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The very first time I remember you, you are blonde and don't love me back.
Utahime was thirteen when her family moved from Kyoto to a smaller town in the middle of spring. Something about starting anew she couldn’t grasp but regardless of whether she liked it or not, she left her friends and old school behind and found herself standing before her new home, daunted.
Once they’ve all but settled she attempts to familiarize herself with the neighborhood, stomping around with her hands fisting the sides of her skirt. She was worried she wouldn’t find anyone she’d be able to befriend, and her anxiety only settled into her more when all the children around seemed to be too young for her to hang out with. She was a teenager now and she wasn’t feeling particularly desperate enough to join in on their street games just to not feel lonely.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she barely heard the shout and barely saw the basketball flying towards her until it hits her on the head hard, the force of it knocking the wind out of her lungs and pushing her to her butt on the ground.
“Shit! I’m sorry!”
Utahime rubs her forehead as she writhes around with how dizzy she feels. When she registers someone crouching down to examine her, she hisses and musters up her nastiest glare thus far.
“Watch it!!”
Looking down at her with a deep frown on his face was an older boy, hands around the object that assaulted her.
“Hey I’m sorry, really sorry–” he says as he holds out a hand for her to take, but Utahime only growls at him and slaps his hand away, attempting to stand up on her own with wobbling feet. He laughs awkwardly, “You won’t tell your parents right?”
She sneers at him, “What?”
“Aren’t you the daughter of the new family that moved in recently? You’re a new face so I could only assume..” He trails off with a tilt of his head. Now that Utahime’s gotten a good look at him, she realized that he was handsome. He was probably a high-schooler, eyes electric blue and bright, skin flawless, and hair white and tousled messily. Despite her anger, her heart starts to beat erratically. She’s only ever seen someone so attractive on screen and on passing billboards, never in real life.
“Uhm–uh,” her face heats up but she focuses on her resentment. “None of your business.”
He only raises his eyebrows before smiling apologetically. “It was an accident. I was shooting some hoops in the backyard when the ball flew over and hit you.” Then he crouches down again and reaches for his pocket, grinning, “If I bribe you with this can you promise me that you won’t tell your parents?” He offers a lollipop and Utahime’s blood boils even more.
“I don’t like candy,” she grits her teeth, terribly offended. “And who do you think you are? I’m a teen too! You can’t bribe me with anything.”
“What’s your name?”
“Utahime!”
“M’kay, Utahime,” he sighs after a moment before standing up again, unwrapping the lollipop and popping it into his mouth. He gestures to her to stay put. “Wait here while I get you an ice pack, alright?”
Against all odds, Utahime forgives him after a while and doesn’t ever tell her parents that the high schooler down the block was responsible for the fat bruise she had to sport for a while, nor the fact that he became her first friend there and that she was pretty sure she developed a crush on him.
After that day, she walked from her house to the path where his own was. Sometimes, he had friends over, sometimes he was alone, and whenever he noticed her he’d wave and pat her head and offer her snacks.
When she started going to school again, she came to him to ask for some assistance on some homework and he, to her utter dismay was smart too. He’d brag that he was reliable with any field because they were all too easy to him even when he was still her age, especially in the subjects of math and science. He was a good tutor and her grades increasing steadily was enough to back up that claim.
He was a complete troublemaker and he was annoying, but he was kind to her. He teased her and made her feel like a kid most of the time, but she still painfully liked him despite. It had Utahime wondering how he’d treat her had she been a few years older and around the same age as him.
Her feelings for him grew and grew, and even when she found out that he was moving to Tokyo, he smiled at her reassuringly upon noticing how glum and disappointed she looked and she felt herself lighten up if only a little.
“I like you.” She kept her head down the whole time, embarrassed and unwilling to see his reaction.
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” was his response. His tone was considerably soft and gentle, but Utahime felt her heart crack all the same. It was her first heartbreak.
