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When Getou Suguru murders an entire village and then his own parents, the world shifts. It’s imperceptible at first, the slightest change in axis, a day becomes just a few seconds shorter, winter becomes a few moments longer, and a part of Gojo Satoru withers and dies.
He wanders the school grounds listlessly, replaying the words, the report, wanting someone to leap from the bushes and call it a prank, tell him it’s a joke. Waiting for Suguru to throw a bucket of water at his head and call him stupid for falling for it.
Nothing happens. There’s only quiet, wind whistling a little and the sound footsteps on stone. A pair of brown boots enter the edge of his vision and he stops walking, head still hung low.
Gojo raises his head and comes face to face with Utahime, hair in two braids over her shoulder, a rake in her hands. Her expression is blank, For a moment he thinks she’s going to hit him with it, and if she did he’d probably let her, just for the chance to feel something. Instead, Utahime looks him up and down, her lips tilting downwards into a judgemental frown, before she presses the rake into his hands.
“Come with me, since you’re doing nothing else, the courtyard needs work.”
Gojo isn’t made for menial labour. His hands were made for holier things, to touch the fabric of space itself and weave it to his design. He should laugh and say it’s a servant’s job, a gardener’s role, not for someone like him, strong beyond comprehension, unbeatable, unbreakable. But when she steps away, he follows.
Utahime doesn’t say a word to him as they enter the courtyard, orange and yellow leaves scattered at the base of the magnificent oak trees. She grabs her own rake and starts to gather a pile and he soon follows suit and he loses track of time. Gojo pulls in the bundles of leaves, listening to the rustle, the crunch. He compares them morbidly to bones being crushed, and wonders when that joke will stop being funny.
To be fair it really isn’t funny. Or it shouldn’t be anyways. What seventeen, eighteen year old thinks murder is funny? It’s only funny when you’ve never experienced it before, when you’ve never locked arms with its personification, shared meals with its ghostly image. Gojo isn’t laughing anymore, he doesn’t have the energy.
He stares at the stone tiles in the courtyard as he mindlessly sweeps. They’re frustratingly neat, perfectly aligned. If Utahime thinks his act of stomping on a corner of the courtyard, causing a four metre radius of tiles to crack and crumble is childish and irresponsible, she doesn’t say anything. She simply tugs him by the back of his jacket and leads him to another part of the yard, and sets him to work on another scattered trail of autumn leaves.
No words pass between them.
It’s better this way, Gojo can barely feel the breeze on his skin, let alone hear and focus on any conversation. The colours feel too bright, too vibrant and full of life. His head hurts, everything aches and doesn’t ache at the same time and he feels lethargic in his own skin, even as his fingers tremble around the rake, itching with the need to swing it at some target, splinter it in two. Like that will solve anything. Like beating away at stationary targets will turn back the clock.
By the time they finish the sun has already started to set. Utahime pries the rake from his hands and once again gestures for him to follow. He really shouldn’t. He has better things to do, like sit for four hours straight and try to change the past.
But her voice reaches him anyways. Was it always so smooth?
“Let’s go inside,” Utahime says, hair looser than it was at the start of the day, nodding towards the rooms, “I’ll give you some chocolates.”
The bribe is unnecessary. He follows again, trailing behind her like a lost dog towards the dining hall. She stops at the edge of a table and turns to press her palms on his shoulders, pushing down lightly. He notices her eyebrows raise, and her hands move off him a little slower than usual. Did she notice? That there’s a wall between him and every other little thing in the universe? A wall that will never come down for as long as he lives? Utahime sits him down on a chair by the kitchen counter and hands him a small bag of sweets. Colourful, swirls of sugar stare back at him, peering over the tops of his sunglasses. He wonders why Suguru never developed a love for sweet things, when the curses he swallowed were always so vile.
“Eat,” She says firmly, hands on her hips in front of him, peering down, “Aren’t they your favourites?”
Gojo looks down at the bag again. They were. He’s had an obsession with these specific rainbow coloured hard candies for a few months now.
“How did you know?” He asks, a little numb still.
She huffs, “Because I’m a good senpai.”
He takes a candy and pops it in his mouth, exhaling at the sweetness and then he laughs. It starts small, a quiet chuckle as he rolls the candy over his tongue, his shoulders start to shake a little as he realises how absurd it all is. He’s eighteen, his best friend just murdered a village and he’s spent his whole life killing monsters. He’s eighteen, and he died once already outside a shrine, throat destroyed by a maniac without an ounce of cursed energy. He’s eighteen, and he’s sitting in the cafeteria with a brown paper bag of his favourite shitty sweets in hand, given to him by the girl he’s always made fun of for being weak.
Gojo is crying.
