BEHIND THE SCENES FOOTAGE of you and toji finding new hidden details on sukuna’s body :: all of this content was edited out of your most recent post.
crack fic ,, they do onlyfans together btw ,, teasing sukuna ,, reader is unserious ,, lots of talk about sukuna’s booty ,, my dream date wow ,,
You used to pray for times like this; having two handsome, muscular men who were obsessed with you naked in your room.
Now it was a regular occurrence.
The footage starts shakily.
"Alright," you crawl onto bed in front of them, "since last video was shibari + eiffel towering, this one is gonna be… ass eating! Yay!"
Both of the men's face drop immediately. Ass eating? They turn to each other, then back to you slowly.
"And you're the camerawoman?" Sukuna blinks once, pursing his lips.
You smile, nodding. "Yup!"
The cameraperson usually isn't involved unless its a pov shoot. So that means…
Sukuna turns back toward Toji, grimacing. Holy boner killer. "I'm not eating your ass." Toji's ass was a hazard in itself. All muscle, no plushness like yours. Fucking gross.
Toji shrugs, not at all bothered by the proposition. If anything, his dick twitches in anticipation, "I'm not gay, but-"
"You've kissed each other. multiple times." You deadpan at the pair, specifically huffing at Toji. "You're bisexual or something. Both of you."
Toji puckers his lips at you, ever the flirt aside from his undefined sexuality, "My lips just don't discriminate, doll. They just don't like ugly."
"I do what you want. Doesn't mean I like kissing this bastard." Sukuna's nose crinkles. The first few times he kissed Toji was because you asked. not because he liked it.
"Then what about that time I came out of the bathroom and you two were making out?" you raise a brow.
"What about the kitchen kisses?" Toji cocks his head to the side, smirking at Sukuna. "And when we were watchin that movie?"
Okay, he might've liked it sometimes, but he is not eating Toji's ass. Nor does he want to get his ass eaten—hell, he doesn't want anyone near his butt!
Yet all of his excuses and protests don't work and he ends up on the middle of your bed, in all his tattooed, hulking gloryon his hands and knees.
"Don't be shy, big guy." you grin wickedly, moving the camera closer to sukuna's face. The grunt you receive only makes your grin wider. "The fans are gonna loveee this. You look so sexy, babe."
Sukuna scowls despite the flush on his face, ignoring how he's eye level with your tits. "You're enjoying this too much," he muttered. As if he wasn't enjoying this too.
"You aren't?" your gaze dips down to his boner, hard and at full mast on his stomach, "You're hard as a rock."
Toji trails a hand up Sukuna's back, a tiny grin on his face as he eyes sukuna's arch. "If you weren't enjoyin' it, you woulda gotten up already." he snickers, kneeling on the bed behind Sukuna.
"Besides, you have a prostate. just tickle it a little and you'll cum." you hummed, brushing your fingers through coral strands, "It'll be over before you know it."
Sukuna's problem wasn't with you two 'tickling' his prostate, it with what he's been hiding between his cheeks. "I have hemorrhoids. You don't wanna eat it." He looks back to toji with the most serious face he can manage.
"I don't believe you." Toji keeps his stare, hands moving lower… and lower… caressing Sukuna's surprisingly soft ass. It felt like giant pillows under his hands.
"I'll check for myself." he kneads one cheek deep and slow, captivated by the feeling. "You got a nice ass, dude."
"Shut the fuck up, Toji."
You point the camera directly to Toji's hands, brows raising at how thick Sukuna looked. "Damn, you do have a nice ass. It's juicy." you poke at the side of his butt, grinning at the recoil.
He's not doing anymore squats at the gym. Ever. The second Toji's thumbs start parting his cheeks, he knows it's over. Even clenching them doesn't stop Toji.
Sukuna was fucked, utterly and completely fucked. All he can do is wait for the inevitable.
"Oh." Toji pauses, spreading Sukuna's cheeks wider. A shit eating grin growing on his lips, "Ohhhh… this is why you didn't want to bend over?"
Sukuna's face reddens further, tips of his ears burning hot. He knows your nosy ass was going to look next— and to no one's surprise you do.
You and the camera focus in on it— Sukuna's anal tattoos. Shaped just like the rest of the marks on his body except for the fact that it perfectly shapes his butthole in four distinct thick lines.
"Oh." You're not even sure what you want to ask first; why didn't he tell you about it or if whoever tatted that takes new clients? Either way, it sparked something new in you.
"It's like a target, wow." your finger traces along the ink, ignoring the goose bumped skin. The longer you stared the hotter your body starts to feel, especially when Sukuna shivers, holding back a gasp.
You reel your hand back, eyes widened like you just struck gold. "You're sensitive, too?!"
Between Toji's tightening grasp on him, and your sparkling eyes, Sukuna doesn't know what to do. He puts his head down, staring at the sheets. hoping the bed would come to life and put him out of his misery.
Toji lets out a deep noise, glancing at you with a smirk, "Get good angles of his face for me." Then he starts pushing Sukuna further into the bed.
You shift onto the bed in front of them, holding the camera to Sukuna's red face, "Say cheese!"
Sukuna scowls, swatting the camera out of your hands. It tumbles down to the floor, and the footage cuts to black.
"My camera!"
it came to me in a dream. im writing tojikuna again someday🫃have you guys seen that art of sukuna having anal tats? it’d take 17 giants to unlatch me from him bro but i’d never eat man butt… unless it was sukuna. #choppedandscrewed
Chapter One || The Places We Learn to Disappear - Ryomen Sukuna
ryomen sukuna x f!reader
"You have always called Japan home, even when the world made you feel like you did not belong. Quiet and guarded, you learned to disappear—until Ryomen Sukuna Itadori noticed you.
Arrogant, brilliant, and impossible to ignore, Sukuna never cared about anyone for long. But with you, walking away becomes the one thing he cannot do.
Somewhere between cruelty and longing, the two of you begin to find a home in each other."
main masterlist | series masterlist | next
The books were knocked from your arms so suddenly that you did not even have time to tighten your grip.
One moment, you were hurrying through the crowded corridor with your psychology textbook pressed against your chest, your notebook balanced on top of it, and the next, everything slipped from your hands and struck the polished floor with a series of sharp, humiliating thuds. Loose papers slid in every direction, disappearing beneath shoes and gathering against the walls while your pen rolled several feet away. “Pay attention,” the girl said, as though you had been the one to walk directly into her.
She did not stop. Neither did the two girls beside her. They only turned their heads as they continued down the hall, laughter spilling between them while they glanced back to make certain you had heard it.
Your breath caught painfully in your throat.
For several seconds, you remained frozen in the middle of the corridor, staring down at the scattered remains of your morning while the crowd divided around you. Shoes passed close to your papers. Someone stepped over your textbook rather than bending to help. A few students slowed, not out of concern, but because public embarrassment had always possessed a peculiar gravity. People were drawn to it. They watched the way they might watch something fall from a great height, waiting to see whether it would break when it landed.
Your face burned.
The heat spread from your cheeks to the tips of your ears, crawling beneath the collar of your sweater until you felt as though everyone could see it, bright and shameful against your skin. A laugh sounded from somewhere behind you, followed by another, and you could not tell whether they were laughing at you or at something else. It hardly mattered. Years of experience had taught you that cruelty did not always need to announce itself clearly to be felt.
You crouched quickly, gathering the closest sheets with unsteady hands. Your curls slipped over your shoulders and fell around your face, creating a curtain you were grateful for. If you kept your head low enough, perhaps no one would see the tears threatening to gather in your eyes. Perhaps you could collect everything, stand up, and disappear into your next lecture before the humiliation settled too deeply beneath your skin.
You had thought college would be different.
That had been one of the quiet promises you made to yourself during your final year of high school. University would be larger. The students would be older. There would be too many people, too many classes, too many ambitions for anyone to waste time tormenting someone simply because she looked different from the family who had raised her or because her hair refused to fall smooth and straight down her back.
You had believed people would grow out of their cruelty.
Instead, they had merely learned how to sharpen it.
Children pointed and asked questions without restraint. Teenagers whispered loudly enough to make sure you heard. College students smiled while they insulted you, wrapping their malice in polished words and false innocence so that, if you reacted, they could tilt their heads and accuse you of misunderstanding.
A hand appeared beside yours, reaching for a page that had slid beneath the edge of a bench. “Easy,” a gentle voice said. “You’re going to tear it.” You looked up and found Professor Hayashi kneeling beside you.
He taught music in the arts building across campus, though you had never taken one of his classes. He was somewhere in his late forties, with faint gray streaks at his temples and the perpetually rumpled appearance of someone who spent more time thinking about melodies than remembering to smooth his clothes. His satchel rested on the floor beside him, abandoned without hesitation as he began gathering your notes. “Professor Hayashi,” you murmured, startled.
He glanced at you, his brows pulling together with immediate concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” you answered too quickly.
His eyes moved briefly toward the group of girls disappearing around the corner. The laughter had faded, but the echo of it remained within you. “That did not look like an accident.”
“It’s fine.” You reached for your notebook. “I should have been paying attention.” Professor Hayashi’s mouth tightened, though he did not argue with you immediately. He placed several loose pages back inside your textbook, carefully aligning the bent corners before handing it over.
He knew your name because your high school music teacher, Mrs. Fujimoto, had known him for years. She had apparently called him before the semester began and spoken about you with far more enthusiasm than you thought necessary. She had told him about your voice, about the way the classroom seemed to fall silent whenever you forgot to be afraid, and about how difficult it had been to convince you to sing anywhere outside an empty rehearsal room.
Mrs. Fujimoto had believed your voice was extraordinary.
You had never known what to do with that kind of praise.
Professor Hayashi had approached you during orientation week and encouraged you to take his vocal performance elective. He had spoken warmly, without pressure, assuring you that there would be no expectation to perform alone until you were ready. He had even offered to reserve a private practice room so you could become comfortable with the department before the semester began.
You had thanked him.
Then you had enrolled in another psychology course instead.
Singing was something you loved only when no one was listening. You sang while helping your mother cook, while folding laundry with your sister, and sometimes late at night when the house was quiet and you believed the walls were the only things capable of hearing you. The moment someone looked at you, however, the music disappeared. Your throat closed. Your body remembered every snicker from school assemblies, every comment about your appearance, every cruel imitation of the way you moved when you became nervous.
A beautiful voice meant very little when fear had taught you to swallow it.
Professor Hayashi picked up your pen and held it out to you. “The invitation remains open, you know.” You managed a small, embarrassed smile. “I know.”
“You don’t have to become a music major. One elective will not destroy your carefully planned future.”
“I’m taking too many credits already.”
“You said that last month.”
“It’s still true.” His expression softened. “And you still intend to become a psychiatrist?” You nodded. “Yes.” It was the only answer you had given with certainty in a long time.
You wanted to understand the mind, perhaps because you had spent so much of your life trying to understand why people chose cruelty when kindness required so little. You wanted to help those who had learned to suffer silently, people whose pain was dismissed because it could not be seen beneath the skin. Psychiatry offered structure to things that had once seemed shapeless. It offered language for wounds that could not be photographed and treatment for suffering others often demanded proof of.
It was a difficult path, and you knew it. Years of study waited ahead of you, followed by medical school, training, examinations, and more sacrifice than you could yet fully imagine.
Still, it felt like a future worth reaching.
Professor Hayashi rose first and offered you his hand. You hesitated before accepting it, allowing him to help you stand while you gathered the last of your belongings against your chest.
The corridor had begun to move normally again. Whatever entertainment your humiliation provided had already been replaced by the next distraction. Students checked their watches, hurried toward lectures, and called to their friends as if you had never been kneeling in the middle of them at all.
You had just opened your notebook to check whether any pages had torn when a tall figure passed close beside you.
A large shoe came down directly on the lower corner of the cover.
You stopped.
The person took another step before apparently noticing the resistance beneath his foot. He looked down, then slightly back, his gaze moving from the notebook to you.
Ryomen Sukuna Itadori was difficult to mistake for anyone else.
At six-foot-five, he stood above nearly everyone in the corridor, broad-shouldered and athletic from years spent on baseball fields. His pale pink hair was slightly disordered, as though he had run a hand through it on his way out of class and decided that whatever shape it took afterward was everyone else’s problem. A black university jacket stretched across his shoulders, and his baseball bag hung carelessly from one hand.
You had seen him countless times before.
Everyone had.
His name traveled through campus with an ease most people could only envy. Some knew him as the baseball team’s most promising player, the one scouts had already begun watching despite his being only twenty. Others knew him as the engineering student who sat at the top of his class without appearing to work nearly as hard as everyone beneath him. Most of the girls knew him for less academic reasons.
Sukuna always had a girlfriend.
Never the same one for very long, but always someone beautiful at his side, wearing his jacket or waiting outside practice with a drink in hand. The relationships came and went so frequently that even the campus gossip accounts had begun making jokes about them.
His dark eyes rested on you for only a moment.
Then he lifted his foot from your notebook. “Looks like you dropped something.” The words were delivered without apology or concern, carrying the effortless arrogance of someone who had never needed to question whether the world would make room for him.
Your face, which had only just begun to cool, burned even brighter. Before you could answer, Sukuna had already turned away. He continued down the corridor without looking back, weaving through the crowd while people shifted aside instinctively to let him pass.
Professor Hayashi watched him go, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and irritation. “That boy,” he muttered, “has far too much ego for one person.” You bent down and picked up your notebook, brushing away the faint mark his shoe had left across the cover. “It’s okay,” you said quietly. “I should have paid attention.” Professor Hayashi looked at you then, not with pity, but with a sadness that made you wish you had said nothing at all.
“You say that often.” Your fingers tightened around the notebook. He seemed prepared to say more, but the warning bell rang overhead, filling the corridor with a bright mechanical chime. Students began moving faster, and you glanced toward the staircase leading to your next class. “I’m going to be late.” Professor Hayashi sighed and picked up his satchel. “Go. But think about what I said.”
“The elective?”
“That too.” You did not ask what else he meant.
Instead, you thanked him again and hurried toward the stairs, holding your books more tightly this time. Your hair bounced against your back with every step, and you resisted the familiar urge to gather it all over one shoulder, to hide as much of it as possible.
You had spent most of your life learning how to make yourself smaller. It began long before college, before high school, before you were old enough to understand why strangers stared at you beside your parents.
You had been born in the United States, though you remembered nothing of it. There were no childhood streets preserved in your memory, no half-forgotten lullabies in another language, no lingering sense that somewhere across the ocean another life waited for you. You had been adopted as a newborn by Hiroshi and Emi Akiyama and brought home to Japan before you were old enough to recognize the difference between one country and another.
Japan was the place where you took your first steps.
It was where you spoke your first word, where you learned to read, where you scraped your knees on the pavement outside your childhood home and cried into your father’s shirt while he carried you inside. It was where your mother taught you to make tamagoyaki, laughing gently when your first attempt broke apart in the pan. Every holiday, every family tradition, every familiar train route and seasonal festival belonged to the landscape of your life.
