#ruer writes
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take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 6: beginning
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chapter synopsis:
'“Why else do you think I am the way I am? I may be shy and scatterbrained, or a horrible woman with a muddled sense of morality or what I think should and should not happen, when in reality it’s just what I want to happen. But this is why I’m so resolute, and so stubborn. This is why I love you so fiercely. All mothers are like that to some degree, even if my own would never let me bear witness to it.”
You haven’t told her you love her too in years.'
'And Itadori seems… like a good person. I think it’s good, that… you were able to find a friend like that.”
“It was. He’s a really, really good guy.”
“You love him a lot,” Megumi says.
---
You and Megumi set out to prevent an emergency involving Yuuji and a cursed object. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. But at least everyone is fine in the end, even if it means you'll have to walk away from almost everything (or maybe it's the other way around).
You're going to be all on your own. Still, now it seems like this will hurt less now.
word count: ~8k; tws: none for now :)
17-6-2018
The two of you walk down the lane. It’s midnight. There’s a loitering silence in the air, no words exchanged between you and him, and it twists your heart in brief moments of hurt when you’re not trying to keep your mind occupied with other things. Your legs move subconsciously without you caring to think of them, the route to the hospital ingrained in your mind as if intrinsically there.
At some point, you think your hand with its sweat and its grip is going to leave imprints like a marring on his skin, but it’s of your own selfishness that you choose to hold onto his wrist anyway.
There’s a million things you could say to him right now, things you’ll forcefully push to the very back of your throat, things you’ll keep under lock and key in a mangled mix of quiet anticipation and sombre anxieties. Right now you’re holding his wrist and that’s enough for you, to have him walking behind you if not beside, to be two people near each other— not together— in silence since any conversation is not an option; any conversation could lead to the last spark needed to be fanned into the flame for it to erupt bigger and brighter than ever before.
If you asked about Tsumiki right now, or why either of them never bothered to speak to you since 2016, it could break you apart, of that you’re sure. And even without words it threatens to do so to you like a chandelier of melting wax candles hanging above you being suspended precariously from the ceiling or light lightning soon to be thrown down mercilessly from the sky.
“The turning to Sendai Hospital is on the right.”
“I know the routes better,” you let out, and rather disappointingly it sounds brasher and more derogatory aloud instead of the unobtrusive tone you were aiming for— you hope it doesn’t hurt him but then wonder why you still even cared that much about how he felt about what you said or did anyway, “I got myself accustomed to taking the one on the left that leads you through. Quick shortcut and all.”
You’re not looking back, but the light pull of his hand from the hold of your wrist seems to suggest his slight reeling back in a small sense of surprise and an equal amount of shock, as if suddenly remembering the fact you were your own person, that you had your own autonomy as one, because somehow everyone thought you weren’t.
It’s strange to look back at how you were before: meek, timid. Too shy to speak up. Too innocent to be angered by anything. Always dreaming, mind bleary as if on a cloud in blurred skies, hiding behind the backs of others like a petrified forest critter.
And now you’re this— this person who frowns and disagrees and retorts at every little thing, and as much as you have to, as much as it was nearly inevitable the way you turned out, all you can think you share with the person you were when you first met Megumi and Tsumiki was your need to be useful— and even that has been exacerbated by how you’ve grown, how you’ve become this person you grew into. And a part of you— no, just you as a whole— doesn’t like yourself at all.
Your father was right. That little girl was hopeful, obedient, kind, caring— you don’t know why even then you were dissatisfied with the way you were, or why your dissatisfaction would matter because at that time you’d cared so little about everything besides caring for people and having fun with the pair of siblings that you were so rarely bothered by it, that it was still just a slight whisper from the back of your head that could be shushed or tuned out with library visits and nights in front of the TV and the glow of old cartoons. Your father was right and this is proved even more by the fact that the whole situation just infuriates you on the surface, and just makes you feel like an empty, hollow shell left behind when you reach deeper into yourself.
That little girl had potential, potential to be useful but kind, obedient and close to the people who raised her even if it meant abandoning her own ideals. But you’d been so devoted to them, you think, that she was killed and destroyed in the world she grew up in, and now there’s a space for her that’s left vacant due to the way she wasted away. You miss her, the girl you once were, you miss being her, how easy and lighthearted everything was and how all of you felt so content in every sense of the word. But you don’t want her back. Now that’s just what makes you miserable sometimes.
Self-reflection just made you feel revolted by yourself. You keep your eyes on the road.
“It’s here,” you state, pointing at the building in front of you.
Sendai General Hospital is an institution made out of bare concrete. Its walls are yellowed and close in on its wards like a prison, coloured using old paint that hasn’t been repainted over and is as pallid-looking as the skin of the people sitting on the beds it is inhabited by. Just being in it feels like a hit to the body and the brain and the senses, too. There are old-fashioned tiles on its floors, their pale beige hue muted yet the blinding shine on them harshly mopped clean. Inside it reeks of an imminent presence of sickness or death or illnesses and conditions never to be able to be defeated and sterile sanitisers. Looking at the latex-blue curtains in it feels like a blindfold unwantedly, forcefully pulled over both your vision and your ears.
“You and that Itadori seem close.”
“We are,” you say, then you add, not really knowing why, “He’s my best friend.” Maybe you’re trying to make him jealous, rile him up a bit. But even then you wouldn’t want him to be riled up, nor would you be satisfied if he were to keep silent. Maybe you just wanted to hurt him, to hurt him back or something, if only for something small, even if you’d already resolved not to do so.
You’ll make sure not to do that again, though.
Instead he does something else, takes another route instead. “Then it seems you visit his grandfather often.”
“Uh-huh,” you nod as the two of you enter the hospital, and you have to blink a few times as always in order to adjust yourself to the light and how it reflects off the detachedly clean floor. “My mother’s here, too.”
“Oh, I’m sorry— is she alright?”
“She’s okay, I… think. She… she got sick a while back and stays here now,” you explain, “Let’s not talk about that…—I mean, I… don’t really want to.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that.” It just makes people feel worse.
He doesn’t push further and you suppose that’s okay. Your chest hurts a bit, like phantom pain on a wound that’s still there. There’s not really a way to explain it but almost everything makes you feel that way these days. Everything makes you feel horrible to some degree. Maybe it’s being a girl, maybe it’s being a teenager, but it’s not quite either, you guess.
“He won’t be here for a while,” you say, “He’s either still in the room where his grandfather is or he’s buying flowers for him.”
“Then I’ll just contact them and let them know the whole situation first.”
Who’s ‘them’?
“Okay.” You turn your back on him, “—wait.”
“What?”
“Do you have any emergency contact or something? Like, a trusted adult who could help you with any of this? In case things go really bad?”
“...why would you need one?” he questions.
You roll your eyes, “Just give it to me, damn it… if there’s anything I have nowadays, it’s probably foresight for stuff like this. For emergencies.”
He gives you the number, albeit a bit begrudgingly. Why’d he have to be so pissy about anything and everything?
“Okay, thanks. I’m going to visit my mother now.”
The air and the colour from it seems distant as always, the ward she was basically imprisoned in smelling of the indistinguishable mix of sanitiser and sickness. There her body chains her to her bed, and there is little she can do besides rely on and weakly cling to the nurses who assist her, a frail shadow of what she once was.
“Hi, Mummy.”
She turns to you, and your chest constricts. Her hair, once much longer, the type that you dreamed to have as it billowed in the wind, the type that invited you caressively to bury yourself in and take in that heady scent of roses that emanated from it— that hair is now replaced with a cloth wrapped around her head. Radiation. Chemotherapy.
The wrinkles on her face make the difference between her now and her years ago all the more stark. Every visit you come back here, you’ve forced yourself to be acclimated to this new reality, one where she isn’t waiting at home no matter how tedious the fights get or how exhausting it was eating with someone who remained silent, someone who chose to continue suffering if it meant she could hurt and turn her daughter to guilt (as if that would change anything). At least she was there.
Cancer is a terminal illness, especially the type your mother is facing— regardless of how much chemotherapy she would struggle through and how much you didn’t want to acknowledge a truth so plain and conspicuously bare, she would be confined to this bed until her final days, her illness like gyves tying her limbs and forcing her earthbound; the bed a cage she could never be liberated from.
Sometimes she made it a point to you that she didn’t want to liberate herself from it anyway, and you’d never been so depressed yet irked by anything else. (You’d regret everything— not spending time with her, not appreciating her nearly enough— except for your decision to be involved in the Jujutsu world, if not as a sorcerer then as a doctor. That was, and is— your ultimatum. Your end all be all of this whole situation.”
“Hello. Where’s that Itadori boy?”
“Not here today, he’s still with his grandfather— maybe later.” You swing your bag over your shoulder, rummaging through it a while before pulling it out. “I’ve something for you, by the way.”
“Oh! These,” she exclaims, and she smiles faintly, bits of colour rushing back to her face like watercolour dots on moistened paper. “I used to make them for you, sometimes. They used to be your favourite when you were really little.”
“I know,” you explain, “That’s why I made them. I don’t like them anymore, but… I can’t remember your favourite food or if I ever asked, and I know you don’t like the food they give you here as much as… I don’t know. Your own cooking, I guess.”
“It’s not my favourite,” she states, matter-of-factly, bluntly, “But thank you for the effort. My favourite will always be my own mother’s cooking.”
Silence.
“Now that I look back at everything, there are so many things I regret. Things I should have done but never did out of fear; things I should not have done and never apologised for out of pride. I’d like it if you could be different. Your grandmother went out the same way. At least, even if you had the same illnesses as we did, which I hope the genes for which have been curbed by your father’s— at least you would not leave the world with regret,” she looks down at her hands, staring down at them solemnly like a shadow, an excluded figure. “But it was a good life.”
“...then maybe you can tell me more. While you— while we still have time. What was your childhood like? What was your mother like?” It feels strange, imposturous, maybe— to be referring to someone basically a stranger as “grandmother”, to name someone so far away from you so intimate, even if the only generation between you, tying the two of you together, was your mother’s. If you had a daughter it would be the same for her, most likely. There’s a part of you that would find honour in becoming your mother once you’d grown, but there’s a part of you that would think being such would accost you horribly, for all time.
She sighs, “I’ll tell you later. There would be so much to say, like compressing all my words into one tiny paper. The stories have weight in them the same way letters and words in handwriting can be firm and large. But if I were to start,” she begins, “I’ll say that I was born as the daughter of two very powerful sorcerers. Now, I know how much this would sound like some nonsense spouted by your mother, but I think you should listen anyway.
“My parents loved each other a lot, but my mother had come from an obscure clan whose name I can’t remember, but who had high hopes in them having a child with a powerful cursed technique as their last resort, since, if I recall correctly, there had been a crisis within the clan for it to keep surviving.
“I still remember when they found out I had no cursed technique and how terrified they were. In me I had a bit more than the relatively normal amount of cursed energy most people have, and so I was expected to have techniques as powerful as they did. They loved me and treated me preciously, like a fragile object, so long as I was quiet and demure— and I guess to some extent I still was and still am today. They wondered what they could do to run from the clan, as if they didn’t have enough power when they were supposed to protect me despite my father’s bullheaded industry and my mother’s patience-formed strength. They lacked grit to grapple against them, and only in this did they lack it, I think; only against my mother’s family did they not have the ability to resolve things whether peacefully or violently. And eventually they just gave up and thought they would just… surrender me over when I entered my adolescent years. I was their daughter. I… suppose they didn’t love me enough. I know it sounds awful— thinking that they should have always protected me, through and through—”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“—when it could have been the clan itself that would have been mostly to blame.”
“But they were still supposed to protect you! They were your parents—”
“Why else do you think I am the way I am? I may be a shy and scatterbrained or a horrible woman with a muddled sense of morality or what I think should and should not happen when in reality it’s just what I want to happen, but this is why I’m so resolute, and so stubborn. This is why I love you so fiercely. All mothers are like that to some degree, even if my own would never let me bear witness to it.” You haven’t told her you love her too in years.
“But then when I was an adult I met your father, who was a bit like a country bumpkin, but a formidable sorcerer and a kind, honest person, and I couldn’t help but fall in love with the person he was both inside and out. And for the next few years we struggled to have a child until I found out I was pregnant with you,” she continues, “Even though by that time I was well into my late thirties, we were overjoyed and decided to keep you.”
Suddenly you wish there had been more time before things were ruined. Time for you to know her better, the beginning of your existence. You would have begged her for old photos, stories, mementos of her and your father.
“And now the clan’s faded into obscurity, finally. The younger members left and the older ones passed away peacefully. Happy story, right?”
“...yeah.” It all ended well, but you don’t know if you can say the same for your mother’s. At least, you hope, when she goes away, it can be swift and peaceful like the way her relatives did.
Then suddenly there’s a buzz in your pocket. An inconvenient one, out of the blue.
“You should go get that first,” she says.
“...okay.”
You lift it up to your face and feel like crushing the damn thing. Old number. Stupid number. Number you haven’t called in months because you’d given up on that bastard— oh. The two of you were working together now.
You turn away from your mother, creeping to the edge of the room. “What’s wrong?”
“I just talked to him, but I think it would be easier if you came back and was there with him too since you know him better than I do. And he… doesn’t seem like the brightest. He may think that it’s not important enough to hand over unless you ask him to or something.”
You muffle your voice with your hand and whisper, “Hey, you shut up, you know nothing about him. He’s way smarter than people give him credit for. But I’m— I’m with my mother right now. Wait for a second. Just ask him to wait for me first; he wouldn’t need any of my help for all of this yet. Make a friend or get a life or something.”
“...fine. But you’ll have to join us later. He’s bound to ask about you.”
“Then just tell him I’m with my mother!” you snap, still whispering.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Wh— you little— oh, don’t you hang up now—”
Weird thing is, he probably wasn’t even being so infuriating on purpose. And you wouldn’t have burst out at someone for being that way anyway. It was only because it was him, specifically.
You’d sworn to put that past you.
Your immaturity strikes once again.
“If you have to go now,” your mother says, “You should. Just come back again next time. I can tell you the rest. Thank you again for the food, [Name].” She doesn’t call you ‘darling’ anymore, doesn’t she? Just your name.
“Okay. Sorry.”
You swing the bag back over your shoulder, wearing it this time instead of taking it off, easing your way out of the room.
“It’s okay,” she assures you, “Goodbye. I love you.”
“...I love you, too,” you say, but it’ll mingle with all the other sounds in the hospital, and it’ll be drowned out like a ship in the middle of nowhere, your voice soft and thoroughly soused by the cacophony of bleak noises like telephone rings and beeps from electrocardiographs outside of her deafeningly quiet hospital room.
“Hi, Yuuji,” you greet them in the dimly lit waiting area, “...and Megumi. Sorry to keep the two of you guys waiting for so long.”
“Oh, hey; it’s okay!” he goes, although in his voice it seems that there’s been some of his usual energy seeping away from him. “Didn’t know the two of you knew each other until just now or that you were a part of some magic curse society. Are you guys childhood friends who met because of all that cursed stuff or something?”
“Something like that,” Megumi explains.
“It’s a long story,” you say, not exactly denying him nor conceding his words anyway. Once again, there’s a trace of anger despite your promise to be untethered to your puerility like this. “Anyway, are you okay, Yuuji? How’s your grandfather?”
He pauses. “Oh, about that… he just passed away.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Yuuji…” you hold the fabric of his jacket (sometimes it still feels wrong to try and hold his hand— it just makes your heart ache again like a scab being clawed at) and pull him into a brief caress, patting his back as gently as you can manage.
“It’s okay, I’ll be fine,” he smiles as you pull yourself away, “Grandpa wouldn’t want me to be crying right now anyway. So don’t worry.”
“Okay, I won’t. But if you’re sad, just know you can always talk to me.”
He laughs, softer than the boisterous manner he usually does so in, “Yeah, I know.”
Megumi clears his throat, pointedly trying to make a sound, “Anyway. Itadori Yuuji—”
“Just call him Itadori. You don’t have to be so uptight.”
“Nah, [Name], I’m fine—”
Megumi sighs. “Anyway, we need you to give the cursed object now.”
“Oh, yeah, that,” you start, “So, Yuuji, do you have the thing that Megumi would have explained to you? The cursed object? We need it for everyone to be safe, and all.”
“Yeah! Hold on, let me get it. I told you I didn’t have it already, but here’s the box,” he says, tossing it over to Megumi.
He retrieves the box. It’s ancient and wooden, the craftsmanship behind it elite and adroit, and the paper on it has the words for a buddhist sutra written on it like an inscription. You’ve heard of it before, the kind of curse it was meant to seal, but it definitely couldn’t be—
He opens the box.
Holy shit.
“Where is it?”
“It’s empty…” Megumi panics, “Wait— hold on!”
Things are bad— as in, they couldn’t get any worse— not only was the school doomed by the loss of its cursed object, the cursed object was Sukuna Ryomen’s finger itself.
You blame your inadequacy, your inability to have stopped everything sooner— if not for that nobody would have gotten hurt. If not for that there wouldn’t even be a risk of anything happening anyway. You should’ve tried harder to sense it, and you should’ve focused more on it to keep the student body safe and sound.
It was your fault. No one else was to blame but your useless self, and even if that were wrong, you’d still have the most to be blamed for.
Megumi has a hand on Yuuji’s shoulder, keeping the other boy from moving, his breathing erratic and his eyes wide in frantic shock.
“...well, they were saying, ‘let’s open it up to see what’s inside it tonight’,” Yuuji clarifies, standing a few centimetres away from the door, “Why? Is that bad?”
Sasaki and Iguchi?
The air in the hospital feels particularly chilly tonight, gooseflesh terrorising your skin all over, and for all the kinds of reasons that would cause anything like such.
“It’s way worse than bad,” Megumi declared, fear and grim so thick in his voice they were tangible enough to be cut through with a knife. “Your friends are going to die.”
“We’ve got to go,” you rush, “Now! Quick!”
It passes by like a blur, as if you’re in that moment and out of it simultaneously. Your mind has been bombarded with and pressed so thoroughly onto the moment, like tissue on a wet surface, that it seems it’s being blanked out, while your legs continue to run despite your mind nearly forgetting, at this point, why you’re running— as if your legs moving so frantically to help them was something intrinsic, something you didn’t need your mind for.
Sasaki and Iguchi are in danger. Sasaki and Iguchi are in danger.
You didn’t know them all too well, really— just through Yuuji, and Yuuji himself wasn’t as close to the two of them, being their junior and all. And although a part of you was doing this just because you could, like the way you did when you first discovered your cursed technique, you knew that another was doing this for Yuuji. If in any way they were hurt or could not survive, he would blame himself to no end. He possessed such a kindness within him, so much that it hit the depths of your soul sometimes; shattered your heart so gently a million times over or heated it in the kindly way mothers heated pans on stoves despite the heat of it being greater than that of blue flame. If anything happened to them, no matter how much or how little he knew of them, he wouldn’t be able to live after that.
The two of them are near the barrier separating the school from the street before you (you struggle with catching up to them— one’s a star athlete and another has been training for much longer than you, you’re sure), the gates tall and enveloped in darkness. You didn’t think much of school except for when it came to your grades and being with Yuuji, thinking of these gates— the ones that you and Yuuji use when you’re running super late— in particular as just a shortcut entrance you paid little attention to, just something treated with indifference as you passed through them whenever you were late. Yet now they echoed denial, refusal, and slim chances— it was unlikely that they’d be alright, especially since this cursed object in particular was the finger of Sukuna Ryomen.
“Is that the building?” Megumi questions, “Where are they?”
“Fourth floor— guh!” Yuuji seems to come to an abrupt halt, nearly slamming into what seems to be an invisible wall. A veil.
“Yuuji!”
“I’ll handle this,” Megumi declares, hopping onto the metal wires, more directed to Yuuji than you. So even he can tell how selfless Yuuji is, even after only having just met him.
“I may not know those two that well, but—” Yuuji starts, “But they’re friends! I have to help!”
“You’re staying here,” Megumi commands, “[Name], if you could— get your father or any sorcerers you know to come here and help.”
He climbs over the gate.
He’s going away from you again. Slipping away from your grasp. And now, all you can do is watch. There’s nothing else— nothing else you can do, at all. If you went inside now, you wouldn’t be able to help except— what?— tend to their injuries? Manipulate your own cells into weapons? The former wasn’t possible with how much you’d strained yourself from running so quickly earlier, and the latter was too dangerous: you hadn’t even started with the basics of that yet, on your father’s obstinate insistence that even if he’d let you play doctor he wouldn’t let you manipulate any of the cells in your body into any kind of usable weapon. Any simple wrong move could make things turn south in the most drastically terrifying of ways. If you went in there, you’d just die, and there’d be more casualties, more trouble, more problems caused by you and you alone.
You can’t even call your father, either. That would always be your last resort— because even if you fought, you still needed him to rest. You didn’t want him overexerting himself by using his cursed technique at all.
(You were selfish. You didn’t want to lose your father. You didn’t want to have to visit not one but two parents lying sick and tired and grey in matching hospital beds.)
“Yuuji?” you start, turning to him. “You’re…deathly quiet. Are you okay?”
His lips quiver slightly, a faint whimpering noise coming out of him. Is he crying?
“Yuuji, look at me. Are you okay?” you ask, as gently and softly as you can right now, despite your ragged, unsteady, unathletic-addled breaths. You place a hand on his shoulder, slowly rubbing up and down from his shoulder and crook of his neck to his back. “It’s okay. …Megumi’s a good and… capable, strong person and jujutsu sorcerer. He’ll be okay, and they’ll be okay too. Just… just put your trust in him, okay?”
“I’m sorry, [Name], but I’ve got to go,” he tells you, “You stay here, and call for help or something. I’m sorry, but I’ve just really got to do it!”
He hugs you, quickly, deftly. And then he crosses the gate, leaving you all alone like Megumi did. You wish he’d hug you longer, that you could take care of him for a little longer— it was your last way to be useful now.
Still, there’s someone you could call, now that you remember him.
The emergency contact.
You snatch your phone out, resolute.
“Hello! Gojo Satoru speaking,” the voice on the other line says.
You’ve heard it plenty before by accident.
When Gojo and Megumi are back, Yuuji’s in the form of a figure slung over Gojo’s shoulders like he’s been reply entrenched into slumber, his body seemingly limp and his torso completely bare. There’s barely an ounce of movement in him, except for slow exhales and inhales you can see on his chest. Sasaki and Iguchi are both nearly the same, the former covered in bruises and in a deep, panicked haze, and the latter as asleep as Yuuji seemed to be while harbouring injuries he may never recover from.
The only non-roughed up one here is Gojo, it seems; Megumi has a stream of blood running from the top of his head in rivulets, staining his sweaty, scraped forehead.
“Wh— you two, what happened? Why are they all asleep? What happened to Yuuji? Are they okay? What—”
“Calm down, kid,” Gojo says, “They’ll be fine. I mean, there’s a 100% chance that your friend can be executed, but…”
“Executed?” you almost scream, “What the hell happened? You said things would be okay!”
“Uh-uh, again, calm down. I mean, we don’t even know when they’re gonna make him kick the bucket! He ate Sukuna’s finger, by the way.” He holds his arms up in faux surrender.
“Gojo you ignorant slut! Don’t you fucking dare tell me to ‘calm down!’ He ate Sukuna’s finger? Why weren’t you able to stop anything? What’s going to happen to him now? You know what— give him to me!”
“You know, it’s not like I’m scared of being hunted down by your father if you use your cursed technique— I mean, I’m leagues stronger than him— but the stuff was too strong. It’s not like you’ll be able to get rid of the finger in your little boyfriend.”
“He’s not her boyfriend!” Megumi interjects.
“Thank you, Megumi!” Your face is going hot like a campfire fanned by the wind.
“Oh?” Gojo adds, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Anyway, we’re going to get him to a place where we can cover everything with talismans to surround him.”
They’re going to execute him at Jujutsu High after.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You sure?” Gojo asks, “Your father isn’t going to like you travelling so far away without telling him.”
Megumi shifts, a little sombre. “[Name], you don’t have to.”
“...I’m doing this for Yuuji, not for you.”
“You okay?” Gojo asks while the three of you are back in the hospital. (You hate this building so much.) Iguchi’s been transferred to a ward, Sasaki having woken up and insisting on staying with him. “I’ve got kikufuku if you want some. You must be really tired since it’s so late, huh?”
The whole situation is so incredulous you’re unsure of whether you want to burst out laughing or dismember someone.
“...nothing. Wait, let me see Yuuji again.”
Everyone is asleep, it seems— all except for you and Gojo. Yuuji’s been knocked out, and Megumi’s stuck in the world of his dreams.
You can’t sleep. There’s just nothing to put your mind at rest.
At least if there’s one thing you can do it’s this.
Gojo picks him up by the sides of his torso (now temporarily clothed with a spare white shirt) like a child with a heavy book. “Woah— he’s pretty heavy for a fifteen year old kid.”
You lay Yuuji face-up on the line of hospital chairs. There are thin scarlet marks right under his eyes— Sukuna’s eyelids, you’ve been told.
You should’ve done more to protect him.
Slowly, reticently, you kneel by the side of the chairs. You press your fingertips onto that pair of thin tiny lines.
Nothing happens. You can’t picture his cells being able to grow back. It’s as if there’s been a slit on his face and its outline has been replaced with brand-new skin. His cells don’t budge.
“Why don’t you help Megumi? I bet he’s got plenty of healable injuries.”
“…I don’t think I’ll be able to help much. I could faint if I try helping him now. It’s better to leave it to Dr Ieiri or something.”
“Pft,” he scoffs, “Shoko? She’s definitely not going to heal all of him. It’ll just be a waste of her time. You can just help him with the tiny scrapes and bruises first. And I’ll even tell her that you did it. She’s really fond of you, you know.”
You give him a shy, modest smile. “Thanks, then.”
It’s time to get to work.
Megumi’s skin is smooth like a baby’s just like the last time you felt it, though the frown on his face, ever-present, is bound to cause wrinkles there in less than a few decades’ time. You place your hands on him, bruised and bloody, watching in your mind and directing his cells as they work.
Once the smaller injuries have been dealt with, you stop. “I can’t really work on the one on his head, since then you’d get another fainted person to carry around, but he should be fine with some bandages and patching-up there, because I’ve already kind of catalysed the start of that area’s healing process a little. Other than that, he should be completely fine. I’ll give it, say… two weeks or so for it to get better completely.”
“Good work!” he smiles, the outline of his cheeks visible on his blindfold.
“By the way, Mr Gojo…”
“You know, I appreciate the respect you’re giving me now, but just Gojo is fine.”
“Okay, Gojo. Do you think Yuuji will be okay?”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure. And I’m going to ask them to suspend his sentence. I’ll just see whether he wants that or not once he wakes up.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not sure if he even will.”
