✦ ⎯⎯ㅤ a three part oneshot series: AFTER DARK!
𝜗𝜚 about. you grow up. you stop following. you stop crying. now that you’re older, the lines between control and protection begin to blurr. old wounds reopen when you bring someone home, years later. you take this as your first step of freedom, and the same boys who once filled your house with strangers decided that you’re irresponsible. and sukuna ryomen realizes he doesn’t like being replaced.
𝜗𝜚 warnings. angst. more plot/lore. minors drinking (i’m not romanticizing it). complicated relationship with sukuna. satoru’s an ass. the friend group sucks. not proofread again mb.
𝜗𝜚 notes. part i. part iii.
you stopped crying after that moment at nine years old. or least not in front of others.
you learned early that being told no didn’t mean someone would follow you upstairs and offer you comfort.
sometimes it just meant that the door would shut, and people would let it. that includes sukuna ryomen.
by fifteen, you had broken the habit of trailing behind them, and you had pretended that you didn’t care anymore. but you weren’t fooling anyone, least of all him.
you parents were gone more often than not. constantly on business trips, conferences, and fundraisers for their newly established company. they already made enough money to fund an entire state, and yet they still wanted more.
this meant that the gojo estate become something else entirely in their absence.
a loud, messy, and unsupervised home that satoru loved. that suguru tolerated, that nanami tried to pretend he disapproved of, and that sukuna ryomen—it hurt you to your core that he—thrived in. music blasted through the halls that you once cried in, and laughter echoed off the marble you used to stomp on.
strangers leaned against the walls your mother once had polished weekly, red cups clad in their hands. and girls. there were always girls.
you told yourself that you didn’t care and that you would just stay upstairs in your room. door closed and homework open with music blasting in your ears. but the bass traveled through the floors, so did the laughter, and so did the moans.
one night, you came downstairs for water. that’s it, just water. you didn’t expect to see her. she was leaning against your kitchen counter with long black hair. lip gloss shining under the all-diamond chandelier.
her laugh was too soft and too deliberate. her hand kept grazing his arm after every joke he made. and your stomach twisted, you felt like you were going to be sick.
sukuna ryomen stood close enough that their shoulders brushed, he wasn’t smiling because he rarely did. you knew that.
you knew him. well. or maybe you didn’t because he wasn’t pushing her away either.
you stopped halfway down the stairs, and she noticed you first. her eyes dragged over you slowly, assessing and judging. you didn’t look away, you never looked away first.
you stared her down like you were trying to carve her out of his picture entirely. and it irked you that she smirked, like she’d already won something.
what a bitch, you thought to yourself.
then, sukuna followed her gaze, and he saw you. his expression didn’t change, but his posture did. just slightly, not enough for the woman to move and for you to notice. you held his gaze with daggers behind your eyes, unapologetic.
he looked down at you the way he used to when you were small. but it wasn’t protective now. it was guarded. “go upstairs”, he said. not loud or angry, just firm. the girl beside him laughed softly, “who’s that?”
“she lives here”, he replied. you felt like your heart shattered into a million little pieces and pierced one of your lungs. she lives here, like you were furniture. like you were background. like you were a child, even if you were.
you felt angered heat flush your face, “i know i live here”, you snapped.
the girl tilted her head, “oh. you’re the little sister.” little sister, there it was. you stepped fully into the kitchen, unafraid of the confrontation.