Hiroshi and Emi never treated your adoption as a secret, but they never allowed it to become the measure of your place within the family either.
Your mother kept photographs from the day they first held you in a pale yellow album stored carefully in the living room cabinet. In every picture, Emi looked overwhelmed with joy, her cheeks wet with tears as she cradled you against her chest. Hiroshi stood beside her with one hand resting protectively over your tiny body, his usually reserved face softened into an expression you rarely saw anywhere else.
When you were young, you would ask them to tell you the story again and again.
Emi always described how small you were, how your fingers curled around hers, and how she knew immediately that she would spend the rest of her life loving you. Hiroshi pretended to complain that she left out the part where he had been the first to make you stop crying, though your mother insisted you had only gone silent because his deep voice frightened you.
Their affection had never left room for doubt.
When you were five, Emi became pregnant unexpectedly.
You did not understand at first why the adults around you became cautious in their happiness. Relatives brought gifts, neighbors offered congratulations, and yet your parents watched you carefully, as though waiting for a sadness you had not known you were expected to feel.
One evening, they sat with you on the floor of the living room. Emi’s stomach had only just begun to curve beneath her dress, and Hiroshi kept one arm around your small shoulders while they explained that a baby was coming. You had stared at your mother’s stomach for a long moment before asking whether the baby would live in your room.
Emi had laughed and cried at the same time.
Later, when she tucked you into bed, she held you close and told you that nothing would ever make you less their daughter. She told you that love was not a bowl that emptied when shared, but something that grew larger each time it was given.
You had not been worried about being replaced until she said it.
Afterward, for several weeks, the fear appeared quietly. It crept in when relatives commented on how wonderful it would be for your parents to have a child of their own, never seeming to realize that you were standing close enough to hear them. It followed you when strangers noticed Emi’s pregnancy and then looked between you and your parents with curious eyes.
But when Hana was born, she did not feel like proof that you belonged less.
She felt like your sister.
She was tiny and loud, with a full head of dark hair and a face that reddened dramatically whenever she cried. You adored her from the beginning. You sat beside her crib and sang softly when she would not sleep, long before anyone told you that your voice was beautiful. As she grew older, she followed you everywhere, clutching your hand at festivals and crawling into your bed during storms.
Hana never questioned why the two of you did not look alike.
You were simply her older sister, the person she trusted to braid her hair, check beneath her bed for monsters, and defend her when she broke one of your mother’s ceramic bowls while trying to reach the cabinet.
Home had always been kind to you.
The world beyond it was not.
The questions began in elementary school, innocent at first, though innocence did not make them painless.
Why don’t you look like your parents?
Where are you really from?
Is that your real hair?
Children touched your curls without asking, pulling the ringlets straight and laughing when they sprang back into place. Some compared them to tangled wires or animal fur. Others asked whether you ever brushed your hair, as though its texture were evidence of neglect rather than something natural.
You tried explaining that Hiroshi and Emi were your real parents.
No one seemed satisfied.
As you grew older, the questions became accusations. You were told you were not truly Japanese, even though you knew no other home. When you struggled with an exam, someone joked that perhaps your foreign blood was the problem. When you performed well, they accused teachers of favoring you because you looked unusual.
There was no way to win.
Your mother learned how to care for your curls through books, and patient experimentation. She ordered products that were difficult to find locally and spent hours detangling your hair gently so that you would never associate her hands with pain. She told you your curls were beautiful, tracing one around her finger and smiling when it bounced back.
At school, you learned to hate them anyway.
You begged her to straighten your hair before your first year of middle school. Emi had gone quiet, but she helped you. She passed the heated tool through each section while you sat in front of the mirror, watching your reflection change into someone you hoped would attract less attention.
The relief lasted until humidity returned the curls by midday.
The laughter was worse because you had tried.
After that, you stopped asking.
You wore your hair tied back whenever possible. You avoided raising your hand even when you knew the answer. You ate lunch in quiet corners, took routes through school that were less crowded, and learned how to recognize danger in a certain kind of smile.
By the time you entered college, shrinking had become instinctive.
You knew how to apologize when someone hurt you.
You knew how to step aside before anyone asked.
You knew how to lower your eyes and pretend not to hear laughter.
What you had never learned was how to stop believing that perhaps you deserved it.
When you finally reached the lecture hall, the professor had not yet arrived. You slipped through the door with barely a minute to spare and chose a seat near the back, relieved to find the desk beside yours empty.
Your heart was still beating too quickly.
You placed your damaged notebook on the table and ran your thumb over the dark mark Sukuna’s shoe had left behind. It was ridiculous that the brief encounter embarrassed you as much as the girls knocking your books from your hands. He probably had not even registered your face. By the time he reached the end of the corridor, you had likely disappeared from his thoughts entirely.
You knew enough about Ryomen Sukuna Itadori to understand that he belonged to a different world than you.
People like him were born knowing how much space they deserved.
People like you learned to apologize for occupying any at all.
The lecture hall smelled faintly of chalk dust, old wood, and the bitter coffee several students had carried in from the vending machines downstairs. By the time the professor began speaking, the room had settled into the low, restless quiet that always came before a long afternoon class. Pages turned. Pens clicked. Someone near the windows coughed into the sleeve of his sweater while pale sunlight stretched across the floor in narrow bands.
The course was Social Psychology, one of the classes required for your major and, ordinarily, one of your favorites. You liked the questions it raised about human behavior, about conformity, prejudice, identity, attraction, cruelty, and the strange ways people altered themselves in the presence of others. It was the kind of subject that made you feel less helpless around the things you had experienced. If cruelty could be studied, perhaps it could also be understood. If it could be understood, perhaps one day it could be interrupted before it became someone else’s lifelong wound.
Unfortunately, Ryomen Sukuna Itadori sat directly in front of you.
You had not noticed him when you first entered the room. You had been too occupied with choosing a seat that was neither close enough to attract attention nor far enough back to appear disengaged. By the time you placed your notebook on the desk and looked up, he had already dropped into the chair ahead of yours with the careless sprawl of someone who believed every seat was built specifically for him.
Toji Zenin sat beside him.
You knew Toji only by reputation, though his was very different from Sukuna’s. He was older than most of the students in the course and carried himself with the unbothered confidence of someone who had long ago stopped caring what anyone thought of him. He was broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and always looked vaguely amused by whatever was happening around him, as if university itself were an elaborate joke he had decided to observe for entertainment.
The professor had barely reached the second slide before Sukuna leaned toward him.
“What do you think would happen,” Sukuna whispered, though not nearly quietly enough, “if someone trained pigeons to steal cigarettes?”
Toji did not look away from the front. “You asking because you need a backup plan after engineering?”
“I’m serious.”
“That’s the problem.”
Sukuna snorted.
You kept your eyes on your notes.
Professor Kuroda was discussing group influence and the way individuals altered their behavior to align with social expectations. His voice was steady, measured, and easy to follow, but Sukuna’s whispering continued like a mosquito trapped somewhere near your ear.
“You could probably train them to steal coins too,” Sukuna murmured.
“To buy the cigarettes?”
“No, idiot. For profit.”
Toji finally glanced at him. “This is why no one should give you grant money.”
You pressed the tip of your pen more firmly to the page and tried to ignore them. Your notes were usually neat, organized beneath carefully underlined headings, but your handwriting had begun to slope slightly as you fought to keep up with the lecture while filtering out the nonsense unfolding two feet away.
Professor Kuroda moved into a discussion of bystander behavior, explaining how the presence of others could make individuals less likely to intervene when someone needed help. The subject made your stomach tighten unexpectedly. You thought of the corridor that morning, of papers scattered across the floor while students stepped around you, and your pen paused against the page.
No one had helped until Professor Hayashi arrived.
You forced yourself to continue writing.
In front of you, Sukuna shifted in his seat, his chair scraping faintly against the floor. For a moment, you thought he might finally have decided to pay attention. Instead, he turned slightly and looked over his shoulder.
His eyes found yours immediately.
You froze.
There was no confusion in his expression, no suggestion that he was trying to determine whether you were the same girl whose notebook he had stepped on earlier. He clearly remembered you, though the realization brought no comfort. One corner of his mouth lifted, and then he winked.
It was quick, effortless, and entirely too practiced.
Your face warmed despite yourself.
You lowered your eyes to your notebook and continued writing as though nothing had happened.
Sukuna remained turned around for another second, perhaps waiting for a reaction. When you gave him none, he faced the front again.
Toji muttered something beneath his breath.
Sukuna answered, “Shut up.”
You did not hear the rest, though Toji’s quiet laugh made you suspect it had been about you.
Professor Kuroda stopped speaking.
The silence arrived gradually, spreading through the room as students noticed that the lecture had halted. Sukuna did not. He was still leaning toward Toji, speaking under his breath with one hand partially covering his mouth.
Professor Kuroda removed his glasses.
“Itadori.”
Sukuna looked toward the front at last. “Yes?”
The professor’s expression did not change. “Would you care to share your discussion with the rest of us?”
“No.”
A few students laughed.
Professor Kuroda folded his glasses and placed them on the podium with deliberate care. “How generous.”
Sukuna leaned back in his chair, entirely unashamed. “I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“I suspected as much.”
The professor stared at him for another moment before turning toward the board. He erased a section of writing, then set the chalk down and faced the room again.
“Since Mr. Itadori appears to have exhausted his interest in today’s lecture, this seems like an appropriate time to introduce the semester project.”
A murmur passed through the class.
You straightened slightly.
The syllabus had mentioned a major collaborative assignment, though Professor Kuroda had offered few details beyond saying it would make up a significant portion of the final grade.
He reached beneath the podium and lifted a stack of papers. “You will work in pairs to prepare a research presentation on one of the major social forces we will examine this term. Each pair will be assigned a topic, gather supporting research, develop a written analysis, and present your findings to the class during the final weeks of the semester.”
Around the room, students glanced toward their friends.
Your stomach tightened. Partner assignments had always filled you with a quiet dread. When students were allowed to choose, you were usually left waiting until someone reluctantly included you. When professors assigned partners, the other person often treated you as an inconvenience before you had even spoken.
Professor Kuroda lifted a small wooden box from beneath the podium.
“Everyone will come forward and draw a name.”
The room erupted into louder conversation.
“Except,” he added, raising his voice slightly, “for Mr. Itadori.”
The chatter died almost immediately.
Sukuna looked up.
Professor Kuroda’s gaze shifted past him and landed on you.
Your heart dropped.
“Since he has been such a chatterbox today, I will choose his partner personally.”
The professor said your name.
Every muscle in your body seemed to lock at once.
Several students turned to look at you. You felt their attention like sudden heat against your skin.
Professor Kuroda gestured between you and Sukuna. “You will work together.”
Your eyes widened.
Sukuna turned around fully this time, one arm resting across the back of his chair as he looked at you. His expression was unreadable for only a moment before amusement crept into it.
You could not decide which was worse.
“Professor,” you began, your voice catching before you managed to make it steady, “that truly isn’t necessary.”
A few students laughed softly.
You wished the floor would open beneath your chair.
Professor Kuroda regarded you with mild curiosity. “You object?”
“No, I just—” Your fingers tightened around your pen. “I mean, I’m sure there are other arrangements that would be more suitable.”
“To whom?”
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out.
Professor Kuroda’s gaze moved back to Sukuna. “Perhaps working with you will encourage Mr. Itadori to use his considerable intelligence for something more productive than discussing criminal pigeons.”
The class laughed openly this time.
Toji lowered his head, shoulders shaking.
Sukuna looked at him. “You’re dead.”
Professor Kuroda lifted the box. “Everyone else, form a line and draw one name. That will be your partner. You may not exchange names unless there is a serious conflict, and disappointment does not qualify.”
Chairs scraped across the floor as students stood.
You remained seated for a moment, staring at the page in front of you without seeing a single word. Your pulse beat too loudly in your ears. Of all the students in the room, Professor Kuroda had chosen Sukuna. Worse, he had paired Sukuna with you as though you were some quiet corrective measure, a stabilizing influence meant to offset his arrogance.
The professor expected great things from Itadori.
Everyone did.
You wondered what he expected from you.
The remainder of class passed in a haze of instructions, deadlines, and grading criteria. Professor Kuroda explained that each group would receive a specific topic, though he would choose yours and Sukuna’s himself. You wrote down every date carefully because organization was the one thing you could control, even while the boy in front of you spent most of the lecture tapping his pen against the desk.
When class ended, students crowded toward the front to compare partner assignments and collect their topic sheets. Conversation swelled around you. Some people sounded pleased. Others complained immediately.
Sukuna stood without looking back.
He slung his bag over one shoulder and followed Toji toward the door.
You watched him go, panic rising in your chest.
Professor Kuroda was already sorting through the stack of assignment sheets. You gathered your books quickly and made your way toward the podium, careful not to bump into anyone.
When you reached the front, the professor handed you a stapled packet.
“Prejudice, social identity, and in-group bias,” he said. “A broad subject, but I expect the two of you can narrow it appropriately.”
The irony nearly made you laugh, though there was nothing funny in it.
“Yes, Professor.”
His expression softened slightly as he studied you. “Itadori is difficult, but he is not lazy. Do not allow him to intimidate you.”
You lowered your eyes to the assignment. “He doesn’t intimidate me.”
Professor Kuroda looked unconvinced.
You thanked him and turned away.
Sukuna and Toji had not yet left the hallway. They stood near the windows several yards from the classroom, speaking to each other while the corridor emptied around them. Sukuna had one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around the strap of his baseball bag. Toji was saying something that made him smirk.
You stopped several steps away.
The assignment packet suddenly felt much heavier in your hands.
You told yourself to walk over. You told yourself it was only a school project, that you had spoken to classmates before and that Sukuna was simply another student, no matter how much attention seemed to collect around him.
Still, your feet moved slowly.
When you reached them, neither noticed you.
“Sukuna,” you said quietly.
He continued talking.
You swallowed and shifted the packet against your chest. Perhaps he had not heard you.
“Sukuna.”
Toji’s eyes flicked toward you first.
Sukuna did not turn.
You waited, unsure whether to speak again. Toji looked between the two of you with faint amusement, then nudged Sukuna’s shoulder.
“Someone’s talking to you.”
Sukuna exhaled through his nose and finally looked over.
“What do you want?”
The bluntness of it made you flinch, though you tried not to show it.
Up close, he seemed even taller. You had to tilt your head back slightly to meet his eyes, and the movement made you immediately self-conscious. You tightened your grip around the assignment packet, pressing the edges into your palms.
“I wanted to ask if I could talk to you.”
Sukuna stared at you.
“You are talking to me.”
Toji snorted.
Your face warmed.
“I meant about the project.”
“What about it?”
You glanced toward Toji, uncertain whether Sukuna expected you to explain everything in front of him.
Toji noticed. “I can go.”
Sukuna looked at him. “Why?”
“Because she looks like she’s about to pass out.”
“I’m not,” you said quickly.
