this is kinda stupid of me to ask but how do you do gradient texts?
Hello!
[Disclaimer: To make gradient text, you have to turn off the beta option on tumblr posts] UPDATE: The beta option can no longer be turned off (presumably because they, well, rolled out whatever features were previously there in the beta). However, you can go to Settings → Dashboard → Type of dashboard (it'll be a dropdown close to the bottom) → HTML.
To make a gradient text, you basically have to convert whatever gradient you have into HTML code. [css code doesn’t work] Fortunately though, there are sites for that! You can use this site and/or this site. Here’s how they both work:
Method 1 - Patorjk’s Text Color Fader
Step 1: Enter your desired text, your colors [you can change the number of colors too; just click on the dropdown option]
[Fade Type: I just use the default fade type, but I reckon the vertical one’s good if you want to create gradient paragraphs]
Now once you’ve clicked the “Generate Color Faded Text” button, you’ll see something like this:
Copy all of that and paste it into this site like so:
Click “Replace Text” and copy it to the clipboard, and you’re done!
Method 2 - JSFiddle
This one’s not as “user-friendly” as the former, but it’s still pretty easy to manoeuvre around once you get the hang of it!
[When you’re done customizing, click on the “Run” button on the top left.]
Now you should see that the colors in those boxes in the run area are now your desired colors. Enter the text in the top text box as shown and click the run button next to the color boxes. Your HTML code should appear in the second text box. Copy that and you’re done!
[I’d only edit the main code if I want to add one/more colors. Otherwise you can just click the boxes in the run area and edit the colours directly from there. This supports hex codes, RGB and HSL.]
For example, I’ve done this:
Okay, now once you’ve copied your HTML code, you have to go back to tumblr and create a new post without the beta format. You should see a gear icon; click that and change the post type to HTML. [tip: customize a blank piece of text however you want (bold, italic etc.) in the Rich Text editor and then just replace that with your gradient text code in the HTML editor]
Now paste your HTML code in the text area, and you should see something like this:
[note: I just clicked on the gear icon to demonstrate what it should look like]
You can preview your text by clicking on the “preview” button to see if you got anything wrong/to see what the final result will look like, and you can add your desired tags.
And that’s really all there is to it! Here’s what my final result will look like:
Viridian: #009698 to #008b8b to #007474
[Forgot to mention, once you've got your gradient text, you can't switch back to the Rich Text editor without losing your gradient, which is why I recommend customising your text in the Rich Text Editor before switching to HTML and replacing the black text with your gradient one! Personally, I just use the header option for my text so I put the h2 tags manually at the start and end of the code so as not to create a hassle]
Description: What happens when a careless whisper turns love into a prison? A complicated relationship between Reader x Gojo/Nanami. Smut interspersed with a ton of angst because sex is best when everyone is crying.
Warnings: MDNI (18+/adults only please!). fem!reader, trying to be as canon-compliant as possible (hence spoilers for JJK 0, JJK Hidden Inventory/Premature Death Arc). Brief mentions/depictions of: depression, PTSD, character death, jealousy, marriage but longing for another, unrequited love, fwb, codependency, satosugu, oral, fingering, piv, rough sex, cum eating, impotence. Lots of angst.
Word Count: ~6.1K words
Author's Notes: Hi everyone! This is my first ever fanfic written for the JJK fandom! Thank you all for reading and I hope you all enjoy it ☺️💕
Suggested listening: Vague Reason by Yoshimasa Terui (照井順政) off the JJK Shibuya Incident Original Soundtrack.
One.
“You still wear a suit?”
Nanami tilts his head a fraction at the sound of your voice, cup pausing on the way to his lips. The garish fluorescent lights overhead somehow throwing softness on his neatly combed hair, a contrast against the sharp angles of his face.
“I thought you would have left that behind with everything else.”
You walk past him in Jujutsu High’s break room, careful not to brush against his arm when you reach for the kettle, steam rising to cloud your vision of the teabag dancing on the deluge of hot water before it settles and sinks, seeping slowly to darken sepia to brown.
