Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

between our two lives,
there is the life of
the cherry blossom
– matsuo bashō

i.  if you are scorched earth, i will be warm rain

You meet God beside a pond.

Your father puts you in your best clothes though clumsy in the absence of your mother. His hold on you is almost painful, tight along the obi around your waist. The servants crowd around you as they whisper about which obi really suits your kimono the best. They sneer at your father’s choice of pattern but your father ignores them, acting deaf despite how loud they sound. They talk about a ‘kanzashi this time to match the kimono’ and your grandmother, from the corner of the room, beside the shōji doors, holds one in her hands, a kanzashi owned by your late mother. Your father refuses to look at it. There is a tenseness in the air that no one dares address.

Your grandmother puts it delicately on your hair and pats your head softly, the smile adorning her lips becoming something that you will see today for the last time. Grandmother does not smile often, you think, not after your grandfather left her for a ‘whore’ he found in Roppongi, according to the servants and according to the members of the Zen’in Clan who live only a town away from you. (Betrayals are not tolerated in the Clan. The next thing you hear about your grandfather is his corpse strewn in the hallways of the compound. Your Clan may not be the most powerful but there is a sensitivity that aches in your bones. Your willowy grandmother has the hand of an iron-beast, the most notorious among the previous heads.) She talks about how distasteful men can be and how you must protect your womb from them, your precious womb, blessed once in three generations. You are only meant for one person and one person only, just like all women of the Clan.

Grandmother asks you if you remember your manners and with a cock of your head, a strand of hair falling slightly on your face, you make a noise of affirmation. She clips away the stray hair and tells you, “You must answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. How long must I tell you this?” You lower your head submissively. Your father stands behind you like a tower, unreachable, unspeaking, unmoving. You cannot see his eyes in this angle, especially given the fact that he is the tallest in the household, including the servants and the well-known sorcerers. Grandmother gives you a pleased smile. She holds your hands. “Be at your best behavior today, understand? You must give the best impression.” She repeats over and over again. You nod. “[Name].”

“Yes, grandmother.” The obi around your waist is suffocating and too tight for your body but you do not speak about it. You are not allowed to complain and your grandmother expects only the best for you. Your grandmother expects a lot from you.

Your father takes your hand in his and guides you to the car, sleek and black. He sits with you at the back while grandmother settles in the front, holding the most power in the household. Your father only tightens his hold around you like this suffocating obi. You still cannot see his face with him turned away from you, focusing on the trees rushing away. You want to talk to him, you realize—your father whose words are somehow always stuck in his throat like he is being held back, even though you heard that your father is one of the finest sorcerers of his generation, yet an outsider of the Clan still. You are tempted to lean on his shoulder just like how you usually do but your grandmother is here and her steel gray eyes are focused on the mirror, watching you closely. You decide to focus only on the front. Your beloved father’s hands are cold, a little sweaty but you hog every moment you can get out of his touch. He does not do this often. (Nobody touches you often. Nobody is allowed to touch you.) You have no choice but to take the most that you can get while you have the opportunity to. Today is, after all, the last day you will be with your father like this, the last day you will see him in a long, long time. (Your grandmother’s eyes stare at your own. You tilt your head away. You beg her, silently, to not look at you. You beg your father, desperately, to take you away and for once, do something.) Your tongue licks the inside of your cheek, instinctively wetting your lips as you poke it out for a moment. The kimono is hot against your body. Too hot. (Or maybe your body is just cold.) You glance at the window, the sound of the cicadas piercing through the confines of the car. Summer. Summer but no breaks, summer but no vacations, summer but no trips. Summer.

When you finally reach your destination, grandmother holds you again. She palms your stomach through your obi. You want to move away but she looks at you like you are her most precious treasure so you let her. She reaches for your womb again. Her hands move to yours, along with her gray, gray eyes. She smiles. You shiver in delight at its appearance. “My granddaughter has to be in her best behavior today. You must please the Gojō Clan and give the best impression. Do you understand that?” Her tongue rolls on your name uncomfortably but you nod your head, mumbling a faint ‘yes’. She looks like she is about to scold you for the quiet answer but your father intervenes.

“They are waiting for us, mother-in-law,” he says.

Grandmother frowns. “Let us go then.”

She lets go of your hands and not even your father moves to catch them. You gather your arms in your kimono, presenting yourself like the good granddaughter you are expected to be, and as you enter the doors beyond the manor of the Gojō Clan, you are greeted by a shock of white hair from the head of the family. His face blurs in your eyes, watching your grandmother bow her head submissively, though not low enough to show that she serves this man. You mimic her movements, of course, lower than hers because you cannot be anything else but. The Gojō Head tells you to show your face and you do. He cocks a smile. “She looks like her mother” and by extension, your grandmother too. All women in the Clan look the same, and thus, his comment is irrelevant. Grandmother thinks so too when she narrows her eyes. “Girl, our young master is at the back. Find him there.” He waves you off casually. Father meets your eyes. He almost looks apologetic but it disappears as soon as you notice it.

Father is always silent. You wonder who took his voice.

As you walk away, you stumble upon god in the backyard of the Gojō Clan’s compound. He is sitting beside a pond, staring at the koi fish that he is feeding. He watches them with bored eyes, his hair as white as his father’s but his eyes, far different. You only managed to see the Head’s eyes for only a moment but you are sure they are not as striking as these ones. And when he turns to face you, his short hair tickling the edge of his forehead, cloaked in loose robes and an expression so nonchalant that it almost resembles the Lord Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto from the countless paintings of him in your Clan’s compound, he moves his head the same way his father does. Arrogantly like you are nothing but a pest to him. You think he is quite pretty though, different from his father yet starkly similar that you can see their shared nose and the shape of their eyes. The color, however, is obviously different.

You remember your honored grandmother talking about them for the longest time: the Eyes of the Gods. The All-Seeing Eyes. The Eyes that Shine Upon the Heavens. The Gift of Amaterasu-ōmikami. The Gaze of Takamagahara. The Great Six Eyes. The god of the current generation. The reason why your role has drastically changed: from the lamb to be offered to the strongest Zen’in spawn to the lamb offered to the god of the new generation. You stare at him. This god. He is rather short for his age, surprisingly. But he holds himself as someone larger than life. A true god. A god who clothes himself in the skin of a boy. He holds himself like the true blessed one of the Great Goddess Amaterasu-no-Mikoto, a being that of Sarutahiko-Ōkami and you are Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto sent to appease him.

In a practice drilled to you by your grandmother, you bow lowly to him (the boy-god). A god who appears to be around your age. A false self, your grandmother had said for gods to test the mortals around him and she demands that you will pass all tests the god will give to you. “I am [Name] of the Tengai Clan,” your words drip with formality, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Satoru-sama.” You hear his name is written as ‘the enlightened one’ but your Matriarch calls him something different—the boy-god. The god who descended from the heavens to masquerade as a man. The god that your grandmother believes far too much that she had broken the agreement with the Zen’in Clan. The god that changed your future with only his birth.

Ah, but a god is much better than Naoya-kun, you think.

The boy-god stands up, looking at you up and down with those eyes of his. You try your best not to squirm under his stare. The famous All-Seeing Eyes. Pretty but dangerous, even adorned with the Gojō Clan’s ability named after the colors that treasure so much, a compensation for their lack of it. A family of white-haired individuals in contrast to the Zen’in Clan’s family of dark-haired sorcerers. And you are stuck in between, your Clan named after what lies beyond the heavens, ironically. He moves to you, limbs awkward. Too awkward for someone called a god. “You’re the one from the Zen’in Clan,” he mentions the taboo topic. A nonchalant god, he is.

“Tengai Clan,” you correct him carefully, “The deal between the Zen’in Clan and the Tengai Clan was changed,” after years of insistence from your grandmother.

He furrows his eyebrows in confusion. He is shorter than you by a few inches. You wonder if he can see your face and expressions as clearly as they say he can. There are rumors about those eyes giving him the ability to read minds too, are there not? You have to work on your thoughts then. “The Tengai Clan’s supposed to give their daughter to the Zen’in this time around, aren’t they? Because they gave the last one to the Kamo Clan,” his words are crude but honest. Grandmother would call it ‘offering’ instead of something as ‘dirty’ as ‘giving’. Most people will call it the same way the Matriarch will. It makes the Clan look cruel when they say ‘give’, she says, when you are only doing your job, what you are meant to do, she says and says and says. “I thought our turn was after this generation.”

You shake your head softly. “Grandmother was very insistent on siding with the Gojō Clan this generation,” you answer.

The boy-god hums. “Then, does that mean you’re mine now?”

You pause. The answer does not come to you.

ii. and her ears were intent upon the melancholy singing of the autumn insects

You are older than the young master of the Gojō Clan, only by a month or two. While he is born when winter has just entered the picture, when the snow is as white as his hair and the weather as cold as his eyes, you are born in autumn. When he learns this, he stares at you intently. As usual, he forgoes formality, his words slick in casual language and torpor that even his servants steer away from him. There is something wrong with the young master of the Gojō Clan—is their shared agreement. His back is sprawled in the porch beside the pond he favors while you are seated in perfect seiza position. His eyes are on you, observing every inch of you as if you are a puzzle meant to be solved. He purses his lips for a moment. “Do you like autumn?” He asks when he learns of your birthday.

Your response is quick because this is what your grandmother says is the right answer. “I was born then, but I like winter the most,” your grandmother says that Satoru likes winter because that is when he was born and that sharing your favorites with the boy you are destined to be with is the only way to gain his favor. With a discreet glance, you catch his dismayed expression. “Is there something—” He interrupts you with a loud groan. You wince.

“I hate winter!” He announces.

“I—” You stammer.

He suddenly sits up, facing you properly this time. His eyes are intense. You fidget. “What’s your favorite season?”

“Win…” You hesitate. He raises an eyebrow. You try to look around, seeking for an answer somewhere else other than his eyes. But you always return to them. So blue that it is almost blinding. Your nails dig into the cloth of your kimono. You try to look, and look, and look for answers but you find them nowhere. You meet his gaze again and you try to scoot away to a place a little further away from him but he grabs your wrist and repeats his question. His eyes become your main focus, clear and bright, hair cut short precisely for people to focus on the intensity of his vibrant gifts. You slouch a little. Pretty, pretty eyes. The answer comes rolling down your tongue, this time, truthful but unsure. You mimic his furrowed eyebrows, genuinely confused. “Winter.”

Satoru releases his hold around your wrist. There is barely any pain present because of how small the both of you are, his hands soft from lack of work. “Why do you like winter?” He asks again. “Do you like the cold? Do you like snow?” His questions come rushing in.

“I—well,” you shut your mouth immediately. You snap your head behind you, expecting to see your grandmother scold you for your stammerings. You do not see her. You only see the empty corridors and the large tree that stands above the ponds. When you look in front of you, Satoru blocks everything. For such a small person, he consumes so much space. And his eyes. They truly are a blessing, are they not? The eyes given to him by the gods. You bite your lip. “It, winter—it gives off the same feeling as your eyes,” your cheeks turn a shade darker when the answer unconsciously comes. You pull your wrist away from him in surprise. You wonder if it is the truth, or maybe another one of the things your grandmother hammered into your head until you grow to believe it as well.

But he gives you a wide grin. A smile that compliments his eyes so well that, if it is even possible, makes it brighter a hundredfold. Satoru leans back, letting himself fall to the ground again, sprawled and uncaring of his appearance. “Did you like winter back then, in Kyōto?” He questions once more.

“The Tengai Clan lives near Mount Takao. Winter is much worse there than here in Tōkyō, I think,” you say your words carefully this time.

He hums.

Your legs are aching from sitting in this position for the past few hours but silence between the two of you almost brings you discomfort. You almost want to lay like him, beside his casualness and his nonchalance. Your grandmother always said that the gods are weighed by the responsibility of taking care of mortals but for someone called a god despite his mortal form, despite his child-like form, the young master of the Gojō Clan feels incredibly free. He is allowed to run around in the middle of the night, spend the rest of his day skipping classes, stay near the pond under the tree for ages upon ages. You envy him. And once again, he looks at you, only one eye open as the other eye remains closed. It still feels like he is staring right through you. “You’re going to be my wife, right?” His questions come barraging again; why are you still here if not to answer his questions? If not to bring solutions to his problems. You are to be his wife in the future, the one to carry his offspring in order to bring forth more children with as much potential as he has.

“I am,” you do not know why but your words are more hushed this time. He does not care though, and instead, scoots to your direction to put his head on your lap. Your hands immediately fly in the air out of surprise. He opens both of his eyes and frowns. “If you’re going to be my wife, why are you still talking formally? I don’t care about keigō anyway,” he shrugs.

“But Satoru-kun—”

“Satoru. Just Satoru.”

You frown uncomfortably. “I—I can’t do that.”

He imitates your expression. “Then only call me Satoru when we’re alone—” He sits up again, almost hitting your chin in the process. His eyes gleam brightly. “Call me Satoru when we’re alone! Then, it looks like we have our own little secret! Got it?”

His eagerness almost infects you. You hesitate again, as you always do but when he grabs both of your hands, when he pulls you in a way you have no other choice but to be so up close to the fervency of his eyes, when he looks at you like that, so voracious and insistent, you cannot help but succumb to him. You are weak for him all of the sudden, the boy-god you are meant to be the wife to. Your shoulders completely slouch this time. “Satoru,” you mumble. And the smile he gives you is so bright that you somehow end up staring at it instead of his eyes.

His smile, you realize, is far prettier than his eyes.

(You think Gojō Satoru gave you a choice, that he was your ticket to freedom, that he would be the wings you longed for in the birdcage you were born in. He is your first taste of the skies, your first sight of the sun, your gate to the heavens. You think Gojō Satoru taught you freedom. But is freedom truly freedom when you are guided through it?)

iii. there is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty

Satoru likes playing hide-and-seek with you even though you have not fully memorized the interior of the Gojō Clan’s compound. Perhaps, it is not really hide-and-seek that he enjoys but the sight of your confused and troubled face wandering around in the tight arteries of the place he knows better than the back of his hand. The corridors of his home become the maze he drops you in. He knows that you love holding his hand the most and he takes advantage of this, the dearest Young Master Satoru whom no one can defy. He drags you to a place in the compound you have never seen before and he ignores the worry in your face. Instead, he even relishes in it. And with the smile that you love the most plastered on his face, and with the eyes that you love the most, the hand you love the most, he directs them all to you, and then, he snaps away.

In the pretense of a quick game of hide-and-seek, he lets go of you, in the dark curves of the corridors, nestled in the place you are not sure you are even allowed to go. You hunch your shoulders together. He calls for your name, so sweet that you succumb again. “Start counting, okay?” And you do, just as promised, you count until ten and he disappears before your eyes, vanishing completely and the difficulty maneuvering around the hallways stresses you out but you do as he tells you, tripping on your own feet as you call for his name.

Satoru likes toying with you, his little fiancée who follows his lead, whether out of obligation or the love that you have developed for him in the months you spend with him. Satoru does not need to ask you to know about your true feelings, about how he managed to catch you with simple words. He immediately notices the shift in your tone and mannerisms ever since that day and he picks it up so quickly that you do not have time to adjust with the change of his attitude towards you. Sometimes, the games he plays with you become too much that you spend hours and hours in a corridor that you do not recognize. Sometimes, he smiles at you across the low-rise table and whines about not liking his food and dumping what he dislikes the most on your plate. Sometimes, sometimes, so many times that you lost count, Satoru asks you to cover for him when he messes up in class and his teachers always look at you pitifully, and relents. He always watches from the side, a cheerful look on his face.

Afterwards, he always pulls you to the grass beside the pond, sprawling against its tickles and laughs heartily that even you end up giggling despite the small lashes you got for covering for him. (Nobody is allowed to hurt the generation’s wielder of the Rikugan and as you are pushed into the spotlight, their fingers itch. As long as they do not hurt your womb or your face, it will be alright, will it not?) He holds your hand so, so, so warmly and tightly. His smile reaches his eyes and you think there is nothing more beautiful than his happiness. (Our own little secret.) How pitiful are you willing to fall for this boy? Your stomach clenches. His smile is directed to you, only to you and the world revolves around him, the moon remains still for him, and the stars shine for this boy-god who calls you so dearly by your name. “Let’s play again tomorrow, okay?” You resist a flinch as hard as you can; you simply mimic his smile.

“Tomorrow,” you promise.

And when you end up with a wound on your knee for tripping in the yard the next day for playing yet another game with Satoru, the housekeeper that accompanied you all the way from Kyōto, looks at you in despair. She usually tries not to say anything as she dabs an ointment to your wound. But this time, she cannot help but let the words slip out from her mouth: “It would have been better if you lived with the Young Master Naoya instead—” Your hand immediately moves to cover her mouth. You look around worriedly. The doors are still shut and there is no sign of a presence when you spread your Curses Energy in the area. You sigh in relief. “I—I apologize. I overstepped my boundaries. I should not have said that,” she rushes to say.

You shift on your seat. “The other servants believe that I’ll have it worse with Naoya-kun. But Satoru—Satoru-kun is much better than him,” your former-housekeeper looks at you in disbelief but you quickly continue, “This is just one accident. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

“But, [Name]-sama, the Young Master Naoya might be cruel to his peers and those around him but he doesn’t—” She pauses. “He makes sure his treasures are in pristine condition.” What a strange way to say ‘toys’, you think in displeasure. You shake your head and move to your futon. You ignore her pleadings the rest of the day.

She remains seated beside your futon for hours upon hours. Consumed by guilt, you finally shuffle on your spot and face her. She smiles at you. “I’m sorry for ignoring you. But you shouldn’t talk about Satoru-kun like that, especially here, okay?” Your hand reaches for her cheek, brushing away the hair stuck on her skin. The softness of your Cursed Energy caresses her. She leans to it. “Let’s not talk about this again.”

Your hands must be cold, you realize when she shivers.

iv. i feel my past has not been free from sins which i remember not

One of the many restrictions in the Cursed Technique passed down by the Tengai Clan applies to the women they birth: in the Main Family, it is simple—the women shall be the shadow of the men, those who continuously give instead of taking. The Cursed Technique of ‘strengthening’ another’s technique, hogged by the majority of the other clans. This is meant to contrast the men of the Clan, born with the technique to decrease their opponents’ strength and together, their combination is the most formidable. But the decreasing number of the men crippled the Tengai Clan and thus, formed the deal between the Three Great Clans of the Jujutsu Sorcerers. Every three generations, the ‘most powerful’ woman of the Tengai Clan shall rise and the descendants will be rotated with each three generations. The first Tengai Offering was given to the Kamo Clan, followed by the Zen’in Clan, and lastly, the Gojō Clan. An everlasting cycle until the strongest man of the Tengai Clan arrives.

(For years, the Three Clans targeted the pregnancy of the women of the Tengai Clan whose wombs possessed a son. The ‘Tengai Purge’ occurred during the early years of the Taishō era, before settling to a ceasefire when the men of the Tengai Clan began to lose the Cursed Technique they prized.)

That is, until the birth of Gojō Satoru. The cycle is abruptly cut with the desperation of spawning another Rikugan user. With Tengen-sama’s support on the matter, the Tengai Clan’s matriarch, Tengai Chiyoe, becomes the catalyst of the ‘New Overturning’. The Zen’in Clan is far from pleased when the daughter of the Tengai Clan is offered to Gojō Satoru but when even Gakuganji Yoshinobu-sama and Tengen-sama insist upon it, the Zen’in Clan sits quietly on their seats and watches the daughter promised to their Zen’in Naoya become the ownership of their greatest rival’s Gojō Satoru.

You were born to be a wife to a man you will be supporting throughout his life, and with no other options offered to you, this is the only life you have lived, but Satoru holds out his hands and whispers a secret, a secret that only you two share: “I read something from Abe-no-Seimei’s logs,” you perk up immediately. He gestures for you to come closer, a bit closer because this is a secret that only the two of you share. “The greatest Tengai Couple fought individually.”

A secret that only the two of you share.

Satoru nudges you to the side a little, huddling under the blanket in the far corner of their aged and famed library, containing the untold truths about the Gojō Clan and by extension, the Great Abe-no-Seimei. He does not comment about how cold you are or how you resemble the winter far more than him despite being born in Autumn. “It says here that the Tengai Matriarch could strengthen whatever she held: a Cursed Weapon! And of course, she can strengthen her own Technique too. She even fought more battles than the Patriarch and even had him supporting her instead but,” he pauses and points to a part where he frowns at, “She found a lover outside of The Clan that’s why she was shunned. They say that’s the reason why the men began dying out and only women were born. They say it was a punishment from the gods because even Izanami-no-Mikoto stayed loyal to Izanagi-no-Mikoto, even when he ran away from her new form, but the Matriarch, who was loved, betrayed her husband!” His frown deepens. “You’re not going to leave me for Naoya, right?”

You gasp in disgust. “Of course not! I hate Naoya-kun and I—” You interrupt yourself, cheeks exploding in darker shades. You duck your head and you do not need to look at Satoru to know that he is grinning deviously at you. You feel him poke your side as you try to scoot away.

“You what? Tell me! Tell me!” He grabs you by your shoulder and makes you face him. That smile again, that smile, that smile, that smile—you try to look away but he holds you so tightly and so eagerly that you cannot help but look back at him again. His smile grows and grows and grows the more your cheeks darken. “[Name]-chan likes me a lot, right? Right? Right?”