Both men looked at you.
You wished you had remained silent.
Toji’s mouth curved slightly, though there was no cruelty in it. “Right.”
Sukuna shifted his bag higher on his shoulder. “Well?”
You held the packet out to him.
“Professor Kuroda gave us our topic.”
He took it from you with one hand and glanced at the title page.
“Prejudice and social identity,” he read. “That’s dramatic.”
“It’s an important subject.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
His eyes moved down the page, scanning the instructions far more quickly than you could follow. For all his laziness during class, there was something sharp in the way he read, his attention narrowing immediately once he chose to give it.
“We need to submit a research question by next Friday,” you said. “And there’s a preliminary bibliography due two weeks after that.”
“I can read.”
You fell silent.
Sukuna glanced up.
For a second, his expression changed slightly, though you could not tell whether he felt guilty or merely impatient.
You looked down at your hands. “I know.”
Toji leaned against the windowsill and crossed his arms. He had gone strangely quiet, watching the interaction with more interest than seemed necessary.
You forced yourself to continue.
“I thought we should decide when we can meet.”
Sukuna handed the packet back. “I have baseball practice.”
“I assumed you did.”
His brow lifted. “You assumed?”
“You’re on the team.”
“You know who I am?”
The question was accompanied by the faintest trace of a smirk.
You looked at him, confused. “Everyone knows who you are.”
Toji laughed.
Sukuna’s smirk deepened. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I didn’t mean it as one.”
The words escaped before you could stop them.
Silence followed.
Your eyes widened slightly, and heat rushed into your face. You looked away, horrified by your own boldness.
Toji made a low sound of approval.
Sukuna stared at you for a long moment.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
It was not loud, but it was genuine enough to alter his entire expression. The arrogance remained, yet something almost curious appeared beneath it.
“So you do speak.”
You looked back at him. “I’ve been speaking.”
“Barely.”
You clutched the packet against your chest again. “I’m only trying to arrange a meeting.”
Sukuna studied you for another moment before reaching into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a silver flip phone and opened it with one hand.
“Give me your number.”
You hesitated.
His eyes narrowed. “For the project.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you looking at me like I asked for your blood type?”
Toji laughed again.
You quietly recited your number while Sukuna entered it into his phone. When he finished, he pressed a button, and a second later, the small phone inside your bag began to vibrate.
“That’s mine,” he said. “Don’t call me before noon on Sundays.”
You took out your phone and looked at the unfamiliar number glowing on the small screen. “Why would I call you on Sunday morning?”
“I don’t know what your habits are.”
“I sleep.”
“Good. We already have something in common.”
You looked at him uncertainly, unable to tell whether he was mocking you.
“When can you meet?” you asked.
“Tomorrow after practice.”
“What time does practice end?”
“When the coach stops yelling.”
You waited.
Sukuna sighed. “Around six.”
“The library closes at eight.”
“So?”
“So that only gives us two hours.”
He stared at you as though you had said something deeply unreasonable. “How long do you think choosing a research question takes?”
“I like to be prepared.”
“I noticed.”
His eyes lowered briefly to the stack of carefully organized papers in your arms, then lifted to your face again.
“Six fifteen,” he said. “Second floor of the library.”
You nodded. “All right.”
“Anything else?”
You wanted to say no. You wanted to escape before the conversation became more embarrassing.
Instead, your eyes drifted to the faint shoe mark still visible across the cover of your notebook.
Sukuna followed your gaze.
Recognition flickered across his face.
“You’re the girl from the hallway.”
Your fingers tightened around the notebook.
“Yes.”
“The one who dropped everything.”
You looked at him. “Someone knocked it out of my hands.”
He glanced at the cover again.
“And I stepped on that.”
“Yes.”
Toji turned his head toward Sukuna, one eyebrow lifting.
Sukuna did not apologize. You had not expected him to.
He only looked at you for a moment longer, then shifted his attention toward the far end of the corridor where several members of the baseball team had begun calling his name.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Six fifteen.”
Then he turned away.
You stood there as he walked toward them, his voice joining theirs almost immediately. Toji remained beside you for one second longer.
“He’s always like that,” he said.
You looked at him.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Toji’s mouth twitched.
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.”
He pushed away from the windowsill and followed Sukuna down the hall, leaving you alone with the assignment packet and the unfamiliar number stored in your phone.
You looked at the topic again.
Prejudice, social identity, and in-group bias.
Of all the subjects Professor Kuroda could have chosen, he had given you the one that felt closest to your skin.
And of all the people he could have paired you with, he had chosen the boy who moved through the world as though rejection were something that happened only to other people.
The next day passed slowly enough to make you aware of every hour.
From the moment you woke, there had been a small, irritating awareness of Sukuna sitting somewhere at the back of your mind. You told yourself it was only because of the project, because Professor Kuroda had made the expectations clear and because you did not like falling behind. It had nothing to do with the fact that Sukuna had taken your number, or the way he had laughed when you told him that knowing who he was had not been a compliment.
Still, you checked your phone more often than usual.
The little silver flip phone rested beside your breakfast bowl while your mother moved around the kitchen, and each time the screen lit from an ordinary system notification, your eyes went to it. Later, between classes, you opened it beneath your desk and looked at the call history even though you knew no one had called. When the afternoon stretched on and no message came, you reminded yourself that the two of you had already agreed to meet at six fifteen. There was no reason for him to call beforehand.
By six o’clock, you were seated on the second floor of the library with your books arranged neatly around you.
The university library was quieter in the evening. Most of the students gathered near the front tables or the computer stations, leaving the upper floor softened by the occasional turn of a page and the low hum of fluorescent lights. Outside the tall windows, the sky had begun to darken over Tokyo, the city shifting into scattered points of yellow and white as buildings lit one by one.
You had chosen a table near the reference shelves, far enough from the staircase that you would not be distracted by everyone who passed. The assignment packet sat in the center, along with two psychology texts, a stack of index cards, and a notebook you had opened to a fresh page.
At six ten, you checked the time.
At six fifteen, you looked toward the staircase.
Sukuna did not appear.
You tried not to let it bother you. Baseball practice could run late. He had said the coach stopped whenever he stopped yelling, and perhaps that had not been entirely a joke.
At six twenty, you began reviewing Professor Kuroda’s instructions.
At six thirty, you looked toward the stairs again.
A group of students came up laughing, followed by an older man carrying several books beneath one arm. Neither was Sukuna.
You pressed your lips together and wrote the date at the top of the page.
The assignment required a focused research question related to prejudice, social identity, and in-group bias. Professor Kuroda had warned the class against choosing something too broad. He wanted a question that could be supported through academic research rather than personal opinion, something specific enough to analyze but not so narrow that no sources existed.
You began listing possibilities.
How does visible difference influence in-group exclusion among university students?
You stared at the question for a moment before drawing a line beneath it.
How do shared cultural identities affect the treatment of individuals perceived as outsiders?
Your pen slowed.
The words struck too close to things you did not particularly want to discuss with Sukuna, much less present before the entire class.
At six forty-five, you finally took out your phone.
You hesitated before opening it.
His number was still saved exactly as he had given it to you. You had entered his name as Itadori, not Sukuna, because using his first name in your contacts felt strangely familiar. Your thumb hovered over the call button for several seconds before you pressed it.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then the call ended without an answer.
You lowered the phone to the table and stared at it, waiting for it to ring back.
It did not.
You told yourself he might still be at practice. He might have left his phone in his locker. He might be on his way and unable to answer.
At seven, you started searching through the library catalog.
At seven fifteen, you gathered three books from the shelves.
At seven thirty, you had drafted four possible research questions and written down the publication details for several sources.
At seven forty-five, the library staff announced that the building would close in fifteen minutes.
Sukuna had still not arrived.
You sat very still for a moment, your pen resting between your fingers.
It would have been easier if he had called to cancel. Even a careless message would have been better than silence. He could have told you practice ran late or that he had forgotten. He could have lied. You would have accepted almost anything over sitting alone for nearly two hours while each sound from the stairwell made you look up.
You hated that you had expected him to come.
Not because he had given you any reason to trust him, but because he had looked directly at you when he said six fifteen, as if the agreement had meant something simply because he was the one making it.
The clock above the circulation desk reached eight.
You packed your things slowly, sliding the unfinished research questions into your folder and returning the books you had decided not to borrow. The assignment packet went back into your bag, its pages now filled with your notes and none of his.
Outside, the evening air was cool enough to make you pull your cardigan more tightly around yourself.
The train station was crowded with students and office workers making their way home. You stood near the edge of the platform, watching the darkened tracks while your reflection floated faintly in the glass barrier. Your phone remained silent in your bag.
The ride home was not long.
Your parents had deliberately remained in the same house after you were accepted into the university. Hiroshi had argued that there was no reason for you to pay dormitory fees when the campus was close enough to reach by train, and Emi had been visibly relieved when you agreed. Some of your classmates treated living with your family as though it were evidence that you lacked independence, but you had never been embarrassed by it.
Home was the only place where you did not have to brace yourself before walking through the door.
When you reached the familiar residential street, warm light glowed through the front windows of the Akiyama house. The small garden beside the entryway had begun to show the first signs of autumn, leaves gathering along the stone path despite your father’s habit of sweeping them every morning.
You unlocked the door and stepped inside.
“I’m home,” you called softly. “Welcome back,” your mother answered from the kitchen.
The smell of simmered vegetables and grilled fish reached you almost immediately. You removed your shoes and placed them neatly beside the others before carrying your bag into the living room.
Hana was stretched across the floor in front of the television, surrounded by notebooks and colored pens. At fifteen, she had grown out of following you from room to room, though she still somehow appeared wherever you were whenever she wanted help with schoolwork or advice she insisted she did not need.
She looked up as you entered.
“You’re late.”
“I was at the library.” Hana’s eyes moved toward your bag. “Studying or hiding?”
You paused.
She smiled innocently. “Studying,” you said.
“That means hiding.” From the kitchen, Emi called, “Hana, leave your sister alone.”
“I’m asking a question.”
“You are bothering her.” Hana sat up and pushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Did you eat?”
“No.”
“Good. Dad tried to steal your fish.”
“I did not,” Hiroshi said from the dining room.
You looked toward him.
He was seated at the table with the evening newspaper folded beside his elbow, wearing the same rectangular glasses he claimed he only needed for reading. His tie had been loosened, and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his forearms. He looked tired from work, though the moment he saw you, his expression softened.
“You said it looked better than yours,” Hana accused.
“That is not the same as stealing.”
“You asked if she was definitely coming home.”
“I was gathering information.” Emi emerged from the kitchen carrying a serving bowl. “He was planning to steal it.” Hiroshi gave his wife a wounded look. “I provide for this family.”
“And yet you still want everyone else’s dinner.” A small smile pulled at your mouth before you could stop it.
Your mother noticed immediately.
“There it is,” she said warmly. “I was beginning to think the university had misplaced your smile.” You looked down, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m just tired.”
Emi set the bowl on the table and studied you with the quiet attention that had always made lying to her difficult. She did not question you further, though her gaze lingered for another moment before she returned to the kitchen.
Dinner was already arranged by the time you washed your hands and took your usual seat.
Hiroshi sat at the head of the table, Emi beside him, and Hana across from you. The meal was simple and warm: grilled mackerel, rice, miso soup, simmered pumpkin, and spinach dressed with sesame. Your mother had placed an extra piece of fish on your plate, likely because she knew you often forgot to eat properly when school became busy.
For several minutes, the conversation centered on Hana.
She had received the results of a mathematics exam and was deeply offended by a question she insisted had been written incorrectly. “It was not written incorrectly,” Hiroshi said after she explained it.
“You weren’t there.”
“I do not need to be there. You just described the question.”
“The teacher explained it badly.” Emi lifted her soup bowl. “What score did you receive?” Hana hesitated. “Eighty-nine.”
Your father stared at her.
You lowered your gaze to hide your smile.
Hana looked between all of you. “That is not the point.”
“What is the point?” you asked.
“The point is that I could have gotten ninety-three.”
“You have calculated the exact number of points your teacher personally stole from you?”
“Yes.” Hiroshi nodded solemnly. “A grave injustice.” Hana narrowed her eyes. “You’re mocking me.”
“Only a little.” She turned to you. “You understand.”
“I think eighty-nine is good.” Her expression became deeply betrayed. “You were supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side.”
“You sound like Dad.”
“That is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me,” you murmured.
Hiroshi placed a hand over his chest. “In my own home.”
Your mother laughed softly.
The sound settled around the table, warm and familiar, and something tight inside you loosened. This was what the outside world never understood when it looked between you and your family. It saw difference before it saw affection. It saw faces that did not match and assumed distance where there had only ever been love.
Hana reached across the table and stole a piece of pumpkin from your plate.
You looked at her. “You have your own.”
“Yours looked better.”
Hiroshi gestured toward her with his chopsticks. “You see? This is what I endure.”
“You were going to steal her fish,” Hana said.
“I was gathering information.” Emi sighed. “I should have made all of you separate meals and labeled them.”
“That would not stop them,” you said.
Your mother smiled at you, but the expression faded slightly when she noticed how little you had eaten.
“Was today difficult?”
The question was gentle.
You kept your eyes on your rice. “Not really.”
Hana stopped arguing with your father and looked at you.
Emi did not push. “You were at the library for a long time.”
“I have a project.”
“With someone?” Hiroshi asked.
You nodded.
“What are they like?” Your fingers tightened slightly around your chopsticks. “He didn’t come.”
A brief silence followed.
Hana’s eyebrows rose. “He stood you up?”
“It wasn’t like that. It was for school.”
“He still stood you up.”
“Hana,” Emi warned. “What? He did.” You stared at your plate. “He probably had practice.”
“Did he call?” Hiroshi asked.
“No.”
“Did you call him?”
“Once.”
“And?”
“He didn’t answer.”
Your father’s mouth flattened.
You knew that look. It was the same one he wore whenever someone was rude to a cashier or left trash on a train platform, a deeply personal disappointment in the decline of basic manners.
“Then he should apologize,” he said.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It is disrespectful.”
“I can do the research myself.”
“That is not the point,” Hana said.
You glanced at her.
She leaned forward slightly. “He agreed to be there. You waited. He should have called.”
The firmness in her voice made your chest ache in a way you did not expect. Hana had always been quick to anger on your behalf, even when you would have preferred to let things disappear without confrontation.
Emi reached across and rested her fingertips lightly against your wrist.
“You do not always have to excuse people before they ask to be forgiven.”
You looked at her.
Her expression was calm, but there was something knowing in it. It carried the weight of years spent watching you return home with hurt tucked carefully behind your teeth, insisting that nothing had happened and that everything was fine.
You lowered your gaze.
“He’s just irresponsible,” you said.
“Then let him be responsible for that,” Emi replied. “Do not make it your fault.”
Hiroshi nodded once, as though she had settled the matter completely.
Hana stole another piece of pumpkin from your plate.
You looked at her.
She chewed quickly. “Emotional support.”