“Old habits die hard.”
His voice.
Deeper than you remembered, though you had heard it many times in dreams. Rough with an exhaustion that resonated with the marrow in your bones. Sanded down by life.
Or perhaps it was memory playing tricks. Maybe Kento had always sounded like this, but a younger you had been too busy revelling in the immortality of those halcyon days to notice.
That is, until the day Haibara died and endings became something lived and not just a speck in the periphery, out of focus and easy to ignore.
Kento had left then. Barely said goodbye, trading one world for another.
Last you’d heard, he had made it to the position of regional director for his firm. Making an inordinate amount of money for people who already had too much, sitting in the comfort of an office building, surrounded by glass and concrete and steel.
“Why did you give it up?”
The teaspoon clinks gently against the sides of your cup as you pour in milk, watching the swirl of white merge with the dark like the sky on the verge of sunrise.
“Because if a job was going to kill me, I’d rather it be on my own terms.”
The response is solid. Certain. Words like stones that have been turned over in the mind innumerable times. You would expect nothing less from him.
Because Nanami Kento had always been economical with words.
Even when he told you he loved you.
Without preamble or explanation, just a confession laid at the corner of your lips like flowers placed on a grave.
Why?
He didn’t say. Did not even talk.
Had only stared at the ceiling fixture above his bed, hazel eyes tracing the rounded fluorescent tube on an interminable loop.
You hadn’t spoken either.
Had only wished for time to stop. To have the chance to process Haibara’s sudden absence like grief lodged in the throat, to understand — somehow, someway — how the sun could set on a boy whose smile shone with the carefree warmth of a summer’s day.
Kento didn’t talk about it and you knew better than to ask. The wound was raw, festering with realization that had by then become obvious to everyone: that the intelligence had been erroneous, that Nanami and Haibara were completely outclassed by the curse they had been assigned to deal with.
That it was like sending lambs to slaughter.
Then Gojo was on the case. Exorcised it in under a minute.
And Nanami Kento realized the senseless futility of it all.
So he had pulled you into his room that night, any and all words superfluous as he held you in bed against him, making no advances while cradling you in the stillness of loss until his lips found yours hours later in a singular act of affection.
Colour had began to bleed across the sky in streaks of blush by the time you finally left his room.
And then, before the shell shock of his gentle confession could release its grip, Nanami Kento had left.
Years later, when a mission took you into Marunouchi, the financial district.
Had caught the shape of him through the window of a bakery, felt like you were looking at someone whose name had just escaped your tongue. Kento was barely recognizable in his pinstriped suit, his polished shoes. The hair that had swept against your cheeks that night now cut short. And he looked…
Tired.
Standing in the check-out line holding a tray with a lone sandwich.
Normal.
Easy.
Like it was simple to leave the world of jujutsu behind.
Like all it took to lead a normal life was to choose it.
Like it was of absolutely no consequence to say I love you and just go.
People die everyday. What’s a broken heart?
You pulled your collar up against the wind, reminded yourself that Satoru was waiting at the meeting point.
Pretended you didn’t see the smile on his face reflected on the woman’s at the register when it was his turn to pay.
But he still put an arm around your shoulders and pulled you close, long legs dangling off the exposed steel beam you were both seated on in the middle of the derelict candy factory.
The curse was gone. Semi-special grade. Would have probably taken you about forty-five minutes to exorcise.
But Satoru had done it in five.
He didn’t have to be there, strictly speaking.
It was convenient, however —
“But I want you anyway.”
— for the things both of you needed to keep buried.
You close your eyes, feel the breath of his approach fanning hot over you: forehead, cheeks, chin.
Lips.
The last one he takes greedily, mouth already open to taste you on his tongue, heat scalding when he slips past the seams of your lips to explore, like he has done so many times before.
And every time his kisses land on that particular corner, you remember…
I love you.
The man who left.
And now you’re with a man who has never once said the same to you.
