Chapter Text
“I want you to need me.
I need to want something more.
He gives what he can,
But now I don’t know
What he’s giving for
Softer,
Harder,
In between,
You know just how
To get to me”
- Pushing It Down and Praying by Lizzy McAlpine
I. An Inherited Faith
Utahime was taught to kneel almost as soon as she learned to walk.
Her father used to say devotion was a posture before it was a belief: spine straight, eyes lowered, hands steady.
In the old house, tucked between cedar and stone, the shrine had always been there. And so too, had her ancestors, who swept each morning and refreshed the offerings often. The ever-present smell of incense that was always replaced before the smoke thinned.
In her clan, faith was not questioned, but inherited. No one ever asked Utahime what she wanted, because they taught her what was required: shinto, the way of the gods; kagura, the ceremonial dance. How to bow without hesitation, how to keep her spine straight and her hands steady during prayer, even when it ached.
Utahime learned it all. She had to.
Because in the Iori clan, faith was not a comfort, but an instruction. A tool for their survival. There were no titles to protect them, no noble family name or political leverage. Only their reputation, to serve well, to be useful, to bring honor to the shrine—and to the kami, who were said to watch closely, and never kindly.
At the ripe age of 8, Utahime had all but perfected her archery. The bow had been her father's, older than she was, polished smooth by use. He taught her that an arrow only flies true when the body is aligned—feet grounded, breath controlled, the mind emptied of impatience. Power came not from force, but from focus and restraint. From knowing when not to release.
With it, Utahime learned to strike from a distance. To split targets she was not meant to approach. To hold tension in her arms without trembling.
It was, she would later realize, not much different from her training as a miko.
She was raised to believe in ranks, rituals, and status earned through obedience. If she followed the rites precisely, if she memorized the prayers, if she endured without complaint, she might earn a place above obscurity. Not power—never power—but recognition. Usefulness. Safety.
Utahime believed this with all the earnestness of someone who needed it to be true.
When her cursed technique revealed itself, it had felt inevitable somehow. Correct, her mother had said. Utahime's power manifested, not as something to grasp or command, but as something that flowed through her, like a current she could guide but never contain. She accepted this without resistance. After all, a shrine maiden lived to serve just as a jujutsu sorcerer lived to protect. And ever dutiful Utahime had always known her place as both.
She purified and amplified cursed energy as a conduit—never its source, never its end. Power like that was too vast, too sacred, to belong to anyone.
Or so she believed.
II. False Gods
“Don’t provoke him.”
Utahime didn’t look away from her target. "I'm not."
“Iori-san, that’s…” The assistant murmured, voice tight. “That’s Gojo Satoru. That’s—”
"I know."
She released.
The arrow cut cleanly through the air and struck the center of the target with a solid, satisfying thud.
"I don't care."
That, perhaps, was the problem.
Because god knows everyone else did.
The special grades destabilized everything about jujutsu society. The careful alignment she had been taught to trust had tilted on its axis the moment they arrived. And in ways she did not yet have the honesty to name, Utahime hated them for it.
The Six Eyed Sorceror and the Curse Eater.
"Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru."
"Yaga-sensei," Utahime said carefully. "They're first years."
“They are to observe only, and provide backup if necessary.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Utahime inclined her head, accepting the instruction even as unease settled low in her chest.
The mission began simply enough: an exorcism inside an abandoned rural shrine, long since hollowed out by neglect. Utahime moved quickly, purifying with practiced efficiency, every step precise, every gesture deliberate.
But the air was wrong, too dense with residue to be the work of a mere Grade One, and the boundaries of the veil were already compromised. Her response came a fraction of a second too slow.
The ground buckled.
A misstep—hers, brief and unforgivable. The backlash struck hard enough to fracture her focus. Cursed energy surged toward her, corrosive and fast.
“Iori-senpai!” Geto called sharply.
Too late.
The air split.
Gojo was in front of her in a second, his cursed energy so electric up close that it made Utahime’s skin prickle.
The curse never touched her. It struck the ground immediately, heavy and inert, already disintegrating.
“Next time, don’t hesitate,” said the silver-haired boy named Gojo, already turning away.
Heat flared beneath Utahime’s composure. “That was unnecessary.”
Gojo glanced back, startled. Then amused. “Was it?”
“You disobeyed orders,” Utahime said, voice clipped. “You were instructed to observe.”