Gojo laughs. “Don’t worry. He was really strong, and able to switch between being possessed by Sukuna and being himself at will. We haven't seen that kind of talent in a millennia! I’m sure they’ll listen to me, anyway.”
“Thank you,” you sigh. Thank goodness. “If you need any type of payment, um… teleport to my house whenever you get inconvenient little cuts like bruises and stuff. I can help.”
“Nah, reverse cursed technique’s got me covered.”
“Oh, wait— I forgot about that— um… I can…”
“Just leave it to me! No payment required,” he exclaims, holding both thumbs up. “And for the record, the one who wanted to save Yuuji was actually Megumi.”
You wouldn’t have imagined that would happen. Megumi— pragmatic, serious, unkind when he needs to be (no matter how kind of a person he actually is— no, was— at heart), different from Tsumiki in so many ways. There was no way he would have been the one vouching for Yuuji, someone he’d only just met, to be spared.
“Really?” you ask, “I… wouldn’t have thought he was the one who would do it. I thought, maybe, you were just… really kind tonight or something…”
“Well, maybe it was because he saw how much you cared about Itadori and did it for you, or maybe he had met Itadori, liked him, and just wanted to save a good person,” Gojo suspects, “But if there’s one thing for sure it’s that your old friend saved your new one.”
“...oh.”
You’ll have to bring it up with him next time— maybe, if he’s still there tomorrow…
“I know you’re mad at him, but a lot has happened,” Gojo states, voice lower, softer like a schoolteacher’s, “Still, I won’t tell you that you have to give him a chance or any of that. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to thank him or anything. I’m sure he did it out of his own volition without expecting anything from you. He knew he probably didn’t deserve to if it were you.”
You pause. “No, it’s just… I’ll talk to him again the next time I see him. Alone, most likely. And I can figure something out. I think that would be the best way to go around things. Thank you, Gojo.”
18-6-2018
The aftershocks are still there, although you’ve come out unscathed.
Last night was a mingled mess, a blur. You’d tried your best to help Iguchi by the time Yuuji was placed in the room of talismans and you could come back to the hospital and visit, but in the end he still needed better help than that. His injuries were too large of scale for how you were at that moment, already tired after healing some of the numbers done on Megumi.
(You were useless. You couldn’t help anyone. You couldn’t prevent Yuuji from being hit with such soul-striking guilt., couldn’t help Sasaki from being traumatised, couldn’t help Iguchi enough for him to be back at school soon—)
Sasaki’s injuries were limited to bruises and scrapes, but though you could help her physically, there was nothing you could do to assist her emotionally.
You stayed with them for a few hours in the ICU and then one of the hospital wards (a floor under your mother’s), your father calling you once the sun had risen.
“Gojo Satoru told me about everything that happened.”
“Yeah. I know you’ll scold me, but… not now. I’m sorry, I’m just really tired.” You hang up.
For all you spoke of wanting to be useful, the night when your powers were needed the most was when you were at your most useless— you couldn’t help them, you couldn’t help attack the cursed spirits, and the only thing you could do was call for an adult’s help like a little, scared and helpless girl.
You needed to train, and train harder than you had been doing for the past few years.
There’s a knock on the door, a dot-dot-dot-dot-dot. dot dot. It’s Yuuji, you know it is. How ever could you not?
Timidly, movements quiet like the room itself, you pull the door knob, seeing him there, relatively unscathed. You sigh in relief, a moment’s respite before you return to the panic you had been living in before since you deserve the respite less than other people do— no, you don’t deserve such a break at all, you’re absolutely sure of that, not after what you pulled, how horribly and utterly useless you were, you’ll remind yourself of that again and again and again— the heart-piercing guilt and the worry and the constant need to care for the people around you, almost like a mother, maybe, but you don’t like that thought as much as you think you should. Maybe if your own mother knew, she’d disagree— maybe she’d tell you that you should be a mother, maybe she’d ignore that you were also a child at certain times— the most convenient ones, probably. When she thinks it good that you, a child, were someone’s caretaker because women should take pride in and appreciate that, she would encourage you to be one; when she thinks it bad that as a caretaker and a so-called ‘adult’ you can have your own autonomy, agency and opinions, then maybe she’d remind you that in her eyes you knew nothing of the world. But maybe, just maybe, there was also a chance that she wouldn’t be like that in any way.
But you wouldn’t put it past her.
“Yuuji, are you okay?” There are questions about to spill out of you, tears about to fall like gushing rivers, but you’re just happy he’s alive at this point.
“Yeah.” His voice is soft. Your chest twinges; it hurts like an awful, intransigent little bruise. “Hi, [Name].” It feels so unignorable, the way it’s filled with such sorrow and worry that it weighs his usually loud and boisterous voice down.
“I thought that—” you start, lips trembling, “I thought there was a chance I couldn’t lose you. The only thing I could do was—” you sniffle, “Hope that they could delay it or something.”
“Yeah. I’ll explain it later,” he says, his voice sincere.
You squeeze the wrist of his sleeve. “Don’t do things like that ever again,” you plead, “Promise me that at least.”
“I promise.”
“And keep your promises.”
“I will.”
“...want to come inside?”
He walks inside, and you step back to make way for him.
“Sorry I came so late,” he says to you and Sasaki, who shakes her head in reassurance. “Hello, Sasaki,” he greets, “Is Iguchi okay?”
They speak for a while— you don’t feel like it’s much of your right to join their conversation, since you did nearly nothing at all when they were most in danger, so you leave them be for a while. It would be better not to bother them right now, anyway. They’ve both been traumatised until it reached beneath their bones within the past twenty-four hours.
When you leave the hospital, Sasaki tells you that she’s going to stay. You tell her to take care, squeezing her hand one final time.
You let her, patting her on the back. You’ll call them later— she’d given you her contact— just to check on the two of them.
“Where’s Megumi?” you ask Yuuji.
“Oh, Fushiguro? I’m not too sure, but that Gojo guy said he’ll be there soon.”
“Where, though?”
Sheepishly, in peak Yuuji fashion, he scratches the back of his neck. “Actually, another reason why I came here was also because… I mean, I know you and him weren’t close, but I’m going to the place where they’ll keep Grandpa’s ashes, and I think… you know, you could come with me. I… I don’t think I’d be able to do it really well alone, even though he had definitely made it clear he seriously didn’t want me moping around after his death and all. Gojo and Megumi will probably be there, but I thought it would be better if you were there because I know you better than those two, and you’re my friend. So… could you come with me? I know that he never really showed it, but I think he had always liked you a lot. Like, he was happy we were friends and stuff.”
“...mhm. I’ll always be happy about that,” you tell him, before pulling him into a hug. The guy must need one right now. You’ve never hugged him before. Your heart hurts.
The air is hot and humid with the breath of summer, bundles of mosquitoes bound to be breeding new ones these next few weeks. Up in the sky is the sun, bold and bright, glaring down harshly at the two of you.
“Before he passed away, Grandpa actually said something. He… kind of cursed me, if I’m being honest,” Yuuji starts. “He said I was a strong kid, so I should help people. And I’m going to do that. So that was why when Gojo asked if I wanted to be executed immediately or just eat all the fingers before dying, I chose the second option. I… I think I want to help people that way.”
‘You’ve already helped people enough. You helped me,’ you almost tell him.
You frown, because that’s the only thing you can do right now. You search for words to say the same way you do looking for dog books in libraries chock-full with those of other genres. “I’m… disappointed, I— I know I should be grateful, grateful that you’re still going to be alive and all, but… you’re still going to be in danger, and you’re still going to be executed one day. I mean, again, I know I should be happy you’re going to have more time alive and that I can still see you, but what if things don’t go as planned? What if you lose control of yourself once you reach, like, the fifth finger or something?”
You’re selfish like that. In a way, you’re just the way your mother is. You should’ve always known— you were her beloved daughter after all, and the people you know would be loved the same way she did you since the day she knew of your existence, and maybe even before that.
“Don’t worry,” he grins, wide as always. Even in an over-enveloping darkness he still manages to be the light. “I’ll be just fine. I’m a strong kid, after all. And we’ll always be friends!”
Gojo asks if he and Yuuji can talk in private for a while. You wonder if this was how your mother felt as she had to give the person she loved most away (but you will have to go away, one day), because you can briefly tell what Gojo is going to ask. You wonder if she felt this twice.
Yuuji can’t stay with you forever. In the same way you can’t remain by your mother and father’s sides for all eternity.
This won’t be the last time you’re here, you think. For a place of death, it’s quite a bit beautiful how there’s such large masses of grass and plants surrounding it.
Megumi nearly walks past you, his eyes on the old photographs of the deceased all around him.
“Megumi.”
He turns around.
“I just wanted to thank you for wanting to save my friend, even if you may not have wanted to do it for me, specifically… um… I didn’t expect that you’d still be here. Are your injuries okay?”
“I’m okay,” he answers you. “And also, I…” he hesitates, the first time he’s talked to you for something actually related to the two of you in a long time— nearly two years if you’re counting correctly, but the thoughts in your head are a bit too jumbled to count at the moment. “I didn’t really do it for you, though. It… it was for Tsumiki.”
“Oh.”
“Wait! I’m sorry, that didn’t… come out right. But I should also apologise for something else. You wouldn’t have been thrown into this world anyway if not for my own demon dogs years ago.”
“No, no, it wasn’t your fault. And I would have wanted to be in it anyway. There’s not many who can heal other people and all, so I just thought… even if I can’t do as much yet, since I don’t have reversed cursed technique and the drawbacks that come from mine are really bad, I can still help people sometimes if they’re dealing with relatively minor injuries. I can, um… make things easier for people. I can be useful like that. I’d keep to it anyway, because I’m stubborn, but… yeah. It wasn’t your fault, really.”
“Okay. That’s good to hear.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’m happy to know that Tsumiki is okay.”
Silence again for a while. The air turns a little more sombre, and a lot more awkward.
“She is. And Itadori seems… like a good person. I think it’s good, that… you were able to find a friend like that.”
“It was. He’s a really, really good guy.”
“You love him a lot,” Megumi says.
“I do. He’s a really good friend. If there’s something I’ll always know I know that, at least.”
“I can see that. It doesn’t seem like he loves you back in the same way, though.”
“...wow. Way to be blunt, Megumi. And yes, I do know that, too.”
“Let’s just… change the subject.”
“You’re the one who introduced it in the first place.”
“Okay. How… how are you?”
“I’m good. Wait, I think you should… go back to them. Maybe they’ll need you there right about now. He’s probably going to have to go to Jujutsu High, right?”
He pauses. “Yeah. I’m sorry, [Name].”
“No, no. That’s okay. I expected it. It’s just that I’ll miss him a lot,” you tell him, “He took care of me, kind of. You know I’ve always been a bit of an awkward or shy person, but he still approached me since I was new and we ended up hitting off as friends, kind of. We did a lot of stuff together.”
Sounds pretty familiar, huh.
“If you want I can make sure he’s safe for you.”
“...you should be able to do that regardless of whether it’s my wish for you to do so or not…” you state, “But that would help, I guess. And I’m sorry for my attitude towards you for the past few hours or so. Thank you again.”
“...I’m sorry I never spoke to you for so long, by the way,” he says abruptly. ‘By the way’? Classic Megumi…
“I could tell you were. It’s… it’s okay. The two of you kind of have a habit of doing that.”
All your rage, your loneliness, your feelings of abandonment— and this is all you can do. This is all you can say. You can only just let it go, in the end.
“I’ll explain it all one day.”
“You don’t have to if it’s hard.”
He stays. “No, I will. I promise. And I promise I’ll start to talk to you again, as well. I was just… scared of a few things, maybe.”
“That’s okay.”
The two of you aren’t quite friends again yet, but it’ll happen soon. Maybe. And even if it doesn’t, you’re finally able to say, with an open, honest heart, that that doesn’t matter as much anymore.
“I guess this is goodbye again, then.”
“Not really.”
“Oh, right— promise to keep in touch, okay? My patience is running thin with you,” you chuckle at that last part, attempting to joke and make things lighter again.
“Promise.”
“I’m going to go home now, by the way. Please tell Yuuji that I wish him the best and I’ll visit when I have my own money to visit Tokyo and all.”
“I will.”
“And help me say goodbye to him for me,” you add, “Hope that’s not too much for you to do. Sorry for the trouble. It’s just that I’d actually just about cry if I had to do it in real time right in front of him. Be good to him and be good friends, okay? Keep that promise, at the very least. That’s the one thing that I wish for the most.”
“Bye, Megumi.” You turn back in the direction opposite of his.
“Wait—!”
His hand is on your wrist. Now you’re in front of him, like yesterday, and he’s holding your wrist, albeit a bit gentler than the way he used to pull it a whole eight years ago.
His eyes are cast away from you, slightly avoidantly and in a way that’s a bit abashed. “I’ll miss you, [Name].”
“It won’t even feel like I’m not there,” you say. Though his grip is slightly tight, he loosens it as soon as you try to slide it up, as if he’d let you be free of it if you want him to.
You squeeze his hand instead, turning to face him. It feels warm. It feels like there’s blood coursing through you, the sensation more tender and tangible than it’s ever been.
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, [Name]. I’ll… I’ll call.”
“Thank you.”
Now you’re the one slipping away from his grasp. You move your hand away and walk back. The door slides open.
2010. Springs, summers, autumns, winters. Hands on wrists, a back faced to your eyes, wide with innocence. Warmth and laughter and happiness and love. Days coloured with vibrant hues and time spent with dog books and in libraries. Frowns were greeted with smiles. Hesitance was non-existent. You didn’t feel a need to compensate for your uselessness. You were a child. You didn’t feel useless at all. You just felt this: a constant leaping in your heart, the corners of your mouth twisting up into a juvenile grin, braiding someone’s beautiful brown hair and tying it with a pretty cherry hair tie.
You want to cry as you walk back home.
You’re pretty sure you do.
taglist:
@bakananya, @sindulgent666, @shartnart1, @lolmais, @mechalily, @pweewee, @notsaelty, @nattisbored
(please send an ask/state in the notes if you'd like to join! if I can't tag your username properly, I've written it in italics. so sorry for any trouble!)
#ohhh my goodness i'm so sorry this took so long#aaa but life's going to get very busy quite soon#so i just decided to post the next two chapters on tumblr first because writing chapter 8 and posting it on ao3 will take a while....#take me back (take me with you)#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#megumi fushiguro#megumi#fushiguro megumi#megumi fluff#megumi angst#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#jjk x fem!reader#fem!reader#ruer writes#megumi x reader#jjk x you#jjk x y/n#jujutsu kaisen x you#jujutsu kaisen x y/n#megumi imagine#adding more tags this time hope it works out#fanfiction#jjk fanfiction
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so I wrote a very short kazuha-centric fic yesterday that’s angsty and not very good
anyways does anyone want to read it
#kaedehara kazuha#kazuha#kazuha genshin impact#genshin kazuha#ruerwimyo talks#writings by ruer#genshin impact#genshin
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we have forgotten the face of our fathers.
cody,Rebecca, and amiyas message:
-I'm getting life insurance, there will be 20-50k set aside for you and your girls. don't kill yourself. also the benefactors/estate holders of my will are Rebecca and you(Amiya Mcgee if she's of legal age). you can all do it or one or two or all 2(3) separate but I expect you to follow what I asked as my voice will be dust and wind, silence. I'm trying to add a clause that until it's fulfilled you will only recive 2k and access to 10k in expenses(upon approval by both rebecca(Christopher Robert Bowling if she's deceased or Amiya Krista Taylor McAdams if she's 18) there will be around 100k before tax for lawyers and hopefully whom or what ever killed doesn't get the evidence I've compiled. I need you understand if you follow through you'll also receive 10% off the back end of the over all amount received through several lawsuits. I want you guys to be alright. ( you and ypur girls and Becca and her children and even her husband Chris)
-I should also tell you that by accepting your role in my estate. you will be putting your own life at risk. This isn't a game, a joke, or a prime time supernatural episode on HBO or showtime. I warn all 3 of you to read everything with the insight I told no lies in ink. Those nightmares our ancestors warned us about in the chronicles of history. Which mostly was written by the victors. Within their one sided verison of history there was more truth then we give credit for. we forgot they are us and we them. No those story's as real as gravity. Yet they or it will defy every rule we are subject to such as gravity. ironic. our ancestors weren't fibbing or stretching the truth. They said magic was real and monster lay behind ever corner, under the bed, with I'll intentions.We say they didn't understand what they were seeing. We write them off saying "it was science a prinitive people didn't understand. Unfortunately they were telling the truth, it's actually us who are primitive. Us who didn't listen. Thats how they win; isolation and selfishness. When no one cares but for themselves how are we different from the jackals, the snakes? and still today that remains true.
We are not the ruers of this blue marble because we THINK our superior intelligence separates us from every thing ese that roams, flys, and swims. no. no. no.
it's compassion. it's love. it's selflessness.
we have forgotten the face of our fathers.
- I'll be posting this on Facebook as a record should something happen to the will or to.
#spilled ink#orion#little bird#life#beautiful creatures#poetry#death#lastwillandtestament#lostwithoutyou#Lynz#rw#soul#human
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f. megumi x reader | summer heat
“i’m bored.”
“i know,” comes megumi’s exasperated reply.
this year the heat waves of tokyo have encroached on a new high, light spilling in abundance from windows sparse in number like water overflowing from a tiny cup. you wrap your balmy arms around his neck, sweat on his silky smooth skin and bleeding through the fabric of his shirt, nearly bare without his uniform jacket on.
“I’d blow air onto you, but it would just make you feel hotter,” you say, landing an open-mouthed kiss on his cheek, your hands on your knees. he leans back on the edge of the bed in exhaustion, energy seeped out by the heat like blood sucked by a leech. curse japanese floors and carpets— always built for heat absorption in the winter. what if it was hot— really hot, like now?
“it’s fine. it’s too hot for anything right now.”
he has skin like snow— you wonder if, with the scalding summer sun on him, he’s going to end up with tanned skin by the end of september.
he’s right, though. even with his hand on your back, precariously near to your waist, the two of you aren’t set on doing anything and there isn’t any air conditioning in his room either. so you’re stuck here, faces hot and breath hotter, necks sweaty and bodies sweatier.
you place your legs over his and your forehead against his collarbone, comfortable and calm, even with the sweltering heat. at this point everything in your mind is swimming through warm waves as you feel more sweat trickle down your cheek.
“I wish we had summer uniforms.”
“I’ll go buy a fan next time,” he whispers into your scalp. his breath fans against your head like steam. he moves his hand from the sweat of your back, looping his arm around your neck. “it’s too damn hot, I can’t even think.”
you nuzzle your nose into the very top of his chest for a moment, before raising your head to peck a spot on the crook of his neck. “feels like an oven.”
you don’t mind the heat, though. not right now.
okay so this is horrible and really short but I wrote this earlier today while it was really hot just because it was really hot. there's not much to say; I live in malaysia. (this is going to flop but omg it's been SO HOT lately like. sweating all the time and i know i should expect it but STILL)
again, selamat hari raya!
#it's not summer it's just Malaysia#jjk x reader#jjk x you#jjk x y/n#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen x you#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#jujutsu kaisen x y/n#megumi x reader#jjk megumi#megumi#megumi fushiguro#fushiguro megumi#megumi fluff#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#megumi imagine#is that a tag? I'm trying to add more tags than I usually do#ruer writes
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i.yuji x reader | konbini in the night
there are breadcrumbs on your face. you wipe them off and throw the packaging away in the dustbin next to his bike, the darkness of the night contrasting the bright lights of the convenience store next to you.
“look!” he calls out, the light in his pink hair fading as he exits the store, “I got one of these strawberry sandwiches I keep seeing online lately.”
the glint in his eyes is like powdered sugar on a perfect cake, or fireworks in a starry sky. sweet, bright, unforgettable— a treasure in people’s memories. the convenience store had been like an oasis in the dim, merely lamp-lit streets, and the two of you decided to dash straight into it before getting back to jujutsu high’s dormitories.
“you sure you don’t want anything else?” he asks, “the cashier lady’s actually really nice. I can give you some of these sandwiches, too.”
you’re sure it’s because he’s nicer. that he walked up to the counter, with that adorable face and kind smile, and the lady just treated him the same. like how sunflowers shined at and turned their heads to the sun.
“no, I’m fine.”
“hm…” he goes, “okay. but you should eat more, you know?”
“pft— yuuji, I’ll be just fine. don’t worry, okay?”
“okay,” he says with a pout.
he gets on the bicycle, and reflexively, you sit behind him. (you really have been pavlov’ed into getting on the passenger’s seat every time he’s on his bike, huh?) he places the sandwiches next to where you’ve placed your own water bottle in the basket, and you lean forward so that your face rests against his back while your arms are wrapped loosely around his neck. the hard pillion seat feels as comfortable as a mattress on display in a department store.
the ride back to the dorms— back home, actually— starts mostly mundanely, the wind humming softly against your face, the night dissolving your consciousness in slumber. you feel just that one bit out of control of yourself, and your head feels light to the point where you don’t want to think about anything at all.
“...let’s get married, yuuji,” you whisper under the twinkling stars, your spirit warmly embracing his while you press your chest more against his back. normally you’d be too scared to, especially with your breath still smelling like sandwiches: all too ridden with your own inhibitions— but this night in particular is almost a perfect one, so for once you don’t mind.
there is so much pain in the world but not here. not behind him and definitely not on the seat behind his back. the world ahead is uncertain but you’d be willing to face it with him head-on as long as he’s fine with it.
“huh? married?” he doesn’t know if the red on his cheeks is obvious but he thinks that even if it is you wouldn’t see it under the night sky. you can tell that under his large brown eyes there’s the faintest of blushes— you don’t need eyes to see that.
you nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck. he smells like some kind of 3-in-1 shampoo-conditioner-shower gel thing, but you guess that’s a testament to how much you love him since you don’t mind it at all. it’s wonderfully endearing to you now: the plain, minty scent that clings to his trademark ref hoodie, how the ends of his spiky pink hair poke and tickle at your face, how you can hear his low, slow breathing like a soft melody soothing you to sleep.
you’re not going to think that you’ll lose him someday. if you did then you wouldn’t be able to live. but if you didn’t promise this now— now when you’ve still only met him three months ago— and lost him, you’d spend your whole life grieving over him.
“mhm,” you reply, “let’s get married. I want to stay with you for a lifetime.”
and if this isn’t love you don’t know what love is anymore.
he looks back for a moment, and smiles, showing his teeth off like a little kid.
“sure! I wanna have that too.” he turns back. “I mean, I wanna make you happy. really happy. every day. and you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping me happy because I’d be the happiest guy in the world as long as you were. and, and—” —he lets one of his hands go from the bicycle handles; you open your eyes as he starts making gestures with it as accompaniments to his words— “— we’ll have this nice house or something, and it can be whatever you like. we can think of something together. and we won’t have much but it’ll be enough, I think.”
“mhm,” you smile. you bet he can feel the imprints of your lips on his skin, because it lays the slightest of gooseflesh on the back of his neck, the hairs there rising a little. as gross as it sounds you don’t worry if it’s chapped, and you guess he doesn’t mind either. “we’ll have just enough for us.”
he hums in agreement. “yeah.”
it’s quiet for a while, just the night air mixed with his scent, the grass swaying along to a silent tune, him, and you.
“…you know, a lot of people think that things like this come in sequences or something. like you have to at least kiss and do more than studying or going to the store together. we don’t even go to each others’ rooms at night or spend every second together and all… but— I think… I think I already know I want to spend my whole life with you. I mean, I really, really love you. so I get kinda worked up about lots of stuff sometimes but then I’ll see you again and that tells me things’ll be fine. that we’ll work things out.”
“yeah,” you say, your breath brushing against his skin again. it warms your cheeks up as the heat in it spreads around your face like hot tea. “we will. we definitely will. I promise.”
you fall asleep on his shoulder and don’t care about waking up on time the next day.
haha I just wanted to get this out since it’s been sitting in my docs app for about a month,,, also 恭喜发财 to the people who celebrate it, and happy Valentine’s Day since it’s coming up soon! so sorry if this is subpar or has any grammatical mistakes TvT
#jjk yuji#jjk yuuji#itadori yuji#itadori yuuji#yuji itadori#yuuji itadori#yuuji x reader#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#yuuji fluff#yuji fluff#yuuji Itadori x reader#yuji itadori x reader#itadori yuji x reader#itadori yuuji x reader#are those all of the tags? he has a lot due to the different spellings of his name#ruer writes
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take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 1: nostalgia
ao3 link for additional author's notes | playlist | next
chapter synopsis:
'“You’re my best friends forever,” you whisper to them. It’s the truth and it’s a promise.
The train halts with that chuffing sound all trains produce, and your mother holds the luggage as well as your other hand as you wave to them goodbye.'
---
' It’s very late and I still have so much I want to talk about with you, but I’m really sleepy now. My eyes are barely open and my face is about to fall on the paper, I think. Just know that I'm thinking of the two of you all the time. XX
Love, [Name]
(P.S.: I still have your hair tie. Do you know if I’ll ever be able to give it back?)'
word count: ~5k; tws: none for now
2-4-2015
Dear Fushiguro Tsumiki,
How are you today? I’m so sorry that we haven’t talked in so long.
Forgive me for asking so many questions in this letter— I know too little about writing them; my mother is the one who asked me to write this saying that it would help me keep in touch with my friends or write better (either of the two, I can’t quite remember).
Between an urban area or a rural area, which would you prefer? I’ve had to go all around the place because of my mother and I’m still all the way in Tanegashima now. If you were to go from Tokyo to where I am, you’d have to either go for a drive lasting more than 20 hours or book a three hour flight.
I’ve only stayed in the city once— that was when we were still in the same school, and we could all fit in my aunt’s apartment since my father was outstationed for the whole year. But I digress. Personally I prefer the city. It all feels so modern, and so much less empty than how it’s like here on this little island. I mean, we have the space centre, so I can always visit that, but after the third or fourth time you’d probably get a little bored of it too.
I wish I could go to Tokyo again one day, though. I’d definitely take the time to visit you, too. I read on a pamphlet once of how pretty everything gets in Tokyo during winter time, especially during Christmas. We don’t really celebrate Christmas here but the pamphlet reminded me of that one December when we spent it at my aunt’s, we ate lots of KFC and had a little party while my aunt sang songs and drank enough alcohol to prove she had a liver of steel a million times over.
It’s nice to reminisce on these things, and it’s nice to reminisce on when we were still there too. I know I never told you this enough, but I was so happy when you walked up to me on the playground that day and asked if you wanted to be friends. I really, really liked your hair and wanted to ask you the same. I was just too shy to do it, and thought that if I would I’d end up messing things up and mortifying myself. I miss that and you and I miss 2010 and I miss Tokyo, and walking back from school with you and Megumi (you were like my cool older sister), and I really, really miss doing each other’s hair. It was the most joyful I’d ever been in my then 8 years of life and every day was a new fragment of happiness to keep in my heart like a picture in a locket.
