Chapter Text
I still think of you too
If only you knew
I just need to work out some way of getting me to you
'Cause I will never find love like ours out here
In a million years
A million years
My location unknown
Tryna find a way back home
To you again
I gotta get back to you
Gotta, gotta get back to you
Location Unknown (ft. BEKA) – HONNE
Kyoto is beautiful.
Utahime arrives in time for the cherry blossoms, dancing on the wind before Daikakuji. The school grounds are further out from the city, but she stops here at the old temple before her meeting with Gakuganji. She is the daughter of a shrine, and this feels almost like coming home.
There is peace here, in the old capital of jujutsu, away from the crucible of curses that is Tokyo. Tradition, as confining as it is, provides structure within chaos.
Living alone requires a new set of habits. She’s not used to taking out trash, and her first grocery run fills the fridge way too much for one person. There are no more white hairs left on her pillowcase, and her sheets smell only of her own lavender shampoo. Instead, there are ghosts around every corner, mirages in her peripheral vision. Utahime blinks them firmly away. She will not pine after someone she chose to leave behind, and neither will she regret this choice she made, with eyes wide open and the future on her horizon.
But. She does not throw away all the gifts Satoru gave her throughout the years. She does not toss the plates they bought together or delete all the cat café photos. She does not want to forget him, does not want him to be abandoned entirely to her past. Satoru is a part of her – he gave her so much, and changed her forever, and she will honor that.
She goes through her closet, selects only her favorite outfits, and donates the rest. She abandons her pigtails, playing around with various hairstyles until she settles on a basic white tie to keep the longer strands out of her eyes. Her boots, old and worn, are replaced with a new set, made with sturdy leather, a gift from Shoko.
She’s not a new person. She’s just Utahime.
White kosode, red hakama, brown boots, and brown eyes – just Utahime.
With distance comes clarity. Utahime isn’t stupid. She knows she’s been used and rereading the letter from Gakuganji leaves a sour taste on her tongue. But she knows she used Gakuganji’s offer as well, for her own selfish reasons, and so there is no hostility in their meeting. They can work together.
The next set of students isn’t here yet, and it’s too late in the school year for her to really integrate with the other classes. Furthermore, there are whispers in the shadows of her relationship, or lack thereof, and Utahime prefers not to feed the gossip. Instead, she spends her spare time tracing the habits of her childhood, assisting the locals in cleaning neighborhood shrines. It’s simple work, but worthwhile.
She explores Kyoto, shrine by shrine, reflecting upon the slow journey through the thousand torii gates of Fushimi Inari Taisho, up the bamboo steps of Koudaiji, and along the Philosopher’s Path at Nanzenji. Slowly, shrine by shrine, Utahime hums her mother’s lullabies and taps out the steady cadence of her father’s steps. Kyoto reminds her of her roots even as it absorbs her grief, holding it gently, as sakura blossoms wipe her tears.
Her missions take her out to Kobe and Osaka, and occasionally even to the Fukuoka coastline. There are less sorcerers in the south, so the missions are more often solo. She stares out at the ocean to the northwest, where she can imagine Busan on the horizon. She’s never left Japan. Maybe it’s time to take a trip.
She has old junior high classmates here too, who moved from Tokyo, who remember when she was still living and breathing in the real world, the one she left behind when she was fifteen. They reconnect easily, and Utahime remembers again what it feels like to simply be a person, going to movies and baseball games, drinking beer under foggy streetlamps, laughing about inane subjects and never once thinking of politics she doesn’t understand or powers she’ll never match.
It feels solid, like dirt under bare feet.
Eventually, the new first years start to trickle onto the campus. There is no one particularly outstanding in the class, and for this, Utahime is secretly grateful. Shoko was right. She is good at recognizing strengths and correcting flaws, good at teaching tactics and new ways of thinking. She thinks of Megumi and Tsumiki, wonders how they are, channels the concern instead to her new students.
“How are you doing?” Shoko asks.
“Good,” Utahime replies, and it is true.
She hasn’t spoken to Satoru since that day she left him in a park. When they finally reconnect, it’s a surprise.
[13:42] Satoru: ANNOUNCEMENT! the one and only gojo satoru here, announcing the newest box office hit
[13:42] Satoru: THE RETURN OF THE NANAMI
Utahime blinks at the screen, the texts sliding into view. A group chat? A quick tap brings her to the members: herself, Satoru, Shoko, Ijichi, and Nanami. She had nearly forgotten Ijichi and Nanami were part of the same class. Haibara was in that class too, she remembers, and Suguru above them.
