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About an hour into Yaga and Gakuganji’s back-and-forth about the Goodwill Event—with the latter constantly bringing up Yuji, and his miraculous return from the dead, and the ‘danger’ this could potentially mean for the fate of the jujutsu world—Satoru decides to tune it all out.
Mostly because he hates the way Yuji’s name sounds coming out of the old man’s mouth, like it’s something dangerous, or dirty. And also because this is all so damn boring. They have these pointless meetings every single year, and the only thing they’ve talked about so far is that the Event will be held at the Tokyo school this time around. So, basically, nothing of importance at all.
“It’s settled,” Yaga says, and that’s when Satoru finally looks around the room. He doesn’t know what’s been settled. “No further discussion.”
“Yes, further discussion,” Gakuganji scoffs. “We haven’t decided on the group portion just yet.”
Like some kind of knee-jerk response, Satoru’s eyes stray toward Utahime. Only a few minutes before this meeting started, he’d hastily scrawled Baseball onto a piece of paper and stuffed it into the suggestion box, not quite knowing why. Except he does know why: he’d managed to catch bits of a conversation between her and Shoko about what to put down for the group portion and she’d shrugged and said, Oh I don’t know, maybe baseball?
Now he feels very stupid about it, because he could have literally put anything else down instead. And what if Utahime hadn’t put down baseball? After all, he’s only spent the last ten years making fun of her for how obsessed she is with the sport. He’d look like an idiot! In front of everyone!
He also doesn’t realise he’s staring. Utahime’s brows knit together, and in a moment her eyes find his. She frowns and mouths, What?
Satoru shakes his head and drops his gaze a little too quickly. Then, very loudly, he says, “Isn’t it kinda early to decide? The Goodwill Event’s not until next week, so what’s the rush, gramps?”
“Satoru,” Yaga warns, but he doesn’t say anything more, which means he’s secretly pleased with the rude interruption.
“Give it time’s all I’m saying,” Satoru continues. Gakuganji is pointedly ignoring him now; Mei Mei’s on her phone, no doubt checking her bank account, since she was promised wads of money just to show up; Yaga and Kusakabe have launched into a discussion about what might have to change in the Goodwill Event now that Yuta’s away. And Satoru, of course, goes above and beyond to save face. “I mean, those kids need to prepare, y’know? It’s gonna be their first-ever battle! Plus, I bet they must be super psyched to show everyone what their Great Teacher Gojo has taught them—”
“Seriously, who are you talking to?” Utahime’s voice cuts in with a snort. “Maybe don’t waste your breath, Gojo. Nobody’s listening anymore.”
“Wha—Utahime!” Satoru makes a show of looking offended; even adding a pout for effect. “We only get to see each other at these useless meetings and you choose to be mean to me? After all the times I’ve rescued you over the years?”
“Rescued…” her scowl turns seething. “Like hell you have! And like hell I would even let you!”
“You wouldn’t be able to help it anyways,” Satoru shoots back, “since you’re weak and all.”
“Respect your seniors!” Utahime bursts, waggling her arms around. Next to Gakuganji, who looks like a stiff and motionless old tree, it’s quite the sight. “Would it really kill you to just have an ounce of respect?!”
“Nah.” Satoru grins. “But then again, I don’t think anything really could kill me.”
“I would,” she huffs, retracting her arms to cross them at her chest instead. “Without hesitation.”
“Ca-aaan’t,” Satoru sing-songs. “Too weak, remember?”
He lowers his Infinity just a beat—just enough for Yaga to slap him upside his head, which seems to pacify Utahime. As she goes on listening to whatever the hell else Gakuganji’s saying, Satoru takes the chance to properly look at Utahime and is at once distracted by how much she’s changed over the decade. Sure, they’ve crossed paths a couple of times a year at the school, and he’d gone over to the Kyoto grounds every now and then, but he’d never really noticed.
At least not the way her hair is worn loose down her shoulders, only precariously held by a ribbon. Her bangs are in fine strands now. Satoru can’t pinpoint exactly when she’d ditched the pigtails for it. He can actually see Utahime’s face now; the familiar curve of her jawline, whenever she turns her face indignantly away from him. He checks for the scar that cuts across the bridge of her nose. It’s still there.
Yaga says something that he doesn’t catch, and Utahime tilts her head and laughs. Satoru blinks.
“…that so, Satoru?”
“Huh?” That earns him another hefty thwack. “I mean, yeah! Yes, whatever!”
Outside, Satoru slumps onto the ground, nursing the back of his head. Yaga could’ve at least held back a little. A minute later, Utahime walks out of the room and brushes right past him across the corridor. Satoru abruptly gets to his feet.
“Pretty neat show of hysterics back there, Utahime!” he exclaims. “You haven’t changed at all! No wonder you’re still single after all this time.”
Her marching comes to a halt and she pivots to glare at him, her brown eyes flaring. “What, you think your lack of manners could get you anywhere? Please.”
Satoru shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me, ‘s not like I’m looking to settle down or anything.”
“Oh!” Utahime sighs loudly. “Well, wonderful news to women everywhere. They can save themselves from ending up with a man-child like you!”
“Better a man-child than a dull, old meanie like you,” Satoru retorts. He sticks his tongue out at her—which only serves to prove her point—and she gives him a dirty look right back. “Utahime.”
“Senpai,” she says, but there doesn’t seem to be much edge in it now. It dawns on him then, just how close they’re standing all of a sudden. “You know, I’m still your senpai, Gojo.”
Somewhere behind her, someone clears their throat. Satoru looks up to find Shoko and Nanami standing in the doorway. They exchange a brief look that Satoru manages to catch. They don’t usually do that. Shoko and Nanami are the last two people who would ever exchange any kind of look, unless… it’s serious.
Satoru thinks about Yuji for a moment and wonders if maybe the training or the recent mission with Nanami had taken some kind of psychological toll on him. He thinks about Yuta, back during his first year, and wonders if maybe history is bound to repeat itself—if students linked with Special Grade Curses are going to be in his corner forever.
“What? What’s going on?” Satoru frowns. “Is it Yu—”
Nanami understands, at least. He shakes his head. “Itadori is doing fine. In fact, from the looks of it, he’s bound to outpace his peers.”
Satoru lets out a breath of relief. Utahime glances up at him, brow raised.
“Utahime-senpai,” Shoko trills, clasping her hands together, and Utahime finally turns around. “How long do you think you’re planning to stay in Tokyo this time around?”