“don’t call me that, bitch.” you said the last word in your head, and she raised her brows in mock surprise. sukuna exhaled softly, “enough”, he muttered.
but he wasn’t looking at her he was looking at you. and his eyes were sharp, akin to something warning and almost desperate.
you didn’t understand it then. you only saw rejection and you only felt humiliation. you watched with barely held back disdain as she slid her hand from her arm to his wrist. the action laced with possession, testing you. you wanted to rip it—rip her—off him.
two could play at that game, you thought to yourself. instead, you pushed past the rest of the people in the kitchen as you opened the fridge. some scoffed, some laughed, but they all froze when you grabbed a bottle of beer.
sukuna ryomen pushed off the counter slowly, “you don’t need that.” you could feel his eyes burn into the back of your head at your choice of drink. when you turned around and slammed the fridge door shut you raised your chin with a defiant look in your eyes. “i didn’t ask you.”
there was a long stretch of silence, and she held his gaze. the kitchen grew more tense, so tense you could slice the air like a kitchen knife in butter.
then, “have fun” you said coolly as you leaned against the kitchen island, and you were proud that your voice didn’t shake. he held your stare longer than he should have, and then he turned away. not from her, but towards the hallway. his free shoulder brushed past yours, and he didn’t look back at you as they headed towards the guest bedroom upstairs.
you watched him go. watched her follow. watched the door close. the music downstairs kept playing too loudly, too carelessly. and you foolishly waited for something for one second.
one. two. three. waiting for an open door, a call for your name, or footsteps. when it reached five seconds you pushed off the island and turned around first. walking back upstairs to your room.
you didn’t cry or slam your door, you just sat on your bed and stared at the wall.
because this is what you had learned:
sukuna ryomen protected you.
he would never choose you the way he chose her.
and that realization hurt more than any indifferent moment with him ever did.
sukuna ryomen thought that the music was too loud. he knew that the house wasn’t his, but it might as well have been. he even had a room of his own that he slept in, lived in. anything except the toxic household he’d grown up in.
with no parents. no rules. no consequences.
his best friend, satoru, thrived in the chaos.
sukuna thrived in control.
he leaned against the kitchen counter while the girl beside him laughed at something he hadn’t actually said. her hand kept touching him, testing. most girls did, and he didn’t stop them.
he didn’t encourage them either. he let them orbit. none of them stayed long enough to matter anyway. he didn’t need them to. he didn’t need anything. that’s what he told himself.
until the air shifted, subtle and tense. he didn’t look up immediately but he knew. he knew the affect you had on any room you walked into. he felt your stare before he saw it.
you were already halfway down the staircase with your arms crossed, your chin high and your eyes sharp enough to cut. you weren’t crying anymore, that annoyed him.
“go upstairs”, he said. not as request, but as a demand. the girl beside him followed his gaze, “oh. who’s that?” he had a fraction of a second.
to acknowledge something dangerous.
but he didn’t, “she lives here”. is all that he said.
neutral. dismissive. overall safe.
and yet the words tasted wrong the second they left his lips. he saw it land, and saw the way your shoulders squared instead of shrinking. “i know that i live here”, you snapped. he saw the anger flare, and all he could think of was good.
because anger meant that you weren’t fragile.
the girl smirked at you, “oh. you’re the little sister”, she laughed. he almost told her to stop. almost. instead he watched with a flex in his jaw. he didn’t correct her, and his gaze flicked to you.
when you stepped fully into the kitchen, something in his chest tightened. you shouldn’t be down here, not with this crowd and with men that didn’t give a damn about your history.
“don’t call me that”, you retorted sharply. he felt the girl beside him shift in amusement.
“enough”, is all he said, and he closed his mouth before he could say anything else. before he said something he would regret, and he projected that in the way he glared at you. staring at you with a warning gaze.
you didn’t understand the warning, of course you didn’t. you thought it was rejection.
when you grabbed the beer, the room shifted. that wasn’t rebellion—it was retaliation. and he hated that much more.
he pushed off the counter slowly, “you don’t need that.” and he watched as you slammed the fridge door shut, leaned back against the kitchen island with your chin lifted high.