“And I observed,” he replied cheerfully, “that you were about to get killed.”
Geto’s gaze flicked between them, thoughtful, unreadable.
“You destroyed the shrine,” Utahime said. “That’s sacrilegious.”
“I’m an atheist.” He waved a hand dismissively toward the wreckage.
Then, impossibly, he stepped over what remained of the altar.
“Stop.” She caught his sleeve before she could think better of it, fingers tightening around the fabric. “You’ll anger the higher-ups.”
He glanced at her hand, then back at her face, eyes bright like a madman. “And what? They’ll execute me?”
Her pulse raced. “They could.”
He tilted his head, grinning with insolent delight. “I’d like to see them fucking try."
Her chest tightened, irritation sharpened strangely at the edges. She drew back her hand immediately, irritated by the sudden awareness of where it had been.
Geto moved next.
His cursed energy unfurled like shadow distilled into air: dark, heavy, viscous. It glided rather than surged, coating everything it touched, smelling faintly of rot. He took the curse—
And swallowed it.
The sight of it unsettled her, yet Geto did not flinch. He moved with the ease of someone born to command attention, as calm as a storm.
And then there was Gojo, his energy still thrumming all around them, like a live wire brushing against her skin. His power was reckless, unshaped, and bright as a lightning strike. Unlike most cursed energy, it did not diminish as he moved. It fed itself, replenished. Sharp and alive, in time with his every breath.
Standing in their wake, Utahime felt something unfamiliar flicker beneath her composure. It was disquiet—maybe even envy—at the way they made her life of preparation, discipline, and restraint suddenly seem insignificant.
No one glanced or chastised Gojo as he left without excusing himself, walking away from the shrine he disintegrated. Even the assistant, already muttering half-hearted explanations for the ruined altar to the higher-ups on the phone, avoided looking at him directly.
This was the first fracture.
It would not be the last.
III. The Offering
The more closely Utahime observed the Special Grades, the less certain she felt about everything she'd been taught.
It was not their power that unsettled her, but how readily the system yielded to it. Orders ignored. Reports embellished. Damages excused. Watching them move so freely, Utahime felt the careful boundaries of her own life closing in on her by contrast. The rules she had been raised to treat as inviolable revealed themselves—gradually but clearly—as conditional.
And yet, for all their power, they remained unmistakably human.
They laughed too freely, indulged without apology. Questioned orders. Dissented. Made careless mistakes. They smoked when they wished, drank when they shouldn’t, and slept with whomever they pleased—careless with their lives in ways Utahime had never allowed herself to be.
Gojo Satoru, however, disconcerted her in a way Geto did not.
It wasn't only that he was powerful. Power alone could be measured, contextualized. But Gojo's was unprecedented. It existed almost beyond comprehension. From the moment he was born, he was mythologized. Revered. Feared. Appeased. He was spoken of carefully, excused preemptively. He did not bow. He did not avert his gaze.
And Utahime—who had served the gods all her life—refused to kneel.
“You’re late,” she said before she could stop herself. Not for the first time.
Silence snapped taut around the room, which only made Gojo’s laugh ring louder.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, already brushing past her. “I was busy.”
No apology followed. No reprimand.
Instead, someone hissed her name under their breath, a warning. “Iori-san.”
Her jaw set. “Then don’t bother showing up at all next time. The mission can proceed without you.”
Gojo stopped in his step and gazed over her, interest sharpening beneath the humor.
“You know,” he said, “most people get nervous talking to me.”
“Most people think power makes you important.”
He laughed again, softer this time.
“Doesn’t it?”
Her chest tightened, irritation edged with something more dangerous she would not name. She held his gaze anyway, steady and unyielding.
He seemed almost pleased by her obstinance.
“You’re wound too tight,” he murmured. “I could help with that.”
Utahime didn’t hesitate.
Her fist connected cleanly with his jaw.
A year passed, but time did not resolve the doubt that had begun to take shape in Utahime's heart. It only gave it room to grow.
She spent more of it with them than she had intended. Overlapping missions bled into invitations, invitations into routine. Familiarity accrued quietly.
Gojo, loud and impossible. Geto, measured and attentive. Shoko, drifting between them like smoke, present without ever quite settling. Together, they formed something like a center of gravity, and Utahime found herself pulled in despite her better judgment.
"You're thinking too loud again, senpai," Shoko said, an ever-present cigarette dangling from her lips.
