[itsnika]

.masterlist under the cut.— taglists.— asks.— nika's bookshelf.

mainly jjk-centric blog. i take requests for oneshots. mdni.

do not steal, reupload, or translate any of my works. most importantly, do not feed my work into any kind of AI.

SERIES:

The Oracle's Burden (Gojo/Reader—ongoing) Playing Favourites (Gojo/Reader—ongoing) A Pretty Excuse (Gojo/Reader/Geto, Sukuna/Reader—ongoing)

ONESHOTS:

Inappropriate Use of Cursed Technique (collection):

No Hands (Gojo/Reader—2,5k) Can't Hide (Sukuna/Reader—2,8k)

[itsnika]

.masterlist.— taglists.

pairing: Satoru Gojo/Reader summary: With your technique, you can see one hour into the future. You've built a career on it—you've kept people alive with it. And then one night, a little drunk and foolish, you look too far. notes: <3

(previous chapter) ༝ Chapter 14. (next chapter)

The memories that woke you in the middle of the night are still there when morning comes. They remain little more than scattered fragments drifting through your mind, but for the first time, they don't vanish the moment you reach for them. The invisible wall is still there, yet now it has cracks—small enough that the vision no longer slips away the instant you try to remember it.

You should feel relieved. Instead, shame fills the space between your ribs, leaving you buried beneath the blankets, pretending to be asleep when Shoko quietly peeks into the room.

The bedroom door creaks open—you stay perfectly still.

Through the thin fabric draped over your face, the pale morning light bleeds into a hazy glow, reducing the room to muted colours and blurred shapes. You concentrate on your breathing, carefully slowing each inhale and exhale until it sounds deep enough to pass for sleep.

It's ridiculous.

You're lying there with your eyes wide open beneath the blanket, hiding like a guilty child trying to avoid being caught.

Silence stretches across the room. After several long seconds, the hinges creak once more, followed by the soft click of the door closing. Only then do you allow yourself to breathe properly, your shoulders relaxing.

You don't know how you're supposed to make yourself leave this room today.

Shoko and Satoru probably think you simply panicked yesterday, that your mind buckled beneath the strain of recovering lost memories. But you know how close it came to becoming something far worse—you couldn't tell where the vision ended and reality began. You were ready to kill your best friend.

The realization twists through your stomach like a dull knife.

Several minutes pass before you cautiously lower the blanket just enough to peek over its edge. The moment your eyes land on the notebook lying open on the floor, you almost pull the covers back over your head; it rests exactly where you dropped it during the night, the pen abandoned nearby, pages filled with frantic handwriting.

Your fingers twitch beneath the blanket. Every instinct urges you to cross the room and read through it again, desperate to uncover another fragment before it slips away. Instead, you remain where you are, staring at the ink-covered pages from the safety of the bed.

Beyond the bedroom door, muffled voices drift through the apartment. Shoko and Satoru. They're speaking quietly enough that you can't make out the words, only the gentle rise and fall of their conversation.

Time stretches.

Sunlight creeps higher across the ceiling, inch by inch, while your stomach eventually begins to protest. You ignore it, curling deeper beneath the blankets. Even the dryness in your throat becomes another small suffering you refuse to ease.

You remain in bed until nearly noon. Only then do you finally move, slipping quietly onto the floor and wincing as the old wooden boards groan beneath your weight. Barefoot, you approach the door and press your ear against the cool surface.

The voices on the other side are clearer now.

"...Could make something..."

"...There's nothing to make."

A long, exaggerated groan follows. You don't need to see Satoru to know it came from him.

They argue for a while about whether one of them should stay and wait for you to wake up, and you lean closer, squeezing your eyes shut as if that will somehow sharpen your hearing. Relief washes over you when they eventually agree to leave together—apparently, there's something they need to talk about anyway.

Footsteps move through the apartment. A cupboard opens. Something is placed on the counter. Then comes the rustle of jackets, the scrape of shoes against the floor, and quiet bickering that never quite reaches your ears clearly.

Finally, the lock turns. The front door closes with a dull thump. Silence slowly settles over the apartment. Only after several moments do you open your bedroom door.

The kitchen is your first destination. You fill a glass with water and lean against the cool edge of the counter, taking slow sips. The cold liquid stings your teeth, but it does little to ease the tightness lodged in your throat.

On the way back to your room, a second glass balanced in your hand, your steps slow as the living room catches your attention. The memory returns. Not the same as before—not alone this time. The vision from last night bleeds into what actually happened only hours ago, the two moments folding over each other until the line between them becomes impossible to find.

Satoru looking over your shoulder. Shoko stepping out from the darkness of the hall. Your body moving between them. The phantom weight of a dagger that never appears.

The living room remains untouched, sunlight spilling across the ground through the curtains. Still, your mind paints the scene differently. Blood stains the wood where there is nothing but empty space.

Your fingers tighten around the glass until your knuckles ache.

Breathe.

You force yourself to inhale, but the pressure building inside your chest refuses to ease. Something inside you snaps. Turning sharply, you hurry back to your room and shut the door harder than intended. The glass lands on your desk with a sharp clack, water spilling over the rim and dripping onto the floor.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Each quiet sound cuts through the silence, making your shoulders tense with every drop.

You crouch and yank your suitcase from beneath the bed.

You can't stay here.

The suitcase is thrown open, and clothes begin disappearing inside. Whatever your hands reach for first gets shoved into the growing pile. Within minutes, the room is a mess.

Once most of your wardrobe has been emptied, you sink down among the pages scattered across the floor. Some are filled with frantic handwriting. Others contain only fragments—half-finished sentences, rough sketches, names written until the ink nearly tears through the paper, questions that remain unanswered.

Everything gets gathered together: the notebook, the loose pages, every scrap that might hold some piece of what you've lost. The bundle disappears into the suitcase before the zipper is dragged shut with a sharp metallic rasp.

You change into a pair of jeans and a hoodie, your movements mechanical. As you pull the sleeves over your wrists, a quiet, humorless laugh catches in your throat: the irony isn't lost on you. When you first returned to Tokyo, you were convinced moving back into the dorms would feel strange after so many years away. Asking Shoko if you could stay with her was the obvious choice, but now, staying here, with her, feel dangerous—you no longer trust your mind.

You don't trust what you'll see the next time memory and reality bleed into each other. You don't trust what you might do if you lose your grip again. And if it happens, if you lose control, if Shoko gets hurt because of you… Your eyes squeeze shut. A sharp shake of your head follows, hard enough to make your neck ache, as though you can physically force the thought away before it takes hold.

You can't let that happen.

So, just like nearly ten years ago, when your transfer to Kyoto was finally approved, you leave without saying a word. The difference is that, back then, you ran all the way to another city. This time, you only make it as far as the school. It's not as far. But you're still running.

Once you've settled back into your old dorm room—and fed Yaga what you hope are convincing enough lies about how you think staying on campus would simply be easier, if he wants to continue asking you for assistance on the missions—you begin unpacking.

When you dig your phone out from the bottom of your suitcase, you notice how many notifications have been waiting for you. Four missed calls and six unread messages from Shoko. One message from Satoru: call Shoko back.

You stare at the screen for a long moment, thumb hovering over the notifications without opening a single one. Eventually, you switch your phone to silent and toss it onto the bed. The mattress dips before the blankets swallow it.

You can't bring yourself to answer either of them. The guilt already gnawing at you is enough. Hearing their voices would only make it worse. So instead, you throw yourself into the one thing that has consumed every waking moment since you opened your eyes two nights ago: the notebook, the scattered memories, and the impossible puzzle your vision left behind.

Within an hour, the room looks less like a bedroom and more like an investigation site.

Loose pages cover nearly every visible patch of floor. Some overlap in messy piles, while others have been separated into categories you've already reorganized several times. Sticky notes cling to the edges, filled with arrows, question marks, and observations that you were able to make after reading trough everything.

You kneel in the middle of the mess, staring at the fragments surrounding you. Every time you think you've found a connection, it slips away. Hours pass. Nothing fits. A tired sigh escapes as your gaze drifts over everything you've managed to piece together.

One sheet contains nothing but a crude drawing of a centipede—the same one you absentmindedly sketched near the training grounds without understanding why. Now you do. You saw a curse in your vision like that. You remember only a brief fragment: it crawling across concrete, cursed energy seeping from its small body. Nothing more. Around the drawing, squeezed into the margins, are scattered notes written with different levels of pressure, as though each line was added whenever another fragment surfaced.

Likes dark.

Drawn to density.

Another page holds only a single sentence, underlined so many times the paper is beginning to tear.

Nanami. Don't let him go to the far

It ends there. Whatever was supposed to come next vanished before you could write it. Your eyes stay fixed on the final word. Far where? No matter how long you stare, the sentence refuses to give anything back.

The last page of the notebook that you tore out is even stranger—the one you keep looking back at every few seconds.

Suguru.

His name covers the entire sheet, written over and over again in increasingly frantic handwriting, as if you wrote it once, stepped away, then returned only to write it again.

He knows.

He knows.

He knows.

Your brows pull together. Knows what? Nearly twenty minutes are spent searching through every other note, hoping the missing answer is hiding somewhere else. It isn't.

The possibility that Suguru appeared in your vision refuses to leave you alone. The entire reason you were able to push Senken that far was because you wanted to see him, and if you saw him in your vision, what happened between the two of you? If you think he knows something… what is it that you've forgotten?

The harder you chase the thought, the farther it slips away.

Eventually, you force yourself to move on, flipping the page over and setting it aside before it can consume another hour. That's when another note catches your attention. At first glance, it looks almost empty. Only a few short phrases fill the page. But one sentence has been circled so many times the ink has bled through.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

Your fingers stop at the edge of the paper. Whatever happens there, whatever this mission is, you marked it as important enough to circle repeatedly. It feels like the point where everything begins to unravel, like the loose thread in a sweater: pull it and everything starts to come apart. The thought appears so suddenly that you almost don't recognize it as your own. Quickly, you grab the pen and write it down.

After adding the note, your mind drifts elsewhere. Toward something that bothers you more than the missing memories themselves.

Your visions have always been consistent. They show the future exactly as it unfolds if nothing changes. They don't create impossible situations. They don't contradict reality. At least, they never had before.

The first inconsistency you find has a name. Yuji Itadori. Shoko told you he's one of Satoru's new first-years. But your notes tell a different story. After several minutes of searching, you find the page. Only a few rushed words are written there:

School underground. Restrained. Angry. Dangerous. Infected.

