Chapter Text
Iori Utahime knows that when she dies, she won’t be remembered.
She imagines she’ll die a quiet death. Old age if she’s lucky. Health complications if she is not. Surrounded by a few loved ones, a mixed bag of family and friends. A simple funeral. A simple headstone. A few tears.
Quiet. Boring. Familiar. But hers.
And, really, she can live with that. She’ll live a life of simple pleasures, and she’ll die a simple pleasure herself. Someone people could look back on and say, ‘she was such a lovely woman,’ but never someone who they’d cry over. Someone who faded into the background, who you’d remember as a pleasant hum in the backdrop as your dearest memories played out with your loved ones as the central.
The countryside trees zoom by, speckled only occasionally by the odd wildlife or man-made construction. The trees by themselves couldn’t be considered anything remarkable; a native oak species commonly found in the more rural areas of Japan, especially in areas commonly used for train routes. Their seeds couldn’t be eaten by any other than the country rodents. The bark was not particularly medicinal. The flowers were underwhelming in scent and short lived.
And yet the people of the countryside kept all of the trees instead of replacing them with a more exotic type, and continued to cultivate them despite the now constant abundance of more flashy imported varieties. Not that they weren’t criticised for their decision.
The soft shade the trees provided, they said, were more suited for their style of work, daily constant to bring food to their families. A tree that bore delicious fruits would simply require more materials - nets to keep the birds away, fertiliser to ensure the tree had sufficient nutrients for its heavy job. Flowers with beautiful scents would simply inconvenience the elderly with more sensitive senses. And, it’d simply be much more than it was worth to uproot all those trees just for a bit of novelty.
So the trees are still speckled across the Japanese countryside to this day, in abundance but without much variety in appearance.
Utahime watches them all blur into one lush green. The train had to be close to stopping now.
It could be worse. Really, what she has now is more than enough to thank whoever is listening above over and over, bowing her head in reverent prayer until her knees ached from kneeling.
Thank you, creator. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
She really ought to.
The moment she takes a step inside, Utahime is hit with the pungent smell of flavoured sugar, no doubt of one of Gojo’s cloying sweets she’d always catch him obnoxiously sucking on during class while everyone else was trying to take notes.
Everything about him is obnoxious. Coming from the centuries old clan, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and ass, the Gojo Satoru she knows has always had zero ability to read the room, a loud mouth that’s landed him - and occasionally those around him - into trouble a numerous number of times, and an air of arrogance that follows him around wherever he goes.
The Strongest. Loudest. Dominant. Bully. If you were to plot out all of his negative traits onto a board and ask her just who you were describing, she'd be able to give you the name of her unruly classmate in a heartbeat.
That being said, when Utahime lays her eyes on him for the first time in about a month, she can’t help but wonder if her junior has just died in front of her.
His hair is somehow even messier than usual, which is saying something since he’s a cocky teenage boy with zero concept of self grooming or manners, the unwashed strands sticking out at so many angles she could probably make an equation out of them if she had a protractor on her. At the same time, they somehow also cling to his head and in the end, the final image makes him out like some miserable wet cat instead of the strongest sorcerer in Japan.
Worst of all, the only way she can tell he’s even still alive is the absolutely disgusting looking hard candy - is that pineapple? - being turned around and around in his awkwardly outstretched hand with a gross stick and unsticking sound, the source of that putrid chemical stink forcing its way up her unwilling nostrils and now, her migraine.
Utahime hovers by the door for a moment more and has to remind herself that she is his senior. She needs to be mature about this. Smacks herself on the side of her head a few times for good measure.
Smack. Smack.
And once she’s deemed herself level-headed enough to brave her migraine without slapping someone, she calmly, yes calmly, sits herself down in the seat beside him.
(though, she does shoot the pineapple candy in his hand a bit of a dirty look as she does so.)
Gojo continues to turn the melted confectionary over in his palm. Utahime’s not sure he even notices she’s there.
Utahime clears her throat. “Gojo.”
No reply.
“Gojo!”
Silence.
She hesitates. “...Satoru.”
And this, she can tell, finally gets through to him. A crackly hum beside Utahime, though he doesn’t bother turning around to face her in favour of very intently staring out the nearby window. There isn’t even anything there. Just the empty campus and one very miserable looking songbird perched on a branch. Maybe the bird looks so miserable because it’s also wondering why the hell it’d flown all the way from Kyoto to Tokyo in the miserable cold just to get ignored by the very person she’d come to see.