They sat on the engawa outside the infirmary, shoulders nearly touching, watching as evening bled across the school grounds. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and rain.
Utahime frowned. "Sorry. I suppose I have a lot on my mind."
"Mhm," Shoko exhaled smoke toward the darkening sky. “You've been doing it a lot lately."
Utahime huffed softly, then fell quiet again. The cicadas had begun their evening chorus. She watched a drop of rain slide from the edge of the eaves and vanish into the gravel below.
"I’m graduating,” she said at last.
Shoko glanced at her, surprised only enough to acknowledge it. “I know."
“Everyone keeps asking what I’ll do next. Where I’ll go. What kind of sorcerer I want to become.”
Shoko flicked ash into a tray beside her. “What do you want?”
The question landed with more weight than it should have. The answers she had been taught to reach for—duty, service, usefulness—did not come.
“I don’t know,” Utahime admitted. “I always assumed the wanting came later. After.”
“After what?”
“After I’d done enough,” Utahime said. “After I’d earned it.”
Shoko studied her for a long moment, eyes sharp despite her languid posture.
“You know,” she said, almost absently, “people say ‘after’ when they’re trying not to want something now.”
The cicadas swelled, then settled. Rain tapped against the roof in uneven rhythms.
She thought of another afternoon that had sounded like this.
Utahime arrived early for her meeting with the Higher-Ups. The summons had been polite and unspecific, which unsettled her more than any demand would have. It didn’t help that when she stepped into the room, she realized she wasn’t alone.
Suguru Geto stood across from her. Hands folded loosely behind his back, posture impeccable, expression serene. If she hadn’t known him, she might have mistaken his calm for courtesy.
When his gaze met hers, she gave a small bow. Formal. Correct.
He hesitated for a moment before returning the gesture, then flashed her a wry smile, small enough to be a secret.
“The matter before us,” one of the elders began, “concerns the future alignment of assets critical to the stability of jujutsu society.”
His eyes flickered to hers.
“Assets,” he mouthed.
Utahime’s lips pressed into a thin line.
They spoke as if she and Suguru were abstractions, variables in a careful equation. She listened as her technique was praised for its rarity, its strategic value, its ability to enhance and purify. As Suguru’s virtues were outlined: his discipline, his ideals, his compatibility. Words like synergy and continuity were used with reverent satisfaction.
Utahime remembered letting her mind drift as the Higher-Ups droned on. She feared that listening too closely would only sharpen the unease she felt.
She thought of the missions she had been sent on lately—not the curses, but the directives. Orders to wait when she could have acted. To save sorcerers before civilians. To not report casualties accurately to preserve a clan’s reputation or prevent scrutiny.
All of it dressed up as a “necessary balance,” for the “greater good.” Expecting obedience to fill the gaps where morality should have been.
Across the room, Suguru listened with the same careful composure he always wore. No tension in his posture, no hairline fractures in his eyes for her to read. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it entirely his own.
“The Council has decided that you, Suguru Geto, shall be married to Iori Utahime once you turn of age.”
Utahime registered their words with muted shock. They settled on her chest with a quiet, crushing weight, heavier for how impassively it had been delivered.
She felt like her head was underwater as they continued to drone on about how they believed her technique would allow Suguru to absorb more curses without risking corruption. And through marriage, two families without rank—his non-sorcerer lineage and her unremarkable clan—would be elevated to a powerful, noble, new bloodline.
An advantageous arrangement, they called it.
Advantageous for whom?
The question surfaced without invitation and refused to leave, lodging itself deep and immovable.
She suspected the decision had been made long before she was ever summoned into that room.
The Council spoke of Suguru in careful terms—his discipline, his ideals, his compatibility—as if naming virtues could contain them. But Utahime had watched them long enough to recognize the unease beneath their measured words.
She knew they did not approve of his convictions and his refusal to bend cleanly. He questioned what others accepted without thought, cared when indifference was safer, and possessed the will and the power to act on both.
And unlike Gojo, who treated rules as playthings to bend with a smile, when Suguru acted, it was not to provoke, but because he believed something was wrong. If a rule stood between him and his principles, he would break it without spectacle or apology.
So the Higher-Ups needed leverage, to give Suguru something he might hesitate to lose.
“Do you accept this arrangement?” the elder asked.
His answer came easily. “Yes.”