“I do,” you mumble.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Really-really?”

You try to pull away. You sigh: “Really-really.”

He laughs and embraces you. “I really, really, really like [Name] too!” He slumps on your lap and buries his face to your obi. He complains about how hard and tightly-wrapped it is but does not say anything any further than that until he looks up at you again. Without his smile in the picture, all you can see are his eyes. “Say my name too,” he says. His hand grazes your cheek. Warm. So warm.

“Satoru.”

(A small secret. A secret shared only by the two of you.)

GLOSSARY

• obi (帯) is the sash used as something like a belt for kimono (着物) which are traditional japanese clothing.
• kanzashi (簪) are ornamental hairpins.
• tsukuyomi-no-mikoto (月読命) is the shintō god of the moon and the husband of amaterasu-ōmikami (天照大御神), the shintō goddess of the sun. they are said to reside in the shintō heavens, takamagahara (高天原).
• sarutahiko-ōkami (猿田毘古大神) is the shintō of deities who live in earth aka the kunitsukami (国つ神). he is known for his love story with ame-no-uzume (天宇受売命).
• the titles of each part come from the tale of genji by murasaki shikibu.
• tengai is written as 「天外」 which means beyond the heavens, in reference to their ability to strengthen cursed techniques. 

edited as of the 2nd of may, 2023

Chapter Text

i long for him most
during these long moonless nights.
i lie awake, hot,
the growing fires of passion
bursting in my heart.
– ono no komachi

v. and yet you let your heart be moved by trivial words

The women of the Tengai Clan are very sheltered and protected, their wombs being of utmost importance. Many of the women still possess the strengthening aspect of their Cursed Technique but none quite as strong as yours, not even a fraction of what you possess are present in their veins. Some of them envy you but most of them, the adults and those who know better, look down upon you like you are pitiful. While the servants whisper of how fortunate you are to be sent to the Young Master of the Gojō Clan rather than Zen'in Naoya who is years younger than you, but promised to you even before either of you were born, your aunts and cousins kneel down to your height, holding your face and sobbing on your shoulders. “Our poor, poor young lady,” they would say, hands creeping to where your womb is supposed to be. Your grandmother, sometimes, would watch from afar, let them have their moment before they are ushered away.

You think you agree with the servants. You are lucky to be married to Satoru instead of Naoya who you hear is as loud-mouthed as always. At least, despite his strange jokes (the corridors narrow down around you, suffocating, restricting, the darkness is all you can see but there is light at the end of the cave and the light is as blue as the snow in his eyes) and his eccentricities (he picks on his food, lets the bean fall to the floor as a servant flinches; he smiles at you and pushes his small  to your direction, “You should eat more,” you wonder, sometimes, if he is mocking you), Satoru, you think, genuinely cares for you. He holds your hands between his so gently you almost cannot feel him, but something that you know out about Satoru is that he is often bored. He looks at the servants of his clan with disinterest and his eyes only light up when they see you coming.

Satoru is always waiting for you to return by your side, as if you were always meant to be with him in the first place but as he grows, it becomes harder and harder. All women of the Tengai Clan are sheltered and protected. They are homeschooled, far from the prying eyes of the civilians and the non-Curse Users which is why you have no choice but to kneel at the entrance, a servant inches away from you in the same position. Practice, your grandmother hisses in your ear. Her lack of presence does not help. A good wife sits at the entrance to wish her husband well and that is exactly what you do: Satoru looks comfortable in his new uniform that of an elementary school student and the traitorous part of you roars with envy because you cannot be like him, you can never go to school normally like him, you cannot even go to the famed Jujutsu High School like him because the women of the Tengai Clan are sheltered and protected, hands on where your womb is supposed to be, and the pits of your stomach swirl with envy.

You think: if only you were a boy like Satoru, then you would wear that uniform with pride, you would have more freedom than anybody could offer—and yet, you are born as a woman. And yet, your complaints die before they can even escape you because Satoru sighs against you, leaning on your shoulder with that bored expression as he talks about how lucky you are that you do not have to go to school and mingle with the other students (you have never been envious in your whole life), because Satoru looks at you again with his beady eyes: “I like it here more with [Name]-chan. I don’t want to go to school without you.” And you crumble. A child’s heart can be fragile at times. No. All the time.

When Satoru says he wants to be with you and only with you, the envy fades, the wrath sinks back into the shadows as if it was never there in the first place. You nod against him tearfully. “I also want to go to school with Satoru,” you say and you mean it honestly.

Your teachers whisk you back to the study room when you try to say you want to go to school too, and they say you must not ask for such things because you must be protected at all cost and that your womb is precious, young mistress, the most precious existence out there for this womb will strengthen the warriors to come and you will become the mother of gods. You cry, the world on the shoulders of a seven-year-old. Once, you dreamed of holding dark-haired children in the future like most little girls of your age. The Young Master Naoya is very handsome, young lady, they would say, and it makes you swoon because once, once, once, like most little girls, you dreamed of becoming a mother. But the arms around your stomach, the hands palming where your womb is supposed to be, the bored, bored but kind eyes of Satoru, all of them make you want to vomit.

You do not want to become the mother of gods. You do not want to be Izanami-no-Mikoto who sits in the underworld, waiting for the arrival of the husband who will shun her. You do not wish to become her, the goddess of the underworld who is permanently waiting, and waiting, and waiting. But you also think: Satoru is to be your husband.

And Satoru cares deeply for you. As if the anxiety and the thoughts never existed, your calm down.

If it is Satoru then—

vi. if like the leaf of the wisteria through which the sun darts his rays transparently you give your heart to me

The Clan Head of the Gojō Clan is a tall, tall man. So tall that you almost cannot see his face at your quaint height and he is not the type to crouch down when he talks to a child. He never lowers himself for anyone but himself, and those occasions are scarce. But in the few times you do meet eye-to-eye with him, during the celebrations when the Gojō Clan gathers in the main hall, you realize that he looks a lot like Satoru or Satoru looks a lot like the Clan Head. His hair is a tussle of white and his eyes are as narrowed and uncaring as his son’s. But the color differs greatly. Satoru is the only one with eyes so blue that it makes the skies look like mere rugs. But there is a time when the Clan Head crouched for you, one that begins to happen more than once after the first incident.

You are ten years old and Satoru is nearing the age to enter another private middle school. The Clan speaks of what you can offer aside from your womb, if your strengthening is truly as strong as they say. The Head, of course, does not tolerate any act of insubordination and so, in the midst of the crowd gathering around the training ground, he stalks to you with conviction. Satoru tries to block his path but Rikugan or not, enlightened one or not, boy-god or not, the Clan Head is still the Clan Head and he still sired the young god that everybody speaks highly of. The Head sneers at Satoru. “Stand down, boy,” he barks and Satoru slouches, gritting his teeth. It is the most anger you have seen out of him. “You. Girl. Come here.”

You spare a glance at Satoru, wondering if he became angry for your sake but his glare is directed to his father. There are no shared glances between the two of you because Satoru is not angry for you. He is angry for himself. He is not worried about you but he dislikes it when someone takes what is his. Like a boy with his toy. A god with his humans. A king with his objects. For once, the Clan Head scoops you in his arms and you resist the urge to squeak in surprise. “You know how to use your Technique, yes?” He demands. You fear saying ‘no’ and thus, you mumble a small sound of affirmation.

He tightens his hold around you. His free arm stretches in front, his fingers intertwined with one another. Out of instinct, you let your Cursed Technique envelop him, your energy urging his own to exceed the limits, to become someone beyond the body he was gifted with. You are a Tengai and you shall go beyond the heavens. He mutters: “Ao,” and the sphere pierces through the skies, silent and fast in a form better than anything that Satoru has ever made before and no doubt, in a strength that the Clan Head has never exhibited before. The Clan whispers among themselves as you are brought down to your feet. Your knees buckle, energy waning with how much you had given to the Head. His fingers run through your hair in appreciation. You try your best not to swoon. “Question the girl again and I’ll personally bring that old bat to you,” you flinch at how casually he had called your grandmother, “And you, Satoru. If you have anything to say, do better.”

And for a boy who was nothing but worshipped, Satoru has heard of nothing as shameful as that.

It is no surprise when Satoru infiltrates your room in the middle of the night, shaking you awake. You are trapped in a small fever, assisting someone as great as the Clan Head putting more toll in your body than you had expected but if it is Satoru who is waking you up, if it is Satoru who needs you, then you will gladly stand up for him. “Satoru,” you shiver, catching the sight of your shoji door beside the engawa being slightly ajar, “Do you need something?”

His eyes glint in the darkness. He opens his mouth as if to scold you before he shuts it. He looks away, adjusting himself to sit in seiza beside your futon. “Do you practice with the Clan Head often?” He asks.

You shake your head. “The Clan Head does not allow anyone to train with him, Satoru-ku—” He snaps his eyes to you all of the sudden, blindingly glowing and intense. You purses your lips at your mistake. “Satoru, you know that. I only train my Technique with the other women. I—I’m not allowed to meet men other than you, your father, and the Elders. You know that, Satoru.” You know how much I hate that. You know, right? Because you tell everything to him: how you want to go to school with him, how you want to leave the compound, how you want to make use of your technique, how you feel nothing but a bird in a cage in this place. He knows this because he is the only one you can talk to. You are trapped in his heart, in his compound, in his Clan, and you complain only to him because you cannot complain elsewhere. And despite these complaints, you do not mind it all because it is him. Your sweet Satoru, your kind Satoru, your happy Satoru, your boy-god, your husband-to-be. (The father to your children—your stomach churns.)

Satoru has to know.

You desperately cling to him, fingers tight around his wrist, begging to leave a bruise because he has to know. And in a way that is almost, almost, almost mocking, he leans to your face, the glint of the god-eyes evident with a single look from him: “Then why don’t you train with me?” You shake your head pleadingly and he frowns.

“You know I’m not allowed to yet! Not when—not until you’re much older, Satoru,” you whisper, slowly loosening your grip around his wrist. Your eyes flit to the side but he pulls your face back to the front. You cringe away. “You won’t be able to take both my Cursed Energy and yours, and if you just—” If you just master the Rikugan then... “—just a little bit longer, Satoru. Just a little bit more.”

He leans his head to your shoulder. His breath tickles your neck and you try your best to quickly calm down. Your own breath hitches. “Just a little longer,” he says.

vii. no penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure

Satoru learns to sleep in your bed around the time he reaches his first year in middle school. He stays longer in classes and he says this, sleeping in your futon, clinging to your side and taking as much warmth from you, is his way of paying back all the time he has lost with you. Of course, you welcome him because there is nothing you will not do for him. The servants care little about it but the Elders scold him for what may happen if he ‘defiles’ you before the two of you become married. Your body is a treasure, they say, that which was gifted by the heavens in order to give birth to the gods of the Jujutsu, and the child you will have with Satoru will be the strongest of all gods, the boy who will exist beyond the realm of imagination. Satoru is not allowed to touch you in any way sexual because they will know. There are servants right outside your quarters, ears strained to hear any sign of ‘unbecoming’ activity and when you are in the gardens with Satoru, there are even more servants to keep watch.

Satoru always makes sure that their guards are up. He leans his face often to yours, whispers something in your ear, his pecks getting closer and closer to your lips, and always, always, always rendering you into a blushing mess. And when in the privacy of just the two of you, in the rare occasions that the servants are more incompetent than those from yesterday or the day before that, Satoru kisses you under the blankets of your futon. (It first started when he came home from his middle school, eyes wide and staring at you. He leans closer. “Can I kiss you?”) His hands would thread to your hair and yours would be around his neck, his lips soft and gentle, rarely to never actually being rough with his actions. He makes silent sounds, so silent than even you who is so close to him can barely hear them. Sometimes, his hands would be around your waist, pulling you close to him and sometimes, there is something hard that presses against you, your cheeks growing darker when you realize what it is. He lets go of you, panting right at your face. His face is so red than his eyes become stark against his skin. He whispers your name.

What surprises you about Satoru the most is his sudden growth spurt. You had been taller than him for years, even calling him short for his age but you should never have doubted him anyway, with how tall the Clan Head is. He continues to grow and grow, both in height and in power. Before he knows it, even his middle school uniform is too small for him. Again, the envy burns you. What does it feel like to grow on your clothes? To not have tailored kimono made for you, to be taller than most people and not be stuck in a feminine body? You claw your chest, the heavy swell that pokes out of your skin.

You servants wash your hair for you, your food is prepared for you, your schedule is controlled, the people you meet are scarce. The envy burns you so badly it scars. But Satoru, despite your stagnancy and his fickleness, always returns to your lap, asking you to pat his head as he talks and talks endlessly about his day in school, complaining about his schoolmates, and how—boring everything is. The word returns again. That word. You remember Satoru’s bored eyes and his low voice, muttering something under his breath and you wonder: what will happen if Satoru gets bored of you next? You know him. You know that if he dislikes you enough, he will somehow convince the Clan Head to get rid of you, throw you back to the Zen’in Clan regardless of what Tengen-sama says, regardless of what the world says because he is the Rikugan Wielder, the savior of the world. The Zen’in and the Kamo will support him with his decision because then, the world will return to its balance. There will be no overpowered boy-god when you give birth to Naoya’s child instead.

What if Satoru gets bored of you?

You are, after all, unable to give him anything as long as you are younger than eighteen. As long as you are not yet married and as long as he has not mastered both his eyes and his technique just yet. What if he gets bored of you? What if he gets bored of you? What if he gets bored of you?—what is the unnatural beauty of the Tengai women for if the man you are to be married is the enlightened one, the saviour of the world, the All-Seeing Eyes of Amaterasu? Those thoughts suddenly put you in your place. You had been asking for far too much, been too indulgent with the idea of the Tengai Matriarch of the past. You had the audacity to be envious, even, as if this was not who you were meant to be in the first place. You are the sole Tengai woman born to be the mother of the greatest sorcerer. You should have known your place.

Satoru is so kind to you, regardless, sleeps with you every night, caresses you and treats you like a treasure but—at the end, you are to be the womb to his child, the mother to the strongest sorcerer to exist. And if Satoru gets bored of you, your life will be stripped of its meaning, regardless of your love for him or not. You laugh hollowly, earning Satoru’s inquisitive look. “Is there something funny, [Name]-chan?” He asks.

You shake your head but you hold his face, the same one on your lap. You beg for him and you think this is when you made a mistake because Satoru is selfish, uncaring, and he is terribly child-like and spoiled. You should have known your place instead. You should have kept this charade up. You should have known your place.

“Please, never abandon me.”

viii. but the prince himself, as he grew up, was so superior of mien and disposition that few could find it in themselves to dislike him

The weight of your kimono is heavy on your shoulders and on your body. It has always been since you were a child but not once were you allowed to complain. You only managed to when Satoru was there but what would you do if he is not here with you? Your answer comes rushing when to you only a few days after you begged him to not abandon you. He so casually approaches you, treads closer as if he is not about to shatter your world into pieces. He puts his head on your shoulder as the two of you lean against the shōji doors. Both of your legs are stretched to the edges of the engawa, the pond where you two first met just meters away from you and of course, the tree that becomes your most precious companion is also there.

Satoru entwines his fingers with yours, playing with them and poking them randomly before he says. You must feel cold, you think. Really cold. And even colder when he finally speaks. “There’s a pretty girl in my class, [Name]-chan,” he says and your heart drops, drops, drops, drops. You have never felt more fear in your entire life. Not even when you first met the Gojō Clan Head, not when you saw your father’s back as he stares at your mother’s grave, not when your grandmother raises her hands, face painted with the anger that you cower from, not when you Zen’in Naobito screams at your grandmother, not when he peers down at you like a est. You sweat, your heart wildly thumping against your chest. You feel like your bones might break if this continues. Your hand shakes. Your fingers freeze. You must feel so cold now. “She had pretty eyes, you know, that’s why I—” Satoru’s face is right in front of yours. He kisses you. “—did this.”

Before you know it, tears are already streaming down your face; your love, your one and only love, your first and last love, holding your cheek like you are a treasure to be kept, a voice to occasionally listen to, his own little bird. What does Satoru want of you? Your womb? If he wants your womb, then you are ready to carve it out of your stomach. If he wants your heart, you will gladly pull it out of you. Your hands barely manage to cling to his sleeve. You have lost your strength, your only purpose. He kisses you again as if he had not just said anything. As if nothing happened. As if you are not crying in front of him. As if you are not deathly cold. You gasp, breath stuttering and lungs feeling so tight under your flesh. He kisses you again. And again. And again. You sob. “But it’s okay, [Name],” it feels like a curse, “I’ll never abandon you.” You cry a bit more.

You wonder when Satoru became bored of you.

Maybe it was when he watched his father pick you up?

Maybe when you first arrived?

Maybe when he first shared a secret with you?

Or maybe, when you realized he could be bored of you. Someday, he will. And the moment you realized it was the moment it ended. But still, he reassures you that he will never leave you because at the end, you are his wife and he is your husband. You are the Tengai Offering and he is the Gojō Young Master. You are the mother and he is the father. You are the womb and he is the seed.

He still sleeps with you, still kisses you, still holds you as he always does. He still pulls you to the libraries, still pesters you to train with him, still makes the servants feel uncomfortable around you. The only difference is that you are not the only one he does this to. When you kiss him, you wonder who else it is that you taste. When you hold him, you wonder who else it is that you hold. When you sleep with him, you wonder who else it is that you sleep with. When you see him, you wonder who else it is that you see. Who else he sees.

“Please, Gojō-sama,” your knees click against the wooden floors. You lower your head, not as low as it would as a servant will but low enough to ask for favors. “Allow me to visit my grandmother.”

The tall man raises an eyebrow. “All the way in Kyoto?”

“If you allow me to.”

He waves off his hand. “You’re not going anywhere until your marriage, girl. Your grandmother will come here instead,” you nod submissively.

And your grandmother laughs at you.

She sits to the opposite of you, drinking her tea like a fine lady, an impeccable lady, perhaps not one Satoru would become bored of. Your shoulders shake. “My poor granddaughter,” she says pitifully, “Of course that boy will visit other women.” You resist the sob that threatens to escape you. You clutch your hands tightly. “He is a god, granddaughter, and he is a man with power. And what do you think men with power do, girl? Give?” She laughs at you, her voice ringing in the room. She is all you can hear. She mocks you. She adores mocking you and she calls it ‘care’ instead. She licks your wounds, saliva dripping with salt and ash. “Men with power take, [Name], and us, wives, must sit still.”

You try to protest. “But Grandfather was—”

“He was not a man of power, fool,” your grandmother grits, “He was just a man.” She relaxes. “But worry not, [Name]. All you need to do is to make him sire a child and after that, you are allowed to leave.”

You sob in your hands. Your grandmother comforts you for the first and last time. She has not held you like this since you were an infant. Nobody has embraced you like this with the exception of Satoru.

“Besides, granddaughter, it is men with power who lose the most at the end.”

Chapter Text

i forget
and it seems a dream somehow
or one i never had?
forging through the snow,
to see my prince.
– ariwara no narihira

ix. she looked at him tenderly, saying nothing. was she alive?

You taste something sweet in his lips, something that you only tasted for the first time. There is a tangy taste—the succulent of strawberries but the sourness of chemicals. You desire to be a woman for him, not someone as invalid as you currently are. Though you have legs, you cannot spread them. Though you have arms, you cannot open them. Though you have clothes, you cannot strip them off of your body. But Satoru's hands are skilled and his smile is sly. He does not let you ask about the strange balm on his lips because he kisses you again, still in his middle school uniform that you envy so much. Your fingers cling against his collar. You become desperate for every little thing he gives you, your Satoru even though he is not completely yours. But how can you stop him? (You have legs but you cannot walk. You have arms but you cannot take. You have eyes but you remain blind. You have a voice but you cannot speak. How can you stop him?) Though you have a body, you do not have a choice but Satoru gives you a choice. A restricted choice, one he offers to you. Choices that are restricted but choices nonetheless.

He guides you to his lap, your kimono making it so that you struggle to move. He helps you: he pulls one of the folds away from your legs, displaying your skin to him. He pulls you to his body and kisses you again. (Strawberry lipbalm. One of the servants brought that the last time. You wonder if he kissed her or if that brand is popular with the girls in his middle school.) His fingers push a strand of your hair to the back of your ear. You exhale, breath faltering when you feel his hand creep to your neck. "Being in [Name]-chan's arms is the best," he mumbles. He presses his face against your collarbone, arms tight around you. "I thought [Name]-chan would be mad at me but you aren't right?" His question invokes something in you. Your stomach tightens around a knot that is not there. Your throat is clogged.

You are angry. You do not think you have ever been this angry in your life before. You were made to be satisfied, to simply be content of what is offered to you because you were made to please instead. But your Cursed Energy flickers deep within you, threatening to burst if not for your fine control. You are so, very angry. You can still taste the lipbalm on your lips and you can no longer feel the warmth from Satoru's body. You are angry, yes, but you find yourself not angry enough to blow up on him. Because at the end, here he is, saying that he likes being in your arms the most out of all women he goes to. Here he is, looking at you from your breasts, shimmering blue eyes wide and focused on you and only you. You take pleasure in this. Comfort in this. You hold his face between your hands, flicking a lock of his white hair to the side. As if expecting something else, you kiss him again, the taste of the balm fading, having transferred to you instead.

