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“It felt weird seeing your back as you took off. I realized that I don’t remember seeing your back. Because you were always beside me.”
- Soulmate, (2023).
“Will you marry me in our next life?”
“....for real?”
“For real, real.”
Oh, this fool.
He sighs. The light flickers before his eyes. His fading vision like fireflies. He doesn’t have very long. He smiles, watching the snow mingle with his blood, settling like needles over the jutting stump of bone where his arm is meant to be.
The last sensations in a world that’s quickly slipping away from him.
He smiles.
“If you’ll have–”
His vision trembles, like a light trying to keep up with the flick of the switch and the darkness starts to close in like hunting dogs crouching at the ends of his eyeballs and then there’s white whiter than snow filling up the centres of his irises–
“Oi. Getō. Wake up.”
Suguru opens his eyes to cornflower blue and Gojō’s idiotic, scowling face staring at him upside down.
Today they’re fifteen and Gojō has been put into detention for trying to activate a domain expansion during field lessons.
Suguru doesn't remember coming to find him in the first year classroom. He wouldn’t have. Gojō aggravates him like a bad rash. Everything he says is a provocation that seems tailored to push all of Suguru’s wrong buttons.
“Morning, princess.”
Gojō drawls, in that infuriatingly put-upon and pretentious way of his and Suguru feels his hackles rise. He rubs at his eyes. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, either.
Strange.
His mind feels stuffed full of cotton. Of soot. Of the heat that seeps into the skin of his armpits and Suguru frowns because he’s very warm, far too warm and he last remembers feeling the touch of snow and the bite of winter and the pain of–
Will you marry me in our next life?
Suguru’s senses sizzle to life like they’ve been doused with gasoline. One blink of his eyes becomes a lit match.
The cotton sizzles. Catches on fire.
The remains of Gojō begin to char and curl away into wisps of ash.
He jerks upwards, elbow catching painfully on the corner of the desk.
A desk which has the year 2005 scrawled on it, a desk that will have his and Satoru’s initials scribbled on the far right corner within a year, a Satoru who is–
“You having a seizure or something?”
Suguru turns around, heart jack rabbiting, and Gojō, who is Satoru, who will be Satoru until the day Suguru dies with his name on lips, is looking at him. Hands in his pockets. Slouched spine. Mouth downturned. Eyes narrowed with feigned disdain.
But Suguru knows better.
He has known the little shivers in those blue irises for a decade and he knows what concern looks like on Satoru’s perpetually bored and nonchalant expression.
Nausea wells up in his stomach and Suguru, fifteen and not, here and not, alive and...not?, sways on his feet. He looks down at his hands.
Hands. Plural. Intact.
Heart, beating, when he presses a hand over it.
What the fuck.
His head flies back up.
“Satoru– you’re....I...what is...”
Satoru’s eyes narrow with suspicion and Suguru remembers. The memory like an implosion; his heart crumpling like paper on itself.
Oh. That’s right. I only called him Satoru at the end of our first year. Never before that.
Suguru feels lightheaded.
What is this? A dream? A vision? The afterlife?
He pushes away the last thought almost violently. Satoru has no place in an afterlife. He’s meant to live and age and bloom like he deserves to, untouched by Suguru’s rot, thriving like he’s–
No. If this is the afterlife, Satoru doesn’t belong here. But if Satoru is here, then does that mean Satoru is also...?
Suguru retches, feeling sick.
No. He’s not. He can’t be. I saw him. I saw him! We spoke and Satoru was fine and he is fine, he will always be–
“Dude. You look white. Are you gonna be sick or something? Don’t throw up on me.”
He makes a face, pretty little nose all scrunched up, and leans away. He looks a little worried, but it sits horribly on his young face. Awkward and out of place.
“D’you...I can get Sensei. Or Shoko. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
He has the audacity to scoff lightly at the end of this sentence, because of course.
He’s Satoru.
He’s infuriating. Arrogant and insensitive and a moron. Suguru wants to slap him. Or kiss him.
He hasn’t held Satoru in the last ten years. God, in this timeline, whatever warped sort of fever dream or dying hallucination this is, he hasn’t held Satoru even once.
“Satoru, I’m–”
Will you marry me in our next life?
He reaches out his hand, his hands, Satoru startles, staring at him with trepidation, and then the sun shifts in the sky, catches on the rim of Satoru’s sunglasses, blinding Suguru–
“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t see you there at all!”
Suguru falls on his ass with a dull, painful thud.
He stares up, blank and uncomprehending. The shadow that falls over him seems to stretch out forever and ever. The mall is a bustling, busy place but for a moment, he doesn’t even notice that the place teems and crawls with monkeys.
“Are you alright?”
A hand lingers before his eyes.
Outstretched and open.
Suguru stares up at it, unable to open his mouth. His undead heart beats and beats ferociously.
Today they are thirty and Satoru stands before him, resplendent and lovely at an age that Suguru never lived to see him reach.
An age that Satoru never reached himself, but for now, Suguru does not know this and it a small mercy life has thrown his way.
He’s dressed in a light blue shirt. Grey trousers. His face has filled out. His hair is windswept. Glasses resting on the crown of his head.
He is beautiful in a tender, quiet sort of way.
Suguru’s lips part.
“I’m–”
“Satoru?”
It’s the first time he’s heard Satoru’s given name be uttered from lips that are not his own.