Now I really want to go there again, and maybe go to the Shinjuku-Gyoen, or see the lights at night. I wish I could stay for a whole year and see how the trees can change from being highlighted cherry blossom pinks, to lush greens with summer dew on them, to golden ginkgo leaves. I’d keep them with me, too. I hope you can take me there one day and we can see everything together again. My apologies if I’m asking too much of you.
Also, how is Megumi? I miss him too. Is he the way he was, still? Is everything okay between you and him, still? Unlike elementary school, the boys in junior high are all taller than the girls, so since we’re the same age do you think he’d be taller than me too? Is he taller than you, or are you still one of the tallest girls in junior high like how you were in elementary school?
It’s very late and I still have so much I want to talk about with you, but I’m really sleepy now. My eyes are barely open and my face is about to fall on the paper, I think. Just know that I’m thinking of the two of you all the time. XX
Love, [Name]
(P.S.: I still have your hair tie. Do you know if I’ll ever be able to give it back?)
28-2-2011
The train to the airport is arriving in a minute, and you’re sure your mother won’t let you just wait for the next one, so you’re stuck clutching your little luggage bag as you look at Tsumiki and Megumi, that inseparable pair, and their snowy-haired “benefactor” (whatever that means. You think he’s more like their father sometimes, though).
Even if you knew it was inevitable and that this day would eventually come, especially with your leaving Tokyo being pulled even earlier than you thought it would, a part of you pretended that you’d still get to stay with them for a little while longer. In Tokyo you’d solidified your place and built your roots— you had friends, were doing alright in school and had even begun to be less anxious about everything. Now you’d be uprooted again, you thought as your fists trembled, Now you’d be back to square one.
2011 had started as a busy year— your father had begun preparations to move somewhere else where you and your mother could follow him and the three of you would be together again. It was busy for Tsumiki, too, who had more school matters to tend to due to her being one of the best, most well-rounded students in her year (you didn’t know much of the details).
…it had also begun with you seeing a dog when you were alone with Megumi once. It had these unique markings on its head, with alabaster fur and jaundice-hued eyes. And Megumi then had a panicked look in his eye, asked how and why you could see them as well as whether you’d seen them before, which you suppose caused him to be busier after that, too. Tsumiki and Megumi’s benefactor visited you and your mother the night after, asking to speak with your mother and your mother alone. He paused before you, almost shocked, you supposed, but you couldn’t see through his pitch black sunglasses (he was one weird guy, seriously— pitch black sunglasses? Really?). To which she frowned, as the man uttered that you could be a “window”, but that you could still be able to use “cursed energy”, or something. You’d heard of neither of those, and weren’t able to eavesdrop or discern anything else they’d said.
Then nobody else mentioned the dog anymore.
If you questioned any of them, you’d only be told that the dog was a stray, and that those markings must have been a particularly special birthmark. Yet you knew it was all a lie, but after multiple tries you gave up on wondering.
When you’d first learned you’d be moving yet again, you cried and screamed for your mother to let you stay, and for what felt like hours. After relaying this to Tsumiki, she just put her hand on yours before hugging you— always wise, always kind, always smiling, you can’t say this enough about her. Megumi patted your back before she pulled him in as well, and for once he didn’t shove her hand away. You couldn’t even bother to be confused at that— you just continued to weep as Tsumiki comforted you, whispering, “I can’t promise I’ll always be able to talk to you, but I’ll try my best to keep in touch when I can. And even if we don’t, we’ll always be friends, okay? So we’ll meet again someday, don’t forget that, okay, [Name]?”
A day after that Megumi told you to stay safe. Nearly ordered you to swear you’d stay safe and protected, always. He said that the world was dangerous since it was full of dangerous creatures and people who could kill you at any moment, but as long as you were on an island like the one you were moving to, you’d be fine. You furrowed your brow at that as he held your hand and felt him squeeze it— subconsciously, most likely.
“Well,” Tsumiki starts, a tinge of sadness in her tone, her eyes slightly swollen. Megumi’s expression is unreadable but his fists are balling the fabric of his shirt and his leg is shaking. It makes you want to sob and cling to both of them and you know if you did they wouldn’t ever let go, “I guess this is goodbye, [Name]…”
Before you realise it, tears start pooling in your eyes and soon they’re trickling down your face uncontrollably, just like the day when you’d first met her. “We’ll still be friends, right?” You won’t leave me, right?
“Mhm!” Tsumiki smiles— she was always smiling, always, even when she was about to cry along with you. Her lip was trembling and for a second you swore you could detect that in the ever-stoic Megumi, too. “It’s okay, you don’t have to worry. We’ll be friends forever, so we’ll surely see each other soon enough,” Tsumiki assures you, close to sniffling, “We made a promise to always be friends, right? So you’ll see the two of us again in just a few years’ time no matter what.”
“Okay,” you sniff, “I’ll see the two of you when we’re all grown up, and… and I’ll be taller, too! I promise I’ll visit Tokyo next time!”
“...that’s good,” Megumi says, his leg still shaking discreetly, joining you and Tsumiki’s conversations in a way he’d rarely done.
Tsumiki nods, “Yeah. That sounds really, really good, [Name]. Wait—! Let me give you something. You can call it a gift!”
She takes it off, and her hair unfurls like flowers from bouquets after they’re untied, placing the red-ribbon hair tie securely in your palm.
“Your hair tie?” you ask, “No, it’s okay—!”
“Please, just… just keep it, okay? It’s a gift from Megumi and I to you, [Name]!”
Then you’re in her embrace again as you clutch the hair tie, while after a little hesitation Megumi joins in and you swear you can see their benefactor smiling— not just the smile he had when you first saw him, this one in particular seemed proud, fatherly, the same way your father did when you told him about how you were able to read through a whole book with beginners’ kanji in it.
“You’re my best friends forever,” you whisper to them. It’s the truth and it’s a promise.
The train halts with that chuffing sound all trains produce, and your mother holds the luggage as well as your other hand as you wave to them goodbye.
15-3-2011
The phone continues to vibrate in your hands as you anxiously tap your foot on the ground. You’re sure it’s going to end up sore. Frantically, you press it almost forcefully to your ear when it stops ringing. “Tsumiki, Megumi!”
“[Name]!”
“Are you alright? I saw the footage of the earthquake on the news, are you safe? Were you and Megumi evacuated, are you all safe? Please tell me whether you’re safe—!”
“Megumi, it’s [Name]!— Don’t worry, we’re safe now.”
Relieved, you sigh, “That’s good, that’s good,” you say, “It must’ve been really scary…”
“Mhm— everything started shaking as if we were on some boat in the middle of the sea and the waves started getting wilder, and it was like the ground was rumbling.”
You shiver. “That sounds so scary…— I’m glad you’re safe, though. I don’t know why stuff like that has to happen so quickly sometimes, and so suddenly, too. And it takes so many people along with it. I thought I could’ve lost the two of you.”
“Well, we made a promise,” she tells you, “So don’t worry. —Oh! Megumi wants to talk to you. Here, Megumi.”
“Are you alright?” he inquires, “Have you seen anything scary in the countryside?”
“Huh? Oh, no, I haven’t seen anything. Why?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to know.” Now that sounds like a bold-faced lie.
“Uh-huh, okay.”
-20-5-2011-
“Hello? Is this Tsumiki? I need to ask if she’s alright—”
“Oh, little [Name]?” a man says over the phone— the benefactor, you remember, “So sorry, she’s pretty busy right now… call next time, okay?”
-21-5-2011-
“Hello? This is the Fushiguro house contact, right?”
“Sorry, Tsumiki’s busy at the moment. Me too, actually.”
“Megumi!” you smile, bringing the phone closer to your cheek in excitement, “How is everything?”
“Good, to say the least,” he replies, “We’re just a bit busy. Sorry, but I’ve to hang up soon.”
“Oh, oh-okay! Bye bye, Megumi!”
“Bye.”
-13-7-2011-
“Hi, [Name] speaking. I called twice last month and a few days ago. Are you still busy?”
“A little— well, Tsumiki is,” the voice on the other side says. You know it’s not Tsumiki, not yet at least. “She’s really sorry, [Name].”
“No, no, it’s okay! I don’t want to bother any of you either, so thank you for telling me!”
“Well, if you want I can try to get Tsumiki right now,” the voice offers.
“Really? Thank you so much!”
The pause that ensues after is followed by the fifteen happiest minutes of your life since February this year.
“[Name]? Is that you?”
“Yeah! Hi, Tsumiki!”
She gasps slightly in the way that children do when in awe or when someone finds out they’ll be eating their favourites for lunch. “Hello!”
“How are you?” you ask.
“I’m good! Really busy, though, so I’m really sorry if I can’t call you as often… but everything’s been alright. You?”
“Mm,” you hum, nodding your head even if she can’t see it, “I’m good, too!”
-18-8-2011-
You don’t know when you started heading to the phone and keying in the number, doing everything but ringing it. You’re busy, too— you’ve less time now to ring them up, and the last time you did, Tsumiki still apologised but sounded a little distant, just that one bit too busy to be able to tend to you. One step farther away from you. And Megumi was seldom ever the one by the phone. Still, you could understand why. You supposed they always had something going on that you never understood or never asked about. That would explain the incident with the unusually marked dog. No, they weren’t sketchy, but there was definitely something they must have known about the world that you didn’t.
Now you don’t know if you can even muster the courage to talk to you or write to you. The distance between you has widened exponentially and you hesitate just a bit more every time you hold the phone and press its buttons.
Then the phone rings, and after you hesitate once more, you put it down.
9-2-2016
If there’s one thing you remember from about half of your life ago, it’s that your first crush was probably Fushiguro Megumi.
You’re honestly surprised it wasn’t actually his sister. That over Tsumiki and her abundant compassion and beautiful soul, you’d feel your heart leaping and overflowing with warmth because of him instead. Constantly angry, never for once not irascible, always serious and aloof. You’re sure that if you’d met him now instead of back then you’d find him some asshole who you just wouldn’t be able to understand— why’d he always have to seem so angry?
Yet it was a struggle, trying to understand him. It really was. Maybe you didn’t really have to understand anyone, much less Megumi. He never ceased being so serious and easily angered but you could tell from his eyes that he must have not intended to hurt anyone; half of the time you understood him: like when you could see that glint in your eyes that replaced what would have been a ghost of a smile on his lips, the other half of the time you didn’t: like whenever he shoved Tsumiki’s hand off his shoulder, and Tsumiki just continued to smile. Now, that really confused you. You’d thought about that for days before coming to the conclusion that you’d probably never find an answer.
Conversely, Tsumiki was kind and patient. If you’d met her now you’d have fallen in love with her immediately and she probably wouldn’t even notice in that terribly goodhearted, unknowingly innocent way of hers.
In retrospect it should have been more obvious: he scowled at you and if it were anyone else who did so to you back then you would have merely cried and closed in on yourself, yet you never did when it came to him. You just continued to stick to him like those kind of glue residuals left behind after you take a sticker off a table or a price tag from the back cover of a book. You were probably annoying like that. And to some degree you suppose he’d given you his own form of special treatment by letting you do so anyway.
If you’d known what you were feeling back then you probably wouldn’t have admitted anything, anyway. Probably you would’ve kept it all within you, quiet and unnoticed, trying to drown yourself into life’s backdrop like an insect engulfed in resin.
But you’re older now, more mature and slightly more outspoken; you’re going to try to be confident and meet someone, this one person alone who you can only meet now without his sister there just because you used to have a crush on him and—
You don’t think you’d be able to admit anything either. Yet to yourself he’s the first. He always will be, and you’re not sure whether that sounds pathetic, miserable or disgustingly, hopelessly delusional, considering you don’t even want to pursue anything yourself.
It’s going to be Valentine's Day soon and you’re quite sure that most of your school friends are making Valentine’s chocolates for their boyfriends or their crushes. In all truthfulness, you might as well not feel blue about it— you’re 14, that’s still pretty young, you don’t have to rush things like relationships or confessions through and you’ve been told to focus on your studies instead— but the thought that you’re going to be alone is still kind of depressing.
10-4-2015
Dear [Name],
Don’t apologise— it’s partially my fault. I ended up being really busy that year due to something we had to deal with.
But anyway, it’s been so long! I miss you every day as well!
Megumi and I’ve been great, and I hope you’ve been too. It’s been a long four years since we last talked (it’s already 2015, how time flies!), but you still sound the same. It’s like you’ve got better handwriting now, though!
Aside from the fact that I’ve been swarmed with stuff to do (I joined the student council, yay!), junior high has been okay, to say the least— and hey, I’m still pretty tall, you know? Plus, a lot of the teachers say I’m surprisingly tall for my age, heheh. Things are going the same as always. I’ve got accustomed to the loads of homework we have now too. But it’s like Megumi’s been having a problem lately— he’s getting into fights, beating people up, things like that. I wouldn’t call him a delinquent, though: moreso someone who beats the delinquents up instead. I know what he wants to do and why he does it, but I don’t want him to fight other people and get himself or others hurt.
I’ve tried to tell him this before, to be honest. I’ve tried it many times but each time I must sound more annoying to him than the last— I don’t want to force him to do anything, though, and I understand that part of why he does this is because of his own ideals. I just want him to not raise his hand against others. So I have to resort to this.
Sorry for spilling it all on paper like this… I just wanted someone to talk about this to, and I thought you would listen to me, I suppose. Sometimes it’s hard— sometimes I really do feel like his parent instead of his sister and it makes me feel so lonely, really.
Oh dear, what do I do to make him hear me, seriously…
Anyway, I totally get what you mean— I’ve stayed in Tokyo all my life, but I’m sure that if I was uprooted and had to live somewhere else I’d have lots of trouble. Tokyo to me is my home, and my whole life is here. Moving somewhere else would probably shatter it completely, I think.
And please visit when you can! Maybe if your mother allows it, we can come to us instead, one day! And it’s not like we can’t visit you either. Our door’s always open. Once this school year ends, perhaps we could stay with you for a night or two! (If you would have us, of course).
Besides that, I don’t really have much to say. I did have a good day today, though. I went out with some of my friends from school after our classes ended and we ate some donuts. They were so tasty!!! Honestly, whenever you have the time, I really recommend going there with some of your friends after school!!
Regardless, I think this is all I have to say in this letter. I promise I’ll try my utmost best to always set aside time to write to you!!! Get some good rest whenever you can, okay? Miss you always!
Sincerely,
Tsumiki
(P.S.: Do you have an email or a phone number of your own yet? If so, please shoot me an email or give me a call! I can reply more there since I have those now and can use those instead of always relying on our house contact. You can keep the hair tie, too, by the way! It can be like a memoir (*^▽^*). And it’s for you, after all!)
13-3-2015
You remember seeing a little dog one time back in your hometown when you were around six or seven years old.
It was a tiny little thing, with the fluffiest black fur you’d ever stroked, and though every second it was barking louder than your mother could ever handle, it was adorable and seldom threatened to bite anyone. And it liked you— it never barked at you and let you shower it with pets despite how much it had frightened you initially.
He was irritable but calm, someone who frowned and scolded but never raised his hand against anyone— not even that “benefactor” of his who you’d never heard him talk about without mentioning how much he’d like to punch him someday. You genuinely don’t think he’s ever done so, either. He doesn’t seem like the type: from what you remember, if he were to think he’d hurt someone he knew or evidently cared about— as much as he’d like to deny this, however— he would blame everything on himself, you think. He’d feel the guilt rake through his body and lacerate his skin, piercing through his ribs. Yet he’d keep living, and he wouldn’t tell anyone about it; he’d be so quietly miserable.
That’s what he was like: quietly miserable. There’s a certain sorrow in the way he does things; you could tell this from the start despite how young and inept at articulating yourself you were at that age. But you’d always known and sensed that there was a sadness running through him, coursing through his veins, one that you could feel like heat from the warm blood beneath one’s skin.
Today you wonder if he’s the same, if he still seems like the saddest person you’ve ever met, if he still seems like he would have been the saddest and most doleful had he not always tried to act as if otherwise, living defiantly against it. If he hadn’t always been able to keep living while suffering quietly like a child with nothing but muffled sobs in the desolate corner of an empty classroom.
But at eight you thought maybe you could liken Megumi to a puppy. Or something like that. He certainly reminded you of that all-bark-no-bite puppy from the past. You wondered how it was now, whether it was still being fed and taken care of.
Tsumiki was vastly different, though— the kindest girl you ever knew, with neat, soft hair and the type of handwriting all the girls in her class wanted to have. She was always smiling, always kind— you thought she was immensely wise for a girl around your age; you always wanted to be as amazing of a person as she was: always hardworking, always clever, always kind and forgiving, no matter what.
…you don’t even know why you’re thinking about some kids you met once who you’ll probably never see again. Just two kids who you never kept in touch with. Or at least never tried to. You had their contact— you tried talking to Tsumiki a few times, but for some reason she could only ever reply once or twice (she apologised profusely for not being available any time she picked up as well), and as time passed the way the distance between the two of you grew, by the summer of 2011 you’d begun holding a telephone close to your ear without keying any number in it, as if clinging onto it would provide you with any sort of closure.
You miss them, though: smiley Tsumiki and frowny Megumi.
Leaning back into the mattress, you trace your fingers over the hair tie on your wrist, fingers rubbing against each thread of fabric in its red ribbon.
Could you even talk to them or face them anymore after ceasing contact with them for years, though? Heck, you don’t even know whether they’re alive or not. Would they be angry at you? Disappointed? Feeling as if they’d been wronged or left behind?
Still, you miss them. You really do.
Your mother’s calls bring you downstairs, and you eat until your stomach is full before washing your plate. The only other step in your routine now is to head up and retreat to your room again.
“Come down, [Name], could you?” your mother says, interrupting your trip back up, “I just want to talk to you for a second.”
Now, that… that was a bit strange. Your mother rarely ever asked you to talk to her. You spent enough time with each other as is, doing almost everything else besides being in school or at work in the same house, even if it never meant asking about each others’ day. It just was never part of the conversations you had with each other. You’d ask where she wanted you to throw things or how you could cook something, but she’d never go out of her own way to learn about your own day since you were about nine or ten, and it wasn’t like you ever did either. Perhaps she was trying to make the effort to?
“What is it?”
“You like writing, honey?”
“I mean, I guess so?” you reply hesitantly, “As long as it’s not for school or my grades don’t rely that heavily on a task, writing can be pretty fun.”
“Good, good,” she remarks, nodding her head, “Actually, I recently found something you may be interested in online. You still have your friend and her brother’s house contact, right?” she questioned. Instantly you know which friend she’s referring to and say yes— how could you not, after all? “Ever heard of pen pals, darling?”
Which brings you to where you are now: your mother leaning by the door frame of your room as you’re hunched over the table writing the letter. Surprisingly, she really seemed to care about this, even preparing the prettiest paper you’d ever seen, with pastel pink patterns printed on the paper’s edges, and though you struggled with what to say it first the words have begun spilling out of you despite how late it’s started to get.
You wonder whether she’ll reply. She probably will, though, but a fragile part of yourself surmises that she may not, and although you’d like to talk to her again you fear that because of the time that’s passed things may just not be the same anymore. You wonder if the years have made the three of you infinitely different than your eight and nine year old selves.
But that was growth, right? So you had to grow and learn how to talk to her, learn how to face her without thinking that she’d be angered or frustrated, or anything like that. And even if she did, even if it would hurt you, you’d be able to live. The world would keep spinning and all that would be lost were two friends who you lived without for about four years, ceteris paribus. Who could claim that the seventy or so years after those four would be any different?
That’s why you took the pen and paper and started to write, telling yourself you’d face it and finish the letter no matter what. Even if it was short. Even if it wouldn’t be enough to express four years’ worth of unspoken words, from funny things that had happened in school, or what you thought of whatever was on the news, or how your parents had gotten you a new phone.
As your eyelids gradually grow heavier, you watch how you fill two whole pages in the handwriting you have— you wish it could have been at least a tad bit more similar to Tsumiki’s, who never needed any boxes or lines to write completely straight and uniform for each character as if copying excerpts from finely printed books to the letter.
Soon, you’re reaching the end of the letter, determined to keep the handwriting legible even if you feel like plopping your head on the table and falling asleep— to some degree you still need it to look presentable, after all.
“(P.S.: I still have your hair tie. Do you know if I’ll ever be able to give it back?)”
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#it's finally up :)#yayy#take me back (take me with you)#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fluff#megumi angst#jjk x fem!reader#fem!reader#fushiguro tsumiki#fushiguro megumi#megumi#ruer writes
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f. megumi x reader | one moment longer
under the light of the moon, he looks more beautiful than anything.
spiky black hair shining like stunning silver, eyelashes weaved of the silkiest threads one’s genes could offer, green eyes shimmering, scrutinised by the moon’s glow. if there was a painting to describe the epitome of beauty he would be its subject.
the collar of that tidy black uniform you can nuzzle your face into, the hyaline scent of detergent and a freshly cleaned room, the rhythm of his breaths, faint and light, as lithe, warm hands rest on your back the same way puzzle pieces stay connected.
“i love you,” you hear. it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard.
you aren’t a jujutsu sorcerer yourself, so maybe you wouldn’t know enough. still, you know some people say that the world of sorcery is one devoid of hope and humanity; you know the general sentiment among them is that this has always been a sisyphean task, that it was born from the resistance of impermanent lives against an evil which would last for all eternity.
yet how can they let their worlds be entrenched in such darkness and lovelessness?
love and good are everywhere, you think, no matter how much loss there is to endure. you’ve felt so yourself.
you see it when you sip from teacups in cafes where the saucers come with biscuits on the side and your ears notice the shutter of his camera and you gaze at the mellow grin resting on his face. you hear it when he sends you whatever tune he’s been listening to for the past few days, sent with a text saying, “thought you might like this”. you taste it when he presses his lips to yours and kisses him back out of joy in a bold defiance of this world’s sorrows. love and good is everywhere in the mundanity of life and it’s minuscule, quiet moments.
“i love you,” he whispers again, voice as soft as a gentle breeze in an autumn-touched street, but with enough conviction to make the mightiest of rulers fall, you’re sure. you shut your eyes slowly as his feet move languidly in tandem with yours.
“you do?” you ask, “i love you too, megumi.”
one day the world he resides in will take him away from you. one day you’ll be left alone with no one to hold you under the moonlight while it spills into their wooden-tiled dorm room, one day you won’t have anyone to dance with you despite the chills outside.
but today is not that day. tonight is not the night you’ll be screeching and crying as you hear news of his death from a cellphone call. it’s not the night when you’ll be shaking and collapsing over his mangled corpse, if there even is one left.
you want a future together. you want for him to stay even after he leaves graduates, for years and years and years of his life. but even you know that with the life he’s living, with the kind of life where any night is one when he may die, you just wish that it can last for a while longer. if not two years, then maybe two months. if not two months, then maybe two weeks. or perhaps…
…just one moment longer. one moment longer with fushiguro megumi.
I don’t even write for jjk haha, I was just simping at 3 am (I want to sleep. I’ve to wake up before 9 tomorrow. someone pry my phone away from me.) I’m also doing this to cope because gege is cruel. someone help this is probably so bad I didn’t even do any formatting or anything bro that picture isn’t even one of the moon
#lmao what am I doing it’s like 3am#I’m going to sleep this is probably so bad#megumi fushiguro#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#megumi fluff#ruer writes#stuff that isn’t genshin#jjk#jujutsu kaisen#fushiguro megumi#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader
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take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 4: placeholder
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chapter synopsis:
'It’s like doing every little thing that you used to do with Tsumiki, and Megumi, sometimes, too— time spent after or during school, time spent laughing and giggling over the phone, time spent over snacks that keep you so full you don’t even want to eat your next meal— the same, but different.'
---
Yeah, no matter what happens, no matter what changes— you'll live, probably.
word count: ~5k; tws: brief mentions of menstruation maybe?
12-2-2017
Out of everything you wouldn’t have expected this.
It could have been her telling you about how Valentine’s Day is coming up, complaining about how that one teacher’s been giving her class quizzes every lesson, or gossipping about frivolous things like the drama happening among the girls in her grade.
But you don’t expect the phone call to go like this.
“Hello?” you ask into the phone, “Tsumiki?”
“Hello,” the voice over the phone says. This one is older, more masculine, and you know whose it is.
It’s Gojo Satoru’s.
“Ah, Mr… Mr Gojo? Is Tsumiki home?”
There’s a long pause after that, the silence like paint filling in the gaps of a puzzle when the pieces are lost.
“…not now,” he says, his tone low and heavy, “Sorry, kid. You should…. you can call on another day, okay?”
“I… okay. Thank you. Could you help me tell her that her friend [Name] wants to call her? She hasn’t been talking to me anywhere since, um… the start of the year, I think?”
“Yeah,” he goes, voice aching to the point it makes your heart twinge, “I’ll let her know. Thanks.”
Then he hangs up. It sounded as if he was holding the phone with all the weight in the world, and had his voice drenched in all the pain in it.
And you don’t know why.
-16-2-2017-
It happens once more, and you’re convinced that every time you see them after a while Tsumiki and Megumi slip away completely from your grasp. Tsumiki hasn’t called in months— again, hasn’t responded to nor read any of your text messages and doesn’t even wish you a good morning when you start the week anymore. She always used to do that. You’re sure they would have a reason— you’re definitely sure— but why would they have to go missing on you right after you left?
And you didn’t even want to speak to Megumi at first. Though the two of you had shared your contacts during your trip in Tokyo and agreed to catch up every so often, you struggled to face him. Perhaps it was childish pride— your wish to have been right and to have him apologise to you, apologise to his sister, too; your wish for him to call you up admitting he was wrong.
You suppose you wouldn’t mind if he never did, though— you just didn’t want to apologise to him. You didn’t want to lose or give in, not when your life has revolved so much around these two, not when this is the only time you can control things. Your relationship with them is a journey on a swaying boat, and each time they move it you feel you’re about to fall into the water and drown from them turning it over. This is the only way you can do it to them, do it to him in particular, because you’d let only Tsumiki prove you wrong. You’d let both of them do anything to you— at this point you have because no matter how much they promise to call you back, to listen to your voicemails, to meet you again, you’re the one arranging plans to move to Tokyo; you’re the one calling them for what feels like over and over and sitting with your phone pressed to your ear for an eternity only to hear nothing. You moved all over the country, so why did it feel like you were the only one stuck in place as they moved forward from you?
At this point it’s even hindering you from making any new friends. You choose so much to linger on these two, on two people you met at the age of eight and only knew for a year before you decided to devote yourself to them, that you miss the chance to speak to anyone else your age who could be a lifelong companion no matter where you moved.
