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Megumi sits on the small balcony outside his dorm, back pressed to the cool wall, legs drawn up loosely. The night air is cool, heavy with rain that spills down from the sky above. The city lights blink far below, distant and blurry. He lifts his phone, thumb hovering over the screen for a long moment before he presses the call button.
It rings once. Twice. Then a familiar voice message kicks in.
“Yo, it’s Gojo. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you sometime. Or not. Depends. I’m busy being gorgeous.
The stupid little chuckle at the end—the one Satoru always gave when he was happy with himself, soft and bright and lazy and it fills the empty balcony. Megumi’s throat tightens. He exhales through his nose, a soft scoff that comes out too raw.
“Don’t even know why I keep doing this,” he mutters into the phone, leaning his head back against the wall. His bangs fall over his eyes, shadowing them. “It won’t do anything. Won’t bring you back.”
The dial tone waits patiently, like the phone itself is listening. Megumi rubs the heel of his palm against his eye, swallowing the burn in his throat.
“Shoko-san says it’s normal to still miss you,” he mutters. His breath hitches as he remembers the way she’d looked at him earlier that week—tired, knowing, something too close to shared grief in her eyes. She was the only other person, he thinks, who understood even a fraction of the hole Satoru’s death left behind. The silent mornings. The empty notifications. The absence that made the whole world feel off-kilter.
He wakes now to a blank phone screen—weather alerts, the noise of group chats he never answers, Yuji’s newest chaotic social post that doesn’t quite have a joke to hide the gloom in his eyes anymore. Megumi scrolls through them each morning pretending he’s not searching for a stupid message that will never come: Up yet? I’m buying breakfast, get ready before I break into your dorm again!!! Coming in 10 minutes with pancakes. Open the door for me ><.
He pretends he isn’t waiting for a name he knows will never light up his screen again.
“It’ll take time, but it’ll get better, Megumi,” Shoko had said quietly. A lie spoken gently. She’d found him at Satoru’s grave after the funeral, sat in the grass with rain running down his hair, his clothes soaked through like the sky itself was mourning, grieving, cracked open with greys like even the sky felt the absence of Satoru Gojo. She’d held the umbrella over him while he stared blankly at the carved letters on the stone.
Gojo Satoru.
December 7th, 1980 – December 24th, 2018.
Teacher. Friend. Son.
The Gojo clan had chosen the words. Too formal. Too clipped. Too insufficient for the man who had been so much more than the titles stamped beneath his name. Megumi had wanted to argue, to fight, to tell them they didn’t deserve to define him after treating him like a weapon for most of his life. He wished he’d told Satoru that too—that he should have had a say in how he was remembered.
He wishes he’d called him dad at least once. Wishes it was carved into the stone. Wishes Satoru knew.
Now, sitting alone on the balcony, he curls his free hand into his shirt, fingers trembling.
“I don’t think it will pass,” Megumi mutters to the phone. Rain falls, soft and thin, tapping against the railings. “I don’t think I want it to.”
The next words scrape out of him like they’re coated in glass, like it hurts to say them.
“Because I’m—” he swallows. The tightness in his throat makes it hard to speak. The pressure in his chest unbearable, like a stone he can’t lift, like he’s spending every waking moment being crushed by a boulder of absence, of grief that never lifts, that wraps his hand around his throat and forces him to remember, to feel. And some nights he wishes it would take him too, to pull him from this cruel, unforgiving world and give him the mercy of seeing Satoru’s soft blue eyes and have those arms wrap around him as he sobs into his throat and chokes out apologies and everything he wishes he had said sooner.
“I’m scared. That if it stops hurting… I’ll start to forget.” His eyes flutter shut, lashes wet. He rests his forehead against his knees. “And I don’t want to forget you.”
He can’t. It feels like a betrayal—when so few people ever truly knew the real Satoru. The sleepy smiles in the morning when he made lunch for them before school. The soft look in his eyes when Tsumiki laughed at his dumb jokes. The way Satoru kept every damn light on for a month after taking them in because Tsumiki was scared of the dark. The warm, gentle hand on Megumi’s head during thunderstorms when Megumi used to crawl silently into his room at night and he always let him, stroked his hair until he was sleeping soft and quiet.
But Megumi saw him. He always did. Even when Satoru tried to hide behind masks and make everybody hate him like he was more comfortable with their distaste than their love, like he was afraid of it, of being loved again. But Megumi saw past that. Loved him. Even if he never did manage to tell him.
His gaze slides to the glowing contact photo on the screen—Satoru with ice cream, doing bunny ears behind eight year old Megumi’s scowling head, but the edges of him were soft, relaxed. Tsumiki had snapped that picture on Satoru’s “I finally survived another mission, come on kids, we’re getting ice cream” day.
Megumi remembers tugging on Satoru’s sleeve that day, blunt as always. “You need sleep,” he’d muttered, small, stubborn, frowning while Tsumiki spent ten minutes choosing a flavor.
Satoru, dramatic as ever, had rolled his eyes. “What’re you? The adult between us now?”
Megumi had shrugged, stubborn. “I might as well be. I had to wake Tsumiki up for school every day the past two weeks.”
The girl had a chronic habit of oversleeping, it took pots and pans to wake her and even then they just barely managed it.
“Cause you weren’t here.” He didn’t mean to add it, but regretted it when he saw the little grimace pulling at the other’s lips, the way the guilt flashes over his face.
And Megumi knew he was trying his best to balance being the strongest and him and Tsumiki but two weeks was a long time.
