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Dark clouds had blanketed the sky, the air simmering with despair. Trees swayed in mourning, the high pitched note that breeze carried— eerie. It was a day designed specifically for a tragedy.
3 days.
3 days since Satoru had been pronounced dead. The Six Eyes user whose name had been uttered like a prayer gone like the wind.
"He's dead." Said with not a shred of mercy. Those words alone chilled bones. Those ominous words hung in the air like a physical weight. "The burial will begin 20 minutes. No more of the scene you keep making, Suguru." Masamichi Yaga's hand gripped Suguru's shoulder.
'Dead? Just like that?'
3 days ago.
His clansmen had arrived for investigation, the teachers gone to recover the body, while Suguru and Shoko scampered to find any sort of proof that could negate his death. Days bled into nights and then back into next. As if the earth had swallowed him whole, their endeavours remained fruitless.
"He'll come back, I trust him. I believe him." His other half slammed the table, the brittle chill of the room shattering. While tears glimmered in his schoolmates eyes, resolve swam in his. Bright and unbreaking.
Satoru had promised.
He was arrogant but he never went back on his words.
Nothing.
It had been 2 days since Suguru had refused to let anyone bury the coffin. His once steady breathing had turned eratic, the composure his teachers had praised long been broken. He had gone out with a belief that gave others hope too. That Gojo Satoru would surely arrive, they believed along with the one who had initiated.
But as the time flew faster than the waters, he'd began seeing Satoru in places he never cared to remember. Suguru had started fearing the coming mornings. The silence which gripped each had turned haunting.
"The door's open..." He would groan. But nothing responded back. Nothing had demanded it in the first place. That's when his stomach would churn, his delicate fingers clamping down his gaunt face. His feet would stumble down, bruised knees crashing against tiled floor before he would empty the hollow guts into the toilet.
"Suguru's morning sickness is getting worse. Tsk tsk." An infuriating voice would bounce against the reflective tiles of the bathroom.
Suguru's head would whip around for the nth time. Brows twisted, his eyes underneath glinting with horror and hope.
'...nothing.'
Then that voice would echo for a long time.
His hands gripped the ceramic, knuckles bone-white.
Somewhere in the middle of finding a proof for the strongest's existence, the flipphone in his hand would clatter against the concrete. Burying his face in his hand, he would lament.
'Almost called Satoru again.'
The sky remained overcast for the entirety of those two days that had been alloted to Suguru. Perhaps the world itself was in the mourning that Suguru couldn't allow. There had been no body. Satoru hadn't asked for the permission to break their promise.
Inky locks obscured his vision, curtains that tried to fall. The play was over. Suguru's head rested against the bark which supported weight more than that of a head's. The sharp lines of his shoulders had long gone soft, a white tee with a silly cat printed hugged his body like a second skin. His fingers occasionally pinched the shirt off his ribs, the shirt latching back like rubber. He exhaled a breath he'd been holding in for God knows when.
"I'm wearing your shirt... aren't you mad?" He asked the wind. Wind named Satoru.
A miniscule smile tugged his lips, a rare smile that no one would catch except for the Six Eyes. "I'll take it off if you say you're joking."
The rims of his eyes painted red. Sitting in the absent wind, unblinking had made his eyes dry. He blinked a couple times, lashes fanning his cheek. "You can have my snacks too."
He tried to please the wind once more.
Even the ghost of him didn't respond anymore.
He had stopped hearing him speak. Instead, Suguru would slam open the door he could swear Satoru just walked through. He would shake away the hand that clamped down on his shoulders. He was fine. His heart would slam against his ribcage when their sorry eyes met his. He was fine.
He would swatt the hand away, eyes cold.
"I am fine. Thank you." The unfeeling words would roll down his lips with practiced ease.
He pulled his shoulders back, hair neat and face polite whenever he crossed those foreign to his true self. His feet took him to the meeting room where everyone was called in. Something regarding Satoru, he'd heard. Each step against the floor felt slow and inefficient, so he added energy. The double doors he saw from afar had gotten closer faster.
He only moved faster for the sake of efficiency, nothing else.
Nothing else at all.
He pushed the heavy doors, stepping inside the cold room. The air inside was heavy, frozen with facts. There was no discussion that day, only an announcement to make. Suguru's muscles were taut, fists white behind his back. But the polite eyes betrayed nothing.
Each pair of eyes held only one. Suguru Getou. Some slid down his body, other resting his face. A silent, unwarranted search for a crack they couldn't find. Getou Suguru was impeccable.
The head sitting infront of the large mahogany table reached his skinny hands out. The hands which trembled with age closed around an item wrapped in white cloth. The countless eyes that couldn't find anywhere else to rest had found its new abode.
Swish-
The cloth slid down, every second stretching like a bowstring.
Thump.
The brittle chill in the room shattered, gasps flooding the room.