[13:43] Ijichi: Nanami-san! Is it true?
[13:43] Shoko: Oh shieeeeeeet
[13:44] Kento: This is unnecessary.
[13:45] Satoru: everyone must know of this momentous occasion, nanami! my brilliant kouhai graduates from being a salaryman!
[13:45] Satoru: this calls for
[13:45] Satoru: CAKE
[13:46] Kento: I don’t like sweets.
[13:46] Satoru: irrelevant!
[13:47] Kento: ??????
[13:47] Shoko: Beer soon??
“Did something good happen, Iori-sensei?” a student asks politely.
“Ah, it’s nothing. I just got some messages from some old friends,” Utahime says, but she can’t hide her smile, wide as can be, stretching her scar oh so pleasantly. “And you know I prefer Utahime-sensei.”
They smile back, “Right, sorry, Utahime-sensei. You look really happy.”
“I am,” she says. “It’s great to hear from them again.”
[13:48] Utahime: Welcome back, Nanami!!! We missed you!
[13:48] Kento: Thank you, Utahime-senpai.
[13:49] Kento: It is good to be back.
[13:49] Satoru: I KNEW IT HE MISSED US TOO
[13:49] Kento: Shut up, Gojo.
[13:50] Shoko: BEER
[13:51] Utahime: I’ll send Shoko some money to buy you a beer on me, Nanami!
[13:52] Kento: Thank you senpai, you are too kind.
[13:52] Satoru: yo where’s my thanks
[13:53] Kento: Non-existent.
[13:53] Satoru: ???????????????????????
[13:53] Satoru: but I announced you!
[13:53] Satoru: I basically made this happen!!
[13:53] Shoko: lmao
[13:54] Utahime: Just Utahime now, Nanami
[13:54] Kento: Then please call me Kento.
[13:55] Shoko: I want to call you Kento
[13:55] Kento: Please do.
[13:55] Satoru: ME TOO
[13:56] Kento: Gojo, if you call me by my first name I will leave again.
[13:56] Shoko: Kento~
[13:56] Utahime: So happy to have you back, Kento
[13:57] Satoru: wtf are you guys for real
Ah, is that the sun? It seems brighter today.
Reconnecting goes better than she thought it would. Maybe its because they only ever talk in the group chat, but the pattern of their interactions is lighthearted – text cannot convey bitterness. Bicker and laugh, tease and smile.
Something in her chest eases. It is this she has missed, more than anything, the routine of it, the comfort of it. They are important to each other, and they will remain important even now.
Teaching is fun. There is an honest satisfaction in watching her students grow. Utahime cannot stop grinning when one of her first years completes a supervised mission entirely on his own. She has contributed to something more than just herself. She has contributed to someone’s future, helped teach someone what it means to protect humanity.
“It just feels like I finally did something good with my life,” she tells Shoko.
“You don’t think exorcising curses is something good?”
“I mean it is,” Utahime agrees. “But it’s just – you only ever see the aftereffects of curses, y’know? You see the deaths, and then you exorcise the curse. But then after the curse is exorcised, the dead people don’t come back. It doesn’t feel like you’ve actually helped. But this is different. I do something, and I can see that I helped, and the next day, things are better.”
“You sound happy,” Shoko says.
“I am,” Utahime confirms. “How’s the not smoking?”
Shoko laughs, “It’s going. I’m proud of you.”
“I’m proud of both of us,” Utahime grins.
And again, the seasons pass.
Todo Aoi, Kamo Noritoshi, and Nishiyama Momo make up her third class of first years. The three are an interesting combination.
Todo Aoi is well-known to be Tsukumo Yuki’s protégé, which doesn’t exactly win him supporters off the bat. Tsukumo has a reputation of being a wildcard and largely useless, unfortunately by choice. Utahime wonders what Todo has learned from the eccentric woman, other than the strange tendency to judge others by sexual preferences.
“You look boring,” he tells her right off the bat. “I’m not sure what I can learn from someone like you.”
“Well, for one, you can learn how to respect your seniors,” she tells him dryly. Dealing with overpowered teenage boys feels somewhat nostalgic.
He snorts in response.
“You’re stronger than me, Todo-kun,” she tells him, and he smirks at her. Yeah, she’s definitely done this before. “But strength is nothing if you’re not smart enough to apply it the right way.”
In a flash, she twists his hair from the weird pineapple bun into a neat bow. She snaps a picture of his confused face on her phone.