Nothing about him being a student. Nothing that matches what Shoko told you. You read the words again. Infected? Does that mean he gets sick? But a simple illness isn't a reason to be locked underground and restrained.

The memories don't fit reality.

A frustrated groan escapes as you drag your hands through your hair. You rearrange the pages yet again, look trough the ones you only skimmed at first. Nothing changes. With a sharp exhale, you grab the notebook and throw it across the room. It skids across the floor before crashing into the wall.

You bury your face in your hands, pressing your palms against your eyes until sparks bloom behind your eyelids. Your vision is a fucking riddle, and you can't solve it alone. But you know who could. Shoko. She would probably start connecting the pieces before you even finished explaining what little you remember.

The thought alone makes your stomach sink. Because after what happened two nights ago, you don't think you can face her.

Monday morning arrives far too quickly. A knock sounds at your door bright and early. You only managed a few hours of sleep, and apparently whoever is waiting on the other side has decided that's more than enough.

When you don't answer, the knocking comes again. Louder this time.

With a long, irritated sigh, you drag yourself out of bed and shuffle toward the door, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. The second it opens and reveals Satoru standing there, your first instinct is to close it again. His boot slips into the gap before you can.

"Not happy to see me?" he muses, sounding far too amused as you unsuccessfully try to push the door shut against him. "That's unlike you, isn't it? Especially considering you practically blew up my phone a few nights ago."

Heat crawls up your neck.

"That was an accident," you mutter, refusing to open the door any wider.

"Well," he says lightly, "me being here isn't."

He lets you wrestle with the door for another few seconds before wrapping one hand around its edge. Then, he slowly pushes it open despite your attempts to hold it in place, and you're forced to step back as he slips inside.

"I've been assigned a very special, very secret mission," he announces. The door closes behind him with a nudge of his heel, and he leans against it, hands tucked into his pockets.

"Then go do your job and stop bothering me."

The words come out sharper than you intend, but it's early, you're exhausted from barely sleeping, frustrated by the mess inside your head you can't solve, and even more annoyed because he's ruining your carefully planned attempt to avoid both him and Shoko for as long as possible.

Satoru doesn't seem offended in the slightest by your tone. Instead, his gaze drifts lazily around the room. It takes him all of three seconds to notice the state you've left it in and figure out what you've been doing all this time.

Pages cover every available surface. Sticky notes cling to the walls, desk, and wardrobe. Half-finished diagrams spread across loose sheets, arrows connecting names to questions, entire paragraphs crossed out and rewritten. The notebook sits open on the floor near the wall. The only thing missing is red string connecting everything together like one of those conspiracy boards from a detective movie.

Slowly, he pushes his sunglasses higher up his nose. "…Been busy?"

You narrow your eyes. Ignoring him seems like the safest option. Maybe he'll get bored and leave. Then again, this is Satoru. Curiosity is practically a personality trait, and sure enough, he starts wandering through the room before you can decide whether to stop him. He moves carefully around the scattered papers, crouching whenever something catches his attention. Every so often, he picks up page, scans it with obvious interest, then places it back exactly where he found it.

You let him. Physically shoving him out isn't exactly an option, and telling him to leave would only encourage him to stay longer. It's easier to let him satisfy his curiosity and wait for him to eventually lose interest. Except he doesn't.

His fingers come to rest on a half-torn page—the same one you spent nearly an hour staring at before finally giving up sometime around dawn.

"Oh," he murmurs. "Now that's interesting."

That gets your attention. You cross the room until you're standing beside him. He taps the page once with a finger, and you lean closer.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

"What about it?" you ask when he continues staring without offering an explanation, his thumb brushing over the ink.

He hums thoughtfully. "There's a curse we've been tracking for almost two months."

Something in your chest tightens. The conversation feels familiar. Not just the subject—the words themselves, like you've heard them before.

"I wanted to deal with it weeks ago," Satoru continues, voice drawn out lazily as he rubs the back of his neck. His attention drifts across the rest of the desk, scanning the notes. "But the higher-ups eventually decided it wasn't worth the resources. It wasn't appearing anywhere near densely populated areas, so they shelved the whole thing."

Each sentence lands with the strange weight of déjà vu. You don't understand why. You're almost certain you've never had this conversation with him before.

"Yaga," Satoru goes on, "just received some very secret information that our elusive little friend finally wandered into the city." A grin slowly spreads across his face. "And he may or may not have accidentally hinted where."

Arms folding across your chest, you move back toward the bed and sit down."So you weren't assigned anything."

He turns arouns, leaning against the desk. "Nope."

"You just decided to go anyway."

He shrugs. "I've been buried under teacher duties for weeks." His voice turns dramatic as he flashes an exaggerated pout. "Besides, why wait until the city is in chaos and every sorcerer starts tripping over each other trying to catch it? I figured I'd save everyone the future headache."

Your gaze shifts back to the page in his hand. "And what exactly does any of that have to do with you barging into my room?"

His mouth opens. For a second, he looks like he's about to say something, but then changes his mind.

"The curse is classified as unpredictable," he says. "I need someone who specializes in predicting things that aren't supposed to be predictable." His eyes meet yours, your fingers dig lightly into your skin, as you force yourself not to look away. "Normally, we'd do this your way. You stay here, and I call you whenever I need another location."

A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. Your eyes flick to the side, as you bite inside of your cheek, taking a shallow breath and then making yourself to look back at him.

"But I thought… maybe this time we could do it the old-fashioned way." He tilts his head slightly. "Think of it as practice before you're officially back in Yaga's office, giving him intel through Senken."

The lightness in his tone is deliberate, you can tell, and it only makes you feel more ashamed for not answering his or Shoko's messages.

"Technically, there aren't any real stakes here. Seems like a good opportunity to ease yourself back into using your technique, doesn't it?"

The answer is already on the tip of your tongue. No. You don't want to spend an entire day alone with him after what happened at Shoko's apartment. You don't trust yourself enough for that. But your eyes drift back to the torn page.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

The words sit there like a warning. Whatever happens at the hospital matters, and if you want answers, you have to go.

"Fine." The word leaves your mouth with obvious reluctance, as you try very hard to convince yourself that you're only agreeing because of the vision. Not because some small, guilty part of you selfishly doesn't want him to leave.

[itsnika]

The Oracle's Burden (Gojo/Reader—ongoing)

@swthngs, @l1v1ngzomb1e, @fics-tbr, @zanawhois, @isa012486, @theonedayididnt, @echosoftheriver, @superstaargirl, @ironmal, @feyrfly, @strawbscakes, @suniloli, @nunuluxx, @kittymeowxo, @babygirl-panda19, @bleepybl00p, @heeknow, @proudlyperpetualcipher, @whimsyjellybean, @ariilovesmoney ...

[itsnika]

.masterlist.— taglists.

pairing: Satoru Gojo/Reader summary: With your technique, you can see one hour into the future. You've built a career on it—you've kept people alive with it. And then one night, a little drunk and foolish, you look too far. notes: <3

(previous chapter) ༝ Chapter 14. (next chapter)

The memories that woke you in the middle of the night are still there when morning comes. They remain little more than scattered fragments drifting through your mind, but for the first time, they don't vanish the moment you reach for them. The invisible wall is still there, yet now it has cracks—small enough that the vision no longer slips away the instant you try to remember it.

You should feel relieved. Instead, shame fills the space between your ribs, leaving you buried beneath the blankets, pretending to be asleep when Shoko quietly peeks into the room.

The bedroom door creaks open—you stay perfectly still.

Through the thin fabric draped over your face, the pale morning light bleeds into a hazy glow, reducing the room to muted colours and blurred shapes. You concentrate on your breathing, carefully slowing each inhale and exhale until it sounds deep enough to pass for sleep.

It's ridiculous.

You're lying there with your eyes wide open beneath the blanket, hiding like a guilty child trying to avoid being caught.

Silence stretches across the room. After several long seconds, the hinges creak once more, followed by the soft click of the door closing. Only then do you allow yourself to breathe properly, your shoulders relaxing.

You don't know how you're supposed to make yourself leave this room today.

Shoko and Satoru probably think you simply panicked yesterday, that your mind buckled beneath the strain of recovering lost memories. But you know how close it came to becoming something far worse—you couldn't tell where the vision ended and reality began. You were ready to kill your best friend.

The realization twists through your stomach like a dull knife.

Several minutes pass before you cautiously lower the blanket just enough to peek over its edge. The moment your eyes land on the notebook lying open on the floor, you almost pull the covers back over your head; it rests exactly where you dropped it during the night, the pen abandoned nearby, pages filled with frantic handwriting.

Your fingers twitch beneath the blanket. Every instinct urges you to cross the room and read through it again, desperate to uncover another fragment before it slips away. Instead, you remain where you are, staring at the ink-covered pages from the safety of the bed.

Beyond the bedroom door, muffled voices drift through the apartment. Shoko and Satoru. They're speaking quietly enough that you can't make out the words, only the gentle rise and fall of their conversation.

Time stretches.

Sunlight creeps higher across the ceiling, inch by inch, while your stomach eventually begins to protest. You ignore it, curling deeper beneath the blankets. Even the dryness in your throat becomes another small suffering you refuse to ease.

You remain in bed until nearly noon. Only then do you finally move, slipping quietly onto the floor and wincing as the old wooden boards groan beneath your weight. Barefoot, you approach the door and press your ear against the cool surface.

The voices on the other side are clearer now.

"...Could make something..."

"...There's nothing to make."

A long, exaggerated groan follows. You don't need to see Satoru to know it came from him.

They argue for a while about whether one of them should stay and wait for you to wake up, and you lean closer, squeezing your eyes shut as if that will somehow sharpen your hearing. Relief washes over you when they eventually agree to leave together—apparently, there's something they need to talk about anyway.

Footsteps move through the apartment. A cupboard opens. Something is placed on the counter. Then comes the rustle of jackets, the scrape of shoes against the floor, and quiet bickering that never quite reaches your ears clearly.

Finally, the lock turns. The front door closes with a dull thump. Silence slowly settles over the apartment. Only after several moments do you open your bedroom door.

The kitchen is your first destination. You fill a glass with water and lean against the cool edge of the counter, taking slow sips. The cold liquid stings your teeth, but it does little to ease the tightness lodged in your throat.

On the way back to your room, a second glass balanced in your hand, your steps slow as the living room catches your attention. The memory returns. Not the same as before—not alone this time. The vision from last night bleeds into what actually happened only hours ago, the two moments folding over each other until the line between them becomes impossible to find.