It is...jarring, to say the least. Unbearable.
Suguru draws himself up to his feet, blood ringing in his ears, instead of spilling out of his blown-apart side.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He turns around and walks away, but not before he’s caught sight of the child who wriggles out of the slender woman’s arms and runs right into Satoru’s knees.
Not before he sees Satoru laugh and bend a knee to pick the child up into his arms.
Oh. Oh.
Suguru’s feet trip over the ends of his gesā. His skin crawls.
He doesn’t wait to see the woman’s face – he can’t, not without feeling like he has vipers slithering in his belly – but a malicious, seething part of him watches her long enough to see that she has hair as dark as his own. He feels bile rise to the back of his tongue.
And the girl...
The little girl has eyes so bright and blue that even Suguru cannot run from them. Irrefutably, irrevocably, undeniably Satoru’s.
He clenches his eyes shut, sick with envy and longing, wishes for a death that won’t come, thinks he hears Satoru call out to him again, thinks he hears a bright little “Who is that, Papa?” that shatters his heart in two, but he’s always been good at walking away from that voice.
Ten years of practice and what not.
Will you marry me in our next life?
Suguru opens his eyes and the people begin to mingle and warp into one meaningless whole and he feels the panic just starting to build when the scene falls away to–
“Suguru. Look.”
Suguru comes to, gasping. He’s standing in one place though, arms crossed over his chest, and he knows that his face shows nothing of the weary turmoil his insides are still feeling.
“Look, Suguru.”
Satoru links their arms together. He’s got blood on his cheek. On his palms. Suguru needs to lean on him and rest. To stop. To...to breathe.
To let his body settle from the terrible sensation of endless free fall.
He’s so scared of all of this being snatched away again.
I just wanted to die by his hand. Why can't I? Why? Why?
Satoru hugs him, smelling like death. Like gore. Suguru’s heart feels swollen like the mouth of a dam in the monsoon, trembling against the weight of all that he’s trying to hold back. He winds his arms around Satoru’s back. Fists his hair harshly than he had meant to.
The tears don’t come and Suguru thinks:
Maybe this is it. Maybe I really am dead now.
Satoru’s arms tighten around his neck. Today they are eighteen and he’s just stood by and watched Satoru killing a room full of people just how he’s been taught to.
Such a quick learner, his Satoru. Perfect, in everything.
“I did good, didn’t I?”
Suguru stares at the viscera and blood splattered across the floor before the stage. Satoru draws away to look at him; painful, naked hope on his face.
Numb, trapped inside a body he outgrew around nine years ago, Suguru nods.
“Y-you did. You always do. Thank you, Satoru.”
The blue of Satoru’s eyes is almost eerily bright. Is the slight fatigue beneath them there real or–
“A-are you happy now?”
Suguru nods.
Yes.
“You won’t leave me, will you?”
He shakes his head. Kisses Satoru’s forehead.
Never.
Satoru smiles, bright, bright, bright. The ends of the smile waver. Just a little. The voice quivers, only a little.
Perhaps, that’s just Suguru’s imagination. It must be. Satoru has never been happier than when he chose to follow after Suguru. He belongs with Suguru. He is Suguru’s and no one else’s.
Always, always, always–
“I love you, Suguru. I always will.”
The two of them, together. Like it was meant to be.
Suguru buries his face in Satoru’s hair. He feels...slightly discomfited. Looking at that expression for too long. He blames it on the constant out-of-body experiences. The relentless loop of lives he’s being strung through in what feels like five seconds of real time.
Yes. Yes that must be it. There can’t be any other reason for this discomfiture.
Satoru and he are meant to be.
This is what it should have been like.
Fuck, Suguru should have asked Satoru to leave that godforsaken school behind and come with him the first time.
“I love you too.” He whispers. Satoru clings to him, trembling, and Suguru doesn’t know if it’s from the high of his first mass killing or from terror at being held by Suguru. It can’t be the latter, right? No. No, it can’t. This is the closest to perfect and whole their lives will ever be. He strokes Satoru’s hair. His back. Kisses his bloody knuckles. “I love you. It’s alright. You’ll learn. With time, you’ll learn. You’ll get used to it.”
His kisses find the remnants of sticky blood in Satoru’s once fair hair.
They stand together on the empty stage, sole performers in this twisted circus, the shredded flesh of filthy monkeys cooling at their feet.
Apex predators.
Like it should have been.
Satoru is quiet. Awfully so.
He must be tired, Suguru thinks. Yes. He must be. It’s been a long day and it’s Satoru’s first time after all and–
“I love you.” He repeats, vicious. Like he’s starving. Famished. Rocking the taller man in his arms. Satoru curls up against him. Silent. Too silent. “You’re happy with me, aren’t you? This is what we’re meant for, you and I. You know that, don’t you? Hmm? You trust me, right?”
Love me, right?
Satoru’s reply is quiet, muffled.
Will you marry me in our next life?
“Yes, Suguru.”
Suguru’s still trying to understand if he really means it when the stage lights go off and Satoru’s weight in his arms sags like a milestone tied to his legs–
“Satoru!”
The fourth time it happens and Suguru’s convinced that he’s dead. He’s dead and this is hell. This is what he gets for the choices he made.