"I thought Satoru wasn't going to abandon me," you tell him. Your hands fall to his shoulders, fingers tightening around the uniform that you despise. You want to tear it off of him, strip him naked until he is bare like you are to him. His hands creep to your waist and it sets fire to your body.

"But I'm not."

He says it like you are stupid for thinking otherwise. He pulls you closer to him, your breasts pressed against his chest. He pulls you so close that you no longer have any room to breathe. His arms become a cage and his gaze becomes shackles. You think, that if he smiles, you will not be yourself again. And he does. He does and your world ends a little. He returns to being a bonfire for your shuddering winter and he smiles, smiles so widely that you are dumbstruck. You feel like crying again. You desperately want to cry and you try to pull away but you lose your strength under that smile of his. (This cunning, cunning boy and his cruel, cruel smile.) He knows what he does to you. There is no way he does not know. Because his hands are gentle and soft, grazing against your cheek and burning you alive despite how cold you often are.

With ease, he pushes you to the ground, his form right above yours. You wonder when he grew so much. "I'llalways come back to [Name]-chan because [Name]-chan is going to be my wife, right?" You nod to yourself, surrendering completely.

You cannot spread your legs for him but you think he can spread your legs for the both of you. He pushes your legs open a little, situating himself between them with such ease that it makes you wonder how many times he had done this already. He leans down, pressing his hardness against yours but all of your clothes are still intact, your waist is still tightly wrapped by an obi, and that disgusting uniform is still clinging to him. But he presses himself against you, shushing your breath with a deep kiss. When he moves, he finally whispers: "It's okay, [Name]-chan is still my favorite."

It should not make you feel better but it does.

x. what legacy from a former life could have brought him to this mortal peril?

Satoru keeps his promise when he said that he will not abandon you. He returns as he always does, impeccable in his time and eats all of his breakfast and dinner with you. The servants coo about how lucky you are because many men will not give their wives this courtesy, their Tengai this kind of courtesy. You are not the first Tengai woman to be offered to another, nor will you be the last, but they speak about how kind Satoru is, how lucky you are to have him, and how must avoid complaining so much because you have no right to complain when other Tengai women have it worse than you. They tell you that it is alright if Satoru comes home with another's perfume or if he comes home feeling colder than usual because he is young, still a little boy in his second year in middle school. Boys will be boys, men will be men, and it is a woman's job to endure for them because did you know? You are lucky. You are lucky because he returns to eat with you still.

You take it all in and in your own private quarters, you play with your Cursed Technique, doing your best to immitate the Tengai Matriarch from the legends. No matter how well you manipulate your Technique, however, you countlessly fail to use it on yourself. Your palms burn with your Cursed Energy, the rush of blue drenching your skin into a deeper color but your strength remains the same, as if your own body is rejecting your Technique. You struggle. You are alone. That is exactly why you seek Satoru even more. You beg for him to bring you in the libraries once againt read you the story of the Tengai Matriarch from the legends and how she left the Patriarch who took form as the chains that bound her to the earthly realm. But Satoru always refuses with a nonchalant shrug: "I can read to you another time," and when you scavenge for the book yourself, ready to grasp your own validation with your two hands, you find no book about the Matriarch, no evidence of her existence.

A servant sits beside you, combing through your hair as you sit in the porch beside the koi pond and the gigantic tree from your childhood. "You must not look so gloomy, young mistress. Men do not like who are more troubled than themselves. You will lose Satoru-sama's favor even more if you continue," she criticizes, and another servant murmurs her silent agreement. You hunch your shoulders and they immediately set it straight. Just as your ire towards the boy in question begins to appear again, the servants continue speaking: "Ah, did you hear, young mistress? It seems that Satoru-sama had an argument with the Clan Head. He will be allowing you to go to Kyoto to see your family soon, so it appears." Your love blooms again. Over and over and over again. An endless cycle that seems to never end.

When Satoru arrives home again with a muted announcement of his return, you embrace him eagerly, ignoring the noise of pleasure from the servants that escorted you to the gates. Satoru laughs right beside your ear, spinning your body around as he holds you by your waist. "Are you going to stop ignoring me now, [Name]-chan?" He purrs, setting you down. As always, he pushes a strand of your hair to the back of your hair. You lean to his touch, cheeks flushed in gratification. "See? You know I hate talking to the old man but I argued with him for you—" His lips curl to a smile and you swoon. You shift on your feet, growing a little guilty. You reach up to hold his hand that cups your cheek. He does not flinch at how cold your body is and instead, welcomes it when he puts another hand on your other cheek. He squishes your face a little before he releases them. "—I like [Name]-chan the most, okay? I hate it when you're angry at me when there's no one I like more than you. There's just times when I feel curious and reckless but I'll still like [Name]-chan the most! I'll always like you the most. Don't ignore me again, okay?"

This is so unfair, you think, deeply and absolutely lovestruck. This is so unfair, so, so, so, so unfair. You will eat up anything this boy says, even as your heart swarms with envy and jealousy, even if your hands are set into flames with the Cursed Technique you painstakingly try to manipulate with the same ease as you do for others, even if you are consumed with anger for his actions, your belief towards him, your love for him, your jealousy, your pride, your greed, your desperation and your hopelessness, you will always fall right back in his arms, threading your fingers through his hair and whispering him how much you love him and how much you want him to stay with you, never abandon you. This is unfair. This is unfair. This is unfair. This is unfair but—Satoru smiles. Your favorite part of him. The reason why you love him in the first place.

"I'm sorry for not understanding, Satoru," you whisper lowly. You are about to look away, a part of you ashamed for asking for more when Satoru is more than enough, but he pulls you to him again. His smile widens and, and, and, and kamisama in the heavens, you love him so much that you have left nothing for yourself anymore. Satoru is the only one who knows the true you in this compound, in this city, in this world. "Satoru still likes me, right?"

"Of course I do! I like [Name]-chan the most!"

You slowly become used to his tousled hair and the taste of unfamiliar balm on his lips. He comes to your room with sharp perfume that is neither yours nor anybody in the compound's but he still comes back to you. He never changes his routine: when he wakes up, he beams at you, kissing you on your lips and whisper a 'good morning' before preparing for school. You watch him leave the compound and you return to studying about curses and about the Gojō Clan and things that are expected for the wife of the future Clan Head. (In these hours, you think of Satoru and how he will look in your marriage once both of you reach eighteen. You pull back your tongue as your Cursed Technique is strictly scrutinized by an older Tengai woman, a widow from your Clan who serves as your tutor in how to be most efficient with your skills. She hates you and your power. She hates the image that you symbolize. You do not blame her. You hate yourself too.) When he returns, you are there to welcome him. You ask about his day and he would whine, ignoring the meal in front of him and simply move to lean on your shoulder. He would ask you to play with his hair and talk about your day instead. You try to tell him that your day never changes and it only does when he comes home but he tells you that he likes hearing your voice, that you can talk for ages and he will always gladly listen. You would hover as he does his homework, curious about how schools work and he would pull you back to the futon, kiss you asleep and wrap his arms around you so tight you cannot move.

Maybe your day turns sour when you see a darkened mark on his neck, and maybe it displeases you when he does something new when he gets physical with you, only for him to say that he learned it from a senpai from school. Maybe, just maybe, you want to claw your eyes out when his clothes are rumpled and when your nose is assaulted by perfume. Maybe. Maybe. But you learn to keep your mouth shut, to simply smile when you notice something different, to simply cover those marks, the scent, the taste, the oddity with your own familiarity. Because it is okay as long as Satoru comes back to you. Because you are lucky that he even treats you nicely. You could have been with someone worse. Someone like the older Tengai woman's husband who was rumored to have beaten her. You are lucky. (So you must not cry. You are not allowed to cry. Because you are more fortunate than most. Satoru is kind fiancé and a kind boy. He cares for you, claims that he likes you more than he does to anyone else. So you must not cry, you fool.) You are truly, truly lucky.

Your grandmother is nothing but pleased when she finds out that you stopped making a fuss over a boy being a boy. You still dislike calling it that but you know better than to talk back to your grandmother, and this is only one of the few times that you are allowed to go to Kyoto. You do not want to ruin it by picking a fight in a losing game. "I knew I raised you well," your grandmother praises making you shyly smile, "Better than I did with your mother." You flinch when your father puts down his cup of sake aggressively against his low-rise table. He glares at the both of you from across the room and your grandmother does not let you try to pacify him. She clicks her tongue. "You are lucky that the higher-ups and I are allowing you to even see your daughter, you ungrateful idiot. Men are not allowed to be near her but we took consideration to you. We should not have done that, it seems."

"Grandmother," you try to calm her down, "You should not have—" Your father snaps his eyes to you, daring you to say anything that involves your deceased mother. But you know your place. You know your place so keep your mouth shut. Again. "I apologize for interrupting."

"Oh, you musn't apologize to that man, my sweet granddaughter. He is at fault," your grandmother hushes. "And you, boy, we gave you such privilege and you still continue to be ungrateful. You will not be seeing your daughter anymore if you continue with that attitude."

Your father scoffs and pushes himself off the ground. He walks to the doors, sliding it open with a loud bang. The servants waiting outside quickly turn away from him. "I never asked to meet her in the first place," and you do not complain because you know your place. You simply tilt your head downwards whenever you see him in the hallways of your compound and you avoid him with every chance you get. You have never met your mother but you hear that they were never meant to be. Your mother was promised to someone from the Inumaki Clan, the Elders fearful for their power but fearful of their dwindling numbers, but the man who was her fiancé died three months after their marriage and no man wants a used woman. Except for your father. Your father who had been one of her most precious friends. You do not know much of their relationship, only that they were closer than best friends but farther from each other than lovers, but their love ran deep, deeper than you can ever fathom for when your mother died, your father died with her too.

"Your father's disregard for that old bat always surprises me, you know—" You snap your head to the doors of your room. The voice is familiar, though riddled with a lowness you have not heard before. You spot a mop of dark hair clinging to a face you have not see for years but you always recognize that smile no matter where you are.

"Naoya-kun!"

(How long has it been since you were this close to another boy other than those from the compound?)

Naoya leans against the doors, arms crossed and face looking amused. He watches you scoot backwards. "I can't stay for long. Did you know how many guards there are here? And wow, there really are no men in the Tengai Compound aside from your father," he whistles lowly, acting far from the boy barely in middle school that he is, "I missed the nēsan who visited me a lot when I was a child, you know. When otōsama said that you were back for a visit, I couldn't help but ask to come. Of course, that old bat didn't let us."

You frown. "I last saw you when I was six, Naoya-kun. I'm fourteen now, and you were just a child too," you remind him but he simply shrugs his shoulders.

"Your Gojō Satoru isn't the only genius here. But I guess you would think like that after getting holed up there for... how many years again?—" He grins mockingly. "Eight years? Eight years doing nothing but playing as the poster child for a child bride? Did you think that you were going to play as the little caged bird when you first met him?" You grit your teeth but found no lies in his words. Naoya, even as a child when you first met him, was a troublesome boy who enjoyed riling up the people around him. Nothing less to expect from the son of a man who has more women than he has fingers.

He watches your dormant expressions and rolls his eyes. "You—"

"You should leave now, Naoya-kun. Nothing good will come to the Zen'in Clan when they find out that you and your father forcefully entered the compound," you faintly hear your grandmother's loud screeches, most likely greeting the Zen'in Clan Head by now, "Do send my regards to the Clan Head."

He laughs. "You're a horrible liar as always, nēsan."

"And you remember that," you scowl.

"Like I said, you've been rotting in the Gojō Compound, nēsan."

xi. a hapless sort of flower

The intimidating Clan Head of the Gojō Clan—the object of your nightmare for years upon years—dies in the midst of a battle against a Special Grade Spirit in the middle of winter. Nobody tells you the details of how it happened, only vague recollections and even vaguer commentary but a part of you rejoices at his death. You always found him terrifying. In some of your nightmares, he is there with his shadowed face, white hair hovering the glare of his eyes. He crouches down to pick you up from the ground and his arms are so big around you, you feel so small and you want to thrash your arms around and push him away and he tells you to show the people your Technique. From afar, you see Satoru but he does not see you despite his all-powerful eyes. In this dream, he finally crumbles. He is dead and he can no longer torment you. If Satoru is the Clan Head, then he will not let you be trapped in this compound anymore. Because Satoru is kind, Satoru is warm, Satoru likes you the most, Satoru loves you, which is why you rejoice upon the Clan Head’s death and you roll in the sheets of your futon.

But Satoru does not share your sentiments.

The mourning clothes look strange on him. You think it is because of how tall he has gotten but it is not that. He stands in front of the altar of his father and you remember him talking about how much he hates the man and how angry he is for treating him like a tool and for treating you like an object when you are far from it. But he stands there, eyes hard and hands clenched into fists. The other guests have left and even the Clan Head of the Zen’in arrived to pay respects. Of course, you were kept hidden and you had to wait until the men left, but when you do arrive, it is late and you are alone with Satoru who stands too too too close to the altar to look respectful. You search for the joy in his eyes. You do not find it. You do not find what you are looking for.

You walk to him and out of instinct, you reach out to hold his hand. You squeeze on his fists and he lets you open his palms and intertwine your fingers with his. You move in front of him. “Satoru? Satoru—” Why are you not happy like me? Did we not talk about how cruel he had been to you? To me who you like the most? You touch his cheeks, lifting his face to see his expression. You frown. His eyebrows are furrowed and his lips are bright red with how hard he is biting on them. “Satoru, can you see me?” You try to make him focus on you instead, your question catching him off guard for a moment because is that not a stupid question to ask someone who is well-known for his all-seeing eyes? His eyebrows furrow even more.

“Of course... how could I not?” He asks back.

“It’s just—” You pause unsurely. Why do you mourn for a man who never cared for you? You do not let the words escape you. You know your place. Though this is Satoru who likes you more than anything else, you still know your place. So you smile, shake your head and embrace him. He relaxes in your hold. You feel his hands cling to your clothes desperately. You wonder what he is so desperate about but you do not ask. “Satoru can always talk to me, okay? I’m always here.” He is heavy. So, so heavy. You remember your grandmother telling you how heavy a corpse is and you think it must feel like this. The weight of a body is heavy. But the absence of the soul is even moreso.

You let him cling to you and you let him push you against the ground, right in front of the altar of his father. He opens your legs because you cannot do it yourself. He leans down to kiss you, as if eager to spit on everything his father had preached to him. Your clothes are the boundaries that set the two of you apart, and you think that this must be the reason why he cannot be satisfied with you, but you know better. Even if you learn to open your legs for him, even if you learn to bare yourself naked for him, Satoru is Satoru and thus, he will always be fickle, malevolent, and untamed. He presses himself against you and breathes right at your face. His cheeks are flushed. “[Name] will never leave me?” With all the honorifics shed, he may as well have taken off his skin and his bones. He is flesh before you, offering you his heart but refuses to let you touch it. “Only [Name] knows me, after all,” this boy is called a god by many.

You have no right to complain, you think, when this boy walks with the world on his shoulders. He was born with men and women kissing his feet, and was destined to surpass all that stand before him. A god strips himself naked for you but he does not let you touch him, nor his heart. You wonder what he is thinking as he looks down on you and gropes you through your clothes, the portrait of his father staring down at the two of you with contempt. You do not know him. You think nobody truly knows him. Nobody does because Satoru is a ghost, a god, a man beyond men. You do not know him but you know him the best. You will never know him as he knows himself, if he knows himself but you take comfort knowing that he likes you the most, he has shown himself to you the most, that he clings to you at night and refuses to let you go.

So you keep your mouth shut when men are still not allowed to be near you. You keep your mouth shut when nothing changes and when you are still the caged bird as you always were because Satoru needs you, and this is the best way you can help your sweet boy-god. You become content because this is all you can do.

Satoru tightens his arms around you, comforted by the warmth of the futon and the blankets. He tells you he likes you the most and he will never abandon you—he says that as he stinks of perfume, as purple bruises bloom on his skin, as his back becomes wounded by nails that are not yours. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay and you learn to feel okay.

Because Satoru still likes you the most and he will always come back to you. Anything for your beloved boy-god.

You let Satoru confine you in the same room you grew up for years, the men in your life still missing and the servants still cooing at you and preaching about how lucky you are to have someone as kind as Satoru as your future husband. When he comes home from that Jujutsu School you desperately want to see, you welcome him, ask him about his day, and guide him to your lap. He still thinks your voice is melodic and he still says that he can hear you talk forever if the world lets him. And you let him do all of those because he smiles so brightly that he blinds you. Your vision fogs and you think it is alright. Everything is alright.

But then, Satoru brings home someone from his school, a boy of his age, a boy unfamiliar, a boy not from any clan that you have heard of. When you welcome him and embrace him, the boy behind him meets your eyes. As if harmed, you immediately let go of Satoru and move behind the servants, hiding yourself from the curious eyes of the dark-haired boy.

Satoru beams. “It’s alright, you know. It’s just Suguru,” he waves his hand.

The boy huffs and kicks Satoru by the back of his legs. The servants glare at him immediately, hiding their mouths with their kimono sleeves as they whisper about who this boy is. But you only stare. You only stare as Satoru rolls his eyes and tries to kick the boy back in a casualness you have never seen. “Introduce me better, idiot,” hisses the boy.

With a look that is so unfamiliar to you, Satoru nods to the boy’s direction, eyes focused intensely for a moment before the look disappears, “This is someone from my year, Getou Suguru. He’s going to be hanging out here every now and then—”

“Haa? I never heard about that, Satoru! At least inform the people in your place beforehand—”

“Blah blah! If you have something to say, win a fight against me first!”

“I already did—I guess you just want your ass handed over to you again, huh?”

“Haa? When did that happen?”

The banter continues and continues and continues. It continues on for what feels like ages. Your knees feel weak but you keep your mouth shut because you know your place.

Chapter Text

living in this world
i shall do until the morrow, for his
cruelty i would endure no longer;
on this evening
should he call, ‘twould be the right one.
– princess shokushi

xii. people were always happy to seek out the smallest and most trivial of misdeeds

Your attendant watches in awe as your Cursed Energy dances. The pill in your hand blooms into a different color, a jolt of blue engulfing it before it settles to a much darker shade. She moves a little closer to inspect it further. This certain attendant is one that has accompanied you for years, combing your hair precociously, and whispering to you news from the other clans with a sleeve to cover her mouth. Most of the women in this compound are adept in fighting, though many of their Cursed Energies are less than those of the First Grade and the Special Grade sorcerers, they are still sorcerers in their own right, tasked to hover over you and protect you in all possible scenarios. You grew up around them, some even raising you, some a little closer than mere servants (the loneliness can be suffocating sometimes and even the comfort of a comb through your hair is appreciated). This particular servant, you hear, comes from a lesser clan, one you have never heard of, perhaps another one of those that were purged out of fear and thus, there multiplication became controlled.

Your run your fingers against the pill before returning it back to its small case. You pick up another one, sending a surge of your energy before it settles to a similar dark color from before. Your sleeve unconsciously moves to cover your giggle when you hear your attendant gasp in awe. “It’s just your normal Cursed Pill, Ueko. It’s something all Tengai can do,” you reach out to put the pill on her hand. She snatches her hands away out of instinct, looking at you fearfully. “It’s alright. You can have it.” You insist.

“But, young mistress, these are precious. I doubt I would ever find use for them,” she mumbles but your indulgent smile calms her immediately. Her fingers gather to hold the pill. Her eyes meet yours briefly before going back to what she deemed as precious. “I would never use this, young mistress. This is only for powerful sorcerers and not Third-Graders like myself. I doubt even my descendants would be able to use this.”

The Tengai Clan is best known for their strengthening abilities but in the perspective of the Three Great Clans, the Tengai Clan’s Cursed Pills, one formerly known as the ‘Energy Pills’ before it was scrapped up under Tengen-sama’s comment that it was rather inaccurate. Energy Pills imply its ability to provide ‘energy’, a build-up of sorts but the ‘Cursed Pills’ are exactly what the Lord Tengen says they are—curses. Very few Clans have the ability to imbue their Cursed Energy well enough that they can create weapons, and the Tengai Clan is most skilled in creating these pills; a bundle of negative emotions in one pill that is, no matter how skilled the Tengai member is, unpredictable in nature. One cannot predict how a sorcerer would react to certain emotions which is why the Tengai women are raised in such a sheltered and concealed environment, rarely having emotions explosive enough to affect those around them. They were raised to have the finest control, the best manipulation of their emotions so that the Cursed Pills they produce, while strong in nature, will still have emotions simple enough to be controlled by the consumer.

It is why only sorcerers of high grades are provided this pill. Only certain bodies can contain certain amount of Cursed Energy lest it will leak out of control and result to the birth of a Curse itself. And people like your sweet attendant, Ueko, will never be given the privilege nor the power to handle a pill, much less a pill that had come from you, the Great Offering of this generation, possessing the most Cursed Energy in the Clan and by extension, the one with the most powerful ‘strengthening’ aspect.