Satoru looking over your shoulder. Shoko stepping out from the darkness of the hall. Your body moving between them. The phantom weight of a dagger that never appears.

The living room remains untouched, sunlight spilling across the ground through the curtains. Still, your mind paints the scene differently. Blood stains the wood where there is nothing but empty space.

Your fingers tighten around the glass until your knuckles ache.

Breathe.

You force yourself to inhale, but the pressure building inside your chest refuses to ease. Something inside you snaps. Turning sharply, you hurry back to your room and shut the door harder than intended. The glass lands on your desk with a sharp clack, water spilling over the rim and dripping onto the floor.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Each quiet sound cuts through the silence, making your shoulders tense with every drop.

You crouch and yank your suitcase from beneath the bed.

You can't stay here.

The suitcase is thrown open, and clothes begin disappearing inside. Whatever your hands reach for first gets shoved into the growing pile. Within minutes, the room is a mess.

Once most of your wardrobe has been emptied, you sink down among the pages scattered across the floor. Some are filled with frantic handwriting. Others contain only fragments—half-finished sentences, rough sketches, names written until the ink nearly tears through the paper, questions that remain unanswered.

Everything gets gathered together: the notebook, the loose pages, every scrap that might hold some piece of what you've lost. The bundle disappears into the suitcase before the zipper is dragged shut with a sharp metallic rasp.

You change into a pair of jeans and a hoodie, your movements mechanical. As you pull the sleeves over your wrists, a quiet, humorless laugh catches in your throat: the irony isn't lost on you. When you first returned to Tokyo, you were convinced moving back into the dorms would feel strange after so many years away. Asking Shoko if you could stay with her was the obvious choice, but now, staying here, with her, feel dangerous—you no longer trust your mind.

You don't trust what you'll see the next time memory and reality bleed into each other. You don't trust what you might do if you lose your grip again. And if it happens, if you lose control, if Shoko gets hurt because of you… Your eyes squeeze shut. A sharp shake of your head follows, hard enough to make your neck ache, as though you can physically force the thought away before it takes hold.

You can't let that happen.

So, just like nearly ten years ago, when your transfer to Kyoto was finally approved, you leave without saying a word. The difference is that, back then, you ran all the way to another city. This time, you only make it as far as the school. It's not as far. But you're still running.

Once you've settled back into your old dorm room—and fed Yaga what you hope are convincing enough lies about how you think staying on campus would simply be easier, if he wants to continue asking you for assistance on the missions—you begin unpacking.

When you dig your phone out from the bottom of your suitcase, you notice how many notifications have been waiting for you. Four missed calls and six unread messages from Shoko. One message from Satoru: call Shoko back.

You stare at the screen for a long moment, thumb hovering over the notifications without opening a single one. Eventually, you switch your phone to silent and toss it onto the bed. The mattress dips before the blankets swallow it.

You can't bring yourself to answer either of them. The guilt already gnawing at you is enough. Hearing their voices would only make it worse. So instead, you throw yourself into the one thing that has consumed every waking moment since you opened your eyes two nights ago: the notebook, the scattered memories, and the impossible puzzle your vision left behind.

Within an hour, the room looks less like a bedroom and more like an investigation site.

Loose pages cover nearly every visible patch of floor. Some overlap in messy piles, while others have been separated into categories you've already reorganized several times. Sticky notes cling to the edges, filled with arrows, question marks, and observations that you were able to make after reading trough everything.

You kneel in the middle of the mess, staring at the fragments surrounding you. Every time you think you've found a connection, it slips away. Hours pass. Nothing fits. A tired sigh escapes as your gaze drifts over everything you've managed to piece together.

One sheet contains nothing but a crude drawing of a centipede—the same one you absentmindedly sketched near the training grounds without understanding why. Now you do. You saw a curse in your vision like that. You remember only a brief fragment: it crawling across concrete, cursed energy seeping from its small body. Nothing more. Around the drawing, squeezed into the margins, are scattered notes written with different levels of pressure, as though each line was added whenever another fragment surfaced.

Likes dark.

Drawn to density.

Another page holds only a single sentence, underlined so many times the paper is beginning to tear.

Nanami. Don't let him go to the far

It ends there. Whatever was supposed to come next vanished before you could write it. Your eyes stay fixed on the final word. Far where? No matter how long you stare, the sentence refuses to give anything back.

The last page of the notebook that you tore out is even stranger—the one you keep looking back at every few seconds.

Suguru.

His name covers the entire sheet, written over and over again in increasingly frantic handwriting, as if you wrote it once, stepped away, then returned only to write it again.

He knows.

He knows.

He knows.

Your brows pull together. Knows what? Nearly twenty minutes are spent searching through every other note, hoping the missing answer is hiding somewhere else. It isn't.

The possibility that Suguru appeared in your vision refuses to leave you alone. The entire reason you were able to push Senken that far was because you wanted to see him, and if you saw him in your vision, what happened between the two of you? If you think he knows something… what is it that you've forgotten?

The harder you chase the thought, the farther it slips away.

Eventually, you force yourself to move on, flipping the page over and setting it aside before it can consume another hour. That's when another note catches your attention. At first glance, it looks almost empty. Only a few short phrases fill the page. But one sentence has been circled so many times the ink has bled through.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

Your fingers stop at the edge of the paper. Whatever happens there, whatever this mission is, you marked it as important enough to circle repeatedly. It feels like the point where everything begins to unravel, like the loose thread in a sweater: pull it and everything starts to come apart. The thought appears so suddenly that you almost don't recognize it as your own. Quickly, you grab the pen and write it down.

After adding the note, your mind drifts elsewhere. Toward something that bothers you more than the missing memories themselves.

Your visions have always been consistent. They show the future exactly as it unfolds if nothing changes. They don't create impossible situations. They don't contradict reality. At least, they never had before.

The first inconsistency you find has a name. Yuji Itadori. Shoko told you he's one of Satoru's new first-years. But your notes tell a different story. After several minutes of searching, you find the page. Only a few rushed words are written there:

School underground. Restrained. Angry. Dangerous. Infected.

Nothing about him being a student. Nothing that matches what Shoko told you. You read the words again. Infected? Does that mean he gets sick? But a simple illness isn't a reason to be locked underground and restrained.

The memories don't fit reality.

A frustrated groan escapes as you drag your hands through your hair. You rearrange the pages yet again, look trough the ones you only skimmed at first. Nothing changes. With a sharp exhale, you grab the notebook and throw it across the room. It skids across the floor before crashing into the wall.

You bury your face in your hands, pressing your palms against your eyes until sparks bloom behind your eyelids. Your vision is a fucking riddle, and you can't solve it alone. But you know who could. Shoko. She would probably start connecting the pieces before you even finished explaining what little you remember.

The thought alone makes your stomach sink. Because after what happened two nights ago, you don't think you can face her.

Monday morning arrives far too quickly. A knock sounds at your door bright and early. You only managed a few hours of sleep, and apparently whoever is waiting on the other side has decided that's more than enough.

When you don't answer, the knocking comes again. Louder this time.

With a long, irritated sigh, you drag yourself out of bed and shuffle toward the door, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. The second it opens and reveals Satoru standing there, your first instinct is to close it again. His boot slips into the gap before you can.

"Not happy to see me?" he muses, sounding far too amused as you unsuccessfully try to push the door shut against him. "That's unlike you, isn't it? Especially considering you practically blew up my phone a few nights ago."

Heat crawls up your neck.

"That was an accident," you mutter, refusing to open the door any wider.

"Well," he says lightly, "me being here isn't."

He lets you wrestle with the door for another few seconds before wrapping one hand around its edge. Then, he slowly pushes it open despite your attempts to hold it in place, and you're forced to step back as he slips inside.

"I've been assigned a very special, very secret mission," he announces. The door closes behind him with a nudge of his heel, and he leans against it, hands tucked into his pockets.

"Then go do your job and stop bothering me."

The words come out sharper than you intend, but it's early, you're exhausted from barely sleeping, frustrated by the mess inside your head you can't solve, and even more annoyed because he's ruining your carefully planned attempt to avoid both him and Shoko for as long as possible.

Satoru doesn't seem offended in the slightest by your tone. Instead, his gaze drifts lazily around the room. It takes him all of three seconds to notice the state you've left it in and figure out what you've been doing all this time.

Pages cover every available surface. Sticky notes cling to the walls, desk, and wardrobe. Half-finished diagrams spread across loose sheets, arrows connecting names to questions, entire paragraphs crossed out and rewritten. The notebook sits open on the floor near the wall. The only thing missing is red string connecting everything together like one of those conspiracy boards from a detective movie.

Slowly, he pushes his sunglasses higher up his nose. "…Been busy?"

You narrow your eyes. Ignoring him seems like the safest option. Maybe he'll get bored and leave. Then again, this is Satoru. Curiosity is practically a personality trait, and sure enough, he starts wandering through the room before you can decide whether to stop him. He moves carefully around the scattered papers, crouching whenever something catches his attention. Every so often, he picks up page, scans it with obvious interest, then places it back exactly where he found it.

You let him. Physically shoving him out isn't exactly an option, and telling him to leave would only encourage him to stay longer. It's easier to let him satisfy his curiosity and wait for him to eventually lose interest. Except he doesn't.

His fingers come to rest on a half-torn page—the same one you spent nearly an hour staring at before finally giving up sometime around dawn.

"Oh," he murmurs. "Now that's interesting."

That gets your attention. You cross the room until you're standing beside him. He taps the page once with a finger, and you lean closer.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

"What about it?" you ask when he continues staring without offering an explanation, his thumb brushing over the ink.

He hums thoughtfully. "There's a curse we've been tracking for almost two months."

Something in your chest tightens. The conversation feels familiar. Not just the subject—the words themselves, like you've heard them before.

"I wanted to deal with it weeks ago," Satoru continues, voice drawn out lazily as he rubs the back of his neck. His attention drifts across the rest of the desk, scanning the notes. "But the higher-ups eventually decided it wasn't worth the resources. It wasn't appearing anywhere near densely populated areas, so they shelved the whole thing."

Each sentence lands with the strange weight of déjà vu. You don't understand why. You're almost certain you've never had this conversation with him before.

"Yaga," Satoru goes on, "just received some very secret information that our elusive little friend finally wandered into the city." A grin slowly spreads across his face. "And he may or may not have accidentally hinted where."