Despite yourself, you laughed.
After dinner, you helped your mother clear the table while Hana complained about being forced to dry the dishes. Hiroshi returned to his newspaper, though every few minutes he offered commentary no one had requested.
The normal rhythm of the evening gradually softened the disappointment you had carried home. Water ran warm over your hands as Emi washed the bowls and passed them to you. Hana hummed under her breath while drying them, getting most of the notes wrong.
“You’re flat,” you told her.
She looked offended. “I am not.”
“You are.”
“Sing it properly, then.”
You shook your head.
Hana nudged your shoulder. “Come on.”
“No.”
“You always say no.”
“I’m washing dishes.”
“You’re holding one plate.”
Emi glanced at you with a small smile but said nothing.
You quietly hummed the melody instead, barely loud enough to rise over the running water. Hana listened, then repeated it, closer to the correct notes this time.
“There,” you said. “Better.”
“You should have taken that music class.”
You placed the plate in the drying rack. “Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“Because everyone is right.”
“Do your dishes.”
She muttered something about oppression.
Later, you showered and changed into a soft cotton sleep shirt before retreating to your bedroom.
The room had changed gradually as you grew older, though traces of childhood remained. A faded stuffed rabbit sat on the upper shelf of your bookcase, too sentimental to throw away and too childish to keep on the bed. Photographs lined the edge of your desk: Hana missing her front teeth, your parents standing beneath cherry blossoms, the four of you crowded together during a summer festival while Hiroshi complained that no one had warned him the photograph was being taken.
You sat on the edge of your bed and reached for your phone.
No missed calls.
No messages.
The screen glowed pale blue in the dim room, displaying the time and nothing else.
You opened the call history anyway.
Your outgoing call to Itadori remained at the top.
For a moment, you considered calling again. It was late enough that practice had certainly ended. Even if he had gone out with his friends afterward, he must have checked his phone by now.
You closed it instead.
Calling twice would feel desperate, and you refused to give him the satisfaction of imagining that you had spent the night waiting for him.
Even though you had.
You placed the phone on your nightstand and climbed beneath the blankets. The house had settled into its nighttime quiet, broken only by Hana moving around in the room across the hall and the faint murmur of the television downstairs.
You waited several minutes.
The phone did not ring.
You sighed and turned onto your side, staring at it.
Nothing.
Disappointment sat heavily beneath your ribs, tangled with irritation. You were not upset because Sukuna had ignored you personally. You barely knew him. You were upset because the assignment mattered, because you had already done nearly two hours of work alone, and because Professor Kuroda had made it clear that the project was shared.
At least, that was what you told yourself.
After another minute, you pushed the blankets aside and climbed out of bed.
There was no use waiting for someone who had made no effort to remember you.
You carried your books to the desk and switched on the lamp. Warm light spread across the pages, catching the edges of your notes and the stack of index cards you had brought home from the library.
You opened the assignment packet again.
Prejudice, social identity, and in-group bias.
Beneath the title, you had written six possible research questions. You crossed out two, revised another, and began outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each one. The work steadied you. Research had rules. Questions could be refined. Sources could be organized. Unlike people, information did not agree to meet you and then decide you were not important enough to remember.
An hour passed.
Then another.
Your phone remained silent on the nightstand.
Eventually, the house went completely still. Hana stopped moving across the hall, and your parents turned off the television downstairs. The only sound left was the scratch of your pen against paper.
By the time your eyes began to ache, you had narrowed the topic to the role visible difference played in social exclusion among university students. You had listed several variables, possible studies, and questions about whether cultural belonging could be denied based on physical appearance.
You stared at the final line for a long time.
Then you underlined it.
It was not a subject you wanted to make personal.
Fortunately, you had spent years learning how to write about pain as though it belonged to someone else.
“uh-huh,” he groaned, one hand firmly planted on the small of your back and pushing it down to make it arch for him. god, he fucking missed the sight of that. the shape of you squirming underneath him as he shoved his cock inside your soaked cunt. “tell me just how much you hate me, baby.”
“i can’t fucking stand you,” you whined, like your walls weren’t clamping down around him at just the sound of his low chuckle.
he wasn’t much better.
not when every sharp retort that left your glossy lips and every glimpse of you biting into his pillow to brace yourself made his cock throb. veins pulsing as he resisted the urge to cum inside you, craving his climax and choking it out at the same time - refusing to finish first.
"don't think your pussy agrees," he snickered, sliding his palm over your back until he found the back of your neck, fingers closing tight around your throat as you let out a moan loud enough for the man upstairs to hear. you must have thought the same thing judging by the way a shudder rolled through your body. "she's squeezing me real tight."
"you're disgusting," you moaned with none of your vitriol and all of your desire, hips wiggling while he dragged his swollen tip right below your cervix.
"and you're the one letting my disgusting dick fuck you from behind," he sarcastically reminded you.
"i didn't say your dick was disgusting," you argued, huffing as you tried to crane your neck around to glare at him. "i said you-"
but he snuck his free hand around to find that cute clit of yours, pressing down hard enough to draw a pretty little whimper from your throat.
"you said what?" he wryly mocked, fucking you faster into his mattress, not giving a shit how much the bed creaked beneath your combined weight, his hips snapping down into your ass as his abs preemptively tensed.
"i hate you," you whined, but he heard it all before.
for you, hate wasn't all that far off from love. for sukuna, he didn't mind either as long as it meant your attention was all on him.
and right now, it seemed like the only thing you were capable of remembering was his name, gasping it in shuddered breaths as he rubbed familiar circles over your sensitive bud, making you cum and cry it out before you could break things off again.
on another day, he probably would've pulled out.
splattered his cum across your back and then spelled his name out with it.
but not today. not now.
no, he was cumming deep inside you, stalling mid-thrust as he felt warm, thick ropes of it start to spill out, his fingers refusing to stop coaxing you through your own climax as he hissed your name.
"you love me as much as i love you," he accusingly muttered, jaw locked tight as he froze over you, staring down at your sweat-slick skin, the smell of sex and your perfume heavy in the air while you caught your breath.
"whatever," you huffed.
that wasn't a no.
he hadn't even fully pulled out when the pounding started at his front door, which, uh, was still not fully on its hinges, a familiar voice shouting his name and swearing to beat his ass on the other.
your boyfriend must've realized you never really belonged to him, huh?
"he's probably gonna evict me," sukuna muttered, carefully brushing your hair back to press a soft kiss to a love bite he left earlier as he slipped his cock out of you, glancing down to see his cum slowly starting to leak down your thighs.
you groaned, rolling over and lazily wrapping your wrists around his neck once you were facing him.
"i guess you can come live with me," you sighed, lashes fluttering as you let him continue to dot kisses down your face to your breasts, greedily wrapping his lips around your breast to suck softly.
"you sure?" he mumbled, busy dragging his tongue across your peaked nipple to care about the incessant banging on the door after he already banged you.
"i might still set your clothes on fire if you piss me off," you warned, drawing what he suspected was a heart with the tip of your finger on his back.
"i don't mind being naked."
a/n: toji alternate ending up next <3 div by @/tsumiinum
"You have always called Japan home, even when the world made you feel like you did not belong. Quiet and guarded, you learned to disappear—until Ryomen Sukuna Itadori noticed you.
Arrogant, brilliant, and impossible to ignore, Sukuna never cared about anyone for long. But with you, walking away becomes the one thing he cannot do.
Somewhere between cruelty and longing, the two of you begin to find a home in each other."
main masterlist
chapter one. The Places We Learn to Disappear
chapter two. The Weight of Someone Else’s Failure
chapter three. The Space Between Familiar and Close
chapter four. The Place You Left Behind
chapter five. The Shape of Choosing
chapter six. The Kindness of Safe Things
chapter seven. The Things We Repair by Hand
chapter eight. Before the Year Turned Over
“she’s going to kill you,” gojo groaned, nervously glancing around the hall like you were about to pop around the corner with a frying pan to beat them with.
“uh-huh,” sukuna grumbled, gritting his teeth as he jiggled the bobby pin in your lock.
“and me.”
“you’ll live,” he dryly muttered.
and if sukuna was lucky, you’d wrap your pretty hand around his neck and strangle him. he could practically feel you squeezing those manicured fingers around his throat while you straddled him, soft thighs locked around his waist as you scoffed at him and called him stupid.
was stealing your cat illegal?
yeah, but the law never had anything to say when it came to the two of you. he hadn't called the cops when you keyed your name over his license plate on his car or popped three of his tires. you didn't file a report when he broke in to steal your mattress during your last bad fight so you'd have to sleep on his bed instead.
"there we go," he grunted as he finally managed to get your door unlocked, twisting the knob and pushing it open with a groan. gojo was right behind him, practically stepping on his shoes while he complained about leaving the bar for this. he ditched the girl he brought with geto, ignoring her protests as his friend followed him out in an attempt to dissuade him from doing something he'd regret in the morning.
you weren't there to greet him.
but he had no problem finding your fluffy cat snoozing on peacefully on your blankets, sprawled out on his side of your bed. calico-colored fur sticking up, her pink bedazzled collar glittering in the moonlight carrying in through the window.
he felt like a fucking moron creeping over to snatch her, shoving her in the cat carrier you still kept in your laundry room, zipping it up as she let out a disgruntled hiss, swatting at him through the bars to protest her cat-napping.
"dude, you've fucking lost it," gojo huffed at him as they made they hurried back out of your apartment, not particularly at being the getaway driver for his crime.
"shut up," he snapped.
but he had.
the fucking second you had decided to take toji's hand instead of his in that bar bathroom, scowling at sukuna as you grumbled to your boyfriend that you should just leave.
how the hell could you do that?
okay, maybe the two of you had both done your fair share of sleeping around and having sex simply to make the other jealous while you were on breaks. but you having a boyfriend?
someone you fucking smiled at when he leaned down and whispered in your ear? who made you giggle and grin when he wrapped a possessive arm around your waist? who didn't even know you?
that asshole would run for the fucking hills if you threw his phone out of a moving car just because you thought a spam text was really some girl he was seeing on the side.
you just needed to remember who you were made for.
and it certainly wasn’t fucking toji.
would he kidnap your kitty?
he probably didn’t even know how to take proper care of your pussy.
did he bother to make you cum twice on his tongue before he shoved his dick inside you? did he know where all your sensitive spots were? know what your favorite position to be folded and fucked in was?
he told you that you were going to get bored.
all he had to do was wait for it.
and resist the temptation to race upstairs and strangle toji every time he heard your cute little moans through the ceiling, telling himself that you had to be faking it for him. putting on a show where he was the only one in the audience.
your point was proven.
he fucking missed you.
you won.
he'd take out the trash and wash the dishes and fold your fucking laundry and do whatever other menial task you wanted him to without bitching about it.
your cat hissed at him when he set her free, but then she was striding over to his leather couch to scratch the shit out of it, still finding fresh ways to piss him off as he gritted his teeth.
that was what he got, he guessed.
laying on a freezing cold bed and chewing the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, falling asleep to fantasies about what you'd do if you were beside him.
he woke up to the sound of his front door being taken off the hinges.
it nearly fell when he swung it open before you could finish, beat-up tools in your hands as you nearly growled at him.
"you could have knocked."
"i didn't want to speak to you," you petulantly pouted, dropping the tools with an irritated grimace.
so you were going to take off his door to get your cat and go?
maybe he should've seen it coming.
"does your boyfriend know you're doing this?" sukuna felt like he was going to be fucking sick saying it. he should be your boyfriend right now.
"what does it matter?" you scoffed. you weren't wearing last night's dress. you had changed, so he guessed you must've gone home to change and shower - and realized afterwards that your cat was gone
"so he doesn't know you're here," sukuna leaned against the doorframe, eyes skimming over your pretty face.
he missed being so close to you.
missed that cute little scowl of yours.
"you didn't even say sorry for calling me annoying, and you go and steal my goddamn cat," you hissed, glaring at him like you were going to claw him. "i'm getting her back and going."
sukuna wouldn't mind getting scratched up if it was you dragging your nails down his back.
"i'm sorry," he begrudgingly grunted, tilting his head back to jut his thumb towards where your cat was dozing off and dreaming on his windowsill, basking in the morning sun. "you know i didn't mean it."
"yeah? then why bother flaunting that girl you were going to fuck in front of me at the bar?" you retorted, voice sharp enough to bite as you slid past him to start towards your cat - but he grabbed your arm to twist you around before you could scoop her up and slip back out of his apartment.
"i didn't fuck her," he argued. "i didn't even-"
"oh sure," you sarcastically muttered, rolling your eyes at him as you shook your head.
"my cock can't even get hard if it's not with you," he confessed, all gruff and gravelly as his throat constricted at the idea of you going again.
something inside him warning that if he let you go now, he might not get you back again.
"get on your knees," you dared, that hard look in your eyes like you didn't think he'd actually do it.
but you were the only person he could bend for.
sucking in a sharp breath as he forced himself to listen, begrudgingly getting down on the floor and grabbing your hips on the way there as an excuse to touch you again.
"you're not supposed to be his," he heard himself say, his voice tight and strained.
"you acted like you didn't want me to be yours," you reminded him, but your bottom lip twitched a little.
"i'm an idiot," he muttered. one that was incredibly, painfully, pathetically obsessed with you.
"you're annoying," you accused, but he saw the way your breath got stuck in your throat, how you hadn't pulled away when his fingers dug deeper into your skin.
"i'm yours."
a/n: @yenayaps gave me the idea for his stupid ass stealing the cat lmfao. final chapter where they make up and fuck coming tomorrow <3 then a bonus alternate toji's ending this weekend :3 thank you guys for indulging me in this ily + the div is also by @/tsumiinum
Sukuna's having a territorial argument with a tiny kitten over his wife
The haze of early morning slowly melts into the soft, pale light that slips through the curtains. Sukuna lies buried under the duvet, his massive frame sprawled and relaxed, but even in sleep, his subconscious keeps tabs on you, his body instinctively tuned to your presence.
As the first real light of morning brushes the mattress, he starts to shift, a low, gravelly grunt rumbling from his chest as he gets ready to roll over and pull you in close, just like always. Eyes still closed, he stretches out one arm across the sheets, his broad palm searching for the familiar curve of your waist to drag you right up against him.
Except this time, his hand doesn’t find your skin at all. Instead, his heavy forearm lands right on top of a ridiculously soft, warm ball of fur.
Sukuna’s brow furrows in his sleep, his arm pinning the small weight to the mattress. A sharp, deeply offended chirp slices through the quiet, followed by the frantic pat-pat-pat of a kitten paw smacking his knuckles with pure indignation.
The blunt, claws-retracted thuds do absolutely nothing to his skin, but the sheer nerve of the assault snaps his eyes open.
Squinting into the pale morning light, Sukuna barely lifts his head, just enough to catch Mikan stomping over and wedging himself right in the dip between your pillows. The kitten’s oversized ears flatten, his tiny tail thumping out a slow, furious rhythm against the mattress, and those round green eyes lock onto your husband with a look of pure betrayal.