But your movements are controlled and your education is even moreso. A Tengai with more freedom would have been taught how to create Cursed Tools but you are only offered these pills, saying that the creation of Cursed Tools would taint your energy and become less effective to the assistance of creating the next heir of the Gojō Clan. And as long as Satoru has not fully mastered those eyes and technique of his, you will remain in the confines of the compound, waiting for the day Satoru will be strong enough to ensure your safety against any Curse, waiting for the day he can take your Technique without any hitch or any side-effects.

“This is the first time I’ve actually seen it being made.”

The masculine voice that interrupts your conversation with Ueko has your little attendant reeling in front of you, ready to shield you with her body. The hand that grabs your wrist is also harsh, about to push you away in a safer area if needed be. You grimace. How old is this girl? How old is she to already choose for herself that her life is of less worth than yours? Your eyes flick to where the voice had come from. Getō Suguru is a tall man, close to your Satoru’s height, that you have to crane your head up if ever you were standing up in front of him. His hair is dark, his appearance is dark, and his contrast with Satoru genuinely surprised you the first time you had seen him. They are so different in appearance that it confused you as to why they got along in the first place. Satoru... Satoru doesn’t like people who do not agree with him, you think.

Ueko frowns, relaxing when she recognizes the uniform. She hides the pills with her sleeves. “Men are not allowed in the eastern wing of the compound, Getō-san. I suggest that you leave now,” she grumbles in displeasure. Something about her face, you notice, does not like Getō’s lack of knowledge of the political implications of the compound and of the Gojō Clan. Even outsiders know that Gojō Satoru is engaged to this generation’s strongest Tengai, and everyone knows that the eastern wing is where you stay and where men are forever banned to even step a foot in. “Must I guide you to your destination?”

Before Getō can speak, you sigh. You place a hand on Ueko’s shoulder. “It’s alright, Ueko—”

“But young mistress!”

“Satoru-kun must have played with him,” you wave your hand, “Can you search for Satoru-kun for me? It is best if Getō-san stays here rather than the other rooms. The girls will not be kind to him.” The girls of the eastern wing are terribly protective of you despite their ignorance concerning your relationship with Satoru.

Ueko turns red in annoyance but follows your words anyway. She stands up and walks to the door, purposely bumping against Getō’s shoulder in the process. She sneers. “Please excuse me.”

You sigh again, catching the equally irritated expression on Getō’s face. You gesture to the floor in front of you as you gather the box of pills to hide them. Getō is but a first year student like your Satoru, his rank unknown to you. Pills are not meant to be shown to sorcerers as young as him. You click the lid of the box close as he sits down to the opposite of you. You watch him scratch the back of his head sheepishly. “Satoru made me come. We’re going to spar again. He said he was in the eastern wing. I didn’t kn—” Briefly, your eyes meet his. He pauses. “I didn’t know that Satoru’s type was a Yamato Nadeshiko,” he cocks into a smile.

“Yamato Nadeshiko,” your murmur, “That is not the first time I was called that. There are nothing but pink carnations in our garden.”

Getō situates himself in a seiza position, surprisingly more well-mannered than Satoru who frequently just lays in your lap the moment he comes in the room. But is that not his charm? Your hands long to touch his hair again. “Right. Has anyone ever told you that you would look good in peach blossoms?” Your lips turn down into a scowl, raising an eyebrow at the connotations he is giving. Sensing your sudden animosity, he raises his hands in surrender.

You huff. “You seem to know more than you let on, Getō-san.”

“I just read a lot, that’s all,” his lashes shadow his eyes, both as dark as the other. He does not resemble Satoru. Their appearance or their attitude. This boy is milder, more silent, but when he speaks, he is heard. You dislike him, you realize, whether it is because of how close he is to Satoru or because of how he handles himself, you dislike him. “Does Tengai-san like reading too?” The small talk is forced, more out of etiquette than out of curiosity. The atmosphere is tense, Satoru’s ‘Suguru’ starting the conversation is terrible way. First impressions are last impressions, that is what you have believed in since you were a child.

You narrow your eyes, waiting for Satoru’s arrival. You humor his classmate. “Indeed. I quite like ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’,” you offer and for a moment, you see something bright in his eyes, something that you have only ever noticed among the attendants and with Satoru.

“Mishima Yukio’s?” With your nod, he speaks again: “Have you read Murakami Ryū’s ‘Coin Locker Babies’, Tengai-san? It seems like something you would like.”

Your frown deepens. You do not think you could ask the attendants to buy you another book, not when the demand of your training proves to continue even further. Not to mention, Satoru has been spending more and more time in missions while you slave away in fining your control for him. “Unfortunately, I don’t have that on hand,” and you doubt you can even receive it in the next few weeks. Your heart itches for a story, a world you can delve into while trapped in this place with no Satoru to kiss you to sleep.

Getō answers you casually, as if it is only natural that this is how he will answer. “Then I’ll bring it to you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Satoru’ll invite me again for a spar. I can drop it off when I pass by again,” he answers.

His hands palm his knees uncomfortably. You mimic his actions, a little confused. “You won’t be allowed anywhere near the eastern wing, Getō-san. Satoru—Satoru-kun only fooled you into coming here once but he won’t do it again,” because Satoru is fickle and easily bored, and he will never do things more than once, just like how he says that he never sleeps with a woman except for a single time. He says he always comes back to you because you’re you but if it is another, he claims it gets boring unlike you, [Name], he would say and you would believe him.

“Then,” he smiles, eyebrows pulling upwards, “I guess I’ll have to learn to sneak in, right? Shōko and Satoru don’t read as much as I do. It would be nice to have a friend to talk about these kinds of things, don’t you think, Tengai-san?”

(A secret.)

The pads of your fingers rubs against the silk of your kimono. You glance at him and the dark colors he surrounds himself with, a contrast to your clothes’ frequent light colors, those that symbolize youth and fertility to please the elders and the higher-ups. You return his smile. “In exchange, I will prepare ‘The Diary of Lady Murasaki’ for Getō-san,” you reply.

“The author of ‘Tales of Genji’?”

“Do you not like her?”

He laughs. “Just reminds me of my days in middle school.”

He brings the book two days later and promises to bring another. (A secret shared only by the two of you.) You await for his arrival.

xiii. who thought of herself as eminent in her own right for having been permitted to serve him

Months later, Ueko claims that she is worried about you when she speaks of the twins from the Zen’in Clan. Her hands hold your stomach, close to where your womb is as her eyes bloom with nothing but concern. She says that the Zen’in Clan tried to wait it out and even tried to hide it but their twins become well-known throughout the other clans—a pair of twins, one with a Cursed Technique and another with nothing to her name. They call them Mai and Maki. Nobody had expected anything like this to come from the Zen’in Ōgi and of course, it only makes sense if this possibility extends to you as well. Though your womb will increase the power of the child you will have, what if you have twins? What if you bring forth an unfortunate child? Your heart drops to your stomach. If you birth a girl with your Technique instead of Satoru’s then—then won’t she be exactly like you? With less power, of course, but with the blood of the Gojō Clan in her veins. You bite against your nails as you pace in your room.

You ignore the part of you that is pleased at the development. That man, Zen’in Ōgi, had always been arrogant and power-hungry, bitter about the fact that he never got to be the Clan Head because of his inability to use the Cursed Technique that the current head, Zen’in Naobito has, and now that he sired two ‘faulty’ children, he cannot even dream of becoming the Clan Head even if Naobito dies. You do not think Naoya is a good option, much less his brothers who lead the Hei. But the Zen’in are the Zen’in and the Tengai are the Tengai, and twins never ran in the Clan anyway. They should have known better when choosing Ōgi’s wife. Her grandfather had been one-half of twins so they should have known better than picking a faulty woman—your thoughts are suddenly put into a halt. Did you just say that? Did you just dare to think that? You laugh against your open palms, how pitiful. You’ve become so pitiful. So disgusting. So, so pitiful. When have you reached this level of low? When have you drowned so deep that even you have become the seas you were thrown to?

You crouch to the ground, your kimono tight around you, your obi tight around you, your ribs suffocating your chest. You clasp your hands together, imploring the world to let Ōgi’s wife to hear your apology. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve become so disgusting. I’ve become so dirty, you sob in your hands—oh, Izanami-sama, I’m not like you. You are not like the great Ame-no-Uzume who dances for the joy of others, who is the example of a good woman, a good wife, whose breasts are heavy with maternity, whose voice is kind to the women, who wooed even the god-among-gods, Sarutahiko-Ōkami to nestle in her lap, whilst being gentle and warm-hearted, who urged even the lonely Amaterasu-Ōmikami to come out of the shell of the Ame-no-Iwato.

You are tempted to pull the womb in your body out of your flesh, to offer it to your grandmother so she can replace you instead but whenever you remember Satoru and his kind smiles, Satoru and his warm kisses, Satoru and the sincerity even behind his infidelity, you are overwhelmed with the need to continue being by his side. If it’s Satoru, your dearest and most beloved Satoru, then it is alright. If it is Satoru, then you can be happy. If it is Satoru, then you can be loved. Your dearest, most beloved, Satoru who will always love you the most despite everything. If it is Satoru, then you do not mind giving birth to his sons, (only sons because what if you birth a daughter and she will be just like you, just like you, and not everyone can be granted a Satoru in their life; some, are born like your mother who died without her love, some become your grandmother who claws against flesh and digs for the womb she never had, some are born as women in the Zen’in Clan who are taught to keep their mouth shut lest it will be stitched together, some are simply born and some, some women, die under the weight of their kimono and the name of a true Yamato Nadeshiko), you do not mind if it is Satoru.

But Satoru is barely home anymore. The women are one thing but this is another. When Satoru comes home with perfume on his clothes, he still comes home. He still sleeps with you and he still kisses you to sleep but Satoru rarely comes home now, saying that the dormitory’s bed is very comfortable and you are tempted to ask if it is more comfortable than your futon and your arms. When he comes home, he still kisses you and tells you all about his day, asks you about yours, and guides your hand to his hair and you beg for the women’s return. It was better when he was surrounded by women. It was better then because at least he still came home and if he was here, you would not have been plagued with Maki and Mai, the faulty twins and the faulty womb—you would never have had gone through this because Satoru, Satoru, Satoru, oh, Satoru—“Are you crying?” You immediately snap your head up, your balance collapsing and suddenly falling on your bottom. There, a man hangs by the walls of the gate of the compound, near the tree that is your only friend, and near the pond where you first met god.

This boy, however, is not god. He is but a fifteen-year-old boy, far from the boy-god who lives in your dreams.

“Getō-san?” You murmur.

He smiles in his own way, the stretch reaching his eyes and his brows following suit. He pulls himself up from the walls of the gate a little, showing in a branch from the peach blossoms he once spoke of. He points it to your direction, aiming it right to your hair with one of his eyes closed. “I was right. Itdoes suit you,” he comments.

You walk to the wall and it is only then do you realize how low they actually are. You look around, relieved that there are no attendants to see the boy sneaking in. “Are you not supposed to be on a mission, Getō-san?” You ask.

“It’s a Sunday, Tengai-san. Even some salarymen come home on Sundays.”

“And you chose to spend this day sneaking in the Gojō Compound?”

He drops the branch right above you. You easily catch it with a single hand. You frown. “This is not a funny joke, Getō-san,” you tuck it to your obi, “If you are searching for Satoru-kun then I must admit that he is out. He has become quite obsessed with those missions of his.”

Getō does not move and instead prefers to hang by the walls. He tilts his head up, watching the tree in front of him remain as still as him. You pull a strand of your hair behind your ear. “It’s a pine tree,” you tell him, letting a hand stray to your eyes to rub the remains of your tears away. (Disgusting. I'm disgusting.) You watch him continue to stare at it.

“Does it have a partner?” He asks.

You pause, thinking. “I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

His smile fades and you find yourself wishing that it stayed just a bit longer. You clench your hands to a fist. “From Takasago, sailing over the bay, sailing over the bay, the moon goes out with the tide,” he recites. He meets your eyes again, and again, and again. You wonder why he keeps on visiting.

“Past the silhouette of Awaji Island, far over the sea to Naruo, arriving at Suminoe, arriving at Suminoe,” you continue. You dream of Hyōgo and Osaka, the sights you have never seen, the skies you have never reached, and the stars you have never connected.

And his smile returns.

“You’re not crying anymore.”

xiv. it will do you no good. i am always allowed my way. just be quiet, if you will, please.

“Lots of people really want my [Name] dead, huh?” You cling to Satoru with everything that you have, taking in every single bit of him that you can take. In the two weeks that he disappeared, drowning in missions after missions with his team and nothing else, he seems to have grown taller. He always does whene er he returns. Your attendants say that he must have fallen in love with woman in his team, a skillful user of the Reverse Curse Technique and arguably one of the most important sorcerers of their generation, or maybe, he has become one of those sorcerers. The sorcerers who enjoy the thrill of a fight and enjoy the sight of exorcising Curses. Either way, you do not mind. All you ask of him is to come home.

And he does.

He comes home, dragging a body to your room, standing right in the pond where you first met him. He cocks his head, stretching his limbs as he drops the body right in front of you. “I was planning on coming home to [Name] with a surprise! I brought you a new kanzashi too! But,” he narrows his eyes and kicks the shoulder of the man with the corner of his indoor shoes, “Look at what I found—is [Name] that hated?” He asks rhetorically. He walks up to the engawa and you immediately shoulder his weight, catching him when he stumbles. A wound is present by his leg, small enough to not be serious but deep enough to earn a frown from Satoru who is rarely involved in fights with fellow-sorcerers like this.

“Satoru,” you breathe out. His face is right in front of yours, a trickle of blood on his mouth. With a comfort that has been present since you were children, Satoru exhales and kisses you, the twinge of blood on your tongue far from your focus at the moment. He clutches your obi, tugging it a little in a mild effort to make it loose. He fails. “Satoru—” You hold his face, worriedly looking at his expression. “Satoru. Was it an assassin?” This is not the first time an assassin has targeted you. It is why you are so protected after all, but during the reign of the previous Gojō Clan Head, you had little care for the assassins that never even managed to set foot to the eastern wing. With the absence of Satoru for the past few days, the assassins have gotten arrogant, or so it seems.

He hums, sinking his face on your shoulder. “Your Satoru is really tired, [Name],” he whines and wraps his arms around your waist. He pulls you closer to him. “Comfort me?”

You smile. Your Satoru is still the same Satoru from his youth no matter how many years pass. You still pull him to your lap and he still closes his eyes and says that he loves hearing you talk, how your voice is melodic and how your touch, though cold and wintry, brings him as much comfort as it always does. Your fingers become stained with blood as you run them through his hair, it becomes even more so when he holds it and pulls them to his cheeks. The open doors of your room has the attendants pulling the body away, simply sparing you an apologetic look as they kindly shut the doors. “I missed you [Name],” he says, “Shōko is such a bore and she’s always so mean to me. Suguru’s even worse. I like [Name] the most—you’re so—” He murmurs something you do not here but it does not take a genius as to why he likes you.

Because you are quiet, obliging, and eager-to-please. And for someone like Satoru who was born with everything, it must please him so much. You do not miss the way he addresses this ‘Ieiri Shōko’ and Getō-san by their given names and though Satoru does not care about honorifics and manners, you know what he is trying to say. You know what he is trying to show you and you do not say anything because you do not think you can. People have their roles and this is yours. If this is enough to make Satoru stay and continue to come back to you, then you do not mind doing this. (Has anyone ever told you that you would look good in peach blossoms?) You flinch.

“[Name], do you want to visit your Clan again?” He asks out of nowhere, his hands playing with your hair. “I’ll let you go to that old bat if you want. Suguru says I’m turning you into a dog—” He huffs and sits up, turning to you. “I’m not, right? Suguru’s very naïve about Clan customs so he won’t understand. If [Name] goes out, then things like that assassin will happen a lot. But,” he sighs and ruffles his own hair, “If [Name] wants to go out tomorrow, then I’ll come with. Oh—date! Let’s go on a date! [Name] would like that, right?”

You blink in surprise, his eagerness catching you off guard. The thudding of your chest prevails though, and you still dance on his palms. You nod, matching his energy. Outside! You can go outside! “I would love that, Satoru!” You chirp.

He grins and he becomes as dazzling as he always is. You swoon, and it becomes a cycle. You forget his disappearance, his subtle actions, and the fact he only returns when he feels like it. You ignore them all. You cling to him. You cling to him. You cling to him because you love him. And when he kisses you again, you succumb.

(Has anyone ever told you that you would look good in peach blossoms?)

・ yamato nadeshiko (大和撫子) is basically the epitome of the ideal japanese woman. she's described to be graceful, gentle, humble, well-mannered, benevolent, kind-hearted, etc. the name is associated with pink carnations.

・ peach blossoms (桃) means 'i am your captive' or 'unequaled qualities'. you can take that as you wish.

・ the temple of the golden pavilion (金閣寺, kinjaku-ji) is a novel by mishima yukio in 1956. it's a story about obsession, based on an arson back in the 1950s when a buddhist acolyte burned the kinjaku-ji, the golden temple in kyoto from the 1400s. 

・ coin locker babies (コインロッカー・ベイビーズ, koinrokkā beibīzu) is a novel by murakami ryuu. it's a story about two boys, hashi and kiku, who were abandoned in coin lockers in tokyo. these incidents are more common than people think though not known by foreigners or people who don't live in japan. there are lockers in train stations in japan and there would often be newborns or babies being left there, abandoned.

・ the diary of lady murasaki (紫式部日記, murasaki shikibu nikki) is the diary of lady murasaki, the author of the tale of genji.

・ the tale of genji (源氏物語, genji monogatari) is a novel by lady murasaki back in the heian era. it's about genji who is the son of emperor kiritsubo and a low-ranking concubine. he was demoted because of political reasons and he begins to work his way up as an officer. it's about his romantic endeavors, etc. this is probably the world's first novel.

・ ame no uzume (天鈿女命, ame-no-uzume) is the goddess of dawn, mirth/happiness, and arts. when amaterasu-oomikami (goddess of sun, and ruler of the heavens) fled to the ame-no-iwato (a cave), it was ame-no-uzume who danced and coaxed her to come out. it was said that she exposed her breasts, opened her kimono, and danced. in another myth, she was sent to accompany amaterasu's grandson, ninigi-no-mikoto (also known as japan's first emperor, the emperor jimmu) to the ame-no-ukihashi (the bridge to heaven) so they could go to earth but was blocked by sarutahiko-ookami. uzume persuaded sarutahiko to let them pass (ahem flirted) and they fell in love, got married. in many cases, ame-no-uzume is described to be the ideal wife and sarutahiko, the ideal man. basically your poster husband and wife.

・ takasago (高砂, takasago) is a noh play. it was about an elderly couple reciting a poetry under the pine trees. the poem talked about the takasago and the sumioe that are wedded pine trees or aioi no matsu. according to the legends, those pine trees will be together forever and will remain with one another for eternity. the elderly couple are the spirits of those trees. in the beginning of the play, they recite this: "from takasago, sailing over the bay, sailing over the bay, the moon goes out with the tide, past the silhouette of awaji islands, far over the sea to naruo, arriving at suminoe, arriving at suminoe." those places are now the hyogo and the osaka prefecture.

Chapter Text

in the summer mountains
from the treetop heights
cuckoo’s
calls fill the sky
as does my love.
– ki no tsurayuki

xv. but waves of white, far out on the stream, roll between us

Satoru may be a cruel lover but he always keeps his promise, but the way he executes it may be different. He pulls you in his arms in the middle of the night after he leaves you waiting all morning. The stench of blood is on his clothes, the faint remnants of Cursed Energy from those he exorcised still clinging to his frame, but he holds you by the waist, faces you with those twinkling blue eyes of his and you accept what he gives you. He never wears those sunglasses when he is at home, not even the bandages that he sometimes wear. With you, he shows himself fully, knowing very well that you will not sit still to hold him and do nothing but observe his eyes. That is not your favorite part about him anyway. It is his smiles. His beautiful, beautiful smiles. And he knows that. He seems to know that.

Because as he carries you in his arms and as you cling to his neck, the air whips against your skin, blowing your hair and nudging it loose. You almost reach to gather them back to even a ponytail, anything to tie its unnatural length but Satoru does not let you. He only speeds up, strolling through the air with ease. The skies have never looked so close—the stars are fading, vague but there. Tokyo is not known for its skies but this is the only sky you have ever had the honor to see so you treasure it, hold it with you because you will never have this chance again until the day Satoru fully masters his eyes. You snuggle to his neck and he lets you. When he lands, he meets the roof of a vibrant red temple, the crowd of people fussing at the bottom but not seeing you. You yelp, startled at the noise. So many things are happening all at once and you—you want to go there, mingle with the people, check out the stalls of whatever place this is but Satoru siezes your wrist before you can even balance your weight on the roof. You turn to him curiously.

He grins from ear to ear. Your heart flutters. You look back to the faint lights in the crowd, the loud chatters, the clicking of their shoes, the sheer life and freedom that you have never experienced before. The air has never felt so good before. Your kimono, one that usually constricts your movements, feels so unnaturally liberating. You excitedly turn to Satoru again but he is already sitting away, stretching his legs across the roof, much nearer to the darkness than the gleaming lights of the commotion. You are sure you can jump down and remain uninjured. Though you are sheltered, you are still a sorcerer. “Go ahead, [Name],” Satoru nudges, crescents for eyes and pearls for teeth. He waves his wrist to you. “I was really tired today from the mission but I wanted to bring [Name] here first. You wanted to go, right?” His words are encouraging and light but why does it feel anything but so? “Go on, [Name]. Just come back here when you’re satisfied. Your fiancé will bring you home after.”