Yet at the same time you can’t handle not saying sorry— if there’s one thing that’s festered in you for years it’s the guilt that’s accumulated from being who you are. Guilt from being a burden, guilt for not having been a better daughter or an easier child to raise, guilt for not apologising after scolding someone over something that never really mattered. What you fought over: in the end, it didn’t matter, right?
Still, you’d rather be immature than lose control the first time you’ve had it; you’d rather be immature than apologise for something you refuse to say is your fault even if your greater conscience tells you to apologise either way.
Your thoughts are scribbles on paper, and you can’t decide, really; you can’t make a stand on what you really want: an apology, to apologise, to be proven right, to be able to talk again, to completely refrain from talking to him at all for the rest of your life—
This really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. So maybe it’s because Valentine’s Day has just passed and you’re lonely and he’s the only one you’ve ever had feelings for, or because this is the compromise you can come up with the part of yourself that wants control and the part of yourself that thinks the world is better off with you being less of a weight on someone’s back.
Anyway, you phone Megumi up.
Slowly, you key his number in— you swore not to forget it when he gave it to you last year, when for a few days you had rebuilt your friendship with him through awkward conversations and beating around the bush, only for it to crumble and come crashing down.
You press the phone to your ear. Its screen feels cold as the side of it grazes the skin on your chin. It vibrates and rings, its hum like a bee’s buzz, as you wait for the reply.
“This is Fushiguro speaking. If you’re hearing this, I can’t be on the phone right now, so just leave a voicemail message—”
You’ve never felt more hurt after feeling his voice reach your ears.
-20-2-2017-
You try again. The beep seems to mock you as you put your phone down and collapse against the mattress.
All of it, the frustration, the melancholic nights spent dialling numbers over and over again, the emptiness that greets you after like an old friend who knows you all too well—
— it has all happened before. It’s happening again and all you can do is watch as it does, forbidding yourself from interfering with what you’ve claimed is now a relapse of the distancing that you had no control over two years ago.
10-3-2017
“We may be moving back to Sendai for a while, since we’ve got to settle some things with our old house there,” your father states— you know that you’re guaranteed to be spending your last year of junior high there, though, since it’s less than a month until the next school year— “Are you okay with that?”
“Yeah, sure.” You don’t have the number of any of your classmates at school, and you don’t really care to ask anymore. “Want me to help with anything?”
4-5-2017
Anticipation for the summer vacation breaks into your school calendar. The summer of 2017 is the first one you’ve had while having a friend close to you besides Megumi and Tsumiki, with Yuuji and you heading off for arcade games every Tuesday, laughing about goodness knows what in between classes and sending each other videos of old vines on Youtube before Vine died at the start of the year. It’s like doing every little thing that you used to do with Tsumiki, and Megumi, sometimes, too— time spent after or during school, time spent laughing and giggling over the phone, time spent over snacks that keep you so full you don’t even want to eat your next meal— the same, but different.
With a skip in your step, you head to class. Yuuji’s in there, and hey— it’s a Thursday, so today you’re especially excited.
That’s what’s been happening to you recently: excitement. Colour. Before meeting him it felt as if things were bleak, dull, grey like piles of dust. Yet you suppose becoming his friend has brought that colour back to you, because now you look forward to days instead of dreading them, all for the sake of him. How romantic.
“So? Which girl in our class do you like, Itadori?”
“I don’t like any of them.”
“Yeah, but if you had to pick one!”
The other boys don’t even mention you. It does make sense. At this point you may just seem to be someone desperate for his attention: of all the people in your class, you talk only to him, mostly because you’d struggle talking to any other girls, even more so any other boys. They were all intimidating at times: the baseball pitcher who dragged Itadori near his table every now and then, the pretty girls always willing to lend you bobby pins and hair ties with the best makeup you’ve seen and rolled-up skirts you feel you could never replicate and look good in, the smart student council leaders sitting at the front of the classroom completing their homework during lunch periods. Even if what would meet you while talking to them was not ridicule, it would be, at the very least, an uncomfortable silence frozen in the air from your awkwardness.
And hearing all this kills you because you know it would never be you. You wonder why it does— liking him was fun. It was supposed to be something you dallied in for your own sake, because doing what a girl your age should do instead of rotting in your room comforted you.
Yet your feelings were fickle, you supposed, because what was a source of joy slowly became a slightly painful twinge in your chest that you ignored each time you waited for him to tell you anything that could have indicated any feelings towards you. It was over from the start: you knew you’d never be the type of person he’d like; your handwriting wasn’t pretty, you were an inelegant klutz, weren’t gentle or caring or anything like that, just awkward. Tsumiki could, though, you think. Tsumiki had a natural grace, and a soothing charm that followed her like the scent of eucalyptus from her shampoo and conditioner. If it were Tsumiki, anyone could fall for her— any boy or any girl, anyone. But it’s you, and you find yourself wallowing in self-pity as you hear him say it before noticing one of the girls— Ozawa Yuko, you think— standing in front of you.
You don’t know her well enough to say anything about her. Still, you know that she’s a good few inches shorter than Yuuji is, and that whenever you walk past her you can vaguely pick up the scent of camellia shampoo.
That’s the type that people— boys, at least— like. Graceful girls with elegance emanating from them, radiant and warm and friendly, even if they may be shy. You know how some other students have spoken about Ozawa, mocking her for things she couldn’t control. And it was stupid as hell: you guys were teenagers, there’d be no need for her to want to lose weight now— she still had so much time to grow and losing weight would stunt it, plus she would be adorable either way, too.
In the few months you’ve known him you know Yuuji isn’t like that. There are boys your age, with their boisterous laughs and common cruelty, and then there’s Yuuji. He’s never said a wrong word about anyone; he likes Jennifer Lawrence and tall girls with big asses but he’s like others in the sense that he loves people who are kind, sweet— someone like Ozawa.
So when you see Ozawa waiting by the door, about to listen in with a light blush on her face, you know you don’t even need to hear his answer.
[Name]
Yuuji
Sorry
Is it ok if we don’t go today
I think I’ve to stay home and study
[Yuuji]
aw ok its all good
good luck studying man
[Name]
Thanks
You should have fun with the other boys
And walk home with them
Sounds kinda gay ngl but eh
[Yuuji]
nah not the same when i’m not walking bakc with u
It hurts a bit as you walk home on your own, but you don’t cry.
Now it’s time to be useful.
The next day, you talk to Itadori as usual. Nothing changes.
But then during lunchtime you head to where Ozawa sits— today she’s in the classroom for a change, and she’s all alone, and you should’ve tried your best to prevent that so that others wouldn’t be like you. If Itadori was the one to be sitting by your desk, you’ll be like that for her whenever you see her.
“Um, Ozawa,” you mumble, tapping her shoulder.
She looks up. “Ah… hm?”
“...good luck!” you say, holding your thumb up as support, “I’ll cheer you on…! If you ever want to talk to him, I’ll help you, okay?”
You run away before things get too awkward, but a connection established is a connection regardless, and you’ve won for today.
1-12-2017
Your parents seem on-edge these days, your mother stressed and tired as she always is, your father worried about nothing you seem to know.
One night your mother places her chopsticks on the rim of her plate. The way she does it is in defeat— silently, firmly so as to show that she wasn’t quite done, that she could still hold them with all her strength in defiance. You only see her that way after your parents fight: that frown, the passively violent, deafeningly soundless aura from her actions. Because it was always your father who “won”. You didn’t have a place to judge— your parents were a sterling team together; even if they fought things would be resolved and you’d have no say in the matter. It was only theirs and if they treated their arguments like fights they brought war weapons to, they would agree that you had neither the life experience to stop them nor the wisdom to solve their problems. You couldn’t handle it either: their fighting and how it froze the air solid, the way it could erupt into them shouting at the tip of their throats so long as they were in their bedroom, because they knew you wouldn’t hear. And so beyond words your father always won their arguments, each of them treating the other like an enemy on the battlefield.
Your mother turns to you.
“Your father has to go to Tokyo on the 24th,” she states, “They need him back for something.”
“Jujutsu sorcerer stuff?”
“I won’t take long,” your father smiles, as if he had not hurt your mother’s feelings to get her to give up, “And I’m not going to be involved in the actual fighting like last time.”
“Then why do you have to go?”
“It’s something really important.”
You frown.
He sighs. “There’s going to be an attack on the 24th,” he says, “Something planned by a man named Geto Suguru, a curse user with an extremely powerful cursed technique. I’ll just help with healing anyone’s injuries,” he explains, “…you know, I actually wanted to bring you there and see how things work in real time, since it seems you’ve been interested in your cursed technique lately, but someone didn’t want you to do it.”
“Don’t bring me into this again,” your mother spits at him.
“I already told you it wouldn’t involve any of us getting hurt,” he retorts, “If I bring her there I won’t even let her use her cursed technique, I just want her to see how Dr Ieiri and I do it—”
“Ah!” you go, “Dr Ieiri Shoko, right? Megu— ah, I heard about her last time, from… someone.”
“From Megumi?” your mother says, “Darling, don’t think about those two anymore, it’s better if you don’t get involved with that or that world at all—”
“Anyway,” your father interjects, “Do you want to try it, sweetheart? And if it all goes well with most of Tokyo still being intact and us having some extra time left, I can see if Dr Ieiri is able to teach you about reverse cursed technique—”
“I told you, she’s not going anywhere near all of this—”
“You and I both want the same thing. It’s not like I want her to be a jujutsu sorcerer, I’m just looking out for my daughter’s interests in healing and recovering things—”
“Wait!” you interrupt them, “I— let me think about it, actually. Could you let me think about it, please? And I promise I won’t do anything near the battlefield, I swear. I mean— I just thought, um, that since they’re going to do some, like—- actual stuff, I guess?— that I wanted to see how it works. I still don’t want to fight. I just want to see if I could help, you know, and it would be good if I could see how Daddy and Dr Ieiri do it so that I can learn from it and stuff and in the future I can make myself useful to other people and all so please don’t fight—”
“You’re rambling,” your mother states, her hands on her lap. Ultimate defeat. Absolute resignation from it all.
You almost want to cry at the sight of it.
“Of course,” your father replies, “Give it some good thought, okay, darling?”
8-2-2018
Time moves like tennis balls against rackets. Yuuji will always be a great friend, you’ve decided, even if he doesn’t like you back. Besides, now, things are back to being fun: you’re going to crush on more people and have fun and see if one day someone confesses to you, and maybe by next Wednesday— the fourteenth— your sweet sixteenth Valentine’s Day will be the first one not spent alone.
Sighing, you close your book again after a long day. There’s pencil lead stuck to the side of your pinky finger as you stack everything together and straighten it against the table so that everything in your bag gets inside all neat and even.
“Man, [Name], you always keep everything so neat,” Yuuji comments, “I just stuff everything in my bag. Surprised I haven’t lost all my stuff yet.”
“That’s why all your stuff comes out crumpled,” you say, “Your notebooks come out like they came out a rat’s nest— no offence.”
“None taken,” he replies, bending down dramatically, “Seriously, [Name], you’re a really good student! Smart, too.”
“You sure?” you ask, standing up with the straps of your bag slung against your shoulders, the two of you exiting the classroom, “I fell asleep during class and only woke up when she gave us those questions. I’m gonna have to check the textbook to finish it up tonight…”
“Still smart to me, honestly,” he states, “I’m a pretty dumb guy.”
You hit him playfully on the shoulder, and he jerks forward for a second before coming back up again. “Nah, be confident! You’re, like, good at sports and English and stuff. I can’t do any sports to save my life.”
“Well it’s not like I can do maths for shit, honestly.” He slumps down.
Then— “Ah, wait, Yuji, sorry— I’ve to go to the bathroom for a second to check something—!”
“Huh? Check what? Wait, uh— want me to hold your bag for you?”
“Sure—” your pads are in there— “Wait, nonononono— I’ll be fine, don’t worry, just something quick, hold on. You go without me first, ‘kay? I’ll meet you at the famima we always go to.”
It turns out to not be a false alarm, and the thing comes early by a few days. You’re lucky you at least have some of your emergency supplies with you so that you can still have a fun day with Yuuji as long as you don’t drink too much green tea or coffee. A little should be fine, though, right?
Still, you could always cell-manipulate your way out of unexpected situations like these. You just choose not to— it’s not worth the trouble of headaches or nosebleeds. Who’d want to willingly bleed from the top and the bottom at once, really?
You check your appearance in the mirror afterward, and everything looks okay— your hair is normal despite school air’s penchant for ruining it, your uniform looks alright even though your skirt pocket may look a little weird later once you put your phone in it, and your face is the same as earlier today, so… well. You don’t know what that says about whether your face looks good or not right now, but you guess this is alright.
[Yuuji]
yo
you okay?what happened
who spends ten hole minutes pissing
[Name]
*whole***
Sighs incredibly loudly
Itadori Yuuji.
What the fuck did you think I was doing
It was my period
Came early :(
[Yuuji]
OHHH SHIT
SORRY…
thought u had a stomach ache or smth
everything okay?
i can like buy more pads or smth for you
[Name]
Mhm yeah I’m okay
It’s okay I’ve got enough at home anyway
If ur buying drinks could you not get me any kind of tea
Or coffee
Like nothing with caffeine in it
[Yuuji]
yes queen o7
i can go back and bring it up to u yknow
[Name]
Nah
I’m fine
[Yuuji]
ok i bought u a sandwich nd a seasonal drink thing
no coffee or tea
[Name]
aw thx man
coming soon, otw rn
Though it’s a bit far away, the sight that greets you as you finally arrive shocks you immediately. He’s got a little blood on his face— that’s already way too much then you can handle being on his face. It couldn’t be from anything like acne or a popped pimple; the guy’s got clear skin for days and though there’s nothing but a tiny scratch by the side of his cheek you’re running over to him.
But this is what’s worse: high school students, about three of them, lying on the floor, passed out like animal carcasses. There’s another one standing, with straight light-coloured hair and enough fear on his face to seem as if he’d just witnessed a war.
And Yuuji’s expression, which is clear as day even with the distance between you: eyes uncharacteristically cold, face distorted away from his usual boyish grin, aura radiating off of him, lacerating through his usual self like a wolf’s claws through raw, cold meat in the tundra.
“…what about you?” Yuuji says to the guy with light hair.
You run.
“Yuuji!”
“Huh?” He notices you. “[Name]?”
“Yuuji— what happened to you?”
“No, just—” He’s back to normal. “Saw some of them picking on someone, so I started beating them up.”
“What— seriously? You could’ve, like, called the police or something, you idiot!”
“But it wasn’t in school, so I didn’t know what to do… plus, we’re in different schools and all…”
“W-well if you call the police, their punishment would have been worse, right?” you sigh, “Alright, what happened to the one getting picked on? Are they okay?”
“He ran away,” he shakes his head.
Poor guy.
“…and this one, the one standing up here?’ you ask, “Is he okay? He looks pretty traumatised.”
“I’m right here, you know!” the standing guy answers. So besides standing in silence, he can talk after all.
“Oh, this one?” Yuuji points, again not acknowledging him. He was just standing there, stunned like a deer in headlights, instead of lying on the ground. “Just seemed like peer pressure or something. He didn’t hurt the guy.”
“Ah… what’s your name, guy?”
“…Rin Amai,”
“You okay?”
“…yeah, just, I guess, surprised? I mean, by the pink-haired guy’s strength and all. You guys are middle schoolers, right? That means he’s crazy strong.”
“His name is Itadori,” you sigh, “Yeah. He’s a strong guy like that. He stands up for good things.”
Yuuji chuckles, scratching the back of his neck, “Aw, thanks, man!”
“Well, now that they’re knocked out, I can kind of say I didn’t like them that much to begin with…” Rin remarks.
“Ah, I get that. Nobody likes people like them. When you can, stand up for others next time, okay?” you advise him, “Got any injuries?”
“No, just a scratch here and there. I’ll be fine. Thanks, you two.”
“No worries.”
“Still wanna go to the arcade?” Yuuji asks.
The two of you say your goodbyes to Rin, who offers to wait with the knocked-out students after that— you’ll probably only ever see him once or twice after this. Yuuji offers to take your bag but you deny him, and the two of you stroll to the arcade.
This has happened before, really, and there’s some kind of anticipatory grief sticking to you as you ruminate over what he’d done. It’s like you’re waiting for things to worsen: either you tell him that he shouldn’t have beat students up even if it was for the sake of others, or you don’t and make decisions conflicting with your own moral code. The last time you’d seen someone get back from a fight, your relationship with them ended up severed, whether due to your commitment to your own ideals or not.
You debate on asking him not to do the same next time, not to get hurt and not to hurt people who pick on others, and—
—the arcade is closed.
“Aaaahhh! Seriously? Sorry, [Name]. Forgot they said they’d be closed today. Last week one of the employees told me they’d have to settle some issues or something.”
Of course he’d befriend the employees. It still surprises you that every now and then he’s so kind it hurts.
“No, it’s fine,” you reassure him, “You know, I don’t really feel up to it today either. Still kinda shaken.”
“Don’t worry about that, honestly! I’m fine, and they’re fine too.”
“Will they be, though? Have you gotten any injuries?”
“Don’t think so. I’ll be okay anyway, though, ‘cause I’ve got a high pain tolerance— ow!”
“‘High pain tolerance,’ huh?” you sigh, “Is it a strain? Are you okay?”
He winces, “I don’t know if it’s a strain or a sprain,” he answers, “But it’s on my ankle, and it hurts a lot.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah, but— it hurts…”
You rest his arm on top of your back, taking hold of his shoulder, guiding him on the way back to his home.
His grandfather— a man with grey hair yet enough energy to wake up at 6am before exercising and going on walks every morning— nods after you explain the situation to him, and lets you stay with Yuuji for now due to your worrying.
The first thing to do with a sprain or a strain is to rest the injured area.
“It’s strange that you got it on your ankle of all places,” you say, outstretching his leg for him, “Were you walking funny or anything?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe you’ve been overusing it, then,” you theorise, “Okay. No running and all for a few days, okay? Or just, until it feels better.”
“Huh? But I’m in the track and field club…”
“Spend some time with the occult club or something,” you tell him, “You can just tell the student council president or the track and field club president that it hurts, so you’ve got to go to the occult club to still be able to support your other interests and stuff as you recuperate.”
“Nah, they’d call bullshit.”
“Pft. You don’t know if you don’t try,” you joke. “Wait a second, let me go get some ice.”
He lies down, his arms resting by his stomach. “You know, [Name]…” he starts, his voice louder for you to hear.
“Yeah?”
“I’m happy you’re my friend.”
If you were a dog, you’d be wagging your tail and kicking your feet up into the air, so happy that your smile is uncontrollable— and the last time it had been that way was more than a few years ago.
His voice stays as loud but you hear it better, clearer, as you move up the stairs with the ice pack. “I mean, I thought I was a pretty lonely guy, and sometimes I still do. Like— I mean, you’re a lonely girl too sometimes, I think.”
You sit down beside him, probably a little too plaintive in your actions than you intended. “…yeah. Guess people could tell…”
“But, hey. I met you and we get to do all sorts of cool and dumbass shit together. So I’m happy I met you and that we became friends, you know? I’m happy you’re even here. So now we’re both a little less lonely, and the world has two new people who are a little less than lonely.”
It’s warm despite it being winter— you hope his hoodie and his student jacket are enough to keep him from freezing. Every time you enter his house, you wonder how he must have lived as a child. You imagine a smaller-sized Yuuji, with wild pink hair and a tired grandfather, living in this house with its wooden tiles and untorn paper calendars from the year 2000, in his endearingly tardy room and boyish clothing choices. The thought of it melts your heart, almost.
“Yeah. I’m happy you’re in my life, too, Yuuji,” you beam, “I’m happy you said hi to me that day, because I probably wouldn’t have made any friends. Like, I thought every time we moved somewhere we’d move again to somewhere else, so I kind of gave up. I didn’t want to get attached. Because there would always be something happening after, like us moving and eventually I thought every day was a chore, because I had this kind of… how do I say it— this kind of ‘I’ll escape one day’ mentality, like I didn’t move forward to each day anymore. But being friends with you brought that back to me, kinda.”
“Really?” he says as you wrap the ice pack in a towel and press it to his ankle, turning his head to meet yours, “Makes me pretty glad. Thanks, man.”
“I’m glad too.”
“You’re a great nurse,” he grins at you, before leaning his head back against his bed.
It feels good. The praise feels good.
Now you really don’t know what to do with him. Or what to do with how you feel about him.
For a moment you consider this: pressing your hand to his ankle, healing it immediately, placing your hands on his ankle and healing it with your cursed technique. But even so you’d have to explain the whole of jujutsu society to him, and that was meant to be a well-kept secret anyway. Yuuji wouldn’t be the type to do well as a jujutsu sorcerer— he’d save everyone, care for everyone, not because judging who would be right or wrong to save was often convoluted or unsolvable, but because he was a good person. If he failed to help people in dire need, whether it was his fault or not, he would be so guilty he wouldn’t live. You supposed a part of you was like that, too: driven by fear of potential guilt, yet you were driven even more by a need to be useful. If at the end of the day you could help, even if you couldn’t offer someone salvation, you’d accept it— that certain things were out of your control. There would be no point in lingering over not being able to change things you couldn’t change, and your experience in Tokyo last month was part of that. It was what changed almost everything. And you swore you’d never let Yuuji go through anything that would change him, that would take that pure love for the world from him. His name is fitting: his humanity is unwavering, a soldier fighting a losing battle, Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill and living through his suffering, the indomitable human spirit against the cruel indifference of the world and the universe.
You’ll tell him one day, you decide.
For now, though, you’ll have to make yourself useful another way: by using the knowledge you have to be at his aid. That’s how you’ll like it anyway.
“Thanks, Yuuji,” you whisper.
Yuuji dozes off. You sit next to him as if he’s a patient at a hospital, watching his breath rise and fall. A part of you wants the moment to stretch out into perpetuity, his steady snoring lulling even you to sleep. It’s creepy as hell. And knowing that you could have all of this: seeing him like this, going to the arcade every Thursday, minding each others’ health; all of it without it leading to him liking you the same way you do him—
—it still hurts. But it’s getting easier to handle it. You’ll deny that it still hurts for as long as you can, staving it off until it really does go away. So you’ll keep silent, no one beside you knowing of your feelings, trying your best to be utilised and useful. You’ll take it to the grave, you’re sure. You’ll continue to be by the sidelines, a helper for convenience and someone to serve, someone to be used.
taglist:
@bakananya, @sindulgent666, @shartnart1, @lolmais, @mechalily, @pweewee, @notsaelty, @nattisbored
(please send an ask/state in the notes if you'd like to join! if I can't tag your username properly, I've written it in italics. so sorry for any trouble!)
#take me back (take me with you)#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#megumi fushiguro#megumi#fushiguro megumi#megumi fluff#megumi angst#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#jjk x fem!reader#fem!reader#ruer writes#wooh that's a wrap for today! for the ao3 readers chapter 6 has been posted on ao3 by the way!#megumi x reader
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lyney x reader: hair (drabble)
features lyney
warnings: nothing except the fact that the text isn’t capitalised or proofread ;v;.
notes: what’s this, me writing for a character that isn’t from the first three nations? anw yeah so this is a drabble but it’s over 100 words,,, also sorry but my exams are in. two days. so. I may be m.i.a. for a while… hope you guys are alright with short things like this and the childe one
synopsis: his hair is really pretty, you think.
unlike his siblings, lyney’s hair is slightly different.
lynette’s hair is soft to the touch, and smells slightly of lumidouce bells. it’s smooth to the point that it’s slippery, always slipping through the gaps in her fingers, always obeying to her ribbons when she’s out at night; the glow of her and her cats’ eyes seeping through the cracks in the walls, learning each of their secrets. freminet’s hair is a beautiful pale blonde, the same as his mother’s before she left; the same as his mother’s, a woman his siblings never knew. it’s straight, but coarse on the ends whenever he resurfaces from the water. nevertheless, it suits his eyes swimmingly. sapphire gems on gold fleece.
lyney, however, lyney, the leader, the oldest, has hair with the fragrance of rainbow roses perpetually remaining on its strands. he makes little effort to keep it as gorgeous and luscious as his sister’s, when he very well could— to him it’s not as if lynette pays particular heed to her hair anyway, he’s the one who brushes through her hair and gets her the shampoo she likes because he knows she loves it.
his hair, to himself, is waiting backstage and anticipating a new show no matter how much of a lie it may be; it’s showering as speedily as he can no matter how much he wants to remain in the steady caress of running water, out of habit yet not allowing his siblings do the same, and choosing to brush his siblings’ hair so that they feel comfortable and have the best night’s rest they can have; it’s falling asleep on accident while you kiss his head, rub the pads of your fingers against his skull and brush through the strands ever so gently, as if for a moment he is precious as shards of glass about to shatter even more, as if for a moment he has been redeemed and has never been an actor, has never been a man overdue for confessions.
lyney’s hair to you is strolling in a field, senses awakened by the heady scent of flowers; it’s the comfort in gazing up at the stage and watching him paint the world until it becomes a sea of clamour, an ocean of awe, a vast land of smiles; it’s waking up to him and coffee being brewed behind you as he’s already set and ready for the day with his hair braided to the side. his hair is pretty, pretty because there was never a time when he was not, pretty because he braids it and makes the effort to keep it neat and tidy even if it’s not gorgeous or luscious, so pretty and hence you comb your fingers through it whenever you can.
and it doesn’t have to be slippery-smooth like lynette’s, nor does it have to be as ethereal as freminet and his mother’s. you’d love his hair any other way.
—
“you’ve always got beautiful hair, lyney,” you comment, one day, resting your nonchalance and your chin on your palm and elbow. “you’re always so pretty.”
he laughs. “why, are you trying to steal my poor little heart? oh, take it away, wrest it if you will. and besides, when have I ever been fairer than you?”
“always,” you state, matter-of-factly. “but you’re the prettiest. your hair curls a little at the end and it fits the way your eyes fill themselves with wonder when you’re on stage, or how you braid your hair to the side in the morning like that, I think. it’s like lynette’s, but I think I like yours just a little more. it’s really pretty, that’s all.”
“my, you’ve rendered me speechless, haven’t you?”
your lips curl into a smile. “I suppose I have.”
#hehe. hehehehe. I put the ‘readmore’ in the middle this time. I’m being so funky rn hahaha exams are in two days I’m going to decompose#genshin x reader#genshin impact x reader#lyney x reader#genshin impact lyney#lyney#genshin impact#ruer writes
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take me back (take me with you) | f. megumi x fem! reader | chapter 2: stasis
ao3 link for additional author’s notes | playlist | prev | next
chapter synopsis:
'So let’s just talk again, I guess. Let’s just exchange contacts and chat on the phone and talk about books. I’ve been reading a lot of books about dogs and I’ve so much to tell you. Nothing else has to happen or change; we can act like there was never a barrier between the two of us in the first place. I really miss you.