Because he is also thinking of one who left.
And it isn’t you. Never you.
Because when Satoru closes his eyes, he sees Geto Suguru.
Curse user. Mass murderer. His best friend.
Another casualty of Haibara’s untimely death, driven to despair only to find comfort in violence’s embrace.
And now, you and Satoru pick up the pieces of being left behind.
Because when Satoru pulls your hair from its ponytail, he is running hands through the ebony strands of Suguru’s. When he curls his fingers to anchor at the base of your scalp to pull with barely restrained force, he feels as broken as you do by the weight of absence.
You cry. Every time.
And so you fuck with abandon.
Hold onto Gojo Satoru like it’s the last thing — the only thing — keeping you afloat in this drowning life, hips snapping up to meet his over and over again until you are both merged in a brutal rhythm where all that is demanded of you is to feel.
Close your eyes and pretend that your nails are raking down Kento’s back, every slash of red an admonition.
Because he had opened the door to love and left without closing the gate or the shutters, and even now, a candle burns within as the wreckage of the seasons pile in upon the doorstep:
The blistering frost of winter.
The interminable rains of spring.
The desiccating heat of summer.
The death and decay of fall.
So you wrap arms and legs around Satoru in this communion of pain, offering yourself to the Strongest because it turned out that he, too, had a heart of glass.
He doesn’t take off his blindfold.
It is easier this way.
Shaves off the edge of guilt when you come hard on the rising tide of ecstasy, body wracked with pleasure made all the sharper when you imagine that it is Kento buried deeply inside you, Kento sinking teeth into the tender flesh where neck meets shoulder, Kento gasping your name in desperation instead of Satoru’s muffled moans of Geto’s into your hair.
“Make it hurt. Please.”
And Satoru does.
Knows by now just the right way to dig fingers into your hips until they leave tell-tale marks he can later admire on your reflection in the full-length, the right way to catch your hardened nipples between his teeth, biting down until you’re on the edge of tears before he finally relents, soothing the sting with broad licks from a flattened tongue. Acknowledges your pleas for more, harder, faster until sweat beads on his forehead and coherence is no longer an option, the only thing keeping you tethered to consciousness sheer anticipation — waiting for each moment of impact, Satoru hard, hot and swollen as he stretches the walls of your wet heat, wringing your body from the inside out till you are given over completely to brutal sensation.
Until the thoughts are gone.
Until Kento is replaced by the staccato refrains of your heart beating hard against your chest.
Until Satoru drapes himself over you like a blanket and your hands move as they always do: hold him close to run fingers through his dampened hair. Press kisses to his temples even as he softens slowly inside you, unwilling to break apart from this tenuous connection wherein you both felt human.
There’s something in Satoru’s voice like an animal spooked — the act of performance, of bravado, long since dropped around you. Pointless now, when you and Satoru knew each other the way you did.
His hand finds your face, fingers caressing as his thumb brushes slow circles on the apple of your cheek. He places the tip of his index against the ridge of your cupid’s bow, tracing from corner to corner of your parted mouth before he presses smoothly inside, chest heaving at the feel of you sucking him deeper on instinct.
“Called me the other day. Finally admitted that he couldn’t do the corporate thing anymore.”
He keeps his tone light, but fear tracks in the tremor of his voice; minuscule but you sense it nonetheless like an animal attuned to danger.
Reaching out, you slide his blindfold off — movement slow and gradual, giving him ample time and space to stop you if he so desired.
Satoru allows it.
Lets you kneel before him on the bed in the penthouse suite he’d booked even though you’d only be staying for a few hours. Watches with a steady gaze as you undress without an ounce of hesitation: top, skirt, underwear discarded in a careless heap on the floor. And when you reached for your stockings—
“Leave them.”
Pushing off from where he had reclined against the pillows, he trails his hands along the length of your stockings coloured like second-skin: tips of toes drawn to the arch of your foot, fingertips slowly ascending from the swell of your calf to the peaks of your knees, tracing slow circles just to hear the rhythm of your breath falter.