You simply stand, looking at him in confusion. Him, shrouded in the dark of the night with nothing but his shimmering-so-bright-like-the-pearls-of-the-three-treasures-oh-oh-oh-bright eyes to serve as the light. It is warm behind you where the crowd talks and mingles with one another. It is warm behind you where the lights are beckoning you to come closer, get the taste of the freedom that you have always wanted. It is warm, so, so warm against your frigid skin that you are tempted to jump down, get the most of this little gift and never come back, perhaps run away and get rid of this womb that is nestled deep within your stomach like a parasite, like a wound, like a curse. But—you want to laugh at yourself. (Once, in a book lent to you by a friend, it spoke of a child strangling his mother to death, not that he knew who she was. There was just this sensation, this need and desperation to kill. An instinct that was never honed but was always there: this person ruined my life, the voice said. The infants left in coin-lockers weep, and you, an infant left in the hands of aging bones and whitening hair. Satoru is your only savior. You cannot trade him for anything else.) You opt to smile at him instead, at lost. No. Not ‘at lost’, but completely in the losing side.

You walk to him, your feet bare and freezing cold but you end up sitting by his side. You lean your head on his shoulder. (As always, Satoru is warm.) You can smell his cologne, this time, truly his. You can smell the Cursed Energy sticking to him from his mission. You cannot do anything about that but you do wrap your arm around his and his hand creeps for his fingers to intertwine with yours. You do not need a date in the light, or a date beyond the gates of the Gojō Compound. You do not need other clothes other than your formal kimono nor do you need to surround yourself with the crowd. Satoru. Satoru is all you need. Just his time is enough. Just his presence is enough. Just his smile is enough. “What place is this, Satoru?” You ask. He lets go of your hand but quickly replaces this with his other. The hand that had been holding you just earlier moves to wrap around your waist. He guides you to his lap and you lay on his chest.

(Ah, when has love felt so familiar?)

Satoru plays with your fingers, his hand overshadowing yours with ease. Both of your hands are so uncalloused, pampered and raised in wealth. “The Sensō-ji. I always went here when I was young,” a Buddhist Shrine, you recognize immediately but you do not have much knowledge about this, not like how you know your Shintō. Perhaps that is another contrast between the Gojō Clan and the Tengai: one worships the old gods of Shintō and the other, the middle-country’s Buddha. As a wife to the Gojō Heir, it is only expected of you to know the basics of it. “Do you know which Buddha is worshipped here, [Name]?” He asks.

“I’m only familiar with a few,” You pause. You remember your father kneeling to a statue of a goddess from Buddhism during your earlier years, begging for answers, for a truth that nobody knows. You hide this secret from your grandmother, a devout follower of the Shintō. But you remember the image of the Buddha vaguely, very vaguely, but you can picture her feminine figure and her red accents. You remember shuffling through your father’s scrolls, desperate to learn her name, though it slips from you in the present.

“It’s Kannon,” Satoru says and in a much more complex tongue that you barely catch, he adds: “Avalokiteshvara. Guanyin. The bodhisattva of mercy.” You recognize the name and Satoru notices this. He chuckles, his hair tickling the lashes of his eyes. You have never seen him more beautiful than tonight. “Everyone knows her. She’s the most beloved Bodhisattva, after all. So [Name], what do you think planting lotuses near the pond?” His connotations are clear and even you know that the lotus is associated with the Bodhisattva Kannon and of course, you would know the connections of the Gojō Clan with the Buddha. You find it ironic though, for a clan descended from Abe-no-Seimei, a fox-son, to find hope in the Buddha.

“But if so, then wouldn’t the platycodon not suit you more, Satoru?” You return.

He halts and then throws his head back in laughter. With how dark it is, you can only see the glow of his eyes. It is always about his eyes somehow. He grins again, and again, and again. And he catches you again, and again, and again. “In our next date, let’s go to the Zenyōmitsu-ji next, okay? It’s just in Setagaya,” he invites you and who are you to deny him?

You stay with Satoru until three in the morning, nestled in his arms as he asks you to tell him a story from your more favored Shintōism. You oblige. (When you get home that night, still nestled in Satoru’s embrace, you remember the statue that your father knelt to. Pulling away from Satoru, you welcome the lights of the library, and there, you find the name that you had seen: Butsugenbutsumo. The personification of the eyes that look upon the truth and thus, bringing forth the birth of Buddha. They say that the eyes of the Butsugenbutsumo can see everything and nothing at once, the All-Seeing Eyes, the mother of enlightenment. They say that in the mandala, never is the Butsugenbutsumo depicted without Shijokobuccho, her brain, her crown, Prajvalosniisa, the light.)

Weeks later, you realize why you Satoru can never be the Sarutahiko-Ōkami of your Ame-no-Uzume, why there will never be a tale of Izanami-no-Mikoto and Izanagi-no-Mikoto.

xvi. i want to tell you everything, all my sorrows and worries.

Getō’s smile is different from Satoru’s. In a way, it looks kinder. You think it is his eyebrows. His hair makes him look intimidating. You hear your attendants say that men with long hair will hurt you but you think it is the stereotype they have with the men from the Zen’in Clan, most especially the ones of power. Long hair was a sign of power among the men, though Clan Head Naobito spits on this tradition, as callous and disruptive as always. Zen’in Jinichi and Zen’in Ōgi stay true to this, however, as well as the many men of the Hei. Naoya mimics his father because there is no one else he can be but the Clan Head, whilst, you hear from Ueko, the estranged nephew of Naobito, the infamous Zen’in Tōji, chopped his shoulder-length hair and now, nobody knows where he is, the man who had no freedom and thus, took it for himself. Other days, you envy him. Most days, you pity him. Today, you are the former.

Your new companion’s long hair is a welcome. Not many men in the Gojō Clan have short hair. They strive to be the opposite of the Zen’in Clan, after all—the black to their white. But his smile is what stands out the most. You are sure it has to be the eyebrows. The quirk of his eyebrows make him look kinder and he—“Is there something on my face, Tengai-san?” Ah. Right. He is here again, sitting right outside of the sliding doors of your room. He says he is trying to respect the rule that no man shall get close to you with the exception of Satoru. You find this amusing. He is already breaking enough rules already. But there is a strange comfort in seeing his back leaning against the doors, half of his back in plain view. When he laughs, hunches, and takes a peek at you, hair hiding his face a little, you realize even more how kind he looks. So kind it feels painful. You find him pretty.

He does not lean against the sliding door itself this time but the sides of it. His feet stretches across the entrance, pushing the doors apart to open them further. In his hands is ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’. He says he finished it a few days ago and apologizes for not coming earlier to return it. “It’s nothing. I was distracted,” you answer, tilting your teapot to your cup, “Would you like some tea, Getō-san?” It is only etiquette to offer, and you have adapted to that ages ago.

He shakes his head. “I already drank some along the way.”

“Those in bottles?” You look at him in disgust.

A snort goes past his lips. He tilts his head again, his hair falling as it always does. His eyes are dark. Very, very dark. “Fine, fine, Tengai-san. I’ll take up your offer then,” he relents, raising both his hands up in surrender. You smile in amusement but it drops when you realize how you will give it to him. When you usually give him a book, you leave it to the door but he is right at the entrance, and the child raised in a strict household in you tells you that it is rude to not share your table with the person you are offering a cup of tea with but this is—you look up from the green of your tea. You meet his eyes. He looks hesitant, well aware of what he almost tried to make you do. He rubs the back of his head. “Or maybe not. I just drink tea so...” He trails off.

You purse your lips. You do not know where the courage came from, or even the urge but you snap your head up him, eyes brimming in an emotion you cannot name. (Has anyone ever told you that you would look good in peach blossoms?) “Have tea with me, Getō-san,” you suddenly say. “I do not mind.”

He gapes for a bit, eyes wide before he settles into a small smile. His eyebrows do their thing again, the quality of his that makes him look the kindest. “Anything for Tengai-san,” he exhales and rises from his seat. It takes forever for him to kneel to your opposite side and even longer for you to properly pour him his tea. But once you are done, the silence settles again, comfortable and calming. “Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result.”

“Ah, from ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’,” you remark. He nods.

“Doesn’t it remind you of Satoru?”

You unconsciously flinch at the usage of his given name. No matter how much you hear his name come out of Getō’s mouth, you still end up feeling uncomfortable. Nobody calls him that. Nobody. The servants call him ‘young master’ or when they address him by his name which happens very, very, very rarely, they add the highest form of honorific. His father called him ‘boy’ and your grandmother calls him ‘boy-god’ as your own father does not even acknowledge him. But Getō says his name with ease, with experience, like he has always done that. “How so?” You ask.

Getō leans back, relaxing out of his seiza. He uses his hands to shoulder his weight. “Satoru doesn’t care about the risks. He’s arrogant. He thinks of himself as the strongest—he’ll probably burn down the Golden Pavilion again if it means he gets what he wants,” which is true, “But don’t worry, Tengai-san, Satoru’s like that but he listens to me. Well, that is when I beat him in a fight.” He laughs like your heart did not just shrivel and sink deep in your stomach.

Your shoulders hunch together. Satoru does not listen to anyone. No one can make Satoru listen. Not even you can make Satoru stop. (Isn’t it because you never tried? Why would even try?) And yet this boy without any Clan to his name, any origin worth speaking of, strolls in and calls Satoru a ‘best friend’—Satoru has no friends. He does not have any friends. “Ah,” you flinch away when a hand reaches out to you. Your eyes fly immediately to Getō who puts his hand down immediately. He sighs, running it down his face. He fathers himself, knees pressing to his chest as he intertwines his fingers together. “Sorry, Tengai-san—you—you just looked like you were about to cry. It was something I said, wasn’t it—” He sighs heavily. “Sorry. I should mind my own business.”

An apology. Almost like a handmaiden.

“Getō-san, can I see your hand?”

“My hand?” He asks but gives it to you anyway. You make sure not to touch him. You know better than to do so. Though nobody will know, you would still know. And sometimes, seeing is enough. And it is. You see the callous of his hands, the roughness of it and the size that dwarfs many. “I switched from one dojo to another when I was young. I couldn’t sit still and settle for one, but I calmed down. I guess it payed off at the end. It’s pretty useful now.”

Your displeasure eases to a more neutral one. “I didn’t go to the teachers. The teachers came to me. I was never taught hand-to-hand combat,” because you did not have to. Because you were meant to be protected.

Getō scoffs, turning away. “The Tengai Clan makes many of our Cursed Tools and Tengai-san has probably more Cursed Energy than Shōko and I combined. You’d do well on your own,” he waves his hand, “And besides, if you ever need help, you can always rely on us.”

“Us?”

“Satoru and I. Didn’t you know, Tengai-san? We’re the strongest.”

In the next few months, Getō and Satoru engrave their legend in the history of all sorcerers. They are announced as the strongest sorcerers of their generation and perhaps, among all sorcerers. And you realize who really is the Shijokobuccho of Satoru’s Butsugenbutsumo. But how ironic it is. Instead of the Butsugenbutsumo leading the Shijokobuccho, it is the other way around. For you can see it, despite being in this cage meant for birds, despite Satoru rarely mentioning Getō to you, you can see it. No, you can hear them from the rumors and the whispers of your handmaidens and your dear Ueko: Satoru looks at Getō strangely. Like the light. Like how the Butsugenbutsumo would to the Shijokobuccho.

Because in all the mandala charts of the Butsugenbutsumo, she is always accompanied by a certain Bodhisattva, the Shijokobuccho, and there is no room for an Ame-no-Uzume longing for her Sarutohiko-Ōkami in this picture.

xvii. but changes come, forces shift. those who can help themselve do so, and he is left behind.

While the higher-ups are pleased to hear of the strength Satoru and Getō possess, they remain dissatisfied, so dissatisfied that they called your grandmother all they way from Kyoto. You are not at all pleased when you see her in the steps of your new home but you welcome her nonetheless. This woman is the object of your love-hatred and the child within you cannot help but cower in her presence, and at the same time, seek for her validation. She watches you pour the tea for her and she mumbles a hum of satisfaction, and an even deeper sound of pleasure when she tastes it. “Your boy is stagnating. He must master those eyes of his soon,” she grumbles against her tea cup.

“I trust that Satoru-kun will succeed soon—”

“That is not enough, granddaughter.” Your grandmother puts down her cup. “While it is true that the Gojō-boy and that Getō works well together, but the All-Seeing Eyes is supposed to be with the Tengai Heiress. The All-Seeing Eyes work best without such a barbaric Technique such as that—that thing.” You turn away, not wanting to hear what you usually hear the most: Getō Suguru can control Curses. The most dangerous among all sorcerers as of the moment and the only reason why we are letting him stick to the All-Seeing Eyes is to—you breathe exhaustedly—make sure the All-Seeing Eyes can eradicate him if needed. And even better, if he masters it along the way. “If they didn’t just work so well together, moving that Getō-boy to Kyoto would have been much easier.”

Getō? To Kyoto? You clench your fists.

Your grandmother leaves, being pulled to a guest room by one of the many servants. You sit alone with only your tea to accompany you. You entwine your fingers together. The heat of the tea has long left and your thoughts travel once more. You are merely sixteen, two years away from your marriage with Satoru and if then, he still does not master his All-Seeing Eyes, you will be stuck as a mere broodmare, the Elders will hasten the birth of a new heir to possess the Rikugan because the older one is taking too long and the Tengai-woman has to be useful for something other than those pills, right? You push your face to your hands. You feel your heart hammering against your chest, feeling as if you are about to break your ribs with how much you want to scream.

When will things finally go your way? When will this frustration cease? When did Getō Suguru become an obstacle to Satoru instead of an article for his success? He is kind. Very kind. So deeply kind that your heart aches for him, that being around him makes you feel weak on your knees because he religiously visits you, tells you about the books he has read and the books he wants you to read, gives you comments about Satoru and ‘Shōko’s getting stuck in the clinic and there’s also this cheerful underclassman that always gets injured so she has her hands full’—when he speaks, he pulls you in his story until the next day, he comes as he always does, smiling with that weird-eyebrow habit, and he sees the redness of your eyes, the lack of comfort in your bones, and the way you almost said Satoru’s name when he comes.

Satoru is too busy dealing with the Elders, and perhaps, he may be in Roppongi with women, or in the midst of dealing with Curses because he calls himself a half of the strongest people among the sorcerers. But Getō arrives and the two of you had long since forgone permissions in entering your room. This time, he walks with assurance, pulls you by your hands and to your feet that you stumble on your steps. His hands are as cold as yours, but so full of life. You hear he eats the Curses he possesses. You wonder how much of that is true.

He smiles again, and again. His eyebrows furrow. “Tengai-san, have you ever gone to the Tanabata Festival?” The summer of their second-year and the lack of it to yours is nearing. He leans to your ear, voice hushed but promising. His hands are tight around yours as if he is the one feeling pain instead of you. His words are shaky and there is something about him that you cannot tell. You feel like crying too. The weight of his Curses must be heavy. The weight of this strength must be terrible. “I’ll pick you up in the seventh. Around nine in the evening.”

His promise stays with you for the next three days. You are stuck waiting for him, feeling more alone than ever now that he does not visit during those intervals. Satoru is nowhere to be seen, and you have never longed for him less than you did now. Satoru, Satoru—your grandmother remains with you, hissing to you about how despicable Satoru and Getō have gotten, calling themselves openly as the strongest when they are nothing but mere boys who just received the opportunity to play around. And that girl, Shōko, she grits—too liberated for her own good, smoking at that age, and her manners—absolutely horrifying, so unladylike. To think that the Gojō Heir is in the same class with the likes of these people and did you not here? That teacher of theirs, experimenting with Cursed Spirits. How far has Jujutsu Kōtō fallen down?

You keep your mouth shut, obedient until July seventh comes wnd when it does, Satoru arrives just as promised, a few minutes earlier than he had said but he still comes. He is wearing a gakuran and not the uniform that he wears in the Academy but perhaps his middle school uniform. He smiles, and his eyebrows again—“You said you never went to school, right? And I’ve seen the way you looked at my uniform,” he offers another uniform, a sailor one from a school you have never heard of, “It’s an old uniform from my school. I got that during the school festival—we had a crossdressing theme. Good thing I didn’t throw it out. I think it’s kind of big—”

“Getō-san.” You clutch unto the fabric, hands shaking. Your kimono feels tight, tight, tight, tight but—you bite your lower lip, tears threatening to pour from your eyes as you become overwhelmed with little you walking around with her kimono and kanzashi, tight, tight, tight but [Name], you have to endure it because a Tengai woman is elegant, the Yamato Nadeshiko among all women and [Name], hush, hush, don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s just a kimono. The obi is too tight then—the uniform is loose, falling down your knees and much longer than you had expected. But it is comfortable. The shoes are a size too big, just a random pair of sneakers Getō apparently bought on the spot on the way and, and, and oh, oh, oh, oh, oh—“Thank you.” You watch the walls of the compound hover above you and with hands wrapping around your waist, you are suddenly hoisted up.

Getō smiles, smiles, smiles. “You’re welcome.”

He helps you to the streets, a hand on your own as the lights flutter around you, blinding but so warm. Or maybe that is just your chest, pounding or the blood rushing to your cheeks as you bump against someone wearing a kimono. Someone apologizes to you and the breeze under your skirt is strange but a shopkeeper chimes for you to buy something, and so many things are happening all at once. You can barely hear Getō as he talks about the star-crossed lovers from the Tanabata mythology, the crowd screaming and you feel like crying. You feel like crying so bad. The hand around yours is cold but you do not need warmth when your chest is expanding far beyond the boundaries of your ribs, not when the heat of the food stalls are kissing your bare skin, not when summer is approaching and the breeze brushes against you, not when you are free.

Getō tugs you closer but you can no longer feel anything aside from the stretch of your lips, smiling so wide that it has begun to hurt but you have never felt so happy before and—a hand grazes against your cheek. It withdraws for a bit before it wipes away a tear. “I brought you here so you would stop crying, you know,” he points out, the bustling of the crowd almost making it so that you cannot hear him but his face his close and he is whispering right to your eas.

You laugh, covering your mouth out of habit. “I have never gone to any festival, Getō-san. I have only gone out only a handful of times in my life and this—this will be with me forever,” you tell him earnestly.

“Oh,” Getō smiles again, “You’re not crying anymore.”

・ sensou-ji (金龍山浅草寺, kinryū-zan sensō-ji) is a buddhist temple in tokyo, specifically in asakusa. it's one of the oldest temples and is dedicated to kannon (観音, kannon), the bodhisattva of mercy. she is known in other names such as guanyin or avalokitesvara. she's one of the more known bodhisattva.

・ abe-no-seimei (安倍 晴明, abe no seimei) was an onmyouji, aka a specialist of onmyoudou that served the emperor. the onmyoudou, in layman's term, were like philosophers but heavily involved with divination. anyway, here, the main character thinks the gojou clan came from abe-no-seimei but mc says it's ironic for them to follow buddhism when abe-no-seimei was said to have been the son of a fox which are famous to be messengers of inari, a shintou deity, or possibly, a youkai. abe-no-seimei's mother, kuzunoha, was a kitsune.

・ platycodon or chinese bellflower is the flower that was put in abe-no-seimei's shrine. it's heavily associated with him. lotus is associated with kannon.

・ zenyoumitsu-ji (安倍 晴明, zenyoumitsu-ji) is a buddhist temple in tokyo japan, specifically in the setagaya ward. it focuses on the origin and roots (of buddhism).

・ butsugenbutsumo (仏眼仏母, butsugenbutsumo) or buddhalocanii, is the personification of "eyes looking at the truth will give birth to Buddha", and it was developed to how it symbolizes the mother of buddha. one of its role is to "open the eyes of people to make them reborn as buddha", basically open the eyes of people to make them enlightened. in the mandala chart, she's always drawn with shijokobuccho (熾盛光仏頂, shijokobuccho) or prajvalosniisa, who is the deitification of the top of the skull, or in others, the brain because the butsugenbutsumo is supposed to guide the shijokobuccho to make the correct choices, in layman's term. 

・ the zen'in hair traiditon is a headcanon. not canon. yes.

・ the tanabata festival (七夕, evening of the seventh) is a festival that occurs every seventh of july. it originated from orihime and hikoboshi who were deeply in love with one another but due to the displeasure of a orihime's father becayse of hikoboshi's cows messing around in heaven, they were separated. the father, tentei, took pity in orihime and made it so that they can meet each other every seventh of july but it turns out they can't meet each other because there was no bridge. (orihime used to weave the 'bridge' aka the milky way.) so every july 7th, the magpies work together as a bridge to unite two star-crossed lovers.

Chapter Text

now i know well
the pain of it;
when someone awaits me
at their home, i’ll not stay away
but pay my call, as i should.
– ariwara no narihara

xviii. i should come to you often, when i am unable to forget those years.

