guess,” she muttered, keeping her voice low, braced against the metal pole by the door, “you just happened to be headed this way.”

He laughed softly, a sound far too casual for the tension threading through her body. Instead of taking the empty space across from her, he came close—too close—leaning against the same pole, his shoulder brushing hers. Standing, he loomed above her, his height both irritating and magnetic.

“I’m not Gojo,” he murmured, voice warm but threaded with amusement, as if he knew exactly how the comparison stung.

Megumi turned her face toward him, closer than she meant to, close enough that she could smell the faint, clean spice of his cologne. Her throat felt tight. “I think you’re exactly like him,” she whispered, testing, daring.

Suguru didn’t flinch. He bent fractionally, bringing his face level with hers, closing the gap in a way that felt deliberate, intimate. His gaze dropped to her mouth—briefly, damningly—before catching her eyes again, steady and unyielding. “That,” he said softly, “might be the cruelest thing anyone’s ever told me.”

The train lurched forward with a violent jolt. Megumi lost her footing, the slick floor sliding under her shoes, and before she could catch herself, she stumbled hard into him.

His arms came around her instantly, solid and sure, pulling her against him. The impact knocked the air from her lungs—her chest flush to his, her palms braced against the firm line of his shoulders. Heat surged through her at the unyielding press of his body against hers, too much, too close.

For a suspended breath, neither of them moved. His hand at her lower back steadied her, fingers splayed, firm enough to hold her upright but light enough that she could pretend he wasn’t lingering.

Her pulse hammered in her throat. She told herself to step back, to put distance where distance belonged—but she didn’t. The sway of the train pressed her tighter against him, her cheek brushing the edge of his collarbone.

Suguru’s head tilted, his lips a fraction closer to her ear. “Careful,” he murmured, his voice low, velvet-soft, edged with something she couldn’t name. The single word vibrated through her chest where their bodies touched.

Megumi froze, every muscle taut, torn between retreat and surrender. The train rattled on, but the world outside had blurred into irrelevance. There was only his hold on her waist, the heat of him against her, and the terrifying realization that she wasn’t sure she wanted him to let go.

The train jolted again, and Megumi shoved herself away from him, palms pressing briefly into his chest before she tore back toward the pole. The distance she forced between them wasn’t much, but it was enough to make her intent clear.

Suguru let her go, studying her with that same unhurried calm, though there was something behind his eyes—something that said he understood more than she wanted him to.

“You’re angry with me,” he murmured, quiet, almost thoughtful. Not a question.

She didn’t answer. Her silence spoke louder than anything she could have said.

He let the pause stretch before shifting, his voice lighter, casual in a way that didn’t quite disguise the weight beneath it. “So. What was it that finally made you hit Gojo? He’s been asking for it since the day he was born, but no one’s ever had the nerve.”

Megumi’s lips pressed into a thin line. She could still hear Gojo’s words, sharp and mocking, as though the echo of them had been etched into her ribs. Her throat tightened. She turned toward Suguru then, her gaze steady, her voice clipped. “He said you weren’t helping me because I was special. He said you just have a thing for easy girls.”

Suguru’s expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. The curve of his mouth faded, his eyes flickering with something unspoken—regret, or anger, or something more complicated that she couldn’t untangle. “I did say it,” he admitted, calm as if they were discussing the weather. His gaze stayed on her, steady, unreadable. “It didn’t mean anything.”

The words were smooth, delivered without hesitation, but his eyes betrayed him—sharp, intent, lingering on her face a moment too long, as though daring her to call him a liar.

“Gojo likes to talk. I let him. That’s all.” 

The train slowed, brakes screeching as it pulled into the next station. The chime sounded, the doors sliding open. Megumi didn’t wait for him to go on. She stepped out into the rush of cold platform air without a single glance back.

Suguru stayed behind, hands in his pockets, watching her retreat. His mouth still curved faintly, but his eyes—sharpened by something darker, quieter—followed her until the crowd swallowed her whole.

Only when the doors closed did he look away, the mask sliding neatly back into place.

Chapter Text

By the following morning, the slap had already become front-page news among the student population.

Megumi heard it everywhere—hushed whispers, muffled laughter, the sting of her name carried from desk to desk.

“Fushiguro hit Gojo.”
“No way—no one touches Gojo.”
“They said he didn’t even block it.”
“Kind of hot, though.”

She kept her head down, books clutched tight, willing the tide of voices to pass over her. But no matter where she went—through classrooms, across the courtyard—eyes followed.

Of course, Gojo loved it.

He sprawled across his desk with the arrogance of a cat in the sun, smirk widening as his friends circled. Each retelling got louder, bigger.

“She wound up like this—” he demonstrated, ridiculous and grand, “and smack—didn’t even see it coming.”

Heat crawled up Megumi’s neck. It wasn’t even the slap that embarrassed her most—it was the way he kept glancing over mid-story, those quick sideways looks sparking with challenge, like he was daring her to break.

She didn’t.

Suguru, of course, said nothing. He lounged back, long legs out, arms folded, watching the chaos with unreadable calm. When Gojo got especially dramatic, Suguru’s mouth twitched in the faintest smirk—but when his gaze slid to Megumi, it held steady. Intent.

Her chest tightened.

Shoko drifted past at some point, cigarette dangling. She arched a brow at Megumi. “Aren’t you popular today,” she muttered, and kept moving.

Even Utahime paused outside the door, frown tugging at her mouth as she caught the laughter. Her eyes flicked from Megumi to Gojo and back again before she moved on.

By the time the teacher arrived, Megumi’s pulse had almost steadied. Then, from behind:

“She really slapped him?”
“Yeah. And he liked it.”

Her pen nearly snapped in her grip.

By combat practice, her nerves were raw. The slap had become the day’s favorite tale, and Gojo had fed the rumor mill like it was a personal hobby.

When the pairings were called and their names landed together, her stomach knotted.

Gojo practically bounced onto the mat, sunglasses glinting under the sun. “Lucky me,” he grinned, letting his voice carry. “Round two, Fushiguro.”

“God, whatever,” she said, flat.

They circled. From the first exchange she knew—he wasn’t fighting her. Not really. His dodges came a shade late, his blocks a touch lazy, each one timed to make it look like she had a shot. He was staging it, drawing her in, letting her feel the edge of control without ever handing it over.

Her jaw set. She struck sharper—only for him to slide past her guard in a blur.

His arm hooked her waist and, in one smooth motion, swept her feet. The mat hit her spine; air left her lungs—and then he was over her, pinning her with casual precision: one palm planted by her head, his chest hovering a breath above hers, a knee braced firm between her thighs.

Gasps and low laughter rose from the watchers, but the sound thinned to nothing.

His sunglasses had slipped; a shard of brilliant blue showed as he looked down—mischief and hunger and something far too pleased with itself.

“Gotcha,” he murmured. Just for her.

Her pulse hammered. She shoved at his chest; he didn’t shift. Too strong, too easy. His grin deepened when a loose strand of her hair skimmed his forearm.

His gaze flicked, traitorous, to her mouth—then pinned her eyes again.

The mat felt hot. Every breath between them was shared heat; every nerve catalogued where he caged her.

“Maybe Suguru was onto something,” he said at her ear, voice turning intimate around the edges of a grin. “You do look pretty good from this angle.”

Color hit her like a slap—rage, humiliation, something she refused to name. She shoved harder, twisting until he finally lifted—effortless, like he’d only ever been humoring her.

He slid his sunglasses back into place with a thumb, the hint of a smirk lingering as the onlookers’ chatter swelled again.

And Megumi understood, with a clarity that burned: he could have ended it at any point.

He just hadn’t wanted to.

The abandoned hospital was colder than the night outside, the kind of cold that clung damp in the bones. Paint peeled in long curls from the walls; a rusted gurney listed on a single wheel by the stairwell. Cursed energy threaded through the corridors like a low current, prickling across the skin.

“The air’s foul,” Utahime muttered, covering her nose as they stepped over a scatter of broken tiles. “If I get bronchitis, I’m filing a complaint.”

Mei Mei drifted a little ahead, braid swaying, eyes sharp. “The nest will be deeper,” she said. “Something’s fed here awhile.”

Suguru kept to the back, quiet as a shadow. “Multiple signatures,” he noted, scanning doorframes, the sagging ceiling, the dark mouths of side rooms. “Don’t crowd the center.”

Megumi slowed near a sagging span of drywall, that prickling in her shoulders sharpening. The cursed energy was off the charts. “The report was way off. It feels like—”

The ceiling split.

A hooked limb ripped down, shrieking. Utahime flinched the wrong way—

Gojo had her collar a heartbeat later and yanked. No ceremony: a swing, a let-go. She slid into a powdery heap against the opposite wall, coughing through the dust.

Blue carved the curse out of the air. Heat fizzed the damp; the thing went to nothing.

“Warn me next time, you lunatic!” Utahime barked, swatting plaster from her hair and dust from her uniform. “You nearly took my head off!”

Gojo didn’t look back. “It’s still on. You’re fine.”

“That’s not the point—”

Mei Mei’s laugh hummed low. “Don’t pout. He treats everyone like a projectile.”

Megumi gave him a look. “If that’s what you call saving, leave me to the curses.”

“I have a results-oriented approach.”

“Try people-oriented.”