You watch as his blue-eyed gaze fixes on the angles of your legs, falling into each other and obscuring the view in between, as if playing coy. His tongue emerges in a flash of pink, licking slow along the edge of his bottom lip.
“Are you happy to hear it?”
He has a hand in between now, palm gliding back and forth along the insides of your thighs, reaching further and further up each time until he is almost touching you. The contact makes you arch, hips rising off the bed in the hopes of meeting him halfway, fully aware that the sumptuous sheets beneath you were going to get soaked tonight for neither of you had bothered to lay down a towel.
“He’s married now. My happiness is no longer of any consequence.”
Satoru stills for a moment, studies your face. Absorbs each reaction flickering across your features as the movement of your body grows increasingly erratic when he resumes his, desperate to seek contact with his fingers. Your pussy parts with the motion, just enough for him to see how you glistened already, flesh darkening with the swell of lust coursing thick and fast through your veins.
Married.
Nanami Kento is married.
Ino had showed you the photos in the break room months ago, swiping on his phone through the carousel of images: Ino himself seated beside Satoru and Yaga at a table delegated for friends and colleagues from a past life. Shoko hadn’t been able to make it but sent a gift along with well-wishes for the new couple.
And as for you…
…Kento hadn’t even seen fit to send you an invitation.
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” Satoru had said when he found out, doing up the buttons of his shirt and sliding his blindfold back in place before he turned to look at you, naked and tangled in the sheets of a love hotel this time, staring intently at the remnants of his cum on your fingers.
You had lifted your hand to your face, inhaled deeply before licking each finger clean, the tepid salt of him on your tongue grounding you in the moment. Satoru’s weight shifted on the waterbed.
“I’ll be fine,” you had lied.
Even now, you sometimes wondered if Satoru knew the true extent of what fine had looked like when you trashed your apartment the day Nanami Kento promised himself to another woman.
That your neighbours one floor down had knocked, concerned, after feeling the impact of you sweeping every book off the shelves lining your walls. That there was so much broken glass it took you forever to get the shards out of the thick pile of your area rug. That you taped garbage bags to the windows after tearing your blackout blinds to shreds because you still had that 6 am mission to get up for the next day.
Satoru finally relents, touching you to elicit a gasp from your lips while your eyes flutter shut against the sensation, against the memories — raw like a wound that had yet to learn how to stop bleeding out. But the darkness is not a friend for Kento lives there like a curse, smiling as he waits beside an altar for you, beautiful bathed in the golden halo of his hair and dressed in a tuxedo you’ll never see him wear.
It is cruel.
He is cruel.
“It matters to me. What makes you happy?”
Satoru’s words are whispered between your legs, his shock of white hair tickling against your inner thighs and you have to remind yourself not to clamp his head between them.
He kisses you first. Always does. Breath skating across skin before he is pressing his lips to your core, reverent as if caressing a lover’s face. Seeking permission through softness, tastes experimental on the tip of his tongue before everything deepens and you witness — feel — the full extent of his hunger.
Teasing flicks encouraging the swell of your clit before he is drawing it entirely into his mouth. Flattened tongue adding to the dew on your folds before he is slipping a gentle finger in the space between, long and dexterous, to feel you from the inside out.
You clench hard around the desired intrusion. Let out a shuddering breath when a second finger joins the first. Eyes flying open when he introduces the third just in time to see him twitch in his pants, Satoru inhaling deeply to tamper impatience down.
“Tell me. I want to know,” he presses.
And it would have been so simple. So easy. To fall in love with Satoru. To lie with him, make love to him and forever entangle your lives together without the ghosts that haunted your lives — unreachable people who held hearts in iron grips like delicate bouquets of forget-me-nots.
Happiness?
What did it even look like, feel like, to you now?
So you draw Satoru up from between your legs, taste yourself when you kiss him — on his mouth, his tongue, on the shining surfaces of his cheeks and chin. Do your best to smile even with tears prickling at the corners of your eyes when you say,
“You. You make me happy.”
