Chapter Text
✶
His mother thinks he’s growing too fast; tugging at the sleeves of his shirts, smoothing out the hems. The skin of his wrists used to chafe against rough homespun cotton in winter, but now they hang awkwardly out like bait left on the hook for far too long. His mouth doesn’t know how to keep up—pulled through his cheek in a slant.
[“Suguru” someone calls and he is giving up, glancing away. “Suguru” someone says and he is struggling to breathe. Shutter; click; shutter. He is the lead. He is the cast. Where’s his script? Can’t find it. He cut it up. There is no script.]
He wanted this, he hopes. He wanted to find a way out of his tearing exuviae. He wanted to scrape himself off the tiles and look his mother in the eye; tell her everything lodged between his snapped ribs. She’s smiling, vaguely. She’s chopping the insulation from the hole in the plaster. “Sit down for dinner” she says and he screams.
[“Haven’t you grown” his mother says, hands in his coat. He looks at her fingers: wants to take them and hold them and feel her skin microwave-warm against his own. See if the guts are still leaking out her nail beds, if her bones have gotten more brittle from carrying a son born of the monsters in the walls.]
He’s waiting; he knows. She locks into place, holds up her hands. “My boy.” she whispers in the dark, He stares at the tilt of her eyes, tiger-bronze. My poor boy, baying wolf.” His arm is propped on split marble, splintered, mending. He’s seen her face before, in the sides of a sink scrubbed-clean, at the bend of a spoon. He’s waiting, and oh, he knows.
[“I look like you” is nothing short of a revelation to him when he stops by a shop window to tap at his reflection; trace his face, and then hers. His mother smooths back his hair so he can feel the sun on his scalp, cat-scratch satisfaction. His bangs are growing out a tiny bit.
“You look like me.” she says, a little mournful. “You’ll look like me more in ten years, yeah?”
And he is six and his mother is his whole wide world and god, he wants to be like her. And he thinks he’ll never stop wanting that.
It is nothing short of a revelation.]
-
He’s fourteen when he goes away to school, and his mother brings out the nice inlaid chopsticks for their last meal together in a long time. She picks at her food; tells him to eat more between slow sips of water, tells his father to split the fish into half instead of three ways — she doesn’t need any.
“Take care of yourself” she says when he gets up, and then “Don’t get into any trouble.” He’s watching her eyes dart from his face, to his father, back to him. There are crow’s feet lining her almost-white lashes, gently digging into her skin. His father needs a cane to walk now, sometimes.
He wants to turn away, suddenly. The room is too small for the three of them and this thing heavy on his shoulders that gnaws away at anything and everything and in the end, the strings of his knitted heart.
HIs mother looks scared. There’s something else prowling their cramped apartment. He’s trying to tell them; has been trying for a long time now. In a way they are still parent and child, linked with sinew. He can’t stop looking back when he leaves.
-
He’s only gotten off the train when someone puts their hand up and waves. There’s no time to take in the countryside scenery; he just grabs his bag and pushes through the angry, swelling belt of people. The girl who waved him over has the morning paper folded over one arm. She glances every now and then at the headers, but the words are upside-down. He can read it fine, though.
The girl stands up and dusts her skirt off perfunctorily. The paper gets tossed back onto the bench. She sticks out a hand and says, “I’m Shoko.” This close, he can smell the tar on her. Eyeliner and leather skirt. She wears either ratty sneaks or heeled boots, no in-between. Smokes at the bus stop and never tips, unless you’re going to take her home to your drafty apartment after and kiss her till your lips hurt.
Every girl back home is either like this or already with children tottering behind them. He thinks he prefers them like this. He takes her hand and tries not to shiver at how cold it is. Another thing about city girls, they never wear gloves.
-
Satoru thinks he grew up in a village in the countryside. Somehow he sees him, fingers poking holes in his worn-thin jacket, and blurts out country bumpkin instead of west-side shitty-apartment city boy. He pretends to ignore his smuggled cigarette packs (split evenly with Shoko). He somehow looks the other way when he steps on gum and swears in a decidedly not countryside accent. He offers to bring his letters home all the way to the post office halfway down the mountain, the mailing address null and void. His dorm door is unlocked when the term stalks past holidays.
”Where exactly are you from“ Satoru asks and he tells him “outskirts of Tokyo“, grasshopper chest flailing in the hope it cradles, and beats, and holds.
[Satoru looking could stitch up the gap in his teeth, maybe. It could lift his head on a heavy day when the floorboards start looking a little too much like cheap linoleum, his face in the mirror stretching to fit the yawning ache.]