“Satoru, stay with me. Don’t...don’t move–”
Today they are sixteen and Amanai Riko is dead and Satoru’s hand is growing colder and colder between Suguru’s shaking palms and Suguru doesn’t know what to do, how to stop this, how to help–
“You stay with me.”
He rasps, half-threat, half-prayer.
He has never been more willing to believe in Satoru’s divinity than he is in that moment.
“You stay with me.”
Satoru’s lips part around a bubble of blood. He’s trying to speak around his broken trachea and torn-open throat.
His eyes have grown milky and opaque. His mouth works. Suguru leans forward, trying to read.
Maybe next–
Satoru’s heart shudders once.
Will you marry me in our next life?
Goes quiet before Suguru has the time to weep. His fingers are tight, tight, around Suguru’s palm, and even that cannot stop the familiar pull that Suguru begins to feel in the centre of his chest.
It’s time to go. Again.
No. No, no, no. Not now. Not like this–
His grip is forcibly snatched out of Satoru’s cold one and with a sob torn out of his throat, Suguru only has time enough to wonder if somewhere, in this never-ending cycle, is a life where he finally has a true answer to Satoru’s question, before the scene falls through like a rip in time and he must leave Satoru behind once more–
–for going back and getting him another ice-lolly after Suguru’s “just one bite” ended up finishing nearly half of Satoru’s.
He can still hear Satoru muttering, stomping and grumpy, as he drags his feet in the unbearable heat and trails after Suguru like a lost kitten.
Today, they are twenty-three and ready to graduate. Tomorrow, they’re supposed to go and see that apartment Satoru found in downtown Tokyo.
It’s no longer possible for them to manage living at the dorms with four growing children in their care. Besides, Suguru has been looking forward to sharing a bedroom with Satoru for the rest of their lives.
“This is why I hate sharing my ice-cream with you!”
Suguru laughs, looking over his shoulder to watch Satoru’s flushed face.
“Awww. I love you too, ‘Toru.”
He murmurs and Satoru’s face turns tomato-red. He tries and fails to suppress his stupid, beautiful grin. Usually, he would have cussed Suguru out for flustering him like this but the presence of their four children makes that an impossibility right now.
“You’re awful.”
Satoru scowls at him then, blushing deeply. He reaches to hold Suguru’s hand.
“And you both are gross.”
Megumi says, without looking up from where he’s tapping away at his Gameboy, one hand secured in Satoru’s.
“Getō-sama, my feet hurt.”
Mimiko. Stretching out her hands to be carried. Behind her, Suguru sees Tsumiki guiding Nanako down the massive stone staircase of the school, holding onto the younger child’s hand.
The ice-cream man is right behind them. Satoru is still holding his hand.
He feels that familiar tug in his chest and resigned, weary, he looks up at Satoru.
“Hey, Satoru?”
“Yeah?”
Suguru smiles, tired and full of yearning.
“Will you let me share from your ice-creams and get mad when I eat more than half for the rest of our life?”
Will you marry me in our next life?
The last thing he sees is Satoru tilting his head to the side, eyes confused.
“Huh? Suguru, what are–”
Suguru doesn’t want to wake up.
But he’s beginning to realize that that’s probably not an option. He will wake up. He will find Satoru. He will lose Satoru. He will wake up again.
And again. And again. And again.
“Suguru? Suguru, baby, wake up. We’ll be late for Megumi’s recital.”
Suguru keeps his eyes shut, if only to hear Satoru’s voice for a few precious moments more.
Today they are twenty seven and Suguru should be – dead, dead, dead – getting into the shower because Megumi’s piano recital is in two hours but he doesn’t.
Will you marry me in our next life?
When he opens his eyes, Satoru disappears behind the sunshine and the billowing curtains, beyond his reach–
After the first dozen or so times, he settles into the loop.
What else is there to do?
Suguru is good at that. Settling. Adjusting like the ocean to the massive tectonic movements rocking through his being.
He moves on quicker than most, even if it means killing himself inside each time he that he must. If this is his atonement...
He will accept it.
It is better than someone like him deserves, to live so many lives beside his soul mate.
Will you marry me in our next life?
Even a heartbeat beside Satoru spans the length of an eternity, for him.
Today, they are fourteen and though he never met a Satoru that young, he is allowed to hold the boy’s hand and walk along a quiet, poppy-scented pathway through the back of Satoru’s estate.
Satoru giggles softly to himself when he sees a fluffy moth on one of the flowers. Suguru commits the sound to memory before he has to wake up again, in another unfamiliar universe, beside another beloved Satoru.
Will you marry me in our next life?
“Satoru–”
The boy runs into him, barely stopping to apologize, but once their eyes meet, Satoru’s widen almost comically.
“Haaah?” He gapes, head cocked to the side. "You...what..."
Suguru smiles.
“Hello, Satoru.”
They are surrounded by palm fronds. This might be anywhere in the world but only Okinawa has ever been so blue.
Today, they are teenagers and the world is theirs. Satoru’s, at least. Like this, in this body, Suguru towers over him.
“S-Suguru?”
His eyes are like saucers.
Suguru sees the bags beneath them. He didn’t miss them at seventeen. He does not miss them now.
Speaking of–
“Where’s your other half?”
He teases, smiles coming to him easier. This one is so young; this Satoru. Suguru wants to pick him up and hide him away from what tomorrow will do to him.
He cannot but–
His useless wishes are as endless as the grains of sand beneath their feet.