Arms folding across your chest, you move back toward the bed and sit down."So you weren't assigned anything."

He turns arouns, leaning against the desk. "Nope."

"You just decided to go anyway."

He shrugs. "I've been buried under teacher duties for weeks." His voice turns dramatic as he flashes an exaggerated pout. "Besides, why wait until the city is in chaos and every sorcerer starts tripping over each other trying to catch it? I figured I'd save everyone the future headache."

Your gaze shifts back to the page in his hand. "And what exactly does any of that have to do with you barging into my room?"

His mouth opens. For a second, he looks like he's about to say something, but then changes his mind.

"The curse is classified as unpredictable," he says. "I need someone who specializes in predicting things that aren't supposed to be predictable." His eyes meet yours, your fingers dig lightly into your skin, as you force yourself not to look away. "Normally, we'd do this your way. You stay here, and I call you whenever I need another location."

A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. Your eyes flick to the side, as you bite inside of your cheek, taking a shallow breath and then making yourself to look back at him.

"But I thought… maybe this time we could do it the old-fashioned way." He tilts his head slightly. "Think of it as practice before you're officially back in Yaga's office, giving him intel through Senken."

The lightness in his tone is deliberate, you can tell, and it only makes you feel more ashamed for not answering his or Shoko's messages.

"Technically, there aren't any real stakes here. Seems like a good opportunity to ease yourself back into using your technique, doesn't it?"

The answer is already on the tip of your tongue. No. You don't want to spend an entire day alone with him after what happened at Shoko's apartment. You don't trust yourself enough for that. But your eyes drift back to the torn page.

Mission with Satoru. Hospital. Don't draw it out.

The words sit there like a warning. Whatever happens at the hospital matters, and if you want answers, you have to go.

"Fine." The word leaves your mouth with obvious reluctance, as you try very hard to convince yourself that you're only agreeing because of the vision. Not because some small, guilty part of you selfishly doesn't want him to leave.

[juvianism]

geto in my style

[notsosuregtl]

Kuna petting an African wild dog cause why not?

[lacquerheadd]

easy, tiger.

[belimah]

art by ADDIN

[retiredpeach]

[readerinthedark05]

first post sukuna brainrot

[meowhoraga]

𑣲┆𝐘𝐔𝐔𝐓𝐀 𝐎𝐊𝐊𝐎𝐓𝐒𝐔 kind of creeps you out.

unhealthy behavior and suggestive content. obsessive yuuta headcanons requested by oomf! if you like the way i characterize him, you can find more in my series. requests are open <3 jjk masterlist

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta still loves you gently no matter how strongly he feels about you, let this be known. he touches you like you’re fragile, brings you small gifts, and holds onto every single word you say. he treats you delicately, as one would a dandelion.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta always seems to be exactly where you need him to. forgot something somewhere? he has it. you feel unsafe? he’s already there to step in. you stop asking how he already knows; it’s probably only coincidence.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta has big puppy-dog eyes you struggle to resist. you don’t always want him to tag along to places with you, or sit in your room while you change, but how can you say no to a face like that?

you have a hard time being mad at him even as he blatantly crosses your boundaries. whenever he’s invasive in his actions or words, you redirect him, whereas you would’ve literally ripped into anyone else.

he’s definitely cried a few times as you’ve scolded him for disrespecting you. yet deep down, his little pout makes you want to apologize for having autonomy.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta stole your favorite perfume from your dorm and sprays it onto his pillow. your addictive scent lulls him to sleep when he’s having trouble dozing off. it also makes it easier to pretend you’re to him closer than you really are.

on late nights, he buries his face into the pillow, inhaling your scent and muffling the sounds he makes to the thought of you. he imagines your hands touching him instead of his own, since he can’t have the real thing yet.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta starts to resent rika for existing. he tries everything in his power to convince you he isn’t still hung up over the dead first love he carries with him. it doesn’t help that she’s so possessive and aggressive toward you. how can he be with you if a curse won’t let him?

he speaks to her differently after the day she attacks you out of jealousy. his tone turns stone cold, and his previously kind requests of her become demands. he’ll sharply order her around, then turn to you and speak sweetly with a soft smile on his face.

rika’s apologized many times since then, but he’s made up his mind.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta’s cursed energy literally wraps itself around you if you’re nearby, especially when the two of you are around other people. it’s awkward when you’re in public around non-sorcerers, who can’t tell that you’re being engulfed by such pressure. sometimes, you swear you can feel it even when you’re supposed to be alone.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta has to pretend he doesn’t already know about all of your interests and routines. he used to slip up at first, but he’s gotten a lot better at sounding clueless. he’s sure to ask about your day and listen intently because he loves the way your eyes light up as he shows interest in you.

plus, if you’ve already told him about your day, you have no reason to talk to anyone else about it!

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta takes on some of your missions behind your back. he can’t stand the thought of you getting hurt, especially at the hands of some foul, disgusting, creature. when you find out he’s been interfering with things, he apologizes profusely and continues to do it anyway.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta makes everyone around you feel on edge. they’re worried about you. they see the way he stares at you while you’re unaware. they feel the atmosphere shift whenever you’re affectionate toward others. they’re hesitant to even say your name in front of him because of how much his demeanor changes.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta had a meeting arranged behind his back by the group while he was visiting the sister school. your friends sat you down and asked if he’s done anything to harm you. you told them you were a bit weary, but “he just has a big heart, that’s it.” they looked unimpressed. as they left, you could’ve sworn you heard panda mutter “stockholm syndrome” under his breath.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ your friends trust yuuta not to hurt them… they think. but they don’t miss the way his face drops or his grip on something tightens when he thinks they’ve said something wrong to you. they love you dearly, but do start to avoid you a bit. if you do talk, they’re paranoid and constantly checking for him over their shoulders. just in case.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ the kyoto students, however, think yuuta’s a fucking freak. his performance in the goodwill event was outstanding because of his skill, of course, and you. he caught kamo and miwa planning to ambush you and immediately stepped in. they barely escaped with their lives, but thankfully, you managed to calm him down before he could go too far (well. further.)

gakuganji and utahime were both horrified and appalled, while gojo simply chalked it up to yuuta's “amazing fighting spirit!”

when todo asked what his type was, yuuta described your body with a dazed expression. mai was disturbed by this interaction.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta was distraught once he noticed you pulling away from him. he hadn’t meant to scare you, but seeing them so close to harming you made him snap. and god, did your absence make him feel sick. he was physically repulsed by himself for upsetting you.

“i made her mad, i hope i die.”

“stfu yuta it’s your turn”

“oh, draw four”

“damn it!”

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta dropped onto his knees in front of you and groveled for forgiveness, swearing not to do anything like it again. he probably didn’t mean it, but it felt like the truth at the time. when you forgave yuuta while cupping his cheek, he felt as though he was being touched by an angel. he didn’t think he deserved you, or your forgiveness, but since you gave it to him he took it gratefully.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ whenever your classmates bring up yuuta’s behavior to gojo, he waves them off and tells them they’re only being dramatic. gojo is, of course, lying off his ass. he thinks the kid’s a little weirdo who probably shouldn’t be left alone with you. however, he’s banking on you to awaken his potential. it’s definitely a risky plan, but gojo’s known for throwing his students to the wolves.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ maki once caught yuuta licking the blood you left on his hand after he patched up your wound. when she told gojo about it, he simply smiled and said “kids these days are so passionate!”

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ gojo’s hunch did end up being correct despite his questionable methods. after seeing you and the rest of the first years injured during the night parade of a hundred demons, yuuta’s growth was triggered over his emotional state. he surpassed his limits over his pure rage from seeing you hurt.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ gojo doesn’t say it outloud, but one of the reasons yuuta was sent off to africa was to have some space away from you. he thought the distance will be healthy and better for… everyone, really. he also got tired of being nagged because apparently his student raised concerns about “safety” and “endangerment”, which he rolled his eyes over

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta is sure to call you at least once a day while he’s gone. he doesn’t think he could survive without hearing the sound of your sweet voice. he sends you good morning/goodnight texts around the time he remembers your schedule being while he was with you.

he values every single picture you send of yourself, so much so that he replies to them while typing with one hand!

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta doesn’t go to sleep until hours after he’s supposed to be just in case you call him. what if there’s an emergency? what if you’re in need comfort? what if you accidentally buttdial him and he misses out on an interaction with you because he was asleep? he can’t just abandon you!

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ obsessive!yuuta appreciates you just the same, if not more, once he returns. except this time, he’s stronger and unafraid of the curses that plague the world. he’s open about his feelings and has learned to control his copious amounts of cursed energy. he’s trained so hard and dedicated himself to protecting you (and the rest of humanity, he supposes).

he’s come to trust that your classmates won’t cross any lines with you. they’re his friends, so he knows they’ll respect his feelings. the same can’t be said about the other sorcerers or random guys on the street who ogle at you.

yuuta doesn’t trust that itadori guy, either. while he was away, toge reported that he was “making eyes” at you every time you two trained together. yuuta reveled in chasing and killing yuuji for the higher ups before unfortunately having to revive him. he may have brought him back, but now yuuji knows he’s someone to be feared.

⋆˚꩜.ᐟ most in his position have a mindset of “mine, mine, mine,” but i believe he’s the opposite. he loves you and he’s yours. yuuta’s positively sure you’ll own his heart until the day he dies <3

[jabesa0]

Brotherly bonding 😋🍔

[itsnika]

.masterlist.— taglists.

pairing: Satoru Gojo/Reader summary: With your technique, you can see one hour into the future. You've built a career on it—you've kept people alive with it. And then one night, a little drunk and foolish, you look too far. notes: ICYM

(previous chapter) ༝ Chapter 13. (next chapter)

Shoko keeps you in the infirmary a little longer.

The first two days blur together in a cycle of sleep and being partly awake—long stretches of drifting in and out of consciousness, broken only when she nudges you awake to eat or drink something.

By the third day, though you still feel like you could easily spend another month in bed, restlessness starts to creep in beneath your skin; you're desperate for air that doesn't smell like antiseptic and bleach.

So, you start bargaining.

"Come on," you pout as you sit with Shoko on your bed, eating the breakfast she brought. "I feel fine. Discharge me already."

"No," Shoko replies flatly, shaking her head between bites.

"I've been staring at the same wall long enough to memorize every crack," you sigh, rolling your eyes as you push your food around the plate, trying your best to look pitiful enough to earn sympathy.