Gojo smirked sidelong at her, voice casual, a gleam slipping under his shades. “You want me to be gentle, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ignored him. They pushed deeper. Rusted bedframes lined the next hall like ribs. Somewhere above, water tapped a patient, endless rhythm in a pipe. The hum of cursed energy thickened, spidering across skin.

“Left,” Suguru said, almost lazily.

They took it. The floor changed—older tile, some hollows where the mortar had chewed away. Megumi shifted her weight to test a set seam—

The crack ran fast. Tile webbed and caved; her foot vanished, balance gone. Above, something unpeeled from the ceiling—long, jointed, eager.

Blue cut it apart mid-drop.

Megumi didn’t hit the floor.

Gojo had her before gravity finished the sentence, lifting like he’d rehearsed it—one arm firm at her back, the other catching under her knees, posture easy and exact. Dust drifted down around his shoulders; the world narrowed to the steady press of his chest and the clean, electric heat of his hold.

“Look at that,” he said lightly, voice sliding warm. “Zero workplace injuries.”

“Put me down,” she said, but it came thin, traitorously breathless.

He didn’t. “You sure?” he asked, tightening just enough that she felt how securely he had her. “Ground doesn’t seem too friendly tonight.”

Heat rose sharp under her skin—some mix of anger and awareness she refused to name. It didn’t help that his hands were maddeningly careful, not a jostle out of place, like he’d chosen each point of contact on purpose.

Behind them, Utahime swiped dust off her uniform with offended dignity. “So I’m a bowling ball and she’s a wedding cake. Noted.”

Gojo finally set Megumi down—but slow, like lowering something fragile to a shelf. His palm stayed at her elbow a heartbeat past necessary, steadying what didn’t need steadying.

They moved on. The corridor bent, swallowing sound and smell. Whatever nested here shifted in the distance; the pipe kept up its patient drip.

“Up front,” Suguru said quietly, and Gojo drifted forward as if tugged by a string, the air lightening where he’d been.

Megumi fell in beside him again a few lengths later, whether by choice or magnetism she didn’t examine. He didn’t look over; she felt him watching anyway, the way his attention sharpened and softened with each step she took.

“Stop hovering,” she said, not quite under her breath.

He hummed. “Bad habit.”

“Break it.”

“Working on it,” he said, and didn’t move away.

They reached an intersection. The worst of the energy bled right. Gojo rolled his shoulder like a boxer loosening a joint; even that looked easy.

He didn’t reach for her again.

He didn’t have to—the space he left at her side was measured to the inch.

The rain had burned off while they were inside. By the time they pushed out of the hospital, the street was slick and the vending machines on the corner hummed over the drip from the eaves. They fell into their usual orbit without talking about it—Mei Mei a half-step ahead, Utahime and Shoko arguing under their breath, Suguru a quiet anchor at the back. Gojo drifted between them like gravity didn’t apply.

Utahime shook dust out of her sleeves for the tenth time. “For the record, being thrown at a wall is not standard rescue protocol.”

“Depends on the wall,” Gojo said, hands behind his head, not bothering to look contrite. “Yours was sturdy.”

Suguru didn’t break stride. “Less paperwork if you bounce.”

Mei Mei’s mouth curved. “Buy her a new blazer before admin does.”

Utahime stomped through a puddle on purpose. It sprayed the entire line. “You’re paying my dry cleaning, Satoru.”

“Put it on my tab,” he said, but his eyes had already slid to Megumi.

She kept to the inside of the sidewalk, eyes on the irregular seam of asphalt and concrete. The hospital’s stink still clung—mold, old blood, hot dust—and underneath it, something warmer she didn’t want to name. She flexed her ankle once, testing. It held, but pain streaked through when she put weight on it.

“You’re limping,” Gojo said lightly, appearing at her side like he’d been there all along.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Mm.” He didn’t press, just matched her pace. A scooter buzzed out of a side street too fast; his fingers found her elbow and angled her a step inward without comment. The spray clipped Utahime instead.

“My socks!” yelped Utahime.

“Tragic,” Shoko deadpanned.

Mei Mei tilted her head, watching the way Gojo’s hand lingered. “You’re subtle as a sledgehammer, Satoru.”

Gojo didn’t take his hand away until the taillight vanished. When he did, it was as if he hadn’t touched her at all—except Megumi still felt the press of his fingers ghosting her sleeve.

Utahime’s scowl curved into a smile too sweet to be kind. “Getting desperate, aren’t you? Clinging to a girl you swore wasn’t even your type.” The apology in her glance at Megumi was thin, like sugar over glass.

The words should have bounced off him. They didn’t. For once, Gojo’s grin didn’t sharpen; it steadied. “You must’ve scrambled something when I threw you at that wall,” he said breezily. “Should I try again? Hard reset.”

“Concussion humor. Classy,” Shoko said dryly, flicking ash into the rain.

Utahime’s eyes swept over Megumi, mock-sympathetic. “Enjoy the act while it lasts. He gets bored fast.”

Utahime: 1. Gojo: 0.

The joke skittered across Megumi’s skin and stuck. She’d been floating on the stupid warmth of his attention since the corridor—the steadiness of his arms, the ridiculous care—but Utahime’s words snapped the thread. Not pretty. Desperate and boring. Easy. Suddenly she felt visible in the wrong way again, like a hallway rumor wearing her face. The sidewalk seemed narrower; she edged to the inside without thinking.

The vending machines blinked at them in syrupy colors. Gojo detoured without warning, thumped a button twice, and came up with two cans. He cracked one, steam curling faint in the cold, and held the other out to Megumi without looking at her.

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He turned the can in his hand so the warmest strip pressed against her palm. “Hold it for me. My fingers are tired from saving everyone.”

Utahime made a lethal noise. “You saved me like a trebuchet.”

Gojo’s smile didn’t change; the temperature did. “You’ve brought that up, what, three times now?” he said lightly. “We get it, you want my attention.”

The jab landed. Utahime’s cheeks went hot; she opened her mouth, then shut it again, brushing past with a stiff flick of her hair.

Scoreboard reset: Gojo back in the game.

They crossed under a ginkgo. Drops shook loose; one landed on Megumi’s cheek. Before she could wipe it away, Gojo reached in and flicked it off with ridiculous precision, as if the water might explode.

“Heroics, part two,” he said.

She gave him a look, because ignoring him felt like surrender. “You keeping a running tally?”

“Mm-hm.” He tapped his temple. “All up here.”

Mei Mei clicked her tongue. “This is boyfriend-tier customer service, Satoru. Careful, you’ll ruin your reputation.”

Utahime’s laugh was bright and brittle. “Reputation? He’s been using her as a punchline for weeks. Now it’s supposed to be cute?”

The barb found its target even as it missed it. Gojo’s jaw twitched; Megumi’s stomach plunged. Every hot, dizzy second of the rescue, the hand at her elbow, the drop flicked from her cheek—suddenly it felt less like attention and more like a setup for everyone else’s joke. She angled her body away half an inch, enough to put air between his shoulder and hers.

Scoreboard swing: Utahime back on top.

Suguru drifted up then, as if on cue, the night curving to make room for him. “Utahime,” he said mildly, which in Suguru meant enough.

“What?” Utahime’s smile didn’t move. “I’m doing her a favor. Someone should say it.”

“You’re saying it for you,” Suguru replied, exhaling toward the streetlights.

Utahime’s eyes flicked, unrepentant, then she shouldered past. “Hot water’s mine,” she called, already stalking for the dorms. “Anyone cuts, I’m hexing your towels.”

Mei Mei fell in behind her, amused as ever; Shoko followed, muttering about bleach and haunted dust. The path thinned to three: Megumi, Gojo, Suguru.

Gojo rocked back a step, hands slipping into his pockets like he needed somewhere to put them. “If your ankle’s bad in the morning,” he said, voice back to easy, “go see Shoko. Don’t make me carry you twice.”

“I said I’m fine,” Megumi answered. It came out too quick, too stiff. She couldn’t make herself look at him. The can in her hand had gone only warm.

“Good.” He lingered a heartbeat longer than made sense.

Suguru’s gaze moved between them, unreadable. “Satoru,” he said, the single word soft as a leash.

“Night, Fushiguro.”

“Night,” she managed, to his shoes.

Gojo clicked his tongue, rolled his shoulders, and let the distance open. He bumped Suguru’s shoulder on the way past; Suguru didn’t acknowledge it and didn’t avoid it.

Megumi lingered a step behind once their voices thinned under the trees. The can in her hand had cooled, its warmth leached away like the glow she’d been carrying since the rescue. For a heartbeat she almost laughed at herself—how easily she’d let a look, a touch, convince her she was something other than the butt of a joke. Utahime’s barbs still stung, sharper for how close they rang to truth.

In her own time, she’d never had the luxury of being this kind of girl—one who cared about who glanced at her, who teased her, who might hold her a little too carefully in the dark. She was a soldier, not a schoolgirl. Gojo had been her teacher, her shield, her grave. Now he was all of that undone—alive, careless, unbearably young—and she was the one flinching at the easy cruelty of teenagers.

It should have felt small compared to blood and curses and loss. Instead it hurt in a way the battlefield never had: personal, piercing, absurdly human. She tightened her grip on the can, its metal cold against her palm, and followed the lantern-lit path toward the dorms, trying not to think about how much it mattered.