“i didn’t ask you.” there it was: defiance. you were daring him, testing him. the same way that the girls do, but your test actually mattered.
sukuna held your stare, long and unblinking. letting the silence stretch until the rest of the kitchen felt it. the girl beside him shifted uncomfortably. good, he thought, she should.
then when you said “have fun”, he realized that it wasn’t out of jealousy. worse, dismissal.
it irritated him more than your tears ever had. he stepped closer, walking close enough that his shoulder brushed yours. not gentle, deliberate. a reminder.
then he walked toward the hallway, not because he wanted the girl.
but because if he stayed he’d have to make a decision.
and he wasn’t ready to make it.
so they went upstairs, to the guest bedroom. never to his room, and he shut the door. the girl started talking again but he didn’t hear a word of it. because he knew that you were counting downstairs.
sukuna could picture you standing there: jaw tight, hands clenched, and waiting.
he almost opened the door, not to comfort her, but to end it. to send everyone home and clear the house and get her out of this mess. instead, he locked the door, and let you believe that he chose someone else.
because if you hated him then you wouldn’t chase him. and if you didn’t chase him, then sukuna ryomen wouldn’t have to decide what he’d do if you ever stopped being a kid.
a few years pass, and it’s all the same for the most part. your parents are now pushing satoru to get into college with his stellar grades. unironically enough, they pay for him for all four years to attend the most prestigious university in your state.
you still live in his shadow, and you’re comfortable in it. the expectations are lower. at the cost of your emotional health.
house party after house party you begin to become more numb to the blaring music, the strangers in your home, and the faint sound of moans through the walls.
at one point in time you would have believed that your room was sacred place. that nobody could hear you, and that you couldn’t hear anybody. but now your walls are thin, and your sanity becomes thinner.
you stopped trying. stopped trying to hang out with satoru and his friends. stopped trying to prove yourself to suguru. stopped trying to defy nanami. and you stopped believing in whatever you felt for sukuna ryomen. he hadn’t waited for you with that one girl three years ago. he wouldn’t wait for you now. they all wouldn’t—they all hadn’t.
you wouldn’t classify it as giving up, because if that were the case you would have been gone a long while ago. but for some sick reason, you stayed.
you took a gap year in between high school and university. the same university that satoru had gotten into. your parents were willing to pay for you to go too, but you declined on their offer. your grades and SAT scores were enough for you to get there on your own and you made sure of that.
you wouldn’t let them—wouldn’t let any of them—control you again.
that word, control. you didn’t fully understand the meaning of it yet. you felt as if the lines between control and something familial were beginning to blur, but you couldn’t prove it.
you just secretly felt that whenever sukuna ryomen glared at a stranger from their house parties came over to talk to you was purely protective. you’d known him for years now, you thought he was looking out for you.
until one day you were out late, that’s wasn’t the issue. they’d all stayed out longer on most days partying on campus or doing stuff that any other senior in university would.
what was the issue was when your front door opened and they all heard laughter. male laughter. not satoru’s or suguru’s or nanami’s. or sukuna ryomen’s. all four of them look up at once from four different places in the room.
all of them stopped. the world froze and time became slower, tenser.
you step inside first, confident and older. not asking for permission from any of them anymore. they all silently look at you and wonder when that happened. satoru and sukuna especially.
the boy behind you suddenly hesitates when he sees all their looks. the hesitation is his first mistake.
satoru is on the couch, feet up and drink in hand. his eyes flick to the boy’s, then to you, and then back to the boy. he had a smile, and then it dropped. “who’s this?” he asks, not curious and surely not welcoming. testing. controlling.
you don’t flinch when you responded, and it takes you everything in you not to scoff. “my date”, you snap matter-of-factly.
suguru leans back in his seat, indifferent, but his eyes sharpen. “date?” he repeats lightly. like it’s a foreign word.
that’s when you feel your blood begin to boil.
nanami sets his glass down carefully and he studies the boy, assessing him like he would an opponent.
sukuna ryomen hasn’t moved yet from his place near the kitchen, and unlike his blonde friend, he’s watching you instead. not the boy.
the way you stand, the way your shoulders are squared, and the way you refuse to shrink. the boy then clears his throat, “nice to meet you”. extending his hand to your older brother, but satoru doesn’t shake it.
suguru smirks faintly, nanami nods once, and sukuna steps forward, slow and measured.
he doesn’t look at the hand, doesn’t look at satoru, but he looks at you. he stops directly in front of you, close enough that the boy beside you takes an instinctive step backward. “upstairs?” sukuna asks, not to the boy.
your jaw tightens, “why?” you ask in annoyance.
