Chapter Text
2099
The Tokyo National Museum opened its doors to the public at half past nine every morning.
Suguru Getō arrived an hour early to review the day's agenda and check the scheduled guided tours. He would stroll through the gallery corridors with a steaming cup of tea in one hand, admiring the works before the museum filled with people.
He would walk through the corridors filled with Bronze Age figurines, enjoying the ceramics and paintings. He would stop in front of the enormous samurai armor and weapons, as imposing as the first day he saw them. He would smile at the sight of that small articulated dragon figure in the corner.
If he looked out the window, he could see the children on that day's field trip running around Ueno Park, playing until their teacher ordered them to line up and remain obedient.
Suguru shook his clothes, as if infected by the dust of history, and went out to the entrance of the museum to greet the children. It was a school from a neighboring city that came to the capital as tourists. In contrast to the tall buildings, the National Museum had preserved its original traditional form, like a relic in the middle of a dizzyingly industrialized and fast-paced world.
“Come on, kids, let's listen to our guide,” the teacher encouraged them, giving one of them a squeeze on the shoulder. “You're an art expert, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Suguru smiled modestly and made a soft gesture.
Gray hair was beginning to speckle his dark hair with furrows and silver highlights. Tied high on his head, much of it was hidden, although his age was becoming evident in his features.
Forty-three years were reflected in his slanted eyes, looking at a younger generation, with a whole fruitful life ahead of them. He took a breath, leading them through the museum, a daily chore.
The children preferred armor and war to Buddhist clay representations and masks, so rooms five and six on the second floor, which they climbed up a giant marble staircase, were their favorite exhibits.
They surrounded him with those dreamy gazes and listened intently to stories about loyalty, castles, conquests and emperors. Suguru strove to create engaging and heroic narratives to make the visit more entertaining.
"... and that was how Torii Mototada changed the course of Japanese history, ensuring victory for Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose family would rule the country for more than two and a half centuries."
One child's mouth dropped open so wide in astonishment Suguru thought his jaw had dropped. Suguru covered his mouth with a chuckle, deciding to keep the detail that the blood Mototada and his men spilled was still preserved stamped in the form of feet, hands, and splatters on wood.
The lights in the place dimmed as they continued their tour, reaching the Edo period.
“The Edo period happened between 1603 and 1868, under the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate,” he explained. “Thanks to Tokugawa, numerous academies were established and literacy rates increased greatly, especially in Edo. Even samurai taught children in urban areas, although in rural areas, knowing how to read and write was reserved for the children of farmers. However, the education of the population contributed to the proliferation of literature and philosophy."
Giving some context before beginning to analyze the works was the best. He remembered himself in college, listening to his teachers explaining the words he now repeated. He had specialized in art history by pure vocation, after discovering a scroll in his inheritance that had changed his life.
After that, the discoveries emerged one by one, unearthed from time as if they were a capsule destined to be opened. Suguru had found a path thanks to his best friend, and lived with him in his memories and the museum.
It would be hard to believe for anyone who did not have an open mind. They had made an effort to cover up the accident with dirt and bury it so that no one would make a mistake again. He was not allowed to talk about it, and the mere fact of thinking about it and evoking it seemed sweetly forbidden.
The teacher counted the children when they went to another room, checking that none of them had stopped to admire the katanas.
"During this period there was a great artistic expansion, due in part to the fruitful economic development that made rich merchants willing to sponsor schools of artists," he pointed out. "Paintings, engravings, fashion and gardening took on diverse and original styles. Even weapons came to be considered works of art."
They reached their favourite room. It was full of screens depicting everyday life, floral motifs and, in short, scenes of incalculable value. They were arranged on steps, surrounded by a velvet safety tape to prevent visitors from getting too close.
It was the first time in months that it had been open to the public, due to restoration work. The exhibition, the lights, the temperature, affected all the works in the museum in different ways, so from time to time certain exhibitions were closed to carry out conservation work and ensure the survival of these treasures.