“About two weeks,” she says. “At least until the end of the Goodwill Event. Why?”
“Mm, no particular reason.” Shoko and Nanami exchange yet another covert look, and it’s honestly starting to piss him off. “Are you hungry? I think our favourite ramen shop across the street should be open by now.”
Like everybody else, Utahime was caught off guard by the return of Itadori Yuji. After their arrival on the grounds—and Gojo’s ridiculous flair for showmanship—it’s fair that her students would be wary of the situation. They don’t know exactly what the boy is capable of or his amount of Cursed energy, or the extent of control he has over his own body. Despite the unusual silence from Gakuganji on the matter, Utahime decided to take it upon herself to keep a watchful eye on Sukuna’s vessel.
For the first two days at the school, Utahime was confused. Itadori Yuji seems like a completely normal first-year student, if a little boisterous. And during their introduction, Utahime learned all that she needed to know: Itadori dotes on his friends and peers, he respects Yaga, trusts Gojo and Shoko, and he has endearingly attached himself to ‘Nanamin’ at the hip. He has both the bright energy and gentle warmth of the sun and it takes all of the two days for Utahime to dismiss him as any sort of threat whatsoever.
“You’re definitely not going to tell me who said that about me?” Utahime mutters into her empty beer glass. The frost is starting to wear off, and she’s itching to order another one already. “Are you sure?”
“Only because I don’t know who said it, Utahime-senpai,” Shoko sighs.
“Or whether anything had been said at all,” Nanami chimes in. “I wouldn’t trust hearsay, senpai.”
It’s the weekend before the Goodwill Event and they’re pregaming at the bar before the rest of the school faculty shows up. And just a few hours ago, news that Gakuganji would take over the strategic planning for her students had circulated, except it came with an additional comment: the Kyoto school’s current supervisor is “clearly inadequate” to the task, and those students should be instructed by someone at a higher Grade.
“Bet it was Gojo,” Utahime says sulkily, ignoring the both of them. The bartender sets down her next glass, which she grabs for eagerly. She polishes off half of it in one go. “I mean, he’d never hesitate to call me weak, right? It probably made his day to be able to put that little comment out for everybody to see.”
“Senpai—” Nanami begins, but is interrupted by his phone lighting up on the countertop. Utahime manages to catch a glimpse of the text, in full hiragana: THANK YOU SO MUCH NANAMIN!! YOU ARE THE BEST! o(≧▽≦)o “Ah, excuse me for a moment.”
“It’s cute,” Utahime comments, when he sets his phone back down, “how much Itadori-kun looks up to you. To be honest, I’m surprised you’ve already taken such a liking for someone like him.”
“Someone like him?”
“Well, he’s like a mini Gojo. Isn’t he?” Nanami recoils at that, as if he’s just been scalded. To her right, Shoko laughs so hard she nearly chokes on her own beer. “I figured it only makes sense, especially since the two of them get along so well. And I haven’t seen that same sort of… admiration for Gojo from any of the other Tokyo students.”
“Utahime-senpai, you’re going to give poor Nanami an aneurysm,” Shoko giggles. She throws a surreptitious glance at him. “I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but what’s your take on him anyway?”
“Who? Itadori-kun?”
“Gojo-san,” Nanami manages to choke out. “Just to be clear… or rather just so we’re on the same page.”
Utahime promptly downs the rest of her beer. She thinks long and hard about the words clearly inadequate and mutters, “An arrogant, selfish, egotistical idiot. Which, in hindsight, Itadori obviously isn’t. I feel terrible for making that assumption now—after all, we know that nobody can match Gojo Satoru when it comes to how big his head is. Or how much of an asshole he can be. What, just because he’s the strongest? So, everybody else around him is just a weakling, right?” Utahime is vaguely aware that she’s kind of yelling now, and that it’s not just Shoko and Nanami staring at her outburst, but she can’t seem to stop. “And—and do you know what the worst part is? He thinks it’s all hilarious! He treats everything that comes out of his stupid mouth like it’s some big joke! He doesn’t care at all about what his words can do to people. And yet everything he says makes him so—so stupid anyway! It’s honestly amazing how he can—I mean, he can really make you laugh one minute, and then completely piss you off the next! It takes talent, really! That’s his Special-Grade talent!”
“Wow, Utahime.” Gojo’s voice behind her makes her jump. “And here I thought you were never gonna stop talking. That was some speech.”
Utahime twists in her seat and meets his heated glare with her own. “It’s nothing compared to what you’ve said about me.”
“That so?” He takes a step closer toward her with his arms crossed. Utahime braces herself for his usual smug look, but when his sunglasses slip down the bridge of his nose, she finds something completely unexpected instead—something bruise-tender, and wounded, like she had just slapped him across the face. “‘Cause I think you’ve said more than enough to bring anyone down. Even this arrogant, selfish, egotistical—idiot.”
She flinches at Gojo’s cutting voice. “Listen—you—I… I thought—”
“Geez, if there’s more where that came from, then you’re crazy if you think I’m gonna stay and listen!” Gojo tosses his hands up and turns to go. “I still have a little bit of dignity left, y’know. I’m just glad to finally know how you feel about me, Utahime. I really am!”
“I thought you liked my hysterics,” Utahime mumbles absentmindedly, but Gojo is already gone.
She only belatedly registers the dull ringing in her ears, and the warmth in her knees, and the strange fluttering against her ribs—after her heart has slowed its incessant beating. Really, what’s it beating so hard and fast for? Ridiculous. She takes a deep breath and swivels back in her seat.
“Utahime-senpai? Are you alright?” Shoko asks. “What do you need?”
“Another glass.” Utahime drops her head onto the countertop. “Please.”
It’s drizzling on the morning of the Goodwill Event, which is just perfect. A perfectly miserable way to start the week, after a perfectly miserable weekend. In the wet heat of the summer, Satoru shoves his hands into his pockets and lets the rain fall on him, miserably, until it starts soaking through his jacket. He realises he’s walked all the way to the infirmary—which is the complete opposite direction he’d meant to go in.
But it’s not Satoru’s fault he’s being dramatic, or sulky, or whatever it is Nanami had called it, right? It’s not his fault he’s still hung up on Utahime’s vicious attack on him at the bar—which, by the way, was completely unprompted! And unprovoked! Sure, maybe Satoru hasn’t been the nicest person ever to Utahime, and sure, he teases her every single chance he gets, but seriously, what the hell did he do to deserve that—that tirade of abuse from her?