A ripple of approval moved through the room, satisfied murmurs from the Council.
Everyone turned to her expectantly.
“And you, Iori-san?”
She drew a careful breath, taking a moment to find her voice. It should have been a relief, an honor. She should have been pleased to please the Higher-Ups.
Instead, she struggled to form the word, her throat closing around it like a chain.
“Yes.”
The Higher-Ups must have thought they had chosen well. Utahime had been dutiful, disciplined, loyal all her life.
And yet, the thought of their satisfaction made her sick.
Suguru, at least, saw her. She knew that much. He spoke to her plainly, trusted her composure, never mistook her obedience for emptiness. If he accepted this, it would be because he believed he could carry the cost without breaking her.
There were other considerations, too—of that she was certain. This engagement was as much a matter of controlling Suguru as it was preventing a more dangerous alliance. Two special grades aligned too closely, loyal to each other instead of the system, posed an unacceptable risk. And Gojo—already untouchable and unchecked—could not be allowed to grow attached to the one person capable of making him stronger still.
Her.
The rain tapped steadily against the roof.
Utahime blinked, and the memory dissolved.
She sat once more on the engawa beside Shoko, the tea in her hands long gone cold.
“There’s…something else,” she confessed, turning to her friend.
Shoko waited, exhaling smoke slowly, her eyes never leaving the darkened courtyard.
“Arrangements have been made.” She frowned, struggling to keep her voice measured and even. “For…after graduation.”
Her friend’s expression didn’t change, but the air between them did, thinning.
“What kind of arrangements?”
“Marriage. To Suguru when he comes of age.”
Something flickered across Shoko’s face—more understanding than surprise. “I see.”
“I haven’t been told everything yet.”
Shoko only nodded once, thoughtful. “But how do you feel about it?”
Utahime looked down at her tea. The surface was perfectly still. “I don’t know.”
Her fingers tightened around the cup. She had always trusted Suguru’s steadiness, enjoyed his company almost as much as she did Shoko’s. Though he could be unruly when with Gojo—and admittedly, so was she—he was gentler with her. Still teasing, still sly, but careful, softer around the edges, as though he understood where to ease and where not to press. He was steady in ways Gojo was not.
“I don’t…dislike the idea,” Utahime admitted quietly.
“That’s not the same thing,” Shoko said gently.
“He’s respected. Principled. Powerful,” Utahime continued, as if reciting a prayer she had been taught long ago. “The match makes sense.”
“Makes sense to whom?”
Utahime did not answer. Instead, she asked her friend softly, “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Ignore them. The higher-ups. Expectations. All of it,” she said in a bewildered voice.
Shoko hummed faintly. “I don’t ignore them. I just think you should only follow rules that get you what you want. And I don’t bother, because I don’t want much.”
“You don’t want anything?”
“I want sleep,” She tapped ash into the tray. “And quiet. Everything else is negotiable.”
Utahime laughed softly, but the sound soon died on her tongue.
“I don’t care about anything,” Shoko went on, almost cheerfully. “Not power. Not rank. Not legacy. I just want to do my job well, go home alive, and sleep without nightmares.”
Utahime watched the surface of her tea remain perfectly still.
"And is it..." She began uncertainly. "Are you...happy?"
Shoko leaned back on her hands, cigarette glowing faintly. Instead of answering, she simply smiled sideways and gave another shrug.
“Some days,” her friend said. “But I know whose life I’m living, and that helps.”
Shoko crushed the cigarette beneath her heel, and the sound of the rain filled the space where the conversation had ended.
IV. The Apostate
The restaurant buzzed with the loose, overheated energy of people trying too hard to celebrate.
Someone from the lower years had commandeered the karaoke machine hours ago, though no one seemed especially interested in listening anymore. Laughter rose and collapsed in uneven waves around the room. Glasses clinked. Chairs scraped. The air smelled faintly of grilled meat, cheap beer, and cigarette smoke drifting in every time the door opened.
Utahime sat cross-legged on the cushion, her cold beer dripping condensation down her hand.
"That's strange," Shoko remarked airily.
Utahime's eyes snapped up. "What?"
"You're drunk but you're in a bad mood."
"I'm not drunk yet," Utahime mumbled. "And I'm not in a bad mood."
Shoko hummed.
“Does this have something to do with Gojo?”
