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They decide on a small, two-floor home in a village an hour outside of Tokyo, with a population of 2,101, now 2,103. The house is an archaic thing despite not being made of wood like the guesthouses and restaurants scattered throughout the village. Cobwebs span the corners of nearly every room, the only ones absent of them marred instead by dents and holes in the plaster of the walls. Suguru eyes Satoru strangely when he puts his hands on his hips and beams at Suguru the first time they visit the home after Satoru made an appointment online to scope out the listing.
“Absolutely no way.”
Satoru frowns, “Come on, it’s a fixer-upper sure, but I don’t know. I have a good feeling about it.”
Suguru crosses his arms in front of his chest, “We did not decide to move out of the city to renovate a house, Satoru. We’d have to worry about permits, and we don’t even know the first thing—”
“But it would be fun,” he argues, stepping towards him. The floor beneath him creaks with each of his steps. “It’s a little ugly but it’s livable, and besides, I’m sure once I get the hang of it it’ll be done fast. We could even use your spirits to help us.”
Suguru tilts his head, brows raised.
“You want to use my cursed spirits to remodel a house?”
Satoru grins, “Yep. Great idea, right?”
Despite his best judgments at the time, weeks later Suguru finds himself out in front of the home, with two, lower grade spirits trailing along behind him, each comically holding onto drywall panels with their misshaped limbs. Satoru is supposedly working inside on the plumbing of the upstairs bathroom after Suguru protested that if Satoru was really going to be stubborn and refuse to hire a contractor, then he’d have to actually do some research and not just wing it.
A gasp startles him, and therefore the spirits, who drop the panels and pivot to face where Suguru turns to, ready to strike. Suguru sees one of their neighbor’s faces above the railing of their fence, eyes wide in horror. He’s quick to dispel the spirits and mold his expression into that of concern.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
The neighbor’s eyes flicker to the panels lying on the ground and then back to him. She nods meekly, bowing her head.
“I—yes, sorry,” she stammers. “I haven’t slept well recently, I must be seeing things.”
Suguru hears their front door open somewhere behind him, and he waves goodbye as the neighbor scuttles away hurriedly. He feels Satoru prop his chin on his shoulder, and peers over at him. The back of his shirt feels oddly cool.
“No more cursed spirits,” Suguru decrees. “At least outside.”
Satoru leans his head against him, “Did she see?”
Suguru nods.
“Oh, well. We can lie and say the house is haunted.”
“How would that help?”
Satoru stands upright, and Suguru turns to look at him and sees his absolutely drenched shirt and front of his pants.
“Oh,” is all he can think to say, amused.
“I called a contractor.”
The part of creating their home that Suguru discovers he likes the most is how they both quickly find out it’s never quite truly done. With one project completed, the possibility for more flourish, even if they’re small. When Satoru wants to change the colors of their bedroom’s walls from the pale pistachio they originally agreed upon, they paint them mint. When Suguru finally gives in to his curiosity and buys the seeds he’s seen dozens of times at their local grocery store after the clerk explains what they are—konjaku, a plant that appears similar to a burgundy lily but produces a yam-like crop, and cyclamen, which the clerk gestures to outside for, and Suguru looks to see pink and white flowers with swept-back petals and heart-shaped leaves—he starts a garden.
“You couldn’t go for something easy like potatoes?” Satoru asks, resting his weight against the doorframe as Suguru inhabits his side of their bed, laptop open to over five tabs, including idiot’s guide to gardening, how to tell if soil is fertile, and sunlight requirements for different plants.
“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, they’re native plants to here.”
When Satoru turns to leave, Suguru hears him mumble something suspiciously close to “at least I know I like eating potatoes.”
Suguru almost gives up on his attempt at rekindling some lost knowledge from his childhood in the country, but then a single green sprout pushes itself through the damp dirt of the large pots placed in the shade behind their house. It’s followed by another and then another until finally, one pot holds three, sturdy stems, the other the seedlings of what Suguru hopes will become flowering buds.