It is not a surprise for you to see the assassins multiply the closer you get to eighteen years old. You think they should have had become more aggressive with their actions when they were younger but who dares go against the late GojōClan Head?  He had been one of the strongest sorcerers in his generation, head-to-head with his rivalry with none other than the Zen’in Clan Head but these people seem to show no fear of your Satoru despite his fame as someone who has long since exceeded the strength of his father, the new god of this generation. You watch Ueko glare at Getō who had just arrived, pulling away the unconscious body of the assassin along with the other women who treat him with the same disgust. His presence has become the norm that even the servants have learned to stomach his frequent appearances and you doubt Satoru does not know. He knows everything that happens in the compound and maybe, just maybe, it is also him who grants Getō the entrance anyway. But you are unsure still.

Getō stares at the body being pulled away uncaringly. No doubt, the women will be killing him the moment they move him out of sight. From the look on his face, Getō does not approve of this but he still walks inside your room and sits in front of your low-rise table. You lift the teapot in the grace of the Yamato Nadeshiko of men’s dreams and let the green tea pour out of it, falling into the cup that has long since been Getō in the year that he began visiting consistently. “Does that happen a lot?” He asks when you finally put down the pot. He drinks it carefully as always, avoiding the heat that he dislikes.

“The assassins, you mean?” You return the question to which he nods. From the corner of your eye, you see the trail of blood left on the floorboards. You remember Satoru. Whenever he comes, he always offers a body to you as if he is proving his worth, and he always, always falls on your lap silently, reassuringly, and longing for something that you do not have. “This body is precious after all. It’s no surprise that the closer to eighteen I am, the more aggressive the assassins become.” Even Getō should know how treasured your womb is, why you even live in the Gojō compound in the first place, why you are caged, why you had been so happy to go out even in that brief moment with him. “Ah, why have you visited this time, Getō-san?”

Sensing the need to change the subject, Getō obliges and tilts his head down a little. He palms his cup again. “I finished reading ‘Spring Snow’,” he begins. When he looks up to you, you become completely enraptured by the darkness of his eyes. You hold your hands together, waiting for him to continue. “Satoko-chan deserved way better, and Kiyoaki doesn’t deserve Honda-kun.” He waves his hand.

Amused, you chuckle under your sleeve. “Kiyoaki was irritating to read,” you agree.

You catch his gaze wandering to the pattern of your kimono. With an eyebrow raised in question, you finger its hem and offer him your sleeve. The kimono of the day is green decorated with the white of flowers, once owned by your mother that your grandmother claimed to have been given to her by the Inumaki she was once married to. Your father asked your grandmother to deliver this to you in your sixteenth birthday, saying that it was one of her most favorite patterns. “It was handmade by my mother’s former mother-in-law. They’re patterned with the habenaria radiata,” you say.

“And what do they mean?”

“My thoughts will follow you in your dreams.”

xiv. were i to follow the fragrance of blossoms, might i not be accused of wantonness?

The stagnancy of your dear Satoru continues.

Until it does not.

The news reach you before anyone else in the compound. It is Ueko who drags you to the corner with tears in her eyes, saying that it has finally happened. Your blood runs cold. She speaks of the death of the Star Plasma Vessel in the hands of the black sheep of the Zen’in Clan. You remember him. Once, you had seen him from afar when he still lived in the Zen’in Compound, his eyes dead and his scar digging deep into his lips like a mark of ownership. This is the shame of the Clan, it seems to say. You once admired his freedom, his lack of care to the world and how he easily became the strongest among each and every one of them despite lacking what everybody believed to be the source of their strength. Once, you envied him. And now, he becomes the bane of your existence.

The generation was supposed to be the finest of them all. The perfect generation. The epitome of peace. The Star Plasma Vessel lived along with the All-Seeing Eyes and the strongest Tengai of the generation. Perfect. It was supposed to be perfect. Until Fushiguro Tōji arrived and tore through your world of perfection, ripping apart what seemed to be the utopia that everybody dreamed of. The black sheep. The hole in the wall. The strongest. The destroyer of heavens and thus—thus was he punished. The righteous hand of the Buddha had torn a hole in Sūn Wùkōng’s stomach, they say. Satoru has become the enlightened one, they say. The Butsugenbutsumo has finally awakened the Buddha, they say. The world has finally tilted to their favor, they say, say, say—Ueko holds your cheeks with both hands, tears of joy streaming down her face as she rejoices upon the death of an innocent girl that spurred the enlightenment of Gojō Satoru. “You’re finally free now, young mistress! Free!” She exclaims happily.

You let her embrace you as you stare lifeless at the open doors of your room, the swaying of the leaves to the pond where you first met the enlightened one. A dead girl for your freedom, for the enlightenment of Satoru, for the defeat of Sūn Wùkōng. An innocent, innocent little girl.

You hear she is fourteen years old.

With agitation in your bones, you wait at the corridor in front of your room, your knees aching in the hours that you have chosen to sit there. (Oh, you have never hated yourself more than you did today. The servants that have been nothing but loyal to you, the servants who cried and smiled for you—all of them rejoice at your freedom, at Satoru’s ascension and at the death of the little girl. She was supposed to be the Star Plasma Vessel, a little girl younger than you, most likely sharing the same emotions as you. You realize; if it was Fushiguro Tōji who was sent after you instead, you would have long since been dead, strewn across the floor. Lifeless. Just like that little girl who unknowingly gave you your freedom. Or what is part of it.) Your fingers carve into your skin as you anxiously wait for Satoru. Satoru. Satoru. (Getō, are you okay?) You wait patiently as you always do. Because it is all you can do.

The servants say that they do not need the Star Plasma Vessel. With their young master with their young mistress, surely Tengen-sama will be much safer. And the child you will shelter in your womb will bloom into a boy (it has to be, it has to be, it has to be a boy) who will be even greater than Satoru. Your hand crawls to your obi where your womb rests behind the layers of clothes and flesh.

And when Satoru finally arrives, he is drenched in his own blood, his body heavy and his legs stumbling on one another. You immediately race to him, ignoring how constricting your obi is and as he sees you, he lets out a small smile, too small for you to actually recognize as a genuine one. He falls in your arms, your sweet, sweet Satoru. He holds you by your waist and lets his blood stain your face, nuzzling his cheek against yours. His lips are planted right at the corner of yours. You try to push him away, tell him that he needs to rest because Satoru has never been this injured in his whole life and he—he leans his forehead against your own. He holds you like you are something precious. He breathes right in front of you. “[Name],” you shudder when he says your name, softly, secretly, strangely, “Let’s go to our first mission tomorrow, okay?”

“Sa—Satoru,” you rarely cry but this time you do. You grasp him by his shoulders and you want to scream at him. Your sweet, sweet Satoru. Your Satoru that you love so dearly that it hurts. He can never be yours but you love him so much. You force him to look at you in the eyes and despite its brightness and vibrance, you find no life in them. “You can stay here. Please. Just stay here, Satoru. We can just live in the compound for a long time. They’ll understand. They’ll let you do whatever you want, you know. If it’s Satoru then it’s alright. If it’s you—” Your voice becomes siezed up. Only tears can come out of you by then. Your fingers claw against his tattered uniform and his blood is only what surrounds you but you cannot help but cling to him. This is only what you can do. This is all you can ever do. You pull him closer and plant a kiss on his lips. It tastes like blood but you do not mind. “Satoru, let's stay here for a bit, alright?”

“Don’t you want to leave already?” He pushes your hand away lifelessly. You frown. You open your mouth to speak but he cuts you off. “Isn’t [Name] supposed to belong to me? Aren’t you supposed to be—” He exhales, breath heavy and labored. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

He pushes you into your futon that night, begging for your warmth and for your touch. He whispers he wants no one more than he wants you, a lie that sings like a melody. He paints your skin with his blood, laughs when you shiver underneath him. He breaks all boundaries, all the rules that were established since the first Tengai woman that was offered. He touches you like he wants to use you, and he does. With your skin splattered with his blood and with his touch setting you on fire like it has never done before, you cry a little. You hold him tight as he struggles to keep himself. His hold around you is even tighter, fearing for your loss and you bid farewell to your collection of books and the small exchanges. You let him do whatever he wants with you, let him paint purple and red to your skin, let him hold you like he hates you and loves you at the same time.

Your dearest Satoru will never love you like you love him. You have known that for a long time now but you were born for him, and you do not mind being born for your boy-god. He will never love you for you cannot find Sarutahiko-Ōkami in him but he will always seek for you like a moth to a flame. He calls you by your name and it is all you need.

When he sleeps, you push yourself off of your futon to sit up. Your body aches and it is deep with the dark colors of Satoru’s superificial love. And in the sheets right between your legs is not Satoru’s blood but your own. Because Satoru cannot cry, you cry for him. You despair for your future and his.

You cannot live like this.

xv. he came calling one day when the chrysanthemums, tinged by the frost, were at their best and sad autumn showers were falling.

As promised, you walk on the earth as the companion of a god. Your grandmother has never been so happy. She cried on your shoulders and spoke of how proud she is to have you as a granddaughter, the wife of a god. The Kushinadahime to Susanō-no-Mikoto. You only smile to her as you feel Satoru’s hand on your waist, tight and unforgiving around these people. He pulls you to one mission after another, telling you that he is the strongest among all of them but with you in his side, he can achieve enlightment beyond all the enlightened. When you catch Getō at the corner of your eyes in the few times Satoru drags you to the Jujutsu Kōto, he does not look like the Getō you know. But he looks at you as he always does, watches Satoru guide you to yet another place, the sceneries whipping in front of your eyes, and he smiles. As he always does. As he always, always does.

You long for the return of your small conversations. The exchanges that, though barely there, gave you more than you have ever asked for in your life.

“I pity you, you know,” those are the first words Ieiri Shōko that says to you. Her hair is chopped short and her eyes lack light and overall, she looks exhausted. She plays with her cigarette stick as she guides you to where Satoru is. She pulls her head back and glances at you. “That Satoru will never be a good husband. I doubt he would ever be a good father too.” You smile through the honesty. You have known that for a long, long time already. And she looks like she knows that too.

She suddenly stops walking making you immitate her almost immediately. She looks around for a moment before she faces you completely. Her eyelashes are long. Very, very long. “You know, it’s hard to please Suguru,” she leans in, “And I—I guess I can see why that Satoru keeps you close and why he keeps you far too. You look like you know too—” Her eyes widen when an arm pulls you away from her, wrapping around your chest. Your feet leaves the ground briefly. Ieiri frowns. “Geh. Satoru. Shouldn’t you be in the classroom with Suguru?”

You look up, watching Satoru’s blue eyes focus solely on Ieiri right under his glasses. “Hey, hey, Shōko-chan,” Ieiri’s frown deepens and she pulls away, “You shouldn’t be mean to my [Name], you know.”

Ieiri looks at him in disbelief. “Hypocrite,” she spits at him.

Satoru rolls his eyes and talks about your next mission. Despite how much you wished for this freedom for so many years, despite how much you begged and prayed for a taste of the outside world, you have no love for it anymore. Your Cursed Energy dances around Suguru as he eradicates Curse after Curse without any effort whatsoever. You do not think he needs you but he keeps you attached to his hip, unwilling to let you go. You wonder if this is the freedom that you wished for because it feels anything but. Satoru remains a cage even when you are outside your compound but he still smiles, tells you that people are staring at you because of your beauty and not because of the oddity if your kimono that is striking amongst them all. He brings you the crêpe from a nearby store and tells you that this certain spot is the best for dates and you let him do whatever he wants with you.

Ueko sits beside you near the pond, her shoulders warm and so are her tears. She cries and cries. “I don’t understand, young mistress! Why are you not happy? Why do you look even lonelier than you had been?” She begs to know the answer but even you do not know. “They were so cruel to you, locking you up like an animal! And now, you can go with Satoru-sama whenever you want, so why—why do you look like that, young mistress?”

You are an ungrateful fool, not finding kindness in Satoru’s actions and instead, feel nothing but loneliness in them. Why was it when you finally got your freedom, you only became lonelier? More in despair? You finally are free, with Satoru in his most enlightened state and with the Elders singing you praises. Your grandmother told you she loves you and of how proud she is but you—the answer to your question comes, and he takes the form of a sad, sad boy. He is sixteen and of the same age as you, his eyes too dark to see the light and his frame too big for the doors. He smiles sadly, his head cocked to the side and his eyebrows quirk up. You are not someone who cries a lot but his visage in this night has your tears streaming down your face. You cover yourself out of instinct, letting your sleeves hover above your face in attempt to not be seen. His chuckle echoes and you try to calm yourself.

You feel his hand on your shoulder, large and calloused but gentle in touch. He slowly pulls your sleeves away from your face and his smile grows. He wipes your tear away with his finger. “You’re always crying when I see you,” he comments, “What should I do to make you smile this time, Tengai-san?” His respectful tone is familiar and the next thing you know is that you are embracing him, tight and pleading. You feel him jolt in surprise but he returns it anyway, his arms cold but so, so full of life. You missed him in the months you have not seen him, in the months when all you shared between the two of you were small glances and smiles. He laughs again. You imagine his eyes creasing and his brows rising. “Is this enough?” He asks.

“More than enough,” you answer, “So much more.”

You settle like that for a long, long time, just crying on his arms as he talks about his day. He says he has been going on more missions with Ieiri and lots of solo missions as well. He has been going around the country, doing a thing or two that he does not tell you. And he says he missed you too. He misses your tea, he misses the way you would hide your chuckles and your smiles behind your sleeves, the way you would tug your hair to the back of your ear, the way you would flip through the pages of a book and the way your lashes would shadow above your eyes, the way you would smile when he is here, the way you would talk about flowers, the way you would wear different kimono everyday, rarely repeating and when you do, you always look better than you did the last time. He says he misses you in a way that is wrong. In a way that he should not.

And you think you share the same sentiment.

As he holds you in his arms so gentle that you cannot feel anything from him, so gentle that his soft breaths become a rhythm that you unconsciously follow. “I found a flower shop when I was outside of Tokyo, you know. It was small. There were barely any people there but they said that people who like flowers would always appreciate chrysanthemums,” he breath hitches and his hands clutch around your robes, “The next time I come back, which colors would you like?”

You lightly push yourself up to meet his eyes, searching for something, anything. Your heart clenches when you see the redness of his ears and the hesitance in his eyes. He looks so dead but so alive, as if your next words are going to be what keeps him holding on. The answer is right on your lips, and you are tempted to say it to him but you hold his face instead and pull him to your shoulder. Your grip around him is unforgiving and desperate. “Please don’t ask me that, Getō-san. Please. You can’t ask me that,” you beg to him. In two years, you will be gone. In two years, you will be a mother. In two years, you will return to what you always were, what you were supposed to be so: “Getō-san, don’t make me answer that. Please. Please. You shouldn’t.”

Getō does not move and instead, pulls you even closer. His heart thumps against yours and his arms have never been so rough around you. You do not want to let go of him. You do not want him to let go of you. “Call me Suguru,” he says, his voice cracking.

“You know I can’t.”

“Just once, please—”

“Getō-san—”

“Please.”

You feel like crying again. You have no idea how you ended up in this predicament, why you found yourself seeking for this instead of Satoru. When you decided that enough is enough, when you realized that nothing will your situation, when you decided that you will never be happy with Satoru—ah, Amaterasu-sama, please forgive this poor soul, you plead, please forgive this child. You were so lonely for the longest time, you begged for the things that should have been provided for you from the beginning. A part of you says that everything is going alright for even the kami makes mistakes. Even they have characteristics as humane as you. Amaterasu-Ōmikami can throw tantrums, and Susanō-no-Mikoto can be envious all he wants; Izanagi-no-Mikoto can leave his wife for something as shallow as appearance, and Izanami-no-Mikoto can seek vengeance for this. Because even the kami are humane and you, as a puny mortal, are bound to sin.

And so, you hold Getō in your arms and for the first and last time, you speak his name.

xvi. so narrow my sleeves, they cannot take my tears. how then shall i make bold to keep you with me?

There are many things that you wish to see before the end of your life, before you turn eighteen and before you marry Satoru. You know you will never get the chance to do that but this is how you were born and thus, this is how you will end. There are many things that you wish to say, there are many things you wish to do, but of course, your womb is what ties you down in this earthly realm, refusing to let you go. You coo at your grandmother’s love and her prideful smiles. She tells you how happy she is that you are not like your mother, that fool, and how fortunate you are that you are born to this family. You look at her in disbelief, in loss, but you can never tell her how you truly feel. Oh, grandmother, you do not despise anyone more than her but you love her so much that it breaks you.

When your father finally visits, months after you and Satoru became partners, he looks the same. He is exactly as you remember he is. He sits beside you and watches the tree beside the pond. The only thing constant in this world. You do not look like your father. You suppose you are fortunate for that. Your grandmother would have been harsher if it was otherwise. “You’ve become more beautiful,” your father says.

You smile. “Thank you, father. You look healthy.”

“I suppose I do, despite the missions.”

You... you hate him for siring you. You despise him for neglecting you in your childhood but you feel for him. No matter how much he denies it, you can see it plainly. He loves your mother. He loves your mother so much that he willingly became her escape from the leers of the Elders and her grandmother telling her that she has become defiled and therefore, is no longer of use. Who would want to marry someone whose purity is lost? And under the guise of a platonic relationship, your father offered himself.

“I assume you know why I came,” he begins and you let him continue. The moon becomes too blinding to be considered beautiful. “I can’t give you a choice. You know what path you are going to take in this world, in this lifetime. I should have—I should have taken you away from the beginning but your mother—she,” he pauses, “She loved Inumaki-san but she loved your grandmother more.” Ah. When the late Gojō Clan Head said that you were like your mother in your first meeting, it seems that he was talking more than your looks. Satoru who became his father and you, who became your mother. This is an endless cycle, the cycle of rebirth. Samsara has failed you, so it seems.

He ruffles your hair for the first time. You do not think he will do that ever again. “Never forgive me, [Name], I don’t deserve it but forgive yourself. None of this was your fault. You were nothing but a good granddaughter. You were never given a choice and for that I,” he does not finish his words but he leaves with his heart with you. You and your father will never have a talk like this again and you prefer it that way.

The moment your father leaves, Satoru arrives and sits beside you, his smile present but no longer having the charm that it once had. He offers you a bouquet when he sees your glum expression. “I’m home, [Name]!” He beams.

You return his eagerness, holding the bouquet and cementing your fate, as a California Poppy sits alone in the seas of Gentians. You wonder what he asks of you.

・ spring snow (春の雪, haru no yuki) is the first installment in the sea of fertilty tetralogy by mishima yukio back in 1969. the plot is... well, complicated. all you have to know is that kiyoaki is the son of a rich family and their neighbor is one of the 28 noble families. there, he becomes childhood friends and sweethearts with satoko. kiyoaki has an on-and-off relationship with satoko and even sent her once a letter that just dissed the hell out of her, and satoko eventually tries to move on and gets engaged to a prince. that's only the beginning of the story. conclusion: satoko and honda deserved so much more.

・ habenaria radiata or white egret orchid, in hanakotoba, means my thoughts will follow you in your dreams.

・ sun wukong (孫悟空) or the monkey king is a mythical figure in chinese mytholoy. he was said to have rebelled against the heavens, only to be punished by the buddha. in gojou's hidden inventory arc, it was constantly referenced that gojou was the buddha and touji was sun wukong.

・ kushinadahime (奇稲田姫) is one of the wives of susano'o whom he rescued from the eight-headed dragon, the yamato no orochi.

・ chrysanthemums (菊, kiku) have many different meanings based on their colors. red can mean i love you; white can mean truth; yellow can mean slighted love; and more commonly, you're a wonderful friend.

・ california poppy means do not refuse me.

・ gentians can mean many things: loveliness, intrinsic worth, or i love you best when you are sad.

Chapter Text

deep with the mountains,
upon the crags where seeds
grow into pines,
rooted firmly – how hard
will our love be?
– lord ari'ie

xvii. thus in a single phrase i can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. it is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

You walk through the hallways, fingers threaded through the locks of an assassin's head that you had chopped off. On another hand is a weapon made from the sweat and blood of your clan, throbbing with your Cursed Energy but not with your Technique. It is common knowledge that a Tengai's Cursed Technique cannot work on a Tengai, much less their Cursed Tool. Some say it is a restriction but the old scrolls say the Tengai Clan was meant to be the bridge to the other clans' relations, a thread that ties them together. In your hand is the same weapon, the same bridge, the same thread that was meant to weaken you. The previous Gojō Clan Head had looked at you amusedly when you pleaded to your knees to learn of the art of the sword and mocked you by throwing to you a weapon from your clan, unable to be strengthened and acted more like a normal, normal weapon for someone like you.

But even normal weapons can cut. And this is not the first head you have sliced, past the flesh, the throat, the spinal cord that connects everything—and you are certain this will not be the last. The onslaught of assassins have never been this bad, their blades eager to cut open your womb and make sure to infant is born from it, from you and Satoru. When you palm your stomach where your womb rests, you almost feel the throb of life and you do not know what to feel about it. After learning more about your mother, you do not know if you wish to give the same life to your child. Whether it is going to be a boy or a girl. But you also fear for yourself, for Satoru, for Getō-san—for what will become of your clan lest you do not proceed with this promise.

Ueko runs into you in the hallway and quickly wraps her arms around you in despair. She ignores how the blood soaks her as well, reaching for the decapitated head. "Young mistress, you should have called for us," she weeps as she always does, your sweet little handmaiden who does nothing but worry for you and your well-being. "We could have protected you."