Megumi’s dorm room was small enough that the lamplight reached every corner. The window was cracked to bleed out the damp hospital smell; cool air lifted the edge of her curtain and set it whispering against the sill. Someone down the hall laughed, a quick burst that faded into the building’s hum. On her desk: a chipped mug, steam thinning. On the floor: her boot, unlaced, abandoned beside a neatly folded elastic wrap she hadn’t worked up the will to re-tie.

She eased onto the bed and pressed her thumb along the tender side of her ankle. It would be fine in the morning. She told herself that twice. It didn’t matter that her chest still held that stupid heat from being carried—how weightless she’d felt, how seen. Utahime’s voice had done its work. The warmth had curdled into something smaller, complicated. She took a breath, let it out slow.

A knuckle rapped once on the door. Not urgent. Just there.

When she opened it, Suguru leaned against the frame like the hallway had arranged itself for him. Hands in his pockets. Collar open. Eyes taking in everything and giving nothing away.

“Light was on,” he said, as if that explained him.

“I live here,” she deadpanned.

“Mm.” His gaze dipped to her bare ankle, then past her to the room’s plain neatness. “You don’t.”

“You didn’t have to come,” she said.

“I didn’t,” he agreed, unfolding to his full height like a shadow lengthening. “But I was walking by.”

“You live on the other side,” she said before she could stop herself.

A corner of his mouth moved. “Long walk.”

It should have been nothing. It didn’t feel like nothing.

He didn’t wait for an invitation—just slid inside with that soft, unbothered stride and claimed the strip of floor against her bed, back to the frame, long legs folding like it was a habit. He set a convenience-store ice pack on the quilt beside her calf as if it had grown there between blinks.

“Thanks,” she said, more wary than warm.

“Shoko’s idea,” he lied easily. “I’m just the delivery service.”

Megumi pressed the packet to the hot ache. The cold bit sweet. “You didn’t have to.”

He tilted his head, watching the way her fingers adjusted the plastic, patient as weather. “I know.”

Silence stretched, not awkward, just present. The building’s old pipes ticked. Somewhere a kettle clicked off. He looked like he could sit there all night, breathing in time with the room.

“Utahime was … mean,” Megumi said finally, the word feeling juvenile and exactly right.

“Hm.” He rolled it in his mouth like a tasting note. “She was hurt. Hurt people throw sharp things.”

“Into my face,” she said.

“Into the nearest soft thing,” he corrected, and his gaze flicked down—ankle, pillow, tea can—back to her eyes. “In that crowd, it was always going to hit you.”

Megumi blinked. The line was clean and it found its mark. Shoko, Mei Mei, Utahime—they were all blade-edges in their own ways, honed by habit and talent and attention. She knew what she was by comparison: soft in the places that broke first and healed last. It had never felt like a strength.

He didn’t lace it up with pity, didn’t turn it to a joke. He just let the truth sit where he’d put it.

He reached, unhurried, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear—no grand gesture, just the kind of fix you make without thinking. His knuckles grazed her temple; the touch was cool from the ice pack.

“Don’t do that,” she said, too quick.

“Fix your hair?”

“Make it sound like you understand me.”

He smiled—small, almost private. “I make a sport of understanding people I shouldn’t.” A beat. “And I like soft things.”

It was absurd how much that line wanted to be trusted. She studied him the way you study a map you didn’t draw—searching for the lie. There was one. There always was. But there was also a steadiness in the way he’d chosen the floor instead of the chair, in the way he hadn’t crowded the bed. Cool, aloof, effortless—and somehow here.

A faint knock sounded again, then the door nudged inward without waiting. Suguru tipped his head toward it, almost amused. “And that will be your chaperones.”

Shoko stepped in first, a roll of gauze in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. Mei Mei followed with two bottles of barley tea and the unbothered air of someone who arrived only where she intended. Utahime hovered last in the doorway, freshly scrubbed, damp hair in a towel turban, bravado gone strangely translucent.

Shoko clocked Suguru on the floor, Megumi on the bed, the ice pack, the way Megumi’s shoulders were set too high. She didn’t comment. “Foot,” she said instead, crossing to the edge of the mattress.

“It’s fine,” Megumi started.

“Mm.” Shoko sank onto the bed’s corner anyway and tapped her own knee. “Prop.”

Megumi did. Shoko’s hands were cool, efficient, impersonal in the way that made you feel safest. The building’s hum filled the space Shoko didn’t. Mei Mei leaned her hip against the desk and set the tea down, eyes faintly amused, like she was watching a scene that always ended the same way.

“Say it,” Shoko said without looking up, and Megumi realized the command wasn’t meant for her.

Utahime’s jaw worked. “I—” She stopped, grimaced, tried again with more spine and less performance. “I was, uh, pretty shitty out there. It wasn’t about you.”

Megumi stared at the steam ghosting up from one of the teas. “It felt about me.”

“I know.” Utahime’s mouth tugged. “That’s the problem with throwing knives in a crowd.”

Mei Mei made a quiet, elegant sound that might have been a laugh.

Utahime’s shoulders lifted, fell. “I was … hooking up with him,” she said, the words flat, as if that might drain them of humiliation. “Satoru. Off and on. Nothing serious.” She swallowed. “And then it was nothing. Not even nothing. Like I imagined it.”

Shoko’s fingers paused at the knot, then resumed. She didn’t look up.

“It sucked,” Utahime finished, somewhere between defiance and apology. “So tonight, watching him—” her chin flicked toward Megumi, toward the memory of a hand at an elbow, a drop of water flicked away like a promise “—that was a lot. And I took the easy shot.” She met Megumi’s eyes. “It wasn’t fair.”

The room breathed once, collective.

Megumi hadn’t realized she’d been bracing for a different kind of confession—one where she was the problem again, the punchline again, the reason someone else’s feelings had nowhere to go. This one felt horribly, beautifully human. Petty. Honest. Hurt-colored.

“It’s alright,” she said, eventually. “You were mad at him.”

“I was,” Utahime said. She forced a wry little smile. “I’m also mad that you’re … very pretty, actually. It’s annoying for me. My only redemption was the next girl being really ugly.”

Megumi let the words sit between them. In her timeline, there would have been no knock on her door. No ice pack. No late-night girls with snacks and sharp tongues. There would have been only the cold, and the work, and the silence you learned to live inside. This—this ridiculous, tender invasion—made something in her chest unclench she hadn’t known was tight.

“Okay,” she said, to all of it. She looked at Utahime. “Okay.”

Utahime’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “Okay,” she echoed, almost embarrassed by her own relief. “If he throws you at a wall, I’ll help you sue.”

“Please do,” Shoko said. “I’ve been trying to build a case.” Her attention shifted to Suguru. “Get out,” she said, not unkindly. “HIPAA violation.”

“Tragic,” he said, already moving. At the threshold he paused, shifting just enough to catch Megumi’s eye. “If it gets loud,” he said, light as a thread, “knock on my wall.”

She shouldn’t have liked that as much as she did. He slid the door closed behind him; his steps faded down the hall.

Shoko claimed the desk chair with the authority of a doctor on rounds. “We’re not doing the ‘go to sleep alone and spiral’ thing,” she announced. “That’s a terrible treatment plan.” She flicked the TV on with her toe. Some ancient comedy flickered to life, laugh track tinny through the walls.

Mei Mei commandeered the kettle, her version of care precise and elegant: four mugs lined in a row, tea bags steeped exactly long enough, sugar offered with a raised brow that said she already knew the answer. Utahime fished in the plastic bag and produced a tube of strawberry Pocky, cracked it open, shoved the first stick into Megumi’s hand with something like penance.

They made space for her without making it a ceremony. Megumi sank against the pillow and let the low, stupid sitcom wash over her. The ice pack melted. Her ankle throbbed less. Utahime muttered a running critique of the male lead’s haircut. Shoko rolled her eyes on cue. Mei Mei murmured one razor-edged aside every few minutes that made all three of them snort.

None of it would have mattered in her timeline. There, nights weren’t for tea or cheap TV. There wasn’t time to be humiliated or soft. There wasn’t anyone to come knock when your light was on too late.

She looked down at the Pocky packet in her lap, at the careful bandage around her ankle, at the mug sweating faint heat into her palms. The ache in her chest didn’t vanish. It shifted, made room.

Outside, the corridor sighed. Inside, the laugh track wheezed, and for once, Megumi let herself be exactly what the moment asked: a girl in a room, held in place by other people’s presence. Not a soldier. Not a plan. Just soft enough to catch what might have shattered.

When Utahime’s shoulder bumped hers reaching for more Pocky, Megumi didn’t flinch. When Shoko tucked the blanket edge under her calf with the offhand care of someone who pretends not to notice things, Megumi didn’t argue. And when the kettle clicked again—Mei Mei wordless and efficient—Megumi realized the simplest, strangest fact of the night:

Someone had noticed she was hurting. And they had come.

Chapter Text

Megumi remembered very little from her childhood. No addresses. No neighborhoods. Just fragments, as if her mind had blurred out the geography but kept the ache. Hunger. Loneliness. The sound of a door that never opened when it should have. A blue wall—that was all she remembered of her home. A color wasn’t enough to find yourself again.

But the udon shop had survived. She remembered it more clearly than her own room: the cramped counter, the races always flickering on TV, the broth so cheap it was half salt. She remembered chopsticks slipping through clumsy hands too small to use them, and a man too busy losing money on the phone to notice.

It had taken weeks to track down the place. Longer to convince herself to walk inside.

And there he was.