His hair starts to gray when he’s 37, in sync with his third pot of flowers maturing, an arrangement of light pink, white, and lilac lining the front of their home. In all honesty, it might have started before, after all, he wasn’t one to zero in on slight changes in appearance like that. Suguru saw things in wholes, truly only paid attention to occurrences once they were grave enough to garner a reaction, so when Satoru stands behind him in their bathroom one night and gently holds out a silver strand of hair, Suguru doesn’t really care beyond the slight pull on his scalp. He has to squint at the mirror to even see it.
“Oh my god,” Satoru says, eyes blown wide in wonder. “You’re old.”
Suguru rolls his eyes as he finishes rinsing his mouth, spitting out water into the sink.
“You’re literally older than me,” he argues.
Satoru lets go of his evidence and starts to search for more, combing through Suguru’s hair with his fingers.
“Suguru, we don’t get health insurance with my job,” Satoru blurts. “What are we gonna do when your bones—ow, ow, okay I get it stop, stop.”
Suguru had turned to start tugging haphazardly on Satoru’s hair in retaliation.
“What about you? Your whole head is white.”
He snorts, “Sure, let me just dye it black.”
Suguru grimaces, “You’d look horrible.”
“Asshole.”
Suguru grins, “Yours, though.”
The luxury of their age is not lost on them. Year after year, it is a weight that accumulates on both their shoulders and soaks each vertebra of their spines. They are fortunate to become 39, 47, and 52. With a taste that has faded from overwhelmingly bitter to almost nothing, Suguru knows that he must be favored by something cosmic to be such a close bystander to one Gojo Satoru aging.
Despite the fashion in which misery tethered itself to them during their youth, despite the calling of death Suguru had once forced them both to answer, he’s allowed to live like this. In a way that cannot be altered or undone, in an almost suffocatingly blissful manner, Geto Suguru gets to grow old with Gojo Satoru.
Still, he isn’t focused on it as it happens. He isn’t aware of the changing scenes taking place in front of him until he sees the results. He doesn’t see the creation of the slight trenches that form channels inundated by past laughter and jovial expressions by the creases of Satoru’s eyes, he only sees them once they exist, suddenly aware of them when Satoru laughs one morning, nearly choking on the piece of waffle he had been eating. He doesn’t count the years it takes for Satoru’s knuckles to be dusted by his age, kissed sporadically by sunlight to form specks of umber, he just becomes aware of them when Satoru splays out his hand on his thigh, pushing him out of the way to sit beside them on their couch to watch a movie.
Shoko visits them, sometimes. She’ll either call or send one of them a text a few days in advance, and stay for an entire weekend. She’s aged far less visibly than either of them, her dark hair cut short again, the mauve skin under her eyes finally lightening, if anything.
“You guys are old,” she says one chilly afternoon, the sun thawing the blues of dusk around them as they sit on their back porch. There are two glasses and a half-empty wine bottle in between her and Suguru, and an empty bowl with the shells of the nuts they’ve eaten.
“You’re old too,” Satoru says, and Suguru peers over at him over the top of Shoko’s head. He’s sitting on a cushioned patio chair, a worn blanket draped over him, pulled tight by his neck as his hands peek out to hold onto his mug of tea.
Shoko shrugs, and Suguru looks back at her.
“I’m not the one with wrinkles,” she declares, and Suguru laughs.
“Rude,” Satoru huffs, and Shoko leans back, resting an arm on the edge of his seat.
“Well,” she says. “Suguru has fewer wrinkles than you, so I would say you look the oldest out of all of us.”
“That’s—”
“I am the youngest,” Suguru interrupts. “It’s only fair.”
“Yeah, by like two months.”
Shoko flicks his mug, “You’d actually be surprised how much the human body can age within just two months. Should I send you the studies done on it? I can include how sugar affects—”
Satoru groans and shifts away from her, “I can’t stand you two.”
It’s a comfortable life. Blissful, even.