He left along with the passing season of summer, and despite all her attempts to stay in touch with him somehow, she never met and talked to him again.
Her first love, Gojo Satoru.
And unbeknownst to her, the clock’s hands started moving.
The next time you are brunette, and you do.
“Nice sketch you got there,” Kusakabe, a peer she shared Cultural Studies classes with, comments beside her.
Utahime offers him a sweet smile as a reply to his compliment, the fine stroking of her pencil against the surface of her notebook not ceasing.
“Didn’t know you liked him.”
This time she does pause, snorting. Then she leans back to examine her work. All sharp lines and soft features. She’s not quite happy about the eyes but that wasn’t anything new. She always found herself unsatisfied with her translation of such intricate-looking eyes into paper. Still– This should do for the day.
She turns back to Kusakabe, gathering her things and getting up for her next class, replying, “He makes a good model.” Then she scurries off along with the rest of the people out of the lecture hall.
Later once her classes were all finished, she dragged her feet straight to the art studio to work on her assignments.
And just as expected, the object of her sketches was already lounging around inside, popping Skittles into his mouth and no doubt playing a game on his phone. He diverts his attention to her once she comes in, grinning.
“Heya,” Gojo Satoru greets cheerily, putting his phone back in his pocket. “How were your classes? You look like you just aged five years.”
“Fine,” Utahime grunted, paying no heed to the last sentence. She drops her bag atop one table before moving past him to set up her canvas. “You?”
“Boring as always. I swear, my professors are having a ‘who-can-make-their-students-fall-asleep-the-quickest' competition. So far, Yaga-sensei’s winning.”
Utahime’s drained as hell but she manages a chuckle. “And he’s also the only one who never hesitates to call you out whenever you act up.”
He groans, “That too– geez. I’m not some high schooler.”
Utahime ties her hair back into a bun, watching him. Amid his whining, moments’ worth of familiarity crosses her mind, resurfacing out from the dark where she’s kept them hidden since they crossed paths in the university library. Two seasons of puppy love crushing on a highschooler, head pats and incessant teasing, feeling like a child around him—
How long has it been since then? She observes him and where snow-white hair should’ve been, brunette locks were present. Notably, however, his eyes –his stupid, gorgeous eyes that were complicated to replicate– were the same, and so was his personality. Quite a while definitely.
He stops rambling. “Utahime?”
She blinks and snaps out of it. Grabbing a stool, “Don’t you have any work to do? Why do you keep hanging around me like this?”
From the corner of her eye, she sees him pout. “And all this time I thought you liked my company.”
“You’re wrong, I abhored it.”
His pout deepens into a frown. He starts walking around the easel to where she’s sat in front of it. When she looked up he was already crowding in on her, invading her space.
“Wha– Gojo,” she gulps nervously, “What is it now?”
“Do you really not know why I hang around you so much?”
His dark almond bangs fall across his eyes, barely obscuring the intensity of his gaze. There was something in them; vulnerably out in the open for her to assess the meaning of.
She drops her palette and backs away from him. “No, I don’t. Tell it to me straight.”
The man only laughs, shaking his head as he moves even closer, leaning one hand on the back of the stool–
“Let me take you out after you’re done with your assignment,” he proposes, face closing in on hers, Utahime’s breath hitches. “I assumed all this time that you knew, considering how all your recent sketches were of me, but I guess not.”
Damn it. “You knew?”
“With how often I hung around you?” He retorts with her previous words, grin melting into a lighter smile when she visibly grits her teeth. “Well? What do you say, Utahime?”
“Gojo–”
“Satoru.”
“Satoru,” she repeats, ignoring the victorious look on his face, “back away first and I’ll think about it.” She’s already made up her mind.
After a while, I give up trying to guess if the color of your hair means anything.
“Do you hate it?”
Her boyfriend watches her through the bathroom mirror with his hair cut to a length shy of being a full-on buzz cut, dyed a pastel two-tone, and a wicked grin etched on his face.