Or something like that.
“You didn’t visit. I thought you would.”
Oh, so he can speak.
She huffs, her cheeks already warming up from the cold. “I came when I could. We all have our own lives too, you know. The world doesn’t revolve solely around the treasure that is Satoru Gojo.”
“Doubt it,” he says, completely serious, and suddenly she has half a mind to pack her things for Kyoto and leave the idiot to sit all by himself with his dumb candy.
“Oh, you…”
But the bags under his bloodshot eyes stick out like a sore thumb against his skin.
So she stays. It's only a moment later that Utahime realises with a jolt that the reason it looks so out of place to her is that for once, his glasses that had become a signature of sorts for him, are nowhere to be found.
“Bummer,” She hears him mutter in a dejected tone that doesn’t match his voice. She’s tempted to ask him why in the world he’d be so stupid as to not wear his glasses right now, but she swallows it back to focus on the currently much more pressing issue in front of her.
“Bummer? What are you mumbling about this time? And - Oh, for the love of everything-”
Then, leaning over his body, Utahime lightly plucks the sweet out of his palm and finally rejoices when she’s able to flick it out a nearby window. Finally gone. The air feels cleaner already.
And Gojo still has the gall to finally lift his head from his intense session of solo bird watching and shoot her a look so withering she’s sure he’s about to throw her out the window too. The little crap was probably about to insist she’d stolen his lawful property and demand a thousand yen in compensation. And, seeing as his weekly pocket money was about three times as much as her entire life saving’s, that would require a very specific form of audacity that could only really spew from his entitled mouth.
Sure enough, Gojo narrows his eyes. “Hey-”
“Here.”
His hands are still stinking up the classroom. Not to mention, he’s getting the stuff all over the table now that he’s pissed, thin strings of sugar stretching and floating off into the air every time he releases his palm from the smooth wood with a noise adjacent to angry velcro. So, she problem solves, tossing him an old handkerchief that’d been resting in her skirt pocket the whole day. This also has the rather wonderful added side effect of a few second’s peace and quiet as he stares at the thing, dumbfounded.
She continues. “Wipe off your hands. You were getting everything sticky.”
And because she’s already had her patience tested thus far, Utahime doesn't react when her handkerchief is immediately thrown right back at her face like she’s dealing with the world's most bratty toddler.
She feels her temper flare up, then settle down as soon as it comes. Control. Control. Control. Settle down.
Vaguely, Gojo mumbles something muffled from his arms, but she doesn’t bother deciphering what. If he really wanted her to know, he could tell her directly. Otherwise as far as Utahime is concerned, it’s simply none of her business.
She pulls out some study material she hadn’t gotten the chance to revise yet, and ignoring Gojo’s incredulous stare, begins to read. She doesn’t tear her eyes from the page and forces herself to both relax her rigid posture and loosen her jaw. She reads, and she reads.
Ten minutes later, Gojo's eyes begin to flutter shut, though he visibly fights it with furious blinks. And another five later, he is asleep.
It’s getting dark out. Even the miserable songbird had long since left to, presumably, go be miserable in its own nest. She folds her page, and, slowly, once she’s sure he won’t wake up, sets her book down and quietly makes her way to the door with the intention to run some errands before he wakes up.
Utahime quietly assures Gojo that she’ll be back soon, just needs to leave to run an errand even though the sensible part of her knows he can’t hear her. Then she shuts the door.
The hot steam rises from her chipped mug of tea in long, curling ribbons that tickle her nose, resting on the countertop as she waits for it to cool down. Green, no sugar, no milk. She’s not insane like Gojo, who’d probably dump in enough honey to kill a small curse and then complain it was too bitter for his taste, and, hey, who drinks green tea anyways? Is she an old man?
Her eye twitches, and the banana she’d been gripping pathetically oozes out of it’s peel onto her palm under the pressure. Standing beside her, smoking a cigarette indoors of all places, Shoko raises both of her brows.
“Someone’s angry.”
Utahime releases the unfairly punished fruit and has to go get a new one from the bowl, then wipes the fruit residue on her skirt since she’s planning to put it in the wash anyways and her handkerchief is still resting on the floor of a classroom after being so unceremoniously chucked. Somehow she’d gotten herself mad over what was essentially her hallucinating gojo satoru in the shared campus kitchen.