“Painting on screens was popular among the upper classes, who commissioned works to decorate their houses and castles,” he continued. “There were many recognised techniques and grouped under different important names, but there were also artists who, isolated from the rest, created their own works and styles.”
They stopped in front of one of the screens, a small one showing a house in the middle of the forest. Flowers were the most striking motif, streaking the underside of the surface in bright colors. Chrysanthemums, camellias, cosmos flowers. A few horses grazed among the delicately painted grass lines.
He could almost imagine the artist leaning close to create them, holding his breath and controlling his own pulse to capture the art of nature.
“This collection of screens and also sketches, as we will see later, is attributed to a solitary artist who lived his entire life in the countryside. They were discovered thirty years after his death, in a cabin near Mount Nantai, in what was Nikkō National Park a few years ago.” He admired the work over his shoulder for a moment, marveling. “At first his name was not known, nor anything about him, since he simply signed with the initials S.R. However, a notebook was eventually found that confirmed his identity as Sukuna Ryomen.”
Unfortunately, Nikkō National Park had been destroyed to make way for resource extraction plants, so that idyllic place where there had once been a nice cabin no longer existed and was completely unrecognizable.
And that's where the fun began. Not only was the scroll he had received proof that Satoru Gojō, his best friend who had gone missing during an accidental time travel twenty years ago, was—had been—well, but the texts and drawings that Sukuna left behind as a legacy had filled in the gaps in history.
Suguru always got excited telling it. It was something children usually loved too, because of the striking facts.
"Sukuna Ryomen was a man who lived between the years fifteen hundred and seventy-one and sixteen hundred and ten. What's curious about him is that he was born in the Republic of Iga... do you remember what I told you before about the mysterious shinobi?" he smiled, seeing some dismayed faces "Sukuna was an apprentice. He was destined to be a shinobi, but he ran away with who we believe was his mentor and a healer during Oda Nobunaga's invasion. The three of them escaped far away and went to live in the forest."
"Why did they run away and not stay to fight?" a girl asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"We assume they wanted to leave danger behind and live in peace for the rest of their lives," he replied. "Life expectancy was not as long as it is now and people only got to know war, poverty and hunger. Also, before the Tokugawa shogunate, socio-political conditions were extremely unstable so you could say that only a few people were happy, either because they lived in isolation or because of their social class."
"Did they live in peace forever?" another kid asked.
"That's right. According to Sukuna's diary-like writings, which are reflected in his artwork, they subsisted by farming and hunting. Occasionally they would go to the nearest village to sell game and surplus from their harvests. It is also believed that Sukuna took craft classes because pieces of earthenware pottery were found in his house."
"What about the other two men?" asked the teacher, interested in the subject.
History was wonderful. It was made up of people like him who felt, lived, and died. He couldn't explain the meaning of that to someone who wasn't willing to understand it.
There were people further back in time who marked their existence with art, people who never got to know why thunder didn't come from angry gods, or how a light bulb worked; people who never had the chance to see what an airplane was like—oh, to fly, the greatest longing for most of humanity—or experience what it was like to go to the movies on a Friday night.
It was so curious, it caressed his heart like a punch, it made him nauseous just thinking that people were creators and destroyers of experiences, peoples, and finally, art. In the end, art was one of the few things that made humans a peculiar species.
Satoru had been in the middle of all that chaos, in the eye of the storm, at the edge of the books.
“The other two men…” they moved to the next screen. The children crowded around them. “… were his only company during that time.”
The screen was a depiction of a wild field where a man was stealthily stalking a pheasant, with a gun in his hands. His figure was rough and large, with black hair and a piercing gaze. The next screen showed a domestic scene of what seemed to be a dinner or a meal.
Sukuna wasn't governed by the wishes of any sponsor, but drew without restrictions. He put his soul into each illustration.
“The healer and the shinobi were frequent people in his works. They are depicted in their daily tasks, and sometimes together.”
The next screen provided a beautiful scene of two figures leaning against the trunk of a tree. The branches of the tree rose to the top edge and diagonally twisted like arms to the opposite corner. Each leaf had been lovingly traced with ink.