A pale finger plopped down the table, the elder having lost feeling in his arms. The two men besides him quickly rubbed his arm to keep the bloody rushing.
The pale finger, dull red where it had torn from was long and slender. The nail trimmed clean despite the blood and grime underneath it. Suguru's lashes shook, swallowing a mouthful of soreness in his throat. He stepped forth towards the table. He didn't dare lift a single finger in the direction of the remnant. He was aware who it belonged to the moment that cloth slipped.
His gaze traced the smoofh finger until it stopped at a mark at the base.
'Sun'
Familiar handwriting. Proof of an intimate moment that him and the owner of this finger had shared.
"Suguru, 1- 2- 3 hurry and pick a thing in the sky as yours. I choose sun!" Satoru grinned.
Suguru frowned, a competitive smile plastering his face.
"Then I'm the mo-"
"Shoko says she's the moon." Satoru rolled his shoulders, his foot stretching towards the ball beside the bed.
Suguru's eyes caught a stray rays of sunlight, the deep purple shining significantly light. "I pick the sta-"
"Haibara's already chosen stars by the way." Satoru plopped on the bed, bed dipping as his arm circled around Suguru's calf. His fingers traced the soft curve which shivered under the ghost force. "Satoru," he slapped his prying fingers away. "when did you even ask the others what they chose? That's unfair."
"They just happened to be near me first."
"So you're saying you asked me last? Forgotten until you saw me?" Suguru's eyes were alit with tease, smile shy. His head rested against the window, hair flowing down one side. Like a prism, he glowed with light hitting all the right angles.
Satoru remained silent for some time. Then sat and closed the distance between them, knee placed between Suguru's legs, his hand pinching his chin with precise delicacy.
"Suguru," His voice came out and octave lower, raspy around the edges. His minty breath Suguru's lips. His fingers rubbed the soft skin under his chin that made Suguru's spine shiver. "Accusing me of something so harsh, did your heart even skip a single beat as you did?"
"You'd think I accused you of an affair." Satoru shrugged at that.
"Something of that nature, you did."
Suguru chuckled, eyes two crescents. He placed his hand on his chest pushing, head tilting back to make distance between them. "Besides, there's nothing left in the sky for me to choose."
"You're too late— to ask me." He added.
"You can be the sky." Satoru spread his arms wide, "All big and fat like it."
Suguru flashed his fist at Satoru who pointed at himself in challengs. Right, the infinity.
Suguru stared at Satoru, his eyes meeting Satoru's whose lips curled into a genuine smile. "But the sun's nothing without a sky to house it. You know?"
Suguru wrapped his arm around Satoru, ruffling his hair. The intensity of the moment just before had set Suguru's fans on fire. His heart drummed against his ribcage.
"...The sky doesn't light up either unless the sun's there." His lips stretched into a restrained smile, eyes narrowed softly. But those eyes held rare warmth. Satoru's eyes glued onto his face, sliding down his brows, into his eyes and down his cheek until they rested on his curled lips.
"Yeah?" His voice was more of a plea for confirmation rather a question.
" Yeah." Suguru responded, hands a little clamy.
"And Shoko is the moon who stays both when the sun is there and the sky is there."
Satoru chuckled quietly but said nothing more. His eyes no longer held the intensity from before. But his smile was content.
"Let's go see if the rumour regarding Yaga sensei wearing wigs is true." He stood up the bed, jumping down.
The clip clattered against the table for the fourth time. Before Shoko could pick it, Suguru's hands reached out and handed it to the trembling doctor. Her eyes had sunken, eye bags darker than ever. Her nails scratched her cheek that had turned chaffed, the dried tears itching. She wrapped her hair around the pin and tucked it in tightly.
The room was silent, any sound that retained the sanity of those in it were the rythmic ticks of a clock.
"Suguru!"
His head slowly turned behind to nothing. He had become less reactive to Satoru's ghost calls. He rested his head against the wall, waiting for Shoko to get ready, his legs had long numbed. Shoko was inconsolable, yet she hadn't made a single sound. Her trembling hands, hair that remained askew, eyes that had difficulty staying open had done all the crying. Even tears were shed, but whatever she suppressed inside remained there.
Deep down, he was aware that whatever he heard and saw wasn't true. When he'd run after that shadow which resembled Satoru and then disappear behind a tree, he knew it wasn't actually him. Or when he'd heard the door to his dorm unlocking with the sound of shoes kicking, he knew that wasn't real either. When he heard him taunting him when he vomited, when he'd seen him tossing the cursed baby like a toy, and when he'd seen him sitting under a tree waving at him, and when he'd pointed at his own torn finger in the meeting room laughing, and when he'd... he...
He exhaled a shaky breath. Ears ringing. He remembered the cursed baby. The way she'd flailed her tiny arms before she was taken for her execution.