“You look good with a bow,” she says absently as he gawks at the picture. “It suits you.”
Kamo Noritoshi is the heir to the Kamo clan, one of the elite. Unlike Satoru, who never quite seemed to take his position seriously, Kamo is a reserved and serious fifteen-year-old, hyperaware of the eyes on him.
“It’s okay to relax, you know,” Utahime tells him within the first couple weeks, watching him address everyone with painstaking formality.
He looks startled and a bit uncertain.
“I know you’re the heir,” she explains, “but frankly, none of your classmates care. And neither do I. I don’t know how it’s like at home, but at least here, it’s okay to just be fifteen.”
“I’m not a child,” his response is automatic.
Utahime opens her mouth to respond – you are – but in the stiffness of his spine, she recalls the heaviness of power, the chains of duty, how their world will lay endless missions upon the shoulders of grieving teens, because theirs is a war fought by children, and thus, children grow up too soon.
Maybe he’s not so unlike Satoru after all.
Utahime smiles at him sadly and places a gentle hand on his head, stroking his hair just once before pulling him into a soft hug.
“Kamo-kun,” she says kindly, “it’s not a sin to be young.”
Nishiyama Momo is harder to figure out. The girl is quiet, hiding deliberately behind the larger personalities in her class. She spends an inordinate amount of time keeps her ponytails perfectly balanced. One day, she misses a lock, and Utahime offers to fix it for her.
“I have to look perfect,” Nishiyama says anxiously, as she stands at the mirror in the bathroom in front of Utahime.
“Why?” Utahime asks.
“Girls get thrown away if they aren't perfect.”
“That’s not true,” Utahime refutes quickly.
Nishiyama glares at her in the mirror. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” Utahime furrows her brows in confusion.
“But you got thrown away,” Nishiyama blurts out. There is a brief hush as her eyes widen and she covers her mouth. “Sorry,” she squeaks.
Utahime puts her hands down from Nishiyama’s hair. “What do you mean?” Silence. “Tell me,” she commands.
Nishiyama fidgets, but eventually speaks, “That’s what the rumors say. That Gojo Satoru left you after you got the scar on your face. Because you were no longer beautiful.” The last sentence trails off almost guiltily.
Utahime giggles. “Let me tell you a secret then,” Utahime grins. “I’m the one who left Gojo.” She winks in the mirror at the blond teen. “And he definitely, one hundred percent, still wanted me after I got the scar.”
Nishiyama gapes at her. “Really?”
“Really.”
Silence, then, “Did he really love you?”
“Yes,” her response is immediate. Of this she has no doubts.
“Do you think he would have loved you if you weren’t strong and beautiful?” Nishiyama’s voice is a little forlorn, a little wistful, like fallen petals crushed underfoot.
Utahime pauses and thinks, back through the cat cafés and the bickering, through late night beers with Shoko and early morning pancakes with Megumi and Tsumiki. She remembers his chest at her back, and the way he followed her into both dark forests and sunlit parks.
“Yes,” she says softly. “Yes, I do.”
The younger girl stares at her in the mirror for a few more moments and then averts her eyes. After a slight hesitation, “I’m not sure if you’re just lying to me. But I guess we can wait to fix my hair. It’ll just get messed up during sparring anyways.”
It’s a start.
This is the closest she’s ever felt to a class. After a year, they are joined by Zenin Mai, Miwa Kasumi, and Muta Kokichi, aka Mechamaru, and the feeling strengthens.
These students, they are hers.
Satoru’s been seeing other women, plural, although none seem to last. He posts pictures of his dates on social media or sends them to the group chat when he wants to talk about the food at a restaurant or café. He doesn’t purposefully provide updates, but he doesn’t hide it either.
Each time, Utahime waits for the hurt and the anger, but it doesn’t come. She’s not really planning on going back to Tokyo, now or maybe ever, and she doubts Satoru ever had plans to wait for her. She’s able to recognize now, with time and distance, the way she must have hurt him too. Satoru has never been one to forgive.
Neither is she seeking his forgiveness.
Mai tells her, late one night when Utahime finds her in the moonlight on a balcony alone, of Maki, the elder sister, who left Zenin one day to find her own way. In Mai’s memories, Maki is brutal and cold, turning her back on her sister to chase some insane, impossible dream of becoming clan head.
“How can it possibly be worth it? All the pain and struggle,” Mai asks. She is fifteen and so terribly young. “How can it be worth leaving me? I don’t understand.”