Satoru is still staring at him, wide-eyed with childish wonder.
“Suguru?”
He asks again, completely befuddled.
Suguru steps closer.
He hasn’t touched Infinity in ages.
The top of Satoru’s head is briny with salt. No Infinity. Satoru gasps, a soft, startled thing, when Suguru gently, tenderly strokes a feather light hand through his hair.
He can feel the tears spring up and...
Really? He thinks, blinking furiously. Now, of all the times? After so long?
“Suguru...are you Suguru? You’re not a trick. I can tell by your residuals. But you’re...”
His face twists with complete incomprehension but before Suguru can answer, he hears the cry of a voice he hasn’t heard since it broke further at eighteen.
“‘Toru! Where are you? Hey, ‘Toru!”
Satoru turns away from him and towards that voice like it is the gravity which tethers him.
Suguru’s hand falls away.
One day, he thinks, watching Satoru’s eyes shine as he stares after that voice, you’ll have to learn to be without your tether.
It’s not such a bad thing, is it? Without that tether, his Satoru learnt to fly. Even if the sky can be a lonely place to navigate all alone, you can’t teach a fish to fly anymore than you can teach a bird to swim.
Perhaps, some love, like theirs, is a thing destined to meet only at the horizon. Where the sun sets.
“Hey, Suguru, come here! Hurry up! You won’t believe this!”
Satoru yells in the direction of the voice. He turns back to the older Suguru, grin split wide on his face.
“You’re Suguru too then! Right? I can’t believe there’s two of you! Are you a time traveller?! Woah, I didn’t know those were real! Hey, is there two of me, too? What am I like? Older? Am I cooler? I must be! We’re still the strongest, right? Are we...um, do you know if we’re...eh, it’s nothing. Forget it....”
Suguru’s heart breaks and breaks and breaks. Satoru fidgets, hesitates, recovers from the slip and keeps yapping, oblivious and overexcited.
“–what does the older me look like? And what’re you wearing those clothes for, Suguru? Oh my god, did you become a monk–”
It’s devastating.
Suguru takes that thin hand and brings it to his damp eyes.
“Eh? Wha...what’re you doing, Suguru...?”
Footsteps cross the hedges and Satoru’s hand goes lax in his just as Suguru sees the silhouette of a much younger himself emerge from behind the palm trees, blue shirt flapping in the breeze, hair done up in that ridiculous manner, eyes softening as he cradles a dango for Satoru in his hands.
“What’d you want to show me, idiot?”
He asks just as Satoru exclaims:
“Come here and see what I found!”
“Stop yelling, ‘Toru, I don’t wanna go deaf!”
“Will you hurry up!”
Their words overlap and the love dripping from the younger him, the tenderness in those eyes, is unbearable enough that Suguru almost wills himself out of this scenario.
Okinawa.
The place where dreams never end.
Satoru’s smaller hand slips out of his–
Today, they are forty and Suguru has never regretted taking a hit for Satoru in the field before and he won’t start now.
“You idiot! You fucking bastard! You...you...what the fuck were you thinking?!”
Suguru tries to answer but he has a hole in his chest and Satoru shrieking and hysterical even as he cradles Suguru more tenderly than his own mother ever held him.
“Suguru, you can’t! You can’t leave! You cannot leave me, you asshole! You swore! You promised, you promised!”
His voice shatters on the last syllables and Suguru rests his cheek against his frantic heartbeat.
It’s okay, he wants to say. I love you, he wants to say. I would do it again for you, he wants to say.
“S-Sato....’toru....”
Satoru is crying, trembling as he crushes Suguru to his chest.
Suguru tries to smile past all the blood. Oh, this is really it, huh?
Will you marry me–
Today, they are twenty eight and making love on the spare mattress because Suguru asked if they could run away together and Satoru said yes, abandoning his wealthy, conservative family for a one-room apartment, an unknown future and Suguru’s hand in his.
–in our next life?
Suguru kisses the back of Satoru’s knee and asks:
“Spring wedding or autumn?”
Satoru laughs and says something that sounds like his name in reply–
Today, he is nineteen and the jingle of the bell above the door lets him know of Satoru’s presence even before the familiar, delicate hues of Dolce and Gabbana Blue flood his senses.
What nineteen year old wears Dolce and Gabbana to his morning classes? Suguru thinks, fondly exasperated.
He reaches for the cup of hot cocoa, with the elaborately done-up marshmallow kitten adorning it, before Satoru can sidle up to the counter and beat him to it with the flirting.
“Daisies, today?” He laughs and pushes Satoru’s usual order of extra sweetened hot chocolate across the counter. “Before I forget, here you go. On the house. Happy birthday, Satoru.”
He winks and has the pleasure of witnessing Satoru’s cocksure charm slip off, replaced entirely by an endearingly cute look of surprise.
“You...wha...how–”
It’s adorable, Suguru thinks, leaning his chin on his hand, watching the taller boy spluttering, cheeks pink, eyes sweetly wide.
It’s something he could get used to.
Will you marry me in our next life?
Being the only one capable of keeping Satoru on his toes sounds lovely, really.
Suguru touches the bouquet of daisies with a smile, Satoru’s cute fumbling making for the sweetest background noise–
Today, they are sixty-five and Satoru’s face is still the most beautiful thing Suguru’s ever laid eyes on, wrinkles like crevasses in snow, eyes a faraway, softer shade of blue behind closed eyelids.