It is far too much for him. It is far too little. Satoru tells him to come in when summer break rolls around; come in and lie on his futon, a corner ripped from the time he let a cat in through the back door, and it is enough.
-
He’d like to think he never dreamt once in three years, that the air was fresh enough to purge any city smog still trapped in his lungs.
He wakes up gasping, though. Chokehold. Can’t let go. Satoru takes to staying up so he can stumble over to hold him when he startles awake. It’s weird, and it hurts in a sharp ache when his bony elbow collides with his hands, but he doesn’t feel guilty for letting Satoru into his room, or falling asleep with him tucked to his ribcage. He’d like to think he breathes a little easier on those nights.
The guilt will come later, when Satoru gets jabbed awake in class, laughing it off. He stares at the dark half-moons under his summer sky eyes and wants to rip open this boy, bit by bit, till he can find out why. But it has to be wrong to feel this much, to grasp at straws and coming away bleeding, howling for home.
[“Don’t you want to go home” Satoru will ask him in a voicemail much, much later. He sits back to take him in briefly, just listening to his voice. His memory constructs the rest for him, blink-and-gone, before his conscious mind goes back to the tiny screen. This phone is a battered old model — he really should toss it someday. For now, he slides another one out of a drawer; records a quick reply, sends it to himself. Sappy much? He’s got the time to be sappy now.
So be it.]
-
People don’t typically mean it when they say “swallowing bile”, but he finds out in due time, they really fucking do; at least he does now. Yaga doesn’t say anything when he pushes past him to get to the door, almost falling through the flimsy paper. He wants to throw up. There’s something in his throat and hell, it burns. It burnt when they made him shove it past his lips. It burnt all the way down.
[“I was so angry too”, he tells his girls. He’s almost humming. “I was angry and things got out of control because you can’t control anything when you’re mad, right? I was angry and curses leech on that anger because it makes them stronger.” He pauses here to stroke Mimiko’s short brown hair. It’s a beautiful colour, really. “And that makes me stronger, too. Anger isn’t always good, but you shouldn’t be scared to be angry.” Another pause. Nanako is dozing off. Earlier than usual, but he’s glad she sleeps so soundly. “You can’t be scared when you’re angry, anyways.”
Mimiko is still listening eagerly. He doesn’t know how to end the story. It never had an ending, even when he knows everything important to the plot ended in Shinjuku a decade too early.
“Go to sleep” He tells his girls absent-mindedly. That’s the thing, then. He thinks he’s smiling, slightly. There’s still bottle-cap plastic stuck in his hand from that beach they went to; there’s white in his hair now, young as he is. This is a different story. Could be his.]
Something is blotting into his vision when he forces himself to stop; pull it together. This is real, he’s thinking. I’m real. I was made to be. Real. Someone made him and raised him and loved him all the same. He’s been here before, in a childhood fever dream. He’s here now. Eyes burning holes in his back. There’s nothing to brace against. He finds the nearest toilet and promptly hurls all over the floor; wipes his mouth. Closes his eyes.
-
It’s not like they can’t smoke on campus, or like Yaga has the time to be chaperoning their every movement. Hell, he might even encourage them. Nicotine gives you an insane boost in energy.
Still, Shoko insists on leaving the school before she even tears a pack open. They’ve got to slip out back and go all the way around the mountain to a tiny pavilion at the end of the bridge over a lake. The roof slants at a dangerous angle and hooks up at the corners.
“Neat.” He grins the first time Shoko takes him there. She doesn’t say anything, just takes out her lighter and flicks the spark wheel. It’s just a cheap plastic one, slim with a clear carriage. The lighter fluid dips and spills in the fuel reservoir.
Shoko lights a cigarette but doesn’t smoke it. She holds it up and stares at him until he gets his lighter out too, suddenly a little conscious. His is the kind that flips open on hinges, heavy and cold against his skin. Real silver. You could trade it at the farm a couple kilometers away for a young lamb, still-fuzzy around the edges, so soft it was ridiculous. For a while they just stand there because he feels terrible and can’t bring himself to light a flame, and Shoko won’t smoke alone.
Eventually he draws one out of the sleeve and lights it. Shoko sniffs and sticks hers’ in her mouth. Eyeliner and leather skirts and all; she hits it like she’s forty-five and behind the gas station catcalling. It makes him straighten up and grab his own smoke a little harder.
