Chapter Text
ᗧ•••
There are a lot of things to say about being hurled into the body of a dead alive twelve-year-old. None of them are particularly positive.
To start with, Itaru has gotta give himself credit in the competition of general mental unwellness.
From gnawing gender dysphoria his entire existence, to his shitty, transphobic parents, Itaru has the proper starter pack for depression and anxiety disorders, and all the fun stuff that come with it. Like, for example, debilitating insecurities in the way he walks — which is so random. Of all things to be insecure of! Now, if only the insecurity would evaporate just because he treated it like an insignificant pest, then maybe Itaru wouldn’t need any therapy at the end of the day.
Itaru was hardly nineteen when he died, still a youngin, so he had a plenty of time to save up and finally hire some quality psychologist! Yay! And then life threw him in a real big truck to make sure that whatever hopes and dreams Itaru had left were thoroughly shattered and minced along with his bones and flesh, so he is back to square one.
Save up for therapy. Yay!
Itaru would laugh if he didn’t want to cry so fucking bad.
“Shit,” the arm of some lanky twelve-year-old he possessed rubbed Itaru’s eyes. Oh, why did they burn? Oh, that’s because Itaru was starting to tear up. Not good.
Itaru sat up on his bed, hiding his eyes the whole way through as the mattress crooned at him.
“What are you, a little bitch?” Itaru whispered to himself. “If you’re gonna be a man, act a man.”
Raucous laughter bubbled up in Itaru’s throat and spilled out, a little wet but— whatever.
Itaru looked around the room, seeking a place to focus on instead of his newfound gift from fate.
The place had blisteringly white walls, not cracked, patched or anything. Just new, perfectly painted walls. There weren’t any posters, or hints of toys or video games, the things Itaru would expect a preteen with a normal childhood to have. It was perfectly clean — there was a desk and there was a nice yellow lamp on it. Underneath, a shelf, and next to it, a black school bag. Itaru didn’t open the shelf yet, but he was entirely confident that it was filled with books and papers, all color-coded and in order of the alphabet. This place was hella clean — not a speck of dust in sight.
Anyways, now the winning question; what was Itaru’s personal opinion on the room?
“A nice one, actually,” Itaru swerved his head this way and that, bobbing his head in approval. “But either this kid had no personality, or he had OCD, or he was poor, or he wasn’t allowed any freedom.”
A splendid set of possibilities.
In case it’s the first one, or the first second one — damn, all that was about to change. Hopefully, he hasn’t been diagnosed, because Itaru could not be bothered with manifesting an entire mental disorder. He didn’t want any more in his collection, truly, your honor!
For the second last one, poverty, Itaru hasn’t seen the rest of the house or met the people in it — but he was soon to find out. Whatever it is, he could deal. Woo! Exciting!
The door was there, so if what turned out to be true was the last option, then maybe there was some respect for Itaru’s privacy, at the very least. A good sign — take whatever you get, you know?
Itaru didn’t know which option of the four he concluded up was better. But did it really matter? Itaru was alive! Or dead, just not in a way that mattered now, ha-ha.
He should probably learn the kid’s name. With any luck, he also had a diary, but little boys don’t tend to do diaries, right? Itaru didn’t grow up like a boy, he went based off of what he knew of pop culture and his sexist father.
Itaru looked into the shelf, and it was indeed all very neatly arranged — no diaries to be found. Only a name on his textbooks.
Geto Suguru. In Japanese.
Well, well, well.
Suguru placed the book back into its place. Gotta respect the kid’s efforts.
He knew this name from somewhere. Somewhere… anime. Jujutsu Kaisen.
Hold on. Suguru’s eyes widened, and his hand stopped rubbing his nape.
“Isn’t that the racist…?”
Geto Suguru was a fucking mass murderer, and that white haired snack’s unofficial boyfriend. The white-haired snack who Itaru used to be so down bad for because Itaru used to get, like, no bitches, so pixels were the way. Hopefully, with some luck, that’ll change? Especially since he was in the place of that unofficial boyfriend?
C’mon, Gege Akutami-sama, you have to give him at least this much! Suguru could beg really prettily!
Wow, Itaru was way more Gojo-like than Suguru-like, he felt. Whatever.
Huffing out a laugh, Suguru closed the cabinet and stretched.