In contrast to the warm colors, the whitish glint of one of the men's hair shone, along with unusual blue eyes. Beside him, the other raised his hand and watched a falling leaf, looking up. Anyone who came closer could see the notch that cut his lips, a superficial defect made on purpose that Sukuna had engraved with a knife.
"Why is that one like that?" the girl with glasses asked again, curious.
Suguru took a breath, nervous. His voice suffered from an imperceptible tremor.
"That one there is the healer. We don't know if that was really his physical appearance or if it was Sukuna's way of showing that he was special, somehow."
"Oh."
There was no other person in any world who was like that. Satoru was so fucking unique that it hadn't taken long for him to recognize him the first time he saw that screen. Every time he looked at him, he felt the overwhelming need to go over and touch his hair, to get in the picture and ask him so many things, to hug him and tell him that he was proud of him.
The relief he had felt when he realized that he had used his knowledge of medicine to make his way through ancient times and survive was incomparable. Who would have thought that this student on the verge of emotional collapse, with two liters of caffeine in his body and music blasting through his headphones, was the same one who had managed to earn a place in the country's history.
"Let's see more things," he announced, guiding them.
To one side, on a glass display, there was a notebook on a lectern. Its pages were open, dotted with illustrations carefully drawn with charcoal.
"This was the notebook where Sukuna drew. On its pages we find everything from sketches of objects to complete illustrations, body studies and portraits. In most of them you can see the healer and the shinobi, whom he calls Satoru and Toji respectively or, sometimes, dad. Keep in mind that he had fled the war as a child, so it's natural that he would form that kind of relationship with both of them.
Satoru was often shown in profile. Sukuna seemed to like drawing him in portraits, highlighting the blue of his eyes—Suguru knew their exact shade—with soft lines, emphasizing a youthful expression on a sweet face, where the harmony was interrupted by a couple of scars.
“Many of his footnotes became diary entries over time. That's how we've learned about most of his life.”
Next to the lectern was a smaller one with an interactive digital screen where one could look at several of the pages that had been scanned. Suguru put a hand on it, drumming his fingers.
“Here we can see more pages of the diary.” He pressed one of the buttons, the screen showing a full page where a drawing of what looked like a samurai could be seen. "Sukuna also drew unknown people whom we hadn't been able to place, but who meant something to him."
The children took turns staring at the screen, standing on their toes. One boy stared back at them harshly, sketched in charcoal with precision, as if he were someone Sukuna had seen countless times.
The boy was gorgeous. Black hair disheveled, dark eyes to which he occasionally added a touch of navy blue with ink; an eyepatch hid a missing eye and his hand was resting on the hilt of a katana. He looked like someone important from the quality of his clothes, the pose and the impression he gave.
The footer read “The boy with the katana and the sea eyes. Someone I can't stop thinking about.”
He pressed the button again.
It was a portrait of a boy with scars and a bright smile. He had dimples and blush on his cheeks, his hair messy. He was certainly cute. Sukuna had written “Family.”
He pressed the button again. Toji and Satoru appeared on the screen. The shinobi cradled the healer's face in his hand, their noses touching. The healer closed his eyes, a smile on his lips.
"Were they friends?" asked the boy at the lectern.
"Best friends."
The boy nodded, making room for a companion to admire the drawing as well. Sukuna had captured them in the stables. The head of a horse peeked out to look at them with small black eyes and braided mane.
At the bottom of the page was “Family” again, along with the word “love.”
"Sukuna briefly tells the story of both of them in the notebook in the form of small poems and loose phrases that required a lot of help to organize chronologically. Still, there are gaps, because many times he didn’t write anything down, or he only talked about everyday life. He seemed to be a simple boy who enjoyed art without expecting anything in return. As it often happens, he only became famous after he died."
"What about the healer and the shinobi?" someone asked.
"Them?" Suguru suppressed a smile, pleased by the question "Oh, they weren’t artists. They lived a humble life and were content with having a family."