Then you help him undress, slide down his body until your hands are caressing the muscular contours of his thighs, and take him in your mouth.
Satoru groans softly, closes his eyes.
Do I make you happy?
Tilts his head back until you can see his Adam’s Apple bobbing in sharp relief.
Even though I’m not Suguru?
If Satoru doesn’t believe you, he does not say.
Just threads his fingers through your hair, shuddering to feel your tongue tracing the veins that pulse along his shaft. Breathes out heavily when you sought to take more and more of him in, easing flesh down your throat to fill the hollowness in your chest, only ever echoing one name…
You press a kiss to the nape of his neck. Slip both arms around him, chest pressed to his back. Feel the slight tremor that courses through his body though to anyone else, Gojo Satoru looked cool and unaffected.
“The Night Parade of A Hundred Demons. You’d think he’d have more to say after ghosting us for ten years,” he scoffs.
If Geto Suguru returned, would you go to him?
If Nanami Kento came back, would you leave me?
“I’m sorry,” you murmur, staying silent about how all this was inevitable. Keep quiet because Satoru’s reunion with Suguru had come at such a high price.
“Stay close to me when we mobilize.” He is already back to business.
“Yaga assigned me to Kyoto—"
“I don’t care. You’re coming to Shinjuku. I need to be able to see you at all times.”
You open your mouth. Hesitate. “It’ll look strange.”
“I’m beyond caring at this point about who knows about me and you. Unless you’re worried about him.”
Him.
Kento.
The man with a golden band on the ring finger of his left hand.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Can’t help it. I can’t think straight when it comes to you. You’re the only one I have left.”
Arms tightening around him, you brush your lips against the pulse at Satoru’s neck, feel its rhythm throb beneath your kiss.
His hands still but Kento doesn’t look up from rewrapping his blade, the Dalmatian spotted cloth so familiar you ache at the sight of it. His wedding band gleams in the light of the setting sun, dying ember rays streaming through the windows of the school’s faculty lounge.
You had waited till everyone else had filed out, using the last couple of hours before sunset to prepare for the battle of their lives: Geto Suguru’s twisted reenactment of the Night of a Hundred Demons, whereupon he was set to unleash thousands of curses on civilians in Tokyo and Kyoto.
And if there was a chance that either you or him would die tonight, you had to know.
“Don’t give me bullshit. Vague reasons about soul-crushing work or choosing how to die.”
Your tone was sharper than you initially intended but you didn’t care. Because the dregs of unrequited love were surfacing now with all the impact of a volcanic explosion beneath the ocean’s surface: all the tears you had cried, the men you had dated only to push away because they couldn’t compare to the one you had built up in your mind. The ten pathetic years that had passed whilst you stood still, unable to move beyond that single confession laced with a kiss.
Because you needed to know whether Nanami Kento had really meant what he said, or whether he was a sadist playing a trick.
The blade is only midway wrapped when he places it down carefully before him. Silent. The space between you and him swelling with time and memory.
And you cannot help the tears that fall though you had sworn you wouldn’t cry.
“I saw your wife once. Before you were married. The woman at the bakery, right? Red beret, white uniform? You…didn’t even invite me to your wed—"
“I meant it.”
The low bass of his voice cuts through the air.
“When I said I loved you. Before I left.”
Love.
Loved.
And now?
“And I came back because I needed to see that you were all right.”
All right.
The words are poison. Thorns. And you do not know whether to rage or despair because frustration is lead in your lungs and your mind has shut down.
I am not okay.
You manage a scoff, manage to brace yourself with a palm to the wall because your own legs could not be trusted.
“What constitutes ‘all right’ to you, Nanami? ‘I’m in one piece,’ all right? ‘I still haven’t died fighting a curse,’ all right? ‘Still show up to do my job,’ all right?”
You despise the way your voice shakes. The way you can’t quite modulate your volume anymore.
Kento removes his glasses, eyes closed as his index and thumb meet at the bridge of his nose.