Exactly as she knew he’d be—hair falling haphazardly, shirt spotted with stains that had lived there longer than a wash cycle, scar cutting across his face like punctuation on a story she’d never heard in full. Same slouched posture. Same tired sharpness in his eyes.

Toji Fushiguro.

Her father.

He was alone this time. No child trailing him, no hand tugging his sleeve. Maybe he’d already left her behind by now. Maybe she was sitting alone at this very moment, six years old and waiting for someone who wasn’t coming back.

Megumi slid into a table three seats away. The bowl of udon steamed in front of her, but her stomach refused it. Life couldn’t prepare you for eating in a moment like this.

On the TV, the race ended. His horse lost—again. 

He watched the replay once with dead calm, then tossed a crumpled betting slip toward the counter and stood. No farewell to the bowl. No backward look. Megumi rose too, a beat behind him, and let the door shut on the udon steam.

She followed, not subtle—because she wanted him to see her. Maybe because some small, foolish part of her wanted him to notice without being told.

Half a block down, he stopped like he’d hit a wall only he could see. Turned. Met her eyes. Up close, he smelled like rain and cheap soap and the inside of a train at midnight.

“You lost?” he asked, voice flat. The word had barbs.

“No.”

He looked past her shoulder, past the building lines—checking angles, exits, watchers. When he came back to her, the focus narrowed. The tilt of his head said he’d taken her in head to toe and filed her under a word he hated.

“Zenin,” he said, not a question. The mouth curled, lazy and cruel. “They send kids to tail people now? Saving payroll?”

“I was eating,” Megumi said.

“Sure.” His eyes slid once to her hands—scarred knuckles, clean nails—then to her posture. “You flinch like a shaman. Not like a waitress. Try standing dumber next time.”

He shifted his weight without warning. Not a feint so much as an absence of one—just enough motion to make most people step back. Megumi didn’t. The corner of his mouth ticked, almost bored.

“You got a message?” he asked. “Or are you just here to make the clan feel like they’re doing something?”

“I don’t have a message.”

He clicked his tongue. “Then tell ‘em I said stop wasting children.” He angled a look down the street, contempt thin as a blade. “If Naobito wants to check my pulse, he can crawl out himself.”

He started to walk. She moved with him, and he cut his eyes back, not surprised, only irritated. Up close like this she could see it: the exhaustion that wasn’t tiredness, the way hunger sat on him like a second shirt. Not a weakness. A fact.

“If you’re trying to pick a fight,” he said, “you’ll regret winning it.”

“I’m not,” she said. Her throat felt wrong. Too tight for all the things she wouldn’t say. Are you eating. Do you ever go home. Do you remember blue walls.

He laughed once, low and humorless. “Right. You’re what—recon? Or just curious what the stray dog does in daylight?”

The word hit; it always had. She kept her face still.

He looked at it longer than she wanted him to—her face. Not recognition. Cataloging. He found the flaw he wanted and pressed it.

“You’ve got that look,” he said, and his voice dropped into something uglier. “The clan’s. Nose up, eyes sharp. You kids are factory-made. Tell them I don’t want the family discount.”

“I’m not a Zenin,” she said, and hated how much she wanted him to believe it.

“Congratulations,” he said, dry as a match. “Neither am I.”

He stepped closer once more, crowding the space, seeing what broke. When she didn’t move, he seemed to decide she was either trained or stupid. His hand came up like he might brush past her shoulder—he didn’t touch her—just plucked a stray thread from the edge of her sleeve and let it fall.

“Here’s free advice,” he said, quiet enough for only her. “If you belong to them, stop following me. If you don’t, stop harder.”

“I wasn’t following you,” she said.

“You are now.” He stared at her a last, bored second. “Don’t make it a habit.”

He turned and went, shoulders loose, hands empty, not once checking if she came after him. She watched until the crowd swallowed him—until the old ache rose so high she thought it might choke her—then she let herself breathe. The street kept moving like nothing had shifted.

He didn’t know her. He’d never asked. He couldn’t afford to. And still, somewhere under the scar and the ruin and the cheap soap, he was exactly the same: a man who’d learned that family meant leverage and attention meant danger. A man who would snarl before he’d bleed. And she loved him anyway, like a wound that hadn’t closed, and probably never would. 

The courtyard buzzed under the spill of late-afternoon light, warm against the stone paths and patchy grass. Classes had let out early, and the friend group had claimed one of the benches near the koi pond as their unofficial basecamp. Mei Mei lounged sideways across the seat, braid trailing, while Utahime and Shoko picked through a bag of candied chestnuts.

Megumi sat at the end, a little apart, her skirt smoothed across her knees. She hadn’t meant to join them — she never quite meant to — but Suguru had glanced at her in the hall, a silent invitation, and somehow her feet had followed.

Gojo sprawled across the middle of it all, long legs stretched into the path, sunglasses tipped back into his hair so that the full weight of his gaze was free to roam. And roam it did — over the group, over Megumi, over the moment like he was always hungry for the next disruption.

Utahime flicked a chestnut at him. “You’re hogging all the space again.”

“Correction,” Gojo said, catching it with a lazy tilt of his palm. “I am the space.” He popped the chestnut into his mouth whole, grinning around the chew.

Shoko rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen corpses with less ego.”

“Not as pretty though,” Gojo shot back.

“Debatable.”

The group laughed. The air felt easy. For a heartbeat, Megumi let herself breathe like she belonged in it.

Then Gojo’s eyes landed on her, and the shift was immediate. That sly curve of his mouth sharpened, angled. He tipped forward, forearms on his knees, voice pitched just loud enough for everyone to catch.

“You know, Fushiguro,” he said, almost lazy, “you really do try too hard.”

Megumi blinked. “Excuse me?”

His grin widened, shark-bright. “It’s cute, in a way. The way you sit up so straight, like if you hold your shoulders just right, no one’ll notice you don’t really fit.”

A ripple passed through the group. Not silence — not yet — but that alert edge when everyone hears the knife being drawn.

Utahime frowned faintly. “Gojo—”

He talked over her. “Don’t get me wrong,” he added, leaning back now, voice still honey-smooth. “It’s … admirable. Like watching a stray dog try to blend in with show dogs. Almost works until you look twice.”

The words hit clean, precise. He meant them to.

Megumi’s throat closed. Her fingers curled tight in her skirt, nails pressing crescents into the fabric. She forced her chin up, but her pulse betrayed her, loud in her ears.

Shoko’s brows pinched, a flicker of irritation that she didn’t bother to voice.

Suguru’s gaze slid to Megumi. Not pitying. Not surprised. Just watchful, steady.

And Gojo — Gojo was already pivoting. He draped an arm along the back of the bench, turned his grin toward Utahime as though Megumi had never been in his line of sight. “So, Utahime, you free this weekend? I hear there’s a shrine festival. Bonfires, masks, the whole thing. Could be fun.”

Utahime startled, cheeks coloring despite herself. “Why would I go with you?”

“Because I’m irresistible,” Gojo said, breezy, careless. “And you’re tragically susceptible.”

The group stirred, some rolling their eyes, some smirking, grateful for the shift in current. The moment that had drawn blood slipped under the chatter like a stone under water.

Megumi sat very still. The ache in her chest was sharp, humiliating. She told herself she didn’t care, that she’d been through worse. It didn’t help. Not when he’d looked at her like that, spoken like that, in front of everyone. Not when she’d believed — stupidly, briefly — that his attention had been real.

Suguru leaned down, voice low, for her alone. “He bites harder when he’s cornered.”

Her eyes flicked to him, startled.

Suguru didn’t elaborate. He just leaned back again, gaze forward, as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

The koi surfaced in the pond, rippling the water. Utahime threw another chestnut at Gojo. Shoko muttered about arsenic. The noise resumed, softer, safer.

Megumi sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her reflection fractured in the pond’s surface. She told herself it didn’t matter. But the words had landed anyway, sharp and deliberate — and Gojo hadn’t looked back once.

The classroom had that end-of-week hum: pens knocking, chairs scuffing, all of it softened under a square of late sun that kept inching across the floor. Someone had propped a window with a dictionary, so the air smelled like cut grass and chalk. At the front, the teacher announced a “collaborative analysis project” in the tone of a man already starting to grade papers, then retreated behind a fortress of notebooks and a thermos the size of a fire extinguisher.

Clusters formed on instinct. The biggest one anchored itself near the back — Gojo at its center like a bonfire, sunglasses shoved into his hair, sprawled over two chairs as if one couldn’t possibly contain him. Utahime and Shoko bracketed him with practiced tolerance; Mei Mei tipped her chair against the wall, braid swinging like a pendulum. Suguru sat at the edge, loose-limbed, attention unreadable. Their conversation rose and fell in familiar waves, the kind that pulled the whole room’s eyes whether you wanted them or not.

Megumi paused inside the door with her notebook hugged tight. Utahime spotted her first, lifting a hand in a wave that felt more like gravity than invitation. Gojo didn’t wave; he just looked up and let his attention land on her like it always did — bright, intent, unfairly sure she’d orbit back.

Not inevitable, she told herself. Not today.

She scanned left. The front cluster was a different weather pattern entirely: Nanami with his tie still neat and his book already open to a flagged page; Haibara beside him with a pastry bun and three pencils, none sharpened, smiling like the project was a party.

Megumi angled that way without giving herself time to second-guess it.

“Hey!” Haibara’s relief was audible. He nudged his backpack off a chair with his foot. “Perfect timing. We’re building an empire.”