"Yes, but…" the boy hesitated "What happened to them?"
"Do you mean their end?"
His eyes filled with tears.
━━━━━━
1601
Blood.
Small drops of scarlet splashed onto his hand, as his throat spasmed again and he spat red-laced phlegm into his palm. He looked at it, breathing hard. A ferrous taste stained his teeth and stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Blood, Toji thought.
He moved slowly, drawing in air. Something scratched inside him, rotted, and stuck in his throat, forcing him to cough again. He leaned over, coughing again and again. Blood slid between his fingers, as his chest sobbed in pain.
The ground was cold beneath the soles of his feet, but his body was burning. His dizzy head spun incessantly and a hissing sound came from his lungs, like someone sliding the blade of a knife across a metal surface.
Beside him, wrapped in blankets, Satoru slept. His sides rose and fell with heaviness.
Toji looked at him over his shoulder, panting. That little face, frosty lashes closing his sky-blue eyes, winter in his features, fire on those lips.
“You have pneumonia,” Satoru had said, that time when he had been bedridden with fever and chest pain. “It’s so cold this winter. We need to get warm.”
It had been a month since then. Toji had only gotten worse.
He sat up carefully, breathing shakily. He had to lean against the wall to drag himself into the hallway and reach the bathroom. They had brought water from the river the night before, so it was fresh and icy in the wooden bucket.
He wiped and washed his face, suppressing a sound of defeat. The weakness he had felt the first few days was nothing compared to this. He could barely see himself able to go outside and clear the snow from the entrance.
Toji stuffed a cloth handkerchief into his pocket, sniffing. His pain threshold was very high and his endurance was impeccable, he was convinced he could keep it hidden for at least another week.
He wasn't stupid. He knew there was no cure for this. Satoru himself had mentioned it at a meal, years ago, when he had seen a man die with the same symptoms. He had explained to them what it was, how they intended to treat it in the future to reduce and contain it. In the past, there was nothing he could do.
He didn't want to worry them.
His reflection looked back at him in the bucket of water. He seemed to be thinner, his hair didn't shine too much. Well, he wasn't young anymore, of course. Nothing shined in him anymore. Forty-six years were too much years.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door frame with their knuckles. Toji turned quickly, wiping his sleeve across his wet mouth.
"Are we going to clear the snow?" Sukuna smiled under the threshold. "Shiro and the others must be nervous after last night's storm."
Toji looked at him, dismayed. The boy, not so young in fact, took up almost the entire doorway with his body. He had become a tall, handsome man, with sharp features, his hair slicked back and always a cheerful, mischievous face.
He swallowed. When had he grown so much? Why was he thinking about it now?
"Of course," he said finally, happy to be able to continue doing those things without feeling like a useless old man.
Sukuna patted him on the shoulder in a friendly manner as they bundled up and walked out onto the porch. He was strong, skilled, he could be anywhere in the world making a living as a potter or an artist, but he had decided to stay home with them and live off what they sold at the market, helping with chores, enjoying a safe and leisurely life.
It was his home, after all. Sukuna wouldn't leave it for anything.
They cleared the snow from the entrance, took it down from the roof. They made a path to the stables, where the horses were huddled in piles of hay. Toji had a habit of looking for Kuro first. He always remembered in the worst way—not finding him—that he was gone.
Two years had passed since then and he still felt horrible, as if he had lost a part of himself. Something he could never get back.
Shiro was already old. Her fur had faded with the passing of the seasons, her joints were no longer the same. She looked like she was waiting to die, lying next to her children.
Nue was dangerously close to that age as well. Orochi was a few years younger, but his body was much weaker compared to his brothers. Mahogara had been the last to be born, he was three years old.
Kuro and Shiro had made the most of their time.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, a lump in his throat as he stroked Shiro’s snout. “Are you afraid they’ll forget you? They won’t, and neither will we. I promise. So take your time.”
For some reason, it was painful. He gently combed her manes, kneeling in front of her, trying not to cry. She understood him, surely.