Let’s just be friends again.
Please?'
---
You're growing, your parents are getting older, and you and Megumi are drifting apart like old seams of clothes being torn the more they're used.
You also discover something new about yourself— leave it to your parents to explain it.
word count: ~8k; tws: mild “gore” that may not even count as gore (a really tiny wound)
2-4-2010
It’s 2010 and your teacher introduces you in front of a previously bustling class turned silent by her (and your) arrival. There’s the chill of spring entering from the slightly opened windows and into your nose and, as desks flank either of your sides before you scrounge for and reach an empty seat. When you sit down you can sense the light graze of spring wind settling itself on your tiny trembling lips and you feel like hiding under the table while your teacher erases your name, written in cloudy white chalk, from the blackboard.
When lunchtime barges in and your classmates sit on each others’ tables or excitedly rummage through their backpacks, you mumble out unnoticed greetings, invitations for connection falling on deaf little ears. There are so many people here, too many for your liking, with voices that accumulate until they make a cacophony reaching the highest heights a tiny, packed classroom of kids can. Of course, they’d start the year with their own friends— there wasn’t much you could do to introduce yourself, anyway, when all of them were off to their own devices in friend groups they were in before the third grade.
In front of you: a girl with brown twintails and a flower hair clip sits on another girl’s dress, while another girl stands there with a cartoon-themed t-shirt layered over long sleeves; on your left: a boy flipping one of those flat, white erasers and playing them with his friends (you wonder if in terms of quality those erasers are actually good for school); on your right: a boy sitting with his head resting against his palms, sitting as if his chair is a hammock, and he’s talking to two other boys about something indiscernible that you probably know less than nothing about. All the way from across the classroom: a boy with the longest black eyelashes you’ve seen, hunched over and engrossed in a book with a title that you don’t know how to read the kanji of yet.
It’s so loud and your senses feel inundated suddenly, like a tiny glass cup about to overflow— so much to hear, so much to see. Your head and the way you think turns their laughter into wails drowning your ears in an inescapable ocean with the most torrential of currents. But you want to go home. You want to be with both your mum and dad again.
You eat from the bento your mother made for you, your hand holding the container up and drenched in cold sweat as you compress and close in on yourself. This new school and classroom is so very, very loud, relentlessly so, and Tokyo is not a pleasant place at all. You’re sure you don’t like it, that you want every chance to leave.
After school your mother takes you to the playground nearby, probably to placate you and shush your cries as you ramble on and on about how much you want to go back to your old school. You have her hand in a vice grip (or at least, you try to, but the strength of an eight-year-old who struggles on the monkey bars doesn’t account for much) as she repeats that it’ll just be for a year, and that if you really wanted to she would let you call them on the telephone later or give you a handphone of your own to talk to them once you’d got older. You wonder why she wouldn’t just give you one now, though.
When the two of you reach the playground she says, no doubt exasperated but still enduring it at all from how the tone of her voice is, “See, darling? Look at the slide! You love slides, don’t you? See? They’ve got swings too, even!” And with a face blotched with tears and hiccups rapidly spilling out of you, you waddle over to the park.
There’s a girl over there, by the swings, long brown hair pulled back into a pretty high ponytail, with an equally pretty white-collared navy blue dress. Probably around your age, or slightly older— she seems quite tall, too; has the friendliest-looking brown eyes you’ve ever seen, those types of brown eyes a person has that make their eyes shine like gold when they smile or when the sunlight hits them; a red ribbon on her hair tie that matches the strawberry hue of her backpack.
Then a boy next to her, and this one you know: long, raven eyelashes that look even longer up-close; spiky hair sprouting out in all directions; green, green eyes that take you by force and bring you into reminisces of fields of grassy gardens in the summertime, pure viridian in his irises as they stare back at you, quiet and observant. The same boy hunching into his book earlier, probably a really smart kid, probably someone you want to make a new friend of if you ever knew just how to.
Were they siblings? Friends? You weren’t sure, but tears were still running down your cheeks as you processed all that information and silently thought to yourself about them, these two strangers, these two kids who could be friends if not for your touch-me-not-plant-like shyness.
“Hey, hey! Why’re you crying? Are you okay?” the girl asks.
(And the rest was history, but you’d still like to tell it anyway.)
She heads over to you, her pleasant expression contorted into one rife with worry, and your mother smiles, letting out a relieved sigh. The girl pats your back and it’s the warmest touch you’ve felt since you arrived in Tokyo, her hand feeling like home or your old bed from before you moved; you almost melt in it the same way ice cubes do in hot chocolate. “Aw, it’s okay,” she coos, awfully gentle, managing this strangely comforting tone for a child your age or maybe just a year older, “You’ll be okay.”
You start bawling again when she says that for a reason you can’t tell yet; it’s just so comforting, the way she rubs strokes across your back with her palm and tells you it’s okay. It feels like a promise. It feels like she’ll keep it.
When everything’s calmed down and you feel a bit light-headed from crying so much, and the hiccups have been smoothed over by longer, calmer and steadier breaths, she guides you to sit down on one of the swings, your hand in hers. “Are you okay now?” she questions. The boy seems slightly concerned, but perhaps too hesitant to communicate with you, instead seeming perfectly comfortable with watching you and following behind her, becoming the girl’s shadow.
“Uh huh,” you sniffle. You still want to go home, though.
“That’s good,” she smiles, and it really is pretty and pleasant. Her smile isn’t just an ordinary one: it’s one of those smiles that gleam like the sun or candles flickering at midnight; it’s the type to have that glimmer in it, that twinkle in her brown, almond-hued eyes that solidifies itself in some comfortable nook or cranny in a person’s memories forever, the type that you can just think of when things aren’t going well and suddenly you can tell yourself you’ll be alright because somehow you now know you can. Because somehow that kind of smile grants people the ability to keep going.
“I’m Tsumiki,” she introduces herself, “And this is my little brother Megumi. What’s yours?”
Tsumiki, you think to yourself, Tsumiki and Megumi. Tsumiki and Megumi. They’re nice names. First Tsumiki, with the ‘tsu–’ produced by back of the teeth and the tip of the tongue, the ‘–mi–’ carrying the voice over to the lips, the ‘–ki–’ light and brisk with the back of the tongue and the roof of the mouth; second Megumi, ‘–me–’, ‘–gu–’ and ‘–mi–’ a quick ride from the lips to the tongue against the roof of the mouth and back, something soft and sweet and quick and quiet about the name.
“[Name],” you mumble, eyes moving all over the two of them indecisively— maybe your mother was right when she tried to force the impeccably useful skill of using eye contact onto you for situations just like these, “Tsumiki, Megumi, can… can we be friends?”
“Sure!”
Tsumiki and Megumi, you think again, Friends.
8-4-2010
It seems that, at his sister’s behest, Megumi makes an effort to interact with you more or at least look out for you in school— reluctantly, though, and that’s how you know this must be Tsumiki’s doing. He doesn’t talk to you between lessons, uttering not one word to you in class, but he does direct you to different places at school if you seem like you want to go somewhere, but are too scared to ask, leaving your anxious face as the only clue for others who take notice of you.
There was one time, before meeting Tsumiki and walking to the playground together with Megumi in tow and after a particularly riveting lesson from one of your favourite teachers— a young woman with glasses and silky brown hair in a bob— when you’d wanted to go to the library, yet didn’t know how. In your mind you merely contemplated whether you should ask anyone you saw, or whether you should wait for the sake of keeping your mind at rest.
Once Megumi saw you, eyes wandering aimlessly outside an empty classroom as you tapped your foot louder than you thought you were, merely scowled.
“Hey.”
“Huh? O-oh, hello.”
He sighed exasperatedly, almost too grumpy for an eight year old— “What is it? What do you need to find?”
“T-the library,” you stammered, hands pulling the fabric of your clothes into tight fists, “It’s okay! I’ll find it myself—”
Suddenly something pulled you forward, like a still-damp shirt on a clothing line, and he dragged you along. Your footsteps stumbled behind him until you matched his pace, his hand lightly squeezing your wrist as he continued to walk.
“Wha—?”
“I’m taking you there,” he said, “Just pay attention to the route.”
“T-thank you,” you stuttered, unsure of what to say.
So you saw the way your footsteps echoed behind his, his right followed by your right and his left followed by your left. You followed him through the hallway, then down the stairs until it was you and him on the ground floor, and the cherry blossoms were raining down like snowflakes. You didn’t see his face and he didn’t turn back to face you until you arrived.
Back then you didn’t know why that made you feel a little sad.
“We’re here,” he signified with a finger pointed to the library door. You thanked him again and promptly entered through the large glass door, using all the force your limbs could muster, only to find out that the door being opened was a feat only accomplished by the force of your arms combined with his own, too. “What?” he asked pointedly after noticing your glances at him, “I’ve to come along too.”
And soon it became just that. In your own silly little tradition, you’d stand outside the classroom and wait for him at the end of the day, and the two of you would walk with zero words exchanged until you got to the library and picked out a book each. You’ve found that Megumi likes to read long-winded books about anything and everything— especially about animals; you’ve learned that there exists no one who adores dogs and animals related to them except for him— besides the same fantastical creatures and adventures that you enjoy reading about, with kanji on their covers that you can’t read.
But he’s always the same every day: frowning and rolling his eyes at your anxiety-induced antics or your curiosity over what he reads. You don’t think he actually means it— he still does the same for you, spending time with you in the library every day, and even though he seems to huff whenever you peek at what he’s reading and ask him how to read the kanji in his books, he’ll still teach you anyway. It’s not like Tsumiki seems to know either. She still encourages the two of you to get along as if you don’t know each other at all.
9-6-2010
The first and only time you see Megumi smile, you know it isn’t intentional. As if it just slipped out of him on accident without him realising, because you know hundred per-cent, even at your age, that someone like Megumi would never smile on purpose.
It goes like this: the day before Tsumiki’s ninth birthday, Megumi approaches you after class before you go outside to wait for him.
These days you feel like you’re opening up so quickly, it makes you feel giddy at times. You stutter less, you can speak a little louder, and you can even read through texts in class when you’re called to without stumbling through and accidentally blabbering about whatever you’d read before.
“I don’t think we should go to the library today,” he says.
“Huh— why? I don’t want to walk home on my own…”
“Just because we aren’t going to the library doesn’t mean that you’ve to walk home alone,” he sighs, “I need you to come to our house. We’ve to prepare for Tsumiki’s birthday since she’ll be coming back later today.”
“...”
“You never asked when her birthday was?” he asks, his tone the embodiment of an audible facepalm.
You suppose you didn’t, because you don’t know, or perhaps you’ve asked, been so absent-minded you’d forgotten what she’d told you, and eventually forgot you’d even asked her in the first place.
“...oh, no!” you shudder, “Today’s her birthday?!”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s tomorrow. It’s just that we should start preparing early if we want to keep it as a surprise for her.”
“Ohh…”
“...so? Can you come along today and tomorrow?”
You pause. Your mother would be fine, right? She’d probably ask how many adults there were, but then again, even if their benefactor wasn’t there, she’d met Tsumiki and Megumi at least once or twice. Even for children your age she’d know that they were trustworthy enough, so it should be fine. You’ll just ask her the next day anyway. She’d probably let you be there.
“Of course!” you tell him.
The path to his house stretches over concrete sidewalks and compact alleys filled to the brim with storefront signs. Temperatures have started to rise, and your switching from knee-high socks and cardigans to t-shirts and socks that only reach your ankles have been an indicator of that. Summer has started to bring in its breezes which blow like whispers against your ear, leaving warmth crawling and blooming across your skin.
When you reach the crossing, your legs continue to carry you forward before you stop to check the traffic light, you crash against Megumi’s back.
“—gah!”
“Hey!” he goes, “It hasn’t turned green yet! Be careful!”
He pulls you forward by the hand until you’re by his right, and squeezes your hand. “...you should stay next to me instead of staying behind so that you can still see.”
“You’re not blocking me, though?”
“...but it’s still better if you’re walking next to me instead.” He turns his head away from where you can still see his face. He looks like a sea urchin.
“Okay.”
Hand in hand, the two of you cross the road right when the light changes from red to green. You don’t let go of his hand, even when you’re turning to the left, or on a crossing again, or when you’re standing right in front of the door.
You’re sure that if you would ask him why he hasn’t let go of it, he would say that he was doing so deliberately just so you wouldn’t get run over or lost, but you’re also worried that if you did, he would somehow realise that he hadn’t let go of his hand all this time on accident. And you like holding his hand— it’s not like when you’re holding your mother’s, when suddenly her hand grows dead on you and you have to hold her sleeve or her arm instead, or when you used to hold your father’s and it would get unpleasantly sweaty. It’s warm, and even if your palms must be balmy at this point you don’t think either of you mind that in particular.
A part of you thinks it must be embarrassing for him to be holding a girl’s hand, especially with how being teased for being friends with boys is all too familiar for you. You were your father’s daughter, after all, and at times your father could be insufferable in that way, even over the phone calls you and your mother had recently had over him. For some reason, he’d be fine if you mentioned Tsumiki, but as soon as it was Megumi he’d giggle and talk about you being “so young and already having a boyfriend!” That saddened you more than it was supposed to, sometimes; it was as if he thought you couldn’t have a boy as a friend without wanting to marry him when you were older.
But you’ll be selfish. You don’t really want to let go, because it’s not like you’ve held a friend since more than a year ago, anyway. You keep his hand in yours and squeeze it every once in a while, feeling the warmth spread across the back of your hand and your fingertips.
He only lets go of your hand when you begin to bake the cake, and he flips the cookbook to a recipe for strawberry cake. Whenever you come across something in the recipe that you don’t understand, he’s reading it for you straight away. He even knows how to decrease the amount of each ingredient that you use so the cake can come out to be just enough for everyone, and when you’re in awe of how smart he is, he just turns his head away somewhat bashfully and says he’s doing it according to the ratio. You don’t even know what that is.
At the same time you make your own additions to the recipe based on what you know from your mother— a little more vanilla extract, slightly less icing sugar so that it doesn’t end up too sweet when paired with the cake. There isn’t any strawberry extract in their house so you make do with just strawberry puree alone.
The sight of him wearing oven mitts and holding the cake mould as you’re opening an oven about the size of his torso must almost be comical. You should’ve got parental supervision, but he seems fine, and you are too. Initially you’d offered to be the one placing the cake in the oven, but Megumi insisted on doing it when you tried to open it and immediately turned away after the heat of it rushed right before your face like a cat dumped in water.
For two eight year olds with limited baking experience, you’d say the cake turned out well, and that it’s amazing how none of you have any burns or have caused any accidents. It’s warm when he takes it out and you leave it out to chill by the time Tsumiki is supposed to be coming back. You feel a bit guilty over leaving her alone, but you try to reign it in and tell yourself that this is a surprise for her, and that it’ll only last for two days: this one and the next.
When it’s laid out on the table and the scent of it wafts through the air, there’s a satisfied grin on his face. You’re supposed to be taking the icing out of the fridge, know it must have been one that he’d shown on accident, because it’s there for just that one second, but the fact that it was there at all, even if he thinks that you probably won’t be able to see it, is something you’d never imagine.
And his smile, that grin— it looked like one of those smiles that spread to the people around them like the scent of fresh flowers in a new vase. That smile was a bouquet of flowers
With a spatula, the two of you take turns slathering the icing around the now less warm cake. It smells so sweet and tasty that you feel you won’t be able to sleep tonight from how excited you are for the celebration tomorrow.
“Yay!” you say, clapping your hands when it’s all done, “We’re done!”
“Now we can just put it in a container in the fridge so that she won’t find it,” he says, “We should put the tray back, though. We usually don’t keep ours in the oven.”
Maybe it’s because you’re sleepy from how much time you’ve spent solely on baking in the last two hours, or maybe it’s because you’re absent-minded as usual, but your first response is to grab the still scalding hot tray from the oven.
You burn the tip of your finger before he can react and stop you.
“Ow!” you wince.
“You burned your hand?” he rushes to pull you— he pulls you a lot, it seems- to the sink and runs your finger through lukewarm water before blowing it and chiding you. “Be careful!” he scolds, “Even if you can’t help it sometimes you need to think before you do things. Don’t act recklessly like that!”
“Sorry,” you say. It didn’t hurt that bad, though. What feels worse is how worried he is about this despite how aloof he typically seems. “I’m okay, though. It’s just a small burn.”
“It’s still a burn,” he shoots back.
“…sorry.”
He keeps the oven open to release the heat from it, and places the cake in the container.
“You know, Megumi,” you start, “You’re really amazing.”
He pauses for a while, but continues to place it in the container. You make a mental note to buy candles or get any leftovers from home if your mother allows it.
“At first I thought you were scary, but after getting to know you for a while you’re a really nice person. You teach me even if I’m probably really annoying or a bother sometimes, and on the street just now you let me hold your hand even if it must have been really embarrassing for you. And even when we were baking, when you did that number to number thing to tell how much of everything you needed— you’re really smart, you know! And every time you’re with me, and even with other people, you’re really caring without saying it. So even if you seem scary or bad-tempered you’re actually really nice,” you smile, “You’re really good! Every time you’re there I think: ‘Megumi’s really cool!’ So I hope you can be my friend forever!”
“…thanks.”
He whispers something else that fails to fall on your ears.
“Hm? What’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
After Tsumiki arrives back, the three of you spend the evening watching TV together. Fortunately, summer’s waves of rain haven’t started coming in yet, so the satellite wasn’t messed up and the three of you got to watch them interrupted, huddled together on the sofa.
Your mother smiles that night when you tell her you were spending time with your friends, but grimaces once you tell her that it was just you and Megumi for a while. When she and you are on the phone with your father, she frowns even more.
You recount the details to him: the strawberry cake, the cartoons on the TV, the cosy compact couch they have in their house.
“So it was just you and Megumi alone? Aw, you’re too young for dating, sweetie, you should be doing those things your daddy before you go around doing them boys! And with just him, too!” you think that’s supposed to be a joke, but you feel offended regardless despite not knowing why. It could be because you don’t like his teasing, or because you can make friends without the intent of marrying them, or because he’s insinuating that you’d rather watch TV and bake cakes with some boyfriend than with your own flesh and blood— you probably would prefer doing that with Megumi instead of him, though. Less annoying and way more fun.
“No, no, no! We were just baking a cake for Tsumiki!”
“Oh, leave her alone, darling,” your mother says as if sighing knowingly, but the frown on her face indicates otherwise, “She’s just a child, still, nothing will happen. Let our baby make some friends, won’t you?”
You don’t understand why they’re saying anything they’re saying, but you shrug it off and continue to talk to your father anyway.
Thankfully, the burn on your hand has disappeared, though. You’re surprised it went away so speedily.
10-6-2010
Her birthday goes like this: there are decorations dangling from the ceiling of their house and a party hat on her head (courtesy of their benefactor and his “work friends”), while their benefactor has a party horn squeezed tightly between his lips and a digital camera in his hands. He’s invited some of his friends, too: a lady with brown hair, concerningly dark eyebrows and a mole by her right eye, and a tall, muscular man with blonde hair and a white suit donned who seems just as annoyed with the white-haired man as Megumi always is.
They’re singing her happy birthday, and she’s over the moon. When they get to “...happy birthday, dear Tsumiki…—” the grin she has on her face is something for the ages: you’ve never seen anyone look happier than she is right now. The candles flicker as she claps their hands, dancing along to the cacophony of voices singing even one of the simplest songs unsynchronised and out of tune, dancing along with it just because she seems to be on cloud nine.
It’s dark outside, the yawn you let out gets you bleary-eyed and you’re quite sure all six of your voices combined sounds awful, but everything feels so unimaginably warm.
It’s beautiful. The sight in front of you is pure joy.
“Make a wish, Tsumiki!” you tell her before she blows out the candles, and a faint line of smoke dissipates through the air right after the candles go out and everyone’s clapping.
The tenth of June, 2010, Tsumiki’s ninth birthday is a great day, and one of the happiest days of your life. It stays that way forever.
30-6-2015
Your phone whines in your pocket like a crying baby. There’s a book shop you want to head to, and you’ve decided that after that you’re going to let the bed mattress cradle you to sleep as you’ll flip through some pages of that new shoujo manga you bought the other day. You’ve decided that’s a swell plan for the day: you’ll mostly be free today, after all. But you rush to pick up the phone, even though the ring had made your nerves spin giddily and switch courses from calmness to anticipation.
The screen displays an unknown contact.
Although your mother was always adamant on her stance on what you should do with unknown contacts buzzing your phone, you pick it up. You can only hope, yet the mere image of that “unknown contact” icon on the screen fills you with joy.
“Hello?” a voice calls from the line. Despite everything, these things will always belong to her and her only— that voice, that smile, that beautiful kindness.
“Tsumiki!”
“[Name]!”
Missing loved ones from far away works in mysterious ways— people know they miss them, but often people haven’t a clue about what of them they missed or why they would have missed them so much for those things. And you were no exception to this, because you never realised how lovely her voice was or just how much you missed it.
You miss Megumi’s voice, too— or perhaps his tone when he spoke to you. Even if it sounded rough around the edges sometimes, really it was as gentle as he was. You’re not sure if it’s changed, though, or if he’s grown a foot or two (though the latter would make him out to be really tall). The last time you saw him in person, he was slightly scrawny and around the same height you were, and that was four years ago when you were nine. Now he’s thirteen, and you’ve seen the thirteen-year-olds in your school and on the island. Everyone’s growing in one way or another. Even you.
Would he be taller now, towering over you, perhaps? Would he have grown out of how he was before, a body composed of long, skinny joints and bones? You think he’d be tall. You think he’d have a nice voice. And maybe, just maybe, if he was a little softer now, you’d have a crush on someone you thought you’d long got over.
“Oh my god— I haven’t heard your voice in ages!”
“Me neither! Never realised how much I missed talking to you in person. Well, I guess this brings us one step closer.”
You nod over the phone. The line seems to be lagging behind a little. “Mhm”
“—Oh, it’s [Name]! Want to talk to her—?”
“Ah! Is… is Megumi there, too?” You hope he is, you genuinely do.”
“I’m sorry, but he isn’t…”
You guess it must have been someone else talking to her, then.
But— if it weren’t someone else, why would he not want to talk to you? Of course, you have to believe that he wouldn’t, but what if he wanted to avoid you?
Had you done anything wrong, said anything wrong in your letters and emails?
If you’d seen him again, would you do the same? Because it’s silly, really, how he was technically your ‘first love’ before you realised it, but you admitted nothing, acted on nothing, trying to make fragile proof or something to stick it to your father in the way eight-year-old you thought you could. You’d probably do the same now. Perhaps because of your age or your immaturity, you’re overly prideful in that sense, because telling people you love them is like cutting the skin off an onion— it’s okay, though, you’re only thirteen. That happened years ago and you should probably just move on; you know you can. You don’t have to act on anything and you’ll keep things that way.
(You should probably stop being over in your head like this.)
At least now you know he isn’t a bad father, never was; he was just a man in a world where they don’t know girls can live without a constant desire for marriage or romance encroaching upon their conscience. And even for a man, he isn’t so bad to his daughter, you think. Now, you know how to draw conclusions like that.
You don’t really know anything. You don’t really know anything at all. So you shove it aside, that overthinking, and talk to your friend like a normal thirteen-year-old.
And he probably doesn’t care about you anymore, either. (But if he did, what caused him to stop? He was so caring so was it just you?—)
It’s okay, you can live without him anyway.
“That aside, how is everything?”
23-11-2010
“Megumi, I think we should exchange books,” you suggest as the two of you make the daily walk to the classroom. You catch up to him now, legs meeting his pace, not something he has to stop and turn behind to glance at before turning his head forward again. “My mummy said it could help. She said it’s good if we read more books from other genres.” (You feel like patting yourself on the back for knowing how to use a word like ‘genres’.)
“We like completely different books,” he says, “You’d get bored really quickly with mine.”
“I mean, if it’s something interesting, I won’t.” And even if you didn’t know the kanji in them, you’d just ask him. “...when have I ever found the stuff you read boring?” you add, to prove a point.
“Yesterday,” he states, “You picked my book up, flipped one page over, then slid it to me over the table surface.”
“But that was because I couldn’t read it!” you retort childishly, “If I can’t read it now, I’ll search it up, or I’ll ask you. If you don’t mind.”
“Fine,” he acquiesces.
“And just so you know, the teacher said I was getting better at reading kanji, and I do think that the stuff you read is nice sometimes.”
“So, what book are you giving me?” he asks, trying to force the library door open on his own. You add your own weight to it as usual and soon the two of you are walking to the same corner you always do. In spite of the school library’s relatively small size, it was a treasure trove of fantasy and reality alike. Students at the high school nearby would go there just to study, and the sight of them hunched over the tables while snoring was one you witnessed every day.
“The same one I finished reading yesterday,” you reply. That book became a favourite of yours. It entailed a young girl learning that she was actually a witch, and one of the adventures that followed that, namely one with a wizard who she’d fallen in love with. Fortunately, your mother didn’t know of the story— if your father was in the house and saw you reading it, he’d tease you endlessly. “I’ll return it first, though. Then you can borrow it again. What about you? What’ll you give me?”
“A book about dogs.”
“I should have expected that.”
12-12-2015
“Are you that excited for Christmas, sweetie?” your father asks as you hang ornaments on the tree. He’d assigned that task to you this year, saying neither he or your mother could bend their backs and legs so much anymore. And he was correct: they seemed to become weaker and more brittle with each year. Eye bags and wrinkles piled under his eyes like stacks of paper to the point that he had to quit doing work so often, and the number of times your mother had to go to the hospital in six months had gone from one to five. They’d started to talk about dying even if they were far from it in your eyes. They’d just need some medicine and a trip to the doctor— they’d be alright in the end like always. Right?
“Mhm!” you answer jubilantly, “I think talking to Tsumiki again did me good, heh.”
“I’m glad,” he smiles, walking over to you, “Need any help?”
“No, I’ll be okay— you should go and rest,” you advise him.
He shakes his head, “I’ll be okay if it’s just for a while, you know that for me it usually isn’t that bad. I can still do things like this as long as I’m not tired.”
“Daddy, your eye bags make you look like a panda.”
“Wow, okay,” he says, sarcastically, “Can’t believe my baby girl doesn’t love me anymore.”
You drop one of them by accident and it falls pathetically, the glitter on it spreading across the floor. “Wait, sorry, let me get that real quick—”
Although you rush to tell him not to, he bends down to retrieve it, and as he gets up he winces and has to support his back with once-strong hands. He’s withering away, slipping like dust blown away from his old table back in your grandparents’ house.