“answer the question”, sukuna seethes, jaw as tight as yours. you don’t get a chance to respond before satoru laughs and you snap your head over at him.
“oh, this is funny”, satoru says with a sarcastic smile.
then suguru’s voice cuts in smooth and cold. “do your parents know?” he asks, and your feeling your cheeks begin to heat. the implication hanging over you all like mistletoe. you scoff loudly.
nanami finally speaks, “how long have you known her?”
the boy stammers, and sukuna’s eyes never leave yours. “you bringing him upstairs?”
“why? planning on timing us?” you snap, and that makes him step an inch closer.
you know exactly what this is. you know exactly why they’re reacting like this. you laugh once, sharp, “incredible.”
satoru steps a little closer now, “this isn’t some party.”
“you still throw them every weekend”, you snap, feeling sukuna’s eyes wander over you head to toe.
“that’s different”, your brother rolls his eyes.
“huh, there it is”, you seethe. suguru raises a brow. “and different how?” you ask as you look at your brother. “because you’re allowed?” then you look at suguru. “because you’re allowed?” then at nanami, “because you’re allowed?” finally at sukuna.
“and you’re allowed?” his jaw tightens and the boy beside you begins to shift uncomfortably.
they continue their interrogation. nanami begins again, “how old are you?” like your words just blew over their heads. “twenty.” he says, trying to muster some confidence, but it just comes out pitiful.
“wow. brave”, suguru smiles. satoru laughs and shakes his head.
“you drink?” sukuna asks him flatly.
“uh—sometimes?” he responds, and sukuna hums.
“she doesn’t like beer.” your stomach drops and you feel your lip twitch downwards. he remembered. you glare up at him.
“how long have you known her?” suguru asks, ironic coming from him. “few weeks”, the boy responds.
suguru smirks and nanami nods. “bold.” the latter asks, “are you serious about her?” but the question’s loaded.
the boy falters, “i mean—uh, yeah i like her.” satoru laughs again, ice cold. “you like her.”
you snap, “can you all stop interrogating him like he’s applying for a mortgage?” sukuna’s cuts through yours, “go home.”
the boy looks at you, confused and hesitating. “no”, you plead with an apologetic look.
satoru’s jaw tightens, “y/n”.
“don’t” you snap angrily.
suguru stands now, still calm. “you’re not being careful.”
you laugh and glare over at suguru defiantly, “careful? like you were?” you muse with a sarcastic grin, raising your brows in fake surprise.
that sentence makes the room shift, but you just keep adding fuel to the fire. “this is all rich, you know. you’re all walking oxymorons.”
nanami stiffens, satoru’s ears redden and suguru’s expression tightens for once.
sukuna steps closer and you feel it. the shift in his energy, slowly becoming more and more… protective? no, controlling.
“enough”, nanami snaps. and they all begin to move closer.
“i should probably—“ the boy begins.
“no”, you say at the same time.
the boy backs towards the door, and he gives you a sorry look as he murmurs an apology.
the tension in the room snaps and you whip your head back at sukuna, scoffing before walking towards him. but his hand grabs at your wrist, beginning to tug you towards him.
“stop it”, he begins. you then yank your wrist from his grip, but the damage is already done. and the boy walks out of the door.
now it’s just you and the four men who’ve shaped you. satoru runs a hand through his hair, “you embarrassed yourself.”
your chest tightens, and you turn around to face them with your chin lifted high. “i embarrassed you. just say that.”
suguru sighs and speaks as nanami rubs his temple, “you’re being dramatic.”