Satoru figures he might as well drop in and whine about how miserable he’s feeling to Shoko, too, since Nanami hadn’t lasted two minutes before hanging up on him. He’s already walking up the steps and plastering on a pout when he catches a pair of voices just outside Shoko’s office.
“… don’t think Utahime-sensei knows, either,” the blonde one with the pigtails—Nishimiya—says. “And now she believes Gojo Satoru was the one who said that awful thing in the announcement.”
“What?!” Satoru squawks unthinkingly. Then, evidently still without thought, he flees right back down the steps and plants himself underneath the stoop to hide.
“Did you hear that?” Another voice—Miwa, with the notable bangs—pipes up. There’s a long pause before she continues, “I dunno, the whole thing seems kind of iffy if you ask me. I really, really don’t want to go through with it.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Nishimiya shoots back. Another pause. “So, what’s the deal with those two anyway?”
Miwa lets out a nervous laugh. “Ah, well, I’m not supposed to say…”
“Come on-nnnn, Kasumi-chan, it’s so dull around here as it is without any gossip,” Nishimiya grumbles. “What do you know?”
“You know what Utahime-sensei is like,” Miwa laments. “She’d never admit it outright! At least not in her own words. But from what Ieiri-san said just now… I mean, you heard her! It’s so obvious! Utahime-sensei’s got it bad for him. For, like, a while now. Who knows—probably for as long as they’ve known each other!”
“Gojo?” There is more than just a hint of disgust in Nishimiya’s voice. “You mean she actually likes Gojo like—like that? The one person she’s been calling an idiot since we got here?”
Satoru jolts, lifting his head so swiftly and so suddenly that he ends up smacking his head against the stoop. Huh? HUH?
“No way. I don’t buy it.” Nishimiya huffs. “I would think Utahime-sensei had better taste in men! And hasn’t she always said that she hated him?”
“That’s exactly why she’s so embarrassed about it! I’m sure it’s her way of hiding her true feelings, but—oh!” Miwa exclaims. “Haven’t you noticed the way she blushes every time we talk about Gojo Satoru?”
“You mean, every time you talk about Gojo Satoru.”
The door to Shoko’s office rattles open and another voice joins in, much more snide in its tone: “Oh. I wasn’t expecting you two out here.”
Miwa hums. “Todo left you hanging again, didn’t he?”
“Todo?” Zen’in Mai scoffs. “Todo can go get himself trampled, or beaten up or thrown off a cliff by any one of Megumi’s shikigami. See if I care.”
“Mai-chan,” Nishimiya calls, almost impatient. “What did Ieiri-san say?”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she mutters. “Just the same old thing about channelling my Cursed energy more finely to minimise the depletion, focusing less on the output… tch. I could’ve figured that out. Next time, though, I won’t let that obnoxious little country rat get the better of me—” She pauses abruptly. “Oh, about that. Mm, seems like Utahime-sensei blew it. Ieiri-san says she completely went off on Gojo this weekend. Used every kind of insult she could think of and aimed them all at him. And Gojo was there to hear everything. Even if there was a little bit of hope there, I’m pretty sure Utahime-sensei just killed off the last of it.”
“Figures,” Miwa sighs. “Utahime-sensei, why?! I don’t get it!”
“It’s not her fault,” Mai goes on. “She’s been out of the game for so long, she doesn’t even know how to show her feelings. And the person she happens to have feelings for also happens to be the one who’s stupid enough not to notice them. It’s just bad luck, I guess.”
“I’d call it tragic,” Nishimiya says.
“Doesn’t matter either way.” Mai lets out a laugh. “We all know Utahime-sensei would die before ever admitting that she likes Gojo Satoru, let alone do anything about it. Otherwise what would it say about her after all these years pretending to hate him, hmm? Besides, everyone knows that Gojo’s just going to use it against Utahime-sensei to keep teasing her. Why give him more ammo?”
“I see,” a fourth voice from God knows where jumps in. “This is just like the episode where Takada-chan tried to matchmake—”
“A—ah! Todo!” Nishimiya, Miwa and Mai scream unanimously. “SHUT UP!”
At this point, Satoru has stopped listening altogether. In fact, he hasn’t registered much of anything beyond Utahime-sensei’s got it bad for him and She likes Gojo like that. He isn’t sure he can comprehend anything else—not any other words or any other sounds or any beating pulse besides his own. It only properly dawns on him that he hasn’t moved at all when he feels the soft squelch of his feet on the ground. Right. It’s still drizzling outside. The courtyard is still glistening wet in front of him, and the sky is still overcast and chilly. Tangentially, nothing has changed in the last five minutes. Yet at the same time everything has.
Because… HAH?!
Utahime likes him? Utahime likes him? Utahime, the one person he’s spent the last decade basically tormenting—and enjoying it, too—has feelings for him? Romantic feelings? But—why? If it’d been for anyone else, he’d be sprinting across the courtyard by now to find Utahime just for the chance to tease her about it. But now that it’s Satoru that she likes… it changes—well, it changes a lot, that’s for sure. He can’t possibly tease her about this. And according to her own students, she’ll deny it anyway, so it’d just backfire on him. He’s not going to undo all the time and effort she’s spent disguising her true feelings with hatred.
Wait a second. He’s going about this in the completely wrong way. Utahime likes him. Utahime, the one person who’s spent the last decade waxing poetic about how much she hates Gojo Satoru—“more than strawberry Ramune and sweet dango combined, more than Shoko’s gross smoking, more than anything in the world!”—has feelings for him! Romantic feelings! This is the ultimate checkmate that Satoru’s been waiting for. His mouth twitches into a self-satisfied smirk. Then at once, Zen’in Mai’s words are thrown at him: Even if there was a little bit of hope there, I’m pretty sure Utahime-sensei just killed off the last of it. And Satoru’s brief flicker of confidence dwindles into nothing.
Okay, fine. Maybe Nanami was right after all and maybe Satoru had reacted harshly at the bar. But now? Now he can afford to be rational. He has to be rational about this, and he will be rational if this is actually going to happen between them. Because, rationally, why wouldn’t it? He’s well aware of his own best features, obviously, and Utahime’s—
Utahime’s walking straight toward him. Satoru blinks rapidly, trying to register that she’s walking—no, more like marching—across the courtyard in his direction, and that her hands are balled up in fists at her side, and his own mouth is hanging open. Utahime’s always been attractive—anyone with a functioning pair of eyes could see that. But damn, it’s like the universe slowed down a little for him to notice. The patchy drizzle has stopped and sunlight is washing over them, catching in the ends of Utahime’s hair and at the curve of her jawline and hands, and for a moment, Satoru is dumbstruck by the sight.