Shoko doesn't even look up. She only shrugs, her attention drifting toward the window as she takes another bite. "Good. Tell me if one of them moves."

You let out an exaggerated sigh that earns you nothing more than the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. With a dramatic slump against the pillow, you concede—for now. Maybe you can wear her down later. The next attempt might go better.

You understand why she's hovering—you really do. After everything that happened, or rather everything you can't remember happening, it would be irresponsible not to keep an eye on you.

And yet, understanding it doesn't make the constant feeling of being watched any less suffocating.

Shoko has practically moved into the infirmary with you. When she isn't patching up students or disappearing into meetings with Yaga, she's seated on the opposite bed with a mountain of paperwork balanced across her knees. Medical journals are scattered around her, and half-finished cups of coffee sit forgotten, going cold beside. Hours sometimes pass without either of you speaking, the silence broken only by the scratch of her pen or the occasional turn of a page.

You're never truly alone, and while you usually wouldn't mind company, right now it feels like an inescapable presence closing around you—something you can't push through or get away from. It keeps you from doing the one thing you really want to do: think.

Every quiet moment becomes a temptation.

When the silence stretches on too long, your thoughts drift back to the missing week, to whatever is sealed behind that invisible wall in your mind. You find yourself picking at it carefully, searching for the smallest fracture, telling yourself you'll stop as soon as your head starts to hurt. You never do. The headache always arrives before the memories can—and Shoko always catches you doing exactly what she told you not to.

She never says I told you so even though the frustration is clear in her eyes. Instead, she leaves a glass of water on your bedside table, wordless, and hands you painkillers. She waits until you've taken them before quietly going back to whatever she was doing.

And even when she says nothing, you notice it—the quiet disappointment she tries to conceal. You can't tell if it's directed at you for ignoring her advice, but it still makes the guilt churn in your gut all the same: guilt for pushing yourself until the headache forces you to stop, and guilt for trying to remember, only to come up empty every time.

Apparently, Shoko hasn't told anyone what really happened. Not Yaga. Not the higher-ups. No one. You only piece that together one evening when you suddenly start spiraling about all the work you're missing.

Officially, you caught a particularly vicious cold the night after returning from the mission—the one you never actually went on, only used Senken in Yaga's office. Senken reacted poorly because you were already exhausted, and now your body simply needs time to recover. It's a flimsy cover story. You'd be surprised if Yaga believed it. Still, he hasn't summoned you for questioning yet. You suspect that's entirely Shoko's doing.

The only other person who knows the truth is Satoru. Not because Shoko wanted him to, but because she had no choice. She mentions it almost offhandedly—that she couldn't carry your unconscious body from her apartment back to the school alone. She called him in the middle of the night, and together they brought you to the infirmary, running every test she could think of along the way.

You've asked about him a handful of times since then, always trying to sound casual enough that Shoko won't notice how often the question slips out.

She always gives the same answer. "He's fine." Or, "Busy."

You nod each time, but none of it really settles the feeling. It lingers anyway—this strange, unplaceable irritation that you can't explain. It only makes you more aware of how much it bothers you that she never offers anything beyond those short replies.

Eventually, you catch yourself wondering why he hasn't come to check on you. The thought leaves a bitter aftertaste you have to swallow down immediately, because the truth follows right behind it: he doesn't really have a reason to.

He knows you're with Shoko, and he trusts she'll tell him if anything goes wrong. So he keeps living his life, and you keep living yours. A week of unconsciousness doesn't erase the distance that's quietly built between you over the years—it only makes it impossible to ignore anymore, now that you have nothing to do but sit and think about it.

One afternoon, after nearly an hour of staring at the same page without actually reading a word, Shoko mentions Satoru in passing. It's nothing significant—just something about one of his new students ending up in the infirmary again after a training exercise—but your attention snaps onto it immediately.

"The one with Cursed Speech?" you ask.

Shoko hums absentmindedly, writing. "Inumaki."

You roll onto your side, propping your head up on one hand. "Couldn't you ask him to tell me to remember?"

The scratching of her pen stops. She looks at you over the top of the papers in her lap, her expression so flat it almost makes you regret speaking at all. "No."

"I wasn't entirely serious." You were, but you're not about to admit that now.

"Mhm." She closes the folder with a soft thud and sets it aside. "But still I'm only going to explain why it's a terrible idea, in case you're struggling to pick up on it."

You sit up, crossing your legs.

She leans back against the wall, folding her arms. "First of all, I highly doubt Inumaki would agree. And even if he did, Satoru would probably drag him out of the room before he could say a single word."

"Second," she continues, "Cursed Speech isn't some kind of magic cure. It forces the body to obey; it doesn't create information that isn't already accessible. So if your brain is refusing to let you reach those memories for a reason, forcing it could do considerably more damage than good."

Your posture deflates slightly, shoulders rolling inward as your fingers start to fidget in your lap.

"You could end up scrambling neural pathways that are already under enormous strain. Permanent migraines, memory loss…" She pauses after listing the more severe possibilities, studying you carefully. "Best-case scenario, nothing happens. Worst-case scenario, you never use Senken again."

Silence settles between you. You hadn't considered that. Your desperation had been loud enough to drown out common sense the moment the idea first took root.

You exhale and let yourself fall backward until your head hits the pillow.

For several minutes, neither of you speaks. Outside, wind rattles softly through the branches brushing against the infirmary windows.

"Does Yaga still think I caught a cold?" you ask, because you don't quite want the quiet to settle in again.

Shoko snorts. "You sound disappointed."

"I'm offended by how unbelievable that excuse is."

"It worked."

You push yourself upright with a quiet groan and wander toward the window. The room has grown stuffy again, thick with the smell of disinfectant and stale coffee. You slide it open a few inches, immediately relieved when cooler air brushes against your face.

Summer is settling over Tokyo.

The breeze carries the scent of damp earth.

Shoko watches you for another second before standing. She reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, giving it a small shake. As you look over your shoulder, the motion catches you off guard, your attention snagging on it longer than it should.

For some reason, your mind replays the gesture twice before she gives you a mildly puzzled look.

You shake your head when she asks if you want one.

After spending most of the previous night relentlessly pestering Shoko every time she tried to get any work done, you finally wore her down, and she agreed to discharge you.

She shows up just after breakfast carrying a neatly folded stack of clothes, dropping them onto the foot of your bed without so much as a greeting.

You eye the pile suspiciously.

Two days ago she'd done the exact same thing, and you'd gotten your hopes up, only to discover she'd brought you a fresh hospital gown instead.

"Well?" she says, nodding toward the clothes when you don't move. "Go get dressed before I change my mind."

You narrow your eyes, half-expecting another trick, but still move quickly—snatching the clothes and slipping behind the privacy curtain before she can take tell you it's another cruel joke.

Pulling on jeans feels strangely foreign after a week spent in hospital gowns. Every movement reminds you how stiff your body has become. Your muscles protest as you button your shirt, and by the time you tug on your boots, you're already slightly out of breath.

When you step back out, Shoko gives you a slow once-over. Her gaze lingers just long enough to make you wonder if she's checking for something you've missed.

"Well?" you ask, spreading your arms. "Do I pass inspection?"

"You're still pale."

"That only proves I can't stay inside any longer," you reply with a grin.

She reaches for the mug of coffee she'd made for you earlier—the one you never touched—and takes a sip.

"Stay on school grounds," she says, slipping seamlessly back into doctor mode. "Don't overdo it. Don't use Senken. Don't try forcing your memories back. And wait for me. When I'm finished, we can head home together this evening."

"Yes, Mom." You're in far too good a mood to stop yourself from teasing her.

Shoko levels you with a look. "You can stay another week if you'd like."

Your smile disappears. Before she can decide she's serious, you hurry out of the infirmary.

The moment you step outside, the difference is immediate.

Fresh air replaces the sterile smell of antiseptic and bleach. The morning sun hangs low overhead, filtering warm light through the trees as leaves whisper softly whenever the breeze stirs their branches. Students drift between buildings in small groups, laughing loudly enough that scraps of conversation reach you before fading into the distance.

You don't have anywhere in particular to go. You simply walk, and your feet choose the route for you. Every so often, you stop—not because you've reached a destination, but because something catches at the edge of your awareness.

The entrance to the dormitory.

A classroom window reflecting the sunlight.

The crunch of gravel beneath your boots as you cross the courtyard.

None of it means anything.

Yet every now and then, a strange unease settles low in your stomach whenever your gaze lingers too long on something. You wait for recognition to follow. It never does.

It's frustrating.

Now that your head is mostly clear, you can feel your mind brushing against something just out of reach, like fingertips grazing the edge of a hidden door. But there's never enough to hold onto. Never enough to pull it open. Only vague impressions, leaving you with a puzzle that's missing half its pieces.

Without realizing it, you wander toward the training grounds. A handful of students are scattered across the field, while others lounge beneath the broad shade of a tree, grateful for the break as the summer heat slowly settles over campus.

You lower yourself onto the stone steps a comfortable distance away and simply watch. Or at least, you try to. Doing nothing has become strangely difficult.

Your hands itch for something to occupy them, so you reach into your jacket and pull out the notebook Shoko gave you, along with the pen clipped neatly inside the cover. With a quiet sigh, you begin absentmindedly sketching meaningless lines in the corner of a page while your attention drifts back toward the training field.

Students. The running track. Grass swaying in the breeze. Your boots—something moving beside them.

Your entire body recoils, your nose scrunching in disgust.

A centipede.

It crawls through the cracks between the stones, dozens of tiny legs rippling in perfect, synchronized rhythm.

Another violent shudder races down your spine, making your shoulders jerk involuntarily, as it disappears into the grass.

Without really understanding why, you lower the pen to the page. You grimace the entire time you draw the ugly bug, scratching absently at the back of your neck as phantom sensations creep across your skin. The finished doodle is objectively terrible—crooked, uneven, slightly disproportionate—but you stare at it anyway; just looking at it makes your stomach twist.

Beneath the sketch, you scribble in tiny letters: eww.

A quiet snort escapes you.

You close the notebook the moment new voices rise somewhere further away.

At first, you don't pay them much attention. The training grounds are never truly silent, even this early in the morning. But then the sound draws closer, cutting through the open air with sharper edges, and something in your chest tightens before your mind has time to catch up.

You look up.

Satoru crosses the field with a boy walking beside him.