I do, Utahime thinks. Staying with the Zenin might have killed Maki. Not physically, but in the same way that staying in Tokyo might have killed Utahime, transfiguring her into something unrecognizable, something she would rather die than become. But in saving themselves, they had left broken chains behind.
“We each have our own pride,” Utahime tries to explain, although Mai just stares back without understanding. “And the only one who can decide the worth of that pride is ourselves.”
These days, her life is full. Nishiyama seeks her out to look through magazines, and Miwa always wants to practice her New Shadow Style. Mai needs encouragement, but it’s a pleasure making the sharp girl genuinely laugh. Kamo occasionally asks for input on developing his technique further, and Mechamaru likes to just sit with her under the sun. Even Todo will often find her, just to talk about the latest Takada-chan event.
When she speaks, they listen. When she leads, they follow. Not always easily, but always with respect. She finds herself wanting to be better, wanting to push herself harder, in part because she doesn’t want to fall behind her own students, but also because their regard makes her want to be stronger.
She wonders if this is how Satoru has felt all his life, surrounded by people who look up to him. She has never had the kind of regard that he does, and never will in quite the same way. She had been okay with that, until she wasn’t. But she has her students now, and in the way they look at her, some part of her soul slides home.
The warning comes out of nowhere.
[18:18] Satoru: hes back
Utahime’s first thought is: why?
And then: are you okay?
The answer is no, of course, but she’s no longer in a position to ask.
Details filter in through rumors and Shoko, until eventually Satoru confirms the story via the group chat. There’s a first year at the Tokyo campus, Okkotsu Yuta, special grade, the one that destroyed Todo at the last Goodwill event. Someone interfered with a training mission he was sent on, breaking through poor Ijichi’s barrier, and Satoru is certain it was Suguru. Utahime isn’t sure how he knows, but she doesn’t doubt him.
Soon, another warning follows.
[17:53] Satoru: dec 24
[17:53] Satoru: curse parade
[17:53] Satoru: hundreds, maybe > 1k
[17:53] Satoru: take care of your kids
And later, long after she’s already gone to Gakuganji and heard the formal report sent by Yaga, long after her students have been briefed and a plan is formulated, sent in the dead of night, like an afterthought, like a dream, like he couldn’t hold it back anymore:
[03:41] Satoru: please don’t be weak
Utahime doesn’t respond. Somewhere in the kilometers between two cities, she’s come to an understanding, of herself and of Satoru.
You’re weak, his voice whispers in her mind, over and over.
I love you too, she whispers back. I’ll be okay. Don’t be afraid. Believe in me.
And he does, because in the battle planning centered around the two schools, her name is in the front lines, and it isn’t Gakuganji who puts her there.
Kyoto is a mess. There are curses everywhere. Her formation with her students has long since fractured; she catches glimpses of them as she runs through the battlefield. To the north, Todo’s bellow shakes the ground. To the east, Miwa and Mai fight back-to-back, as Nishiyama covers them from above. Mechamaru and Kamo to the west, accompanying each other through swaths of enemies. She can feel their cursed energy signatures rippling, struggling, breaking apart, coming together – and surviving.
Her students, both strong and weak alike, will be okay. She has faith.
A curse born of dark alleys leaps at her. She sidesteps, and it explodes with one blow. The next curse reaches out from the sewage gate, and another from a nearby truck. Her heart is pounding, her ribbon is long gone, her kosode is drenched, in sweat and blood. This tsunami of curses is never-ending, but so, Utahime finds, is the fire inside her.
Here, in the chaos, in the struggle, as Satoru once showed her so long ago – here, she is alive.
She types out the message twelve times and deletes it eleven times before sending. Her anxiety has risen gradually as she awaits news, until she can think of nothing else.
[19:23] Utahime: are you alive
Minutes pass. Ten. Thirty. Then:
[20:02] Satoru: yeah
Her chest relaxes. She can breathe again –
[20:04] Satoru: i killed him
– until suddenly she can’t.
“He found him in an alley,” Shoko tells her over the phone. “Yuta-kun did a number on him already. And then Gojo finished him off. Confirmed kill. Neat little hollow purple straight through the heart.” A pause. “He asked me if he should bring the body back, but I said no.” Shoko’s voice, always so even, has the faintest vibration. “Was that wrong?”
“Of course not,” Utahime reassures her. She cannot imagine Shoko, standing before Suguru’s cold body, preparing to dissect it for answers, as if etched along his ribs will be an answer to why did you leave us, and carved into the walls of his heart will be the answer to did you miss us too. If that were to happen, Utahime thinks, Shoko might never raise her scalpel again.