“There you are,” Utahime grumbles. “Seriously, Gojo, where the hell have you been? Do you know how long it took me to find you?”
“You—uh, what? Find me? You were looking for me, specifically?” He could slap himself. Not five minutes since he learned that Utahime likes him and all rationality is flung out the window.
“The staff meeting.” She clicks her tongue impatiently. “Or pre-meeting, I don’t know. I’m not officially involved. At least not strategically anymore, and everybody knows that now, don’t they, thanks to—” Utahime sucks in a sharp breath. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s demeaning enough that they made me come and find you. The Goodwill Event starts at four sharp, by the way.”
Satoru watches Utahime breathe out, watches the tension shakily unravel from her shoulders and her eyes finally rise to meet his.
“Oh, right,” he says, dazed. He needs to get it together. He’s the one with the upper hand here, for crying out loud. “Yeah—uh, thank you, Utahime-senpai.”
“For what?”
“For… coming all this way to find me!” Satoru manages a grin. He moves to lean casually against the steps, flexing one knee and smoothly tucking a closed hand under his chin. “I know you’re probably here against your will, but I really appreciate it.”
“You’re right,” she bandies back. “I would’ve loved to do literally anything other than go around the school looking for you, Gojo. Unfortunately, it was a job that I was given. And even more unfortunately for me, I happen to be someone who’s always happy to do their job.”
Satoru’s grin grows even wider. “So, you’re saying that you’re happy to come and find me?”
“What? No, I—” Utahime fumbles. “That’s not what I said! You know, if you used even a tiny bit of your brainpower for anything other than keeping your Infinity on, you could probably make some room for basic comprehension.”
“It’s what keeps me the strongest!”
“It’s also what keeps you the stupidest,” she retorts.
Satoru doesn’t say anything to retaliate. He can’t bring himself to, especially not when the truth is presented to him so plainly like this. He has to tread carefully, knowing what he knows now. Oh, man. She’s really got it bad for him! And she’s trying so hard to hide it!
The silence between them lingers for long enough that Utahime actually looks like she wants to snag the words right back, and then Satoru starts laughing. She wrinkles her nose, confounded, and stares at him like he’s just announced he’s going to join a beer-drinking competition.
“Fine, don’t show up to the pre-meeting then,” Utahime mutters at last. “Not my problem if they decide to start without you.”
Utahime wishes she could say there was only a single moment in time when Gojo Satoru caught her off guard, but the miserable truth is there’s a lot to choose from. The first, which she wants to forget but has somehow wedged itself into her memory, had happened after he’d—ugh—rescued her and Mei Mei from the Cursed mansion, back when he’d been riding the high of being the junior who extracted his two seniors from the wreckage—but I bet you were the one who figured out the Curse’s overlapping barrier, Utahime, that was really smart, he’d told her without pause, without any hint of mockery in his voice.
The last, well, whatever it was that happened on the school’s courtyard five minutes ago, which even Utahime isn’t exactly sure of. Gojo had thanked her—unironically—and he’d smiled for longer than she’d thought was humanly possible before the muscles would give out and he’d watched her, with such painstaking focus, and saying so little while watching her that it was enough to make her feel restless.
Now that the rain has finally stopped, Utahime takes the long way back to the faculty lounge. She slips through the exit by the dormitories, where the path loops down toward the training grounds. There’s something about the Tokyo High campus that, despite having no structural difference from the Kyoto school, keeps the air far too stilted in this damp summer. It’s hard keeping cool as it is. Maybe it’s the lack of mountains, or having too few deciduous trees than necessary lining down the path. All this light and nothing to catch it.
“As I’ve told you before, Itadori-kun,” she hears Nanami saying, further down the training grounds, where he’s standing near the track. “I am not a faculty member nor an official supervisor. It would be considered cheating. I won’t encourage it.”
“Our actual supervisor’s way too busy moping to be useful today,” Kugisaki, the first-year girl, huffs. “And we just wanna be prepared for anything.”
“Yeah!” Itadori exclaims. “What’s up with that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gojo-sensei so depressed.”
“Well, you,” Kugisaki jerks a finger at him, glowering, “have pretty much been dead until just this weekend, so what do you know?”
“Hey, come on!” Itadori jolts in offence. “Are you still on that? I said I was sorry! And I served the punishment, didn’t I?!”
“Something happened with the Goodwill Event,” Fushiguro says, deftly ignoring his peers. “I heard Ieiri-san mention it.”
“With so few jujutsu sorcerers involved this time around, it should be unsurprising that news would travel like this.” Nanami sighs. “Apparently, it had gotten out that the Kyoto school’s principal would be taking over their strategic training for the Goodwill Event—duties which, under normal circumstances, would be carried out by their supervisor. Utahime-san.”
The three students stare at him, waiting.
“I take it you know what was said,” he goes on. “As it happens, it was wrongly believed that Gojo-san was the one who said it.”
“Wrongly?” Utahime blurts out—very loudly. Before any of them can glance up and catch her eavesdropping right at the top of the stairs, she darts across the pathway and takes cover behind the first deciduous tree that she sees.
Nanami lets out a thoughtful hum. “No, rather, Utahime-san very quickly believed that he was the one who said that about her. I can’t say I blame her, but as a consequence, a very heated quarrel ensued between the two of them this weekend.”
“Quarrel?” Itadori repeats, reaching a hand up to scratch his head. “That’s not really new, right? I still don’t get why something like that would make Gojo-sensei so depressed, though.”
“Itadori-kun.” Nanami pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and braces the other on his hip. He lets out another tired sigh, as if he would much prefer to do anything other than continue this unbearably inane conversation. “Often when one is… in love, they tend to behave very abnormally. Perhaps this is caused by an overflow of feelings and emotions beyond their control. And in many cases, one may choose to conceal those feelings.”
“I see,” Itadori says seriously. And then a moment later, he’s floundering. “Ehhh? Love?! Gojo-sensei—in love—with Utahime-sensei? Since when?!”
“Since forever ago,” Fushiguro mutters. “For as long as I can remember, at least.”
“No, longer than that,” Nanami affirms. “I believe it can be traced back to when we were both in school together.”
Love? LOVE?! What? That’s not—this can’t—this has to be a joke. Utahime can only gawk helplessly from behind the hornbeam, trying to determine if this is part of some elaborate prank that’s going to come unravelling any minute now. But coming from Nanami, of all people! There’s simply no way Nanami would spend this long talking about Gojo Satoru and his pathetic love life, willingly, unless he’s telling the truth.