Your attention locks onto Satoru first. His white hair catches the sunlight so brightly it almost hurts to look at, and for a brief second you're almost transfixed, watching the way he moves—casual, animated—while the boy beside him looks somewhere between amused and exhausted.

Then your gaze shifts. To the pink hair. Everything inside you goes still.

You can't make out the details from this distance, but the colour alone drains the moisture from your mouth. You're almost certain you've never seen him before, and yet that certainty doesn't fully hold. It feels wrong, like you're forgetting something obvious. Even his name presses faintly at the edge of your mind, refusing to surface no matter how hard you try to pull it forward.

Your grip tightens around the notebook. You stare too long, too intently. And then it happens—you feel it, a subtle pressure in the air. The unmistakable sense of being seen.

Your eyes flick sideways just in time to catch Satoru glancing your way. He tilts his head slightly, curious. Then, without hesitation, he hooks two fingers around the boy's elbow and gently steers him forward, guiding him along the path. Straight toward you.

Your body reacts before thoughts can intervene, and you shoot to your feet, scrambling to pick up your notebook as it falls onto the steps. Before they can reach you, you turn and walk away—quickly, not particularly gracefully.

Running from Satoru would feel childish, especially considering how much you've been thinking about him lately. But you force the thought down, telling yourself this isn't that. You're not avoiding him. You just need distance—from the boy. Because the longer you look at him, the more your vision swims.

The boy's face follows you for the rest of the day.

No matter what you do, you can't shake the feeling that you know him. Every attempt to trace where you might have seen him before sends a sharp pulse of pain through your head, like something inside you is refusing the question outright. By the time evening arrives, the pressure behind your eyes has settled into a relentless, dull throb.

You bring him up to Shoko once the two of you are back at the apartment, eating takeout because neither of you has the energy to cook.

"The pink-haired kid?" she asks, lifting an eyebrow.

You nod.

"Oh, Itadori—one of the new first-years Satoru teaches."

"Yuji?" The name slips out before you can stop it, like it's been sitting at the tip of your tongue all evening.

Shoko pauses, chopsticks hovering halfway to her mouth. "You know him?"

"I…" You frown. "I don't think so."

But the name feels familiar, like something you've said countless times without ever remembering the moment it first mattered.

Shoko keeps talking, shifting into explanation—cursed objects, vessels, and how Satoru somehow managed to turn a disaster into a teaching opportunity, something about a delayed death sentence tangled in the details—but you barely catch any of it. Her voice fades into background noise as your mind gets stuck on the name.

By the time you go to bed, the headache has returned in full force.

Sleep doesn't come easily. You toss beneath the blankets while rain begins tapping softly against the apartment windows. The sound should be soothing, but instead each drop feels like it's tugging at something buried deep inside your chest.

Still, eventually, exhaustion wins.

You wake with a gasp, eyes wide and darting frantically across the room. Your hair sticks to the back of your neck, your shirt clings to your skin, as you drag in sharp, uneven breaths that don't quite feel like they reach your lungs.

At first, you only stare at the wall, trying to steady yourself—forcing slow inhales, trying to see past the blur clouding your vision. Then, as if jolted awake a second time, you stumble out of bed. Barefoot, you fumble through the clothes you left on the floor earlier and dig out the notebook.

You don't bother with the light. Instead, you crawl toward the window, where moonlight spills in and lays a pale strip across the floorboards, and you start writing.

Your grip on the pen is so tight your hand aches, but your sweat-slick fingers make it difficult to hold steady.

Write, write, write.

Your handwriting deteriorates with every line, letters colliding and collapsing into each other until half the page is barely legible. You keep going anyway, because the memories come faster than your hand can keep up—flashing through your mind in fragmented bursts. You refuse to slow down long enough to sort them out, afraid that if you hesitate even for a second, they'll stutter, fade, and vanish completely again.

The rain outside grows louder.

Your pen stills.

One image refuses to leave.

Shoko's jaw locked around Satoru's shoulder. His shirt soaked red. Blood dripping from the corner of her mouth as she turns toward you.

Your stomach twists so violently you nearly gag. Your palm flies to your mouth as your eyes squeeze shut, forcing yourself to breathe through it before you pass out from the pressure building behind your ribs.

Shoko told you Satoru was fine. She told you he was busy. But you haven't seen him since you woke up.

What if she lied?

The thought is irrational. You know that. Shoko would never hide something like that from you, and yet panic coils tighter anyway, wrapping around your limbs until it feel as though something is crawling all over your skin.

You push yourself to your feet, leaving the notebook abandoned on the floor.

You walk slowly out of the room, each step careful, as though the shadows might shift if you disturb them too quickly. The hallway is dim in that unsettling way that makes familiar corners feel warped. Your footsteps echo too loudly against the floorboards.

The living room is empty.

No bodies. No blood. Nothing out of place.

But your breathing doesn't ease. Your heartbeat doesn't slow.

You stand there for a long moment, staring at the empty space, before turning and heading toward Shoko's room.

At first, you don't see her beneath the pile of blankets when you peek inside—and something in your chest snaps. You rush forward and yank everything off in one frantic motion.

"What are you doing?" Shoko groans, tugging weakly at the blankets, her voice thick with sleep and irritation. "Do you even know what time it—"

She cuts off mid-sentence when she sees your face. Sleep vanishes instantly from her expression. Her posture shifts, shoulders tensing as she sits up properly, rubbing at her eyes.

Your hands fly to her face.

You cup her cheeks and force her to look at you, eyes scanning every detail like you're checking for injuries, for wrongness, for anything that doesn't belong. Only when you're certain she's real—that this isn't another fragment of the vision—do you release a shaky breath you didn't realize you were holding.

"What happened?" she asks, voice softer now. Her fingers close around your wrists, gently prying your hands away from her face.

"Shoko…" Your voice breaks on her name. You swallow hard and glance around the room again, as though something might still be hiding in the corners. "Where is Satoru? Is he okay?"

Her brows knit together. "Why would he be here?"

But you're already moving again, panic tightening its grip around your ribs and squeezing until it hurts to breathe.

You don't listen as she calls after you. You need to see him. Now. Before the image burned into your mind takes root and rots there.

You bolt out of her room and back into your own. Shoko follows immediately behind you.

Your hands shake as you grab your phone.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

"Why isn't he picking up?!" you snap, pacing back and forth. Your fingers drag through your hair like you want to rip it out.

You end the call and try again immediately, thumb striking the screen too fast, too hard.

Shoko stands in the doorway, watching you now with a dawning concern that cuts through her earlier confusion. You don't even notice she leaves. Only when she returns do you realize she was gone at all. She presses a glass of water into your hand and plucks the phone from your trembling fingers.

"Drink," she says, guiding you toward the edge of the bed. "I'll call him."

Before going to get her phone, she switches on the lamp, filling the room with a warmer light that does nothing to settle the tremor in your chest.

Thud.

You are out of bed before the sound fully lands, pushing past Shoko before she can grab your arm and stop you from running into the living room.

Your body collides with Satoru before your mind even confirms he is real. Your arms wrapping around his shoulders, holding on as though letting go would mean losing him entirely. He goes rigid. Then, slowly, as your grip tightens, his hand settles at your waist

Your fingers brush the side of his neck as you fumble for his collar, trying to anchor yourself. It is an accident—just your hand slipping against skin—cold. His skin is cold to the touch.

You jolt back instantly. Your hands fly to his face , cupping his cheeks and forcing him to look at you. You need to see his eyes—need proof of life in them.

He lets you guide him, head dipping slightly, but his gaze does not quite meet yours. Instead, it drifts just past your shoulder, fixed on something behind you.

Confusion flickers across his face.

You turn.

The world fractures—memory and reality overlap like two images pressed over each other.

Shoko stands in the dark hallway. She does not move. She does not speak. She simply watches—too still, too wrong, like something wearing her shape.

You can't let her come closer. She's infected.

The thought whispers to you and you shove Satoru back a step as you turn fully toward her.

Your fingers curl into a fist at your side. and you look down, but unlike in your memory, the dagger doesn't appear in your hand. The absence of it makes your panic spike higher.

No, no, no. You can't let her come closer.

The thought loops endlessly.

Shoko says your name. You don't hear it.

Satoru's hand lands on your shoulder, but you shrug it off harshly, refusing to let him pull your attention away from her.

"What is going on?" he asks. Or maybe he doesn't, you don't know. The words fizzle out under the noise in your head.

"You can't let her get closer!" you snap, shoving at his chest again when he tries to step around you. Your palms press into him, nails digging into his shirt, as if you can physically hold him in place. You look up at him—pleading, frantic—but his attention is past you.

A sudden drop in pressure tears through the room.

Cursed energy floods in like a storm. It presses inward from every direction, warping the edges of your vision until nothing feels stable. Your senses buckle under it.

Their attempt to overwhelm you works—too well. Their cursed energy makes you dizzy, your head starting to spin again, and your knees suddenly feel too weak to hold you up.

Your eyes roll back and you slump against Satoru, his arm coming up to wrap around your frame as he catches you before your head can hit the ground.

The Oracle's Burden TAGLIST

@swthngs, @l1v1ngzomb1e, @fics-tbr, @zanawhois, @isa012486, @theonedayididnt, @echosoftheriver, @superstaargirl, @ironmal, @feyrfly, @strawbscakes, @suniloli, @nunuluxx, @kittymeowxo, @babygirl-panda19, @bleepybl00p, @heeknow, @proudlyperpetualcipher, @whimsyjellybean, @ariilovesmoney

[itsnika]

no rush at all and understand if ur busy but YEARNING for chap 3 of Playing Favorites😣😣

I'm gonna be like very honest rn, but playing favourites was supposed to be oneshot, and the second chapter was an accident that happened when I thought it would be fun to write drunk!Gojo. and while I very much want to finish it (but bc it was oneshot that wasn't supposed to be continued) I'm struggling to write the third (and last) chapter that would wrap up everything and end the series 😭

so idek when I'm gonna update it 💔

[itsnika]

TOB changes

so, after rereading my draft, there were only two major changes I decided to make.

originally, my timeline was a mess, and I did a poor job establishing the setup in the prequel. it suggested reader left Tokyo six months ago, but also that she ran away shortly after Geto left??? which doesn’t make sense since he defected while they were still students. bc of this, I rewrote some of the prequel scenes.

and, so you wouldn’t need to reread it, here’s what changed (plus some additional context I don’t think I included):

reader, Shoko, Gojo, and Geto studied together for around two years. after Geto defected, reader went into a depressive spiral and transferred to Kyoto without telling Shoko or Gojo, who only found out after she left. she intended to stay only briefly but eventually graduated there (all of this happened between 2007–2010).

between 2011–2016:

Shoko obtained her medical license, Gojo became a teacher, and reader worked as a jujutsu sorcerer, mainly in Kyoto. Shoko still kept in touch with reader, but reader didn’t visit Tokyo often, and most communication happened over the phone, as she was still running away from what happened almost ten years ago. reader and Gojo had little to no contact, and when they did see each other, it was usually bc she was there to see Shoko. in prequel, it’s mentioned that the last time they spoke for more than five minutes was during her last visit for Shoko’s birthday, when she stayed in the city for a few days.

the fic begins in late May 2017, which is also when the prequel takes place.