But there are still mornings in which Suguru loses his breath over it. Moments where he is astonished to feel a weight beside him on bed, to hear Satoru’s familiar footsteps in the room beside him. This home is theirs, it has been rearranged and retouched and rebuilt by their hands, and Suguru finds himself staring at them at times, his eyes tracing the strokes of his palms. He has helped to create a home, a sanctuary, and he has done so without blood.
He used to soak in the lineage of others; would flick his wrist or blink and have vermillion spray the world around him, but now, his life was strangely absent of such vicious red. Now, the color invades his life in soothing glimpses; the crimson blanket draped over their reupholstered armchair in their office, the dollops of red that start to grow at the ends of his tomato plant after his first dried out, the lychee Satoru insists on purchasing whenever the bumpy fruit is in season, and so on.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing Suguru paints is red.
He buys a few red peonies from the florist in their town, a middle-aged woman who has taken over the business from her grandmother, and sets them up in a glass jar on their kitchen table. It’s far from a bouquet or scenic, but it’s what Suguru wants to paint. He hadn’t bothered to inform Satoru of his recent curiosity with art, just lets him discover it as he returns home from a trip to the school, finding Suguru set up, sketchpad in hand.
He doesn’t say anything, but walks up to him and looks over his hunched shoulders.
“Don’t bother me about it, I just started,” he says, feeling the need to defend himself.
“I didn’t say anything,” Satoru responds, and they stay like that. Suguru continues to sketch the flowers, and Satoru watches him. When he’s content with the outline, he leans over to pick up the starter paint kit he had bought, and Satoru steps aside to sit on the chair opposite of him.
“I didn’t know you were into art,” Satoru points out.
“Don’t know if I am yet.”
“Hm.”
He doesn’t stop painting. He’s not necessarily good at it, but it doesn’t matter. He paints what he wants, uses the colors he wants to see, and whatever is created on the canvas is his. He’s bewitched by the process, his surroundings blurring until all he can see is his subject and his intention.
“I think your style can qualify as expressionism.”
Suguru nearly falls off the stool he’s sitting on in their living room, turning to glare at Satoru, whose half-lidded eyes are still weighed down by the persistent burden of sleep. He had interrupted his curated silence, the only sounds accompanying Suguru during this time the faint scrapes of the wet brush against canvas.
“Since when do you know about art?”
“You’d be surprised what you can learn on youtube.”
He has to take a break from both gardening and painting when he trips and falls on their stairs one day, landing on his hand in the wrong way and spraining his wrist. Suguru’s half sure Satoru teleported from whichever room he was in when he heard Suguru’s yelp, because he’s there immediately, helping him up.
His wrist becomes an ugly thing; the skin bruised and swollen, tender to the touch. The doctor Suguru insists on visiting said it would take a minimum of two weeks to heal, and a maximum of six. Satoru isn’t having it.
“I’m telling you, Shoko can heal it. She can come visit or you can go—”
“It’s fine. It’s a busy time for her right now.”
“If I say I won’t water your plants for you, will you go?”
“ Satoru .”
When their doorbell rings, Suguru narrows his eyes and Satoru frowns, mouthing an inaudible I don’t know. He’ll chastise him later for clearly calling Shoko behind his back about this, and he’s about to complain that she went behind his back when he opens the door, but his annoyance is caught in his throat when he sees Megumi and his sister, Tsumiki instead of Shoko.
“What’s with the face?” Megumi asks, blunt.
Suguru shakes his head, “Thought you were someone else.”
From inside, Satoru calls out, “Who is it?”
Suguru knows when he sees them because instantly Satoru’s voice takes on the excited shrillness he knows bothers Megumi and he feels his weight press against his back.
“Megumi! You actually came to visit, what a miracle— wait, no, don’t go.”
The dinner they end up having is nice. Satoru suggests take out, to which they all agree, although coming to a decision proves difficult. Satoru suggests an Italian place but Megumi skews his face when he pulls up pictures online of the food, and offers his own suggestion, referencing pictures of a noodle shop he and Tsumiki passed on their way here. All three turn to look at Suguru, and when he agrees with Megumi, Satoru lays a hand over his chest exceptionally dramatically.