Utahime threw back a sip just as Gojo laughed loudly across the room at something Suguru had said. She gulped down her drink with a frown.
"Why would it have anything to do with that idiot?”
“Because,” Shoko said mildly, “you’ve looked at him five times in the last few minutes.”
Utahime frowned. “I have not.”
“Hm.” A pause. “Maybe it’s your future husband you keep staring at, then.”
Utahime's eyes widened. "Shoko!" She berated her friend, though she couldn't quite figure out for herself why. It was true, after all.
Shoko’s mouth twitched faintly. "Why don't you go over there and talk to him?
"I..." Utahime furrowed her brow. "No, I...I'm just trying to enjoy my evening."
Gojo's laugh echoed throughout the room again. Even among sorcerers, he occupied space unfairly. Attention bent toward him instinctively, conversations loosening around the gravitational pull of his amusement. It irritated her more tonight than usual. Perhaps because this was supposed to be her evening, her graduation party.
Or perhaps because every time someone congratulated her on the engagement, she felt his gaze slide toward her, deliberate and singular. The feeling of having the Six Eyes on you was particular, after all, and Utahime had been feeling it all night.
Utahime took another sip of sake before she could stop herself.
The warmth had settled strangely beneath her ribs — not enough to blur her thoughts, only enough to soften the rigid edges she usually kept around them. The room felt louder because of it, brighter. It made everything else dangerously easier to swallow down, too.
As though summoned by the thought, Gojo glanced over. Their eyes met briefly.
His grin faltered, almost imperceptibly, then sharpened again into something unreadable.
Utahime looked away first, annoyed by the strange little shift in her pulse.
“You’re grumpier than I thought,” Shoko said mildly.
“I’m not—"
Before she could recover, the cushion beside her dipped suddenly under new weight.
“Talking about me?”
Gojo leaned carelessly into the opening between her and Shoko like he belonged there. His sunglasses sat pushed into his hair despite the hour, revealing bright eyes already fixed on Utahime with unsettling precision.
Shoko exhaled smoke directly toward him.
“Unfortunately.”
Gojo ignored her completely.
“You didn’t tell me,” he said.
Utahime’s fingers stilled around her cup.
The noise of the restaurant continued around them, but something in the space immediately tightened.
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re getting married.”
Oh.
Of course he would be direct about this. Gojo Satoru had no tact nor any sense of propriety or respect for anything. Everything was a sport to him and his brazen, impudent tongue.
Utahime set her cup down carefully.
“It hasn’t been formally announced yet.”
“But it’s true.”
Not a question.
“Yes.”
Gojo stared at her for a moment too long, his eyes strangely clouded. Something flickered across his expression before he smoothed it away.
“I think the word you’re looking for is congratulations,” Shoko smiled at him wryly. “On graduating and on the engagement.”
But Gojo just laughed, short and disbelieving.
“You said yes?”
The question landed strangely. Too sharp for curiosity. Too personal for politeness.
Utahime frowned. “It was decided.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Something unpleasantly warm curled low in her stomach.
Shoko, wisely, stood.
“I’m getting another drink,” she announced to no one in particular.
Gojo watched Shoko disappear into the crowd before looking back at Utahime.
“You really agreed to it?”
Utahime’s spine straightened automatically beneath the scrutiny.
“It’s an appropriate arrangement.”
“Appropriate,” he repeated, like the word itself offended him.
“Suguru is respected. The clans approve. Our techniques are compatible—”
“Oh, well,” Gojo interrupted lightly, “if the techniques are compatible.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You’re being rude.”
“And you’re talking about your own life like a mission briefing.”
Something flickered hot beneath her skin.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
His gaze sharpened immediately.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Utahime hated, suddenly, how aware she was of him sitting this close. One careless shift and his knee brushed hers beneath the low table. He didn’t move away.
Neither did she.
“You can do whatever you want,” she said quietly. “The rules don’t apply to you.”
For once, Gojo didn’t answer immediately.
The noise of the restaurant rushed strangely back into focus around them — someone singing badly, glass breaking somewhere near the kitchen, Suguru laughing softly in the distance.
Gojo leaned back slightly, studying her face with an expression she could not properly read.
“You think that’s a good thing?”
“Aren’t you always acting like it is?”
Utahime exhaled slowly through her nose.
The alcohol had made him harder to ignore. That was the real problem. Normally she could dismiss him as loud, arrogant, disruptive. Tonight he felt dangerously difficult to reduce into something simple.