He’s planted his whole fluffy body in front of your face like a living barricade, spine bristling, glaring at Sukuna as if his favorite human in the world has just committed an unforgivable crime.
Sukuna just stares at the kitten for a long, silent moment. Mikan stares right back, his whole tiny body stiff with outrage, and lets out a high-pitched hiss so pathetically small it barely counts as a threat. Even so, he holds his ground, making it painfully obvious Sukuna isn’t getting anywhere near you.
"Are you fucking serious right now?" Sukuna rumbles, his voice incredibly deep and rough with sleep, the gravelly edge of it vibrating through the mattress.
He reaches past the kitten to pull you in, but Mikan is faster. The cat lunges forward, front paw darting out in a blur, smacking Sukuna’s thick wrist with a rapid, unimpressed rhythm that reads as a flat-out no. Sukuna might think it’s just attitude, but Mikan’s message is clear: you almost crushed me, and you’re not crushing her either, you giant idiot.
The faint tremor running through the mattress tips him off that you’re definitely not asleep anymore.
Face buried in your pillow, your shoulders tremble as you try, and fail, to smother the bright, sleepy laughter threatening to spill out. The sight of your hulking husband being thoroughly berated and held hostage by the very kitten he rescued for you is just too much, especially at seven in the morning.
Sukuna’s eyes flick down to the back of your head, catching the way your hair is shifting with your muffled giggles. His jaw tightens, but the corners of his mouth twitch, helpless against the fond amusement tugging at him.
"Don't encourage him, brat," he grumbles, glancing at you over the kitten, his hand still hovering in the air, completely blocked by the angry fluffball. He drops his head back onto the pillow with a dramatic sigh, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "I crawled under a dusty civic on my hands and knees to haul his little ass out, and this is what I get? Just because my arm brushed him?"
You can’t help it—you giggle even harder. Back when you first begged for a cat, Sukuna had scoffed, muttering about not wanting some useless, shedding ball of fluff tearing up the furniture. Then, months later, he’d come home after a shift, lugging a makeshift carrier with a tiny kitten inside. He tried to act like it was an inconvenience, but Mikan latched onto him from day one, and Sukuna never stood a chance. He was a goner, and everyone could see it.
His deep, disgruntled rumbling finally coaxes you to lift your face from the pillow, eyes crinkling with a wide, sleepy smile as you peek over the tiny barricade at him.
"You didn't brush him, Kuna, you almost flattened him with that giant arm," you tease softly, your voice raspy with sleep. You reach out, your fingers mindlessly scratching Mikan right under his chin, though the kitten's green eyes stay locked on Sukuna like a tiny bodyguard. "Now he thinks he has to protect us both from you."
"I was asleep," Sukuna says flatly, not even trying to defend himself.
Watching your fingers drift through the fur, his crimson eyes lose every edge, softening completely. He stretches out a single, thick index finger, lazily nudging Mikan’s side.
The kitten’s dramatic anger instantly melts away the second his favorite human touches him. Mikan lets out a tiny, squeaky purr, flopping onto his back to show off his fluffy belly and wrapping his front paws around Sukuna’s finger, nipping at it affectionately, though he still keeps his small body wedged firmly between you two. Sukuna lets out a low, amused huff, letting the kitten attack his hand for a moment, rubbing the soft fur behind Mikan's ears with his thumb.
"See? Dramatic little shit," Sukuna mutters. "He only acts tough because he knows I let him get away with it."
With a low chuckle, he decides he’s done waiting for the kitten’s permission. Moving with that effortless, sudden speed that always catches you off guard, Sukuna sits up and reaches out with both of his massive hands. He doesn't touch the cat; instead, he hooks his forearms under your waist and thighs, scooping you right off your pillow and hauling your whole body over Mikan and straight into him.
The cat lets out a startled squeak as his living wall is taken away, leaving him alone on the sheets while you’re pulled right into your husband’s chest.
"Hey!" you gasp, giggling as you bump into him.
"My turn," Sukuna murmurs smugly, his deep chuckle rolling over your skin while his arms lock tight around your waist, pinning you flush against him. Thick legs tangle with yours, his heavy thigh thrown over your hips to keep you right where he wants you. Shooting Mikan a narrowed look, he adds, “My bed, my wife.”
Mikan, seeing that everyone survived the move without getting squished, trots across the blankets and curls himself into a tiny ball on Sukuna’s pillow, nuzzling right into your husband’s head. Loud purrs vibrate from his chest as he tucks his paws beneath his body, finally satisfied that his humans are safe.
Sukuna exhales, long and defeated, as the kitten’s fur tickles his forehead. Still, his big hand stays pressed to your back, blunt nails tracing gentle circles at the small of your spine. He leans down, pressing a warm, lingering kiss to your temple.
"Now go back to sleep, angel," he mumbles into your hair. "Before the terror decides he wants breakfast."
One last, quiet chuckle slips out as you wrap your arm around his broad shoulder, burying your face in his neck. Completely surrendered to his heat, you let the hush of the room pull all three of you back under, drifting into deep, peaceful sleep.
a/n: this was inspired by the @marvel-ness comment on Sukuna doesn't handle waking up in an empty bed very well. thank you for that idea, i genuinely loved it and immediately had to write it, though it took me quite some time to edit it lmao
i have fallen in love with for your entertainment, you have written it all so beautifully, i adore your gojo and sukuna, and the respect they have! i wondered if you had anything you could share before the next chapter, like just some ‘fun facts’ about the universe 🫶 thank you!!
thank you sm!! yeah, let me see what i can think of 🙂↕️
very mild spoilers below the cut!
i envision them living in nyc although i don't specify. i envision reader's apartment looking similar to the one tom holland's spiderman gets at the end of no way home, although smaller (her bed and the couch across from it are very close, and also very close to the kitchenette) and with a worse view since she looks out onto the subway. her apartment doesn't get much natural light because a lot of it is blocked by the subway platform, as it's in one of the parts of the city where it's above ground.
in the same vein, her hometown is based on kerhonkson, a small town a few hours from nyc that genuinely does have the (former) world's largest garden gnome.
reader and yuki's parents are super close. they grew up together, with choso moving to the town a few years later. yuki was always closer to choso than reader and pretty much everyone who knew them figured they would date someday. choso can be pretty reserved and it took him a while to work up the courage to ask yuki out.
sukuna is one year older than satoru, but both are the top of their class in the same program at the same school. sukuna's classes are broadly in the morning and he gets up early to work out, while satoru's classes are broadly at night and he works out after class.
hiromi is older than all three at around twenty eight. he just finished law school and is currently doing practical work during the day and bartending in the evenings. he's very tired LOL
jillian is sukuna's aunt! she's married to his dad's brother.
sukuna's father is fairly successful and he could likely get a job from his father after school but chooses not to for a number of reasons.
sukuna's full name is ryomen sukuna itadori. he chooses to go by sukuna bc his father's full name is ryomen wasuke itadori and he didn't want to be ryomen jr, despite the fact that his father also doesn't go by his first name as he didn't wanna be ryomen sr.
sukuna is a twin! they're polar opposites.
satoru comes from a lot of wealth and has money to spare, so in his choice to pursue jillian's business once he graduates, he has room for failure should it happen.
sukuna has switched minors so many times that the faculty advising office is sick of him. he likely won't complete his minor by the time he graduates, but he does't particularly care as his major is the only thing that truly matters and he really enjoyed the history and literature classes he took that filled out the extra credits he needed for his major. his current minor will be revealed later!
although sukuna wants to own and start a company, he's been pitching to angel investors and other startup and scaleup owners while still in school because he doesn't want to be the face of the company. he has no desire to market himself, show up to events, do sales pitches and god forbid he touch linkedin. he knows it's all part of the trade, but he hates the way businesses work these days. he briefly considered offering satoru a partnership and does have genuine respect for him, but he also finds satoru grating and chose not to.
sukuna doesn't actually mind most of satoru's friends either. they drop by the shop sometimes. kento in particular isn't just satoru's friend but a regular of the shop as well with his girlfriend. his girlfriend is a baker for a living and sukuna will slip them his employee discount in exchange for fresh loaves of bread or buns.
sukuna's friends are made up mostly of people he grew up with. he's got a harsh personality and it can be tough to get along with him when he's constantly assessing those around him. the only person in his friend group who he didn't grow up with is hajime, who's got no problem shooting sukuna's attitude right back at him and shares a music taste.
the bar reader plays at has been in his family since it opened in the late 1800s. it's been refurbished dozens of times, but continues to be profitable for them. it's a popular spot because of its heritage, its vibes, and how close it is to the subway. hiromi has worked there since he got his alcohol certification training at 22. he makes good tips through his regulars and contemplated dropping out of law school at one point to stay a bartender because he enjoys it, but he's deeply passionate about how unfair the legal system is.
sukuna has a horrible tendency to tune people out when he's disinterested in something. it makes his already tough personality even harder to handle at times. most people take it personally, but it's shockingly not something he does on purpose. he's actually a good listener and likes to know what's going on in others' lives and their thoughts even if it's from a judgemental perspective, he just oftentimes gets caught up in his own thoughts. he's almost always considering what needs to be done for coursework, classes, and his future business and sometimes as little as a word can give him na idea that leads him on a mental tangent.
sukuna is great at keeping secrets. if you can get on his good side, he's a great confidante and has great advice too. he's surprisingly apt when it comes to emotions, he's just an ass. they don't pair well as traits.
-
those are some fun facts i can think of off the top of my head rn!! i hope you enjoy <33
ok i have brainworms too imagine this time around sukuna doesn’t crash out. he lets reader do her thing and acts supportive of her fling with toji bc he just ✨knows✨
so everything’s normal, he still has a drink with toji here and there bc he’s not a bad guy BUT he does casually slip in how much reader loves beets. toji obv keeps that in mind bc he’s at that stage where he just wants to impress her and shit, so he brings her some fancy drink from a juice bar one day and she’s all excited thinking it’s like pomegranate or wtv
and that’s the first time she loses it on him. she doesn’t even swallow it, she spits it out the moment that dirty earthy taste hits her taste buds, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is “are you fucking stupid?” toji’s so confused, he’s barely processing it and she just keeps going like why the fuck would you give me this, this shit is fucking nasty, what are you trying to say, are you saying i need to lose some weight
he’s scrambling to calm to her down, says he thinks she’s perfect and that there’s nothing wrong with her. literally nothing works, she storms out while saying something along the lines of “yeah whatever scarface” and she storms off, leaving toji confused and HURT bc she knows how he got that scar?? and the whole time sukuna’s been enjoying his morning coffee on the balcony, smiling and nodding every time reader says something that was on the bingo card he made
ok that’s it that’s all thank you for the treats i love you
sukuna absolutely is telling himself that reader knows where home is right now LMFAOOOOOO
i loved this so much omg i just picture reader slams the door behind her just to immediately be like oh shit and has to make herself take in big deep breaths to lock back in before walking back into toji's apartment and starting to fake cry and claim she's just on her period and toji is just dumbfounded
"you called me scarface," he grimaced, beefy arms folded across his chest as his dark brows pinched together. honestly, if you met him before sukuna, maybe you would be...more stable.
"i thought you were trying to tell me to lose weight," you muttered, pushing out your bottom lip like you were the one wounded here. looking up at him with big watering eyes as you reached out to brush your fingertips along the bulging muscles of his arm, squeezing softly as you blinked to make sure a stray tear rolled down your cheek.
but he didn't budge, just squinting at you like he didn't know what to believe.
damn.
you really didn't want to apologize.
but you forced yourself to swallow your pride, thinking about the chance that sukuna could be listening downstairs, devouring every ounce of drama.
"i'm sorry," you half-whispered, making sure your lip was quivering as you tugged his arms to press yourself against his chest. "i don't know why i get like this."
it wasn't even a lie.
but it got you what you wanted.
one of those big arms wrapping around your back, squeezing you with a sigh as you nuzzled your face into his warm chest.
"i didn't mean it," you added, keeping your voice deceptively soft and sweet.
"i heard you liked beet, was jus' trying to do something nice for you," he grumbled into your hair.
"from who?" you asked, barely able to keep the derision from dripping from your voice.
"your ex," he admitted.
of fucking course.
you were glad he couldn't see the face he was making while you briefly contemplated murdering the bastard on the floor beneath you.
"he's just trying to get in between us," you murmured, pulling back to look up at him. tracing your thumb over the scar you just made fun of before tugging him down by his shirt so you could press a small kiss against it.
"guess i should've seen it coming," toji muttered as you redirected his anger towards you back towards your ex.
"you know, just because i'm on my period," you started, slipping your fingers back in his dark hair and trying not to think about how it wasn't as soft as sukuna's. probably because he just used the cheap three-in-one shit from the grocery store to wash it. "there's still other ways for us to fuck."
you weren't even on your period.
but he'd be too busy buried in your ass to notice.
meanwhile sukuna is listening to his plan go to absolute shit and starts crashing the fuck out because ik he tracks her period on his phone and KNOWS she's not on it and her ass is supposed to be just for HIM
"that goddamn-" he muttered, rummaging through his tool box as a familiar whimper carried through the ceiling to assault his ears.
were you arching your back for him? wearing that lacy red thong and letting his calloused palms tug it down your soft thighs?
he found the tool he wanted.
storming off to the bathroom as he heard toji groan your name the way he used to, squatting down by the toilet to squint at the exposed pipes.
wouldn't it be a shame if one of them broke and a pesky maintenance call interrupted your make up sex?
"She had spent her whole life learning how to be careful—careful with her body, her voice, her heart, and the truth of who she was.
Then Sukuna entered her life, all sharp edges, quiet obsession, and dangerous tenderness. He was not soft with the world, but with her, he became something close to gentle.
A secret romance between a trans woman still learning she deserves to be loved openly, and a man who makes it impossible for her to feel hidden."
cw; smut. fluff. homophobia (from parents)
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven
The first time Sukuna invited you out with his friends as his girlfriend, you thought he was joking.
Not because you believed he was ashamed of you.
He had already made it painfully clear that shame was not part of his emotional vocabulary. Sukuna was not subtle about anything. If he disliked someone, they knew. If he thought a professor was incompetent, the entire row of students around him usually knew. If he thought you were beautiful, he stared at you until you grew too warm to look back.
He had called you his girlfriend every day since you agreed to be one.
Sometimes unnecessarily.
“My girlfriend wants the last dumpling.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You looked at it.”
“You wanted it too.”
“I can buy more. My girlfriend is dramatic when she’s hungry.”
Or:
“My girlfriend needs help carrying this.”
“Sukuna, it’s a sketchbook.”
“It’s heavy.”
“It weighs less than your shoe.”
“Still.”
He seemed to enjoy the word too much.
Girlfriend.
Each time he said it, something tender fluttered inside you. It still felt like a dress you were afraid someone might rip from your body, something too beautiful to wear outside the apartment.
Inside, it was easy.
Inside, you were Y/N.