“Oh, will you stop? We ate from that place a week ago.”
“A week, Suguru,” Satoru retorts, stunned. “That’s a whole seven days.”
“You just like their dessert.”
“So?”
Their home feels alive with Megumi and Tsumiki there. Not that it feels lifeless with just Satoru and him, but it feels different. The marigold of their kitchen walls feels brighter, and there is a sense of fullness within Suguru that doesn’t originate from the food in his stomach when he watches Tsumiki lean towards Satoru and share something on her phone. When Satoru averts his attention to Megumi, a sly but mischievous curve to his mouth, the feeling swells.
“You know, it’s nice that you came to see Suguru after he fell and all, but if I fall, will you come?”
“How are you still this obnoxious?” Megumi replies.
“So, you won’t take care of me? Unbelievable, after the years I spent raising you.”
Megumi’s eyebrows shoot up and he leans towards Satoru.
“ Huh? What years? Where are they? I’d love to find them.”
Tsumiki laughs behind a hand raised to her mouth and Satoru wags his finger at Megumi.
“You’re so mean. You’ll never find a wife with that attitude.”
“I-What? You don’t even have a wife.”
“Well, that’s because—”
Grief is something Suguru had come to terms with decades ago. He had accepted that it would linger for the rest of his life, not as an overwhelming tide or the sharp pains that would strike him helpless his first year back, but as something present. Something invisible but altogether there, tucked away on their bookshelves and wedged in between the clothes hanging in their closet.
In moments like this, when intimacy makes itself known to Suguru as he watches Satoru lean in to cup Tsumiki’s ear to whisper something that makes Megumi frown in the manner he did when he was a teenager, Suguru’s grief is simmered down to plain awareness of what was and what no longer is, of what could have been but won’t be. There is no tightening of his chest, no sudden loss of air that renders him incapable; there is only a familiar, dull blade caressing his skin, tracing the faded scar across his forehead, as if to kiss it goodbye, again and again.
Other times, when he is alone and thinks of Mimiko and Nanako, there is no anger, no need for vengeance. There is only an almost effortless acceptance that, every so often, will still catch him off guard, his steps coming to a stop in the middle of a hallway, or in the kitchen, as water comes to a boil on the stove. Sometimes, Satoru will notice, and Suguru will feel his arms ease their way around his waist to hold him, cheek against his head, and Suguru will try to share the impossible weight with him.
To know another is a mercy, and Suguru is known, down to his core.
Satoru had proved that to him decades ago, frantic in a corridor of a subway station that made history.
“You’ve been reading that book for over a month now,” Suguru says, on a day when their house trembles, recoiling at a passing thunderstorm.
He breathes in as he raises his arms above his head slowly, exhaling as he lowers them in front, fingers interlaced. No matter the cushioning he’s ensured his seat has, his back cramps if he paints for over two hours at a time, a tedious ache gnawing at his lower spine. He hears Satoru close the book he’s reading and turns to look at him, his white hair luminescent in the muted grey light filtering through the curtains. On days like this, when rain soaks the earth and the rumbling of thunder greets the flashes of lighting, Suguru knows Satoru’s bones have a tendency to ache.
Satoru leans his head towards him but doesn’t look. His fingers trace the raised bumps of a book title on the cover.
“I know,” Satoru replies. “I must be saving it.”
“Must be good.”
Satoru hums, “Mhm. Or maybe I’m lazy.”
Suguru laughs.
His eyes are untethered to their living room. Whenever Satoru soundlessly drifts off elsewhere in his wondrous mind, Suguru makes sure to steer him ashore.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
Satoru lifts his gaze to meet his, hints of his dimples dotted in his cheeks from his slight smile.
“How many more years do you think we have until we croak?”
Suguru blinks, startled, but then laughs.
“Wow,” he says, before standing and moving towards him. “That’s morbid, even for us.”