Sukuna brushed the horses, happy for the arrival of winter, while Toji watched and memorized his face, his gestures.
In just two days, his condition deteriorated by leaps and bounds.
“Toji!”
Satoru ran towards him in the snow, stumbling forward, desperate. Toji had collapsed on the ground, without warning. One moment he was carrying a couple of buckets of water and, the next, he had collapsed.
Sukuna stepped out onto the porch to see what was happening, his hands stained with charcoal. The dusk reflected in his eyes as Satoru tried to pick the man up, screaming.
“Sukuna, help me! Help, he’s fainted!”
Sukuna couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had run so fast. He nearly broke his leg when he stepped deep into the snow. The blizzard was already covering his father’s body as if he were nothing more than the carcass of a dead animal.
Between the two of them, they managed to get Toji inside. They closed the door, secured the windows, stoked the fire, and unrolled a futon in front of the fireplace.
Satoru raised Toji's head with a soft pillow, desperate at not getting any response. The man’s body was pale and sweaty, a sickly color. He had lost weight, his tongue and lips were stained with blood.
He placed a wet cloth on his forehead, caressing his cheek. Kneeling to the side, Sukuna noticed something sticking out of Toji's sleeve. He grabbed it without thinking.
And dropped it instantly, stifling a grimace of terror.
"Satoru..." He frowned, distressed. "Look... look at that."
There was a blood-soaked cloth handkerchief on the floor. His fingers trembled, his breath went out, afraid to even exist. Satoru took it carefully, opening it, showing the network of red spit, rusty-colored phlegm that smelled of iron.
He let it fall to the floor, pursing his lips in a grimace of frustration. He clenched his fists, as he stiffened and thought, thought, and his heart broke into pieces at the realization.
He opened Toji's clothes, leaned towards his chest and rested his ear there. It whistled. His breathing was weak, and something made a whistling sound inside him.
How could he not have noticed before?
It had never been pneumonia, had it? He tried to pull away, but a hand tangled in his hair. Toji breathed hard, opening his eyes as he stroked Satoru's head in a reflex, muscle memory. He pulled him close, squeezed him, not wanting him to go, then let go.
Satoru sat up, looking at him. He cupped his face in one hand. Toji brushed his wrist and held on weakly.
"Don't worry," he said, his voice hoarse. He turned his head to the side, coughing. "I'm..."
Sukuna covered Toji's mouth with the handkerchief. Blood soaked through the cloth as if it were nothing more than thin ice on a lake about to break.
"... Dad?" Tears blurred his vision. His hands became fists, his nails leaving half-moon marks on his skin.
“It’s okay,” Toji reached out an arm toward him, grunting to get rid of the last of the phlegm trapped in his body.
His body gave a violent tremor. Toji clenched his jaw, moaning softly. There was something inside him that was eating him alive, like a parasite that spread every second, multiplying.
He squirmed, gasped, and shook his head from side to side until he managed to calm down. He sighed heavily, blinking slowly. He was dizzy, out of his own mind, trying to connect with reality.
Satoru was telling him something, talking to him. He squinted, trying to concentrate to listen, to... his chest hurt, a fire trapped there. He had trouble breathing.
"Toji, Toji..." Satoru cradled his face lovingly. "Stay awake, don't fall asleep..."
"I'm not going to sleep, honey," he assured, smiling. "We haven't had dinner yet."
Sukuna stood up and hit the wall with his fist. Satoru jumped, sobbing.
"What...?" Satoru tried to speak in vain. He shook his head, rubbing his face. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"... I feel dizzy."
Fever. Satoru hurriedly made an infusion. He took the herbs out of their jars, preparing them without thinking about what he was doing. The burning water spilled over his hand, leaving it pink and sore.
He brought it to Toji's lips. He could still swallow.
"It hurts," Toji confessed, licking his lips. "Here, in my chest."
"I'm sorry," Satoru lowered his head, feeling useless.
He couldn't do anything to stop it. That kind of pain wouldn't go away with any stupid herb from that stupid time. He needed real medicine, to grab him and go through a portal, something, drag him into the future and hook his life up to a machine.