Time to… do shit. In front of other people. That’s how you become successful, yeah?
Well, no! Introducing Suguru’s darnest shittiest opponent — Soshal Aaaangziety! Or, if you’re dyslexic, Miss Social Anxiety!
Let’s go and meet the parents, as they say!
ᗧ•••
Oh Hell No.
Suguru got up to meet his mother, and what he met instead was the stink of alcohol and a slurred, incoherent noise he wasn’t sure even came from her throat.
He took one, two looks at her in the kitchen, and walked out.
Not dealing with this today, dying was already such a handful!
With a track record of two shitty mothers, Suguru felt confident enough with his experience to say this — he is done.
This? The woman that’s supposed to be his introduction into feminism? That’s his mom? Are you sure?
Excuuuse meee, but she has been vetoed by his mental council. She has been strrrripped of her girlboss rights. Suguru could find a better one by himself on the playground in a gaggle of five-year-old girls, let’s be serious, ma’am.
He is dead! Dead, Akutami-sama! Please don’t make Itaru have to supportively hold an adult’s hand into sobriety as an annoying twelve-year-old!
Some other questions popped up, of course. Where was his father? Was he worse?
But that didn’t matter to Suguru that much. He didn’t love her enou— wait.
…His heart sank.
Now, Suguru praised himself on being a big, brave man, who could be completely honest with himself. And that painful twinge inside his heart? That was a sign of a lie he was telling himself.
So, Suguru loved his mother.
Yes, that sounded right.
Should Suguru spend some time on introspecting why he loved her when he knew her for two seconds, seeing her in what he hopes is her worst possible state, since today?
Suguru knew what his answer would be, so he sat back down on his bed and scrunched his nose.
Being honest with yourself is unpleasant.
He loved her because whenever he looked at her, his little hindbrain refused to acknowledge the very obvious differences in appearance between his previously awful later dead mother and this kid’s drunk mother. The impressions coalesced together, like two brooks meeting to form one, so when he looked at her, his instinct was to bring her water before being repelled by logical thought of I do not know this woman. As for his old mother… whatever affection he carried for her should have long died and withered, any extra input unnecessary. But some part of him, now, loved the one who stood in her role, and it made all those previous feelings resurface. Maybe that twelve year old kid within him wasn’t dead dead after all.
It was Itaru’s memories in Suguru’s body, and what is the difference between body and mind, really?
Oh. Wait.
Suguru harrumphed, sticking his finger nerdily as he corrected himself innately. Because actually, in Jujustu Kaisen, there is an entire technique called Soul Manipulation! So maybe body and mind aren’t really the same! That could actually matter!
Giggling, Suguru lay down, splayed out in his bed. It’d be funny if this woman was a reincarnation of his former now dead mother. What’s the coincidence, an entire family of truck-kun victims. Imagine that.
Suguru breathed out a laugh. That has potential for a batshit Japanese manga title— My Entire Family Was Reincarnated Into A Manga?! And I’m a Mass Murder Destined to Kill Them?!?
Ha, ha, ha.
Exciting, surely.
Ha, ha… ha.
ᗧ•••
Suguru couldn’t believe that he forgot that twelve-year-olds went to school. Nineteen-year-old Suguru had done shit with his life; his bouts of Mariana Trench-deep depressive episodes left him feeling more inadequate than his acute down badness for his little 2D blorbos. Suguru couldn’t help but look back and think, what the fuck was I doing? But when he noticed that thought, he focused on trying to forgive rather than condemn, because that’s what all those professionals on YouTube kept yapping on about, and the shame became lighter on his shoulders. The mantle of his living as this Geto Suguru became easier as well, because, with his acceptance of his past uselessness, the expectations he made up for himself dissolved a little like ocean foam.
It’s Monday when Geto Suguru is awakened by his red-eyed mother, a sure sign of non-sobriety, to go to school. Feeling stiff and sadled, Suguru made a muffled noise of assent and yawned before looking into his drawer.
It would be helpful if he knew what his school uniform looked like. He supposed he could take a guess, surely there would be an emblem of some sort on the jacket, and black trousers was a worldwide norm, yeah? A tie, maybe?