You wore your hair down. You walked around in soft camisoles and little shorts. You left lip gloss beside the bathroom sink and no longer worried that Sukuna might find it. He had even begun moving it when he cleaned, muttering that you owned “too many tiny useless tubes.”
He had also started kissing you whenever he wanted.
Which was often.
He kissed you when he came home from class. When you gave him coffee. When you finished a model. When you insulted his cooking and he wanted to shut you up. Sometimes he simply appeared in your doorway, looked at you for a moment, and said, “Come here.”
Outside was different.
At school, you still dressed carefully. Your hair was usually pulled back. Your clothes remained loose. Some students had started noticing the changes in you, but they rarely asked questions directly. The campus was full of whispers, sidelong glances, and men who watched too long without saying anything.
You had not asked Sukuna to keep your relationship secret.
You did not have to.
He understood the danger without you explaining it. On campus, he stood close, carried your things, and glared at anyone who spoke to you disrespectfully, but he did not announce anything you were not ready to have known.
Then one Thursday evening, he walked into the kitchen while you were making tea and said, “We’re going out Saturday.” You looked over your shoulder. “Where?”
“Ren’s place.”
“Who is Ren?”
“One of my friends.”
“You have friends?”
Sukuna stared at you.
You turned back toward the kettle to hide your smile. “I’ve met some of them,” you added. “You’ve seen them.”
“That is different.”
“They’re having people over.” You reached for a mug. “Have fun.”
“You’re coming.” You paused.
Sukuna leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest.
You looked at him. “Why?” His eyebrows lifted. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I don’t know them.”
“You know me.”
“That’s one person.”
“Enough.”
“Sukuna.”
“What?”
“Are you asking me to hang out with your friends?”
“No.” You narrowed your eyes. “I’m telling you.”
“That is not romantic.”
“You’ll survive.” You stirred honey into the tea, trying not to let your nerves show. “How many people will be there?”
“Maybe fifteen.” Your hand stopped. “Fifteen?”
“Could be twenty.”
“You made it worse.” He shrugged.
You looked down at your tea.
The idea of going made your stomach tighten. It was not only the number of people. It was being seen beside him. Being introduced. The possibility that someone might recognize you from campus and ask questions you were not ready to answer.
Sukuna noticed the change in your face.
He pushed away from the counter. “You don’t have to go.” You looked up.
His tone had shifted. Still blunt, but softer.
“You just said I was coming.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You never change your mind.”
“I do when you look like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to disappear.”
The words settled heavily between you.
You looked back down at the mug. “I don’t want you to think I’m hiding you,” you said quietly. “I don’t.”
“You should be able to bring your girlfriend around your friends.”
“I can.”
“But if I don’t go—”
“Then I don’t go either.” Your head lifted quickly. “You would skip?”
“I’ve skipped before.”
“That was before we were dating.”
“Exactly. Why would I start liking them more now?”
A reluctant smile touched your mouth.
Sukuna stepped closer.
His hands settled gently on your waist. “You don’t owe anyone a performance,” he said. “Not them. Not me.” You looked at him. “But if you want to come,” he continued, “you can dress how you want.” The words made your pulse flutter.
“How I want?”
“Yeah.” You glanced toward the hallway leading to your bedroom.
Sukuna followed your gaze.
“You have something in mind.”
“No.”
“Liar.” You smiled shyly. “Maybe.” His mouth curved. “Wear it.” You spent most of Saturday afternoon changing your mind.
First about going.
Then about the dress.
Then about the makeup.
Then about the dress again.
The outfit hung against your closet door, waiting for you like a dare. It was a soft cream-colored dress with little pink flowers, fitted at the waist and flowing gently over your hips. The neckline was modest, but it showed the delicate shape of your collarbones and the small curve of your chest.
You had ordered it months earlier.
You had never worn it outside.
By six o’clock, you stood in front of the mirror wearing it, your hands smoothing nervously over the skirt.
Your hair fell loose past your shoulders in soft waves. You had spent almost an hour curling the front pieces, though your hair already had a natural bend to it. Your makeup was light: a little concealer, soft blush, mascara, and a pink gloss that made your lips look fuller and brighter.
You looked like a girl going to a party with her boyfriend.
The thought made you smile.
Then the fear returned.
You turned slightly to the side.
The dress fit beautifully. It also made it impossible to hide the fact that your body had changed. Your breasts were still small, but they were there. Your waist narrowed gently. Your hips had softened.
You looked feminine.
Not almost.
Not secretly.
You did.
A knock sounded against the open doorframe.
You jumped.
Sukuna stood there.
He wore a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms and dark jeans. His pale pink hair had grown slightly from its usual buzz, though it was still cropped close. He looked handsome in a way that felt unfair.
His eyes moved over you.
Then stopped.
You waited.
He did not speak.
Your nerves sharpened.
“Is it too much?”
“No.”
“You’re staring.”
“I know.” Your cheeks warmed.
He stepped into the room slowly.
The closer he came, the more intense his gaze became.
You looked down, suddenly self-conscious. “I could wear something else.”
“No.”
His answer came too quickly.
You looked up.
Sukuna stopped in front of you.
“You look beautiful.”
Your breath caught.
He said it simply, as though beauty were a fact and not a kindness.
“Really?” His eyebrows pulled together. “Do you think I lie to you?”
“No.”
“Then stop asking stupid questions.” You smiled despite yourself. He reached up and touched one curl near your cheek, winding it carefully around his finger. “You did this yourself?”
“My hair?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“It looks good.”
“Thank you.” His gaze moved to your mouth. “That the strawberry stuff?” You laughed softly. “Yes.” He leaned down and kissed you.
The kiss was slow and warm, his hand settling at the side of your neck. You smiled against his mouth, and he kissed you once more before pulling away. “Tastes the same,” he murmured. “That was very scientific.”
“I’m an engineer.”
“You use that excuse for everything.”
“It applies to everything.” You laughed. Sukuna looked at you for another moment, then took your hand.
“Ready?”
“No.” He nodded. “Good enough.” Ren’s apartment was louder than yours before you even reached the door. Music vibrated faintly through the walls. Voices overlapped inside. Someone laughed loudly enough to be heard from the hallway.
You stopped walking.
Sukuna, still holding your hand, took one more step before noticing you had not moved.
He turned.
You stared at the door.
“What if they recognize me?”
“They probably will.”
“That does not help.”
“What do you want me to say?” You swallowed.
The truthful answer frightened you.
My girlfriend.
You did not say it aloud.
Sukuna understood anyway.
His hand tightened around yours. “I’ll handle it.” Your gaze lifted to his.
“What if someone says something?”
“Then they stop.” The calmness in his voice should have worried you.
Instead, it made you breathe a little easier.
Sukuna knocked once, then opened the door without waiting.
The apartment was crowded.
Not packed, exactly, but full enough that the room seemed to move. People stood near the kitchen island with drinks in hand. A group sat around the television. Music played from a speaker near the window.
Several faces turned toward Sukuna.
Then toward you.
Conversation faltered.
Not entirely.
Just enough.
You felt it immediately.
The double takes.
The confusion.
Some of the men there attended the same university. They knew you, or thought they did. They had seen you in oversized sweatshirts, hair tied back, eyes lowered. They had known the quiet student who walked beside Sukuna and never stayed at parties.
They had never seen you like this.
One boy near the kitchen narrowed his eyes. “Wait.” Another leaned toward him. “Is that—” Sukuna’s hand moved from yours to the small of your back.
The gesture steadied you.
Ren approached first.
He was tall, though not nearly as tall as Sukuna, with dark hair and an easy smile. “Sukuna,” he said. Then his eyes moved toward you. “Hey.”
Sukuna nodded toward you. “This is Y/N.” Ren looked at you for a second longer.
Recognition dawned.
His brows rose.
Sukuna continued before anyone else could speak. “My girlfriend.” The room became very quiet.
Your heart pounded.
Somewhere behind Ren, someone coughed.
Another person said, “What?” Sukuna’s hand remained warm at your back.
Ren blinked once.
Then twice.
“Your girlfriend?”
“Yeah.” A blond boy sitting on the arm of the couch looked openly confused. “I thought that was your roommate.”
“She is.” The word landed softly inside you.
She.
Not corrected.
Not hidden.
Sukuna used it in front of everyone as though no other answer existed.
The blond boy’s gaze moved over you again. “But I thought…” He stopped, Sukuna’s expression sharpened. “You thought what?” The boy hesitated.
Another one of Sukuna’s friends, Kaito, spoke from near the kitchen.
“Are you gay now?”
The room seemed to tilt.
Your body went cold.
Sukuna looked at Kaito.
Then he scoffed.
“Hell yeah.”
Everyone stared at him.
Even you.
Kaito frowned. “What?” Sukuna shrugged, entirely unbothered. “I’m gay for her,” Your eyes widened.
The words were so blunt, so casual, that it took a moment for you to breathe again.
Kaito opened his mouth.
Sukuna continued. “I don’t care about gender and all that shit. I like her.” He said it with the same certainty he used when discussing numbers or criticizing bad designs. No shame. No defensiveness. No attempt to soften you into something easier for the room to understand.
I like her.
That was the whole answer.
Ren looked between you and Sukuna.
Then he smiled. “Okay.” The simplicity of it surprised you. “Okay?” Kaito repeated.
Ren shrugged. “He said she’s his girlfriend.” Sukuna nodded. “Correct.”
The blond boy stared at you again. “You really go to our school?” You nodded, voice quiet. “Yes.”
He did another obvious double take. “No offense, but you really look like a girl.” Your stomach twisted.
Before you could decide whether the comment was kind or careless, Sukuna’s expression darkened. “She is a girl.” The blond boy lifted both hands quickly. “Yeah. Sorry. That’s what I meant.” You touched Sukuna’s arm. “I’m okay.” His gaze shifted to you.
The sharpness in his face softened. “You sure?” You nodded.
Ren stepped aside. “Well, come in. I think Maya and Nori are in the kitchen. They’ll probably save you from all of us.” You smiled faintly.
“That might be good.” Sukuna guided you farther inside, his hand never leaving your back.
For the first fifteen minutes, you barely spoke.
You sat beside Sukuna on the couch with your knees together and your hands folded in your lap. He remained close, one arm stretched along the back of the couch behind you. His fingers occasionally brushed your shoulder, small reminders that he was there.
People looked.
Some tried not to.
Others failed.
But no one said anything cruel.
Then two girls approached.
One had long dark hair and silver earrings. The other had a short copper bob and bright blue eyeliner.
The dark-haired girl smiled at you.
“Hi. I’m Maya.”
“Nori,” the other said, sitting on the coffee table in front of you. “Your dress is really cute.” You looked down at it automatically. “Thank you.”
“Where did you get it?” Maya asked.
You told her.
Nori’s eyes widened. “Online? Does it fit true to size? I ordered from them once and the sleeves nearly killed me.” A laugh escaped you.
The conversation unfolded gently from there.
They asked about your major.
You told them architecture.
Maya was studying communications at another university. Nori was in nursing school. They complained about professors, deadlines, and the terrible parking near campus.
They did not interrogate you.
They did not ask about your body.
They did not demand your history.
They simply spoke to you like another girl at a party.
At one point, Nori leaned closer and examined your eyeliner. “Did you do this yourself?” You nodded. “It’s really good.”
“I’m still learning.”
“You should’ve seen mine freshman year,” she said. “I looked like a raccoon with debt.” You laughed so suddenly and loudly that Sukuna looked over from his conversation.
His eyes settled on you.
You were smiling.
Not cautiously.
Not politely.
Really smiling.
Something in his face softened.
Ren noticed. “Damn,” he said. “You’re gone.” Sukuna looked at him.
“What?”
“You’re staring at her like an idiot.”
“I’m looking.”
“Same thing.” Sukuna ignored him.
By the end of the hour, you had both Maya’s and Nori’s numbers. Maya created a group chat titled Girls Who Hate Group Projects.
You stared at the name on your phone.
Girls.
The word warmed you.
Nori immediately sent a blurry photo of the three of you from the couch, all leaning together and smiling.
You looked at your own face.
Long hair loose.
Glossed lips.
Flowered dress.
Happy.
You barely recognized yourself.
Not because you looked unfamiliar.
Because you looked like the version of yourself you had only ever imagined seeing.
Sukuna appeared behind the couch.
His hand settled on your shoulder. “You having fun?” You looked up at him. “Yes.” His mouth curved faintly. “Good.” Nori looked between you both. “You two are cute.” Sukuna answered before you could. “I know.” You covered your face.
Maya laughed. “You’re embarrassing.” Sukuna leaned down and kissed the top of your head. “You’ll live.” Later, when the music grew louder and people had settled into smaller groups, Sukuna pulled you toward the quieter hallway near the balcony. “What?” you asked.
He looked down at you.
“Nothing.”
“You dragged me away for nothing?”
“You were talking to people for an hour.”
“That is usually what happens at parties.”
“You forgot about me.” You stared at him. “Are you jealous of Maya and Nori?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You came over three times.”
“I was checking on you.”
“You stood behind the couch for five minutes.” His expression remained serious. “You looked good.” Your face warmed. “That is not an answer.” He slid one hand around your waist. “It’s the only one you’re getting.” You looked up at him.
The hallway was dimmer than the living room, lit only by the warm glow from a nearby lamp. Voices and music blurred behind you.
Sukuna’s gaze moved slowly over your face.
“You’re beautiful.” Your breath caught. “You already told me that.”
“I’m telling you again.” His thumb moved against the fabric at your waist. “You look happy.”
“I am.”
“Good.” You smiled. “Thank you for bringing me.” He leaned closer. “You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t have to tell everyone.” His face changed. “Tell them what?”
“That I’m trans.” The words were quiet.
Sukuna studied you. “If you didn’t want me to, I’m sorry.” The apology surprised you.
He rarely apologized. “I’m not upset,” you said quickly. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“Kaito asked.”
“You could have said something else.”
“I could have.” You waited, Sukuna’s hand tightened slightly at your waist. “But I’m not going to act like liking you is something I have to explain around.” Your eyes stung.
He noticed immediately. “No.” You laughed softly. “I’m not crying.”
“You’re about to.”
“I’m happy.”
“You cry when you’re happy too much.”
“You say nice things in mean ways.”
“Efficient.” You shook your head, smiling.
He leaned down and kissed you.
This kiss was different from the ones at home.
Not because it was deeper.
Because it was public.
His hand remained at your waist. Your fingers caught lightly in the front of his shirt. He kissed you slowly, without hesitation, where anyone passing the hallway could see.
When he pulled back, he looked at your face and frowned.
“What?”
“Your lip gloss is gone.” You laughed. “You kissed it off.”
“Put more on.”
“Why?”
“So I can do it again.” You laughed harder.
Sukuna smiled and kissed your cheek.
Then your jaw.
Then the corner of your mouth.
“You’re being clingy.”
“You like it.”
“I do.” His hand moved from your waist to your hip, holding you closer. “You really are beautiful,” he murmured.