“I don’t have the luxury of disappointing people,” she said at last.
Something shifted in his expression then. Not softened, but stilled. Like a stone fallen away, leaving behind a crack.
"So you'd rather disappoint yourself. They’re just using you, you know.”
Utahime stiffened. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
But he was unusually persistent today, his voice more serious than she’d ever thought him capable of. “They’re using both of you, actually. But you especially.”
Utahime did not think of herself as someone easily humiliated. Being from a small clan of little importance, in a society full of self-important people, she had endured worse things than gossip and thinly-veiled insults.
But Gojo's words - Gojo Satoru, of all people, needling her - feel like a slap to the face somehow.
“Watch yourself.” Her jaw tightened and she stood up to leave.
He chased after her, grabbing her by the wrist. “I’m only saying this because I—”
Utahime narrowed her eyes at him, forcefully pulling her hand back.
"It’s none of your concern.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, voice low. “So everyone keeps saying.”
Utahime felt something inside her shift—not break, not yield, but tilt. Dangerously.
“Do you think me a fool, Gojo? A mere pawn?”
Something in his expression softens—not teasing now. Almost earnest.
“In the end, we're all just pawns in their game. Even me"
She frowned, confused by his words, not quite knowing what to say. Silence stretched between them, pulled taut.
"For what it's worth," He finally said. "I think you deserve better than an arrangement."
Her chest tightened. “So does Suguru.”
That stopped him.
“Oh,” he said. And then, with a strange, crooked honesty, “Yeah. He does.”
The air shifted and something unsteady crept in. The words hung there, heavier than they should have been. He looked at her as if he wanted to say more, as if something pressed at the back of his teeth, unformed, dangerous.
The alcohol had made him harder to defend against. Usually she could dismiss him as arrogant, reckless, impossible. But tonight there was something frighteningly lucid beneath the performance, as though he’d decided, briefly, to stop hiding behind it.
Utahime hated how aware she suddenly was of his attention. Of how carefully he was looking at her.
But for every cutting, caustic remark he could have said, he simply—much to her surprise—stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Congratulations,” he told her, not sounding like he meant it one bit. “I hope he makes you very happy.”
For once, he didn't smile.
Utahime watched him leave with the uneasy sense that he had offered her something she did not yet know how to accept.
The village smelled wrong.
Utahime noticed it before they even crossed the torii gate. Not cursed energy exactly, but something older. Something that had settled too deeply into the wood and earth to be purified cleanly.
Fear left too long in the sun.
It clung damply to her skin as she followed Suguru up the narrow mountain path toward the scattered houses ahead. Cicadas screamed endlessly from the trees. Somewhere farther uphill, a child cried out once — sharp, sudden — before the sound vanished completely.
Beside her, Suguru said nothing.
The silence itself felt unnatural. Suguru had always known how to fill space without overwhelming it: a quiet observation, a dry remark, the occasional softness beneath his composure that made people instinctively lower their guard around him.
Now there was only stillness.
Utahime kept catching herself looking at him when he wasn’t paying attention. At the rigid line of his shoulders. The careful blankness in his expression. Even his exhaustion had changed shape somehow, compressed into something dense and carefully contained. These days, he didn't just look tired but dimmed.
Something had been wrong with him for months now.
Ever since he came back from the Star Plasma Vessel mission, half-dead and cut open.
And when Haibara died, it felt as though a part of them had gone with him. Gojo grew stronger and more unreachable for it, all bright arrogance stretched taut over something increasingly difficult to touch. Shoko stopped sleeping properly and started smoking more. Nanami left without ever really looking back. And Suguru—
Suguru disappeared even as he remained beside them, receding quietly into his silences and the hollow stillness settling behind his eyes. More and more often, people had to say his name twice before he answered. Sometimes Utahime caught him staring at nothing at all, expression emptied so completely it unsettled her once she noticed.
And yet the world around them continued moving as though none of it meant anything at all.
Missions. Reports. Debriefings.
More curses. More orders. More dead children.
She should’ve known this excursion wouldn’t be any different.
The path narrowed until the trees closed overhead, branches knotted together like fused ribs. Utahime adjusted the strap of her bow as the air grew heavier with each step.
Suguru finally spoke just before they reached the first house.
“Do you hear that?”
Utahime paused.
Cicadas.