You’re scrambling to help him up, to scrunch your brows in worry and ask if he’s okay, but because you forget to move your hand away, your elbow smacks against his head.
“—Ow!”
“Ack! Daddy, sorry, Daddy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Are you okay, sweetie?”
You feel yourself twist in guilt. How could you have ever felt annoyed by this man in the past?
22-12-2015
You don’t know what brings you to do it. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s his birthday and you’ve only been able to wish him via asking Tsumiki to send him your regards, or because you’re feeling sentimental and remembering Christmas five years ago in Tokyo, but you write a letter addressed to Fushiguro Megumi on a chilly Tuesday that you don’t have the intent to send. Or maybe you just don’t want to yet.
Dear Fushiguro Megumi,
I don’t really know why I’m writing this to you. Maybe I’m desperate for some kind of romance so I’m writing this to turn my thirteen year old self into a shoujo manga protagonist (I feel like you’d cringe at that, sorry).
But I’ll write it anyway. I really liked you but I didn’t really notice it— well, more like I didn’t want to admit it. My dad was being a little annoying about it and that was probably young me’s way of giving him this big middle finger but I won’t really go into it. He’s pretty okay about all of this now, and these days I can bear with him a little better too. (Hopefully that’s how things are for you and your benefactor, too— he always seemed more like a father anyway, even if he was always there. Would that be too presumptuous of me to say?)
Still. I used to really, really like you. I don’t know if I still would if I met you again, but hey. We should try it, meeting each other another time. I really want to see you again.
I still think you were really cool. I bet you’d still be so now. Taller, too. (More handsome if you’re fine with me saying that, but maybe that could just be attributed to being part and parcel of one’s physical growth? Truly, I don’t quite know.)
I know you probably never felt the same, but I thought I should just let you know. YOLO, am I right? I’m, like, living life to the fullest with no regrets right now.
I know how much of a burden I was, how annoying I must have been. But I guess because of that I know how caring you can be. So I’ll always be thinking, ‘Megumi is really, really cool!’ when I’m reminded of you.
I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to me anymore— maybe you’ve given up on me, and I get that. Whatever it is, though, I know it would be valid, even if sometimes the fact we stopped talking in the first place makes me feel a little hurt. Because I know it’s my fault too, since I was too scared then to talk to you.
So let’s just talk again, I guess. Let’s just exchange contacts and chat on the phone and talk about books. I’ve been reading a lot of books about dogs and I’ve so much to tell you. Nothing else has to happen or change; we can act like there was never a barrier between the two of us in the first place. I really miss you.
Let’s just be friends again.
Please?
28-12-2015
“We’re not going to be here forever, you know,” your mother says as if she’s about to drop dead at any moment. She’s not and you can’t bring yourself to fathom it. So you won’t.
Your mother is amazing— she cooked for you, comforted you, tried her best to raise you properly and lovingly even if she hadn’t been herself. She made sure you never slept hungry and tried her best to make you think you were the most beautiful girl in the world no matter what others said, even if in the end she couldn’t. She held your hand even if in the end you stopped clinging to hers as you grew. She did the chores even if her body was falling apart and deteriorating like yellow paper.
You don’t think you could ever handle having to do that even if it was for your own children. You don’t think you could ever be her.
It had always been a bit of a curse that your mother had you a little late. She said you were supposed to have an older sibling once, one that she couldn’t carry to term. So that’s why you were born, and born a bit later in their lives; that’s why you were their cherished baby girl.
So you try, you’ve been trying, to be of use. To be the medicine that ameliorates their headaches and backaches and joint pains. You help out with the chores even if you seldom talk to your mother these days; you listen as your father regales you about (mostly fake) stories from his youth if it helps him feel better. Because if not for you, your mother would have less wrinkles on her face; if not for you, your father would be less hellbent on working to provide for his family.
“…mhm.”
“I think that you should know something, though. I just… I don’t want to die, darling, but I think I will. So I feel like I should tell you this,” your mother begins, “Honey, let’s… let’s tell her about it.”
There’s something eerily calm in the depressing air your father casts over himself as your mother says this.
“Okay,” your father agrees.
Your mother starts first, “Do you remember seeing that weird sunglasses-wearing, white-haired man?”
“Oh. The… the benefactor? What about him?”
“Well, for starters, he’s not just some weird guy. That man’s name is Gojo Satoru,” she states, “He’s a jujutsu sorcerer, like me.”
“Oh… okay, but… um. What? I thought you were a doctor. Are you two like Harry Potter…?”
“No, we’re— um, do you remember seeing that dog?”
“The one with the red markings?”
“Yes. The thing is, normal people can’t see things like that dog. But people like you, your mother and I can,” your father explains.
“So we have superpowers, or something?”
Your mother smiles and she looks younger, happier. “Something like that. There’s something called cursed energy and most people have it. It’s formed from negative emotions, and the people who have more than the average person can see cursed spirits— the creatures manifested from leaked out and fermented cursed energy, who jujutsu sorcerers basically try to get rid of before they cause normal people who can’t see them any harm. —Oh, goodness, I feel like an encyclopaedia.”
“So the dog was a… ‘cursed spirit’?” you wonder, “It sounds like we’re in a shounen manga.”
“No, the dog was a shikigami.”
“Wait— those things are real?”
“But it was your friend Megumi's shikigami, specifically. Some jujutsu sorcerers can summon simple shikigami. Those were ones generated from his cursed technique, though,” your father clarifies, “Most jujutsu sorcerers have cursed techniques, which is when they channel cursed energy into their own ‘powers’. People who don’t have cursed techniques like your mother—”
“You’re going like a bullet train. My brain’s getting pulverised. Please slow down,” you say, “So he has a cursed technique, and mummy doesn’t have one. Do I have one?”
“That’s what we were worried about,” he starts, “When you were born, neither of us wanted you to get into that life. So we moved to the countryside, specifically places with little to no cursed spirits. Then when you got older we figured we should just check if you could see them in general, but nothing happened except for when you saw that dog. We think you’re a window, though. Someone who isn’t a jujutsu sorcerer, with no technique but the ability to see curses anyway.”
“But you think I do, now?”
“No. We just wanted you to know about all this. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”
“No, no, it’s fine— nothing happened because of it. I just never knew, but I guess I do now. So you were a jujutsu sorcerer?”
“He was,” your mother answers, “Technically, he’s already quit due to health complications. But your father’s been saving a lot, and it’s not like jujutsu sorcerers have a meagre pay…”
“We’re rich?”
“I mean… the stronger ones are loaded, but we still have enough money to last us for a while without working,” your father says, “But I have a cursed technique and so I was a sorcerer last time, so I’d always be working away from home before I took the shinkansen back. The year you were in Tokyo, I was working with a team of other sorcerers to eliminate groups of curses spread all over Japan. Then when we found out you could see them, we just decided to go back to the countryside. But now we know we can’t keep you out of the city forever— we know how much you love it, and we love our girl. So we needed to tell you about this.”
Your mother sighs, “We’re sorry again that we never told you any of this. We just wanted to keep you safe.”
“Okay. It’s okay, you don’t have to apologise. I mean, I don’t really want to die either, even if it means saving people and things like that. There’s probably other ways to save people. Plus I’m probably a window like what you and daddy said.”
“Thank goodness,” your father smiles, “I’ve lived through it and… well, Daddy doesn’t want that either.”
“Neither do I,” your mother says.
You don’t want to be a jujutsu sorcerer. The thought of people walking into that world, of children being born into it, of people like your father, kind people walking to death every day.
You think it must be the ones in power— they don’t seem to care; how could they if they’d just let fates like that befall your father?
And Megumi, Megumi— Megumi, the guy you haven’t talked to in years, walked into it. He sought to protect you first; told you there were monsters and warned you to be careful.
Just how much of a burden were you then?
That’s the first thought that crosses your mind. Because there’s never been a time you weren’t a burden, not to your friends and never to your family, and thinking that Fushiguro Megumi would care anymore, for you, was beyond reality.
20-12-2015
Your father’s cursed technique is called cell manipulation.
“It’s a pain to use, but I’d say it’s always been quite powerful,” he explains on one of the days he’s teaching you about the jujutsu world, “Like the name says, I can control cells. But I have to imagine things really vividly, down to a cellular level, and put lots of cursed energy into picturing how exactly you want the cells to shift and change.”
“So… just the cells? Can you do anything more than that?”
“Just the cells,” he says, “At least, that’s what I think. But I suppose that makes it liable to entities who have cells that can go against my cursed technique, or can control their own bodies at a subcellular level. Who knows, really…” There’s a hint of sadness underneath his tone.
“D’you think you’ll ever use it again, then?”
“Maybe. But I’m definitely not planning to,” he tells you, saying it with conviction that’s stark against that soft, weary voice he has so often nowadays, “I don’t want you to use it either. I’ve never wanted you to have it. If you did, everyone would be telling you to walk into death willingly, every single day. Everyone would ask you to be useful. I’ve already told you so many times that I don’t want that for you. I can still do some simple things with minimal effort, though. Want me to show you?”
You don’t understand why he’d have make himself “useful”— he’s always been, he’s your father after all. He doesn’t have to do anything else, doesn’t have to prove anything to add meaning or worth to his existence. Truthfully the one who has to be useful is you; you have to be a better daughter, a more helpful one; you have to be a better friend and a better person.
You smile, “Okay. But just a little.”
He holds out his hand, displaying his palm. It’s slightly wrinkled, littered with old calluses like mildew on leaves that you never knew the true stories behind. Sights such as these remind you of his age, who he’s speeding to fifty before he may even see you reach your twenties. “You see how my hand’s like this, right?”
You nod your head.
“So, what I can do is imagine—” he starts, closing his eyes, “And this happens.” There’s a rift that’s forming slowly in his hands like the land giving way to sprouting volcanoes, before scarlet blood is pouring out of his hand.
“Gah! No, no, it’s okay, you don’t have to show me any more—!”
The wound closes up and he opens his eyes once more. “See? Good as new,” he grins, “It’s much harder when it’s not used against humans, though. You don’t always know the cell structure of other cursed spirits, so they have to be studied like Pokemon. And if those cursed spirits aren’t the same,” he goes, immediately turning grim again, “You’ll have to use it on yourself. That means that every time you use it, one mistake could cost your entire life.”
You can’t imagine it: that for years when you were living carefreely, thinking your father was off at a hospital or a clinic, spending his time examining tongues with popsicles or holding stethoscopes to chests and stomachs— he was, in truth, risking his life; about to be the cause of his death at any moment. And for what? For money? To save others’ lives? For you?
The notion itself is terrifying.
“Then I think we’re the same,” you say, “Because I don’t want you using that either.”
1-4-2016
The last time you and Megumi uttered a single word to each other was five years ago.
You haven’t talked to Megumi in a long time, but you call Tsumiki whenever either of you are available. That about sums things up. But every once in a while you and Tsumiki— just Tsumiki— hold your phones next to your heads as you chat and gossip about your days and the people and events in them, crossing your legs as you’re sitting on the bed or doing chores as you secure the phone between your shoulder and ear.
Last year you’d learned a few things: school eats away at your life like a parasitic fungus, you’re someone who can see monsters that rarely even live where you do anyway, and that even if you’ve finally the maturity to admit that you may have loved someone, you won’t act on anything if you’re sure what you’ll face is either rejection or anything but reciprocation.
At least you can still live your life. At least your parents are still here, thank goodness.
“Tsumiki, I’m serious. ”
“But I really think you should! You can’t just tell me that and expect me not to react like this!”
“Honestly, Tsumiki…” you start, “I haven’t talked to Megumi in years. I can’t just. Ask him to talk to me again, you know.”
“Still, you said you liked him! Megumi! My little brother! And he said he wouldn’t mind seeing you again, too!”
“I don’t know, I just. I felt silly so I thought of telling you. If you told him now it wouldn’t change anything. And I think he’s avoiding me. I think he’s been avoiding me for a while.”
“I know, but… sometimes when he does this to other people, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to talk to them. He’s just… what’s the word, emotionally constipated? He’s like that.”
She sounds so excited over the phone.
“I’ll just pass that old letter to him and nothing will happen. Then I’ll live my life peacefully and I probably won’t ever see him again.”
“...I honestly think that if you did that he’d just try to find you again.”
Yeah, right, you think to yourself.
taglist:
@bakananya, @sindulgent666, @shartnart1, @lolmais, @mechalily, @pweewee, @notsaelty, @nattisbored
(please send an ask/state in the notes if you’d like to join! if I can't tag your username properly, I've written it in italics. so sorry for any trouble!)
#sorry for the long wait :)#for the ao3 readers chapter four is coming soon!! I’ll try my best to finish it by tomorrow#take me back (take me with you)#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#megumi fushiguro#megumi#fushiguro megumi#megumi fluff#megumi angst#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#jjk x fem!reader#fem!reader#ruer writes#megumi x reader
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HEEEYYYAAA SWEETHEART
so I saw your Christmas event thingy and wanted to request a #13 with lyney x reader, preferably fluff but not like overly fluff so it becomes cringe (I sound bitchy I'm sorry😭)
Anyways congrats on 2 years on the blog,don't forget to eat and drink, mwah mwah( ◜‿◝ )♡
the christmas mix | #13- baby it’s cold outside | lyney x reader
event masterlist
features lyney
notes: hiii<33!! thank you so much for requesting (and for being the first one too!!) aaaa!! anw I’m so sorry this came so late but I wanted to write something a bit longer (to be honest, I still feel like this one’s pretty incomplete, so I may write a part 2 for it!! I just didn’t want to take too much time so I just want to give this to you first.) and I really wanted it to be good because you seem so sweet aaaa <333. but ANYWAY thank you so much and have a merry christmas, mwah!! lmk if you need a rewrite of this and my apologies if there’s not enough (?) fluff (??) or if it's too short!!
warnings: none, except for the fact that it's fem reader, really (I hope that's okay!!)
summary: (set before the current events of the game) it's in the winter of his first show at the opera epiclese that he meets you. you think you may be falling for this stranger, this all-too-busy magician. it's alright if either of you have to go, though, the two of you can stay together-- it's too cold outside, after all.
The first time you meet him, the both of you are young and he’s a nameless stranger you meet at a friend’s party. You hit it off with him and glass bottles clink against each other before you bring the rim of yours to your lips and sip your fonta.
“So, what brings you here?” you ask the stranger before you. He’s a new, unheard-of magician, you’ve been told. You think he’s the epitome of what magic should be in a world of surging elemental powers and mythical beings— a perfect mix of misdirection and secrets— with all his charm and mystery, and that little bit of dramatic flair he uses to present himself.
“My sister and I were invited to perform, it seems,” he explains, taking his own sips in, “And you?”
“Invited? Why, I just waltzed my way in like most of the others. Do you think I’ll be seeing you up there later, then, Mister…”
“Lyney. Mister Lyney.”
“…Mister Lyney.”
“And you won’t be seeing me, anyway. I’ve told the host that my sister and I must attend to some urgent business concerning our first show at the Opera Epiclese tomorrow.”
“Hm,” you hum, “The Opera Epiclese, huh? Glad to know I’m speaking to a future big shot. Remember me when your tickets are worth every gem and mora in Fontaine, won’t you? I don’t think I’ll be able to steal each and every one to see you again.”
“Of course,” he grins, “And you won’t have to steal anything, I promise. Nothing would be worth as much as you.”
“You’ve a penchant for words, I see. And here I thought budding magicians were often shyer than this…”
“Our introduction to being in the limelight would not change my occasional sharing of the truth. Then he lays his bottle down on the table, and it’s silent and so very unlike how you thought he would based off your initial impressions of him, and so very different from how anyone else would after drinking fonta. He sets it down quietly, stealthily, as if if he were to clash any louder against the wooden table’s surface he would dart out of the host’s house while the liquid in the bottle barely moves, appearing like creases on a red velvety tablecloth. “But!” he exclaims, “Now I really must get going—”
His voice is like a twinkle out of a music box, its melody even better than the one bursting out of your friend’s gramophone; his eyes are like a velvet coat that pair well with his cheshire cat-like smile; his hair is silky as it is silvery and you want to run your fingers through it.
So you don’t want him to go.
“Leaving so soon?”
“Well, the magician’s life just so happens to be a busy one, dear [name]—“
“Oh? Mr Lyney, I don’t recall having ever told you my name,” you remark, quirking up a brow and holding him by the wrist as he begins to get up.
The mister giggles, “I’ve heard of you before, of course. Our host informed me of who you were— and so did everybody else at this lovely soirée. Why, who hasn’t heard of the eccentric, renowned [name]? But I really should get going.”
“Oh, but won’t you stay? It’s just so dreadfully cold out and it would be a shame if you and your sister were to get sick from the winter winds right before your grand show. Goodness, I’ve heard of the severity of all the snow and hail these days, and even some of my acquaintances have nearly succumbed to hypothermia due to it all!”
He feigns a sigh, his voice like velvet wrapping around your eyes and ears and engulfing your senses, as he sits down again as you keep a firm grip on his wrist, “Well I hope they’re well into a good recovery, [name], but Lynette and I have the thickest coats and a great tolerance for the cold due to our brief time in Snezhnaya a few years ago—”
You pry a little further. “What got you into Snezhnaya, Mister?”
“Oh, please, that’s certainly a story for another day—” he starts again, taking hold of his hat.
“Well even if you wouldn’t like to tell me, Mr Lyney, I must know everything I can about you— everything you’d like me to know— in these few minutes you still have. So, please stay?”
He sighs again, freeing his hat and his coat. “Alright, since you’ve been such lovely company, perhaps I’ll just stay for one more sip.”
“Perhaps you could stay for one more bottle?” you cheekily suggest.
“Five more sips.”
“Please, just one more bottle…” you suggest again, “And come rain or shine I’ll be sure to come for all your future shows, whether they be in the Epiclese or not. Your first one’s tomorrow, right?”
“…you, my dear friend, have a deal.”
You laugh, “That took more convincing than I thought it would.”
“Well you’re definitely persistent as you are eccentric,” he comments, digging into his pocket to reveal a deck of cards, “Now, allow me to show you a magic trick as we chat through our next bottle…”
—
“Didn’t think you’d be the Casanova type,” Lynette jabs as he finally exits the building, “So you just left [name] there as she kept talking to you?”
“Well, you know how things are,” he says.
He already knows he can’t afford this. He’d been honing his magic for years from the streets to the halls of nobles’ houses to their rooms in the House of the Hearth for the sake of Father’s cause. If he were to let just anyone in, if he were to fall back from that tower of deception and secrecy and let it topple, then—
“I’m sure that Father would be alright,” she states, a knowing, teasing lilt in her voice, “We won’t even be that late.”
—
There are a handful of things you know about him by the second time you meet. That he used to perform solely on the streets and was then offered the chance to have a show at the Opera Epiclese after gradually gaining renown over the years; that like the cats he adores, he likes fish dishes; that he and his sister have a younger brother.
The hall itself seems empty, the hues of each chair blurring together to form a sea of gold and red.
“Why, it seems we meet again!” a voice echoes from behind you, then softer, it goes, “You’re earlier than I thought you’d be, though. And in the front seat.”
“I know,” you smile, torso twisted, “I wanted to be extra early. And don’t ask how I got to the front seat, would you?”
(In truth, you’d purchased it from someone who wouldn’t be available and was selling their front seat ticket at a much lower price than it should have been. No theft had occurred.)
He moves in front of you. “To talk to me once more, I assume?”
You pause and hum, tilting your head in an acted-out thought process. “Of course.”
“Well,” he starts, “I still have more things to get ready backstage, and more props and tricks to prepare, so I don’t think I’ll be able to.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, go ahead—”
He panics. “—But it’s you, so I’ll make some time. About five minutes, possibly— in truth, I do have a trick for you, dear [name],” he says, the words pouring out of him like a magician’s trick of pulling out an infinite number of differently coloured silks sewn together from his pocket.
You lean forward in interest, and you try not to notice the barely audible gasp threat’s pulled from his lungs as he almost unwillingly backs away, then schools himself again. Maybe you were leaning in too much? “Show me, then,” you say.
“Alright, then,” he begins, “I have a flower in my hands, and—oh? It’s disappeared!” he narrates, the sun-coloured flower vanishing with a flick of his hand.
You raise a brow.
“Now, have you noticed anything near your ear?”
“My ear—?” Then to your surprise, you feel something tickling at the skin between your scalp and your ear, finding a whole stem tucked behind it. You pluck the flower away, bringing it to your nose and inhaling its scent. “Well, wouldn’t you know.”
He giggles, “Do you like it?”
“I do,” you reply, “I just thought you would’ve used a rainbow rose instead. But I love marcottes, too— they have such a sweet, light scent. Marcottes symbolise purity and sincere care,” you recite from a book you’d read, “And rainbow roses… well.”
“Why, I’ve never learned of the language of flowers before,” he remarks, “…but I can start.”
“Oh, really? Well, I don’t want you to take up too much of your time— a magician’s life is a busy one, no?”
“I suppose we all have to trade the time we have for something we care about no matter how little of it we have.”
“Hm, I suppose so. Now, go—! Ten minutes have passed, mister!”
“Oh—? But I’ve one more thing I need to say, dear [name],” he hurries, taking your hand and lightly pecking it, then letting his lips go and keeping your hands together, “You should stay later. It’s too cold outside for anyone to leave, but… if you need it, once everyone has left, you’re always welcome to stay and bask in the heating the Epiclese provides. Lynette and I will have to stay here for a while after, anyway.”
You grin at his invitation— or his request, maybe. “I will.”
“And, Lyney?” you call right as he turns back to face you again. “You’re always welcome to visit me in my own home.”
You scribble your address on a piece of paper as people start to trickle in. It’s as if there are half as many people as there should be. It’s a sour thought, and, hopefully, in his next show, there’ll be more people.
The marcotte is tucked tightly between your index finger and thumb for the whole show. You bring its petals to your lips when the show is over.
You hand the paper to Lyney after and you praise his show as you bid him farewell. You leave only a second earlier than he does with Lynette in tow.
—
In the frigid winter weather, Lyney heads out, shivering, and buys a bouquet of rainbow roses as well as a book on the floral language of Fontaine.
—
The show actually turns out to be a smashing success among the people who had watched it. The names Lyney and Lynette appear on the Steambird three days after the show, and you have the pleasure of reading an article about it, with details on a trick involving water and fireworks, written by one journalist Charlotte.
The same day you read it, you open your door to see a bouquet of rainbow roses near your doorstep, hoisted and kept upright by the edge of the door and the wall.
You wonder how they could have stayed alive without freezing, but you take it in. You already know who it’s from, even though there’s no name, no address— nothing. Nothing besides a note in elegant, cursive handwriting, saying “Thank you for coming.”
A dig through your house finally reveals an old vase of your parents’, a gorgeous, transparent vase of glass with patterns of roses embellishing it near the bottom that you trace with your fingers. You fill it with some tap water, remove the wrapping around the flowers, and place them in the vase.
They rest near your bed and though the days are getting colder your heart warms at the sight of them every morning.
So as it gets cold outside you think you’re falling for the all-too-busy magician, with his mystery and his tricks and his beautiful silver hair and violet eyes.
You ought to invite him sometime during Christmas. And hopefully you can keep him for a while, too, as the fireplace crackles. It’ll be too cold outside, anyway.
event taglist (please send an ask if you'd like to be added!):
wishing everyone a merry christmas ♡!
#thank you for requesting!!#and thank you for requesting <3!! this was my first one so I was so happy haha#genshin x reader#genshin impact x reader#lyney x reader#genshin lyney x reader#lyney#genshin lyney#genshin impact lyney#genshin impact lyney x reader#ruer writes#genshin impact#ruer's 2023 xmas event!#genshin impact x female reader#genshin x fem!reader smau#genshin x female reader#genshin impact x fem!reader#lyney x fem!reader#lyney x female reader
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#18 with platonic Brother-in-law Diluc! I think it would be funny if Traveller!Reader (jokingly) and Paimon (not so jokingly) kept asking for increasingly expensive things for Christmas. Whether Diluc delivers is up to you.
the christmas mix | #18- santa baby & #7- rocking around the christmas tree | brother-in-law!diluc and traveller!reader (platonic), husband!kaeya x traveller!reader (romantic)
event masterlist
features diluc (platonic), kaeya (romantic), traveller!reader
notes: hello honey, I really hope this is okay!! you were so sweet and I really liked your idea hahah it just took me a while. I’m so sorry if it’s not up to standard and wasn’t worth the wait (please let me know if you’d like me to write anything else in the future to compensate ;v;,,). regardless, I hope you have a wonderful christmas ❤️!!
warnings: none, really (except for no capitalisation, I suppose?)
summary: it seems like paimon doesn’t have any regard for diluc’s bank account (and why would she?), and that your husband and his brother will be having a good christmas this year, whether they’d like to admit it or not.
christmas in mondstadt, you’ve come to learn, is always a cheery, beautiful thing. there are stalls temporarily set up in springvale and the city itself, selling mulled dandelion wine, more varieties of wurst than there were dandelion seeds in teyvat, and all kinds of lovely little trinkets from traditionally made wooden toys to handmade christmas tree ornaments. it’s like the one time of the year when parents are taking their children all the way to dragonspine to play with the snow, the time when citizens are flocking to the cathedral to pray to their lord (who just so happens to be the drunkard singing christmas carols in the tavern), the time when families are gathering by the fireplace to chat and bask in each other’s presence or sitting by the table to enjoy a lovingly prepared meal at christmas gatherings, parties and the like. even some members of the knights of favonius are taking a break no matter how busy they are— especially jean, lord knows how much the lady needs a break— and you and your husband kaeya already have loads of preparations underway for christmas gatherings and the like.
it was a lovely thing.
“merry christmas,” your brother-in-law— diluc ragnvindr, the wine tycoon himself— greets you as you enter the tavern after a long day of commissions (it was to be expected, what with all the preparations needed to be made for a safe and pleasant christmas).
kaeya waves at you as you sit by the counter, before you peck his cheek and tuck some few of his luscious strands of blue hair behind his ear with a “hello, love”.
“merry christmas to you too,” you reply to diluc, “even if it’s only, like— a whole week away?”
“well, christmas in mondstadt starts a month before the actual day itself,” kaeya jokes, “and I’m sure my dear brother would be pleased to gift you whatever christmas present you’d like, wouldn’t you, diluc?”
diluc grimaces as if looking at the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen. (it was funny.) “shouldn’t you be doing that for your own spouse, kaeya?” even the way he says his brother’s name sounds like he’s spitting it out, though you know he doesn’t truly despise him, and so you try your best to hold a snort.
“oooh, ooh, master diluc!” paimon starts, rather discourteously (or maybe out of a lack of care for how the poor man would perceive her) waving her little arms about before his face, “maybe you can give us some really tasty, fancy food for christmas!”