Once he figured out what to wear through a lot of searching and comparison, he went to the kitchen and found his mother, deciding to make sure one last time if he looked put-together at all. After receiving a dismissive hum, he grinned triumphantly and made a quick stop at the fridge for some buttered toast. Breakfast, hooray! Suguru put the last of the bread in his mouth and opened the door to finally embark on his journey to… school.
Yay. School. Back there, huh? Haha… well, it could be worse. Education is a privilege, after all, and is not not available in some parts of the world at all. If Suguru looked at it like that, then perhaps it wouldn’t seem like his anxiety was trying to eat him.
Suguru waited around, searching for students with a similar uniform to follow, and once he found them, he began his trek.
Staring at his feet and using the kids in his peripheral vision as directions towards his first day out in a school full of people he hardly knew, possibly with friends he didn’t remember at all, Suguru mentally steeled himself with a mantra of ‘education is a privilege’.
Education is a privilege, education is a privilege, education is a privilege…
That’s right! Suguru breathed out of his nose like a bull, closing his eyes and fixing on a stiff, polite smile as he clamped on his rising anxiousness. Fake it ‘til you make it. Usually works. Look, he wasn’t even that nervous anymore!
This Geto Suguru lived in the countryside full of greenery and fresh, carbon-less, oxygenated air. The roads he walked through were sided by lots of trees, rosy bushes and the buzzing of wildlife. Every car he saw quickly rumbled past him and disappeared down the roadway, and again, the timer of fifteen minutes started before another car came around. This place was also really… beautiful. Suguru watched the morning sun rise and peek at him through the horizon in demure greeting, his jaw dropping at the beauty of the fluttering green grass, the yellow-lined burst of sunshine painting everything a honey hue, the azure sky and its lazy wisps of clouds. Not once did Suguru want to stop and admire the quiet majesticity of this landscape. It seemed to have been inserted into reality straight from a painting from a true professional.
The countryside was truly wonderful.
Then, something bit into his leg.
Ah, yes, Suguru thought as he looked down in alarm at his ankle.
As of yesterday, he lived in the fictional world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
What wasn’t wonderful about it were the ugly little things that Itaru remembered to be called curses. These existed because people couldn’t stop suffering, so they spitefully brought that idea right back to them and made them even suffer more.
Itaru wiggled his leg, squinting at the cockroach-like curse. It did remind him of a cockroach, it was just big and had large human eyes with red scleras.
A mental image of his mother popped up, and his past life father.
Suguru suppressed his snort in his hand.
Alcoholism is a disease. It’s not funny to mock alcoholics, some of whom are actually nice people and try to become better everyday. Actually, quite rude. Unacceptable, even.
Suguru crouched down, his task of finding the way to school neglected in favor of this ugly, bitey cockroach guy. He clasped his hands on each side of the cockroach curse’s jaw and pulled, successfully detaching it from his leg after a couple of tries.
Suguru held the curse up by the back of its neck as its six little legs wiggled around, trying to find solid ground. An ill-fated endeavor, because it likely wouldn’t see another day as long as its captor had anything to say about it.
Suguru hummed, observing the curse. Geto Suguru was a special grade in canon, right? He had this cursed technique that allowed him to turn curses into spheres and then eat them, although they tasted so nasty he turned racist and homicidal at the end. Understandable.
Looking at it superficially, this way and that, Suguru wasn’t able to find any leads on what to do next. Suguru didn’t really trust his inner self, because his gut feeling was often more wrong than not. However, weren’t cursed techniques found because sorcerers just kinda… knew what they were supposed to be doing?
Suguru sighed, and decided to turn off his frontal cortex for once.
With half-lidded, unfocused eyes, Suguru faded into a state of pure existence and nothing else.
Come on. Observe the way air feels on your skin, ignore the cricket-like sounds that the curse is screaming, organically breathe in the cold air and exhale it hot. Close your eyes, and sink in deeper, until the sensations rule out one by one and the only thing you can observe at all…
Is this black mass. Like a black hole, deeply nested in the space under Suguru’s brain, with a heart of its own that beat, beat, beat. One he knew to identify as cursed energy.
It held knowledge in it. In a language that couldn’t be accurately recorded in any alphabet, any word, it basically said something that translated to hello, old friend. Do you remember me? but there was a question behind the question, light behind the dark, a face behind the apple. I, as the narrator, could spend days listing out every single question it was asking Itaru in such a compact, simple form, but its multifaceted meaning would just be lost on you. Not through any fault of your own, but because it was a question that was asked not to you, dear reader, but to the nineteen-year-old man behind Geto Suguru.