“Huh,” Kugisaki muses, wrapping one finger around her chin. “No wonder I could practically smell the desperation off of him the entire week before the Goodwill Event. I guess now it makes sense. Does Utahime-sensei know?”
“I do think it’s for the better—for all parties involved—that she doesn’t,” Nanami says. “You see, in his attempt to conceal his feelings, Gojo-san went to the other extreme altogether. Right from the start, he treated Utahime-san with so much disrespect that not only does she not know, she also completely and utterly hates him. I doubt that can be mended now.”
“But—but she doesn’t know that it wasn’t Gojo-sensei who said that about her!” Itadori exclaims. “Wait, how’d you know it wasn’t him?”
“Gojo-san was the first to complain about it to Yaga-sensei.” There’s not a single trace of doubt in Nanami’s voice; Utahime’s stomach curdles with guilt. “He said it was extremely unfair, and that it made no sense whatsoever. To deem Utahime-san ‘clearly inadequate’ to conduct the Kyoto students’ strategic training was groundless, and there was absolutely no precedent to the claim—and that if it were possible at all, he would raise it to the higher-ups himself.”
Itadori and Kugisaki’s faces—and even Fushiguro’s—go slack with unguarded surprise.
Nanami takes a deep, measured breath. “Unfortunately, Gojo-san has also spent the last ten years repeatedly telling Utahime-san that she is weak and that she will never be able to catch up to him in strength and success. He has never once taken her seriously about anything.”
Itadori wilts. “Oh…”
“I’m sure that argument this weekend drove the final nail in the coffin. There is nothing that can convince Utahime-san of his feelings now. In her own words, everything that comes out of Gojo-san’s mouth, he tends to treat it as a joke. Now,” Nanami reaches into the back of his jacket and draws his blunt sword from its holster, as if he’s just concluded a business conference instead of revealing the most earth-shattering news for all of them to hear, “are we ready to begin?”
“Ha!” Kugisaki snorts. “That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve heard about him yet. And they say women are the ones who are so complicated about their feelings? Please!”
Utahime is glad that they’ve started their training right away (Itadori being the loudest of them all, and charging straight for Nanami) because she’d been craning her neck so far around the stem of the hornbeam tree to hear them that she loses her balance. Her arms swing clumsily through empty air and she lands directly on the soft, still very dampened ground—and comes face to face with second-years Zen’in Maki and Inumaki Toge.
She laughs fearfully, hoping against all hope that they’ve just arrived and hadn’t noticed her eavesdropping this entire time. “Oh, hello!”
“Utahime-sensei?” Maki calls, and then abruptly gives Inumaki a covert look. “Are you okay?”
“It was raining—the paths are quite slippery.” Utahime pulls herself up at once. Thankfully, her kosode suffered no damage; only a small, unnoticeable wrinkle in the pleats of her hakama. “Ah, you’re preparing for the Goodwill Event, too, aren’t you? I’ll wish you both the best of luck then. I do hope everybody will be able to help each other out through it!”
They bow thanks, and then Inumaki says, with some degree of eagerness, “Tuna. Salmon roe!”
“He says that Gojo’s looking for you, Utahime-sensei.” At the sound of his name, Utahime flushes right up to her ears. Not that she means to—not that she ever has before! She ducks her face and does her best to conceal it from Maki, who’s watching closely. “Really urgent, apparently. He says he wants you to—”
“Yes, yes, fine!” Utahime bursts, hoping that it will disguise her elevated heart rate and her hot palms. She’s already marching back down the path she came from. “I get it already! I’ve heard more about that idiot today than I have ever dreamed of in a whole lifetime, thank you!”
For the first few minutes, Utahime doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t even care. She thinks—hopes—that the path she’s storming along will somehow take her closer to the school’s exit, away from the faculty lounge where she won’t ever have to hear anything about Gojo ever again. She would walk all the way to Tokyo Station, or even back to Kyoto if she could. Because at least she won’t have to speak to Gojo and feel so terribly guilty that she has to give him some kind of heartfelt apology, or he won’t have to feel so moved by her apology that he will suddenly think she feels anything at all for him. She is not here for any of that. And she should be allowed to be petty once in a while.
Even later when she finally does reach the faculty lounge, when all the anger is gone from her and only a dull sense of shame remains, Utahime is uncertain as to what it is about this whole thing in particular that’s gotten her so riled up. So what if Gojo likes her? So what if he has only been rude and disrespectful to her because he’s been hiding his feelings for her all along? All that this tells her is how unbelievably juvenile Gojo is and that he hasn’t grown up at all since they’d left school. That he had found a way to get under her skin—on purpose, just to get a rise out of her, giving her a reason to fight, or some renewed sense of resolve—and has somehow always been the only one who knows how to do that. And that every time he’d told her something meaningful in between the insults, he’d actually meant it.
“Utahime-senpai.”
Utahime doesn’t even have the time to force herself to duck her eyes and keep walking before her head jerks up and she finds herself face-to-face with Gojo. He’s standing right there in the doorway, arms crossed at his stomach, smiling at her.
“You were almost late, y’know. It’s gonna start soon. But I saved you a seat!” He frowns. “Hey, you okay?”
“Fine,” she replies stiffly. “Why?”
“Your hakama,” Gojo says, pointing. “It’s all wrinkly.”
Utahime folds away a smile that, had he said this maybe half an hour ago, would’ve never even threatened to show in the first place. How ridiculous it is that now that she knows Gojo likes her, she’s suddenly lost all sense of how to react to him. She focuses on a particular spot where her boots meet the uneven paving stones, where small plants have grown between them over the summer. Her gaze catches his when she finally glances back up at him.
“What’cha staring at?” Gojo mutters. Utahime thinks, for an alarming moment, that she can see his face redden just underneath his blindfold. “Hurry up already. Slowpoke.”
Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to have Utahime sit right next to him all through the Goodwill Event after all. She’d spent the first hour glancing between the screens in front of them (where they could see her students and Satoru’s own students wasting no time going after each other instead of the Curses) and her cup of ocha (which Satoru had been one hundred percent sure was completely empty) just to avoid having to look at him.
Not that it’d mattered. That only meant he could freely glance at her. And Satoru hadn’t realised then, just how often he’d been doing that—that, being, glancing over at Utahime—until the next time he’d done that, she was no longer in her seat. When he’d looked at one of the screens, he’d finally noticed that Miwa Kasumi was lying spreadeagled on the ground in the middle of the dense thicket.