You looked down shyly.
He caught your chin gently.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Hide when I compliment you.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“You are.”
Your eyes lifted to his.
Sukuna’s expression softened.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
Someone shouted his name from the living room.
Sukuna ignored it.
They shouted again.
He sighed.
“You want another drink?”
“Just water.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I can—”
“Stay here.”
“You’re bossy.”
“Yes.” He kissed your forehead and walked back toward the kitchen.
You watched him go, smiling helplessly.
A few minutes later, while Sukuna stood near the counter pouring water into a plastic cup, Kaito approached him.
Kaito looked toward the hallway where you were speaking with Maya again.
Then he lowered his voice. “So you’re serious?” Sukuna did not look at him. “About what?”
“Her.” Sukuna set the pitcher down. “Yes.” Kaito rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
“That usually means you’re about to be one.”
“I’m just asking.” Sukuna looked at him.
Kaito hesitated. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“What?”
“That she has…” He paused, then lowered his voice further. “A penis.” Sukuna’s face went still.
Kaito immediately looked uncomfortable. “You don’t have to answer. I was just wondering how that works.” Sukuna stared at him long enough that Kaito began shifting his weight.
“You know what I mean.” Sukuna’s jaw tightened. “We haven’t done anything.” Kaito looked surprised. “Nothing?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Right. Sorry.” Sukuna picked up the cup of water.
Then he paused. “I like her for her.” Kaito looked at him, Sukuna’s gaze shifted toward the hallway.
You were laughing with Maya and Nori, one hand covering your mouth. Your hair spilled over your shoulders. The little pink flowers on your dress moved when you laughed.
His expression softened.
“I don’t care what parts she has,” he said. “She’s Y/N.” Kaito followed his gaze.
Then nodded slowly. “Okay.” Sukuna looked back at him. “You ask her anything like that and I’ll break your nose.” Kaito raised both hands. “I won’t.”
“Good.” Sukuna carried the water to you, you took the cup with a smile.
“Thank you.” He looked down at you. “What?”
“You were talking to Kaito.”
“Unfortunately.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing important.” You studied his face.
Sukuna leaned down and kissed your temple.
“Stop worrying.”
“I’m not.”
“Liar.” You smiled and took a sip of water.
The night continued gently after that.
You played a card game with Maya and Nori. Sukuna accused Ren of cheating. Ren accused Sukuna of being unable to lose gracefully. Nori made everyone take another group picture, and Sukuna looked irritated in every single one except the one where you kissed his cheek.
In that photograph, his expression softened.
Not enough for anyone else to call it a smile.
Enough for you.
By the time the two of you left, it was nearly midnight. The hallway outside Ren’s apartment was quiet and cool. You held Sukuna’s hand as you walked toward the stairs.
He glanced at you.
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“Had fun?” You looked down at your phone, where the girls’ group chat continued buzzing. “Yes.” The answer came easily. “I had a lot of fun.” Sukuna nodded, satisfied.
“They like you.”
“I like them too.”
“You can hang out with them again.”
You looked at him.
“Without you?” He frowned. “Why would you want to?” You laughed. “You’re clingy.”
“I’m not.”
“You checked on me all night.”
“You looked nervous.”
“Then I stopped being nervous.”
“You still could’ve needed me.” Your chest warmed.
You squeezed his hand. “I always need you a little.” Sukuna glanced away.
The tips of his ears turned faintly pink.
You smiled.
“Did that embarrass you?”
“No.”
“It did.”
“Keep walking.”
You laughed again.
At the bottom of the stairs, Sukuna stopped.
You turned toward him.
“What?”
He looked at you for a moment.
Then he lifted your joined hands and kissed your knuckles.
The gesture was so unexpectedly tender that your breath caught.
“I’m proud of you,” he said.
Your eyes widened.
“For what?”
“For coming.”
You looked down.
“I almost didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I did.”
His thumb brushed over your hand.
“So am I.”
You leaned into him, wrapping your arms around his waist.
This time, Sukuna hugged you back without hesitation.
His arms closed around you firmly, holding you against his chest in the quiet stairwell.
You rested your cheek over his heart.
“You really don’t care?” you whispered.
He knew what you meant.
His chin rested lightly against your hair.
“No.”
“Even about my body?”
“No.”
“What if—”
“Y/N.”
You stopped.
Sukuna pulled back enough to look at you.
“I like you.”
Your throat tightened.
“All of you,” he added. “Whatever happens later, we figure it out later.”
You nodded.
He touched your cheek.
“You don’t have to be scared of me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are sometimes.”
“Not of you.”
“Then what?”
You searched for the right words.
“Of being happy and losing it.”
His expression softened.
Sukuna leaned down and kissed your forehead.
“You’re not losing me.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I just did.”
You smiled faintly.
“You’re very bossy about reassurance.”
“I’m bossy about everything.”
“That is true.”
He kissed you again, softly this time.
Then he took your hand and started walking.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home.”
You followed him out into the cool night air.
Your heels clicked softly against the sidewalk. Your flowered dress moved around your knees. Your hair remained loose beneath the streetlights, and your lip gloss had long since disappeared beneath Sukuna’s kisses.
For the first time, you had walked into a room full of people as his girlfriend.
Not hidden.
Not explained away.
Not dressed as someone you were not.
And when people looked confused, Sukuna had not flinched.
He had called you his girl.
He had said he liked you for you.
The world had not ended.
Instead, you had made friends.
You had laughed.
You had kissed your boyfriend beneath warm hallway lights while music played in the next room.
"She had spent her whole life learning how to be careful—careful with her body, her voice, her heart, and the truth of who she was.
Then Sukuna entered her life, all sharp edges, quiet obsession, and dangerous tenderness. He was not soft with the world, but with her, he became something close to gentle.
A secret romance between a trans woman still learning she deserves to be loved openly, and a man who makes it impossible for her to feel hidden."
cw; smut. fluff. homophobia (from parents)
one | three | four | five | six | seven
By sophomore year, hiding had become more difficult than honesty.
Not safer.
Never safer.
But harder.
Three years of hormone injections had changed you in ways that could no longer be dismissed as poor lighting or a naturally soft face. Your body had continued unfolding quietly toward itself, inch by inch, month by month. Your skin had grown smoother. The hard lines you had once searched for in the mirror had softened into something gentler. Your hips curved more than they had before, and your chest had developed enough that even your loosest shirts could not entirely erase it.
Your hair had grown long too.
It fell well past your shoulders now, brown and soft, with a slight wave when you let it air-dry. At the apartment, you wore it loose most days or tied it back with ribbons you pretended you had bought by accident. Sukuna never commented on the ribbons directly, though you once caught him staring at a pale pink one woven through your hair while you stood at the kitchen counter. “What?” you had asked.
He looked away. “Nothing.”
“You were staring.”
“It’s bright.”
“It’s pastel.”
“Same thing.”
“You don’t like it?” He had glanced at you again, gaze catching briefly on the ribbon before settling on your face. “I didn’t say that.” That was as close to praise as Sukuna liked to get without being cornered.
Around your parents, however, your hair disappeared.
You twisted it into a low, severe bun at the nape of your neck and tucked every soft strand away. You wore baggy sweatshirts, loose jeans, and compression garments that left you sore by the end of the day. You stood straighter. Lowered your voice. Removed every trace of gloss from your mouth.
You only saw your parents once or twice a year now, but the rarity did not make it easier. If anything, each visit became a performance you had more time to fear.
Your father always looked at you too closely.
He commented that you were getting thinner even when you were not. He asked why you kept your hair so long. He told you to stop wearing oversized clothes because they made you look weak, unaware that the fabric was the only thing keeping him from seeing the daughter standing in front of him.
Your mother noticed more.
You could tell.
Her gaze sometimes paused at your face or followed the shape of your hands. Once, during winter break, she touched your cheek and said your skin looked different. You had blamed a new moisturizer.
She had nodded.
You had both pretended to believe you.
When you returned to the apartment after those visits, Sukuna always knew how badly they had gone before you said a word.
You would enter with your shoulders curved inward and your hair still trapped in the low bun. You would set your bag down too carefully. Speak too softly. Avoid looking at your reflection in the hallway mirror.
Sukuna never asked whether you wanted to talk.
He simply walked toward you, reached behind your head, and pulled the elastic from your hair.
The first time he did it, your long hair fell over your shoulders in a loose wave.
You stared at him.
He stared back. “What?” he said.
“You took my hair down.”
“It looked uncomfortable.”
“It was.”
“Then stop wearing it like that.”
“My dad—”
“Your dad isn’t here.” The words had settled into you more gently than anything soft could have.
Your dad isn’t here.
Here, the pink tank tops had migrated from the bottom drawer to the regular laundry basket. Here, your panties dried beside Sukuna’s black gym clothes without either of you pretending they belonged to someone else. Here, your hormone supplies sat in a small lockbox beneath your desk instead of hidden behind textbooks. Here, Sukuna used she and her so naturally that sometimes you forgot there had ever been another way to speak about you.
Outside the apartment, things remained more complicated.
The university was still an all-male institution on paper and in spirit, filled with young men who competed over grades, internships, gym records, and the number of women they could claim had wanted them. You moved quietly through those halls in loose clothes, your student identification still bearing a name that felt more foreign each time a professor called it aloud.
Sukuna hated that name.
You noticed because he never used it.
Not once.
When he needed your attention, he called you princess, brat, roommate, or simply snapped his fingers until you looked at him.
The snapping lasted until you threw a pencil at his head.
After that, he mostly used princess.
You had spent months choosing your real name.
You wrote possibilities everywhere.
In the margins of your sketchbooks. On scraps of paper tucked into books. In the notes app on your phone. You whispered them alone in front of the bathroom mirror, listening for one that sounded like it belonged to the girl looking back.
Some were beautiful but felt too delicate.
Others felt too unfamiliar.
A few made you smile for a day before losing their shape.
Then, one afternoon, you found it.
A name that felt soft without making you feel fragile. A name that sounded beautiful when you whispered it to your reflection. A name that belonged to the girl you had always known was waiting beneath everything you had been forced to wear.
You wrote it on the first page of a new sketchbook.
Y/N.
Then underneath:
My name is Y/N.
The words made your chest ache.
You stared at them until your vision blurred.
Telling Sukuna should have been easy.
He had already accepted everything else. He bought the strawberry lotion you liked and pretended it was practical. He helped you research injection sites after you bruised your thigh. He had once stood outside your bedroom door holding a heating pad because you said the shot had left you sore.
But this felt different.
A name was not clothing hidden beneath a sweatshirt.
It was not a pronoun spoken privately.
It was a declaration.
A promise that the person you were becoming deserved to be called into the world.
You carried the secret for three days.
Sukuna noticed on the first. “You’re acting weird,” he said over dinner.
You looked down at your noodles. “I always act weird.”
“Different weird.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.” You twirled noodles around your fork. “Maybe I’m tired.”
“You slept nine hours.”
“You watch me sleep?” He looked unimpressed. “You drool.” Your head snapped up. “I do not.”
“You do.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“You soaked my shoulder last week.” Your face heated. “That was because I fell asleep during the movie.”
“On me.”
“You sat too close.”
“You leaned first.”
“You put the blanket over both of us.”
“Because you were cold.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“So are you.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
Sukuna was unbearable when he knew he had found something.
You stabbed a piece of broccoli with more force than necessary. “I picked a name.”
He stopped eating.
The room became strangely quiet.
Not tense.
Just attentive.
Sukuna set his chopsticks down. “Yeah?” You nodded, suddenly unable to look at him.
“I think so.”
“What is it?”
Your fingers tightened around the fork. “Y/N.” The name left your mouth barely above a whisper.
Still, it seemed to fill the apartment.
Sukuna repeated it once, slowly. “Y/N.” Hearing it in his voice made your heart stumble. He leaned back in his chair, considering it with the same seriousness he brought to structural designs and expensive purchases.
Then he nodded.
“I like it.” You looked up. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“I don’t say shit just to say it.”
That was true.
Sukuna’s honesty could be brutal, but it was dependable.
You smiled faintly. “It feels like me.” He lifted one eyebrow. “That’s dramatic.” Then the corner of his mouth twitched. “It suits you.” Your expression softened again.
He picked up his chopsticks. “So that’s your name now?” You swallowed. “Yes.”
“Y/N.” You looked at him.
He said it again, not testing it this time.
Using it.
“Pass the sauce, Y/N.” Your eyes stung instantly, Sukuna’s hand paused over his bowl. “Oh, hell.” You laughed through the tears gathering in your eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re crying over sauce.”
“I’m not crying over the sauce.”
“Looks like it.”
“You said my name.”
“I’m aware.” You wiped beneath one eye with the heel of your hand. He sighed and pushed the box of tissues across the table toward you.
“Don’t start doing that every time.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I might.”
“You’re exhausting.”
But he said your name again before dinner ended.
Then once more when he asked whether you had finished your architecture assignment.
Again when he told you to stop leaving pencils in the couch cushions.
Again the next morning when he knocked on your door and said, “Y/N, you’re gonna miss class.” For the first week, he used it more than necessary.
You knew he was doing it on purpose.
He acted like he was not.
It became one more thing about Sukuna you loved too much.
That was the problem.
You loved him.
You had tried calling it gratitude at first.
Then friendship.
Then attachment.
You told yourself it was natural to care deeply about the first person who had ever seen you and refused to flinch. Sukuna had become your safety without either of you formally agreeing to it. Of course your feelings were intense. Of course your chest warmed when he said your name. Of course you felt calmer when he walked beside you across campus.
But gratitude did not explain the way your stomach twisted when girls approached him at parties.
Friendship did not explain why you noticed his hands.
Attachment did not explain the ache that spread through you when he came home smelling like someone else’s perfume.
By sophomore year, you stopped lying to yourself.
You were completely, hopelessly in love with Ryomen Sukuna.
It was an inconvenient love.
Sukuna still talked occasionally about women he found attractive, though less often than before. He still received messages late at night from girls whose names you did not know. Sometimes he ignored them. Sometimes he went out.
You never asked where.
You did not have the right.
You were his roommate. His best friend, perhaps, though neither of you would use the phrase aloud. You studied together, ate together, watched movies together, and spent so much time in the same space that people on campus had begun assuming you came as a pair.
Sukuna always chose you.
That was what made everything worse.
His friends complained about it constantly.
“You’re skipping again?” one of them asked outside the engineering building one Friday afternoon.
Sukuna adjusted the strap of his bag. “Yeah.”
“We’re going to the bar.”
“Sounds terrible.”
“You said that last week.”
“It was true last week too.” His friend glanced toward you, standing a few steps away with your sketchbook held against your chest. “You hanging out with your roommate again?” Sukuna looked at you. “Yes.” His friend laughed. “You two married?” Your face burned.
Sukuna did not react. “Why?” he asked. “Jealous?” The boy raised both hands. “Hell no. Just saying you used to have a life.” Sukuna began walking toward you. “This is my life.” You nearly dropped your sketchbook.