Itaru just came to this world a day ago, for Akutami’s sake— cursed energy was an entity unknowable, untraceable to him, but when confronted like this? By the very eldritch power that shaped his entire definition, like a god reaching out to its chosen one?
Yes, Itaru said something in that same language, something that translated to this. Hi, to you, again.
Suddenly, several truths came to light.
As the population rose, so did the population of sorcerers. Not simply because of the way that things were, but because humanity was an undoubtedly powerful force — perhaps more powerful than was wise. If it could birth curses from its negative influence, then the opposite could happen.
Humanity birthed curses, and it birthed cursed techniques. The higher the human population, the greater the curse population. And finally, the greater the god population.
And those gods, which were born through the absence of suffering, resided inside the bellies of humanity, at the epicenter of cursed energy production, existing to imbue their human chosen ones with their divine powers to protect themselves and their communities.
Cursed Techniques are man-borne gods living in sorcerers’ bodies, existing solely to defend their mothers and fathers, as natural opposition against curses.
Suguru would smile if he felt any kind of connection to his body right now. So wholesome.
Itaru? Suguru? Whatever the name, it’s your cursed technique that really defines who you are in this universe. This is why there is no other person in this whole world who has your Cursed Technique, or combination of Cursed Techniques, while you’re still alive.
Cursed energy likes to recycle itself, huh?
An answering smile in the dark of coy assent. Recycling? You could call it that.
The swirling mass of power that Suguru had metaphysically inside himself hasn’t slowed or hurried at any point at all. It looked so constant, so eternal, so unchanging, that it forced Suguru to forget his worries, whatever they were. Here, none of that mattered. Here, Geto Suguru was getting to know his Cursed Technique.
So if you’re a god, then what am I? Your priest? Suguru presumed curiously.
You? His Cursed Technique answered, or something like that. You are my shrine. My domain.
Domain? What a particular choice of wording.
An impression of a grin. It is exactly why you think it is.
Finally being given the revelation that he needed from the god inside his body, Suguru was brought out of his trance. His eyes flickered open, noting that the smiling morning sun had risen a few degrees over, and it felt like it was welcoming him back into the outside world. The lightness of air upon Suguru’s skin felt entirely different from the sticky, dense sensation inside his mind, the warmth of the sun’s kiss on his pale cheeks feather-light and softly adoring, whereas inside himself, it was… intense.
The curse inside Suguru’s fist has stopped resisting, probably a long time ago, too. Its legs were still and hugged in on themselves.
Suguru’s other hand, tremblingly, rose to meet his heart. He wasn’t having hallucinations, right? He wasn’t drugged?
But his heart gave him a “liar, liar, pants on fire” twinge. Suguru was trying to fool himself into ignorance because he felt insecure where he stood.
What does any of this change?
Suguru now knew what a cursed technique was in-depth, having been given the definition by his own, however crazy that sounded — because it must have known that Suguru wasn’t of this world and needed some guidelines. Did this happen regularly? Wouldn’t have this been mentioned at some point, that Cursed Techniques communicate with their shrines? Or maybe they don’t, because gods don’t really talk with their places of worship? Or do they? God, Suguru felt like VSauce, he wasn’t sure of a single thing. It’s like when he was introduced to Physics in high school all over again — it was a miracle he even passed.
You know what— you know what? Whatever, none of that mattered when he had a small curse in his hand that needed to be dealt with ASAP.
Because Suguru knew what to do now, thanks to this impromptu meeting.
The curse in his arm transformed into a ball of swirling water. It looked like it should have glowed a little, but its glow was overtaken by the soft sunshine — dispersed, made into obsidian. He knew his next action, then.
Suguru prepared himself to taste vomit and plopped the spherical object on his tongue, scrunching his mouth and struggling to fit the shape into his mouth.
Finally, Suguru’s mouth encompassed the entire thing, and… instead of the horror he was expecting, Suguru… got an undeniably tasty delicacy.
It tasted like heaven on the tip of his tongue, a rush of energy liquidated and dispersed the moment it reached the back of Suguru’s mouth. The taste then went down his esophagus, and left Suguru with a deliriously fine aftertaste that made him want to jump and hum with delight, so he did. If there was a single person there, he had no doubt he would be garnering looks, but Suguru made sure to check for any audiences or windows before doing a happy little wiggle dance.