“It’s dangerous,” Utahime said, mumbled really, like it couldn’t have been any more obvious, because Satoru had gawked at her with probably the stupidest expression she has ever seen and she was trying her best to keep from snapping at him, “leaving her in a forest full of Cursed Spirits.”
And now Satoru is standing—swaying, maybe just a little—at the same spot they’d discovered the Curtain earlier.
Utahime is also still here for some reason, but Nobara and Mai are nowhere to be seen—and even then Satoru has to be completely sure. He blinks, waiting for the rest of her to come into focus. The ground tilts like he’s been craning his neck sideways this whole time, or like only one of his legs is rooted to the gravel. When he takes a step forward, he has to wait a second for his vision to clear.
That’s when Satoru realises he hadn’t replaced his blindfold; it’s still hanging loosely around his neck. His thumb and index finger are still pinched together, still tense, but the rest of his hand has closed in on itself. Barely there, somewhere in the back of his mind, a mechanical buzzing: Cursed technique reversal red cursed technique lapse blue. Every time Satoru uses Hollow it feels, simultaneously, like he has done it a hundred times before and also for the first time. Every bone and nerve and sinew in his body feels raw, like his brain had just been struck by lightning and the rest of his body is trying desperately to reconnect. He lets his uncovered eyes fall on everything he can see. The stone lanterns neatly lined to his left. The Special-Grade Curse’s branches—limbs?—still deeply rooted in the school’s courtyard. Deadwood and debris and dust—all from the aftermath of Hollow. The reopening of the sky. The river. Utahime.
“Gojo?”
“I know, by the way,” he blurts out. “Utahime.”
“You know—?”
“I know that I like you, and I mean really, really like you.” Wait, what? “I mean—no, I mean the other way around! That you like—!”
Too late. Utahime is already staring at him wide-eyed like she’s trying to make sense of his words. Satoru can’t even make sense of them himself! Where did that even come from?! Sure, he hasn’t used Hollow in a while, but it’s not supposed to fry his brain clean off like this.
There’s a kind of unmistakable rush of triumph that pumps through his entire body after he uses Hollow. It’s like being high on adrenaline—he says things he doesn’t mean. Or sometimes he says things he actually means but wouldn’t have the courage otherwise, like when he’d stared emptily at Suguru, only half-recognising him, with Amanai’s cold body in his arms and a flaring desire to watch the crowd around them destroyed.
(Satoru remembers the day he’d put a hole in Fushiguro Toji with Hollow. It had been a warm, bright day and Satoru had only walked away because the smell of blood—already staining the concrete floor—was starting to get to him. When he’d gotten to the school he had run right past the infirmary, fighting to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of Suguru possibly lying dead on the autopsy table. That year he had turned sixteen, and he hadn’t yet learned that he would actually really lose Suguru come September.)
“Utahime,” Satoru says. He can still feel the blood thrumming in his ears, his chest bursting with unspent energy. Things he’s always wanted to say, all crammed into a specific corner in his mind. He shuts his eyes. “For the longest time, I wanted to change the jujutsu world. I didn’t want any of us to suffer the way he—that way again. But I didn’t know where to start, y’know? I was just a kid who liked to talk big. Fostering a new generation of jujutsu sorcerers? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about any of that until—”
He inhales. “Until I saw you. With your students. I can see the way they look at you, Utahime, like they don’t just trust you and respect you, they… they admire you. But I mean, why wouldn’t they? You’re nice, and you’re smart, and you’re really pretty, so y’know.” He clears his throat. That is not at all the point that he was making. He has strayed unbelievably far from the point. “But you’re also really sure of yourself. You don’t let anything stop you, not even ten years of me making fun of you and calling you weak all the time! And at first I didn’t get it, like, at all. I guess what I was seeing is you, being a great teacher and mentor to your students. I mean, you really believe in them. And I dunno, I guess what I’m trying to say is it kinda made me understand, and—and it inspired me, too. It’s inspiring. You’re… inspiring.”
(Damn. Damn, maybe he does like Utahime. Maybe he really, really likes Utahime.)
“Inspiring,” Utahime repeats comprehendingly, tilting her head a little, “and weak?”
“Yeah.” He starts flailing about when it finally clicks. “Wait, no!”
A noise slips out of her that sounds a lot like a laugh. Utahime ducks her head, no doubt trying to hide it, but Satoru catches her expression changing all the same. A blush gathers at her cheeks where her scar is most prominent. He decides that he likes this look on her even more than her usual scowl—more than anything.
“Gojo,” she says airily, and walks right up to him. A smile is slightly tugging at the corners of her lips, but he can see that her hands are shaking. Without any warning, she reaches those same hands forward and takes hold of his blindfold, pulling it all the way back up. “I really, seriously think… you need to get your head checked.”
By the time Satoru blinks a few more times, she’s already walked far enough down the pathway, where the first stone lantern meets the bend. She straightens her arms behind her and her fingers find each other against her back, tangling idly together.
“Is there a single corner of this entire school compound that you don’t loiter in?” Utahime says. “Seriously, why are you everywhere?”
The post-meeting—post-post-meeting, technically, since the Goodwill Event is pretty much over now—isn’t in another two hours. And in her haste to flee the Kyoto meeting room before it could blow up even further with Gakuganji at the helm, Utahime had found herself at the foot of Shoko’s office, where Gojo was sprawled on the stone steps. And maybe she wants to flee from this now, too, but then she feels her throat close up when Gojo’s curious, scrutinising gaze on her doesn’t waver one bit, somehow rooting her to the ground.
“You’re telling me,” Gojo mutters, leaning back on the steps on his palms. “You’re here for two weeks and for some reason, everywhere I go, bam! There you are! Y’know, Utahime, sometimes even when I’m not thinking about you, you still show up anyway—” He catches himself and at once he stops talking. His gaze drifts to the ground. “You—uh, you here for Shoko?”
Utahime shakes her head and drops down beside him. “How’s Fushiguro doing?”
“A little bruised, beat up, but it’s nothing he can’t heal from.” Gojo lets out a chuckle. “Stubborn as ever, though. Kept insisting he wasn’t feeling a thing. You should’ve seen the way he was squirming before Shoko put him under.” He shakes his head. “How’s Noritoshi?”