“An outline,” Nanami corrected, striking a straight line down his page. “We are building an outline.”

Megumi sat. The relief came quiet and immediate — like setting down a bag you’d almost forgotten you were carrying. She opened her notebook. Her shoulders didn’t feel like armor for the first time since the bell.

Across the room, Gojo’s smile didn’t change. It did freeze.

“Did she just—” Utahime began.

“—choose competence,” Mei Mei finished, amused. “Rare taste, but admirable.”

Shoko glanced over her shoulder long enough to clock where Megumi had landed. “Huh.”

Suguru shut his pen with a click that was somehow soft. “Even numbers are good,” he said to no one in particular.

Gojo twirled his own pen once, twice, faster. “We were even,” he said, just as much to himself.

“You were loud,” Shoko said.

“Same thing,” he replied, too easily.

Nanami slid a photocopied packet toward Megumi. “The assignment is a comparative review of two case write-ups. We summarize the first, critique the second, propose a better methodology.” He tapped three tidy bullet points. “We’ll split it.”

“By ‘we,’” Haibara said, “he means he wrote this outline in his sleep last night.”

Nanami didn’t look up. “In my waking hours. I don’t do schoolwork in my sleep.”

“He dreams of spreadsheets,” Haibara stage-whispered to Megumi.

A smile tugged at her mouth before she could stop it. It felt small and foreign, like trying on a jacket no one else had worn yet.

“Right,” Nanami said, pencil poised. “Fushiguro, you’re strong on field notes. Take the observational summary. I’ll draft the critique. Haibara can handle the visuals.”

Haibara blinked. “We have visuals?”

“You do now.” Nanami slid over a blank grid. “Give me a timeline and a map overlay. Keep it legible.”

Haibara saluted with a gummy bear he’d smuggled from somewhere. “Aye aye.”

Megumi flipped to a fresh page and began to write. The quiet at this table wasn’t silence; it was space. Nanami’s pen made careful weather across his page. Haibara hummed under his breath as he sketched arrows and boxes that, against all odds, began to make sense. No one was waiting for a punchline. No one was watching her hands like they might drop.

When Haibara murmured, “Kento, what’s that word you used… triang—triple-thing—”

“Triangulation,” Nanami supplied, still writing. “Three sources to verify an observation.”

“Oh! See, Megumi’s a source, I’m a source, and …” Haibara twisted to glance toward Gojo’s table, then back quickly like he’d looked at the sun. 

Still writing, Nanami supplied: “The peer review board rejects that source.” 

Megumi’s laugh slipped out then — quiet, brief, real. It surprised her enough that she looked down to make sure it had actually happened. When she glanced up again, Nanami was already moving on and Haibara looked pleased like he’d found a secret switch on a vending machine.

Across the room, three heads turned in the same heartbeat. Utahime squinted. Mei Mei’s mouth curved. Shoko exhaled smoke through her nose.

Gojo stopped twirling his pen.

Suguru’s attention had already been there, calm and steady as a shadow at noon. The piece clicked into place behind his eyes. He closed his notebook, unhurried.

“Where are you—” Utahime started.

“Balancing the numbers,” Suguru said, rising like the room had made space for it. “Five here, three there. It’s asymmetrical.”

“We are famously not doing math,” Shoko said.

“Yet somehow symmetry improves everything,” he murmured, and slid his bag over his shoulder.

Mei Mei’s brow lifted, entertained. Gojo’s smile brightened another unnecessary watt.

“Even numbers, huh?” he said, lazy. “That why you’re going?”

Suguru looked at him like he hadn’t heard the question. “Back in a minute,” he said, and walked.

Suguru reached the front cluster and didn’t ask; he just tilted a hip onto an empty chair, then folded into it like the seat had been measured for him. Nanami’s sigh was resigned. Haibara brightened like someone had switched on a lamp. Megumi’s pen paused for a fraction then kept moving, like she’d decided not to read into anything until the evidence forced her hand.

“Two groups of four,” Suguru said mildly, setting his notebook down. “The universe spins smoother.”

“Only if everyone participates,” Nanami said, underlining with authority.

“Of course,” Suguru replied, gaze flicking to Megumi’s page and back. “I’m very symmetrical.”

“That’s not how that works,” Nanami muttered.

Haibara leaned forward. “Suguru, can you draw?” He slid over the grid like a dealer cutting cards. “We’re doing a map. I’m creatively excellent, but sometimes excellence is confusing.”

“Translation: it’s a disaster,” Nanami said without heat.

Suguru took the pencil. His lines came sure and light — not showy, just exact. Corridor. Stairwell. A box for the nest. Arrows that said don’t walk here without needing to write it.

Megumi watched his hand for a beat too long, then dragged her eyes back to her own notes. “We need dates,” she said. “And weather.”

“Light sources, too,” Nanami added. “People misremember under bad lighting.”

Haibara nodded, solemn. “Like karaoke.”

“That’s not—” Nanami pinched the bridge of his nose once and let it go. “Fine. Like karaoke.”

Megumi’s mouth did that almost-smile again. It was ridiculous what this table did to her pulse — how it settled instead of spiking, how it let her be a person instead of a performance.

“Fushiguro.” Suguru’s tone was quiet enough that it didn’t carry. He inclined his head toward her notes. “You separated what you saw from what you assumed. Keep that. Most people don’t.”

She didn’t look at him directly. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said, even softer. “Just keep it.”

Across the room, Gojo propped his chin on his fist and watched Suguru tap his pencil beside Megumi’s hand, watched Megumi nod, watched Haibara ask a question that made her laugh a second time. He angled his chair so the legs squealed on tile. Shoko flicked him in the shoulder with a paper corner.

“Jealousy ages you,” she said.

“I’m timeless,” he said, and the smile showed teeth.

“Then stop acting twelve,” Shoko said.

“I thought we were all acting twelve,” he replied, but his eyes didn’t leave the front cluster.

Mei Mei draped her arm along the chair back, viewing the classroom like a stage she didn’t particularly care to exit. “If you want her attention,” she said, lazy, “you could try not setting it on fire first.”

“Who says I want it,” he said.

“No one who can see,” Mei Mei murmured.

He flicked his pen cap like a coin and caught it. “He said it’s for numbers,” he added, as if the argument wasn’t already lost.

“Mm. And you don’t believe him,” Shoko said.

Gojo’s jaw worked once. “I believe he likes straight lines on paper,” he said. “On people, less so.”

Mei Mei smiled like a cat who’d just learned a new trick. “How poetic.”

“Shut up,” Utahime told all of them, even though she was watching too.

At the front, the project found its rhythm. Megumi set her summary into clean pieces; Nanami laced his critique between them with surgical thread; Haibara turned Suguru’s draft map into something that might even impress a teacher. Suguru didn’t take over; he adjusted the dials — a lighter touch on one paragraph here, a sharper verb there, two lines on the map that solved a traffic problem they hadn’t noticed yet.

It felt absurdly like a team. Not the kind where someone barked and someone else obeyed, but the other kind — the rare kind — where everyone found the right weight to carry and no one had to pretend.

Megumi didn’t realize she was smiling again until Haibara pointed at her and gasped like he’d spotted a shooting star. “There it is,” he whispered. “Do it again.”

“Don’t,” Nanami said, without glancing up. “You’ll scare it off.” A beat. “And finish your chart.”

Haibara drew a heart in the margin, then scribbled it out like even he knew that was a step too far.

Suguru’s amusement didn’t reach his mouth; it stayed in his eyes where only the close could read it.

From the back, Gojo slouched deeper and slung an ankle over a knee until the chair looked like it was begging for mercy. “This is boring,” he announced to the air.

“Then be quiet in an interesting way,” Shoko said.

He drummed his fingers on the desk in a precise rhythm that managed to be both irritating and impressive. Utahime shoved his ankle off her book. He let it fall like he’d planned to anyway.

“Fine,” he said, stretching. “Field trip.”

“To where,” Utahime said, flat.

Gojo glanced at the window. “Vending machine diplomacy.”

“Bring back a water,” Shoko said.

“A sparkling,” Mei Mei added.

“No gas,” Shoko amended. “She said water.”

“Lemon,” Mei Mei said.

Gojo stood with a flourish that might have been for an audience he wasn’t currently getting. “I’m not your intern,” he announced, and then, because he was, he collected yen from three outstretched hands on his way out. The door clicked shut behind him.

Suguru didn’t look after him. He was busy aligning the header on Nanami’s outline by the thickness of his thumbnail. “Your spacing is off,” he said.

Nanami checked. “It is not.”

Suguru shifted the page a millimeter with a fingertip. “Now it isn’t.”

Nanami stared, then conceded with the smallest nod. “Fine.”

Haibara breathed, “Whoa,” like he’d just watched sleight of hand.

Megumi wrote light source: west windows, 3:15–3:40, and felt stupidly steady.

Gojo came back with a clatter of coins and a lopsided armful of bottles. He thumped them onto the back table and set them out like offerings: water for Shoko, sparkling for Mei Mei, a lurid sports drink for Utahime, something neon and ridiculous for himself. He didn’t say a word when Mei Mei made him switch lids. He didn’t say a word when Utahime stole the cap off his straw and chewed it until it was unusable. He just drank, jaw tight, gaze fixed across the room.

Megumi didn’t look up. That, more than anything, was what made him feel it.

He tried a smile on anyway, the easy one that always found purchase. It slipped. He put it back, sharper. It held.