SPOILERS FOR CH. 2–12. DO NOT CLICK KEEP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THEM YET—IT WILL SPOIL EVERYTHING. DO NOT READ COMMENTS EITHER. like, I’m serious: don’t continue if you haven’t reached ch. 12 yet.

there’s one other major change, and it has to do with Gojo.

while writing, in my mind, I kept going back and forth on whether he should be a teacher like in canon, but after refining the timeline, I decided to keep him as one. of course, that decision created another issue.

now, this may be a teeny tiny spoiler for ch. 13, BUT

reader sees Yuji at school in ch. 13, which doesn’t really make sense bc he doesn’t start attending until 2018, while the fic is set in 2017.

I tried to find a way to include him that still made sense, but with the current outline, where the story is heading and considering what will be revealed later, it doesn’t really work, and I don’t want to add a big timeskip since it wouldn’t fit the fic.

so Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi being friends, attending jujutsu high, and being taught by Gojo—and being essentially one year older than in canon—is a continuity flaw that will remain, and I’m choosing to ignore it for the sake of the plot.

also, if you’re curious, I have an early draft of the timeline I made. I later added more details for myself, but this version is mostly spoiler-free and outlines key events between the prequel and ch. 1–12:

NOTE: there's one mistake. reader return to Tokyo at the end of MAY, not march.

& while I’m yapping about the fic: while rereading it, I realized my english storytelling skills definitely need sharpening, so if anyone would be willing to become a beta reader, I wouldn’t be opposed to it!

[fukiouh]

Double take | shy!nerdjo x shy!reader

warnings: drabble, pure fluff, meet cute awkward, café au, slow burn, mutual crush, mutual pining, shy!gojo, shy fem!reader word count: 3.8k

You are a simple creature of habit. This was your café. Your corner nook. Your wobbly table by the window where the sunlight hit just right every time you came in.

You have a system, a routine, your sacred order the barista starts making automatically anytime you walk through the front door, noise-canceling headphones, and mild productivity. You do not bother the universe, and the universe does not bother you.

It was your emotional support place, an unassuming little spot where you went to work, study, read, or just exist. Cliché, yes, but you were a coffeehouse loafer, so what.

Until one day the universe decides to intervene. It was raining that day, sudden downpour, and he'd forgotten his umbrella, of course, so when he spotted the café on his frantic walk downtown, he ducked in to just wait it out somewhere dry, somewhere cozy. A cup of coffee sounded good anyway.

He tumbled through the door with a soft, breathless laugh, shaking the rain from his shoulders like a very tall wet dog. 

You instinctively looked up from your book. The chapter was dragging like craaazy and you were getting bored. He was at the counter, currently trying to wipe the fog off his glasses.

Oh—

You blinked away, but your eyes betrayed you. 

You did a double take.

OH—

Tall. Cute. Pale cheeks flushed from the cold, hair plastered to his forehead, and he was burying his fingers into the sleeves of his sweater just to warm his hands up. Wet and cold from the rain but probably the most attractive man you'd seen in your entire life.

You looked back at your book. Bit your lip. Looked up again. Back at your book. Up again.

Triple take.

You could feel your cheeks involuntarily heating up as you took in his wet hair, his nose, his jaw, the adorable little shiver that ran through him while he waited. God, he was really your type. But you just glanced at him, nothing more. As one does. Casually—

Quadruple take.

Okay. Fine. You were staring.

Internal spiral initiated. Deep breaths, babe. He was just a ridiculously attractive stranger. This was a normal human experience. You were in a public space. Hot people existed. You would survive this.

He turned around, clutching a steaming cup of his americano with both hands, and scanned the room. The moment he turned around, you caught a glimpse of the most absurdly blue eyes you had ever seen. Even his eyes were so, so pretty. It wasn’t really fair.

You looked back at your book. You'd read the same sentence four times now.

You forced your eyes to stay glued to the page, aggressively willing yourself to comprehend the actual freaking words.

Focus. You were reading! It was just a man.

But out of the corner of your eye, you tracked him as he settled into a chair a few tables down. The scrape of the chair. The soft rustle of his wet sweater. He finally gave up on wiping his glasses dry on a damp sleeve and just shoved them back onto his face. God, cute men with glasses really did something to your knees. You were so pathetic.

And for the next twenty minutes, you were super aware of his every movement. The plot of your romance novel be damned, ‘cause you glanced at him every few sentences through your peripheral vision only.

You heard the quiet clink of his cup being set down. You heard him sneeze once, very quietly, which was lowkey a ridiculous sound to come out of a man who was easily six-foot-three.

But you did not look directly anymore. You held your ground as you were the god’s strongest soldier right now.

Eventually the frantic drumming of the rain against the window slowed to only a light drizzle. The storm broke and you heard his chair scrape again.

You risked one final, fleeting glance as he stood up. He grabbed his empty cup, ran a hand through his semi-dry, messy hair, and headed for the exit. And you wondered if his hair was as soft as it looked…

As he pushed the door open, he paused as if hesitating, glancing over his shoulder. For one terrifying, totally heart-stopping millisecond, those bright blue eyes flicked over to your corner. Directly, not directly, you couldn't tell because you ducked your eyes back to your book as quickly, immediately chickening out. So he pushed through the door. The little bell above it chimed and off he went.

The air in the café immediately felt weirdly lighter.

Okay, you thought, finally turning the page. Not that you'd been on this page for the last fifteen minutes or anything. Happens to the best of us, I guess.

He was just a glitch in the matrix. A very tall, very blue-eyed glitch in the matrix. You survived the hot stranger. He got his coffee, he dried off, he left.

The gravitational pull you felt was just what happens when you see the man of your dreams. And in true man-of-your-dreams fashion, he disappeared as quickly as he materialized.

Normal human experience.

Except, a week later, on a perfectly sunny afternoon, the little bell above the door chimed a little more loudly in your perceived little bubble.

Hmm. Weird.

You didn't even mean to look up. It was a reflex at this point. But there he was.

Wearing an aggressively cozy hoodie this time, those big glasses, and that ridiculous height with it.

Your stomach violently dropped to your shoes. Oh no. He wasn't just a figment of your imagination. He was freaking back.

And a few days later, he was back again.

You figured he just really liked the coffee. And to be fair, just your luck perhaps, because the coffee here actually was that good. The Google Maps reviews were damn right about it being the best espresso in town. So it made perfect sense that a guy who stumbled in out of the rain would become a repeat customer after tasting the superb roast.

Perfectly logical. Totally normal. Nothing to do with you. Why would it anyway.

But there was something you didn't know.

He also came back because there was this girl in the corner with a book who looked up when he walked in and then immediately looked away like she hadn't — and something about that was, well. He didn't have exactly a word for it. Because while you were busy having a silent, hyper-fixated meltdown over him on that rainy first day, he had clocked you too.

In fact, the moment he'd turned around from the register with that steaming americano and caught you aggressively chewing your lip while pretending to read, his brain had completely stalled out. White-out.

So on his very second visit, Satoru had stood on the pavement half a block away, pathetically arguing with himself whether you'd even be there — or if he was actually crazy for thinking about it at all. He told himself he just wanted to take a lewk. Just to confirm that a girl that pretty! actually existed and wasn't some kind of fever dream brought on by the rain.

He walked in. There you were. Same corner. And just as cute as the first time, maybe even cuter.

So he kept coming back. And he felt a little pathetic about it, tbh. Showing up like a well-trained dog just because he was crushing on a girl he'd never even spoken to. But he couldn't help it. He was just a man, after all.

Satoru learned quickly. Look your way from his table. Look away. Look back. Realize he was staring, look away again too fast. Rinse and repeat.

He caught you looking, twice, three times, every single time. The first time your eyes actually met properly, you both snapped your heads away so fast it was a miracle neither of you pulled something.

He told himself he wasn't a coward. He just… He figured you'd say something eventually. You kept looking at him. And that meant something, right? You were practically telegraphing your interest! Which — was it interest though? What if you were staring only because he looked weird, hair a mess or some stain on his clothes —

Oh god.

OH GOD.

He wasn't great at reading people. So he decided to simply wait it out. His strategy was simple: exist in your general vicinity, look nice, and eventually you would come over and say something. He was not a coward. He wasn't, I swear!

Except you did not, in fact, say something.

You just kept staring at him like he was a jump scare and then violently burying your face back in your book, or your laptop, or your hands.

Your eyes betrayed you constantly. Do not look at him, you would tell yourself. You would look at him anyway. You would catch him glancing in your direction—chewing on the end of a stir stick, his glasses slipping slightly down his nose—and panic would seize your throat. You would snap your head away just to study the gluten-free muffins in the pastry case.

He would realize you caught him, and he’d immediately pretend to be so so engrossed in a completely blank stretch of the wall. Sometimes he’d accidentally bump his knees against the bottom of the table and the soft thump! followed by his quiet sigh would make you want to literally melt into your chair.

A lot of fleeting glances, a lot of unnecessary throat-clearing, and one very serious pep talk he gave himself in the bathroom mirror. But to no avail. 

So once you locked eyes again, you did that awkwardly, very pathetically, very often, he tried to be brave brave. He did this tiny, little nod, like a quick acknowledgment, a gentle, hesitant yes, I see you seeing me, hi hello.

You stared back at him with a blank, wide-eyed face of a person whose brain had simply ceased to operate. What the hell. Affectionately, of course.

His cheeks flushed, turning this soft, pretty pink.

Your cheeks flushed so hot you were surprised you weren't actively steaming.

He held the look for a beat, his expression so painfully hopeful, before you completely gave up, turned away like a loser, and snapped your gaze back to your mug. He deflated a little, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a quiet exhale. And here went his chance. Well, damn...