He seemed unaware of what he had said.
Or perhaps he knew and did not care.
That night, you replayed the sentence until three in the morning.
Sukuna’s behavior did not help.
He started waiting outside your architecture classes even when his own lectures ended earlier. He claimed the campus was unsafe after dark, though the walk home took less than fifteen minutes and the streets were always crowded with students.
He carried your model-making supplies because he said you held them wrong.
He brought you coffee during long studio sessions.
He stopped going to most parties unless you went too, and when you did, he stayed close enough that no one approached you without first looking at him.
One evening, a classmate named Daichi offered to walk you home.
Before you could answer, Sukuna appeared beside you. “I’ve got it.” Daichi looked between you both. “I was just offering.”
“And I just answered.” You waited until Daichi left before turning to him.
“That was rude.”
“He was staring at your chest.” Your arms crossed immediately over yourself.
Sukuna’s expression changed.
Not softer exactly.
More careful. “You don’t have to cover up,” he said. “He was the problem.” Your hands lowered slowly. “He might have just been looking at me.”
“He was.”
“That’s what people do when they talk.”
“Not like that.” You stared at him. Sukuna stared down the hallway where Daichi had disappeared, jaw tight.
Something warm and hopeful stirred in your chest.
You smothered it immediately.
He was protective.
That did not mean he wanted you.
You had no idea whether Sukuna would ever see you romantically. He saw you as a girl, yes. That gift alone still felt too large to hold. But being recognized as a girl was not the same as being desired as one.
You were terrified of confusing the two.
So you said nothing.
Weeks passed.
The weather warmed, and your hair grew long enough that it brushed the middle of your back when wet. You began wearing more feminine clothes inside the apartment. Soft shorts. Fitted camisoles. Long skirts you had ordered and hidden from your parents.
Sukuna never made a spectacle of them.
He did, however, develop opinions. “You’re not wearing that outside.” You looked down at the pale blue dress you had tried on.
“Why?”
“It’s too short.”
“It reaches my knees.”
“Barely.”
“You can see my kneecaps.”
“Exactly.” You stared at him. “You’re twenty, not my father.”
“Good. Your father has terrible judgment.”
“I like the dress.” He looked at you for a long moment.
His gaze moved from the hem to the fitted waist, then up to your face. “You look good,” he admitted. “That’s the problem.” Your heart nearly stopped.
Sukuna walked away before you could respond.
You wore the dress.
He glared at every man who looked at you.
The confession came on a quiet Sunday evening near the end of spring semester.
Nothing dramatic happened.
There was no rainstorm. No party. No accident that forced hidden feelings into the open.
You were sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by pieces of foam board, glue, rulers, and tiny trees for an architecture model. Sukuna sat on the couch behind you, pretending to study while actually watching you struggle with a miniature staircase. “It’s crooked,” he said.
You did not look up. “I know.”
“You cut the base wrong.”
“I know.”
“You should redo it.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then he added, “It looks terrible.”
You turned around and threw a tiny plastic tree at him.
It bounced off his chest.
Sukuna looked down at it.
Then at you.
“You assaulted me with landscaping.”
“You deserved it.” He picked up the tree and placed it on the coffee table. “Your aim is bad.”
“My aim was perfect.”
“You hit my shirt.”
“That was the target.”
“You’re supposed to be building.”
“You’re supposed to be studying.”
“I understand my material.”
“I understand mine.”
“The staircase says otherwise.”
You glared.
He smirked.
You turned back to the model, muttering under your breath.
After a moment, Sukuna slid from the couch onto the floor beside you.
His shoulder pressed against yours. “What are you doing?” you asked.
“Fixing it.”
“I can fix it.”
“Clearly.”
“You are so annoying.”
“And yet you keep living with me.”
“I can’t afford to leave.”
“That the only reason?”
The question sounded casual.
Too casual.
Your hands went still.
You looked at him.
Sukuna was examining the staircase piece, brow furrowed, seemingly focused on the model. “What do you mean?” you asked.
He set the piece down.
Then he looked at you.
There was something different in his expression.
Not uncertainty. Sukuna rarely looked uncertain.
Restraint.
Like he had been holding the same thought behind his teeth for too long and had finally grown tired of it. “You like me,” he said.
Your entire body froze.
Heat rushed to your face so quickly it almost hurt.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He leaned one arm against his raised knee. “You’re a terrible liar, Y/N.” Hearing your name in that moment made panic and longing collide inside you.
You looked away. “You’re being weird.”
“I’m being direct.”
“You’re always direct. It’s one of your worst qualities.”
“You stare at me.”
“I live with you.”
“You get mad when women text me.”
“I do not.”
“You slammed a cabinet so hard last month the hinge came loose.”
“That cabinet was already broken.”
“You cried when I went out with Hana.”
Your eyes snapped back to him. “I did not cry.”
“You stayed in your room all night.”
“I was tired.”
“You were listening to sad music.”
“I like sad music.”
“You played the same song nine times.” You opened your mouth.
Closed it.
Sukuna’s expression softened faintly. “You like me,” he repeated.
Your throat tightened.
There was no cruelty in his voice.
No triumph.
That made it worse.
You looked down at your hands, fingers marked with dried glue. “I’m sorry.” His brows pulled together. “For what?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t mean to like me?” You nodded, shame creeping hot beneath your skin. “I know you see me as a girl,” you said quietly. “And that means everything to me. I didn’t want to make it strange or act like you owed me something because you accepted me.” Sukuna stared at you.
You forced yourself to continue. “I know you like women, but I don’t know if you would ever like someone like me that way. I didn’t want to ruin what we have.” His expression changed.
The softness vanished beneath sudden irritation. “Someone like you.” You flinched. “I didn’t mean—”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“No. Explain it.” You looked at him helplessly.
“I’m trans.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t born—”
“I know how it works.” Your voice became smaller. “Some men wouldn’t consider me a real woman.” Sukuna’s face went frighteningly still. “Those men are idiots.” Your eyes stung.
He leaned closer.
“You think I call you Y/N because I’m playing along?”
“No.”
“You think I use she because I’m being polite?”
“No, but—”
“You think when I look at you, I see some guy in a dress?” The words were harsh, but his voice broke around something wounded.
You shook your head quickly. “I don’t know.”
“I do.” You looked up.
Sukuna’s red eyes held yours. “I see you,” he said.
The room went quiet.
Your chest tightened so sharply that breathing hurt.
He continued, voice lower now. “You’re a girl. You’ve always been a girl. You just had a bunch of people telling you the wrong thing.” Your vision blurred.
Sukuna saw the tears and sighed. “Don’t start.” A laugh escaped you, broken by a sob. “You’re being really mean for someone saying something nice.”
“I’m not good at this.”
“At what?” His jaw shifted. “Whatever this is.” You wiped beneath your eyes. “You started it.”
“I know.” He looked away for a second, then back at you. “I like you too.” Everything inside you stopped.
Even the air seemed to hesitate. “What?” Sukuna frowned. “Why do you keep making me repeat things?”
“Because you just said—”
“I like you.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
Not smirking.
Not teasing.
Serious.
“You mean as a friend?” you asked, hating yourself immediately.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not having this conversation twice.” Your heart began pounding. “Sukuna.”
“I like you,” he said again, slower this time. “I don’t want to watch you date someone else. I don’t want Daichi walking you home. I don’t want some idiot touching you at parties. I hate when you hide in your room because you think I’m seeing someone.”
Your lips parted.
He leaned closer, one forearm resting across his knee. “And I’m tired of pretending I choose you over everyone else because I hate people.”
“You do hate people.”
“That’s not the point.”
Despite the tears, you laughed.
His mouth twitched.
“There,” he said. “That.”
“What?”
“That’s why.”
“My laugh?”
“Partly.” You swallowed. “What’s the other part?” Sukuna looked at you like the answer was obvious. “Everything.” Your face crumpled.
He groaned. “Oh, come on.” You covered your mouth as tears spilled over. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You cry too much.”
“You just told me you like me.”
“Yes.”
“And that you see me as a girl.”
“I’ve been saying that for a year.”
“Not like this.” Sukuna looked uncomfortable, which was almost funny considering he had been the one to start the confession.
He picked up the miniature tree from the coffee table and turned it between his fingers. “So,” he said.
You stared at him through watery eyes. “So?”
“You wanna be my girlfriend?” The word struck you harder than anything else had.
Girlfriend.
Not roommate.
Not secret.
Not some complicated exception he had to explain.
His girlfriend.
You began crying harder.
Sukuna stared at you in horror. “Was that the wrong thing to ask?” You shook your head rapidly. “Then why are you crying?”
“Because you called me your girlfriend.”
“I asked if you wanted to be.”
“Yes.”
He blinked.
You laughed through the tears.
“Yes, I want to be your girlfriend.” Sukuna’s shoulders loosened.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What else?”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
Then you laughed again, wiping helplessly at your face.
“You’re terrible at romance.”
“You said yes.”
“Barely.”
“You said it twice.”
“I was crying.”
“Still counts.” You shook your head, smiling despite yourself. Sukuna watched you for a moment. Then he reached out awkwardly and wiped a tear from your cheek with his thumb.
The touch silenced both of you.
His hand remained there.
Warm.
Careful.
His thumb brushed beneath your eye once more, gentler than you had ever seen him be with anything.
“You really mean it?” you whispered.
His expression tightened.
“Y/N.” Your name sounded different in his mouth now.
Deeper.
Closer.
“I don’t do things I don’t mean.”
“I know.”
“You’re a girl.” Your breath caught. “My girl, if you want.” Another tear slipped free. Sukuna sighed, but this time he smiled faintly. “You’re gonna dehydrate.” You laughed and pushed at his shoulder.
He caught your wrist.
Then, before you could lose your courage, you leaned forward and wrapped your arms around him.
Sukuna stiffened.
Even after a year, he still reacted to hugs like someone had thrown a net over him.
You pressed your face against his chest. “I’m really happy.” His arms hovered for a second.
Then they came around you.
Less awkwardly than the first time.
One hand rested between your shoulder blades. The other settled at your waist, holding you close enough that you could hear his heartbeat. “You’re crushing the model,” he said.
You looked down.
Your knee had flattened two miniature shrubs.
A startled laugh escaped you.
Sukuna looked at the damaged landscaping.
“Your first act as my girlfriend is destroying architecture.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Unacceptable.”
“You distracted me.”
“With what?”
“My emotional breakthrough.”
He snorted.
You pulled back enough to look at him.
“So what happens now?”
“We’re dating.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“Good.”
“But what does dating look like?”
Sukuna considered the question.
“We already spend all our time together.”
“True.”
“I already buy you food.”
“You complain every time.”
“Still buy it.”
“You walk me home.”
“Obviously.”
“You scare away anyone who talks to me.”
“Not anyone.”
“Most people.”
“They’re usually annoying.”
You smiled.
“So nothing changes?”
Sukuna’s eyes moved down to your mouth.
Your breath caught.
“One thing.”
Before you could ask, he leaned closer.
Then stopped.
The hesitation startled you more than the movement itself.
Sukuna, who never asked permission for the remote, the last dumpling, or control over the thermostat, waited.
His gaze met yours.
“You okay?”
You nodded.
“Yes.”
He kissed you.
Softly.
Far more softly than you expected from him.
His lips barely pressed against yours at first, warm and careful, as though he understood this was not simply a first kiss. It was proof. Recognition. Something you had been afraid to want.
You kissed him back.
His hand moved from your waist to the side of your neck, thumb resting beneath your jaw. The kiss deepened only slightly before he pulled away.
You remained close, eyes still closed.
Sukuna’s forehead rested against yours.
“You wear lip gloss?” he murmured.
Your eyes opened.
“What?”
“It tastes sweet.” Your face warmed. “It’s strawberry.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Not bad.” You laughed. “That’s your review of our first kiss?”
“The kiss was good.” Your cheeks burned hotter. “The gloss is not bad.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“You’re smiling.”
You were.
You could not stop.
Sukuna leaned back and looked at you fully.
Long hair loose around your shoulders. Tear-streaked cheeks. Soft mouth shining faintly with pink gloss. The girl who had once hidden tank tops beneath gray sweatshirts was sitting in front of him now, wearing a lavender camisole and crying because he had called her his girlfriend.
His girlfriend.
The thought settled warmly inside him.
He reached up and caught a strand of your hair between his fingers.
“You should wear it down more.”
“My hair?”
“Yeah.”
“You like it?” He looked almost annoyed by the question. “I told you to grow it.”
“That was almost two years ago.”
“And I was right.” You smiled. “You always think you’re right.”
“I usually am.” You touched the side of his face, almost shyly. “I’m glad you were.” His eyes softened.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then Sukuna glanced down at the ruined model.
“You still have to fix the stairs.” You gasped. “We just became a couple.”
“And the stairs are still crooked.”
“You could be romantic for five minutes.”
“I kissed you.”
“That was thirty seconds.”
“It was efficient.” You stared at him.
Then you began laughing so hard you had to lean into his shoulder.
Sukuna wrapped one arm around you, muttering that you were ridiculous, but his hand rested securely at your waist.
You stayed on the floor for the rest of the evening, shoulder against shoulder, repairing the model together. Sukuna complained about the glue. You accused him of being controlling. He redesigned the staircase when you were not looking.
At some point, your head settled against his arm.
At some point after that, his hand found yours.
Neither of you commented on it.
When the model was finally finished, you stood to carry it to your desk.
Sukuna rose with you.
“You don’t have to follow me.”
“I live here.”
“You were going to follow me into my room.”
“Maybe.” You smiled. “Clingy.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t start.” You carefully set the model down. When you turned, Sukuna stood in the doorway. He knocked twice against the already open frame.
You laughed. “Come in.” He did.
Then he kissed you again.
This kiss lasted longer.
Long enough for your hands to rise to his shoulders. Long enough for his fingers to slide carefully through the hair he had once told you to grow. Long enough that when you finally parted, you were breathless and smiling. “My girlfriend,” he said, almost to himself.
Your eyes filled again.
Sukuna pointed at you. “No.” You laughed, covering your face.
“No more crying.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’ve cried four times.”
“It’s emotional.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“You like me.”
“Unfortunately.”
You lowered your hands.
Sukuna looked at you.
Then he smiled.
Small.
Private.
Real.
“I do,” he said.
The apartment had not changed.
The same textbooks sat stacked near the couch. The same dishes waited in the sink. The same city lights glowed beyond the windows. Your parents still believed you were someone else. Your tuition still depended on their approval. The future remained difficult and uncertain.
But your name was Y/N.
Your hair fell past your shoulders.
You were studying architecture.
And Ryomen Sukuna stood in your bedroom doorway looking at you like there was no contradiction between the girl you knew yourself to be and the girl he wanted beside him.
For the first time, love did not feel like another thing you had to hide.
It felt like being found.
I will be posting these on Sundays, bc Sundays aren't for the God, its for my Lord Ryomen Sukuna🙌🏻
gummygunk
kianamaiart