“Fine.” Utahime turns her head away. Her jaw is stiff as she replays their conversation from just this morning. Kamo had at least had the courtesy to drop his head when he’d handed her the tools he’d meant to use to beckon the Cursed Spirit in the forest, to kill Itadori Yuji—but he had also made it perfectly clear that he hadn’t regretted it one bit. “He’s just fine.”
“Hey, go easy on him,” Gojo says, gently bumping her shoulder with his. “He’s a clan kid.”
“Of course, I always do.” Before she can restrain herself, Utahime leans over and nudges him in the knee. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a great teacher and mentor to my students. I’d even go so far as to say I’m inspiring.”
He briefly gapes at her, and then laughs, setting a sheepish hand on the back of his neck. “Ah, hah, yeah. That was kinda weird, huh? I just… yeah.”
The two of them sit in silence like that for a while. It’s not as awkward as she’d dreaded. They both lean back against the steps and idly watch the unfolding of summer right in front of them—the smell of fresh, damp bamboo from the morning rain, the steady thud of the shishi-odoshi just outside Shoko’s office, the occasional breeze—shifting one elbow with the other. Out of the corner of her eye, Utahime steals occasional glances at Gojo. He’s traded his usual uniform for a summer jacket that she’s never seen before, and every now and then he flexes his fingers, exhaling through his nose.
“Look, I know this is kinda long overdue,” he says, after a balmy, companionable silence, “but you should know, I wasn’t the one who said that thing about you. Before the Goodwill Event.”
Utahime softens at that. “I know.”
“Huh?” He twists his whole body to face her. “You know?”
“You’re not the type to do that. Yes, you are infuriating and yes, you can be such an asshole. But you’re not actually cruel, Gojo.” She smiles wanly. “You wouldn’t—”
“YOU KNOW?” Gojo yells, as if she hadn’t said a single word. “You know and you let me take the fall for it anyway?! Utahime-eee!” He jerks a finger at her disbelievingly. “Man, you were so mean about it, too! I mean, you really went on and on and on at the bar that night! Y’know how humiliating that was?! And you say I’m the one who doesn’t care about what my words do to other people? Oh yeah, sure—”
“I didn’t know it at the time obviously, you idiot! And your inflated ego wasn’t helping either!” Utahime yells right back. “Fine, maybe I let my feelings cloud my judgement that time, okay?! Maybe I didn’t want to admit I actually had—” she heaves a loud sigh. “God, you are so dramatic, Gojo, and you can be so… so stupid sometimes it makes me question why I even have these feelings for you in the first place!”
The words tumble clumsily from her mouth; unwilling, unprepared. Yet they’re out here in the air between them all the same. With every second that passes, it becomes too late for her to even dare to take them back.
She watches his jaw go slack. “Did you just—?”
“No,” Utahime huffs, dropping her head into her hands. She’s pretty sure her entire face, and body, have spontaneously caught on fire. “Shut up.”
There is a very long silence in which Utahime waits, breath held fast in her throat. Just as she’s gearing herself up to fill it with something, anything, she feels Gojo’s hands moving over her own, his fingers closing loosely around her wrists. Utahime freezes, but she lets him slowly ease both her hands down, away from her face.
“Utahime,” Gojo murmurs. His blindfold is discarded. One of his thumbs presses lightly into Utahime’s palm, pleading. There’s a fond smirk on his face that she will definitely kick him for later. His eyes are so, so blue. “You like me?”
Utahime is still casting around for something to say. Gojo is still watching her, and at once the weight of this moment hits her like a swift and sudden punch to the heart, and all she can bring herself to do is fold her lips in, tight.
“Utahime!” Gojo exclaims, impatient. “You like me! Admit it!”
“Oh my God, seriously, Gojo, shut up.” So juvenile, she thinks, even as her heart doesn’t stop jumping maddeningly in her chest; even as she feels every single one of her limbs buzzing with an unfamiliar warmth. “Well, you—you like me, too!”
“Yeah, I do,” he says, beaming. “You have no idea the hold that you have over me, Utahime. It’s crazy! Isn’t that the craziest thing you’ve heard?”
“It is,” she agrees. Well. There’s no going back or avoiding it now. “But—not as crazy as the fact that I know how that feels, too.”
Gojo breathes out, satisfied, as if that’s all he needed to hear from her before he sets a hand over the curve of her jaw. He runs his thumb carefully over her scar once, and then dips his head and kisses her. And not only does Utahime let him kiss her, she also kisses him right back. In fact, Utahime reaches up for the seams of his jacket and pulls his face even closer, as close as it will come, until the air is gone clean from her lungs. When she finally pulls away, Gojo’s face follows after her for a brief second before he realises that he’s also out of breath.
“Wow, you must really, really like me, huh,” he teases. He’s still breathing a little hard, eyes glittering in the sunlight. “Utahime, I—”
“Gojo-sensei! Are you still…” Itadori stumbles back in the doorway. “O—oh! Oops, were we interrupting—?”
Utahime tries to pull her hand away, but Gojo only edges his hand down and laces their fingers together instead. He hides their clasped hands in between the folds of her hakama and she has to scrunch her nose to keep from smiling. So, so juvenile.
“Oi, try to have some tact, why don’t you?!” Next to him, Kugisaki lets out a regretful sigh. “Sensei, Fushiguro wants pizza when he wakes up.”
“Hm? Pizza? Megumi?” Gojo pretends to hum in thought. “You sure?”
“Yep, totally sure,” Kugisaki replies. Itadori is still momentarily speechless, gawking at the space between Utahime and Gojo. “He wants mentaiko. Oh, and make sure it’s a large, kay? Thanks!”
“W—wait, it’s real?” Utahime hears Itadori exclaim, on their way back into Shoko’s office. “This whole time, you guys were actually being serious?!”
“So anyway, where were we?” Gojo leans back against the steps and loftily pats her hand. “Oh, right! You were just gonna tell me which one of my amazing qualities that made you fall for me first!”
“You mean, which one of your awful qualities that I had to excuse,” Utahime scoffs, turning her nose up. “Because what I will tell you is that this is one hundred percent happening against my will.”
“Uh-huh,” he snickers. “Sure.”
Utahime’s face is still hot as ever, with absolutely no chance of subsiding anytime soon. Her mouth is still tingling. She takes a deep breath. “You are going to be unbelievably annoying about this, aren’t you?”
Gojo gazes down at her, grinning giddily like he can’t help it. Utahime splays a hand over his face and shoves him back, but he catches it before pulling her toward him again. She rolls her eyes at him, just for good measure, before meeting his lips with her own. He laughs softly as her fingers reach up to grip the front of his jacket once more.