“He’ll either implode,” Mei Mei said, serene, “or try to buy the school.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Shoko said, flipping a page.

Utahime leaned back, chair tipping to balance on two legs. “If he cracks his head, I’m not doing the paperwork.”

“Fushiguro,” Gojo called suddenly, like the word had been sitting behind his teeth waiting for an excuse. He didn’t pitch it loud; he didn’t need to. The room was tuned to him whether it wanted to be or not. “You going to the festival or are you allergic to fun?”

Nanami’s pencil paused. Haibara looked between tables with the open curiosity of a kid watching weather change. Suguru didn’t move; he just listened.

Megumi didn’t turn around. 

Nanami lifted his head instead. “Satoru,” he said, cool as a shade. “Some of us are trying to meet a deadline.”

Gojo’s eyes cut to him and back. “Some of us meet them in our sleep.”

“Then let the rest of us catch up,” Nanami said, returning to his page.

Gojo leaned back, a picture of lazy compliance. “As you wish,” he said — and still watched Megumi not look at him.

Suguru’s pencil tapped once against the table. “Transition,” he murmured to Megumi, under the general noise. “Between your observation and Kento’s critique. Two lines, not three.”

She smoothed the paragraph. It fell together like a trick you only learned by doing it wrong first.

“Better,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. The word warmed more than it should.

By the time the period bled toward its end, the project had bones: Megumi’s clean summary; Nanami’s precise critique; Haibara’s absurdly charming, surprisingly informative map; Suguru’s fine-tuned edges. The teacher popped up from behind his grading fortress long enough to remind them of due dates, then vanished again into the groan of red pen on paper.

Packing began in that slow, reluctant way that meant the bell was close. Nanami stacked their pages square, tapped them once into alignment, slipped them into a folder. Haibara tried to pocket a spare gummy bear and failed, loudly. Suguru stood, stretching the kind of stretch that didn’t make noise.

Megumi slid her notebook into her bag. It was almost nothing, the distance between the two tables — a handful of desks, a swath of afternoon — and it felt like a mile she had finally decided not to cross.

As the bell rang, Utahime called across the aisle, “Fushiguro. We’re grabbing coffee after school. You coming?”

Megumi looked up then. Utahime’s expression had a new edge of something that wasn’t just performative kindness. Shoko’s eyes were half-lidded, measuring. Mei Mei’s mouth did its little half-smile. Gojo didn’t say anything; he flipped his pen cap on and off like a metronome.

Megumi considered the table where no one had waited for her to perform, where Nanami’s silence was permission and Haibara’s chatter never once cut. She considered the other table where every breath felt like a test. She considered her pride and her pulse and the promise she’d made herself about not bleeding for applause.

“I’m good,” she said, and the way she kept her gaze on Nanami’s folder instead of their faces made the answer land louder. “We’ve got to finish our figures.”

“Even numbers,” Suguru said mildly, almost to himself.

“Tragic,” Mei Mei sighed, and meant neither tragedy nor the opposite.

“Your loss,” Gojo said, careless and cutting. The smile he put on after was the kind that drew blood if you weren’t careful touching it. “We’re unforgettable.”

“I remember plenty,” Megumi said. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.

Nanami closed the folder with quiet finality. “Library, fifteen minutes,” he told their group. “Then we can be done with this and go back to pretending we don’t know each other.”

Haibara slung his bag. “I know you, Kento. Deeply.”

“That’s the problem,” Nanami said.

Suguru stepped back from the table like tides do. “I’ll catch up,” he told Nanami, and meant more than the project. To Megumi, just a glance — you choose, I’ll match your pace. He didn’t reach for her; he never needed to.

Megumi nodded once. Then she turned away from the back cluster — from the heat, from the orbit — and walked out with the group that didn’t ask her to be anything but a person doing the work.

Behind her, chairs scraped, sunglasses went back on, and Satoru Gojo watched the door like it owed him an apology. Utahime said something dry, Shoko stole a sip from his neon drink, Mei Mei checked her reflection in her phone. None of it shifted what had already moved.

In the hall, the noise of the school gathered her up — lockers banging, a whistle somewhere, sunlight on tile. Haibara bumped her shoulder on purpose and told a story about a teacher who ate an entire apple in four bites. Nanami edited the story in real time for accuracy. Megumi let the sound wash and, without meaning to, smiled again.

It wasn’t triumph. It was oxygen.

And in a room behind her, a boy who loved being the center of gravity had to reckon with what it felt like when someone chose a different star.

Chapter Text

The dorm roof hummed the way rooftops do at night—vents ticking as they cooled, the city a low electric murmur beyond the trees. Someone had dragged two milk crates up here back when first-years still thought heights were romantic; now they were permanently installed furniture beside the rusted water tank. The chain-link fence wore prayer ribbons from some lost dare: weather-bleached, snapping softly in the breeze.

Suguru was already there, back against the tank, a knee propped, smoke curling from his hand in a ribbon that the wind kept almost stealing. Gojo shouldered through the hatch with a bag of convenience-store junk and a bottle of Ramune dangling from his fingers like bait.

“Look at you,” Satoru announced. “Mascot for poor life choices.”

“Good evening,” Suguru said, which was either politeness or a diagnosis.

Gojo kicked one milk crate to line up with the other and dropped onto it, long legs splayed, sunglasses shoved into his hair despite the dark. He set down the bag and started inventory like a surgeon prepping instruments. “Chips, chips that pretend to be shrimp, chips that are honest about being shrimp, mystery bread that leaks cream at morally questionable angles.” He glanced up. “Gum to fix your reputation.”

“Keep the gum.” Suguru tapped ash into an abandoned soda can. “You’ll need it when the cream bread wins.”

Gojo broke the Ramune marble with a satisfying clack, then took a swallow and made a face so dramatic Suguru smirked without looking. They let quiet sit between them a minute, the kind only people with miles of shared silence can stand.

“You switched tables,” Gojo said finally, like he was observing the weather.

“Even numbers,” Suguru said.

“Cute that you think that works on me.”

“I don’t think it works on you. I think you’re bored enough to want a better excuse to be irritated.”

Gojo’s grin went bright. “There he is.”

Suguru’s eyes slid sideways, amused and tired at once. “There you are.”

Gojo levered the Ramune between his knees and pirated Suguru’s cigarette, took a single drag, then handed it back without comment. The old relay—childish, intimate, practiced—said more than half the words they ever spent on each other.

He didn’t circle the subject again. He padded toward it and stepped on its tail. “You like her.”

Suguru flicked ash. “I like good work.”

“Megumi’s a person.”

“Those categories aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Gojo chuckled like he’d been waiting for the parry. “You fed Haibara lines until the entire table landed a laugh. Strategic morale boost?”

“I prefer my projects not to bleed out.”

“Mm.” Gojo tipped his head back against the fence and watched the stars fight the glow. “She laughed.”

Suguru said nothing.

Gojo glanced over. “Twice.”

“That a record you’re keeping?” 

“For the semester,” Gojo said. “Quarterly report pending.”

Suguru watched the smoke unspool and vanish. “You sounded like you were taking roll when you called to her in class,” he said, mild as a weather report. “That tone.” He imitated it perfectly: Satoru’s lazy bell that meant the room was already his. “‘Fushiguro.’”

“So?”

“Kings don’t invite people to sit,” Suguru said. “They assign chairs.”

A beat. Gojo’s mouth twitched. “And you prefer …?”

“Doors. Open ones.”

“Poetic,” Gojo said, though the angle of his shoulder eased a fraction, as if the words had slotted somewhere he already knew.

He dug into the bag and slung a bag of shrimp chips at Suguru, who caught it one-handed without looking. Gojo tore his own open and popped one into his mouth. “She tries too hard,” he said conversationally, as if talking about the weather. “Back straight, pen to grid, acting like the room is taking notes on her.”

“And you?” Suguru asked.

“Me?” Gojo smirked. “I’m the notes.”

“Ah.” Suguru’s voice didn’t change, but the edge of it turned clean. “That explains why you keep doodling over hers.”

Gojo laughed, sharp and delighted. “You hate when I’m cruel.”

“I’m bored when you’re obvious.” Suguru’s head tipped against the tank. “Sharpness isn’t the same as depth.”

Gojo clicked his tongue, pleased and annoyed in equal measure. “You’re only this smug when you’re right.”

“I’m only this smug when you play small.”

A cleaner night than most would have allowed the quiet to sting there. With them, it just found a place to sit.

Satoru rolled the glass marble along the lip of the Ramune bottle with his thumb, watching it catch the moon. “You think I’m playing small.”

“Today?” Suguru said. “Yes.”

“Because I didn’t peel open a dimension and crown myself Student Council President?”

“Because you saw something soft and put your thumb on it to see if it bruised.”

Gojo’s smile flashed, wolfish and quick. “And?”

“And she bruised,” Suguru answered, unflinching. “Your favorite result.”

“I like honest reactions.” Gojo’s tone was air-light, too light. “Most people fake it to keep up. She doesn’t know how yet.”

“And you don’t know what to do with that,” Suguru said. “So you do what you always do.”

“Dominate the group project?” Gojo offered. “Yes, tragic.”

“Break the toy,” Suguru said, mild.

“Toy?”

“Point made.”

Gojo huffed, not laughter, not quite a scoff. “You think you’re protecting her.”

“No,” Suguru said, and his gaze finally met Satoru’s, level. “I’m protecting you.”