The ghost Satoru he saw...
None of that was real. Yet he had responded each time. And his only reason has been,
'If one those Satoru was real, he'd be sad if I didn't respond.'
The winds blew whistles that called for people. As if to call for those who mourned their close ones. To gather them at place to support eachother.
Osidian coffin laid on an intricately carved stone slab. Rows and rows of people stood in lines, students, teachers and clansmen in different rows. All the sorcerers around the cities had arrived to witness the fall of the strongest.
Each row stretched sharper than the other. The silence had been ruptured with quiet sobs and sniffles of those who were close to the person, whose remains laid inside. Gojo Satoru had been officially pronounced dead, with his torn finger brought back as his last remaining piece of body.
This coffin had to be buried quarter an hour later. This was the rule Suguru could no longer break. He stood at the front, eyes devoid of any light. The sun to his sky had set forever.
15 minutes.
His black robes fluttered in the wind, like an unmoving tree whose leaves trembled with each breath. The thorn in his throat pricked him harder with each passing moment, but nothing spilled forth his eyes. Not a tear, not a single sob.
Shoko stood beside him, her shoulders shaking, head bowed as her sobs filled the entire area. She had clamped a hand down her mouth but the sounds only came out more heartbreaking. She held her head that threatened to split open with headache. Satoru was...
That boy was laughing with them just half a week ago.
"Pick anything in the sky, quick! I'm the sun by the way." He'd asked her. She'd scoffed at him before turning to leave.
She sobbed. Had he not caught her hand and threaten her with breaking her tools, she'd have never answered.
"The moon then. Since you're the sun, someone has to keep you in check." She'd smirked.
Ugh-
Shoko doubled down coughing with sobs and tears spilling everywhere. Utahime whose own eyes were red caught Shoko. Circling her arm around her back.
"If I hadn't- ugh ..." Shoko's voice muffled. Yaga sensei turned his face away, hands covering his own face. He had aged 10 years in three days himself.
"If I hadn't prayed he die, on the new year's..." Shoko broke down, unable to form a single sentence. The usually calm and laid-back spine of the trio was now held by people, inconsolable.
"Don't say that!" Utahime cried, tightening her embrace.
Tragedy itself befell the day. Dark— wind that whistled like a blade, trees shook with enough force to tumble down.
Suguru's arms hung by his side, his hair fluttering like leaves in the wind. He could hardly hear anything. Like a bowstring, his heart was taut ready. One final trigger and he knew something shameful would break forth. If he let it slip even for half a second, death would seem more sweeter than this life.
His life that would become an eternal night, for the sun that lit it up may set forever.
The pallbearers from Gojo clan stepped forward to take the coffin, their footsteps synchronized.
"It's time for the burial." Masamichi Yaga's deep, jagged voice rang out like an alarm. His face utterly defeated. The loss of his brilliant student, the young boy he couldn't protect was impacting. The shame of not being able to find his body was a weight he couldn't bear.
Suguru's breath hitched, taking a step forward that had turned two and four. He stood infront of the coffin, his lashes trembling. The steady rise and fall of his chest turned violent by the second. Sudden fear gripped his throat— the realization that his other half could only ever exist in the memories, no longer be seen in the future he would dream of slammed like a hammer. He gasped as if he was drowning, his hands clutching around his stomach.
His knees went weak, his elbows hitting the cold surface of the coffin. The wind slashed like a sword, chill biting into cheeks, his hair scattering across his face. He bowed his head in defeat, the sting in his eyes manifested into a headache. Hot tears slid down his face, dripping onto the wooden surface with a sharp noise. A ragged, gutteral sob tore through his lungs, throat tight.
"Satoru..." He groaned. Each time he uttered his name, it clawed the wound on his heart deeper. The heart that he'd always kept so closed off, broken like porcelain. The millions of shards pricking his throat. Satoru had betrayed him.
"You promised me... you promised." His nails dug into the polished surface of the coffin.
'We can't be the strongest duo with any of us missing.'
That didn't make them the strongest anymore. He couldn't be the strongest alone.
The incense swirling around the casket was thick enough to choke on. Suguru remained bent over it, his long, inky hair veiling his face.
"I hate...you." Suguru's voice muffled, his face hidden in his arm on the cold casket. His shoulders heaving in restrained, jagged spasms. He was the "strongest" too but there, he looked like a broken shield. His ugly, raw sobs filling the air.
"How could you ever hate this face and body?" A voice teased.
"I hate you..." He choked, fingers wiping the tears on the casket away.
"Please don't hate me."
Suguru voice cracked, forehead hitting the casket with a careless thud. "I don't hate you."
'I won't hate you... I won't hate you. Please come back. I won't hate you even if you tell me you're joking.'