“hmm, expensive, too,” you join in, teasing him, “oh, please, diluc? or maybe even one of those new automobile machines they’re working on in fontaine…”
it seems kaeya’s getting the hint— your hint, at least, since it seems like paimon is every bit serious about this unlike you and your husband. “well, you heard them, diluc—”
“I am not getting you a car from fontaine of all places. and aren’t you already closely acquainted with the actual Chief Justice himself?”
and on it went, with paimon naming every thing she could think of, and you (or your beloved kaeya) listing whatever else was more expensive than what she did as if you were raising the price at an auction— yet one difference this had from an actual auction was that instead of the buyers paying for the increasingly costly dishes, gifts and goods, it was poor master diluc instead.
and your brother-in-law, though annoyed, was never fazed by the prices themselves and kept at the empty glasses he had been cleaning.
—
“do you think he’ll actually get any of what we said we wanted?” you ask as the two you walk out the tavern, a dozed-off paimon in your arms.
“I don’t think so,” kaeya begins, “but knowing him… well, let’s just say that whatever he decides to do will be interesting, to say the least.”
“uh-huh,” you reply, raising a brow.
—
there’s music playing from the gramophone, a jolly tune that kaeya hums as the fireplace crackles in tune with in delight.
“kaeya,” you call. he stops mid-hum, setting down the cutlery on the table. he gets up immediately, like a pet to its owner’s voice, and suddenly you’re giggling fondly at the thought without having noticed it.
“yes?” from behind his arms circle you like a warm, snug blanket, luscious and long strands of beautiful blue tickling your back and the nape of your neck, and his hand on your waist.
“I think that madman really did it,” you grin, gesturing to the bottom of the ornately decorated (courtesy of both yours and kaeya’s ideas for where to place each and every ornament) christmas tree, and each of the gifts below them (from how you know what each one is, you’re quite sure he’s not the best gift-wrapper around, but definitely the wealthiest): a cutting-edge thirty-million-mora watch from fontaine, bespoke paimon-sized garments made from liyuean materials and handmade by inazuman tailors, and even a limited-edition TCG card yet to be fully released to the public (you know cyno would be punching the air right now if he knew). “or, at least, he tried to get some, even though some of the wishes we brought up were almost unfulfillable. he tried to get most of them.”
“well I suppose we ought to just wait for him to come, if he’ll even visit,” kaeya says.
“wonder how he even snuck it all here in the first place,” you jest, though you suppose the darknight hero had temporarily done some christmas duties in santa’s stead the night before, “and I’m sure that he’ll come,” you finish, pecking your husband on the cheek.
—
“merry christmas,” diluc says as he walks through the door, and although it’s late and most of the others have left, the clock has yet to strike midnight and it’s still christmas night.
“and a happy christmas to you too, diluc,” kaeya greets, “and I was surprised you actually delivered. you wouldn’t happen to just be fooling us with the wrapping paper, would you?”
“do you want me to have done so?”
pft— even after regaining some of what they had before they bore the titles of estranged brothers, your husband was still absolutely incorrigible. (it was really funny, especially now that you knew each word they spoke to the other had less hate and more love than the last; that you knew it was more of playful jesting against a thoroughly annoyed sigh instead of vestiges of a duel many, many years ago.)
but still. poor old master diluc, having to deal with his brother and his spouse, as well as the borderline unmeetable demands of said brother’s spouse’s long-time travelling companion.
“haha! I was just joking, diluc. but thank you, for this, I suppose.”
“mhm,” you add, “you should’ve seen paimon’s face when she saw the wrapping— actually, we were waiting for you to come so that we could open all of the presents together, right in front of the person who’d gotten them for us.
“paimon!” you call, directing your voice to the rooms above you and up the stairs, “diluc’s here.”
then she floats down, and, like a child, wags her legs about excitedly. “ooh, paimon was so excited for this!”
so the four of you open the gifts together, untangling the poorly-tied ribbons (again, you’re sure diluc must have tried his best, and done so on his own, too) and tearing away at the wrapping paper. paimon squeals in delight with each gift opened, and kaeya whips out a kamera for a picture of the four of you.
—
“merry christmas, diluc,” kaeya says, handing him the gift, “from me to you.”
—
“grape juice, huh?”
“of course. he likes it, after all,” kaeya answered as he sat by the christmas tree, wrapping paper, scissors and tape scattered all over the floor, and then he pointed to the leather-wrapped object beside him, “but this makes everything better.”
“a book? it looks beautiful,” you commented.
“no, a photo album. to capture memories we used to store old mementoes and photos in old boxes, but now that kameras are getting more and more common than ever, I decided to get one like this. see?” he grinned, displaying its opened pages before you, “it has these cases to protect and preserve the photos inside.”
“oh, kaeya,” you kissed his cheek, “it’s wonderful. I’m sure he’ll love it.”
event taglist (please send an ask if you’d like to be added!):
wishing everyone a happy christmas ❤️!
#kaeya x reader#kaeya#genshin kaeya x reader#genshin diluc x reader#diluc x reader#diluc#genshin diluc#genshin kaeya#kaeya alberich#diluc ragnvindr#diluc fluff#kaeya fluff#genshin fluff#genshin impact fluff#genshin#genshin impact#ruer writes#ruer’s 2023 xmas event!#genshin x reader#genshin impact x reader
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childe x reader: five-thirty pm.
features childe
notes: I don’t even know what’s happening here either, so. also, I’ve got exams coming up, so I’ll try to write small things like these before I get back to writing long works 👍🏻. thank you!
warnings: not proofwritten
synopsis: sometimes he thinks he’s too lucky.
Out of all the possible outcomes he could have had in his life, he had never once imagined that it would be so lucky as to have this.
You puff out breaths of laughter into the air like a Christmas carol, eyes relaxed as he nuzzles his nose into the crook of your neck, cooking up giggles from the pot of your chest. He feels giddy, high on your body, happy and healthy, high on your love, warm and welcoming; he’s covered in a blanket by this feeling, lulled to it by its lullaby and its loving.
Your skin is so cold, a bucket of ice cubes during scalding summer weather, his chest feels content and warm like chamomile tea in the winter. Bursts of giggles bubble up from his chest like foam on hot cocoa, the afternoon glow seeping through the curtains and spilling onto your skin in abundance: the sun shines on golden rings, on shimmering shores by the azure seaside.
His eyes lie closed on your skin, the ocean calm and undisturbed, temporarily bereft of its thundering waves, only choosing to remain with tranquillity, only wanting to savour it as much as it can.
Childe’s hands grip the parts of the blankets that flank your sides. “Come on, say it!”, he chortles, joyous breaths rushing out of his body like a flowing current. “Say it, say that you love me, okay?”
With an open mouth and eyes shut from splitting your sides you squeeze the corners of your mouth together to form a coherent answer. “Say— say you love me, first! Say you love me first, Chi— haha!”
And he wonders how he could have deserved you. You who his name is unknown to, you who only knows him as Childe, as a beautiful stranger who stayed and grew to be a friend, grew to be a lover. Grew to be the tide holding you close under the pottered moon, the glass of water to a morning headache as the sun woke.
He is one half of the two of you, a ragtag pair of a couple who tear through opponents as if they are merely wet paper, and kiss under the moonlight as if it’s glow signals a gunshot right at the start a race.
“Come on, I’ll have to go back to work tomorrow,” he whines playfully, “Please? ‘I love you, Childe’: that’s all you have to say!”
“You still have to say it first— I’m the one being left here,” you swing back, “It’s going to be so cold back here, you know? You have to say it first, Childe!”
A faux sigh of defeat pulls the lever for a cheeky grin for you, as his arms loop under you between your back and the comforter, and he pulls you in, tight. He hopes you don’t question why he holds on for just a little while longer every time he does so.
“Okay,” he acquiesces, “I love you more than anything,” he starts, lightly pinching your nose, head moving closer down to yours. When your heads finally connect he repeats, just a bit softer this time, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
You giggle. He feels your skin get warm again, a shift from winter to spring.
“You big softie, you,” you whisper, guiding his lips to yours.
#childe x reader#genshin impact x reader#childe#genshin impact#tartaglia#tartaglia x reader#I didn’t know that was a tag#ruer writes
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from ‘take me back (take me with you)’, chapter 5:
@mechalily iwnsjsbsb I actually never thought about that!
(long explanation ahead)
one thing about the cancer though, is that though I’ve never stated what type it is, it’s probably something like myeloma or lymphoma (iirc?? I base things in the series a lot on my own experiences even if it isn’t a self-insert haha).
I also can’t remember if I stated this when [name]’s father introduced the technique, but usually users of cell manipulation can’t really see (?) the cells just by touching that spot or anything— they really do have to study the biology behind it and visualise everything correctly for it to work (I think I did mention reader needing to use a microscope for their cursed technique in… chapter 2? chapter 3? oh dear, I’m so sorry— I can’t remember TvT), so it’s quite a tricky technique to use and comes with more drawbacks than advantages, really… (the only advantage is that this could be used to heal. but even still, a person with rct like shoko could heal as well or even better without needing that biology knowledge necessary for cell manipulation).
basically, what I’m getting at here is that the mother probably has a blood cancer, so her cancer cells are all around in her body. the father lacks the precision, probably, as well as the cursed energy to eradicate all her cancer cells, or to expedite any processes for T cells (if I remember correctly, that’s what they’re called) to get rid of her cancer cells. even if the father may have been an expert, age has certainly worn him down and now he’s probably,,, well. this isn’t stated, because it isn’t really important and I want people to decide how things are for themselves, but his daughter has nearly surpassed him at her young age.
I do admit that this was lazy writing on my part, though— I wasn’t able to think of that. but I’ve always thought of it like this: no matter what happens to the father or the mother, either of them can’t do anything. even for [name]— even if they can affect her through words, in the end she can still ignore them regardless. while they’re a source of motivation for her at times and a reason she does certain things, if either of them die or anything, all that the other can do is nothing at all. I hope that makes sense ;v;,,, I’m also really sorry if I sound defensive throughout this— I promise I’m not. I’m just trying to come up with a reasoning for the plot to still hold up while explaining some things behind it as well 😭. (that said, i’m not an expert on this or anything, so please feel free to correct me on what I’ve gotten wrong!! hehehe)
and about them being annoying hypocrites for parents,,, well,,, they do love her a lot, I’ll say that. sometimes our parents pull stuff like this even if they’re wrong— even if they love her, they’re bound to screw up. [name] IS their only child, and they are quite immature people, still.
but thank you so much for commenting, and thank you again for commenting so quickly! I’m actually quite happy that you brought this up, because I really like to explain the things behind this goofy, silly little series that I haven’t had the chance to state or explain in the story itself.
so, thank you so much!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ have a good day or night :) <333
#mechalily#take me back (take me with you)#ruer writes#jjk megumi#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen x reader#megumi fushiguro#fushiguro megumi#jjk#megumi#megumi x reader#fem!reader#fushiguro megumi x reader#megumi fushiguro x reader#megumi fluff#megumi angst#jujutsu kaisen x female reader#female reader#jjk x fem!reader
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genshin impact x fem!reader: coloured goodbyes/farewell to childhood
features ayato
warnings: angst (?), no beta we die like ayaka and ayato’s parents :), quite badly written tbh, reader sighs like. three times in the whole thing they do it a lot, I honestly think that everything here is quite tame but if there’s anything that you think needs a warning just lmk :)
notes: YO I’m back haha!! I had genshin burnout for a while + was a bit busy (I’ve yet to update the masterlist and all), but I’m hoping to get back into it soon! I’ve also had my training arc (my ao3 is here if you’re a fan of yuumori/moriarty the patriot, shameless self-plug, sorryyy!!).
this fic is a sequel to yet the waves continue to crash (my writing style has probably changed a lot since then), though you can read it as a standalone fic (it would be a bit confusing though— there are a few callbacks to the first one). a sequel may be a it unnecessary, but I just chose to scribble this down, and I hope you like it!
synopsis: your invitation back to inazuma due to the irodori festival has brought to you one final night with ayato.
Upon your invitation from the yashiro commission, you’ve made a temporary return trip back home; the air in inazuma now feels a little chilly as you inhale. You pay the man who was kind enough to bring you across the sea a few thousand mora.
It feels great to be back.
——
You dump the water from the bucket on it repeatedly. Water gushes into your ears and you want to close your eyes as if there is a waterfall behind you, as if there is a sun above you and not the blaring lights that stare down at you condescendingly in his family’s bathrooms.
“Still cold?” a muffled voice questions.
You care more about whether the water slides into the walls of your ears. “I’ll be alright.”
Ayato watches you as you wash your hair.
“Haven’t tied the knot with any noble ladies yet?” you wonder aloud.
“There was never any time, nor did I ever wish to.”
Not like that would change anything.
For a while all the two of you hear are the hushed footprints atop the puddles of water, and the water beating against the tiles in rhythmic choruses, before the two of you exit the bathroom with the same silence.
Yet that is better, is it not? Better than talking. Cacophonies amidst silence are better than those which end up sounding silent, as if the words were nothing to listen to at all.
He offers to dry your hair for you. His fingers tangle in the strands— they were so familiar to him that they could have been his instrument in the past.
“Why?”
“Hm?”
“Why are you doing this? Why did you invite me to the estate specifically? Why haven’t you married anyone yet?”
“I’ve already told you— there was no time,” he replies curtly.
You stand up, wrapping your fingers around his, attempting, with every fibre of your being, to not recall when you used to do so, much more cheerful than you are now— before everything ended, before the knots were severed short.
(Then you give up, for you will never forget— you are constantly living through what could have been while being alive in what things have become— and you will never stop trying to forget, will never step away from that fool’s mission.)
Turning back to face him, you begin. “I know you, I’ve known you for all my life. And I also know the people of this nation: I know that none would not fall for you.” You take a single step closer to him, feel his fingers reaching near your elbow, barely touching them (yet you can feel that they are there, somehow, as if there was always a way for you to sense him no matter what) gazing at your eyes and not your chest, hands near your arms and not anywhere else. As it is you who had given him the life he never grew up to have, for it was you who let him taste the pure sweetness of childhood and the puerile drunkenness of teenage love.
Does he know that he was the same to you?
“So you already know the answers.”
“Yes, yes I do.”
The love of your life wants you to become his.
Such a prospect is one you shall have to wholeheartedly decline. After years of apprehension, childlike innocence, adolescent bouts of foolishness and heartbreak, the kind that pierced and still pierced your heart and clotted the blood from flowing, not in the morning but in the night when you wish to retire to the clouds of rest and slumber, a force akin to a thorn lacerating through the skin of your chest that keeps you from waking. How many years of sleep have you lost to that man, your prince, your best friend, your closest companion, your confidante?
The roles have been reversed. The love of your life wants to marry you, has confessed to you, albeit without words; you wish to push the rules down upon him.
“What say you?”
Lips trembling, you explain yourself. “I have a life outside of this and places to go, you know. And as much as this is ‘fun’, as much as I enjoy my time with you, and would love to spend it with you always, even— I can’t. Neither of us can. It was us as children who could indulge in those things, yet now, we can’t, the age-old tale repeats. The lovers have to leave.”
“Star-crossed lovers, are we?” he jests, and you almost giggle at the thought. “I love you more than anything. I wish you never had to leave. I wish you could stay forever, I wish I could marry you and that we could place our records in the official documents,” he confesses.
A sigh exits your mouth. You start to lather your hair in camellia oil— you always did use too much— before you give him and answer. “We know each other too much for us to know our words will always have replies from the other. If we argue with each other, we already have all the rebuttals we need against the other. I know you, ayato, sometimes more than I think you know yourself. I know it’s the same for you too when it comes to me.”
He nods, and there is almost nothing for you to describe his face besides it seeming to be one you’ve seen before, that downturned lip with lowered eyelashes and frequent deep breaths.
“I know that you love me. I love you too. Still, what we have is more than love, or more than romance. Because you know how to leave me and how to be left. You know you’ll be able to leave me, because in a way you’ll still have me.”
They claim that as you grow older, you grow wiser. In some ways that is true. Yet, perhaps it is the resistance from carrying out unwise actions is more suited to be a sign of growth. You hope that you are right. You hope you can resist from pressing your lips to his; hope you can abstain from having the soft skin of his lips on yours again; hope you can refrain from doing what would allow your mind to rest, after years and years of being separated from it, in the sensation of the tastes of fruit amidst the bitterness from the tea on his lips, even if only as a final goodbye.
So your prince, your best friend, your closest companion, your confidante, with the years’ echoes upon him, with each of growth’s scars in his soul, lets his silky ocean-like eyes gaze into yours, maintains the distance between his lips and yours, keeps his skin from touching yours. You know it would be the same if your roles were reversed, like how they were before. Things would end up in the same way— the two of you are a product of yourselves and history only. “I know. But I would rather have you by my side than have you only when I miss you in the night, once the day is done,” he argues back. Still his tone is unperturbed, only soft and ever so gentle as he always is, and there is nothing for you to describe this except sorrow. He would never wish such explicit anger upon you; you were worth more than any nobleman or politician he knew. Voice wavering, he chuckles. “I’ve lost all my sleep to you.”
“I’d rather we say that’s your work’s fault,” you laugh, bitter but melancholic, as if the little jokes here and there are the only times when yellow is painted with a thin brush on this saddened, dark, solitary canvas.
Ayato’s lips purse, periwinkle eyes boring into yours as if he were examining you, scrutinising and inspecting you from the inside-out. In those lakes of violet-like blues is a wistful sorrow, a young soul in reminiscence for when they were younger. And indeed, your childhood days must have been full of love— the older you get, the more you realise how each spark of love has been lost. You don’t know how you had lost your love, your childhood, but it had been lost long ago, in some gradual, cryptic process— in which you were smiling and loving one day and had lost the ability to weep on the next. Still, you couldn’t pinpoint when that happened, but it was there, and it was real, and it must have been replacing the love you had before, for it felt just as real as that love did. For what is reminiscing on the past if not yearning for a love left long ago?
But the waves are supposed to crash on, they must, they have to.
“Don’t leave me again, please.”
“We both know what we have to do.”
Then, then— he bends his back, pulls you into the tightest embrace as if he wants to let you go, needs to— but would only do so if he had one last chance to have you and to hold you, through sickness and in health. One chance to have you as if you were husband and wife. “Just one night,” he pleads, his arms tightening around you.
And you weep into the nook of his neck, head peering from his shoulder, and you wait. You wait for the comfort you’d like to have, and there is none. However, you want to stay in the position anyway, in this bittersweet position.
A while after you pull away, and ayato places the sides of his fingers under your chin. He lifts it up, as if only to soak the sights of you in; you do the same and have your eyes to his, hands which search everywhere for something to hold finally wrapped around his hands, gentle and veiny and firm but kind in such a way that is leaderly. There is the moisture of washed hair on his fingers. “Okay,” you answer. “Just one night.”
He brings your chin closer along to his, until you connect at each other’s faces, each other’s souls. When he kisses you, languidly, for the first time in years, you taste the tea off him— its taste never went away— and the saccharine sweetness that you feel emerges in your head from it is all the same. He and you remain that way for a while.
As the two of you pull away from each other, you begin. “I don’t think I can drink tea after this. It would force me into the depths of a depression so deep it would kill me.”
“I don’t think I can do anything after this,” he muses. “Everything would remind me of you.”
“I know,” you choke out, your cheeks wet with rivulets of tears. “And I know you’ll manage just the same.”
Lifting your fingers, you tuck his hair, periwinkle and as blue as a rainy sunset sky, behind his ear, then let your palm fall. It lands on his cheek, pinkish with a tear’s aftermath. “Oh, I love you more than anything.”
His hand holds your wrist. “It’s cruel. Fate is cruel. Fate is only a product of what we have done. Why can’t it keep us from having to say goodbye, over and over again?”
“I don’t know,” you respond, in between high-pitched, incoherent sobs. “Let’s- let’s go for a walk, when this is over.”
Will it ever be over?
“A walk would be alright.”
He turns his back on you, leaves his palm open behind him in invitation. Slowly your fingers crawl onto it, exploring what you’ve held before, nervously, excitedly, with sparks grazing your skin like the glow from a lit lamp. Your hands touch once, and then he shifts forward, and he nearly slips away, the two of you only connected at your fingertips. You wish to pull him back, yet he only pulls you forward with him and your palm shifts to meet his. You slip away again. He pulls you forward. The two of you leave the estate.
You bring your other hand to his wrist and grab it— you don’t pull on it— you grab it, stubborn as a mule, jejune as a child, as if a pinch of immaturity were alright if it were now. If it were before what after had to become. If there were ‘what if’s or ‘would be’s. This time he doesn’t pull you forward once more; you gather your courage to do that for yourself. Then when your hand slides again, with your other hand’s hold on his wrist still intact, you use that hand to clutch onto him. And you believe that in this moment, when he runs away from you and becomes older, farther from you once again, you have been harmed by the lacerating sweetness of a person’s love, and from that you understand that you had been made a grown woman once you’d decided to leave him in the land of your birth, away— far from you.
The stroll in chinju forest is quiet, so quiet you could only break it apart by leaving it behind.
“How’s ayaka?”
He replies, “She’s well. You’d be proud of her now.”
“Yeah,” you choke. “Yeah, I would. I really, really would.”
“I know,” he answers. “And she’d be happier to know you were happy for her as well.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Your footsteps continue creating little melodies, tiny melodies stored into tiny spaces, tiny gaps in your memories of everything else that you will never forget, that you can never re-enter. They will be tucked away, along with him washing your hair and drying it, and kissing you the way you did when you were young, when you were mere children. The quiet echoes on, conquering him, the unconquered, causing the unwavering head commissioner to waver. Yet you’d known him before that, and you know that the man inside that husk, inside that title’s shell, is stronger. Much, much stronger. And much kinder, as a result.
You stop, gripping his wrist once again. “Won’t you turn back and look at me?”
“Won’t you kiss me again?” He turns back with just as much abruptness.
Yes, yes, a thousand times. And then a thousand times more, you want to tell him.
You don’t. Instead you press your lips to his again, you feel the bitterness of tea burst in your mouth before it dissolves into that candied, giddy sensation in your head. “I love you.”
Softly he giggles, “I can’t promise they won’t suspect us of being lechers tomorrow.”
“Promises won’t help anything, really,” you sigh. “You’ll be able to handle everything they throw at you, right? You always do.”
He nods.
“Do you want to handle all of it?”
“If it were you.” He’d walk over scorching coals for you, would bear the brunt of every kind of humiliation for you. He’d put everything below you a long time ago, not in worship or obsession— but just in love, more than adoration— to give you everything he could give and to take everything he could take for your sake only. The two of you continue ambling, by the lake and through the fluorescent bright blues of the flowers, their stems buried into the bushes. “When will you be setting off tomorrow?”
“Before twelve o’clock, at least.”
“Don’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Where to next?” he ponders. The two of you turn back.
Head rested on his shoulder, you wrap your arms around his left arm. “Who knows? Maybe snezhnaya, or fontaine. I’ll buy you gifts— I heard the dresses worn by young ladies in fontaine are pretty. I’ll get some for ayaka, too.”
“Thank you,” he responds. “I’ll write, so you’d better write back while on your travels. And be sure to tell me everything that happens,” he laughs.
“I promise.”
He cuts a beautiful figure when illuminated by the flowers’ glow. He looks younger, you suppose, as if the weight of time and his life were not constantly applying pressure down on him.
That night the two of you sleep in separate rooms— you will never know what it is like to sleep beside him, to see his silhouette in the night and feel safe, to be embraced by him as slumber ensnares you in the night. You aren’t able to sleep at all, yet when you finally do, its ostensibly endless. You lie with the thoughts of the day, nuzzle your head into the blanket, and finally let tears flow out in rivulets, as if the water had finally crashed through the dam. You can finally rest, can finally, truly, sleep after years without such a night.
The morning after, you wake up and think that night gave you the best sleep you’d had in years. By the time your eyes are open and you squint to see the sunlight beaming at the tatami mat, ayato has ordered for the two of you to have breakfast together before your departure.
To sit you down, he intertwines his fingers with yours and tugs on your hand until your legs are bent beneath you, kneeling on the mat.
“I’m sad, I think.”
“Why do you think you’re sad?”
“Well,” you start, the meals decked out in front of you. “All my life I’d only felt the kind of sadness that makes me cry. The only time I hadn’t felt it was when I first left, and I’d bid you goodbye on that tiny little ship.”
“What did that kind of sadness feel like, then?” he questions, his sweet eyes holding a curious gleam on you, on your eyes that don’t face him in return. Fingers slide across the tatami mat, softly, in some sort of wistful way he can make only you think he possesses. As if it was an invitation. As if he were requesting your permission. You allow his fingers to brush against the back of your hand. He slides his fingers, ungloved this morning, in between yours. “Like a heightened version of the sorrow someone can already feel?”
You pause, “Well, forgive my inarticulateness.” You lean your head towards his, and he guides it down, near his chest. “But they’re fundamentally different. Like I knew what would have caused me sorrow was coming to me, and that I couldn’t stop it, even if I was the cause of it myself. It just feels… tragic, I suppose. That we can’t be humans and live according to our thespian urges, since life in society— a watered down version of life itself, I guess— is just awfully tragic, like the time to say what a shame. And I can’t say I don’t want it because how could we have not caused it?” Your head is in his chest before you realise it, arms circled around his waist. “It’s tragic, it’s so tragic.” And you don’t bawl or cry because you haven’t done so with such fervour in years, only letting out occasional sobs like the one from the night before. There are tears pooling in your eyes, however, so you shut them tight in hopes that you can dream again.
“Don’t cry,” he wishes. “You’ll make me cry as well.”
“Would that bother you?”
“No, but it definitely would make things harder later.” He starts sobbing, quietly.
“Then cry– as much as you’d like. I’m the only person you’ll be seeing– when I leave.”
Life is cruel in the way that humans could have prevented things, yet they did not. It is cruel in the sense that things could have happened, and yet like humans, they prevent these things from happening, time and time again.
Society is cruel in the way that it holds the wrong people back with weapons formed from obligations and names made long before they were born.
All so cruel. Yet so kind in the way it is just.
He caresses your back, cradling your head with his other hand. The two of you sit in silence for a while, the words and your thoughts sitting right beside you. All is quiet, for a moment’s respite.
You retract from the clasp of his chest, and bore your eyes into the pearly seas in his once more, smiles wistful, teary eyes in melancholy. “We had our night yesterday,” you comment. It was like a spell in a fontainian fairytale someone had bequeathed to you. But this time you won’t get married to your prince, your best friend, your closest companion, your confidante. As much as you would have liked to believe it years ago, there are no fairies, or magical shoes made of crystalline glass, or glamorous dresses made from torn fabric. There are no mice, or evil step-family members, or carriages made from vegetables. “Today, everything is going to get back to normal.”