It shut Gojo up long enough for the wind to lift one of the prayer ribbons and drape it across the chain-link, red against dull steel.

“How benevolent,” Satoru said after a beat, the drawl back. “Write it on my chart.”

“You hate charts,” Suguru said.

“Fair. Draw a little star next to my name.”

“You don’t need another star.” Suguru tore the shrimp chips open, not because he wanted them but because Gojo would forget to eat if someone didn’t. He set the bag between them, a small act disguised as clutter. “You need a brake.”

“I don’t have those,” Gojo said cheerfully. “They voided my warranty.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t need to babysit me, Suguru.”

“God forbid.”

“You like soft things,” Gojo tossed out, knowing exactly how to make the line sound like a compliment and an accusation.

“Some of them,” Suguru said. “The ones that are soft by choice, not because they’ve been sanded down.”

“So you like her because she’s stubborn.”

“I didn’t say like.”

“You didn’t not say it.”

Suguru exhaled through a smile, smoke thin as thread. “You’re allergic to subtext tonight.”

“I’m allergic to losing.” Gojo didn’t say it like a joke.

“Then stop turning every room into a game,” Suguru said.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Where’s the dignity in winning against people who don’t know they’re playing?”

The line landed. Gojo’s jaw clicked once, a tiny muscle jumping near his temple. He spun the Ramune marble again and let it clatter once against the glass. He didn’t look at Suguru when he said, almost idly, “You’re enjoying this.”

“Which part.”

“Standing where I stand,” Gojo said, finally letting plainness bleed into it. “Center of gravity.”

Suguru’s laugh was soft, incredulous. “Satoru, I don’t want the center.”

“You want the levers.”

“I want balance,” Suguru said, and it wasn’t a dodge.

Gojo studied him for a long beat, then tipped his head back and addressed the sky. “Balance says things like ‘even numbers.’”

“It does.”

“Balance follows her to the front table.”

“It follows work to where it’s being done,” Suguru replied, unbothered. After a beat, “And it moves when someone acts like a black hole.”

Gojo’s grin showed teeth again. “Pull her back, then.”

“I didn’t say I would.” Suguru shook the cigarette out and set the butt carefully into the can. “I said you didn’t have to keep swallowing the room to prove to yourself you could.”

“Who said it’s about me.”

“No one had to,” Suguru said. “I know you.”

They let that lay between them, heavier and gentler than most things they admitted.

Below, a scooter stuttered past on the road, its engine whine climbing then dropping away. Somewhere, someone practiced trumpet badly enough to count as a curse. The night was generously ordinary.

Gojo slid down his crate until his shoulders hit the bottom slat and his knees hooked up like a grasshopper. “Do you ever think—”

“Only on Fridays.”

“—about how easy it would be,” Gojo finished, ignoring him, “to pick her up by the back of the neck like a kitten and set her where she belongs?”

Suguru made a face that was all amusement, no approval. “You say the most deranged things when you eat the shrimp chips.”

“It’s a service,” Satoru said. “I’m a gentle tyrant.”

Suguru’s eyes warmed even as his mouth didn’t. “There’s nothing gentle about you when you’re afraid.”

“Afraid?” Gojo repeated, genuinely offended. “Of what.”

“Being ordinary,” Suguru said, and then, before Satoru could react to the insult shaped like a truth, added: “You’re not. So you can stop checking.”

Silence, again—this one landing with the weight of recognition. Gojo’s answer, when it came, was sideways and light. “Nanami’s going to staple your tongue to a rubric if you keep coaching his team.”

“He’d have to catch me,” Suguru said.

“He’ll write you up in MLA,” Gojo countered.

“APA. He’s not a monster.”

Gojo laughed—real, short, surprised at himself. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and let the sunglasses clatter down his chest to the crate. “You’ll keep going over there.”

“If the work’s there,” Suguru said.

“And if she laughs,” Gojo added, too quick.

Suguru didn’t blink. “And if she breathes easier.”

“Same thing.”

“Not to her.”

Gojo tipped his head, conceding the point without saying he did. The Ramune was half-warm; he drank anyway. “Do you want me to stop.”

Suguru’s answer was fast and soft. “I want you to not choose to be cruel just because it’s the shortest road.”

“I like shortest roads,” Gojo said.

“I know.” Suguru’s mouth moved just enough to count as a smile. “Sometimes the detour has better food.”

“I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

Gojo let his head thunk back against the fence and stared up until the stars doubled. “Fine. I’ll … vary the route.” He said it like a man promising to try spinach once.

Suguru didn’t thank him. He never did. He toed the bag until it coughed up the cream bread, tore it in half, and pressed one piece into Satoru’s palm. “Eat. You’re unbearable when hungry.”

“I’m unbearable when fed,” Gojo corrected, but he bit in anyway and made a face like it insulted him personally. “This tastes like regret.”

“You’re projecting.”

“Onto bread?”

“You’d do it to a cloud if it looked at you wrong.”

They ate like that, bickering at a low simmer, until the edge came off Satoru’s voice and the cigarette smell had gone thin. When the quiet came back, it was easy.

“Question,” Gojo said into it, idly, as if he hadn’t been waiting to ask since they sat down. “If I don’t call her like a king … how do I call her?”

Suguru didn’t pretend not to know who he meant. He also didn’t hurry. He watched the marble roll in the glass neck and stop, watched Satoru’s thumb start it again. “Start smaller,” he said. “Ask her about the thing she’s already doing. Not the thing you want next.”

“Soft,” Gojo said, derisive on reflex.

“Exact,” Suguru said. “You like exact.”

A pause. Then Satoru’s grin returned, softer around the edges this time, curiosity taking some of the heat out of it. “And if she ignores me.”

“Then you continue to exist,” Suguru said. “Radical, I know.”

Gojo mock-gasped. “A world where I am not the fixed star.”

“I didn’t say that,” Suguru replied, gaze flicking up and away in a tiny concession. “I said don’t collapse the rest of the sky to prove it.”

“Poetry again,” Gojo said, lazy, pleased. “You’ve been reading Kento’s margins.”

“Someone has to,” Suguru said. “They’re very straight.”

Gojo nudged Suguru’s ankle with his toe in a gesture most people would have missed. “You’re impossible.”

“Unforgettable,” Suguru returned, deadpan, and the echo turned the line into an inside joke instead of a boast.

They sat there long enough for the trumpet to give up and the wind to shift. Crickets made a sound that was almost civic. The prayer ribbons knocked once, like applause.

Satoru put the empty Ramune down and balanced the marble on the bottle mouth with surgical care. “I’m not apologizing to her,” he said to no one in particular.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I’m not promising to be nice.”

“I didn’t ask that either.”

“I’m not giving you the center.”

“Keep it,” Suguru said, finally sounding tired. “It looks better on you. Just stop lighting the edges on fire to prove you can read by the flames.”

Satoru looked at him, long and too open for a heartbeat. Then he nodded, once, like he’d lost a game only he knew the rules to and found himself relieved. “Deal,” he said. “Until I get bored.”

“You’re always bored,” Suguru said.

“Not always,” Satoru said, and that, too, was an admission.

He pushed up from the crate, stretched until his spine made satisfying little pops, and offered a hand without thinking. Suguru took it and let Satoru haul him up with no show of strength, just the old, casual physics of them.

At the hatch, Satoru paused like a thought had put out a foot. “Even numbers,” he repeated, as if turning the phrase in his mouth might change its taste.

“Mm,” Suguru said. “We make four nicely when you’re not being impossible.”

“I’m always impossible.”

“Not always,” Suguru said, returning the line exactly, a mirror he knew Satoru needed more than he’d ever admit.

Satoru smiled—small, private. “Get some sleep,” he said, as if he hadn’t kept Suguru awake.

“You first,” Suguru said, as if he couldn’t be kept.

They clattered down the ladder one after the other, the roof swallowing the sound behind them. In the dark room below, Gojo’s sunglasses slid back over his eyes out of habit, a shield he didn’t need when no one could see him. Suguru tilted the cigarette pack back into his pocket and didn’t light one.

They separated at the hall with the kind of nod that contains a hundred arguments they didn’t have to finish tonight. Behind closed doors, the building settled. Somewhere down the corridor, a laugh broke and faded.

Satoru lay on his back and stared at the ceiling like it might give him a better angle on the sky. He tried to picture the room tomorrow—the three at the front table, the way Megumi’s mouth had surprised itself into a smile. He tried to imagine calling her without being the sun.

He grinned despite himself.

“Start smaller,” he said to the dark, and for once, the advice didn’t itch where it sat.

The trick to walking up to someone without making it a performance is knowing where to put your hands.

Satoru kept his in his pockets. It slowed him down, made his steps look like they belonged to the evening and not to him. The courtyard had thinned to lamplight and long shadows; the ginkgo by the west path shook down a dusting of gold when the breeze came through. Out beyond the koi pond, somebody had left the equipment shed half-cracked so the radio inside whispered an old ballad like it was embarrassed to be heard.

She was there. He’d known before he saw her—something about the way a space goes quiet around a person who isn’t trying to take any of it. Bench under the ginkgo, notebook open, pen balanced across the spine like even the stationery was on guard. Head down, shoulders squared. No audience, no armor. It jolted something in him he didn’t have a name for.

Geto’s voice from last night walked down the path with him: choose a lane. Stop playing to the bleachers. And—he could still hear the smile in it—don’t assume she’ll wait.