He sleeps as peacefully as he has been, these last few months. He’s not likely to ever wake up again, they say.
It’s a lot, they say.
With Satoru’s technique and the constant strain it put on him, it’s a miracle that he even made it to this age. His heart simply cannot keep up, anymore.
I want to live to a hundred if you’re beside me.
Suguru remembers Satoru having said this, once.
He runs a hand over the thin, papery hand. Megumi’s as still as a stone beside him, his face closed off. Unreadable. They’re here, obviously. All the children. Not just theirs, but every single one who ever thrived under the sky that Satoru was.
Is.
Suguru kisses Satoru’s hand.
Lowers it back to the hospital bed but does not let go. Satoru wouldn’t like that.
“Thank you for the hard work, Satoru. You can rest now.”
Will you marry me in our next life?
“Don’t worry.” He whispers, low enough that no one but the man asleep before him can hear him. “I won’t make you wait for me too long.”
The life support is one switch away.
It’s click is the loudest thing Suguru’s ever heard in his life, like the end of the world, like a whisper in a sea of voices–
Today, he is thirty-two and their first neighbour, in this new apartment, moves in. Suguru’s heard enough gossip and speculation among the aunties to kill any lingering anticipation.
Apparently, the man is a renowned violinist.
Suguru’s not sure. He didn’t stick around for the gossip. He found it very impolite to be discussing someone who wasn’t even there in such intimate detail in the first place!
“He has two kids! One boy and one girl!”
His daughters, unfortunately, have no such inhibitions. They insist he must go meet them. Talk. To this complete stranger. Make friends. Get to–
“–know more people, Dad!”
Good heavens.
“I have friends.”
“You have one friend you made back in elementary school and even she says that your house plants don’t count as new friends!”
That’s how a very flustered and affronted Suguru, flanked by his two overexcited teenagers, finds himself outside 6B, carrying a box of homemade cookies, because obviously, his mother raised him with manners!
Nanako knocks.
She has to knock twice more before there’s something like a thud from inside the apartment and some muffled cursing.
“Who is it?”
Comes the muffled voice from behind the door and Nanako and Mimiko exchange a glance before turning to Suguru for help.
Suguru sighs.
“We’re from 6A, next door. Your new neighbours, uh....”
I don’t even know his name. Fuck.
Before Suguru can abandon both the cookies and his little troublemaker twins at this doorstep from the embarrassment, he hears the voice cheerfully reply from within.
“Oh! Neighbour? One moment!”
Two heartbeats later, the door opens.
“Hello! It’s so nice to see you! Or not, since I’m blind as a bat." There's cackling. Loud as a banshee. "I hear the music from your apartment each afternoon, though. You’ve got a good ear for music. Say, are you a musician too? I’m a violinist! Hey, what’s in that box? Is that a box?” He reaches out and pats the box before a bewildered Suguru can react in any way. “Oh yeah, it is! Is it for me....and wow, you’re tall, huh! I can make out some of you. I’m not totally blind, y’know, but enough to be legally so. Oh, I smell...are those cookies...? You brought me cookies! You’re so sweet! What kind did you get? How’d you know I like sweets? Have you been keeping tabs on me, Mister Neighbour? How sneaky! Hey, what’s your name?”
The man who’s standing in front of them is tall and pale and white-haired. His slender, elegant hands move as swiftly as heron's wings and he talks so rapidly that it’s like his mouth is struggling to keep up with his mind.
Which question do I even answer if he won’t wait between them, Suguru’s wondering, thoroughly overwhelmed and a little alarmed, when a dark head peers outside, looking completely done.
“Can you not? This is why we get kicked out of every new place we move to.”
The man just laughs some more, before taking off his dark sunglasses. He blinks, running a hand clumsily across his face, the gesture laced with easy, effortless charm.
He’s a beautiful man, Suguru can tell, even with a brief, discrete once-over.
“Satoru Gojō! Pleasure to meet you! I’m sure meeting someone as perfect as me wasn’t on your bingo card this year!”
He holds out a hand. It’s angled in the wrong direction and without looking up from his phone, the young boy gently guides it back towards Suguru.
Gojō grins, his eyes fully open and for the first time, turned towards Suguru. He looks right past Suguru, too. He blinks rapidly, too fast for Suguru to keep up with. He’s got a lazy eye. Suguru thinks it’s rather adorable and is promptly mortified at himself.
“Sorry.” He laughs, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “I’m light sensitive and it's way too early in the morning! So, what’s your name?”
His white eyelashes flutter and open fully, like dandelions and then–
The bluest pair of eyes Suguru has ever seen seem to fix on him, for just a second, and he visibly falters. The blue shifts and ripples, unable to hold still, and he feels each shift like a blow to the chest.
Like a dream shattering on stones.
Will you marry me in our next life?
The box of cookies falls out of his slackened grip–
Today, he’s twenty five and Satoru, crowned heir, beloved and adored, is watching from the ramparts when Suguru rides up to the palace gates.
He moves as soon as their eyes meet and Suguru can imagine him traversing the halls of the palace like the wind, robes billowing gently after him.
Satoru does not run out of the palace and down the steps anymore. Not like he used to when they were children and he was constantly sneaking out to come and play with Suguru’s meagre collection of wooden toys.