It was truly agonizing, if you ask me. It was the most physically painful, heart-fluttering, ridiculous thing to endure.

Satoru was too invested now, but entirely out of his depth. He kept coming back, genuinely believing every single day that this would be the day! you finally made the move, because surely you realized how cute he thought you were.

And you believed every single day—every single one—that this would be the day! he finally made the move, because surely he knew he was the most gorgeous man to ever walk into your life.

Yet every day, neither of you did. 

The panic just kept growing. Growing. Growing! And the respective crush along with it. 

Until a rainy Wednesday, exactly one month after he first walked in.

You were there, you always were. 

You didn't even need to look up to know. Your stomach did the thing, the fluttery one, that happened only when a specific six-foot-three man in glasses walked through the door.

Satoru got his order, sat at his usual table.

For the next hour, you fell into the build of your usual dance. You were actually working, doing okay, but your eyes kept drifting, always drifting. He caught you once or twice; you caught him twice or thrice. Your silent language. Settled into something almost comfortable. Something that made you look forward to coming here beside the actual coffee. A quiet, familiar routine noone had balls big enough to break. 

And then, he ruined it. By taking the leap again.

You glanced over, expecting him to be snapping his neck sideways. Instead, he was already looking right at you.

He visibly swallowed, sat up a little straighter, and risked to lift a hand off the table, offering a small, hesitant wave, accompanied by a soft, genuine smile that completely transformed his face. Breaking the stalemate, daring you to participate too.

Oh my. Your hand spasmed and in said hand was your mug with your latté. Your wrist ungracefully, unceremoniously jerked and enough espresso and oat milk splashed! over the rim to soak your notes and pool dangerously close to your laptop.

Humiliation hit your face like a freight train.

You couldn't find the courage to look up, if you did right now, you would literally expire on the spot. You grabbed a fistful of dry napkins, slapped them blindly over the puddle, and immediately started shoving your things into your bag.

Book? In. Laptop? Shoved. Dignity? Left in the puddle of dairy. Hotel? Trivago. (And I swear I will stop using this phrase. One day…)

You were packed and out of your chair in record time. The little bell chimed its cheery goodbye, and you noped the fuck out into the downtown crowd before you could actively perish from the secondhand embarrassment.

The air in the café suddenly felt completely different. Heavier. Emptier.

Satoru sat frozen in his chair, his hand still half-raised in that pathetic, brave little wave.

But you were fucking gone.

He lowered his hand, staring blankly at the empty chair you'd left behind. His heart hammered in his chest, but it wasn’t because of the fluttery panic of having a crush. No no. This was faaar more dreadful.

Oh no.

He had spooked you. He had tried to be brave, bravest either of you ever allowed yourselves to be, he had tried to just smile at you, and you had literally rather fled the premises.

Satoru buried his face in his hands, his glasses digging uncomfortably into his palms. 

Fuck, fuck. He didn't know your name, for fuck’s sake! He didn't know what you did for a living, or what you were always reading, or anything other than the fact that you had a sacred order and the cutest face he had ever seen.

He sat frozen to his spot with very icy, very ugly realization. What if you stop coming in because of him?

What if you were so so embarrassed that you will never come back to your wobbly little table? What if he had just ruined the one undeniably good thing about his week, all because he had spent a month staring at you like a coward, okay he is a coward he admits it okay?!, instead of just walking over and saying hello?

He furrowed his eyebrows as he eyed the soggy pile of soaked napkins as he sipped his own coffee. Tapped a finger against the ceramics. 

Next time.

Next time he was just going to walk over. That was it. That was the whole plan. Simple.

NEXT TIME!

Except, there almost wasn't a next time. And he cursed himself every time you didn’t show up. You didn't show up the day after, nor the day after that.

By the following week, Satoru was practically vibrating out of his skin. He went in every single day, just in case you broke your routine. But every single time he sat in the café alone, he almost convinced himself that he had ruined his own life by smiling too aggressively. Were his parents lying when they taught him to be nice to strangers?

But then you came back. Of course you came back. It’s your freaking café.

Yes, you had been avoiding it for almost a week, surviving on approximately seventeen different bathroom mirror pep talks and five different affirmation YouTube videos about how you were going to be completely, totally normal this time.

You will not stare! You will not spill a single drop of anything! You can drink a caffeinated beverage in the same zip code as a super hot guy in glasses. You can do this! You go girl!

You pushed the door open and he was there. Obviously, he was there. Why was he there.

You ordered your drink. But when you turned around to head to your cozy familiar corner, you froze.

Your table was taken. Some random-ass guy was sitting at your precious wobbly table, aggressively typing on a laptop. What the hell? Just your fucking luck. You stood in the middle of the café, clutching your mug, completely derailed. You scanned the room in a mild panic.

And the only open table left was... oh, God.

It was exactly one table away from Satoru.

It was closer than you had ever sat before. Closer than you would ever choose to sit. But you had no choice, though. You power-walked over like the big girl you were and practically threw yourself into the chair.

You were instantly off balance. You took out your book of the week, but you couldn't focus. You were so close now. Too close now.

You could feel the warmth radiating off him. You could smell his ridiculously good, subtle cologne. Something like cedar and clean laundry mixed with the scent of roasted beans. It was making you so, so pleasantly dizzy, or perhaps it was just him. You couldn’t really tell.

You both fell right back into the unspoken dance, but it was completely different now. More exposed. You looked. He looked. The usual betrayal of your eyes, but with the closeness dialed up to an utterly suffocating, heart-fluttering level. Every time he shifted in his seat, you felt it. Every time you shifted, he felt it. Hyperaware of every movement, of every breath taken, of him.

You decided to look sideways, properly, for the first time today.

And it locked. It held.

It was longer than usual, electric! and absolutely terrifying. You could feel your heartbeat in your throat, yet the warm flutter that spread from your stomach all over your body prevented you from chickening out right away. It felt too good. You were pleasantly stuck. You were curious. And you were maybe testing the waters, too.

His eyes started darting all over your face, as if searching for clues, checking if he would, could, should take it further, if you dared to look even longer. He oh-so-wanted to. Needed to.

But as those absurdly pretty blues softened, melting into something fond and undeniably sweet, your breath hitched. You completely panicked again. You broke the gaze, snapping your eyes down to your novel and bracing for the agonizing silence as a hot, deeply betraying flush spread all over your neck and hiked up all the way to your cheeks. 

Then, Satoru sighed.

It wasn't from disappointment, or from being angry. After all, he so proudly said next time, didn't he? And he understood that if anything, you were even more shy than him. He found it impossibly endearing.

It was a definitive, resolute sound, and you froze. You heard his chair being pushed back. Was he leaving because you were being such a coward again?

Then, a few soft footsteps closing the short distance between your respective tables.

A tall shadow fell over your table.

You slowly lifted your eyes and he was standing right there. Up close, he was somehow even taller—not imposing though, more like inviting. And his chest was rising and falling a little too fast.

He reached out with a shaking hand, grabbed the chair across from you, and pulled it out.

The tips of his ears went brilliantly pink. He rubbed the back of his neck, burying his hands into the sleeves of his sweater, but he didn't run away. Now or never, baby. Hail Mary. He sat down. Right across from you.

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looked you right in the eyes, and let out a long, shaky exhale.

"I, uh." A pause. He cleared his throat. Pushed his glasses up again even though he'd just done that. "Caught you staring." His ears somehow got pinker. He wanted to sound more confident, but oh well... "I MEAN—I was also—I've been staring. That's not—" A beat. He ducked his head slightly, peering at you through his long lashes. "Hi. Can I sit with you?"

What. You stared at him.

"...you're already sitting."

"Yeah." He let out a breathless, cute little laugh. "Is that okay?"

You eyed the way his broad shoulders were hunched inward, how he was practically holding his breath while he waited for your permission to stay. He had actually crossed the unspoken line between you, managed to completely fumble his opening line, and was now looking at you with wide, nervous eyes.

"Yeah," you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. "It's okay."

He smiled. A real one, wide and slightly crooked, and it did the thing to his face that made you always bite your lip, but up close it was somehow so much worse in the best way possible. He had dimples. Of course he had dimples.

"I'm Satoru," he said.

You told him your name. His smile just grew softer at the sound of it.

He reached over and stole the little glass sugar dispenser from the center of the table, turning it over in his hands like he desperately needed something to keep his fingers occupied.

Over the past week, Satoru had been planning, deciding how he would approach you. He had asked friends, scoured Reddit, and practically checked a freaking WikiHow on how to approach a cute girl in a café when you've both been mutually staring at each other. 

He hated all the cliché café-adjacent pick-up lines, but perhaps it was the gravity of your doe eyes, or perhaps he was just nervous. Either way, his mouth went on autopilot, asking with terrible casualness:

"You come here often?"

You looked at him.

He looked back, expectant, already cursing himself that his vocal cords had picked the absolute most ass question imaginable, but he tried to play it cool and you genuinely could not tell if he was joking or dead serious.

But this was the next time he had promised himself. And honestly, you had missed him over the week you spent caving at home. You thought about your café. Your corner. Your sacred table by the window that was currently occupied by a stranger who had no idea what he'd just accidentally done. Which you were currently thankful for. To Satoru. And to the stranger, too.

You picked up your coffee.

"Yeah," you said, a tiny, helpless smile finally breaking across your own face. As you decided that he meant it dead serious afterall. "Actually."

He looked unbearably pleased about this. You looked out the window so he wouldn't see just how hard you were blushing.

Then you thought about this table. This one, right here. The one that wasn’t yours, nor his.

But as Satoru stretched his long legs out and his knees accidentally bumped gently against yours under the wood and neither of you pulled away you realized that maybe, just maybe, this table might just become yours. Both of yours.

── Divider from muerdida!

[itsnika]

just a heads up regarding updates:

my TOB draft has reached 20 chapters (including the ones already published), and while I wanted to post a few more before doing a biiiiig edit, I realized I can’t really continue with the second half of the fic until I properly sort out the timeline. as you know, I didn’t exactly keep track of everything while writing, and ofc it’s coming back to haunt me now 😭

I don’t think there will be any significant plot changes, but if anything major does change, I’ll post a little note about it so you won’t have to reread everything for a second time!

sooo anyway, there will probably be 1–2 more chapters in the upcoming days before I slow down updates for a bit!

ALSO, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read my story! all the likes, reblogs & comments literally make my day and your support is one of the biggest reasons I’m so excited to keep writing TOB 💖

[saengseonjjim]

ummm ummmm