“this could’ve been handled better”, the blonde haired man sighed.
sukuna still hasn’t moved from his spot, he’s still looking at you. not angry or yelling, but something darker than that.
“what the hell were you thinking?”
“you bring some random man into this house?”
“you barely even know him, y/n.”
“you’re not that stupid.”
four voices, four bodies, four walls closing in on you and they don’t even notice it. you take a step back, then another.
“you all brought girls home. brought them to your rooms. he—he took me out on a date. a normal, fun date.” you tried to explain, but you should have known that it wouldn’t have made them less of assholes.
“that’s not the same”, satoru fires back.
“why? because you’re men?” you begin to raise your voice.
suguru exhales sharply, “don’t twist this.”
“sorry, i’m talking to a man right now. oh wait—there aren’t any in the room”, you seethe angrily.
“lower your voice”, nanami’s voice rises for the first time.
“don’t tell me what to do!” you scream.
sukuna moves closer, too close. your instinct is to put your hands on his chest and push. he didn’t go very far, but he was taken aback. his red eyes looks unrecognizable for that split second, darker. almost… hurt?
“y/n, that’s enough. you don’t get it, alright.” sukuna begins, but you’re quick to cut him off.
“then explain it to me instead of cornering me!” you scream, and they don’t realize that they’ve begun to crowd you.
your back nearly hits the kitchen island, and your breathing changes. and they don’t notice.
“you’re being reckless,” suguru says, to your left.
“you don’t think ahead,” nanami adds, not that far behind him.
“you act on emotion,” satoru says, to your right.
sukuna doesn’t yell, his voice is low and he’s directly in front of you. “do you think this is some sort of game?”
your eyes start to burn, and that makes you angrier. “stop”, you plead, but one does.
“you don’t understand men like that,” satoru says.
“oh my god”, you scoff, looking away. anywhere but their faces and especially his. because if you do you’re sure to cry or explode in anger.
“you’re naive,” suguru adds.
“you don’t know how they think,” nanami says.
sukuna steps even closer, watching as your lips begin to tremble and your breathing becomes more sharp. “stop.”
and that’s it. before your vision blurs and your throat tightens. your heart racing a thousand times per second, and you reach a hand to your chest, your chest tightening and your breathing becoming uneven, ragged.
you’re nine years old again. feet on the marble floors. four boys leaving.
“stop embarrassing yourself.”
your chest caves and you shove at satoru’s shoulder, hard. pushing through them until you’re far enough away to regain your breath.
your hand still pressed to your heart, trying to even your breathing, but it isn’t working.
they take the time to try to grab you, in hopes of steadying you, but you don’t budge.
nanami instinctively grabs your arm, but you rip it free. “don’t touch me!” you yell.
your voice cracks and that’s when they hear it. they see it. they feel it. they know it all at once. like they’re dreaming the same nightmare together.
they can see the old fracture in your voice. you look at all of them, hiccuping and shaking your head. and you’ve never dropped your chin, trembling but lifted. even as your eyes are glassy and you’re beginning to see black in your vision.
“wow”, you laugh, and the sound is broken. “nothing has changed.”
there’s silence. then their faces begin to change. satoru’s face falls slightly. suguru looks confused. nanami’s jaw tightens. and sukuna doesn’t move.
you swallow hard. “nine years later and you’re still telling me i’m too young. still telling me to go upstairs. still deciding what i can and can’t do.”
those words pierce them, landing heavier than any weight could.
you look at your brother, “you still don’t see me”. then at suguru, “you still talk down at me.” then at nanami, “you still think i need correcting.”
then at sukuna, “and you… you still think you can control me.” that hits him, harder than he would have wanted it to. it annoys him that you have such strong of an affect on him. even now.
even then. he attempts a step forward, “don’t.” you lift your hand to his face, the extremity trembling yet heavy with strength.