After that first time they go there a lot. He never brings his own lighter anymore, just leans over Shoko’s and watches her light both cigarettes at once. It sends up a kicker of a plume. Sometimes when they’re in a bit of an adventurous mood they smoke two at one go, using the dying cherry of the first to light the second. It gets a lot milder after the first, but there’s no break in action. This is pretty amusing to them the first couple times, then it settles into their routine. They put out the butts on the pavilion railings and score the wood so badly, it’s a wonder it doesn’t burn through.
The more they go there, the more he hates it. The scores trail along the railings and up the square posts, all the way to the hooked corners. They have to go hunting for an unmarred inch to mark after every smoke. He puts out Shoko’s cigarettes for her now; she can’t reach that high. It is the only act of service he ever does for her.
The missions pile up and they start coughing in class. He almost brings up a lung when Yaga thumps him on his back. Shoko looks at him behind her thin dollar novel, almost sorry, and he looks at her. Eventually the moment passes and she goes back to her book. He stays there on his seat, his mouth itching for something. A slur maybe, or a thank you.
They don’t stop going. If Satoru holds him till he falls asleep, this; the pavilion, the lake, this is Shoko’s own gift to him. You couldn’t beat it out of him with your bare hands, but he’s an all-around nice guy most of the time. He just didn’t have it in him to be cruel.
-
They have run-of-the-mill lessons on the off chance one of the teachers disappear for more than a few days on a mission. Math. English. Social studies. Ijichi comes in to tell them where to sit, what not to do; tell Satoru to stop eating in class already. “You kids deserve a normal education sometimes.” He says, then steps aside to make way for some poor external vendor.
It’s some sort of literature today, taught by a pretty young college student, insistent in her efforts to drill lofty ideals into their bone-thick skulls using the few short weeks she has. He doesn’t know why he listens. Satoru is busy chucking wadded up balls of paper at the fan, watching the blades toss them out of the air; Shoko’s off for a smoke break. Without him. He’s not going to sit here wallowing in grief, just. He’s just going to sit here and he’s going to listen, damn it. Don’t ask him why.
He stares at the teacher’s mouth, closing around a foreign lilt. She says, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé. To love and be loved.
He looks to the board behind her, trying to think about home The taste of packaged cod and the way the thin film over top would come off in tatters. The skate down slick passages of dead malls. Shelves after shelves of TVs still in their boxes, and they would come alive if you put your hands on the screens. It was true; the whole world was yours in the city of dreams. When he was ten he realised the Earth he was in was but a flat reimagination. What you saw under the plastic shell was the real deal. Everything is real in the city of dreams.
Satoru bumps against his shoulder; jerks his head at the door. His eyes are sharpened to points under his glasses. He's thinking, the room, this boy. There is nothing flat here. Everything is bursting with colour. Everything is real in the city of dreams.
They leave.
-
It starts slow, like everything else.
Yaga lets him watch Satoru train, sit by the sidelines and let it seep in: how fast, how good, how brutal he is. Then the man points him over to the practice targets on the other side of the courtyard and leaves him be.
He doesn’t know what to do the first time. He kicks a straw-stuffed dummy over on the second. He sneaks back to his dorm on the third, and then goes to bother Shoko on the fourth, and gets Doordash on the fifth. Sixth. Seventh. He still doesn’t know how to fight. Eighth. Shoko kicks him out of her makeshift lab. Tells him he’s avoiding himself. Ninth. Tenth.
Eventually, Satoru barges into his room in the evenings and needles and whines and cusses till he goes back out in cheap slippers; learns how to throw his first blows under the waning light. Yaga thinks they can’t see him lurking menacingly behind the pillars, and Satoru actually can’t half the time because he’s sleeping up on a tree, but the guy’s really too damn bulky to be ducking around columns.
When Satoru is awake, he’ll climb down and poke at his arms, criticise his form with half made-up jargon. You have bird shit in your hair he tells him politely once and Satoru tackles him, all legs and kneecaps and knuckles. He gasps, short of breath and out of air and laughing, laughing, laughing.
[This is so, so pointless, he’s thinking when the moon comes up, I won’t live past twenty in this world.
This is pointless, he‘s thinking, and it’s also the most alive he’s felt in a decade.]
-
It starts slow, but he’s getting better. Not at the fighting bit - he can’t make that out. The part where you look at your hands and don’t notice the shake in them. He knows how to look for everything else, the other parts: the twitch of an eye, the spasm of an arm, the hesitation. He hesitates a lot for someone learning how to kill, enough to know the freeze-drop-run drill, enough to lick his lips clean when he gets pummelled to the ground, go back for more.