Breathes.
Stands.
Takes one step, then another. Brown leather oxfords tracking across wooden floorboards until he is toe to toe with you.
And he is close, so close to you that you have to keep reminding yourself that this is not a dream. That the rise and fall of his chest — indigo cloth stretched broad over muscle and sinew — is real, cruel like the heart that beats beneath.
Rhythm strong and ongoing though your own had withered to dust long ago.
“I wish you had stayed away.”
The words leave your lips in a whisper.
You do not look at his face. Keep your eyes trained on the dots of his spotted tie. Imprint upon your mind the way his hands twitch at your words, long fingers curling tight until you could no longer see the golden band you knew he wore.
And the only thing your traitorous heart wants is…him.
Close enough to touch, to smell — clean and calm because fuck him, how dare he keep cool when you are once more teenaged and vulnerable and lying in his arms, staring at the same ceiling and thinking of Haibara and silently mourning a childhood lost.
So many questions and not a single satisfactory answer Nanami Kento can give either to you or himself.
Because how does one turn back the pages of a mistake?
And Nanami Kento — practical, prudent man that he was — had been careful with everything but his heart.
And now, on top of that, he could add cowardly to the list.
Others might call it being responsible. Being an adult. Living gracefully with the irreversible choices one has made.
But Kento knows that honesty is the hardest, bravest thing that has ever been asked of him. And instead, he had chosen silence.
Because what would have been the point of telling you that he had not meant to ever come back? That seeing Haibara draw his last breath while working out a way to extricate his best friend and himself from an impossible situation had fractured something inside him he couldn’t even name? That Jujutsu High was so full of ghosts and memories that life had whittled away into days of grey, a simple act of putting one foot in front of the other while pretending he wasn’t ash on the inside.
Kento had to leave. Life itself had depended on it.
And he hadn’t really been thinking that night when he pulled you into his arms, holding you to him and finding a modicum of peace in the space between your synchronized heartbeats. The only thing he was certain of was that he loved you, had loved you since the day you noticed him slipping Kawabata’s Snow Country into his bag and sheepishly confessed to having cried while reading it. That life, temporary like the seasons, meant that time could not be wasted.
So he pressed his lips to yours for the first and last time.
In the beginning, Nanami thought about you every day.
Getting adjusted to a new workplace, new people. A new life.
Back when he was trying to force himself to belong in spaces that felt like wearing someone else’s clothes.
But then gradually, the days got easier — monotony a well-oiled machine driving life towards its final destination: earn enough money to retire while he could still enjoy it, live out the remainder of his years on a beach somewhere nice. Malaysia, perhaps.
Finally get a chance to read all the books he had accumulated on the shelves that lined the walls of his apartment, fingertips tracing haphazard patterns in the sand when he turns to the lounger beside him to ask what you’d thought about the book—
No.
Not you.
Nanami had given up that right a long time ago.
And every time he thought he’d finally worked up the courage to ask Gojo for your number, he faltered.
Hello. It’s me. I’m sorry for everything. Can I be a part of your life again?
There is no deterrent greater than shame.
And then…Keiko happened.
Kento had pretended not to notice the way her eyes never left him whenever he frequented the bakery she owned, always buying the same sandwich day in and day out. Keeping conversation to the polite minimum required to maintain social cohesion, careful not to encourage, not to give false hope.
But then he’d noticed the curse on her shoulder — Grade 4, at most — and exorcised it with a simple gesture of the hand. And after many, many repeated requests, he finally relented and accepted her plea for a date.
“Just one dinner! To thank you for helping me! My shoulder’s been feeling so much better ever since you did…whatever you did!”
Kento had dreamt of you that night. Saw your face across the table at the French restaurant, lovely and lit by candlelight. Felt the warmth of your fingers beneath his hand when he reached for you, unable to believe his good fortune at having the chance to actually share a meal with you like this. You had whispered something just beyond his limit of hearing, and when he had leaned in closer and asked you to repeat yourself, his elbow caught the stem of his wine glass, spilling Pinot Noir across the front of his pants.