All those fucking home remedies, Satoru would be capable of smashing them against the ground, crushing them, crying over them. They were useless against cancer, they wouldn't even cause a miserable tickle.
He was a doctor and he couldn't save the life he loved the most.
"It hurts so much."
"I know, I'm sorry," he covered himself with his hands, torn apart by sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Sukuna left the house. He needed to keep himself busy so he wouldn't lose his mind. He slammed the door and went to get water for dinner. He got lost in the wind and snow, crouched down in front of the river and broke the ice with his heel.
By the time he returned, Toji was still lying down. Satoru was holding his hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb, afraid to look away and have him faint in that time.
“The fever has gone down,” Satoru announced. “But it will get worse soon.”
“How much do you think…” Sukuna swallowed the end of the question, anxious.
Satoru didn’t answer.
They ate in silence. The house had never been this silent, hushed under the weight of three souls constricted in a wooden box. The walls grew small around them, suffocating memories.
Toji ate as much as he could, letting Satoru feed him soup and cut vegetables into tiny pieces. The broth stained his clothes, and Satoru wiped it away lovingly.
Sukuna didn't look up from the plate.
Later, they moved him to the bedroom. They tried to cover him up, but Toji shivered, struggling to keep from being caught by the sheets, until he stopped resisting. Between shivers, he murmured about how cold it was, how hot, how cold, how hot.
He vomited his dinner in a matter of minutes.
Satoru left him for a moment to calm down, even though he knew he could leave at any second, but he couldn't take it anymore. He closed the door behind him and leaned against the surface. He slid to the floor, curling up to cry, his voice breaking into strips of sobs and moans, covering himself, pulling at his hair.
He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand, sniffling loudly. He couldn't do anything, why? Why? Why him? He hit himself hard, gritting his teeth.
Why did it have to end like this? Wasn't it cruel and unfair? Unfair, unfair. Satoru cried with his heart in his mouth, remembering all the times Toji had lifted him by the waist, spinning him around; the times he had hugged him while he was sleeping, sick with the seasonal flu, and talked to him about how the sky resembled his irises.
Couldn't he wait for spring to come back? Would he never see the flowers again?
Would he even survive one more day?
Satoru noticed Sukuna watching him with pity, also in the hallway, sobbing in complete silence.
"I guess not everything is eternal," the boy whispered.
Everything is mortal. It lives and dies, Satoru had once said, teaching him how to make medicinal poultice.
Unfair.
Satoru held his stomach, as if he had been beaten. He hugged himself, hugged Sukuna.
How do you say goodbye to someone? Sukuna had never asked himself that. He hadn't had the chance to say goodbye to the places he'd lived, the people he'd met, so he didn't know how it was supposed to be done.
He'd been living in peace for decades, with hardly any worries. At thirty, he had no plans to leave, just to get on with the routine until his time came.
He had no friends. His hobbies were crafts and art. Nothing else. As logical as it might be, he'd never thought he'd lose the one who was his only family, the ones who had rescued and loved him.
"The cancer has spread too far. I'm sure it's in the terminal phase and it's spread to his brain, and... I... I'm sorry..." Satoru squeezed him tightly, sobbing. "Sukuna, I'm sorry..."
"I know you can't do anything." Sukuna caressed his back, resting his forehead on his shoulder. "Don't apologize, it's okay."
"... but, he's suffering a lot..."
When Toji had a moment of lucidity, he would ask for the poison. They both knew it.
They had saved the poison from the capsule he had removed when he had given up his old life as a shinobi. They had at least a couple more that they had kept in the back of a closet, because we come together and we leave together.
Sukuna had accepted that Satoru and Toji would be united in death, after a long conversation in the moonlight with Satoru. He hadn't taken it badly, he didn't feel like he would be abandoned. He loved how they loved each other, he loved seeing them love each other. He understood that.
He would never get to experience something as pure and deep as those two did. He didn't plan on interfering in something like that, even if he knew he would have to manage alone.