You narrow your eyes but hold her cheek in your hands still, the blood staining her skin. But she snuggles to it, desperate for the cold of your touch. "This one was a strong one. If I did not fight him, many of you would have died," you tell her. You may not be as strong as Satoru or Getō but the Cursed Energy that runs in your veins is potent, malevolent, wild and compact. The pills of the Tengai Clan cannot be used by a Tengai and it can only hold so much, and when you infuse too much energy, it explodes as any other container does, wrapping the surroundings in wild explosions. But the blade was enough for this one. Your missions with Satoru proved to be useful as there are times when he sits by, his face on a hand as it leans against his knee, sitting in the air like a mockingbird. "I'm sure [Name] likes to be let go." He held your arm, guiding the blade and pointing it to the Curse. "Go on."

They call you a Second Grade because you cannot fight Curses alone, because the weapons you use are regulated and you have no reason to bring around the pills when you cannot use them anyway. They call you a Second Grade as an offensive sorcerer but a Special Grade as a support. You are not unaware about how many people from different Clans try to have you with them on missions, asking Yaga Masamichi who handles Satoru and sometimes, even Gakuganji Yoshinobu who handles the Kyoto Jujutsu Kōtō and by extension, has influence over your Clan who resides there. Anybody wants a woman who can make them feel stronger and more powerful than they actually are, and when they look at you as you walk with Satoru in the hallways of Tokyo's Jujutsu Kōtō, they see the submissive fianceé, clad in traditional kimono, hair tied up and long as any other Yamato Nadeshiko, an ideal woman of tradition.

They say, that before the men of the Clan died out, there was nothing better than a Tengai woman and a Tengai man together, a pair more powerful than anything else until the heavens grew angry at them and thus, killed the men and made it so the women's abilities cannot assist the people of their Clan. A punishment, they say. But a punishment for what? Satoru once spoke of lies, tickling your love with the thought of becoming the Matriarch born from his mischief. There was never a Matriarch. There was never a runaway wife. There was never freedom.

There was only you.

Ueko holds your hands once she discards the head. She runs her fingers right below your eyes, as if wiping non-existent tears. Her face contorts painfully. "Young mistress, do you want me to call for the Getō-boy?" Your head lifts to meet hers, furrowing your eyebrows unsurely.

"Getō..." You echo.

"Yes," Ueko says in surrender. Her hands are unbelievable comforting, unbelievably caring, and she leans to your shoulder, a little teary-eyed. Her fingers are tight around yours. She is shaking and crying for you. She is desperate and angry. For you. She is unbelieavably furious for you and she wants nothing more than the best for you, it is obvious. So obvious. You wonder how many of your handmaidens cry for you, how many of them wish to help you, how many of them think of you and beg the gods for a better life for you. "The young mistress is the happiest when she is with that Getō-boy—the older—the older servants have never seen you like that since the young mistress was a child. When—when the young master was much kinder." (Was Satoru ever kind to you?) She lowers her head to you, reverently.

"Ueko, I'm sorry."

"The young mistress must never be sorry. You—" She pauses, her tongue twirling around something unfamiliar, finally referring to you as you and not as her young mistress. "You are so kind."

She says she will call your Getō, says that if there is anyone who can make you feel better it is him, the one you chose, the one that you had freely extended a hand to. Ueko mumbles about not liking that boy who came from nowhere and how barbaric his Cursed Technique is but she smiles softly, a smile that you can barely see, but you feel it so so deeply that when Getō arrives in the middle of the night, you welcome Ueko's invitation, her kindness, her empathy. As if he will disappear when you let him go, you embrace him as when you first did, the first and last time you uttered his name. He breathes against your neck unsurely. "Ueko-san called me," he says. "What happened? Are you okay?"

You're okay. You are more than alright. You think you can last a little longer as long as he is here. You can survive the next year, just a year closer to when you are eighteen, as long as Getō is with you. This is cruel of you, you think, you have never been so cruel to someone else ever in your life but Getō returns your embrace and when you do not answer about your status, he seethes with an anger you cannot explain. His finger dig into your kimono. "You can just run away with me, you know," he suddenly announces.

His words make you jolt in surprise, pulling away to look at his face. His eyes meet yours resolutely. He intertwines his fingers with yours, eyebrows furrowed and gaze enraged. "I'll be graduating soon and before you—" Before you turn eighteen because you are older than Satoru still and the law states that while women can get married at sixteen, men can only get married once they are eighteen. And there is nothing you can do with how eager your grandparents are to marry you off. "Before that happens, we can run away. Together. You can come with me."

You frown in confusion. "Come with you? To where?"

Getō, for once, hesitates. He does not elaborate further but he makes a promise that digs into you, engraving itself in your bones, unrelenting. "I can make a better world for you, Tengai-san. A world where you don't have to stay here. A much better world. And if it's you by my side, we can certainly..." He trails off before he sighs in his strengthlessness. He leans to you, numb as a fossil. You try to look at him again but he just stays. "I'm sorry. I—I'm sorry. I've become just like everyone, and I—I want to give you a choice, Tengai-san. Forget what I said just now. Just tell me. Just tell me whenever. Just give me the word and I'll give you a ticket away. Anywhere."

His hands shake, becoming earthquakes that know nothing of ceasing. He sweats and his shoulders hunch, ashamed of himself for implying that he needs your Cursed Technique, fearful that he has become just like the people who made you this way, who trapped you until you could not even eat unless allowed. But you love this boy, you think. Not in the way you loved Satoru who, you realize, though you loved deeply, also someone you did not love as genuinely as you liked to think. Who would not have fallen for a boy as beautiful as a god? A boy who kisses you as he holds hands with another? A boy who tells you how much he loves you and treats you as his most treasures. But that is it. Women are not supposed to be treasured for you are not objects. There must be no favorites because favoritism means comparison and comparison means demeaning and you remember the fear for yourself when you had heard that Zen'in Ōgi's wife raised faulty children but still, she raised them. Loved them. And everyone scorned her for it.

Your Getō-san is not the Getō-san you once knew, plagued with the same change that warped Satoru even further. It must have been the little girl who gave you the freedom you have longed for since you were a child. You find yourself a little at fault, a little guilty, utterly disgusted at your brief happiness.

You pull his head to finally lift it up. You tilt your own and smile as you always do. "You know, Getō-san, I always found your Cursed Technique kind. I could never understand why so much people disliked it," you admit. You let go of his face as you play with his palms. His gaze shifts to there, still ashamed. "You give them another chance, in a way. You talk to them when even I, who thought of everything and nothing at once since I had nothing better to do, did not even think much of Curses. They were always meant to be exorcised not—not like you. Not like how you talk to them. I think, Getō-san, if ever I die, I would love nothing more than becoming a Curse."

Getō snatches his hand away in disbelief. "Tengai-san—"

"If you Curse me, it would be an honor to stand by your side, Getō-san. But I hope, I hope—I hope that if I become a Curse, I would resemble a bird. One with wings and as much freedom as they do. Now that I think about it, there is nothing I want more than that," you say whistfully, "I want to be a bird."

xviii. when action was needed, i was absorbed in words

Another head falls in your hands, Ieiri Shōko glancing at you in speculation. You wonder if you have killed more humans than yoh have Curses with how much assassins visit you at day and at night, whether or not you are in the company of someone. Of course, they know better than to linger when Satoru is there who does not let a single blood splatter to you and instead, snaps his fingers and ends the game before it even begins. This must be the first time Ieiri has witnessed the assassination attempt. She is as calm as she had been when she gave you your check-up that she does every time you go to missions with Satoru. She picks up a tissue and wipes the blood on her cheek, the assassin dying with a single wave of your sword. "Isn't that a Special Grade Weapon?" She recognizes.

"A Special Grade Weapon that I cannot use as nothing but a blade," you reply, flicking the sword and letting the blood shake away, and with skillful manipulation, you wipe the remaining blood with the same tissue that Ieiri used. "Did you know, Ieiri-san? That I am officially not allowed to have a Curse defeated under my name alone? That I am not allowed to go off on missions alone? That I am not allowed to exorcise a Curse alone?" The irony makes you laugh: a Sorcerer not allowed to kill a Curse because of the fear of what your Technique may do if honed to such an offensive force rather than its defensive.

Ieiri raises a single eyebrow, leaning back to the sheets of the countless beds in the nurse's office, a place, she once said, is the only solace she can get when she smokes or when she wants to be alone. The other doctor who actually owns the office does not mind having her in here as she will be the one replacing them in the future. "Then why don't you just run away? You know, Tsukumo Yuki is rumored to have disagreements with the higher-ups a lot. It's why she's around the world instead," she comments, offering a cigarette. You only grimace.

"And yet, Tsukumo-san was not born like me, wasn't she?" You answer in amusement. "How bold of you to assume I have not tried to leave. A few weeks before I was sent to the Gojō Compound, I formulated a plan: I took all my jewelry and my expensive kimono, planning to sell them and living in the farthest north of Hokkaido. For a four-year-old, it was an impressive attempt, I suppose. But I was dragged by my hair by my grandmother and was whipped for hours. And in the compound, I am surrounded by women who I cannot leave. What do you think would you do, Ieiri-san, you, born without shackles to hold you down?"

The gaze you share is at a standstill. She sighs and slumps back to the sheets of the bed. She curls herself. You sit beside her, ignoring the dead body on the floor or the body count in your hands, or the few number of Curses you have slayed in your name. "How do you even live?" She asks. Her bored demeanor fades a little. This time, she is truly curious and terribly confused.

You pull her hair away from her face, running a hand down her cheek. "I exchange books and tea with strange visitors," you reply mysteriously.

"If we exchange books and tea right now, would I still be counted? I don't think I'm a stranger, you know," she pokes your side and hesitantly looks up to you.

"Indeed. You are a friend," you clarify to her. Perhaps, you would have been close friends had you entered the Jujutsu Kōtō. And perhaps, you would have bonded in a way the dearest of friends would only as you complain about the two other boys in your class. Perhaps, you would not be wearing your kimono but the same uniform they do, and the four of you would become the best team that the sorcerers have to offer and then—perhaps then, you would be a little happier. A little more free.  A little less reluctant everytime. "You know, Ieiri-san, I think you would look great in long hair. An observation. From a friend."

"Then as a friend, I'll try it out."

When you leave, Satoru is there to wait for you at the doors, hands stuffed in his pockets. He moves his head to your direction, eyes blocked by those bandages he is beginning to prefer. He beams at you. He reaches to your face to wipe something away and when he separates, you see the blood of the assassin. "[Name] is really good with the sword," he remarks and slings an arm around your shoulder. You let him because he is still Satoru. "I'll spend the night at home to keep you company! After that, I'll be leaving again, okay? That Old Man Yaga's been nagging me to go to the Curse hotspots already. Why can't I just bring you with me? I bet you'd want to take a peek at Ibaraki, you know."

You hold his hand in comfort. He tightens his grip around you. He leans down and kisses you in your cheek, softly and silently. His hair touches your face. "Do you want any souvenirs?"

You recall the hundreds upon hundreds travel pamphlets you have read meaninglessly and you remember Ibaraki. "In the Hitachi Seaside Park. Won't you bring me blue nemophila?" You suggest.

His smile freezes but relents. "Is it for me?"

"Who else is it for, Satoru?"

xix. amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon

The tips of your fingers surge with Cursed Energy, encasing it in the ball, a pill for another set of Sorcerers who use it more as a power-up and not an Energy Repleneshing material which is no surprise. Most sorcerers become obsessed with the taste of the Strengthening Technique once they eat it for the first time. Most especially the Zen'in Clan Head who is said to mix it with his alcohol. He orders the most from you, unsurprisingly, and buys it in bulks upon bulks from the Tengai Clan and he makes sure to especially ask from you, the one with the finest control, the most potent of energy, and the best of the bunch. You have never met Naoya-kun since you were a child but you think it is for the best. You cannot imagine being with Naoya or even living under the roof of his home.

The doors of your room are open as always, the view of both the pond and the large tree right in front of you. The nostalgia is overwhelming and it has you frozen for a moment before Ueko, from a kneeling position at the hallway. She pokes her head from the sliding doors. "Young mistress, your father is here," she reports.

You straighten your back in surprise. You glance at the clock hanging in your walls; this late at night? He is supposed to be in Kyoto still unless he has a mission around this area which is doubtful. After your conversation with your father a few months ago, not once did he attempt to contact you which you do not mind. While he is still your father, no one can honestly expect you to forgive him, as much as, despite your love for your grandmother, you still cannot forgive her. Out of curiosity, your hands meet the cup of tea beside your low-rise table, watching your father enter your room. He sits to the opposite of you with his head low. "Father, what made you come?" Your voice is silent with its bitter tone but you cannot really push away your father when he appears so late tonight.

When he lifts his head, the first thing you see is the strange marking son this forehead, littered with a pattern of stitch-like engravings. Or are those actually stitches? Your heart hammers against your chest and you quickly move to his side, holding his face. You despise your father, yes, for his neglect and his abandonment, but you cannot wish him death or injure. "Father, are you alright? Do you want me to call Ieiri-san? I can ask Ueko to—" He grabs your wrist. You flinch in surprise. Father never dared to touch you.

He shakes his head. "This is nothing, daughter. I just," he pauses. He furrows his eyebrows before he sighs, an announcement of his finality. "I reflected upon my actions and just thinking about how much I pained you, how much you suffered because of my selfishness—[Name], my daughter—" His voice shakes pleadingly, tears stinging his eyes. "Please, let me do something right for once. Please let me make you happy. Before you get married to that Gojō-boy, let me—let me help you."

"Help me?" You ask, trying to tug away your wrist but his hold is strong and unyielding.

"I can hide you somewhere that not even that Gojō-boy can find. Not even your grandmother, or Tengen-sama," his breath hitches, using your hand as some sort of prayer as he presses it to his forehead, "Let me make you happy, my daughter."

You sigh softly, a hand reaching for one of the pills as you offer it to him. "Father, your Cursed Energy is erratic. Please calm down. You are saying such nonsensical things," you put the pill in his hands, sandwiching them with your own.

"No, my daughter! You do not understa—" With a sudden burst of your Cursed Energy, the pill glows as it overflows.

It explodes wildly, shattering the casing it sits within. You immediately jump away, hiding your face with your sleeves as debris fly in your direction. Before Ueko can even reach your side in urgency, you put a free hand in the air to stop her. "Leave. Quickly," you hiss but she does not move, "Leave! We will all die if you stay here, girl!"

Ueko's eyebrows meet in frustration. She steps forward but quickly returns to where she originally was. "I—I will call for the young master! You must survive 'til then!" She does not call you her young mistress but instead, her equal. Tears swell in her eyes, imploring you to do as she says for once, to listen to her advice, and she pleads to you. She is pleading to you. You only smile in the same smile she always does as she runs as fast as she can, her Cursed Energy flickering in and out of life. Just as you are about to face your enemy once again, a hand siezes your throat, tight and unforgiving, cold yet burning—an aged-old vengeance and desperation that you are not familiar of.

The smoke dissipates and only a man remains. Or what is left of a man. Your father's face has been burnt, skin flaking away and exposing the flesh and the corner of his eyeballs, his mouth peeling with skin, and his nose barely even there. His chest, however, is what has taken the most brunt. Out of instinct, you try to force your arm through his exposed chest but he only catches it with another hand, putting you in your place with such little movements. "How did you know?" The monster questions.

You fidget under his hold, feeling bruises already form around your neck. "My fa—father—he would never try to ta—take my away. He loves my mother more than he will ever love me," you spit on his face and he hisses at the pain of it. He throws you to the floor and you quickly run to your sliding closet, pulling the familiar handle of your blade. You point it to him. "Who are you?"

The monster turns to you, running a hand through his dark hair. His glare looks nothing like your father's and his face is far from it as well, whether or not the skin remains. He straightens his back, glancing at the caving of his chest. "I planned to take you peacefully. Women can be so stubborn which is why I took the form of your beloved father instead," his thumb pokes on the stitchings on his neck. His nails suddenly move through the stitches, giving you a small peek of what sits inside. "I should not have waited for the maturity of your womb. I should have harvested it earlier."

Your hands unconsciously move to cover your stomach. "There are legends of man-possessing curses but I did not think of it as true," you admit your mistake, fingering the pills behind your back and within the sleeves of your robes. You wonder how long you can stall for Satoru. How long can you protect this compound? How long can Ueko make sure that everyone has left to leave you? How can you make sure they would not stay to protect you? You click your tongue and with fine and practiced movements that of any other veteran sorcerer, you erect a barrier that stands from the pond to your room. "You could have harvested it right then and there. You could have taken me, as you said, but you did not."

The monster cocks a grin. "That would have made it much harder. I would have needed to visit the Tengai Clan to find a suitable host for it, and even then, I would need to collect the right amount of Cursed Energy to give birth to my Hyakki Yagyō. A living Tengai is the finest Tengai, after all," he holds a hand to your direction, your tongue licking on a pill, "I do not wish to harm such fine treasures. I shall give you a choice, girl: come with me and I shall seek vengeance in your name, maybe even let that love affair of yours live, or I shall kill everyone here. Especially your beloved girls."

You flinch.

You called this place your cage for so many years, called the other women your captors when they weeped for you and hissed at Satoru for your sake. Nobody is truly right and nobody can truly be wrong, such as your hypocrisy in damning Satoru for his infidelity when you offer your heart to another man—your desperation of your Getō-san when you know you can never give him what he wants, your distaste for giving birth to a child when you want nothing more to call one as your own—the world is not painted black and white. This place is your cage, the bars that surround you as your wings become clipped with the blue nemophilia that never dares to leave. You long for the chrysanthemums and the kiss of small exchanges. This place is your cage, you think, but this same cage is where your girls live, where your dearest handmaidens and servants kiss your hands and cry for your loss and your sufferings.

And though you had been forced to this position, though you know you were born for this, you cannot leave them alone. Not when they care for you so deeply, not when you love them just as much. You are still a woman of the Tengai Clan, the Matriarch-to-be of the famed Gojō Clan, and though you have wings so clipped that you cannot fly, that does not mean you can sit still. You hate your life, sure, but you love the people in it.

Perhaps you have become insane.

Perhaps you are only desperate.

Perhaps, perhaps, you could be in a better position; a dream wherein you wear the same clothes as Satoru and Ieiri and Getō, a dream where you can stand beside them as an actual sorcerer, a dream where your father embraces you and calls you his beloved child, a dream where grandmother smooths your hair with the bones of her hands, a dream where Ueko and the other girls will smile for you instead. Perhaps, you could be happier.

But you think this is your choice too. This is actually your choice. In your mouth are the pills and in your hand is the blade they call useless on you. Your Cursed Energy sings right underneath your skin as this monster calls you a broodmare. You care not for what he thinks of you, of what the people think of you. You rarely cared for it anyway.

So you rise a little, stumbling a little, hesitating a little, but you think—you think: you could be happier. You could honestly be happier. But you could be a bird too. A bird free of its clippings and a bird who can fly higher than anybody else. Once, the late Gojō Clan Head held you in his arms and pushed his Cursed Technique to pierce through the clouds. Beneath your disgust, you had been in awe.

You look at the monster and of the pond where you first met god. Or perhaps, the man before you is god. You meet his eyes shamelessly and you smile, a choice, a true choice, one out of love, of hope, and of the lives that come after. Your Cursed Energy builds and builds. "Fuck off," your hands move faster than it has ever been and your blade slices through your own skin, the same spot where you touch frequently, the same spot that your grandmother treasured, the same spot that has baned your existence. You hear something faint from the monster, a roar, or maybe it is the end of the story.

(In the days of samurai and in the rule of heavy armor, the women hold the naginata to protect their homes, in the confines of their kimono, in the confines of their compounds, but as their naginata flashes and as it blazes, the women protect and they fight. A show of strength. A show of love. A show of devotion for your home.)

They say that Cursed Energies bloom in the face of negativity and no wonder your Cursed Energy claws through the pills in your mouth and spreads. With what little of your strength is left, you stab through the monster's feet and you laugh, letting your Cursed Energy pour and pour and pour. They call the Technique of the Tengai Clan mere objects to bring strength and damn them all, you will pour it out of you, let them walk like natural disasters, the divine punishment.The world throbs and throbs, and the monster tries to gather what is left of your womb as you slump in his arms. He claws and he rages. You faintly feel your pain on your forehead before the world freezes and the world cracks.

You laugh, and laugh and laugh—perhaps you truly have become insane. (You think of Satoru, of Ueko, of Ieiri, of Getō. You love them more than you can ever love but you love yourself more, you realize, for once. You choose to love yoursef more than you love any other and you do this for once. For once, you make a choice: damn this world of monsters and this world of faux gods, these chains that restrict you and this weapon that cannot kill. Damn them all for with the weapon that cannot kill, with the chains that can only restrict, with the wings that have been clipped, the Gojō Clan survives this massacre, and your Ueko clings to her survival.)

Using the weapon and the pills they deemed to be your restriction, between the Cursed Energy and the explosions, within the confines of the home they called your cage, you have made your choice.

The gods have spoken: this is the divine punishment.

・ i want to be a bird (鳥になりたい, tori ni naritai) it is homonymous to 肚裏になりたい (tori ni naritai) which is "i want to be in your heart".

・ the hitachi seaside park (ひたち海浜公園, hitachi kaihin kōen) is a park in ibaraki with fields of flowers. one of those flowers is the blue nemophila, representing prosperity and healing, and it's also called the blue eyes in many cases.