“It’s an honest question.”
Suguru places a hand along Satoru’s neck as he stands by his knees, and Satoru leans his weight into the touch.
“If you stop inhaling sugar behind my back,” Suguru answers. “I give you until 85, maybe 90.”
Satoru coughs, “Shit, that’s old.”
He slides his hand underneath Suguru’s and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss along his knuckles.
“You have to give me a year now,” Suguru says. “It’s only fair.”
Satoru is quiet as he lowers their hands to his blanket-covered lap, stroking his paint-smeared knuckles with the pad of this thumb.
“I don’t want to,” Satoru admits.
“Why not?”
“Well,” he says, in the wistful way he speaks during storms like these, his words honeyed as the rain pelts their windows. There’s a leak in the laundry room, Suguru quietly remembers, he has to make sure a bucket is by it.
“You can’t die before me again, and after me would be cruel of me.”
“Oh.”
“Mhm.”
Satoru is so Satoru sometimes that Suguru forgets they are 72 and 71, his chest tightening boyishly, but absent of the doubt provided by adolescence. They do not belong to one another, Suguru will not go as far as to lay claim to Satoru’s existence nor Satoru his, but they are reflections of one another, lacking any real partition. Where Suguru’s hand moves right, Satoru’s moves left, destined to always return to one another.
“It looks like,” Suguru remarks as he moves to join Satoru on the couch, “our only option is to die together.”
He snorts, “You’ve always been so dramatic.”
Suguru rests his head against Satoru’s shoulder once he’s nestled beside him, Satoru holding the blanket up with an arm before draping it over them both. A particular booming growl of thunder erupts, a distant car alarm resounding moments after.
“I guess I have been,” Suguru says. “Do you think I would have been a good actor?”
Satoru’s shoulders shake with his laughter.
“You? With the crap you’ve pulled? Definitely.”
“Maybe in our next life,” he hums.
Satoru eases his weight against him, the bulbs of Satoru’s bony knuckles cold as they find Suguru’s hand other the blanket. When they meet, their fingers intertwine easily, naturally, a skill that’s been honed and perfected over the span of years.
“Yeah,” Satoru smiles. “Maybe.”
Age comes with its consequences, and Satoru is no exception.
Neither had thought much of it, at first. Suguru would turn to Satoru atop of a step stool, holding out a framed painting he was about to hang.
“Do you think this would look good here? I wasn’t sure.”
Satoru would turn from his seat, squint, and then huff, “You think I can see that from here?”
It didn’t click, didn’t completely settle into realization until Satoru points at a page of a book Suguru is reading and frowns.
“What’s wrong with the paper?”
Suguru looks up at him, confused, “What are you talking about?”
Satoru taps the center of the page, “Here, why’s it so smudged here?”
“Satoru, are you alright?”
“Are you alright? Why can’t you see—wait .”
“What?”
Satoru drags his hand from the book to the wood of the desk, and then Suguru’s arm, all the while following the motion with his eyes.
“I think,” he says, something akin to disbelief and amusement, of all things, in his tone. “I think I’m going blind.”
Suguru forces him to let Shoko check over him.
“Macular degeneration,” she says, with the same tone of an item on a grocery list. Sugar, milk, eggs, macular degeneration—
“Can you treat it?” Suguru asks since Satoru won’t.
“Not sure, really. It’s sort of like a leak, if I fix it, it would just leak again eventually. Not sure why his reversed technique didn’t handle it.”
“He could just heal it again then, right?”
“I mean, he could. Does he want to?”
“I’m right here,” Satoru interjects, and both Suguru and Shoko look over at him. One of his cheeks is puffed out from where he’s sucking on a candy, legs crossed over one another.
“Well,” Shoko says. “Do you want to try?”
“Is it natural?”
It isn’t what Suguru thought he would have said, and a peculiar dread coats his mouth. It isn’t hurried, isn’t desperate, but it’s knowing, fine-tuned after years of close exposure.