“i’m not talking to you.” there’s dead silence for a second before your brother butts in.
“you don’t get to speak to him like that”, and you turn to him with the same broken laugh leaving your lips.
and sukuna grabs your wrist, this time tighter. “don’t you dare”, he says.
then, your tears spill. you can’t stop them. can’t stop their stream down your face and onto your top. the same pink lace halter top you’d spent hours trying to pair to your outfit. the same pink halter top you’d actually felt cute in in a long while. the same pink halter top that is now tainted with the memory of your first date, and the four men in your life ruining it.
you yank your arm back violently. “what are you going to do?” you scream. “ground me?”
the words echo off the same marble floors. no one speaks, and your voice drops as you sob, raw and shaky. “i’m not n-nine…” you cry.
and that’s when it hits them. a freight train slamming into them all at once.
the marble floor and the staircase and the crying and her words, “i hate this house.”
they feel it all at once. the guilt of that day, that lingered for only a moment, and acting as if nothing happened the following week. the following month. the next couple of years.
déjà vu—they drown in it.
you step away from them, your chest heaving and your sobs fighting to remain silent. “you don’t g-get to decide who i bri-bring home…” you cry, you weep.
satoru’s voice softens, “y/n—“
“no.” you growl, wiping away your tears with back of your hand, but more keep coming. then you point at him, “you don’t get to be brilliant and reckless and then cage me.”
suguru looks almost guilty now. nanami looks deeply unsettled, and sukuna ryomen… he looks heavily wounded.
you had words for each of them, but you decide that it would be better not say them at all. because the burden of keeping them stored away forever is better than the burden of saying it and being misunderstood.
you shake your head, bite down on your bottom lip so hard that you begin to bleed. you free it to speak, “i waited for you once. never again.” you don’t even realize you’ve said it.
but he does. sukuna ryomen always does. has always hated how much he notices you.
you turn, then storm towards the staircase. body wobbling as you begin to rack in sobs. the sound of your footsteps on marble echoes through the house exactly like it did nine years ago.
halfway up, your voice cracks again. “i’m n-not too young.” the slam of your bedroom is identical, and the four of them stand down the stairs in silence.
satoru swallows, “…we did it again.” suguru exhales slowly. nanami looks toward the stairs.
sukuna hasn’t moved at all. his jaw tight and his hands are flexing like he wants to punch something. he remembers. he remembers the way she cried at nine. he remembers the way that she swallowed her sobs. and he remembers the way she looked at him.
and tonight, she looked at him like he failed her. again. he did at nine. he did at fifteen. and now he did at 18. and that? that bothers him more than that boy did.
when the door slammed, it sounded all too familiar to you. you locked it, not out of fear, but because you didn’t want them to follow.
your back hits the wood, and your breath shakes. you press your palms into your eyes like that’ll stop it, but you know it doesn’t.
restlessly, you walk to your bed. you sit, stare at the wall and you try. you try very hard to remember a moment.
one single moment. a clear one, where they chose you. where they defended you. where they didn’t just tolerate you or corrected you or when i wasn’t told to “go upstairs.”
trying to sit with them when they all placed cards. satoru laughing loudly when you miscounted. suguru reshuffling the deck without looking at you. nanami telling you to sit properly. and sukuna flicking your forehead when you got too “loud”— you were excited.
you had cut your hair shorter because suguru once said that he liked girls who looked “sharp.” he didn’t notice.
you wore red because sukuna once glanced at a girl wearing it. he didn’t comment.
you memorized the lyrics to satoru’s favorite song so you could sing together in the car. he sang over you.
you baked cookies because nanami once said he liked girls who did soft, domestic things. he corrected how long you left them in the oven.
you sit there, breath shaky as you try and think. thinking of every little moment you’ve spent with them.