“I know,” you croak, sniffing, the white of your eyes reddened with branches of blood-hued veins.
He chokes back, “I’m going to miss you again,” he pleads, then, “Remember me, please.”
“I could never not forget you,” you echo what you’d reaffirmed of yourself long ago, softly. Your arms circle his again.
“Be sure to visit again. And not after a few years, like how you did it this time.”
“I’ll be sure, yeah. I’ll- I’ll definitely do that.” You blink a few times.
Breakfast is tranquil, hushed. It is eaten in a comfortable silence you won’t have in years.
“When I see you the next time, you’d better be happy,” you warn jokingly while the plates are taken away. “Be married to somebody nice, give your children the family that you had as a child.”
No matter how much it hurts you, you’d hope on the stars for that, since you’d want him to finally love someone more than he loves you.
“I guarantee no promises,” he jests back.
“I know. But do your utmost to have that.”
During the last time he’s accompanying you somewhere, it’s to the docks in ritou. “Time for me to go,” you smile wistfully. There is no gleeful grin plastered on your face like the last time. The sun has only just risen an hour ago, and the scent of summer is nigh, brought on by spring’s lovely, flowered farewell. “It’s almost like before.”
“We’re older now, however,” he muses.
“Hm,” you hum in agreement. “We’re all grown-up. We’re the adults in the stories now.”
Ayato smiles. Is it pride? Joy? Melancholy? Maybe a mix of everything, making it nothing at all? You presume it’s a mix of everything. “And just one thing.”
“What’s wrong?”
“When you’re absolutely sure you’d like to, check your portmanteau. Everything I’ve wanted to say and haven’t said to you is sealed away in a letter inside it.”
You know what he’ll say, yet you want to read them from him anyway. Not because of curiosity, but because you’d like to have something to remind him by, always. Still, you wish to kiss him once more. But not now. You can’t do it now.
And you leave him again, hopping on the ship. “I’m sailing away.”
“Safe travels, old friend.”
“See you, ayato. I wish you well!” you laugh, waving, the tears already pricking at your eyes.
“And I, you,” he waves back.
The day is good. There is good weather, and the sea is calm. With weeps you soak in the sea’s scent, let your skin bask in the fresh summer sunlight and the lack of torrents.
That night you settle in wangshu inn, and you rummage through everything as if you were searching for a gold earring in a bathhouse tub.
Once you find the little piece of folded paper, buried below everything, you sigh, knowingly, bittersweetly. Of course, he would put it where it would be difficult to find, that mischievous little man. And of course, you would not know how he could have done it, or even when he could have slipped it in.
This is what’d been dispatched in the letter:
My dear,
Forgive me for copying your style of sending a letter before a goodbye, though they do claim that imitation is the highest form of flattery.
I’d like you to know that I’ll love you always— I cannot imagine how one can stop loving another, much less how one can stop loving you. I will think of you whenever I can, and whenever I need to, so I now give you my apologies in case you’d like me to stop, because I don’t think such is humanly possible. Perhaps, in another life, where we were normal people with normal duties to carry out, and our definitions of heroism and extraordinary acts were just living like decent citizens, we would have felt the joy of last night every single day. And maybe, in that life, we would have consummated a marriage long ago, and had the life you want me to have without you now. Please, don’t feel disheartened by anything, and don’t feel ashamed by crying or feeling horrible either. There is not a single soul who goes through their days without feeling terrible at least once or twice. Please be happy in the sense that you won’t forbid your own sadness or jealousy, and be in peace in the sense that you’ll allow chaos to break into the cracks of your life once in a while. The cracks will be pieced back together, sooner or later, although I myself have yet to find a way to promise when. Your sagacity is derived from how you don’t have all wisdom, and that is the best kind of it one can have, because it is the kind that you have. Your beauty is derived from how kind you are, and how you are one the best types of people in the world— the ones with little sections of the tragic in their lives who still smile eventually.
That line makes you grin subtly. He’s one of the best people in the world, then.
Never feel inferior to others only due to the fact that your head and heart tell you these. Please remember that no matter what, I love you, and if I of all people can’t help falling in love with you, then there will be several others who will see your frown, or see you doing something considered peculiar one day, and they will fall for the same qualities of yours that I had fallen for. Think of these requests as favours you’ll be carrying out for me.
For you I would trade it all.
With the end of this letter I wish you a wonderful rest tonight, my princess, best friend, closest companion and confidante. (If I’m not mistaken, that was the whole list, right?)
You shake your head in light disbelief that he had written this, but also because you finally knew what to do in life. Before you had been wandering over teyvat aimlessly, yet now you knew what you wanted to task yourself with. Before you sleep you press a kiss to the piece of paper. Its scent is just like his.
For now you bid farewell to the one who will always be your prince, your best friend, your closest companion, your confidante, even if he cannot be that person in your life anymore.
And perhaps the two of you have accepted that.
#kamisato ayato x reader#genshin ayato x reader#kamisato ayato#ayato x reader#ruer writes#genshin impact x reader#genshin x reader#ayato angst#(question mark??)
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like it’s the old love. | part 1.1 | “winter beach”
masterlist | next
features albedo
warnings: fem!reader, a few ships, like ganqing and xingyun. but other than that there’s nothing, though you could ask me to add them if there’s anything you’d like me to put tws of!!
notes: woo new series lesgo lesgo!! seriously though, I hope this doesn’t end up being another tiatt,,,, (I’m still working on tiatt I promise)
summary: a walk on the beach in winter hits the spot. spending time with albedo, your all-too-perfect best friend, does that better. the two of you come up with an arrangement, after.
The sand lies by the banks like brown sugar sprinkled on a pastry, warm and sweet and comforting. It’s that perfect, pleasant time in winter— when it’s not too cold, or not too warm that it still feels like autumn, and your fingers only feel like frost if you’ve dipped them in unheated water or gone on without stuffing your hands in your pockets for too long. Winter to the two of you isn’t like the rush of snowflakes, or being huddled up in blankets with hot chocolates– though, a hot chocolate would be a welcome surprise for you right now— it’s visiting the beach when the air’s not too frigid that you’ll be blowing your fingers off later and the water at home will still feel tepid enough to keep you warm after. It’s sleeping in his parents’ used car after a chapter in a book; it’s silence or empty exchanges between you and Albedo that keep you close, connected at the hip all the same whenever you’re together.
There’s pink dusting his cheeks and nose, at the porcelain paleness of his complexion. You have to squint every time your mother is about to take a picture: the wind’s whooshing heads straight to your eyes, so it’s not like you can open them much— and his hair.
He tugs on your coat as he always has. “Cold?” you ask, turning to him.
“No,” he shakes his head. “I’ve to show you some of the seashells.”
He guides you to different spots, ones you think could be a collector’s treasure troves. Since you were young, you’d never really gone out much: your parents only had time to spare for work, and they never had more time to introduce you to any of their friends’ children, or re-introduce you to the ones you’d known from the time when you were in diapers— the only exception being Albedo, of course. The one who’d become your closest friend, no matter how far from him you lived, or the fact that you only visited him and his mother and sister, Alice and Klee, in Mondstadt every holiday you had (and holidays were scarce, especially back home in Liyue). No matter what, he’s still the one who’ll blow on your fingers for you, who’ll find trinkets and gifts from everywhere he knows about more than you do.
You bend down to unearth one from its blanket of sand as you did to your hands from your pockets. The cold prickles at your fingertips.
The seashell— or perhaps it’s not a seashell but that of a clam, you don’t visit the beach that often anyway— is a deep marine, with waves of white on it like a rippling in the water or the wind playing with silk. How mystical, you think, no matter how normal it seems or how stupid you sound finding a clam’s shell captivating: that a jewel without any acclaim for its beauty is still a jewel, and even more so once it's observed.
You stand up again.
“Think I could keep one of these?” you jest. “I had this friend once, whose grandfather went to these beaches for her grandmother. He collected lots of shells until he had a bag of them, and brought them back to his wife. Must’ve had a nice thing going on there.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been told that that’s illegal,” he answers, nonchalantly. “And I don’t think you want those crimes on your track record. Though I could collect some of them for you if you’d like—”
“No, it’s really alright— I was just joking,” you chuckle. “Don’t think it would do you too good if you had those on your track record, either. Didn’t expect you to take it so seriously.”
“I’d manage,” he replies. “My mother told me she’d have a place for me, anyway.”
You narrow your eyes in confusion. “But Alice doesn’t—? Oh…” He’s talking about Rhinedottir. “You still call her your mother? Wait, you don’t have to reply, just got confused, sorry if I’m overstepping anything or prying into things too much.”
“It’s really alright,” he states. His expression stays the same: a blank slate, yet so… human? There’s something about his face that places his identity firmly onto him, even if it barely changes. Sometimes you wonder how he can keep himself so level, so calm and unchanging each time. And then you give up because you’ve never found an answer and never will.
Silence pushes itself onto the two of you for a while, the waves crash on the shore leaving bubbles that remind you of milky foam on hot coffee. The sky and the sea are almost one, like those art pieces in watercolour where the colours get darker on the paper the more brushstrokes you apply over their spots. It’s clear and undisturbed, a picture-perfect view of an image you can hear the sea from, a mosaic of sea, sky and sand.
“Oh, god, my hands are getting numb— how can your hands stand it?”
He brings your hands to his fingers, pale and long and probably quite lithe with a pen on paper, rubs them over yours, and lays his breath on them. It’s warm.
“That’s what happens if you keep them out of your pockets for too long,” he says. “You’ll enjoy it once you get used to it. Then you’ll start to love what you’ve never noticed the joy of before.”
“I’m not saying I don’t like the cold, I’m just not used to the numbness. It stings, really. I guess I’m quite lucky to have you here with me,” you smile.
He smiles right back at you. “Then it’s fortunate that I’ll always be here to warm them up for you.”
For a moment everything feels perfect— it’s the best winter break you could have asked for during your gap year, before you enter university. The sun is enveloped in the embrace of pillowy clouds, hidden from the sky. The scent of the sea fills the beach and your hands cling clumsily onto his comfortable jacket while the waves laugh along. For a moment it’s all familiarity with the unfamiliar; it’s visiting the beach like you’d done the year before, yet feeling how unknown it all is to you again. It’s seeing him again and knowing everything and nothing about him.
“Could I borrow your phone real quick?” you request, hands mimicking the click of a camera. “I want to take a picture.”
“You don’t have your own?”
You make a short mime act of fishing something out of your empty pockets, before turning them inside-out, holding your also empty hands up for him to see.
He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Here.”
You swiftly snatch it from his hands. “Thanks.”
Hands in his pockets he turns his head down toward the sand, the trees behind the beach swaying somewhat hesitantly along with the early winter wind.
“Click, click— okay, pose!”
In the photo his eyes are fully dilated, every other bit of his stolid expression still intact.
“I can’t believe I actually got a picture of an Albedo expression! Wait, hold on, I’m going to save it in my favourites real quick,” you giggle, but soon it turns into an onslaught of guffaws. “You should make it into your profile picture instead of that passport photo.”
You quickly stuff your hands back in your pockets, the phone still with you: you don’t want them to be numb again.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks you, though there’s a teasing lilt subtly hidden in his monotonous voice. “And here I thought you wanted a picture of the scenery.”
“I will, but I still have to take pictures of you too. You’re part of the scenery,” you jokingly reply. “And yes. Thanks for bringing me out here again—”
“Why don’t we go closer to the water?”
“Huh—? Ah, sure, but wouldn’t I be getting cold again?”
“I’ll warn your fingers again once we get in my car, after my mother notifies us of when we can drive home.” Now he’s talking about Alice. “And you’ll get to take more pictures, too.”
So you acquiesce, and gaze down at the ground, at your shoes trailing behind his, leaving solemarks on the sand. It seems as if pieces of shells or whole shells themselves were sprinkled on the ground like speckles of unstirred sugar on a warm beverage.
You wish you could find a conch to hear the waves’ melody forever. You snap a few pictures before locking the phone between your arm and torso, about to dip your hands in the water— he said he’d help you warm them after, anyway—
He steals his phone back—
“Hey!” you shout, but he already has the phone, and you can already see the light from the flash rapidly appearing and disappearing. “Albedo! Stop!” you order, but it comes out more like unadulterated laughter, tinged with a slight amount of faux disbelief. You try to push it out from the grasp of his hands.
A seagull passes by, the white of its plumage temporarily covering the two of you.
And all the play fighting and goofiness… feels good. Wonderfully so. It’s the best you’ve felt in a year, since the last time you and him had met. At home where your parents are usually busy, you’re a different person, a result of having to change from a child to a little adult for the approval of those who make up your life. But here you’re free, at least for a little while; you’re allowed at least a moment of respite, when you’re thousands of kilometres away from home.
Two giggling children, having fun and being young as if there’s no tomorrow. The two of you have your lives, it’s events stacked before you like dominoes meant to be pushed at the end of your gap years— Albedo has a promising future of being a chemist, like his mother, ahead of him, already on the Sumeru Akademiya track; you’ve got your life back at home, where you have to study, appease your parents enough and go through three years of university until you’ll be an adult in the working world.
And you probably won’t see him again.
Or you will, but it won’t be the same— it’s as if he’s a part of childhood, your fountain of youth. You meet him and again you’ve rejuvenated the parts of you that are just two kids who know nothing about each other yet love each other regardless, so unlike the adults you have to be when you’re apart. So without that tiny, drowning part of your child self, how will your interactions be? When that part of you is dead, dried out like a wilted plant, what will happen to the two of you? What will be left but awkward, uncomfortable silence and typical adults’ perfunctory gestures?
“Albedo! [Name]!”
The two of you turn behind, stopping yourselves immediately. Your thoughts are torn from you like wet paper.
“Klee! Don’t run too fast, you’ll trip yourself—” her elder brother warns.
She speeds up on the sand, scampering excitedly toward the two of you.
“Oh, she’ll be just fine,” you reassure him.
Behind her Alice follows, her face like the warm glow of sunlight peeking through winter weather, strolling along.
“Hi, Klee!” You squat down.
“How was the walk?” Albedo’s head turns up to meet his mother.
“It went well. We’ve got to go back in the car soon, though,” she clicked her tongue playfully. “Someone has to go to take a nap once we get back home.”
(“But I don’t wanna,” Klee frowns.
“Oh well, Albedo and I will be sleeping too, anyway, so you won’t be missing anything”, you tell her.)
“You can just text me once you’ve arrived back home. On a side note, though,” she turns to you. “How was your walk?”
“[Name] tried to steal my phone.”
“Hey, you can’t say that, I was trying to take a picture!” you retort. “And you stole it back!”
—
He helps you into the front passenger seat, shutting the car door behind you as you enter.
You gaze at him as he’s outside, the inside of the car— his car, god, the two of you can drive now— a little world you’ve been suspended in. Same eyes, same cheeks, same face as when you first met. You hope that in the future, nothing changes at all. He’s science and he’s magic, he’s pale blonde hair and striking, inquisitive blue eyes in black winter jackets and white lab coats and button-up shirts. He’s your best friend, he’s someone you rarely meet, he’s someone you’re splitting paths with. There’s a chill from the air that lingers on your skin and if you exhale you can still see your breath disappearing into the air, but you’re lumped under your layered jackets and soon you feel warm as his hands lie on the steering wheel.
He’s there and it’s warm and familiar and you wish you could stay with him forever. Yet your heart is full of jealousy and worry— he has everything figured out for him, decided for him. He is the boy genius, the prodigy, and you’re someone who doesn’t want to grow up yet because—
“I’ll send you the pictures later,” he reports, pulling you out of your thoughts.
“That would be great, thanks,” you smile, checking the time on your phone for no reason. “So, how’s life at the Akademiya?”
From him comes a little hum. “I’ve been alright,” he says. “What I’ve heard from my seniors about the difficulties of studying didn’t seem to affect me much.”
“Ah, I get that. But that’s because you’re smart,” you compliment, though you’re quite sure that he, with his kind of genius, has heard that a million times over. (But you can’t help but bring it up sometimes— if only he’d be a bit meaner about it, less modest or less kind— you’d feel better. Happier. Less envious. Still, that kind of thinking was selfish, meant to be bitten back by your throat forever.)
He makes another noise— a little, hesitant one of discomfort.
“But anyway,” you continue, “Any plans yet for your post-Akademiya days?”
“No— well, I can always go to Mother’s,” he starts, “But I want to continue painting. I fear that if I work with her, even if I’ll still be in Mondstadt most of the time, I won’t have much time left for other activities— like painting and taking care of Klee,” he pauses. “Or taking care of you every time you come back.”
“Nah, I’m the one who takes care of you,” you playfully retort. “Still, seriously: if you feel like you want to focus on art instead or find a job that lets you keep both science and art, just go for it. You don’t have to stay with Auntie Rhine.”
You’ve seen his work before, though. Pure masterpieces, all of them: only he can pick out such exquisite colours and paint them in such a methodical manner to produce an item so beautiful, so mesmerising. It’s as if his everything, from painting to work, is built from the foundation of scientific procedures and observation. The first time he had shown you his artwork— the piece in question being a sketch of two butterflies— was a few years ago, and after that you had asked him why he was planning to go to Spantamad instead of Khsharewar.
“I know that,” he replies. “But thank you. How about you?”
“I’ve just been how I’ve always been. Nothing’s changed all that much.”
He’s out here, accomplishing so many things, set to have a bright, fulfilling future; you’re here, taking a gap year not for a break but because of uncertainty, because you’re unsure of what you want to do and who you want to be, a leech on and a burden to your parents who send you away to live with someone else while they’re busy. It’s because you’re scared of not going through the full coming-of-age experience, of optimising the last year you get to be a child, before you become an adult with an empty life (at least, that’s how you think things will end up like for you— being a corporate slave or plain business owner dragging your parents’ hard work through the ground, with only dead dreams and student loans to your name).
And what of everyone else back at home? You tried to get with many friends of yours, giving them support, encouragement and advice when you could. They would all find in you a person to confide in, and you’d be pleased, thinking that you could confide in them too. However, they would then tell you that they’d been infatuated with someone else for a long time or would never be interested in someone before you would have the chance to confess, ever terrified of rejection.
You fell at every chance you could, just for an opportunity to have a fling, or some kind of love like the types in fairytales and romcoms. All that just to fail and feel lonely in the end.
You’d really like to say Albedo was an exception. In some ways he was. Yet in other ways he wasn’t— he’s definitely not much different from them, though. Just someone you think you should go for no matter how much he exists outside of your league. Still, you think there’s much reason to be less shy around him, less bashful.
The rest of the drive is silent, and you don’t know if it’s him understanding you or not knowing what to say (though he always knows what to say, no? Is staying quiet the best he can do for you right now?)— he makes a few turns and soon the two of you are on the highway, heading back to the suburbs. You didn’t suggest any music. You just took the silence in and enjoyed it with him.
Raindrops begin to fall, lulling you to sleep. He’s still steering the wheel, steady and calm and undisturbed, as your eyes start to close.
When you’re there he stops the car and starts to unfasten his seatbelt. He turns to you.
“Tired?”
“A bit. And I don’t want to be out in the rain…”
“You can sleep here if you’d like.”
(“...you actually waited?” you ask, groggily. “I thought I’d only be sleeping for five minutes, and then you’d wake me up and drag me to bed.”
“Morning,” he greets. “You slept for a whole hour.”
You groan. “What about Klee and Auntie Alice?”
“They’re in the house.”)
—
You spend the next few hours in the house with Albedo, staring up at the ceiling. It’s golden hour, the sky still painted a mix of both warm and cool hues. The clouds gather above you, though they’ll probably be gone soon enough without any rain or snow.
A chuckle erupts.
You laugh, but it tapers off all too soon.
He’s always been perfect, you think— like a prince out of a fairytale.
(You don’t know if that makes you hate him or love him.)
When you were little and would visit them, a tiny child with tiny clothes and a tinier suitcase your parents had packed for you, you would scamper your way to Alice before she would read you a fairytale every night. Sometimes Albedo would join. Whenever Rhinedottir wasn’t around, even though he would be fine sleeping alone, he’d still prefer to sleep in the same room as you.
Over time, as the two of you grew up, Rhinedottir’s appearances slowly dwindled. In your head you had once likened Rhinedottir’s growing lack of presence to the sun during a storm. It was always there at first, though as the clouds began to gather, it would soon be engulfed by dark, dust-like clouds, and no matter how much you enjoyed the storm you would wonder where the sun had gone.
“And so, the baby princess was cursed. The witches rushed to keep her somewhere safe—” Alice recited, to which Albedo questioned, “Weren’t witches bad?”
“No, they’re good witches!” you corrected him. “They took care of the princess!”
Alice giggled. “Oh, yes, my dear. The good witches had placed the princess under their care right after they had heard the curse fall from the wretched witch’s mouth. They hoped to avoid such a fate,” she said. “Yet if there’s one thing you should know, it is that you can never evade the inevitable. You’ll understand once you’re older.
“Soon, the princess grew to be a beautiful maiden, unbeknownst to the fact that she had been born royal all along. She cared for the animals in the wood where she’d grown, and sang songs of romance, love and freedom while dancing with the flora and fauna. Under the moonlit, starry sky and the towering trees she dreamed of falling in love with and marrying a prince. And he was a rather handsome one, at that.
“On a day meant to be much like the others, she wandered a bit too far from where she was accustomed to, before she met a beautiful prince. They fell in love at first sight, and decided to get married.”
“But that would be bringing the curse to her!” you panicked. Albedo stayed silent.
“Ah, yes, and the wretched witch from before— the one who had cursed the dear princess— sought the engaged prince and princess out, and hypnotised the princess. She was put in a trance, and ended up pricking her finger anyway. Then she and the whole of the kingdom were put in a deep sleep, while nature would be set to reclaim it for a hundred years.”
“Oh no!”
“But don’t fret— the good witches were alive, and hurried to wake the prince.”
“Does he save the princess?” you asked.
“Why, yes. But she saved herself, too. And their love was what saved the kingdom, for he stood by her side and gave her a true love’s kiss, giving her the strength to think again and rouse herself from her slumber.
“They soon headed to defeat that wretched, wretched witch, and they succeeded. The people rejoiced, having been saved, and the prince and princess were safely wedded, ruling as king and queen for half a century over the prosperous kingdom.”
“Woah,” you breathed out.
Beside you, Albedo was already asleep, eyes shut tight in a slumber as deep as the princess’s.
“He fell asleep!”
“Well, I suppose it is getting late,” Alice chuckled, turning the bedside lamp off and tucking you in. “Goodnight, [name] and Albedo.”
Suddenly, your eyelids felt as heavy as rocks. “Goodnight, Alice…”
You wished you had a prince, too. Or a princess. Just someone in general.
(The morning after that, you woke up, and beside you there was no Albedo. He was always, always, one step ahead of you. Maybe you would always be chasing him.
You then headed back to your parents’ home, ready to start school again.)
“Hey.” You turn to him out of the blue. “Remember the fairytale about the sleeping princess?”
“...Sleeping Beauty?”
In fairytales the main characters marry each other; in romcoms the leading characters fall in love. In books the girls are smart, ending up with the people they want. In stories they are not useless; in fiction the characters accomplish things and live their lives to the fullest without wasting any time.
So you, clouded in your envy for life and joy and excitement, at least for one year, want that too. To be young and free and in love. And then, you’d be alright with being a corporate slave, or with handling the mundanity of your parents’ work while your much more successful relatives watched and judged you, pitying you for the life you’d found yourself forever trapped in (at least, you think they’d do that).
“Yeah. Are you familiar with the concept of coming-of-age?”
“Yes, but why…?”
“Just wanted to know. That’s good, though.
“I’m going to ask something of you, so please forget it if you don’t want to.”
For a moment you can see the ever-stoic Albedo gulp, his eyes laser-focused on yours, deep with inquisitiveness and a slight bit of shock. You tightened your hands on his shoulders.
Outside, the sun has already begun to set, the light blending into the growing intensity of a post-golden hour sky’s marine hue. The clouds have all but dissipated.
Of all the ideas you’ve had, this is by far the most stupid, dignity-reducing one that you have ever had in that scattered brain of yours
“Date me. I’m a forever young adult-ish soul stuck in a growing person’s body with no life at all who only stops being a ghost when I’m miles away from home. I’ve always struggled with finding someone, so I couldn’t have my coming-of-age adventure or my summer fling. And it’s not like I could have found that kind of adventure with friends anyway, since I’m not as close to anyone as I’ve always been with you, and they’re all people who would never fall in love with me,” you ramble.
Albedo, reduced to a gaping fish out of water, jaw barely clinging onto his fair face.
“So I’ve always wanted to ask that if you, because you’re close to me, and I know that it may be a waste of time for you, so I just want to try my luck and if it doesn’t lead to anything or if you don’t want it then you can just forget whatever I said—”
The words stop tumbling out of your mouth for a while. You gaze at him, something indescribable and indecipherable in his eyes, like a snow globe that you can’t look clearly into. He’s staring up at you, and what is he thinking, you wonder and worry, what is he thinking of saying? Will he decline and will he forget? Can you even entertain the notion that he wouldn’t?
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
“Okay,” you reply. And suddenly it hits, because for the first time even if out of pity due to your pathetic desperation someone is willing to love you or at least act like it. It’s completely quiet before tears roll down your cheeks like they’re from a garden’s canister, as if it’s water trickling down the leaves of plants and onto their patches of soil. He begins to worry, you can tell from the rush of his fingers to rub them off and wipe them dry, to which you assure him that you’re just alright. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to get much better at acting.”
“Maybe I won’t be acting at all,” he says, and you swear it’s merely a joke of his, so a little grin breaks out on your face. And the only emotion you can understand amidst the sea of his eyes is relief. “I hope you enjoy it, your small fling. I hope you enjoy your young adult novel gap year.”
You giggle a bit harder, inhaling loudly. “Yeah. Best summer fling— one for the best books in YA fiction, I’d say.”
And in that moment while you bring him to you and hug his chest as tight as you can, the two of you laugh and laugh and laugh, until you’re silent, face still sore with remnants of the sudden smiles stuck on your faces. In that moment you forget your jealousy and keep only your joy alive, like a candle finally reaching that temporary moment with nothing around to destroy it.
“…But it’s winter, not summer.”
His sudden remark is so ridiculous that it makes you laugh, playfully swatting at his arm. “I’ll be here for a whole year,” you smile. Classic Albedo. “It’ll be a summer fling for a while. And you’d know what I’d meant, either way.”
(“Should we tell Auntie Alice?”
“No, let’s just try to acclimate ourselves to it first,” he suggests.
“Right, good thinking.”)
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#genshin impact x reader#genshin x reader#albedo x reader#albedo smau#genshin smau#genshin impact#albedo#ruer writes#litol 💿.#fem!reader#fem reader
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