“I mean, it isn’t like it happens to everyone. Some people keep their vision, some people lose it, and some people get this. The case you have can get worse real fast. You could heal it quickly.”
“Is it painful?”
“Not at all. Minus walking into a wall or something.”
Suguru closes his eyes when Satoru says, “Then it’s fine. It sounds like a hassle to keep track of.”
They fight over it. Shoko walks out of the room to let them.
“Blind, Satoru? Blind?”
“It’s not that big of a deal—“
“Yes, it is, you absolute asshole.”
“I won’t lose all my senses, I can still see cursed energy for emergencies—“
“Not the point—“
Satoru grabs his hands suddenly, squeezes, and says, “Suguru. Listen to me.”
Suguru, despite himself, does.
“We’re old,” he says. “I have spent all my life protecting myself and others and I don’t regret it, but I’m tired. I’m tired and I just want to be old. If my body is going to go blind then screw it.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
“I know that. But you’re here, too.”
Suguru kisses his eyelids once he starts to lose his vision.
He places a hand on either side of Satoru’s face, presses his lips to his left eye with the faintest of pressure, and then replicates the ritual with his right. When Satoru looks up at him, misty baby blues unfocused, his mouth becomes an illustration of fondness, reverence orchestrating his lips into a pillow-soft grin.
“You know,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been okay with this actually growing old thing if I knew it meant I would have to stop looking at you.”
“Who’s fault is that?”
Satoru pouts, “Mean.”
They fall into a routine. Satoru will ask Suguru how the day is, and he’ll describe it, from the sky to the earth.
“It’s a pretty day today.”
“Is it? That’s good. What color is the sky?”
Suguru looks up, and thinks of his crumpled tubes of paint, trying to recall the exuberant names of different shades of blue.
“Baby blue, but it’s almost sunset so there’s some pink, almost like a coral color.”
“Are the leaves turning yellow already?”
Suguru looks over to the mountainside in the distance, at the sea of amber and orange treetops.
“Yeah. The leaves look like marmalade.”
Satoru snorts.
“What the hell is marmalade supposed to look like?”
Suguru slaps his shoulder, and Satoru laughs, reaching for his wrist.
“Do you know how difficult it is to describe things so much? You have me looking up synonyms for colors.”
“Honestly, I thought you just used paint names or something.”
“Sometimes I do,” Suguru admits.
Satoru grins, “How pretentious.”
He moves to shove him, but Satoru’s grip tightens on his wrist.
“Hey, Suguru,” he suddenly says, void of the teasing from before.
Suguru is suspicious, but answers.
“What?”
“Have you ever painted me?”
“I’ve thought to, but no.”
“What have you painted since, you know,” Satoru says, motioning towards his eyes.
Suguru purses his mouth, thinking.
“Most recently? The window in our kitchen, at sunrise, while you were still asleep. Before that, some fireworks. Some cursed spirits, myself, the girls.”
Satoru’s silent and Suguru is half worried that he had managed to say something wrong or inconsiderate, but then Satoru reaches to touch his face, thumb pressed against Suguru’s jaw by his ear.
“Wow,” he says, and Suguru huffs.
“Wow, what?”
Satoru shrugs, “I don’t know. There’s just something romantic about that.”
Now, Suguru snorts, feeling sheepish.
“Romantic?”
Satoru rolls his milky eyes, “Oh, how dare I think my husband is romantic.”
Suguru touches his hand, “It’s just painting.”
“But it’s you that’s painting. It’s you picking the colors and it’s you picking up the brush and deciding. It’s you.”
A lifetime of found comforts, of shared space and breath and touch, and yet, Satoru is still veiled by impossibility, tossing his thoughtless yet earnest words at an unprepared Suguru.
“Gross,” he says, managing to speak through the honeyed sentiment that rises from his heart. “Age has made you a sap, Satoru.”
“Among other things,” Satoru says, pulling his hand away to twirl it dismissively in the air.
Suguru grins, “You mean blind?”
“You’re cruel.”