“That! Was! Amazing!” Suguru whisper-screeched to himself in utter ecstasy, crouching with a big grin. “Wow! I thought curses were supposed to taste terrible, but this? This is— great! I could survive like this, for sure!”
Mood uplifted, Suguru jumped up to his full height and continued to lackadaisically walk, a jolly bounce in his step, before he came onto a crosswalk. That was the moment he realized that he completely lost the two students that were supposed to be his gateway to school when he decided to exorcize that delicious cockroach curse. Ew, what a freaky thought.
Suguru looked one way. Then, another. Then back from where he came from, coming to the conclusion that he didn’t even know how to go back home.
No phone in his pocket, no Google Maps to help him out.
“Sssshit.”
ᗧ•••
Suguru found himself ankle-deep, shoe-less at a brook on the edge of the nearby woods.
The grass wasn’t very tall here, seeing he was currently chilling in a massive park that spanned across acres and was well looked after, which opened a sight to a beautiful cityscape of sunlight lining the edges of concrete rooftops and greenery on its edges, where the hills rose. It hasn’t rained in a few days, judging by the dry stones lining the rivulet, so they became the perfect bench to enjoy the weather on without fear he would look like he had shat his pants after.
Suguru’s hands were busy with a scrapbook he found at the base of his rucksack, hidden well beneath packs of preserving plastic-covered textbooks, filled with drawings and sketches of animals and Pokémon characters. Reminded Suguru that the kid used to be, in fact, around twelve years old. Made his heart squeeze unpleasantly, because he was given the body of the kid to take care of in his stead.
Itaru hoped that, wherever this Geto Suguru was, he’d live a happier life than this one. Without these cruel techniques and without alcohol destroying his caretakers. He seemed to be a good child, clean and responsible, before Itaru took his place. That’s one for his flourishing impostor syndrome, gang.
“Rest in peace, soldier,” Suguru called, pushing back onto his hands, to lose himself in the infinite depths of the blue, blue sky for a bit. It has been a tiring day, after all.
Until he felt the scrapbook… slip.
Suguru got up a second too late — the book had already begun swiftly running along with the brook into the woods when he rose onto his elbows. He bounced up on his feet, and neglecting his rucksack, he dashed right after the lost book like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, hissing from the hot stones underneath his bare feet but unrelenting. He skipped between the smoothest rocks, careful not to skid while also not losing speed or distance away from his goal, bending to reach for its plastic cover and catching it — yes! — yet it still escaped his grasp, just without the plastic cover.
Double shit. If anything remained of this book by the end of this venture, Suguru would conclude he was eternally blessed.
The small river curved, then it curved another way, and with it did the precious, fragile scrapbook, so Suguru’s route had no choice but to assimilate. There was no way in Hell that Itaru would lose the only heirloom he had inherited from the boy called Suguru, so he chased it like police dogs were on his lead the entire way into the forest, looming over the plain like defensive wooden golems.
Suguru kept going until, finally, the scrapbook stuck to its riverbed along with the heavier sediment it carried right before the brook ended and was, instead, sucked in by a pipe. Panting and huffing from doing all that running, Suguru kneeled across the channel and pulled the book out, sitting on the rock above it after he did.
The moment he sat, he quietly cursed, because the rock was slippery. Code word for muddy. He didn’t notice because his attention has clung to the sketchbook for so long that he tunnel-visioned.
Suguru stood up in the brook, checking his ass. It couldn’t be seen very well because of the dark color of his pants, but if someone was interested…
“It definitely looks like I shat myself.”
Groaning in frustration, Suguru slowly sat back down. It already happened, what could he do now? Suguru checked the scrapbook for any damage besides the obvious, and surprisingly, nothing! Could be some lost pages, but this Suguru kid liked to keep everything in pristine conditions, so no wonder this book could last for so long. He might actually be blessed, if not taking into account the muddy fiasco. At least the book was actually in one piece, just a bit crumpled, wet and mucky on the edges — nothing that the sun and some time left alone couldn’t fix.
Suguru sighed, gently holding the scrapbook in one hand and rubbing his forehead with the other. How stressful.