“I love you, Shoko,” she says quietly, because it’s true, and because she can say nothing else.
Back in Tokyo, Shoko is crying.
[01:43] Utahime: if you need anything
[01:44] Satoru: i know
Sometimes Utahime wonders why they don’t talk about these things. The fact that so many of their comrades, people they grow up with, laugh with, cry with – these people die in droves. Why do they accept this as normal? Why is it that, when Nanami left, they never talked about him again, until he came back to their world once more?
Would it hurt so much to say his name now, if they had kept Suguru’s memory alive when they were young?
“We’re all such liars,” Utahime murmurs, sitting alone in one of the highest rows of a baseball game, half hidden in the shade of the scoreboard, looking down and around at all the humans below her, blissfully unaware of how close the entire city had come to complete destruction. Was she really doing this for them?
Jujutsu society likes to play the martyr, likes to say it’s protecting humanity from curses, from great evil that can destroy the world. But if Tengen’s barrier, a sorcerer’s barrier, didn’t exist, then Japan wouldn’t even have this many curses to begin with. There would be no need for Suguru, forced to swallow evil over and over, and no need for Satoru, forced to bear witness to all the terrible manifestations of tragedy humanity is capable of birthing. No need for Haibara to die and no need for Shoko to pick up the scalpel. Children could be children, and Utahime and Satoru – they could just be human.
Are curses a check on humanity, Utahime wonders, or simply on the sorcerers arrogant enough to believe in their own self-importance? And if cursed energy could never gather so well without the help of Tengen, if humanity didn’t actually need them, then what were they fighting for?
The batter in the field hits a home run and takes a victory lap around the bases.
Utahime recalls the heat in her belly, when she watched Satoru fight on Fuji’s peak, and she remembers the pure jolt of savage pleasure in the way he tore the curse to shreds. The rush of her blood and the tingling of her scar as she raises her own cursed energy, readying her battle song. The delicious ache that spreads through her thighs as she sprints towards her death with breakneck speed.
She sees it in all of them. Satoru, of course. Todo and Kamo, too. She sees it in Gakuganji, when his guitar strums, and in Miwa, as she sheathes her katana. Even in Mai, reluctant as she is, in the way she raises her revolver, breathes, and aims.
Yes, she knows this answer.
The need to fight – rip and tear, dominate and win – it is deep within them, a part of their core, maybe even the essence of cursed energy itself. They are not so different: curses, and the ones who birth them.
Maybe Suguru is the only honest one after all.
The clean-up from the holidays effectively takes the rest of the academic year. There are small curses littered throughout Kyoto, hiding in various nooks and crannies. Crime in the city spikes dramatically for no reason that normal people can ascertain. It’s blamed on the unusually warm weather. Utahime and her students are constantly in and out on various missions.
Life returns to normal slowly and just like that, the next Goodwill Event arrives.
Satoru has kept the group chat updated on the increasingly dramatic events of the past few months. Sukuna’s vessel, Itadori Yuji, discovered and then dead soon enough, at Megumi’s feet. Utahime has her suspicions about Itadori – Satoru doesn’t seem nearly as upset about it as he should be, considering how attached he is to his students, constantly sending pictures of them and bragging about their progress and accomplishments.
She wonders how Megumi is doing. The boy has dealt with so much loss. They have texted occasionally, but she misses the family dinners with her parents, when Megumi could barely control his rabbits, when innocent laughter filled the air and Tsumiki picked flowers for the table. She reminds herself to send more flowers for Tsumiki soon.
The appearance of multiple special grade curses is concerning, especially the way Gojo describes them. Curses with Domain Expansion are a nightmare. She herself has never been able to reach that pinnacle of jujutsu.
[01:43] Satoru: you need to call me if one shows up
[01:43] Satoru: i mean it
[01:45] Utahime: I will, Gojo
She means it too. She may have discovered her pride because of him years ago, but she’s older now, more comfortable with her limits, and more comfortable too, with his.
He’s late to the introduction of the students, of course, because why would he be on time? Utahime can’t resist rolling her eyes with a tsk when he finally shows up. Almost thirty years old and he’s still such a brat, even leaving her out of his souvenir gifting with a teasing smirk. This is familiar ground, him being obnoxious, and her yelling at him, in the middle of the Tokyo campus she knows so well.