・ the titles come from the temple of the golden pavilion.

Chapter Text

i was resigned
and suffering,
yet rashly
and still in pain
did i start to meet you.
– otomo no yakamochi

xx. yet was it not natural that, when my will to live depended entirely on fire, my lust, too, should have turned in that direction?

The Lady Tengai grants her a position higher than the other servants and she calls it a gift of gratitude for serving her late granddaughter so well and kindly. Ueko does not want anything to do with this woman but she settles for now, her hands clenching into fists as she purses her lips, angered at being in the mere presence of the woman. As she sits outside of the room of your granddaughter, she ignores the soft and silent hiccups causes by tears and focuses only on her anger. You were loved, she thinks, but never loved in the right way—she hears that the Young Master Satoru has thrown himself to more missions than anyone can count and lives alone in the eastern side of the compound where he sleeps in the room of Ueko's old mistress, that your dearest Getō-san has long since left, spar on the beliefs of the Jujutsu Society and has fled somewhere nobody can reach. Ueko mourns for you because no one else can do so in a respectful manner.

Your grandmother shudders and says that if there is no corpse then there is no death. Young Master Satoru cocks his head and laughs: "Would you like to see her remains, then, grandmother? Her arm's still around, you know." That had been a terribly incident, the Lady Tengai attempting to slap Young Master Satoru across the face but failing with the throb of his Technique. The crowd whispers of Young Master Satoru's lack of respect and the lack of his mourning. They sneer at him as if they knew you in the first place. As if they saw you as anything but a breeder. Ueko believes that, in this world, she is the only one who mourns.

Young Master Satoru... he does not mourn and instead acts as if nothing had happened, becomes whistful at times but at the end of the day, he throws his head back in laughter and returns to whatever he does. That Getō one defiles your beliefs by ruining the society that you had protected, ruins everything that you had died for with reasons too vague to be captured. Your grandmother is not even someone to be amused of. "You, girl," the woman had said, "How fond was my granddaughter of you. Between tears and snot, Ueko does not answer, angered at being taken to such a place, the compound of the Tengai Clan that you called your first cage. But she keeps her mouth shut and narrows her eyes instead. The servant beside Lady Tengai whispers something to the Clan Head and she laughs. "I see, I see. She favored you the most, did she not? Then I must thank you, then. This will be your new home, girl," and Ueko remembers you: your desperate eyes as you scream for her to leave, the sheer fear she had felt as that man with your father's face peers at her.

She ran like a fool.

She ran like a coward.

She kneels before the altar in her room, clasping her hands together as she bows to the ground. She sobs and sobs and sobs. There was no one she loved more than you, her beloved mistress who remained so kind despite her cruel words—once, she told you that you should be happy with the Young Master's attention still focused on you but Ueko learns to love you more than the Gojō Clan, more than this job, more than anything else because to her, and to the other women, you had been so kind. So terribly kind and understanding. "Oh, young mistress," she dreams of your smiles. Perhaps, in another world, Ueko would have stood beside you as she holds your children and you would smile at her as you always do, tell her your children's names and perhaps, one of them would have the blue eyes of the Young Master as it was always meant to and then, you will avert your eyes somewhere else, longingly at what flies beyond the walls of the compound. She cries a little bit more.

She offers you zinnias and she hopes you will like them.

And with a distinct anger on her tongue, she puts the yellow camellias and primulas in your vase. She closes her eyes, the presence behind her as powerful as always. She tilts her head to the side. She finds the tall man standing at the corner. He is as familiar as he appears but the monk ensemble truly does not suit him. It feels like the defiling of Buddhism. Not that it is worshipped in this home. "I am only asking this of you since I cannot do this myself. I hope that after this encounter, we will not meet again," regardless of the fact that the young mistress loved you.

Finding amusement in her words, the man raises both of his eyebrows. "You defiled what she aspired to protect. You are—" Ueko's words are seized, a hand suddenly wrapping around her neck. "My young mi—mistress will never appro—ove," she tries to say but the hand only tightens until she is released. She collapses to thr ground but vows to herself that she will not meet this man's eyes ever again. Once, she adored him more than the Young Master because of the joy he had brought to you but as she catches a glimpse of a bird on his shoulder, she is tempted to vomit. You had finally become who you wanted and now he brings you to his massacres? Getō Suguru defiled you.

"Ueko-san better leave Kyoto as soon as possible. Satoru will make sure to take care of you," he suggests as he begins walking to the direction of the Lady Tengai's room, body heavy in his masquerade.

Ueko spits at Getō's feet. He does not bother to twitch. "I will not seek help to the people that ruined my mistress."

"Right," the sorcerer says, "We all did, didn't we?"

Once, you cried in her shoulder and spoke of the future of the Young Master, worrying for him and no one but him. "It is men with power who lose the most at the end," your grandmother had said and you begged for your life to last a bit longer, to be there for the Young Master at all times but as she hears the shrill screams of your grandmother in the hands of the man you gave chrysanthemums to, as Ueko closes her eyes and hears of Gojō Satoru killing Getō Suguru a week later, as the world ends a little, Ueko laughs near your altar and prepares the tea you had taught her to brew.

With a small smile, she lets a tear slip: "The Golden Temple is no more, young mistress, and Kannon has been burnt to crisps," and she does not know what more she will do to her life.

xi.  then, as one looks at the small, dirty, brown, blood-stained tooth lying in one's hand, one's thoughts are likely to be as follows: 'is this it? is this all it was?'

Getō Suguru does not believe in love at first sight.

But he believes in you.

He believes in your small smiles and the way your sleeves would reach to cover your lips as you laugh. He believes in the way your eyes would light up with anticipation when he offers another book exchange, a small exchange, a small memory among so much more. He believes in that. He believes you when you say that tea from convience stores are disgusting and that he should be drinking your tea instead, and honestly, Suguru cares little about his tea but he believes in you. He believes in you like he believes that love at first sight does not exist but he believes in what he felt when he first saw you—something clicks. Suguru does not know what it is but it has his throat siezing, his chesy arrested for a solid moment before the world goes on again. Suguru does not believe in love at first sight but he believes in you and he thinks that is enough.

When Satoru speaks of you, he calls you cute and kind and he says that the world does not deserve you, throwing his head back dramatically and lifting his hands in the air to add to his emphasis. Suguru watches Satoru's white hair fall above his eyes and he knows him better than anyone else does, he thinks, but less than you know him. Sometimes, he thinks your eyes can see more than Satoru's narrow vision, and sometimes, Suguru wants nothing more than to bask in your gaze. I am your captive, Suguru thinks as he elbows the branch of a peach blossom. A passerby sends him an odd look. The branch suits him more than you but he tells you otherwise. And you're his.

He makes a bad first impression as his tongue drips in attempt of a jest. "Has anyone ever told you that you would look good in peach blossoms?" He hates his mouth then and there, and the way your face twists to a sneer. He wonders what it is like to be you, an actual captive, an actual prisoner. He cannot ask you further. He stands behind the gates and the walls of the Gojō Compound, hanging by it as he waves the peach blossom. Your eyes are rimmed with red.

Suguru does not often want.

But he wants—he wants so desperately and you look best under the lights of the fireworks, mingling with the crowd in a uniform that is not yours. You look best when you twirl and when your eyes become overwhelmed with happiness, contrast to how he always sees you—lonely, longing, little to nothing. Suguru does not dislike many things but he dislikes it when you cry. He hopes you can just stop crying and if whisking you away in the middle of the night helps, then he will count one thousand and one nights, prepare stories from lands far, far away, and catch your attention and your smile because then, you wouldn't cry. "The pine tree in your garden," he says as he lets you pull him into the crowd, the orange and red lights of the festival making you look nothing less than the sun, blazing and golden, and burning, burning, burning, "It must be lonely." You turn around and Suguru crumbles.

He crumbles, discarding the title of a Special Grade Sorcerer and finds himself tightening his hold around your hand, putting a stop to your excited skipping. You tilt your head. "Does it bother you that much? Leaving that pine tree alone?" He does not know what to say but he lets you sandwich his hand between yours. He feels the cold of your skin and has never felt at ease. "Then why don't you plant one for me? Of course, not in our yard. It's been there before grandmother was even born but it's never too late to plant another one." He truly, truly crumbles. "Once it's grown, show it to me, Getō-san."

"That would take years," he says.

"Then I will wait."

"What if it takes ten?"

"Then let it pass. You know where to find me, right, Getō-san?"

Even if he didn't, Suguru would still find you. Even at the ends of the earth, and the depths of your field of blue nemophila, among the dances of chrysanthemums, and the mountains of your peach blossoms, Suguru would always find you. Because Suguru does not believe in whatever this is but he believes in whatever you are. So he leans to your shoulder, resting his weight as the bustles of people become on with the background. He wants to stay like this, just a little bit longer. He wants to immortalize this memory just like the next. And the next comes in form of your embrace. He wants to dwell in it for a long, long time. He damns those monkeys for letting these Curses exist in the first place because if only they weren't here, if only Curses were not here then—then you would be smiling a lot more, right? Because Suguru remembers the look on your face when you finally gained a bit of freedom, mourning for a young girl, the both of you, and Suguru is so angry. He has never hated something his whole life and he wants to tear this world apart of what it has reduced you, of what it has reduced that little girl who only wanted a chance to be happy and it clicks.

Suguru, he—

He will make a better world for you, for Amanai Riko who died too early, for Haibara Yū whose laughter he can still hear—for you, his Tengai-san—Tengai-san—Tengai-san—Tengai-san, Tengai-san, please don't cry. What can he do to make you smile? What can he do to stop you from crying? Suguru holds you like you are the only thing keeping him from staying, his throat clogged and the chrysanthemums have long since bloomed. It has already bloomed for a long, long time. Beneath its white petals and its multiple colors, the bouquet explodes with red, red, red, red—so, so maddenlingly red that Suguru is willing to dye those petals to the the angriest red if you so wish. "Call me Suguru," he pleads, desperately, clawing through your kimono.

"You know I can't."

"Just once, please—"

"Getō-san—"

"Please."

Once, Getō Suguru stood in front the door of your room as you focused on nothing but the pills that forced you to make. He said something he does not remember, probably something along the lines of seeing it for the first time, and you looked at him in apprehension. You probably told him to go out too. But he stayed and he offered you a book in return for your smiles, but he never said it like that. He felt cruel for telling you that Satoru lured him here when it was you who lured him instead. Smile, he thinks, thought, begs and begged—Satoru watches him from afar and that cock grin crawls to his face. "This is why the higher-ups hate you so much, Suguru, always being such a delinquent," he laughs and wraps an arm around your body as Shōko glares at him. Suguru wonders why he ended up in this predicament. Why children are made to be exorcists, why you are made to be a broodmare, why Satoru is made to be a boy-god. Why, of all people, he ends up with you.

"If you Curse me, it would be an honor to stand by your side, Getō-san. But I hope, I hope—I hope that if I become a Curse, I would resemble a bird. One with wings and as much freedom as they do. Now that I think about it, there is nothing I want more than that," Suguru does not believe in many things, "I want to be a bird."

But he believes in you.

(And he thinks that you have always been in his heart.)

But there is a part of him that makes him hesitate. Satoru... for all his annoying tendencies and how contrasting their views are, Suguru thinks of Satoru as his closest friend. His best friend. His one and only, and as they share their gazes to you, another burns on his back. He does not look back and focuses on you only. Satoru sits beside him, clothes darker than their uniform, eyes rimmed with something but not red, never red. Suguru wonders if he looks the same. How long has it been since they have sat together like this?

The wood of the floorboards creaks under his weight. Neither of them say anything, of whatever each of them are doing outside of school, how they know you, why they know you, what you are, how the pine tree looks so intimidating from the angle, how Suguru wishes to stay here just for a little longer. He wants to blame Satoru but he knows him better than anyone else, knows him more than the back of his hand, and Satoru is—Satoru is his best friend. His one and only. While you were the gardens that welcomed him, Satoru was the sky that grounded him. Suguru closes his eyes.

He does not deserve these people. (When ye meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha! When ye meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor! When ye meet a disciple of Buddha, kill the disciple! When ye meet your father and mother, kill your father and mother! When ye meet your kin, kill your kin! Only thus will ye attain deliverance. Only thus will ye escape the trammels of material things and become free.) And as he clothes himself in the the faux of a monk, the blood of his people, and the memory of peach blossoms, he does not shave his hair and instead, keeps it long. Nor does he shed the weight of the world and the names of the dead. (Within the Hosui-in a great flickering shadow had arisen. The statues of the Three Holy Buddhas, Amida, Kannon, and Seishi were lit up in red. The wooden statue of Yoshimitsu flashed its eyes; and in the back its shadow fluttered.) The red camellias that decorate the bird burns. He reaches out to it, appearance grotesque with flowers for wings, eyes for nemophila, and beaded around its neck. (From where I sat, the Golden Temple itself was invisible. All that I could see was the eddying smoke and the great fire that rose into the sky. The flakes from the fire drifted between the trees and the Golden Temple's sky seemed to be strewn with golden sand.)

He smiles at the Curse.

(I wanted to live. I want to be a bird.)

xxii. other people must be destroyed. in order that i might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.

The Head of the Tengai Clan exhales, the puff of smoke filtering in the air. Nobody remembers her name. All they call her is 'old bat' or 'that Matriarch that should be replaced already' and nobody cares about her, honestly, not since she gutted her husband after his infidelity. People thought it was too much and some more eccentric people, like Tsukumo, found it amusing. Satoru does not know what you think about it. Actually, he does not know what you think about many things but he does not regret it. He glances at the old woman and finds her staring at him with disdain. He is not surprised to see her so hateful like that and a part of him, is deeply, deeply entertained.

From the corner of his eyes, he sees a servant running down the hallway, covering her face as tears stream down her eyes. She is wearing the same mourning clothes that he is. Their eyes meet and the look of disdain is still present. Satoru is really, really hated now and honestly, he does not mind. But as he sits to the opposite of this raggedy old woman whose smoke is all he can feel, he remembers standing in front of the aftermaths of everything. That short girl that is always tagging along with you screaming at his face and crying, and crying, and crying so he arrives, half of the compound that he grew up in turning into nothing but rubble and ash. (His chest tightens.) Even with the glory of the All-Seeing Eyes, he struggles to find the evidence of you. Or maybe the evidences of you.

He sees your hand first.

Your grandmother laughs from in front of Satoru. Her gaze narrows as her fingers play on the edge of her tobacco. "I had originally thought that you were the better option. You seemed so much better than that Naoya-boy," she breathes out, not expecting any reply from Satoru. Her fingers thread to her hair in frustration. She struggles to continue speaking. "Everyday, I think: should I have just chosen Naoya-kun, instead? If I just plant a strong man of our clan there, then nobody could—then the Zen'in would not be so bold to hurt her. But my granddaughter... she—to you, she—she has always—" She hide her face behind her palms but does not shed a tear. She has long cried so much in the past and she has ran out of tears to pour already.

As Satoru sits at the other side of the compound, in the engawa that he does not visit and the bed he does not sleep in often, he feels your touch. Just a little. Suddenly, he is a child again, and you are in front of him, mumbling about your favorite season. You say it is winter and Satoru tells you to call him by his name. You do. Your eyes shine so brightly it is almost blinding, nuzzling against him and whispering his name to him. He holds you because he does not know what else he can do. He thinks that is when it started. Maybe. He does not know but you are limping for him and you welcome him, call him your beloved Satoru and he hears nothing but boy-god the same way your grandmother does even though he knows you will never treat him like that. You—you are the only one who knows him.

His fingers intertwine with yours.

You are his, he realizes as a child and he wants to keep you in the confines of his home, make sure you are unhurt, make sure you do not hear what they say about him, make sure that you are still you but Satoru becomes overwhelmed with something else. His grip around your hand tightens and he grows older, and older, still holding your hand and clinging. (Does he like you? Does he love you? Does he care? No. Whatever this is—Satoru does not want anything more. "Please, never abandon me," you say. He fears you will change when he lets you go. You will become tainted by them, those people.) His uniform is heavy around his shoulders. You look at him enviously and an epiphany arrives. His grins to himself and holds your cheeks between his hands. "There's a pretty girl in my class, [Name]-chan," and he watches your world crumble. Something swells in his chest.

Be angry. Be angry. Be angrier. Hate me, he thinks, fight back. Hate me. Hate me. Blame me. I am—the reason why you are stuck. The reason why you cannot move anywhere. Satoru is not dumb. He can let you roam around the moment his father disappeared, compleey out of picture but instead, he lets the traditions envelop him and he lets the traditions continue. Hate me, he thinks as he clings to your hand. Get angry. He is not a boy-god. He is not someone to be worshipped and though he revels in it, he hates it when you do. You can do more. You can get angry at him. Just be angry at him, please—but you know him better than he does.

You know him so well.

He clings.

And clings.

And clings.

And he watches. And sees. Because that is all he knows best.

They are fifteen and Suguru glances at the flower shop they are passing by. Shōko raises an eyebrow. He watches Suguru ask the cashier if they have peach blossoms and somehow, they end up watching Suguru climb a random tree in some street tucked away in the corners of Tokyo. "You look dumb," Shōko snorts, nudging Satoru who repeats those words in amusement. Suguru does not care, even as a passerby looks at him in suspicion. He just elbows a branch, breaking it with ease and the next time Satoru sees that peach blossom is when it is in your desk. Something tingles in his chest. He tosses the head of the assassin that visited again, an offering of sorts before he asks you for another favor. "Your Satoru is really tired, [Name], comfort me?" He is deep in your arms, fearful as he is satisfied. He smells the flowers in Suguru's clothes and the books in yours. He has always seen too many things. He has always known too many things. He does not know what this is but he does know that he is fickle and once, you called him a whirlwind with sad, sad eyes.

He makes you choose. He wants you to leave him. He wants you to jump in the sea of the thousand suns and in the company of the crowd but you stay, you sit beside him, you let him talk about mercy and next dates that he will not give you. Get angry at me. Hate me, he thinks as he digs his stare into Suguru's back. "You're an asshole," the boy says, "You don't deserve her."

His best friend. And his fiancée. He holds the both of them in his hands, offering each of his eye if he can. His one and only. So he laughs, throwing his head back and calls you cute and kind. "And you do?" He wonders what kind of reaction he is searching for but it is not this: whatever is swimming in Suguru's gaze as his back hunches. Shōko calls Satoru stupid and tells him he should just do what he wants to do. "Ah, what happened?" He cocks his head to the skies as Suguru compares his eyes to them, as you bind him to the ground with your smiles.

"Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result," you announce in the middle of ruffling his hair. He wishes he can stay like this forever. In an ideal world, he is with his 'one and onlys' and they call him by his given name and he will learn to accept that no matter what he does, you can never get angry because you do not get angry at anyone, because you are kind, and you are collected, and you find no need for it because of what little you have. In an ideal world, sheltered by the golden temple that you adore, he does not have to be anyone but Satoru. "I don't think it reminds me of you, Satoru." Instead, it is Suguru.

Suguru is in front of him, Curses swimming around him as his students crumble and as Yūta screams. A bird flutters on his shoulder with the eyes of nemophilia, the feathers of chrysanthemums, and a story untold.

Satoru never cried during your funeral and he does not cry even at Suguru's.

He sits alone in the pond, watching the pine tree sit still. He remembers meeting you in this exact same place. How ironic that this is the place where he loses you too.

(With the death of the traitor, Getō Suguru, Gojō Satoru's fame as the Strongest Sorcerer of this age is further cemented. No one speaks of the need of a Tengai to assist him or a companion to fight with him in battle for he, alone, is the Strongest.)

・ zinnias mean loyalty; yellow camellias mean wish; primulas mean desperation/desperate

・ the following quotes are from the last chapter of the temple of the golden pavilion. it is about a monk who burns down the golden temple, a famous buddhist temple. it is based on a true story. it is a tale about obsession, beauty, and devotion. these following quotes are also before, during, and after the burning.

• When ye meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha! When ye meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor! When ye meet a disciple of Buddha, kill the disciple! When ye meet your father and mother, kill your father and mother! When ye meet your kin, kill your kin! Only thus will ye attain deliverance. Only thus will ye escape the trammels of material things and become free.

• Within the Hosui-in a great flickering shadow had arisen. The statues of the Three Holy Buddhas, Amida, Kannon, and Seishi were lit up in red. The wooden statue of Yoshimitsu flashed its eyes; and in the back its shadow fluttered.

• From where I sat, the Golden Temple itself was invisible. All that I could see was the eddying smoke and the great fire that rose into the sky. The flakes from the fire drifted between the trees and the Golden Temple's sky seemed to be strewn with golden sand.

• I wanted to live

・  the quote: "Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result," is from the temple of the golden pavilion. 

・ dawn flowers or blue morning glories can mean many things: vain love, spring-like love, or long-lasting love. the title is an excerpt from matsuo bashou: "How I long to see / among dawn flowers / the face of god". i narrowed down dawn flowers to blue morning glories and i find it really beautiful that its meaning is quite fickle.

・ the ending line is meant to mirror a quote from buddha: "I, alone, am the honored one," as stated in the manga itself, a parallel to gojou.

・carrd link: https://unolvrs.carrd.co/

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