He only noticed when he tastes salt on his candy. He blinks, once, twice, as if surprised. And then someone is running their fingers through his hair, and he leans forward into the touch, closing his eyes, letting it fade to black. He presses his forehead against soft, silky material, and feels the comforting weight of arms around his shoulders, pulling him close, the murmur of comfort above his ear and the delicate hand sweeping through his hair.
Gojo doesn’t move from that spot for an hour.
When he finally does, there’s a small wet patch on Utahime’s clothes, and half a dozen candies rolling on the floor from when his grip had slipped. She pats his head, “You should take a nap.”
He’s powerless to refuse, and lets her pull him up, and guide him to his room. Gojo steps in and Utahime turns away and the moment he feels the warmth from her recede he panics. His hand shoots out to grab the edge of her sleeve.
Utahime pauses and turns slightly back to face him, looking down curiously at his hand.
“Tea,” He says in a rush, finding a reason, any reason, “I want green tea.”
She huffs, “Fine, but just this once.”
Gojo is placated by the knowledge that she’ll come back, and lets go of her. She disappears back down the hall towards the kitchens and he has nothing to do but stare at the wall. Suguru used to live just a couple doors over. He grimaced, something sour works its way up his throat and he shoves another candy down his throat.
Gojo lies down on his stomach, practically falling into the bed, burying his face into the pillow. He turns his head outwards a moment later, and starts to count the number of ants crawling on the other side of his window and by the time he’s done that Utahime is back. He feels her cursed energy before he sees the hem of her clothes. A mug of hot tea is set on the bedside table, and she doesn’t seem to realise he’s still awake because she drapes a blanket over his shoulders, and pries the bag of sweets out of his hands.
He stays still, breathing in the chamomile that sticks to her hair. It’s only when she moves to leave again that he calls out, “Utahime.”
She jumps a little, “You–! I thought you were sleeping.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You do, it’s not healthy to stay away for so long.”
“Don’t want to.”
“You really should, just for a few hours.”
“Why?”
“You need to rest.”
“I don’t.”
“Everyone does, hurry up and sleep,” She says, and then seems to understand what he’s trying to ask, what he can’t find the right words for, “I’ll read my book here with you, so drink your tea and then go to bed.”
It’s acceptable, he decides, and props himself up on his elbows to drink the tea, scrunching his nose a little in anticipation. Gojo doesn’t even like tea, it’s gross and bitter and the least relaxing thing he can think of but he’d asked for it because he knows she makes her own tea. And he wanted something homemade, with care, and caution. Gojo sips the hot beverage and tastes honey, way too much honey for it to be Utahime’s preference and he takes a bigger sip, letting the liquid warm his throat, his chest and stomach and he drains it all in one go.
He flops back down onto the bed, head turned so he can see her, sitting in a chair by the window and reading.
“You put honey it in,” Gojo accuses.
She hums, not even looking up at him when she answers, “Because I know you don’t like bitter things.”
Oh.
He doesn’t have a response to that. It takes him far too long to understand why she would remember, why she would really care. He doesn’t realise it in this moment, too caught up in suppressing the unfamiliar emotion rising in his chest to recognise its meaning. Too caught up bathing in the attention and affection to go any deeper.
“Read to me?” He asks, selfishly again, “I’ll go to sleep I promise.”
Utahime looks like she’s about to deny his request but then sighs, and shifts her chair closer to the bed. She reads her book of fiction, something about a boy on an adventure, in some distant far away land, where he fights dragons and rescues princesses and all Gojo think about is how cheesy it all is, and how good her voice sounds to his ears, soft and calm.
Gojo Satoru falls asleep to siren reading him fairy tales.
And years and years and years later, he looks across the table, at the short distance between them and sees the two mugs set out.
Utahime looks up, a scar crosses part of her face, a reminder that he’s not as all-reaching as he likes to think he is, that there’s always a chance he could be too late one day.
“Gojo, are you listening?” She prompts, irritated at his incessant tapping.
He grins, “Nope! It’s all so boring, Utahime, you’re terrible at giving these reports.”
She clicks her tongue and levels him with a vicious glare, and he preens a little at the undivided attention her gets in that moment. And then it’s gone, Utahime turns her head away from him and continues to make her report.
Gojo sits there knowing that he picks all he wrong words, all the wrong phrases and emotions to spill out into the open, and says all the worst things, speaks about everything but the one thing he truly feels.
He can smell the honey mixed in with the tea from here. It barely passes for tea with how sweet it is but it’s for him, it was made specifically with him in mind. Utahime is not a traditionally affectionate person when it comes to him, he knows this. But he also knows that the extra mugs of sweet tea set aside, the handful of sweets or the occasional leftover cakes dropped by his office through the years are as good as a building being lit up with the words saying I’m here, I care about you.
But Gojo is fool. And all he can do is speak in circles, and then pray and pray and pray that she knows it means I love you.