Some things, however, are different. Later, when he discusses with her the concerns for a mole, she thinks belatedly that this is the first time he’s asked for her help.
And then the veil appears.
[18:13] Shoko: so like this event was super fucked up yeah?
[18:14] Satoru: it’s fine~ it’s fine~
[18:14] Satoru: great teacher ~gojo satoru~ saved the day~
[18:15] Kento: Heard some rumors. What happened?
[18:16] Utahime: It’s been a long day.
[18:17] Shoko: this calls for
[18:17] Satoru: CAKE
[18:17] Shoko: beer
[18:17] Utahime: beer
[18:17] Ijichi: Beer please
[18:18] Kento: Beer it is.
[18:19] Satoru: you’re lucky I like you people
[18:19] Utahime: I think we’re just unlucky you don’t have any other friends
[18:20] Shoko: HEADSHOT
[18:20] Kento: I enjoyed that.
[18:20] Ijichi: Hehe
[18:21] Satoru: i’m DEAD utahime. DEAD.
Utahime isn’t really sure about continuing the Goodwill event after that disaster of a first day, but she agrees with Satoru that the decision should be made by the students. There are so few opportunities for them to be together like this; she doesn’t want to take any of that time away from them.
The group baseball game is exactly what she needs too. Utahime is suspicious of the way Gakuganji and Yaga reacted to the pull from the box, even more so when Satoru actually winks at her before walking out of the building. But it’s so fun, strategizing with her students, yelling encouragement from the sidelines, hiding her snicker when Todo’s face is beautifully flattened by Maki.
She can’t hide her relief and her genuine happiness, and when Satoru catches her gaze again, she beams and says, “Thank you.”
Hours later, they are with the others, entrenched in a karaoke bar. The students are long gone, no doubt enjoying their own debauchery, and everyone here is from the generation past.
They are both more than a little drunk, or at least Utahime knows she is. Drunk and sleepy. She’s not sure about Satoru with his self-rejuvenating jutsu and whatnot. But he’s at least drunk enough to be in this corner of the karaoke room with her, half hidden in the shadows, with Shoko and the others pointedly ignoring them. She is perched at the edge of the bench, and he is on his knees before her. Her fingers are somehow clasped in his collar, and his forehead is warm against hers. Utahime blinks at the way his gaze, hooded and warm, focuses down on just her.
Ah. She knows this scene.
Unbidden, the words come.
“I miss you,” she confesses.
“I miss you,” he whispers.
Her forehead slides away, landing instead on his shoulder as she bends forward. She breathes him in.
“I’m drunk,” she says.
“Yeah,” he confirms.
“You too?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it though.”
“Yeah.”
“Will you remember this in the morning?”
His palm traces her side. “Do you want me to?”
Utahime is already asleep.
She remembers the next morning, waking up on Shoko’s couch, but she doesn’t gather her courage until late that day. She could call him, but somehow, she thinks she knows where he’ll be.
The campus is eerily quiet. She passes the dorms and remembers late summer nights with Shoko, giggling over ramen and manga. There are the training grounds, where she struggled against Satoru’s overwhelming power for the first time and found something within her that thrived in the fight. To the side are the classrooms, where she would exchange books with Suguru, whose absence is felt even now, and behind her is the principal’s office, where Gakuganji first introduced her to the jujutsu world when she was five and set the course of her life.
He’s waiting for her behind the morgue, leaning against the building’s shadows, staring at treetops. The sky is slowly transforming into hues of lavender and violet, reflecting in his hair like an echo.
He is beautiful.
“Welcome back,” Satoru says, as she approaches him, lifting his hand in greeting. His voice is light, but if she looks closely, his fingertips are trembling.
Utahime looks up at him. His eyes are covered with a dark blindfold. She lifts it carefully. He doesn’t stop her. As it slides past his forehead, his hair flops down, and she brushes it out of his eyes, both hands coming to a rest around his face.
Yes, she has always loved these eyes. Ever since that very first skipped heartbeat, under the sunset glow, when they were both so terribly young, when he had laughed and something deep inside her had stirred and awoken.
They have changed so much since then, metamorphosed into something like adults. This is Utahime, older and wiser, and this is Satoru, harder, yet kinder. Falling together is no longer an act of desperation, like prayer sticks tossed into the wind. Instead, this journey will be deliberate, with small steps chosen carefully as if traveling through torii gates, steady as the tide and as inevitable as the seasons.
“I’m back,” Utahime says, carefully placing her fingers in the spaces between his.
Satoru smiles.
fin