He moves with measured grace and poise, now. A tall, intimidating figure with his slender hands folded together inside his sleeves and nothing readable on his impassive face.
He’s dressed for the festival. For their victory in battle. He wears the heaviest crown the treasury has, the gold glinting in the sunlight. Satoru hates that crown.
Always complaining about how it cuts into the backs of his ears.
Layers upon layers of opulent silk – the usual blues that Satoru favours have been replaced by a deep, lovely shade of lavender today – trail after him as he leaves his handmaidens behind and walks right out to the open palace gates, unaccompanied.
He’s not supposed to do that, but...
Satoru’s known for a lot of things. Propriety and toeing the line are not among them.
Hundreds have gathered to see him today. Waiting since dawn, just to catch a glimpse of that strangely beautiful face, crowned and deified and framed by hair the colour of first snow.
But Satoru has eyes for none of them.
He takes Suguru’s mare by the reins, and she whinnies, nudging him in the chest with her muzzle, ecstatic to see him. Satoru strokes her head, rests his forehead against her smooth skin to breathe in the scent of war and mud and wilderness clinging to her.
He looks up at Suguru, the blue of his eyes naked with unbearable emotion, and Suguru cannot look away. Fire licks up his spine. To think that Satoru has not even laid a finger on him yet.
Over the people’s cheering and the tired, trudging clomping of the hooves of horses, Satoru leads his mare through the gates himself.
“All these days and you didn’t write home. Not once. Not even after I asked you to.”
He says, without turning back, smiling face turned towards the crowd. Suguru can see the vein standing out on his forehead when a few young women at the front of the crowd wave shyly at the strongest war general their kingdom has ever known.
He waves back, only because it’s delightful to rile Satoru up and not many have that privilege.
No one else.
Satoru throws him a look over his shoulder, disdain barely masked, but Suguru’s joy at poking the bear is not yet sated.
“My liege wanted me to write to him in the midst of a war? I wasn’t aware. You must forgive the slight.”
“Don’t call me that. I have no patience for your pretentiousness today. I have a name you know well how to use.”
“I did. Your name was all I had with me on the coldest nights out there.”
Satoru colours, deep as a carnation. His mouth opens and closes a few times and he won’t meet Suguru’s eyes.
“All that shameless flattery and yet you couldn’t be bothered to write to me.”
“You sent me off to war without so much as a goodbye. What if that had broken my heart, hmm?”
“Well, did it? Goodbyes are useless trifles when I know that you will always return to me.”
There is a vague pricking in his mind that he does not understand. Sudden, unbidden, a though brushes across the front of his mind.
Will you marry me in our next life?
Suguru starts to frown but it doesn’t last when Satoru’s hand brushes over his vambraces in a subtle caress. To the watching gaze, it is just an accidental touch.
But Suguru is the one who gets to feel those bare fingers linger just a moment over leather and metal.
He feels a smile pull at his lips as Satoru begins to lead the mare to the stables without waiting for the rest of the army to catch up.
The noises of the crowd begin to fade behind them. The sun is high in the sky now and Suguru is sweating inside his armour. His helmet seems to weigh a thousand tonnes and his hair sticks uncomfortably to his scalp, but he does not take it off.
Undressing himself after a battle, tending to his wounds, even polishing his armour by himself, are not new.
But whenever he has returned home with another victory, there is always the same set of hands waiting to undo his armour for him in the quiet of his bedchamber. In all these years, he has never denied those hands what they have asked of him.
“If I died in battle someday, would you still undo my armour for me?”
Silence.
Then,
“Morbid. You're not dead, yet. Are you?”
“But if, someday, I am? Would you? Do that for me one last time? A last little act of...” Love. Passion. Devotion. “...kindness?”
He muses out loud and is met with a smile that does not waver.
“No. If you died in war, there would be no king left alive in this wretched place, either. So stop asking me stupid questions and try to be more careful with your life.”
Satoru guides the mare to her stall and holds out a hand for Suguru, away from all prying eyes at last.
“Now, come. I have a warrior to welcome home and your armour takes far too long to take off. Sometimes, I don’t know why I even bother.”
“Because you believe I’m worth the trouble.”
Laughing, Suguru reaches out to take his hand–
Today, he is a week away from twenty six when the cheerful, rambling man who’s been visiting his shop every day for the last five months shyly says:
“You really think he’ll like me back, Suguru?”
I think anyone who wouldn’t isn’t worth a second of your time. I think he’d be a blistering idiot not to. I think I’m in love with you–
“As long as you don’t open your mouth, I think you’re good.”
“Suguru! You’re so mean!”
Suguru laughs and does not feel it.
“Are you going to tell him then?”
A wringing of hands.
“I...I think I will. I should at least try, right?”
Suguru’s hands don’t shake as he reaches for the reddest carnations he has in his shop.
My heart aches for you.
“You can’t go without the right flowers.”
Satoru’s eyes sparkle with barely-hidden joy. He clings to Suguru’s arm.
“You’re the best, Suguru!”
And I’ll still never be good enough for you.
Suguru smiles, leaning into his touch. Now isn’t the time for all his moping. Not when Satoru is so happy. So hopeful. So eager to share his joy with Suguru.
“Tell me how it went.”
He says, instead of “If he breaks your heart, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
It’s not his place maybe, but he will. He really will.
“Promise! Hey, Suguru?”