Wind.
Something else beneath it: a thin, irregular sound, like labored breathing.
“Yes,” she said carefully.
Suguru nodded once.
“Don’t separate.”
The words landed softer than an order, closer to a warning.
She did as she was told.
Suguru exorcised the curse without needing her assistance or her technique. It was weak compared to him, barely a Grade 2. He killed it then swallowed it without hesitation.
But even after it was gone, the cursed energy remained—too much of it.
It lingered in the air, settled into the walls, seeped through the floorboards beneath their feet. There was a heaviness here that did not belong to the curse Suguru had just taken in.
Utahime frowned, scanning the room.
Suguru did too.
A look of quiet confusion passed between them.
Then one of the villagers stepped forward. After a moment's hesitation, he gestured for them to follow.
The girls inside couldn't have been older than ten.
One sat curled tightly against the wall, knees pressed to her chest. The other stood slightly in front of her, thin shoulders squared in an instinctive protectiveness no child should have needed to learn.
They were small, filthy, trembling things, but Utahime crouched down immediately to hold out her hand.
“It’s alright,” she said softly, but neither girl responded nor moved forward. Their eyes remained fixed somewhere over her shoulder, stark and wide-eyed, watching the villager.
Watching the villager.
“Those things have been causing trouble for months now,” the man muttered. “Strange deaths. Accidents.”
Utahime turned slowly.
“What did you say?”
The man sighed like this was an inconvenience he had already explained too many times.
“Those things,” he said again, more impatient now, “have been responsible for everything happening here.”
For a moment, Utahime simply stared at him.
Then understanding settled coldly into place.
The building was too isolated to serve any ordinary purpose, the structure too deliberate to be storage. Every board, every lock seemed designed not to keep something out, but to keep something in.
The villagers must have mistaken the source of the haunting. Fear made people irrational, after all. It latched onto whatever stood nearest, whatever looked strange enough, different enough, to carry the weight of blame. Suddenly, a memory surfaced unbidden: stories from her childhood. Villages blaming shrine maidens for droughts. Women accused of inviting misfortune simply because they were different, because fear needed a face.
“They’re cursed,” the man said. “We locked them up before more people died.”
Utahime looked closer. The restraints weren't recent. The bruises along one girl's wrists had faded and returned more than once. Layers of injury, old and new. The straw scattered across the floor was flattened from prolonged use. There was a bucket in one corner and food scraps on the other.
This had not lasted days.
“It’s okay,” Utahime repeated, but the words felt pathetic the moment they left her mouth. Nothing about this was okay.
They were just children.
Children who had manifested cursed techniques in a village with no language for what they were. Who had watched people die around them and been blamed for it. Who had been locked away because frightened adults found it easier to fear them than understand them.
Too young to control it.
Too innocent to deserve this.
“We’ll get you out of here,” came Utahime’s wobbly voice. One of the girls flinched when she reached for the lock.
“Wait!” The villager snapped. “What are you doing? Don’t let them out!”
He stepped forward abruptly, reaching to grab Utahime’s shoulders, but Suguru intercepted him before he could touch her.
“Tell me,” he asked the man conversationally, a vague smile plastered on. “Did any of you ever once consider they were children before deciding they were monsters?”
“I told you,” he snapped. “They're cursed.”
His gaze flicked toward the girls with open disgust.
“Isn't that what you're here for? To exorcise them?”
“The curse is gone,” Suguru answered, his voice unsettlingly calm.
“Then kill them.”
Silence.
Utahime felt her body go very still.
“You have your orders, don’t you?”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
The younger girl had started trembling even more. The older one shifted in front of her instinctively, shielding her with a body scarcely larger than the one she was trying to protect.
Utahime rose to her feet.
“Enough.”
She rarely raised her voice.
“The mission is complete,” she said. “These girls will be transferred to jujutsu custody. They are not your responsibility.”
The man ignored her completely.
“Your orders,” he demanded Suguru, “What were they?”
Suguru’s smile remained exactly where it had been, but something beneath it had disappeared.
The girls were watching him now.
"To execute the sorcerers responsible for the villagers' deaths."
The villager pointed toward the cage.
"Well?"
The word landed with ugly expectation.
"They killed people, didn't they?"
“No,” Utahime choked, a chill sliding down her spine. “No—there must be a mistake.”
“The Council sent you.”