She glares at him, still grinning that shit-eating smile across from here. Shoo!
Ignoring his stupid voice in her head, she puts down the fruit, picking up her cup of tea and sighing before taking a long sip. Just right.
(The baby blue mug had been hers before she graduated, and she left it behind after the fact in case of situations like these that she came around to visit.)
“It’s nothing.” Utahime coughs from the smoke filling her lungs. “God, what is in that stuff?”
Shoko shrugs. “A couple leaves. Probably just sawdust, since I got the cheapest one I could find. Student salary, and all that.”
Utahime just stares blankly, watching her friend cough a little herself as she goes to stub out her used cigarette onto the stone countertop. “Right. Er… how’s Gojo? Is he holding up well, after… you know.”
It’s an empty question, since utahime has seen for herself just how well Gojo is holding up. She just needs a discreet way to see if she could get any insight into Gojo’s state. Asking directly would probably get her teased to hell and back if it got out, which it definitely would. Nothing gets past the doctor, right?
Shoko glances back at Utahime, another fresh stick already perched between her lips for lighting.
“His vitals are fine.” Her brown eyes stare up at the ceiling, and her hand holding the lighter halfway to her mouth stills temporarily. “His techniques still hold up. All we can really do now is wait to see if the mental shock has any lasting effects,” Shoko murmurs the last part in a thoughtful tone, as if she herself doesn’t know what those effects could be.
Utahime nods. “Hm.”
The mandarin she’s finally picked out is much too sweet for her taste. She turns the citrus fruit over in her palm. feeling the smooth peel against her skin and pressing against its surface to a light resistance. It’s still cold from being in the fridge.
She slips it in her bag.
When Utahime comes back an hour later, taking care not to slam the door, he is still sound asleep and exactly where she left him.
She stops in front of the desk where he rests, watching his face intently for any changes. The subtle rise and fall of his chest against the tabletop, the way his face is mushed against the cold wood. A slight pinkish tinge on his cheeks from the weather that matches hers. Her hand reaches out without thinking and gently brushes the stray hair out of his eyes, soft to the touch from all the expensive products he probably uses. His eyelashes flitter in his sleep from the cold contact of her fingertips. He looks peaceful. Much more peaceful than she’s seen him look thus far.
Before she can stop herself, she smiles a little. She’s glad.
A week later, her hands still smelling of faint mandarin, Utahime finds that it's time for her to leave. She doesn't say goodbye to anyone before she departs for the station late at night, her only escort being herself. It'd hurt too much.
She debates getting the shinkansen for the ride home. It’d allow her to reach home much faster, but the price is a considerable deterrent and in the end she opts for the train once more.
It’s much too dark out to see the trees or wildlife this time, so she contents herself by reading a book with a light on overhead. It’s warmer at night, so she’s not particularly cold. She still shivers a little every now and then, whenever a cold breeze brushes past her face.
When the automated female voice rings from the speakers, reminding the sleeper carriage passengers that the train would be making its final stop at Kyoto station in approximately one hour, Utahime realises that she probably loves Gojo.
And to her surprise, she doesn’t feel as strongly about it as she thought she would about her first love. The wind doesn’t begin to whisper a tinkling melody in her ear. Nor do the stars outside her window begin to twinkle any brighter, giving her a poetic wink like in the fairytales. She just loves him. To her, it feels as factual of a statement as saying that all jujutsu sorcerers had cursed energy, or that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Even more to her surprise, she finds that she is fine with Gojo not knowing. He’s far from being in the state to accept anyone’s affections. It’d be selfish of her, if anything, to angst over unreciprocated love in her day-to-day life when Gojo is going through what he is.
One day, Gojo will grow up. He’ll marry a woman chosen by his family, beautiful and educated. It'd be even more irresponsible to try and get it in the middle of that, and as his senior, she’d make the responsible choice for both of them.
Utahime watches the moon up ahead. It watches her back.
So, she’ll resign herself to saying it in her head every time she sees him. Roll around the incriminating words in her mouth like a marble just to see how it feels, feel the glass clink against her teeth and the cold seep into her gums. From afar. Always from afar.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
And maybe one day when she says she’s fine with that, it'll finally feel like she means it.