“Hmm.”
“What if...what if he says no?”
God, I hope he does and you can be mine, mine, min–
Suguru bites his tongue till he tastes blood and ties off the bouquet with a blue ribbon. He doesn’t know if blue is the other guy’s favourite colour and he frankly, doesn’t care.
It’s Satoru’s.
“He won’t.”
“But how do you know that?”
“I don’t. But you’re you. That’s reason enough for anyone to say yes.”
He clears his throat when he catches how Satoru’s bright, intelligent eyes are looking at him.
“Anyone, huh.”
Suguru shoves the bouquet into his arms.
Will you marry me in our next life?
“As long as you keep your mouth shut, yes.”
He repeats and Satoru smacks him on the forearm. The sound of skin against skin is loud.
It makes Suguru laugh and masks the sound of his heart breaking a little when he sees how lovingly Satoru is staring at the flowers.
“Suguru, I–”
Today, he steps past the doorway of a library in Ginza. There’s a man sitting cross-legged on the floor, arranging children’s books into slightly dusty, labelled cardboard boxes.
Alone, except for the slants of sunlight that dot the mostly darkened floor.
Suguru adjusts his scarf around his neck. He does not need the man to look up to know him by heart.
“Satoru?”
Satoru looks up at him but Suguru’s eyes stay fixed on the book in his hands.
The Little Prince.
“Yes? Do I know you?”
“No.”
“Do you know me?”
Suguru scruffs the toe of his sneakers in the dirt, not crossing the threshold.
“Not really.”
Not as I should have.
“But you knew my name. Are you a stalker?”
“You’re wearing your name-tag.”
And you blush just how you always have.
Satoru turns his mouth into a tiny, displeased moue.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Can I help you? We’re actually closing down the library– hey, are you sure we haven’t met before?”
Suguru shrugs.
“Why do you keep asking that?”
Satoru frowns, a little hesitant. Then, he sets down the book and shakes his head.
“I...I don’t know.”
Will you marry me in our next life?
“You just looked a little familiar. Isn’t that strange?”
Suguru pushes his hands inside his coat pockets.
“It is. We’ve never met before. If we had, I would have remembered you.” He crosses over the threshold at last and holds out one wool-warmed hand. He smiles and his heart fills with light. “My name is–”
Today, he’s twenty one and the rain has ruined what was meant to be their first date and Suguru sits beside Satoru on the bench, waiting to take the last train back home.
Satoru’s dozing on his shoulder and Suguru mourns the loss of his warmth when the train pulls in, huffing and puffing under the humid, gloomy sky.
Rubbing his eyes, Satoru walks him to the carriage. He kisses Suguru on the mouth with all the longing of a person who’s afraid they won’t ever see their lover again.
“Sorry that today wasn’t what you deserved.”
Suguru mutters, fiddling with his sleeves. Satoru laughs. The sound like raindrops on a window pane.
He leans forward, resting his weight on the bars. His lips ghost over Suguru’s cheek. Again and again and again.
“Silly. Any day is a good day for me when I spend it with you.”
He draws back as the train starts to pull away and Suguru watches him standing on the damp, leaf-littered platform. A tall, beautiful boy in a grey hoodie, baggy jeans and blue shades on even under the lamplight.
He stares after Suguru with the kind of deep yearning that only those left behind have shared.
Suguru cannot take his eyes off of him.
“Hey, Suguru!”
Satoru calls out, once the train has almost pulled away from the station. His voice booms in the night, drumming a beat against Suguru’s ribs.
“What?”
Suguru yells back, lingering at the door.
“If it makes you feel better, you can promise me you’ll try!”
Satoru throws at him, grinning from ear to ear, hands cupped around his mouth.
“Try what?”
Suguru asks, craning his neck to see Satoru’s face. He can make out the other boy’s resplendent and joyous expression even in the dim, amber glow of night.
“To make this better the next time! Okay? I’ll wait!”
Satoru’s waving at him and the train is pulling out and why does this feel like a life already lived and yet never lived and why is his heart beating so quick and–
“I’ll wait for you! I’ll wait, Suguru!”
Suguru’s breath hitches.
Will you marry me in our next life?
He turns to reply to Satoru but the wind has picked up and he’s too far out and it carries his words away–
Today he is–
Will you...
Today–
...in our next life...
They are–
...next life, will you...
Satoru touches him. Kisses him awake.
“I love you more than–”
Suguru, will you...
He wakes up in a bed warmed by himself, cold at his core.
Thinks, I chose this, I don’t miss hi –
Will you...
November.
Will you marry me
April.
In our next life
July.
Marry me...
Weeks blend into months into years into dreams and nightmares and half-lived reveries.
Over and over and over.
Will you marry me in our next life, Suguru?
Suguru opens his eyes.
It is the hundredth time he’s done so. He’s not been keeping count. He just knows. His soul knows.
Satoru cradles him close. Eyes so blue. Heart so kind.
He smells like the first thaw of spring.
Freshwater. Grass. First love.
“Suguru, is it time?”
He asks, mouth pensive.
Suguru kisses the inside of his wrist.
Not yet.
“Almost–”
He opens his eyes.
Satoru’s shoulder is so warm. It’s saying a lot, given how Suguru can’t really feel anything more any longer.