“Hey,” Satoru said, when he was close enough that the greeting didn’t have to travel far. He didn’t pitch it wide. Just … there.

Megumi looked up. Lantern light found her irises and did something complicated with the green—sharper than he’d expected, cut glass instead of the usual schoolroom jade. It stopped him for half a breath. Ridiculous. He’d seen a thousand eyes. None of them had ever made him forget what words were.

“Yes?” she asked. Not cold. Careful.

He nodded at the notebook. “You left class with Kento’s holy outline. Thought maybe he took your soul with it.”

“Just my afternoon,” she said. Dry, not defensive.

All right. Satoru tipped a little closer to the back of the bench, enough to glance at the page without crowding. Her handwriting was small, even, the kind that corrals chaos into neat lines. She’d broken their field notes into columns—observed, inferred, unverified. He let himself be impressed. He didn’t say it like a prize.

“You’re pulling out lighting conditions,” he said. “Nanami’s a contagion.”

“It matters,” she said. “People lie. Shadows don’t.”

“Debatable,” he murmured, because it was reflex, and because it won him the smallest sideways look. Not a smile. A recognition.

He waited. Performing would have been filling the silence with himself. He let the quiet stand and felt how odd it was to not be the loudest thing in the room—how the world didn’t end when he wasn’t.

She set the pen across the page so it wouldn’t roll. The movement was exact. “Did you want something, Gojo?”

Honest question. No edge he could catch with bare fingers. He slid one hand out of his pocket and patted the side of his jacket like he might have smuggled in a reason. Nothing. No excuse. Just the decision he’d already made.

“I wanted to not be an ass,” he said. He watched her, didn’t blink. “I’ve been one.”

That got a pause. Her lashes lowered, not coy so much as protective. The air at the edge of his jacket felt cooler. He wanted, absurdly, to put the hand back in his pocket and rewind two sentences, but he held the line.

That got a pause. Her lashes lowered, not coy so much as protective, a shutter coming down over something he wasn’t supposed to see. The air against his jacket sleeve felt cooler. He wanted—absurdly—to put his hand back in his pocket, rewind two sentences, and pretend he’d never started this. But he held the line.

“You were,” she said at last. No give in it. No softness for him to step onto. The honesty of it made something in his chest tilt and settle, like a table with one leg shaved too short.

Then she shifted—just a fraction—and tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “Say it.”

His instinct was to dodge, to lace the silence with something stupid. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, holding the urge down. It broke anyway, quieter than he meant it:

“I’m not sure of the pronunciation.”

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. Just kept watching him.

“Can I write it down?” he asked.

Megumi extended her pen without a word. He took it from her, his fingers overlapping hers—completely on purpose, and so light it could’ve been an accident. He leaned down, close enough over her notes that the tilt of his head brushed a line of her hair, close enough that the air between them warmed. For a second he almost forgot how to spell it. Still, he scribbled it in the blank corner of her page:

sorry.

She studied the crooked scrawl like it was rare currency. Something at the corner of her mouth quirked—not a smile, not yet, but on the way there.

“I’ll frame it,” she murmured.

He groaned. “Too much time with Mei Mei,” he accused. “If you sell it, I’ll say it’s a forgery.”

The sound that escaped her then wasn’t quite a laugh but close enough to bruise him—short, startled, a slip of breath that proved he could make her bend.

“No,” she said. “I’ll have it hung in the national museum. Proof Satoru Gojo has a heart.”

He hated the way something inside him shifted at that. He looked away before he gave it a name, before she could.

“You sound like Suguru,” he muttered.

When he looked back, she was smiling again—about that of all things—and suddenly he wasn’t sure he liked her smiles after all.

“You like him,” Gojo said, too quickly to pull back.

“I like his even numbers,” Megumi replied. Anyone else and it might’ve been a joke. “Would it bother you if I did?”

“No,” he said instantly, sharper than he meant. “Why would I care about your terrible taste in men?”

“Good question,” she said. She didn’t even blink. “Why would you ask if I like him?”

Her question hung there, clean and sharp, and for once he had no clever place to set it down.

Gojo’s shoulders slouched, as if the weight of her gaze pressed them lower. “I didn’t,” he said finally, but even he could hear the weakness in it.

Megumi didn’t move. Her hand still rested on the page where he’d scrawled his apology, fingers faintly smudged with ink. He had the absurd thought of covering them again, blotting out the stain with his palm.

“You ask too much,” she murmured, almost to herself.

“Me?” His mouth twisted, relief and unease mixing. “I’m a delight. You’re the one keeping ledgers.”

Her eyes flicked to his, quick and bright. “Then stop owing me.”

It landed harder than it should have. He was absurdly aware of how close they still were, how his hand had never quite retreated, how the heat of her sleeve brushed his knuckles. The air between them was thin now, thinner than it had any right to be.

For a moment he forgot to look away.

Megumi didn’t flinch. She stayed there, steady as stone, though her lashes lowered like she’d weighed something privately and chosen to hold her ground. Her voice, when it came, was softer than before.

“You should go.”

He should. He knew it. But his hand tightened minutely over the pen he still held, and instead of leaving, he lowered it back to her page—slow enough that she could’ve pulled away if she wanted. She didn’t.

He set it down in the exact place her fingers had left it, and for one impossible second his knuckle brushed hers again.

“I will,” he said. But the words came out like a lie.

Megumi looked at him—looked through him—and then, as if it cost her nothing, gave the smallest nod. Permission. Dismissal. Something in between.

Gojo leaned back at last, the space he reclaimed colder than it should’ve been.

“Next time,” he said, already regretting it, “I’ll practice the pronunciation.”

She didn’t answer. She just closed her notebook, slow, as if pinning his word down inside it.

He almost laughed. He didn’t. He tilted two fingers in something that wanted to be a salute and wasn’t, and walked away before he had time to ruin his own progress.

The gate between the courtyard and the faculty path creaked like it always did. He took it and nearly walked straight into the wall that was Utahime Iori’s disapproval.

Shoko leaned on the post like she’d grown there, sleeves shoved to her elbows, cigarette tucked behind one ear because the campus patrol had been overzealous all week. Mei Mei stood in the half-light with the air of someone who could itemize your sins and sell them at a markup.

“All hail the reform arc,” Shoko said, not moving.

Utahime’s eyes were knives he had earned. “Are you serious,” she said flatly. Not a question.

“About?” Satoru asked, because he couldn’t help himself, and because the alternative was admitting he could feel his pulse where Megumi’s green had lodged in his head.

Utahime’s mouth tightened. “You humiliate her in front of everyone for days, we try to fix the damage you caused, and somehow you’re the one she actually talks to.”

“That’s not how I’d summarize it,” Satoru said, keeping his voice in the shallows.

Shoko tilted her head, understanding the game even when she didn’t like it. “But you could, if you wanted to.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, and it was almost true. He’d done less than he ever had. It felt like more.

Mei Mei’s gaze slid past his shoulder toward the ginkgo. “You lowered your volume,” she said. “Shocking tactic. Effective.”

Utahime’s laugh was short and humorless. “Of course it’s effective. He breathes and people rearrange themselves.” She moved in close enough that he had to tip his chin down to keep the line of her eyes. “She won’t forgive you because you acted human for five minutes.”

“I didn’t ask her to,” he said. The quiet in him surprised him again. “I asked her what she was working on.”

“And she told you,” Utahime shot back, raw under the brittle. “She won’t even look at us.”

Shoko let out a slow breath through her nose. The fight had gone out of her awhile ago; what was left was a clinical sort of irritation. “Don’t get proud about doing the bare minimum,” she said. “Even if it looks good on you.”

“Everything looks good on me,” he said automatically, then let his mouth flatten when it didn’t land. He rubbed a thumb along the ridge of his palm—nervous tell, old as childhood. He forced it still.

Mei Mei’s smile ghosted, unreadable. “If you’re going to keep … not performing,” she said, “you’ll have to be consistent. Otherwise, this will feel like a trick to her. She doesn’t like tricks.”

“I like tricks,” Satoru said, because he did, and because saying so kept him from saying I know.

Utahime stepped back half a pace, enough to breathe. It didn’t soften anything. “You make everyone’s life harder,” she said, and the simple truth of it landed cleaner than any insult. “Try not to make hers.”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t promise it. He didn’t trust himself yet.

Shoko flipped the cigarette from behind her ear and into her pocket when a teacher’s shadow lengthened across the path. “We’re going,” she said, because she always knew when to end a scene before it soured further. “Mei.”

Mei Mei’s braid swung as she turned. “Don’t waste the advantage you just bought,” she said over her shoulder, not unkindly. “You paid for it with everyone else.”

They moved off together, Utahime in the middle like the sharpest point in a spear. Satoru watched them go and felt the oddest urge to apologize and the familiar refusal to do it badly.

Behind him, a page turned. He didn’t have to look to know whose fingers smoothed it. He let himself—just once—inhale the way the courtyard smelled when it was mostly empty: chalk warmed by sun, ink, ginkgo, the faint metallic tang of the koi pond’s water. Then he started toward the library path, hands still in his pockets, Geto’s voice still somewhere close:

Choose a lane.

He had. For tonight. He wasn’t sure what it would cost tomorrow. He only knew that when she’d looked up at him, the green had felt like a yes to a question he hadn’t let himself ask.

It wasn’t victory. It wasn’t forgiveness. It was a foothold.

For now, that was enough.