The soles of his feet pulsed in pain, and he looked over to see that it was scarred and bloody. Some of the rocks might not have been so smooth, then.
“Oh, shit,” Suguru cursed, keeping his feet underwater. “Won’t that get infected? Fuckkk…”
Suguru didn’t like to swear in such huge chunks normally, but excuse him — he was having a really shitty time right now.
All of a sudden, Suguru was struck with an awareness that numbed his frustration to near zero.
He veered around to see a girl— a boy? They were wearing both a skirt and pants, which seemed like a deliberate choice, and a general androgynous face — with a stark black bowl-cut, blush red eyes and many, many beauty marks that covered their face and hands like an inverted night sky. They seemed around Suguru’s age, and they handled a massive, leafless tree branch taller than themselves in their hands like a staff.
“Hey,” they greeted, hands on top of one another on their staff as they repetitively pushed and pulled it, to and fro.
“Hey,” Suguru answered immediately, decidingly not thinking about what he looked like right now. A boy with a gross scrap book with gross trousers, feet in the river, sitting on muddy stones — he probably looked homeless right now. Why was everything going so badly today?
But the person didn’t seem to make a habit of overthinking as much as he did, instead taking his acknowledgement as an invitation to approach and sit right next to him like it was their personal right to do so.
Suguru shuffled away for their comfort, following whatever appropriate conduct with strangers he had learnt, trying to make space for them, before they settled thigh-to-thigh on the filthy rocks along the damned brook which he might just as well dub that — the ‘Damned Brook’. The preteen took off their Barbie crocs and put them in the way of the stream, cleaning them manually, swirling the water inside the shoes and scrubbing it away.
Suguru spotted a large, skinny spider crawling up their arm as they worked, and he thought to point that out or pluck it out himself until they slapped it on the spot and brushed it down their arm for the channel to take.
Oh shit, Suguru realized, suppressing his jolt. They are cool.
And in ways Suguru couldn’t even begin to be. Suguru was sitting next to the embodiment of the forest they were in. A fairy? Do fairies exist in Jujutsu Kaisen? That would be too European, no?
He wanted to think that he would make a fool of himself by starting up a conversation, and then watch the train wreck happen — for some masochistic, anxiety-affiliated reason — but it wasn’t like that at all. This person next to him, who was cleaning their Barbie crocs so thoroughly while gallivanting around the forest without a smidge of fear of bears, or murderers, or nettles in bushes, had an absolute sort of calmness to them. Within the peaceful forest, alongside the brook, barefoot, they didn’t stand out like Suguru felt he did. Their breath was slow, their eyes were focused and half-lidded, and they didn’t feel afraid about looking like they shat themselves or the fact that they were wearing Barbie crocs as a twelve-year-old, who could probably have moved onto plain crocs, or something. This person looked entirely homemade and home-like.
It was obvious that they were in total acceptance and assurance with whom they were as a person, and they were fine with that.
Geto Suguru really wanted to be like that. He really wanted to.
“Teach me your ways,” he breathed.
They made a questioning noise, flicking him a curious glance.
Suguru felt shy, all of a sudden, hugging into himself a little. “Ah, I mean, you’re really cool?”
“Thanks,” the person hummed, acknowledging. “You’re cool, too.”
A young kind of flush crawled up Suguru’s cheeks as he watched the person’s concentrated face, a small, content smile crawling up his face. If he made a social blunder now, they wouldn’t care or even remember it, because they were busy. He could try again later, and they already said they thought he was cool.
While Suguru was thinking up new ways to restart the chat, they switched to washing the other croc in the meanwhile.
“What’s your name?” Suguru asked, mirroring their careless tone but his burning curiosity no doubt shining through.
“Hira,” the person answered calmly. “Yours?”
Itaru. But his new name came easily enough to him. “Suguru.”
Hira…
Suguru didn’t recognise that name from the series, but he recognised it from a good online friend he used to have, back in his old life. Two years ago, they completely left the Discord server the both of them were in, and Suguru couldn’t reach them no matter how hard he tried. Wherever fate led them to, Suguru sincerely wished them well. They were a great person. Suguru thought that half the cast of Jujutsu Kaisen could use someone like that in their life, accepting and kind without unnecessary complexities.
(Suguru didn’t notice the way Hira’s hand clung up when he uttered his name, because they almost instantly began scrubbing again, same pace and all.)