Well, that was what growing up was all about, wasn't it? Winning and losing people constantly.
Toji would be sick with sadness if he died, because he loved him as if he were his own son. Satoru too. The three of them loved each other, that was fine. It had been fine while it lasted.
He wanted to be strong, especially since Satoru couldn't see things clearly when he was this affected, but he was on the verge of collapse too. He wanted to help and he couldn't.
"We can wait until dawn," he suggested. "To be by his side one last time. And then ask him if he wants to stop suffering."
"One last time?" Satoru cracked. The ice in his gaze broke again and overflowed into a forest river.
Sukuna rubbed his back to reassure him. He hoped Toji wasn't listening.
One last time, Toji smiled as he saw them enter. Satoru ran a hand up his chest, rubbing the area as if that would undo the illness. Toji put his arm around him and Satoru snuggled under the sheets, trying to keep him warm.
"You'll always be my little one," he said to Sukuna, who sat on the mattress. "Come here."
Sukuna let himself be dragged along when Toji grabbed him. A kiss landed on his forehead, just like when he was a child and couldn't sleep because of nightmares. His lips trembled, unable to speak.
They stayed together all night, praying the Sun wouldn't rise for once in the world. Toji smiled and occasionally spoke, delirious in pain and drawing Satoru closer, holding Sukuna's hand, without shedding a tear.
If this was his end, he didn't want to be seen crying. But suddenly he found himself babbling about the past, about the future and everything he thought he could do before he died.
"I thought... I could read more books and hug you more... and visit Edo again and go sightseeing with you..."
The stars swayed in the earth's vault, filling the sky with kisses sprinkled with silver and star dust.
Toji didn't read much. He had always preferred to work the land and go out into the forest to hunt. Maybe he should have rested more, maybe he should have spent more time with them.
“I really liked the summer when we went to the lake to swim,” he swallowed. It tasted bitter. “I remember when I taught Sukuna to swim and he wouldn’t stop screaming. That was… that was really funny…”
Sukuna squeezed his hand, feeling the weakness in Toji’s grip. Sitting beside him, he was unable to sleep, only to listen, as was Satoru, who raised his chin and looked at him with bits of stars in the corners of his eyes.
“Or when… when Satoru tried to make a fried egg and we laughed at him because it didn’t turn out the way he expected.”
Toji laughed, feeling claws scratching his chest from the inside. Maybe…
“Maybe I deserve to die like this for all the people I killed.”
“Don’t say that,” Satoru snapped. "You did what you had to do, Toji, don't you dare..."
Ah, Satoru was right. He nodded. He would do it all over again, without regrets, if he could end up lying there, with those he loved. It was nice. It felt bad for his foolish heart of a man in love with life.
He remembered Shiu. That life was much better, yes. Far from worries and weapons. That was his true path. He slowly sat up, on his elbows. Satoru helped him lie down, lying down made him nauseous.
"I wanted to see… er... that comet Satoru talked about."
“Halley’s Comet,” Sukuna muttered. “It will pass in a few years.”
“Yes…” Toji gave the boy a gentle tug. Sukuna rested his cheek on his shoulder. “Look at it for me and… someday… tell me what is it like.”
Sukuna’s expression twisted with crying, but he managed to whisper a yes.
Toji didn’t say anything for hours. He closed his eyes, moving a little with the discomfort, whimpering softly as Satoru looked after him, combing his hair, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I wanted us to be happy for a few more days, but…”
“It’s okay, Toji,” Satoru pushed his black bangs aside.
“I didn’t want to worry anyone.”
Sukuna relit the burning candle. Toji watched the shapes projected in the room, the same one they had lived in for decades. He had made love so many times in that bed, he had held Satoru in a thousand ways, whispering in his ear, placing a kiss under his earlobe while telling him how good and beautiful he was.
Then, with the first golden beam of the Sun, something began to fail.