trying to find one clean memory. one. where someone looked at you and thought that you were theirs. instead you were always: little sister, brat, rebellious, too young, too loud, too much.
your chest tightens, and you whisper to yourself, “did they ever love me?” and the silence answers for you.
the saddest thing wasn’t that you thought it, but that you believed it.
the tears come down all at once, like a never-ending stream, not pretty or delicate.
you fold forward, hands trembling as they clutched the fabric of your shirt. you think of the years, nine of them spent contorting. of stretching and pulling and tearing off parts of you so that you could get just one look of love. one comment of appreciation. one smile of affection. one nod of acknowledgement.
nine years of trying to be smarter. trying to be prettier. quieter. more impressive then less impressive. whatever would finally make them see you.
you cry for the nine year old who hated her house. you cry for the fifteen year old who waited five seconds for footsteps that never came. you cry for the eighteen year old who found out that her freedom came with a price. you cry for the girl who was determined to not be what they all wanted you to. and for the realization that you spent years doing exactly that.
you cry because tonight, they all proved that nothing has changed.
the house is quiet now, and no one sits where they were before this is all happened.
satoru is now standing in the kitchen, not touching his drink.
suguru has his arms crossed with one of the most emotion-heavy expressions on his face.
nanami is leaning against the counter, eyes unfocused and slightly glassy.
sukuna ryomen hasn’t moved from where you left him.
your brother is the first to speak, “we… cornered her.”
suguru exhales, “like a pack of wild animals.”
nanami’s jaw tightens, “we reacted emotionally.”
satoru scoffs weakly, “you reacted emotionally.”
nanami looks at him flatly, “we all did.”
silence, and then sukuna finally speaks lowly. “she looked scared.”
the three of them glance over at him. satoru frowns, “she wasn’t scared.” sukuna doesn’t look at him, he looks toward the staircase.
“yes, she was.” that’s when it hits them. the hand in sukuna’s face, your glassy eyes, and that line. “nine years later”, sukuna says lowly.
satoru runs a hand down his face. “i remember that...” suguru nods faintly, “the stairs.”
nanami says quietly, “she said that she hated the house.” silence again, heavy and uncomfortable.
satoru laughs again once, bitter. “she tried so hard to hang out with us.”
suguru looks away, “she used to wait outside my door wanting to play.”
nanami says, “she used to argue with me just to stay in the room.”
sukuna’s voice drops, “she stopped crying in front of us.” that one hurts the most, because it means that they’ve lost you. they did lose you. nine years ago, and they were nine years too late at fixing it.
they all remember that shift. they say that you stopped begging, the day she stopped trailing behind them, the day she stopped looking at sukuna ryomen like he was something worth chasing.
satoru exhales, “…when did she stop being that nine year old girl?” no one answers, because none of them were watching closely enough to notice when it happened.
it made your older brother sick to know that he didn’t even know the most basic things about you. he began to think. what’s one thing i know my sister likes? what’s your favorite color? your favorite movie? what makes you cry?
he didn’t even know that last one. he just knew that you’d be sad one moment and fine the next.
sukuna finally moves, walks toward the staircase and stops at the bottom of it and stares up at it emptily.
he didn’t follow you when you were nine.
he didn’t follow you when you were fifteen.
he didn’t follow you tonight.
and he doesn’t know which of those mistakes weighs the most.
upstairs, your crying eventually quiets. it was echoing though the walls and making them all grimace. downstairs, they all go to bed one by one. not because they’re tired, but because the guilt is exhausting.
they wonder for the first time how many years they’ve failed you. and sukuna? he lies awake and stares up at the ceiling, thinking about what you said, “i waited for you once.”
he realizes that he doesn’t know what that meant, but he knows it wasn’t about the boy.
𝜗𝜚 TAGLIST: @mm4st3r @awkwardaardvarkforever @nightgrief
𝜗𝜚 SELENE’S NOTE: do not copy, repost, or put in any form of ai.