He makes it a rule to fight dirty early into the game - a wicked hook here sometimes, a roundhouse kick there at others. It never quite works on Satoru, who never even had to fight dirty. It does work on everyone else, and that’s good enough for him.
-
The five of them go to the arcade when summer sets in, hot and persisting: him, Satoru, Shoko, plus the first-years they let tag along (the arcade, singular, because there was only one within walking distance after a two hour bus ride). For more company, if anything. Mostly so they can pool their money for tickets.
They discover, regrettably, that they aren’t allowed inside with their uniforms. They turn their shirts inside-out and go back, smiles plastered all over their faces; the kid on shift as security flips them off.
“This is dumb.” He says when he grows tired of the games. His head is starting to swim. Shoko left for a thrift store next-door and the younger students wandered off to mess with the Dance Revolution™. Satoru’s stuck on a level. “Fuck off, you’re dumb.” He mouths conspiratorially, though there’s no conspiracy in sight, no shared secret. They laugh anyways, and then some more when Satoru finally beats the boss with a flurry of spammed keys. He shoves past to slouch on the floor beside the machines together, bumping shoulders.
‘You know,” He starts, the patch of sun they’re sitting in weighing down his words. His breath comes a little later; cloying, sticking, curling up to stay. It’s frightening. He’s never felt this light before. “I don’t mind this. The school. Everyone here.”
[It’s good, it’s good, it’s good for him. It’s good if he doesn’t want to run away.]
“Yeah, I do know.” Satoru grins with all his teeth like he has some unfound wild thing inside him, canines glinting. “I’d know everything if I wanted to.”
He waves a hand in front of Satoru’s face, miming the blind. “You don’t get it.” Satoru looks at his wrist, the curve of bone. His eyes are in shadow, but he knows they both can see where his gaze lingers. “This is fucking nice, idiot. I can do this, even if it sucks sometimes. I want this.”
(I’ve never wanted anything like how I want this before.)
“You’re wrong. I get this. About wanting it. ‘S bad sometimes, cause I know I’ll get anything I try hard enough for, but I’ve never tried.”
And he’s trying not to stare at Satoru, because he’s a little quiet in the way that makes you feel sorry for him and his smile is lopsided and there might as well be scaffolding over his chest holding every fracture up. This is the inevitable collapse.
-
A door in the dark. He goes back to when he feels like it; if only to feel the rusted handle under the pads of his fingers, just standing there and waiting. Eventually, the floor will drop to reveal a trapdoor and he’ll fall.
(falling. falling. falling.)
He’ll never outgrow this building. It’ll never have too small a space for him at its core, never stop leaving an empty room.
(falling. falling. i want this. falling.)
Four walls. A door. There’s flesh hemming him in. It could snap him in two, a half for his ma and the other for his pa. In three, maybe, so there’s enough to braid around. He thinks his feelings are getting too big for this shaft, nonetheless.
(falling. falling, this is something more in me, ma. falling)
(falling. falling. falling.)
His arms are coming loose, rising. He could be buoyant (if only). This is the kind of open-eyed, slack-jawed dream he’s been waiting for.
(falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling. falling.)
-
There is a golden touch to jujutsu. You can’t let anyone claim otherwise to you because then you get your hopes up, and when you get your hopes up your fights are fuelled by pure adrenaline, and then before you know it you’re up against some hotshot like Satoru Gojo, who doesn’t need to try when he eventually trounces you. Then you’re squatting by the wall, wiping the spit off your mouth. Your head hurts and there’s blood in your ear. You’re struggling to find the right adjectives to describe the way you hit the floor.
Look, no one’s denying it; you just have to know it for yourself. There’s a golden touch and to deny its existence is to go against the foundation of the craft and all that bull. You just can’t lack that touch and expect to do well.
Come on, tell you something. Golden touch and all, that’s fine. There’s always something else out there for you.
But, let’s say, you’re squatting by the wall, wiping the spit off your mouth. Someone comes to sit next to you. You cock a fist. He takes the fist and pries it open. Your hands are curled together like bleached shells, one over, around the other. You want to shake the hold off but he’s forgotten to clip his nails and they dig into the meat of your palm. You’ll never know if this was meant to be sacred or routine. He’s holding your fingers between thumb and index finger. Every point of contact stings like a pronged star in the wild.
It’s not like there’s light trickling from the touch, but what you’ll know is that this is your life. Look at you, you’re done chasing the fame. You’re going to be great someday.