“They didn’t know,” she shook her head. “Surely, they couldn’t have known.”
A sound abruptly cut through the tension—it was Suguru’s laugh, a broken, humorless sound.
Utahime felt it sit wrong in her chest.
He stood perfectly still, gaze lowered and expression unreadable, as though something on the ground had finally arranged itself into a shape he could no longer ignore.
“They knew.”
“Suguru,” she said carefully.
When he raised his head, the look he gave her made her stomach drop. His cursed energy thickened with a slow, deliberate heaviness, almost enough to make her feel suffocated by it.
“They didn’t even blink when Amanai died.” His voice was eerily calm once more. "Or when Satoru or I almost did.They didn't care enough not to send Haibara—”
Utahime’s fingers tightened around her sleeve.
“That’s not fair.”
“I thought—” A short breath, another hollow laugh. “I thought there was a line somewhere. That there was a point where someone would finally say enough.”
His gaze drifted—not to the villagers, not to the cage—but somewhere unfixed, like he couldn’t decide where horror was supposed to land.
“I kept thinking maybe there was something I wasn't seeing,” he said quietly. “Some reason it all made sense from above.”
His jaw tightened once, then relaxed.
“Every time someone gets hurt, we're told it's unfortunate. Every time someone dies, they say it couldn't be helped. They always have a word for it: mistake, oversight, duty, necessity.”
The words fell quietly between them. Utahime swallowed thickly, her hand clenching around her sleeve so tightly her knuckles hurt.
“But those making the decisions are never the ones paying for them.” He continued, and he sounded so unlike himself that it made Utahime’s skin crawl. His exhaustion seemed to have burned through his anger entirely and arrived somewhere distant and colder. He looked at the villager with a long, exhausted disappointment so profound it had begun hardening into contempt.
“We spend our lives swallowing curses for them." His mouth twisted faintly. “And this is what we protect?”
It was all Utahime could do to whisper, her eyes glistening and wide with horror.
“No.”
The word came out too thin, caught halfway in her throat.
“You don’t mean this.”
For a moment, Suguru's gaze lingered on her. There was no anger there. Instead, he looked tired.
Endlessly tired.
“I’m done being blindly devoted to this broken system.”
“Suguru.”
“They don’t deserve this, Utahime.” He said softly, and the gentleness of it shook her more than any shouting would have. “And neither do we.”
Something in her chest constricted painfully.
For one awful moment, she understood.
But—
“You can’t kill civilians.”
“Why?” he asked, and the question landed like a blow. Not because he was challenging or demanding her, but because–Utahime realized with dawning horror–he truly wanted an answer.
“They may not be innocent," she said carefully. "But they’re afraid, too.”
“And we’re sacrificed to that fear over and over again. I thought you of all people would understand.”
“Understand?” Utahime whispered in disbelief.
“Our marriage. Your technique.” Suguru’s voice rose steadily. “Kyudo is meditation, not violence. Yet they would have us execute a child?”
Her hands shook as she drew her bow and raised her arrow, pulling the string taut.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t make me do this.”
Something in his expression softened.
“You’re too kind, Utahime,” he said quietly. “I’ve always admired that about you.”
“Please,” she said again, smaller. “I can’t lose another friend.”
Then, after a pause:
“Come with me.”
He spoke in that same, soft voice from earlier, when he told her to stay close–softer than an order, closer to a warning.
Utahime blinked back tears, still holding her bow tight and unable to speak. Her knuckles were turning white with the force of it.
“Come with me,” he repeated, and his voice wavered, just slightly.
No one had ever asked her that before.
Not:
Do this
Be useful,
Obey,
Endure.
Come with me.
She was crying now, tears streaking silently down her face.
Sweet, sensitive Suguru.
The boy she thought she knew well enough to trust with her future.
The friend she used to laugh quietly with, the one she turned to when Gojo got to be too much and Shoko too little. The person who basked in silence with her when everyone else drifted off into a cacophony of noise.
The Suguru standing in front of her now, speaking like that life had never existed.
“No,” she whispered.
Pain flickered briefly across Suguru’s face—immediately buried and chased away by resolve.
“Then I’m sorry. For everything.”
In a blur of cursed energy, something sharp tore across her face, and the world exploded sideways in pain.
The last thing Utahime saw before darkness swallowed her whole was Suguru standing in the center of the ruined clearing, the two girls gathered silently behind him.