He’s gotta ask. “Are you a girl, a boy, or something else?”
“I’m just Hira. I was born a girl though. You?”
“I’m a boy. Definitely.” On all fronts now, too.
Hira looked at him curiously. “Is it nice?”
Suguru didn’t miss a beat; his mouth opened on his own. “I love it.”
Hira hummed, considering. “Maybe I should try being a boy.”
Suguru grinned.
The moments of chatter and silence alike between them passed comfortably. Suguru looked through the scrapbook, searching for some drawings he liked before, trying to figure out which pages were missing. Hira continued washing their crocs, and when they finished the last one, they put it aside along with its sibling and began washing their feet instead. That was done rather quickly.
Hira splashed some water on their face, getting some on Suguru’s scrapbook, but he felt it was a little redundant to get annoyed over.
“We’re friends now,” Hira declared unexpectedly, splashing their elbows with water. They turned around to look at Suguru, determined. “Let’s be friends.”
Suguru blinked. People usually weren’t this upfront when making friends, but he hadn’t understood why, after just a few minutes of knowing each other, Hira decided to propose that. Twelve-year-olds had their own politics as well, unlike five-year-olds — friendships meant something.
But it felt right. To him, to Hira — it all felt like their entire meeting would lead up to this moment.
Suguru welcomed them with a big grin. “Okay, Hira, friend.”
Hira shot him a fond look back, stretching their arms. Hug? they asked without speaking.
And one thing you have to understand about Suguru — he loves hugs. So he encompassed his arms around Hira’s sides and squeezed, and then felt them squeeze back.
He didn’t know why, but his heart sang, and the embrace felt a lot like coming home.
Once they untangled, Hira asked him, “do you wanna go back to school?”
Suguru blinked again, confused. “We’re in the same school?”
“Yeah,” Hira affirmed, folding up their skirt to show an emblem. “Urabana, right?”
“Oh— yeah.” Probably. “Yes. But I need to get my shoes back.”
Hira heaved themselves up into the brook, then into their crocs, stretching. “Let’s get your shoes then.”
“And rucksack,” Suguru made sure to add for accuracy’s sake, following them up and stepping out of the brook.
“And rucksack.”
Suguru hummed. “I ran a long way here, y’know—“
“Don’t forget your diary.”
“Ah!” Suguru suddenly felt the absence of it in his clutch, and he looked around to see it lying on the grass, about to have been forgotten. He dashed to take it, shooting the Damned Brook a warning look, before sharply turning to follow Hira sauntering down its channel.
“Thanks,” Suguru’s voice was full of gratitude.
“No worries.”
In this lifetime, Geto Suguru’s first best friend was a nonbinary non-sorcerer whose full name was Hirakugo Hirako.
“You kinda remind me of Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter,” Geto Suguru commented offhandedly.
His notion was met with a dozen (or so it seemed) perplexed responses.
New setting, meet: Urabana Junior High!
“Huh?” “Wha?” “What’s that?”
“Hirakugo-chan,” a girl that Suguru hasn’t been introduced to spoke up. Short dark hair, ankle-length skirt. “Who is this guy?”
Oh, and by the way, Hira? Yeah, that Hira.
They were the leader of a local girl gang.
That Suguru had no choice but to be part of, because honestly, where else would he go? At least they didn’t sell cocaine here.
Or so he thought.
“I mean, you don’t gotta do it,” said one of the girls earnestly, “but it’s quick cash. Will help with college.”
Well, the option was definitely there.
“I didn’t know I was gonna witness illegal activity—“
Hira clamped his mouth shut, sending a careful look around them and him, the most special one, a glare — though they quickly eased on it, chill as they were.
“It’s just coke,” they said quietly, pointing a sharp looking fingernail at him — but no sharper than their tongue. “Don’t make me regret that I picked you up in those woods, fairy boy.”
Suguru clicked his tongue. “I’m not gonna say anything, ease on the scary act.”
Hira rolled their eyes, but did as they were told, arranging their textbooks on their desk in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Itaru will be honest, his own aesthetic environment has suffered since he reincarnated into Suguru Geto. Mostly because he was messier by far, and didn’t care much for it. “Ya better.”
The school bell rang, and— oh, ugh. Suguru prepared himself for a drag.
Physics.