He had jolted awake. Hated himself a little more.
Hated himself a lot more when he said yes to a second date. Then a third.
The first time Nanami made love to Keiko, he couldn’t get it up. She was kind about it, had put her hand gently on his lap when he explained that it’d been a long time. He had appreciated her understanding. Then stepped into the shower and promptly turned up the temperature to near scalding, letting water beat over his face because the thought of you alone was enough to get him hard every single time.
She had been the one to bring up marriage. Said no other man made her feel safe like he did. Secure. Keiko had mentioned wanting children eventually, as did he. Maybe we could start a family together? she had asked one day after dinner, eyes shy and cheeks flushed when she placed a cup of tea onto the table before him.
And Kento…
…could not find a legitimate reason to say no.
It had been almost a decade now since he told you he loved you. Since he left. Whatever might have blossomed between you and him had surely died by now. You were brilliant, beautiful; everything anyone would ever want in a partner. And though he had held tenaciously onto sentiment, Kento knew it was ridiculous of him to think you would be cut from the same cloth.
It made Keiko happy, the wedding planning. His own mother had been over the moon when they broke the news to her. And when it came time to drawing up the guest list, Kento’s hand had hovered over your name between Gojo’s and Shoko’s before finally drawing a thick black line through it.
Because he couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t trust himself not to break down in the middle of his own wedding day.
To renege on his vows right after he had said them if you happened to appear before him.
The girl of his dreams…
…forever to remain in his dreams.
“You’re a fucking idiot. You know that, right?” Gojo had cornered him that night at the reception, slinging an arm over Nanami’s shoulder and smiling like he was tipsy though not a single drop of alcohol had passed his lips. “And here I thought Suguru was the heartless one.”
Knew he went overboard when he grew more and more silent as the celebrations wore on, reassuring Keiko in her white dress that he was merely tired. He couldn’t let anyone know how shaken up he had been by Gojo’s words.
The insinuation cutting like a knife, the hidden hope that had flared dangerously in his heart to think that maybe…maybe you still cared? Still cared about him while he…
…he was now a married man.
Gojo didn’t stay long. Had made his exit soon after delivering his message, mentioning something about an emergency that necessitated his immediate attention before he left the banquet hall.
And in a moment of insanity, Nanami Kento excused himself and followed him.
All the way out to the lobby of the hotel before he stopped in a dead halt. Because he had heard your name on Gojo Satoru’s lips, stretched into a smile as he spoke on the phone, saying:
Three months into married life, Kento made his decision.
He would quit his job. Return to the jujtusu world he had sworn to leave for life.
He had discussed it with his wife. Given Keiko ample time to think about it, to adjust. To come to terms with the reality of things like curses and jujutsu. Reassured her that a sorcerer of his calibre could earn enough to ensure that they’d continue to live comfortably.
“It’s not about the money, Kento!” Keiko had exclaimed in exasperation when he first broached the subject with her. “I’m worried about YOU, my husband! Curses…these things…they all sound so dangerous!”
He’d had nothing to say to that. Not when it was true.
But he needed to do this.
Needed to find you again in that abandoned world, make sure you were fine, though he had long lost that right, probably never even had it in the first place.
To return to that place of hurt for reasons so vague they didn’t even seem coherent to him at times, aside from the one truth that had never quite left Nanami Kento’s heart:
Kento knew this was deserved. That it was more than he deserved.
But what had hurt him more were your tears, running freely down your face and him, completely impotent in the moment. Unable to reach out and touch you, hold you like he had so desperately wanted because he was a husband now.
Just not yours.
And you are even more beautiful than he remembered. As brilliant as you are deadly, confirming without a doubt that Kento had committed the most grievous error of his life, one from which he could never recover, never set right.