"If you tell me you were... pranking us, I won't hate you. I won't say anything. I..will laugh." Incoherent pleadings and tears spilled together, the pain in his throat spreading like poison. His trembling hands wiped his eyes and the tears that fell on the casket clumsily. His curled body had pathetically turned small.
Shoko stumbled forward in a hurry, swallowing her tears. Her mind couldn't process seeing the ever so composed man shaking like a leaf. The boy who'd never let a peep of complaint except for the one time he had told them how the curses tasted, was promising a dead man his heart and dignity.
"Suguru!" She held him right. The pillar who scolded Satoru for not protecting his self-respect was begging a dead man to lie to him. With no awareness of how many looked. The man who didn't even cry in the silence of his own room...
Clang.
The school gates groaned opened.
It was a slow, heavy sound that pulled every head to the gates. It's eeriness contrasting against the quiet, mournful air around the courtyard. Suguru remained hunched over the wood, unaware to whatever happened outside, heart hammering against his flesh.
The mourners froze.
There stood a silhouette who limped forward, supporting himself on the steel gate which didn't completely touch him.
Satoru stood there, his white hair plastered to his forehead with thick, dark gore. His uniform was drenched, the fabric clinging to a chest that had large bloody gash.
Satoru leaned against the gate which didn't touch him completely, blood dripping from his chin onto the pristine stone.
Blood drained from Shoko's face, the elders who sat at the back, on the verge of death. Utahime looked at the Gojo Satoru who had appeared and then at the said Gojo's coffin behind. The air crackled with the sudden heat of surprise.
The world dropped silent. Whether the wind stilled or rustling leaves fell off the tree altogether, no more of it could be heard. In the second that stretched taut like a rubber band, intake of a single breath felt painful. The weight of death pressed even tighter with the arrival of the one who was being mourned.
Only broken, muffled sobs of the one sprawled, bent over the coffin echoed through the silence. Unaware to the world which had frozen, his body crumpling with passing second.
" Goddamn..." Yaga sensei whispered before moving forward to his student that had come braving death.
Collective gasps broke the hold of silence, murmurs overtook the place and few went forward to confirm the reality.
The staggering strongest acknowledged none who approached. His face devoid of feeling, the limitless Six Eyes exuded an odd tranquility in their burning glow. The sorcerers who reached for their curse energies behind, teachers that approached with hesitation, Shoko who sat beside the coffin and— his other half that had lost all his signature composure. He saw all.
His footsteps took him towards Shoko whose eyes were puffy and red. He stretched his lips in a taunting smile that tugged fake around his edges, fingers making tears motion. Shoko's delicate brows furrowed in embarrassment, eyes softening, and a soft chuckle escaped her lips. Her hands let go off Suguru, reaching for the cigarette in her pocket but found the space empty.
'Got so sad over an idiot's death I forgot my cigarettes...' She sighed in relief. Her greatest strength was adaptation after all. She left the scene, arm in arm with Utahime who looked behind, eyes clouded in confusion.
Sun peaked through the cloud curtains for the first time in days, it's weak light helped Satoru's shadow rest on the coffin made for him. Suguru's eyes caught a rare flash of light in his peripheral vision and almost turned.
'Not again...'
He gripped his uniform tighter, holding himself in place. If he turned and made such scene infront of everyone, where he claimed he saw his best friend's ghost— the name 'strongest duo' would fall apart before he could carry it on his own. He could explain the waterworks, but not the mental distortion.
He would turn all he could in the intimate places his ghost appeared in next.
'Just not Infront of those we loathed together, Satoru...'
Suguru didn't look up—he couldn't— until a shadow fell over the casket. It was a long, thin shadow, swaying slightly.
"Yo," a voice cracked the silence. It was hoarse, wet, and unmistakably arrogant.
Suguru's eyes widened, but he remained unmoving. His shoulders tensed, heart stilling in place. The voice he heard was the clearest among all he'd heard the past three days, the shadow's sharp lines more vivid than the sky had been that morning.
The blue eyes traced the back which remained alert but never moved. His knees crashed against the stone, arm circling Suguru's shoulders.
"You hate me so much you wouldn't even answer me?" His head thudded against the wood, face pressed lazily. He rasped, cracking at the edges. But the slight pain in his voice only reached his best friend.
Suguru's eyes met Satoru's. Red and wet, the rims of his eyes crinkled.
'Ah... the countless times I responded to your ghosts, I still ended up hurting the actual you who demanded one.'
Suguru's eyes stung hot again. His thin fingers gripped Satoru's hair tightly, yanking him before crushing him in his embrace.
"Wi wi..." Suguru felt cold weight settle against his stomach. A small ball of energy squirming in his lap weakly. His trembling hand clutched Satoru's collars, eyes wide in horror, the other hiding the wobbly creature against him.
Satoru's head tilted, a lazy smile adorning his blood stained face, "Didn't you say you miss her?"