If she’s being perfectly honest, Utahime will be glad if neither of them ever has to say another word again.
It’s not even ten minutes into this stupid post-post meeting and Satoru has honestly just about had it. He’s already said his piece anyway. There’s no reason for the Goodwill Event to be over just because they were intercepted by a couple of unwanted Curses, and besides, it wouldn’t be fair to the students, who were looking forward to a fair match.
Maybe Satoru could bring it up to Yaga—that all of this, including Ijichi’s extensive list of human casualties—could literally be typed out in an email. All he needs to do is hit ‘Send’, and no one needs to show up to these things anymore. And then maybe they could, you know, actually spare themselves the cash they keep throwing Mei Mei’s way.
He makes a long sweep around the room and, on pure instinct, without missing a beat, his gaze lands on Utahime. Well—okay, fine. Maybe if having more of these pointless meetings means that Utahime gets to come to Tokyo more often, then he’ll take it. He’ll take whatever he can get.
Utahime catches him staring. She opens her mouth, falls silent, and then glances away again.
Inwardly seething, Satoru huffs through his nose. This meeting doesn’t look like it’s ever going to end. It’s like the universe is out to torture him.
“Fine, then, if that’s the case,” Gakuganji says, finally, finally. “I suppose it’s just as well that we move on to the group portion now.”
The group portion? Right, of course. The group portion. Unfortunately, Satoru doesn’t even have the time to process what has just been said—and what is subsequently about to take place—because Yaga is already rummaging through the suggestion box and pulling out a piece of paper.
“Baseball,” he announces.
“Interesting.” Mei Mei stifles a laugh. “So, I was right to bet on Utahime-san after all. I knew it.”
“Ah, sorry, Mei-san,” Utahime interjects, “but I wasn’t the one who submitted that.”
“This goddamn chicken scratch handwriting…” Yaga peers closely at the paper. “I’d know it anywhere.”
All at once, the cluster of heads turn to gawk at him. Satoru laughs nervously. “Oh, hey! What’re the odds, right?”
Mei Mei and Kusakabe are already snickering at each other as they get up to leave. Gakuganji lets out a scoff and Yaga follows after him wordlessly, not even bothering to look at Satoru. And it’s really just as well that Nanami and Shoko are standing right in the doorway, witnessing it all. Utahime is the last of them to leave the room, and somehow that’s what finally gets Satoru’s gears going.
“It’s not what you—I didn’t—I wasn’t… wait, Utahime!” His voice breaks, very embarrassingly, at the end of her name. “I—uh, I need to ask you something important!”
She pivots on her heel to face him with her arms crossed. “What do you want?”
“You’re in love with me, aren’t you?”
“WHAT?! Of course not! Where the hell did you get that from?!” Utahime fixes him with a glare. “You’re not in love with me, are you?”
“No way,” Satoru mutters, pulling a face. “Not in your wildest dreams! Though I gotta warn you, Utahime, your students have a huge gossiping problem. They’ve been going around saying you’ve got it real bad for me.”
“Funny,” she hurls back, “your students seem to think that you’ve been pining for me for the last decade.”
“I wonder where they got that from.” He glances pointedly at the doorway before turning back to Utahime. “So then, you… don’t like me like—that?”
“No,” Utahime says firmly. “No more than friends. And barely even that! We’re just colleagues, nothing more!”
“Nothing more,” Satoru repeats, nodding, “exactly!”
As if on cue, Shoko pulls her phone out of her pocket and sighs loudly. “Mm, that’s not what you said yesterday, Utahime-senpai. In your message here, you said you couldn’t believe you were starting to have real feelings for Gojo. And even just now, right before the meeting, you said that you accidentally told him about your feelings, and you’ve never been more relieved to learn that he feels the same—”
“Sh—Shoko?!” Utahime shrieks, making a lunge for her. “Shoko, stop!”
Shoko only gives a lazy smile and nudges Nanami in the elbow.
“Right.” Nanami starts reciting rapidly from his phone like he’s reading the morning news and not the most humiliating thing that he will ever have to say aloud. “From Gojo-san earlier this week, dated August 16th 2018, Holy shit I think I just told Utahime that I liked her but I didn’t mean to at all I just wanted to give her a taste of her medicine like when she went on and on about me at the bar you know but I ended up complimenting her the entire time and I even told her she’s really pretty like an idiot I’m such an idiot—”
“Okay, okay, I think we all get it already!” Satoru swipes the phone from him. “Geez, Nanamin! What’s wrong with you?!”
“Good job,” Shoko mumbles, giving Nanami a thumbs up. “Lunch today’s on me.”
“That alone should be worth at least a week’s lunch,” he says, frowning in disgust. “I think I’m going to put in a request for more solo missions.”
In all the chaos, Satoru sneaks a glance at Utahime. She’s flushed up to her neck, still floundering at a laughing Shoko—and when she finally surrenders the phone back, she looks up at Satoru. They stare at each other, mortified, panting, and maybe even a little bit delirious.
“Oh, well,” Satoru laments with a shrug, “guess we’ve been busted.”
Utahime hums. “I’m just glad you’re actually aware of your own idiocy, Gojo. Good for you.”
“So, Utahime,” he says, smirking. He chooses to ignore all of what she just said. “You like me? For real? Are you prepared to admit that?”
“Absolutely not,” she retorts with a scoff. “But I guess since you like me, I have no choice but to… charitably accept you.”
“Wha—charitably?! Are you calling me a charity case?” He pouts. “Fine, I guess I’ll settle for you, too. You’re gonna need someone strong anyway, and what could be better than the strongest? Y’know, since you’re so weak—”
“Gojo, I’ll kill you,” she grits out. “And I wouldn’t even hesitate, you know I wouldn’t.”
“Hmmm? What’s that?” Satoru cups a hand to his ear and lets out the most dramatic gasp he can muster. “Get married?! But Utahime, that’s too fast, don’t you think?”
“I swear, I am going to kill you,” Utahime hisses. “You’re the worst.”
“I know,” he says, laughing, “and you really like me anyway.”
She reaches up to shove him in the face, but Satoru catches her hands before she can. He becomes sharply aware that they’re alone. It feels like Utahime’s face and his stay close like that forever, her breath washing softly over his chin, hesitation and absolute certainty both clashing within a single look.
But Utahime doesn’t let go. In fact, she curls her fingers tightly around his, looking a lot like she’s going to kiss him again.