Despite the blindfold, he could sense the way Gojo’s gaze tracked you in every room the white-haired man entered; seeking you, always seeking you. And though it pained him in a way Kento knew he had no right to feel, he also knew no one stood a better chance of surviving in this world than one under the protection of Gojo Satoru, the Strongest.
So he pretended that it didn’t cost him to say,
“Stay close to Gojo.”
Pretended he couldn’t hear you cry when he packed up his blunt blade and left the faculty lounge, footsteps taking him farther and farther away from love.
Rubbed the ring on his finger and reminded himself of family and responsibilities…
…and silently mourned that a single decision had been enough to cleave his entire life in two.
And once again, you are transported back to that bed in the student dormitory, staring at a ceiling as you took comfort in the heat of another’s body even as you sought to soothe them all the same.
“I did it. Finally killed him.”
Satoru’s voice is cold. Devoid of feeling that you knew was overwhelming him with the force of a tsunami on the inside. Always on the inside.
There was no other way.
He had threatened the students. Put them at risk.
Geto Suguru might as well have attacked Gojo Satoru’s own children.
Tightening your embrace, you draw Satoru closer to you, each mourning love forever lost by way of a silent understanding that has characterized so much of your relationship with him. It is strange but necessary, incomprehensible perhaps to anyone but you and him, but neither of you could work up the will to care at this point. Maybe never have.
Geto Suguru is dead.
Nanami Kento is married.
And you and Gojo Satoru…
…you’ve got each other.
Part of you would always harbour a piece of Kento as he was all those years ago: before the wedding, before the leaving, before Haibara.
Just as you knew that Suguru would always have a place in Satoru’s heart: forever untainted — the best friend who had never gone astray.
And yet…
“I love you, Satoru.”
You were sick of standing still.
His breath hitches, body suddenly stiff in your arms.
Hey Satoru, want to come with me?
Let’s leave this heartbreak behind.
Find happiness of our own.
We deserve it, no?
I think we do.
I think it’s time.
Satoru pulls off his blindfold. Stares at you with red-rimmed eyes.
And you know in this moment, that even if he says no, even if he doesn’t feel the same, even if he accuses you of ruining everything with those three words, it wouldn’t matter.
Because you had spoken your truth.
You did love him, in your own way. Had gradually, unwittingly stumbled through the fog of trying to find the answer to heartache in the arms of another to actually building something that could potentially resemble a real relationship, if you and him would just give each other the chance.
Give yourselves the chance.
To be the ones who stay.
Together.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything—"
“I love you too.”
Hand finding the back of your head, Satoru pulls you flush against his chest, embracing you so tightly the rhythm of his heart beats against your cheek.
“Someday, Satoru — maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow — but someday, let’s try for happiness together, okay?” you say, trying to keep your voice from wavering.
For a long while, Satoru says nothing. Only nods, breath shaky when he draws it in upon a deep heave before finally whispering into your hair:
“You. You make me happy, too.”
You close your eyes, swallow down the emotion that rises within you to hear those familiar words falling from his lips this time.
He clears his throat. “Have done so for a while now, actually. Guess it’s something you have a knack for.”
“Don’t leave me?”
You wondered whether Satoru could hear the smile in your words.
“I won’t.”
Because you could hear the love in his.
And as his lips found yours, reasons fell from your shoulders like a heavy winter cloak that had been worn for too long. Because in Gojo Satoru’s kiss, you finally sensed the coming of spring.
You made it to the end! Hope you all enjoyed this piece! Please stay tuned for more writing to come! 😊💕
P.S. For all my Nanami lovers, please know that Kento WOULD NEVER!! 😂. Sweet baby is responsible to the core but I had to amp up the angst somehow lol.
"Vague Reasons" is copyright 2026 Kintsukoi, all rights reserved. Please do not repost/modify/translate/plagiarize in any manner or on any platform.
“Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”
— I Know What You Think of Me, Tim Kreider for the New York Times
after YEARS of seeing this quote online and finding it to be the most deeply and resoundingly profound writing i finally found the source article and absolutely nothing could prepare me for this opening paragraph
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