The last of the pain has left him, replaced by the tepid numbness that characterizes death. Even the sting of the cold is fading and it’s that, rather than his own struggling heart, that tells Suguru whatever he needs to know.
This is really it, then.
He doesn’t have a lot of time left even if Satoru walks away without lifting a finger now.
“Any last words?”
Satoru asks and Suguru has many. So many. None of which would wipe away the tragic, tender pain from Satoru’s lovely, sorrowful face.
The words he does want to say would be a cruelty right now.
We do get it right, Satoru, he wants to say. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. You and me are meant to be. Nothing can keep us apart.
I don’t blame you for this and you shouldn’t, either. Burn me once this is done. Don’t try to follow me, is right on the tip of his tongue too, but he knows that Satoru will not listen and moreover....
Moreover....
At the end, Suguru has always been a selfish, selfish man. Trying uselessly to run from what he has always wanted.
He turns his face away to the blood, his blood, on the wall, and swallows all the words that Satoru deserves to know.
“...it’s just that in this world, I couldn’t really smile from the bottom of my heart.”
Not after you.
Satoru caresses his stringy, matted hair. Uncaring of the blood that sticks to his hands.
“Suguru?”
Suguru, who’s slipping in and out of consciousness, tries to hum. He’s not sure if he does make a sound, because Satoru is warm and he’s cold, so cold, and he doesn’t want Satoru to ever let go–
He must have responded somehow, because Satoru keeps talking. Suguru tries to turn the eye not burning up with numb agony, to his face.
He’s listening.
When it’s Satoru, he’s listening even to the silences.
“Will you marry me in our next life?”
Talk about timing.
“...for real?”
Satoru hugs him. Embraces him in a way he never did before, not even when they were younger. Gentle. Careful not to jostle Suguru’s wounded side. Pressing his lips to Suguru’s hair.
“For real, real.”
The snow falls. Suguru touches his face with his one good hand, helpless against his smile.
In a hundred thousand lifetimes, yes.
“If you’ll have me.”
Satoru ducks his head.
What a strange time to be shy, Suguru thinks, brushing a few strands of hair away from his forehead so he can look into those eyes one last time.
Satoru meets his gaze.
Earnest.
Open.
“Suguru, ___________, ___________.”
Suguru’s eyes widen and then, it’s his turn to duck, hiding the pink spreading across his cheeks.
He shakes his head, overcome with the sight of the tears that won’t fall from Satoru’s eyes.
He reaches out and one tiny droplet catches on the tip of his thumb. Like a promise. It tastes like a promise.
“Oh, you. At least curse me a little, at the very end.”
December 24,
Year _______.
Today, they are here and he does not know his age, nor Satoru’s. This place abides by no time and reads no clocks.
Age is measured by the petals of the peonies hanging from the tree he sits beneath.
Time, by the lines on Satoru’s face as he stands under the same tree, letting the snow kiss his cheeks, his hands folded inside his long sleeves, dark scarf swaying in the wind.
This is a place caught in the grasp of the decade that they spent trying to draw each other’s face from memory alone.
All those years running out like yarn from a spindle. The two of them desperately trying to stitch together a present where they didn’t have to live with only half their souls intact.
Suguru looks up at the sky.
It never stops snowing here and yet, he can no longer feel the cold that he had once lived with for eleven long, lonely years.
Surrounding himself with a family hadn’t helped. Choosing a new path hadn’t worked.
Nothing, no one, never, had been able to bring the thaw to the long winter of Suguru’s heart, because Suguru blotted out the sunshine with his own hand.
The sky is replaced by a bluer blue.
“Hey, you.” Satoru’s kiss lands on the bridge of his nose. “You cryin’?”
Suguru closes his eyes, turning over his smile into the caring arms of the sun.
“I am. Just realized I’ll have to spend the rest of eternity with you. I’m fully stuck now–”
Satoru tackles him to his side, arms tightening around his shoulders, laughter trickling past Suguru’s lips.
“Suguru! Suguruuu! You sayin’ we’re gonna get married?! You wanna marry me?!”
He’s as loud as every childhood melody that waited for Suguru to come home.
“Yeah, in your dreams, maybe–”
Suguru starts, laughing, and Satoru kisses him quiet. He’s painfully, anxiously genuine when he draws away.
“Is it time yet, Suguru? Did we get it right this time?”
Suguru does not reply. Not right away.
Did they?
They’ve been trying, for so long.
A lifetime of happy lifetimes bypassed, lying just beyond their grasp because they were too hesitant to look the truth of it in the eyes.
Only now, it is today at last, and today, Satoru’s smile is bright enough to swallow up the unchanging sun in this strange, timeless place. He's looking at Suguru still. Waiting for an answer.
Always waiting. Always for Suguru.
“I don't really know but..." Suguru pauses. There's a thrush in the trees, grey and dusky, preening itself on one of the overhanging branches. A speck of life, where life is least expected. How sudden. Like love. Their eyes meet. The bird takes flight with a vigorous little shake of its feathers. "But I think...hey, Satoru?"
"Yeah?"
Under the snow-filled peonies, he takes Satoru’s hand, before smiling up at the unmoving brightness of the blue sky. At the bird now balancing itself on the tightrope of the wind, like a beacon against the sun.
Satoru’s hand is as warm in his as it was yesterday.
"Let's get married today."
“Will a day come when you don’t want me anymore?”
“No.”
- Law of Attraction, (2011).