Toji coughed. Sukuna covered his mouth with the handkerchief, collecting what he expelled. His breathing became much more difficult from one moment to the next. His bones vibrated with agony, it seemed like a sea of blades had settled under his skin to finish him off.
At some point he fainted from pain. He heard the voices of Satoru and Sukuna fading in the distance, and minutes or hours later he woke up. It was unbearable.
That was the moment.
"Bring it," he asked Sukuna, the boy he had loved like a son. "Please bring the poison, I won't hold on any longer..."
Satoru hugged him, desperate, while Sukuna went to get the capsules. The footsteps disappeared down the hall, a cupboard creaked open.
"You should stay with him, little prince." Deep down, it was a selfish request. He wanted the two of them to live. "He doesn't deserve this. You should..."
"Sukuna is ready," Satoru determined.
"But..."
"He's not a child anymore, Toji, love. And he'll be safe, you know that."
Satoru had sat up and was looking at him with those huge, beautiful eyes. There were pink flecks of sadness all over his face—it was him, he felt so guilty—and white strands of hair fell down his forehead, messy. He was beautiful.
Would he never see him again?
"No... I don't want to die," he confessed, sobbing. Tears rushed down his cheeks. "I'm scared..."
"No, no, no" Satoru held his face, admiring the man's features. Moles from working under the sun, scars "Don't worry, I'll be waiting for you on the other side."
Toji looked through him.
"Do you promise?"
"Of course. I would never leave you alone" Satoru smiled, tilting his head slightly.
Their lips collided in a kiss, warm and salty. A hand went up Satoru's shoulder, around his neck, pressing his nape forward.
Sukuna waited in the hallway for the silence to disappear. When it did, he gathered all his courage and entered the room, where they were both lying down. That was love. He gave each of them a capsule, feeling that he was looked at and loved.
"Thank you for everything" he lowered his head before them, heaps of tears running down his features "I love you."
They hugged each other. Toji patted his shoulder and ruffled his hair. Satoru kissed him and told him to live a long life.
“I’ll take good care of the horses,” he promised. “And this home.”
“What a good boy I’ve raised,” Toji said proudly, laughing.
“Be careful on the road,” Satoru said, settling back. “Do what you love most, okay? Don’t ever give up on it.”
Sukuna loved art, and in that instant, he swore he would listen to him. I promise. They smiled. He left the room, closing the door. His last image of them alive was lying in bed, cuddling together.
Satoru placed the capsule in his mouth. Toji did the same. They hugged each other as if they were just going to take a nap on an endless winter day, their legs tangled, their noses graciously touching.
They must have said I love you before biting the capsules and waiting for their heartbeats to die out in each other's arms. They must have tried to have a conversation about everything they already knew and wouldn't forget when they took the plunge. In reality, no one would know, Sukuna never got to hear that lovers' secret.
The world fell apart and ended. Two hearts paused.
When Sukuna entered the room, he did so holding a notebook.
━━━━━━
2099
Suguru admired the screens.
The school trip had been over for hours. Visitors were leaving the museum, it was closing time.
He strolled through the exhibit, stopping in front of the notebook that had belonged to Sukuna Ryomen. He pressed a button on the interactive screen on the lectern next to him, flipping through the scanned pages until he came to one in particular.
It was a drawing of two people hugging each other in bed. It was simple and elaborate at the same time. Toji and Satoru seemed to be sleeping peacefully after a long day of work in the fields. It was beautiful.
Sukuna had titled his drawing "One last time in your arms." The page had been splattered by a drop that wrinkled the paper in one corner.
The rest of the drawings followed the pattern of the others. Everyday scenes, Toji and Satoru, the boys of his dreams. A comet in the sky. The last page was a portrait of himself, something he had never done before, a novelty.
He was a man with hard, attractive features, an intense gaze and slicked-back hair. He had a scar under one of his eyes, the result of some manual work, and a shy smile with full lips.
Sukuna had died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving behind a whole art collection under his name. He had hanged himself in his room, after freeing his horses and selling most of his possessions.
Next to his portrait, on the last page, one could read:
"I've kept my promise"