“I left you guys with Shoko, you usually love staying with her,” Satoru said softly.
Megumi had frowned at his feet. He did like shoko. She let him stay up late past his bedtime and watch cartoons with cuss words and always gave him and Tsumiki lollipops.
“But she’s not you,” Megumi muttered under his breath, hated how honest it was, usually he was so careful with his feelings, kept them locked up tight, knew it was safer that way, less hurt to be had. But somehow, Satoru had gently pried him open, like a flower blooming, and in his hands, the feelings felt less scary. Like he could trust him not to drop them. Like he knew the other would just cradle them safe.
Satoru pauses, a painful yet soft look passed over his face and he crouched low, eye to eye with him.
“I’m sorry Megumi,” he muttered softly, genuinely, honestly in ways that Megumi had learnt he meant. Adults liked to lie but not Satoru. He pulls off his sunglasses that he always loses. “I’ll try come back soonmegumer next time okay?”
And Megumi, all eight year old stubbornness and softness he hadn’t yet outgrown, mumbled, “Promise?”
Satoru smiled, soft, fond. “Yeah, I promise. I’ll come back sooner.”
He had let his long pinkie intertwine with Megumi’s and when he straightened back up when Tsumiki had finally made her choice, his fingers slipped into Megumi’s unruly dark hair and the eight year old just leaned into his leg. Satoru glanced down, surprised, and then he softened and smiled to himself as he stroked his hair.
On the balcony now, Megumi’s grip tightens around the phone until his knuckles ache. He feels like an open wound, like a bruise taking the shape of a person, like he’s more grief than he is human.
“You said you’d come back soon,” he whispers shakily. A tear splashes onto the screen, sliding over the tiny image of Satoru’s grin. The moonlight glows pale across his hands, cold and soft like a ghost passing over him. His voice breaks. “So why the hell aren’t you here?”
The hurt punches through his chest with suffocating clarity. It doesn’t fade. He knows it never truly will. He’ll grow, but he’ll grow around this hurt—around the shape Satoru left behind when he walked into their lives all light and warmth and laughter, and then vanished in the next breath. Megumi bows his head, shoulders trembling, arms curling in tight as if trying to hold himself together but he can’t.
He’s tried but he can’t. He fractures, ugly and broken. Every shard digs into him, every ache feels agonising. He bleeds out, silently, painfully from grief that carves into him like bone. His fingers slide into his hair and, for a second, he pretends they’re longer. Gentler. Threading through with a soft laugh and a teasing, “Alright there, kid?”
His mind flickers like a film reel. Satoru’s laughter is bright, a splash of colour in every memory he finds himself running to, clinging to like it’s his mothers skirt, vibrant, warm, like a supernova contained in a man who was too bright for the world.
“How do I look Megumi?” Satoru asked with a goofy grin as he turned to the eleven year old, Tsumiki looking proud of the makeup she’s slapped onto his face.
“Gross,” Megujmi had deadpanned and Satoru’s face fell.
“Megumiiii you’re so mean to me–” he whined and Tsumiki laughed and told him to stop ruining her precious work and Megumi had turned away from them, a small smile at his
“Kiddos I’m home!” Satoru called out to the apartment and before he can blink there are two little bundles running at him and he steps back from the force.
“You’re back!” Tsumiki said, already teary eyed and he blinked, softened, scooped her up in one arm as she clung to him.
“It was only a couple days,” he says, looking over at Shoko who’d been keeping an eye on them who gave a dry smile.
“They missed you,” she’d muttered with a shrug and his eyes dragged down to where Megumi is pressing his face to his stomach. His hand came up and threaded through his hair and he felt his chest ache softly.
“Yeah, I missed you guys too,” he said softly.
“This isn’t what the recipe says,” Megumi grumbled as Satoru laughed and chased a squealing giggling Tsumiki around the kitchen with flour on his hands.
The kitchen was a mess, flour everywhere, cake batter on everything, because Tsumiki wanted to try bake a cake.
“So?” Satoru had grinned as he caught Tsumiki, as the girl squealed and laughed loudly as he lifted her and smeared flour all over her pink cheeks. “This is more fun.”
Megumi had huffed and watched as Satoru and Tsumiki played. Satoru noticed. He always did. “C’mere, you too,” Satoru had grinned and set Tsumiki down and Megumi blinked and let out a scoff.
“No way. Stay away from me, I don’t wanna get dirty–” but they were already chasing him and he ran off, laughter catching in his lungs.
“We’ll stay together, alright?” Satoru said softly, Megumi tucked under one arm in his big bed, Tsumiki under the other.
“Forever and ever,” Tsumiki had giggled and pressed her head under his chin and he laughed, low and soft.
Megumi had turned over, pressed his face to his chest and Satoru’s hand stroked his hair fondly. “Yeah alright, forever and ever.”
And now here he is. All alone. And he’s sick of it. Sick of the ache. Sick of the hurt that makes his ribs creak from under the weight of it. Sick of being left here whilst every person he’s ever loved is stolen from him, over and over again in a sickening cycle he can’t break.
Blessing, is what his name is. He wishes Toji just named him cursed. It was more fitting. Always ruining the lives of the people around him. Everything he touches is blood soaked. Everything he loves is stolen from him no matter how hard he tries to hug it to his chest.
“So why the hell did you guys leave me here alone?” Megumi breathes out ragged and pained.
The voicemail cuts out, the tone falling flat.
The rain falls harder.
And Megumi stays there, alone in the quiet dark, waiting for a voice that will never answer back. Not anymore.