Leaning on the door frame with her arms crossed, she shakes her head. “My opinion wouldn’t change anything now that it’s done.”
“So do you hate it?”
“You’re handsome and I love you no matter what.”
“You sound like you hate it.”
Satoru grumbles petulantly, running a hand through the strands in a measly attempt to style it, and she stifles a laugh. “I don’t,” she denies lightly.
“Do I still look like Gojo Satoru to you?” He asks and she knows what he means. Did he still resemble Gojo Satoru, the good-for-nothing son of the prestigious Gojo family who did this in the first place to spite his parents one last time before abandoning and dropping the family name the following day?
“Yeah, but in a good way,” Utahime straightens up and walks to his side. He faces her and she reaches to palm his face.
“Okay,” he smirks, nuzzling into her hand. “After all, this will be my new identity from now on. Iori Satoru–” he makes a show to shove her, squealing and ignoring the way she rolls her eyes, “–Kyah Utahime!! Can you believe it? Soon we’ll be sharing the same family name! Iori Satoru, Iori Satoru–” the name dances out his mouth in a sing-song manner. “It has an attractive ring to it.” New identity, my ass, she thought despite herself. The idea was a bit amusing to her. Satoru was still Satoru no matter what physical alteration or “glow up”–his words– and no matter what life, really. He was menacing and unbearable and adorable and Utahime loved him all the same.
She pinches his cheek, scrunching her nose at the surge of affection in her chest. She could never deny that she was just as excited as him.
Because even if you don't exist, I am always in love with you.
“Iori Utahime-san?”
Utahime was sitting in a famous restaurant with her 2nd blind date of the week, looking at her with furrowed brows and concerned grey eyes.
“..Sorry Honda-san,” she smiles apologetically, aware that it definitely appeared forced. “What was it again? Your first name?”
“Honda Satoru,” Satoru re-introduces himself again, expression softening. “You can just call me Satoru from now on.”
“Satoru,” the name slides off her mouth fluidly, barring the fact that she's never uttered the name out loud before in this life until now.
She doesn’t go on anymore blind dates after him. A month later she finds herself dating Honda Satoru, and a year later she moves in with him.
Utahime did love him. He was an incredibly doting boyfriend, and most importantly he made her happy.
Happy enough to be able to escape her thoughts constantly haunted by another Satoru, for long bouts of time.
A Satoru she never gets to meet in this life, the last, nor the next. But she guesses she can’t help herself either. She can only escape him for so long before he starts haunting her dreams again.
I remember most fondly those lifetimes where we get to grow up together,
Just when Utahime thinks nothing else of Gojo Satoru can make her fall into the rabbit hole any more than his past selves had, she gets introduced to a snotty, bratty kid a few inches shorter than her with nosy hands and chubby cheeks and gets proven wrong terribly.
Satoru has always been a fascinating person in whatever life she meets him. At the very core, he’s the same, but he’d have varying aspirations and traits in every single one of them that she uncovers only when he’s all but grown up. But now that she’s got a taste of what it felt like to actually grow alongside him— sharing toys and interests, playing hide-and-seek while their moms talked animatedly amongst themselves outside the yard, walking side-by-side to their school every day without fail unless the other called in sick, watching him grow taller than her with the effects of puberty with her own eyes, sneaking in alcohol into her room for the first time and having her finish his, going through all their childhood phases together—
“I don’t want anyone else but you,” she confesses when she pulls him away from their classmates and parents to an empty classroom. It was their graduation day and they wouldn’t be going to the same university; life is unpredictable and although she doubts they’d grow distant from each other, wasting time wasn’t her forte. Loving him was easy most of the time, but sometimes it came to her gradually and slowly, creeping up on her like the first time she developed a crush on him in her first life centuries ago, creeping until it came full circle to her earlier while he was tugging on her pigtails, wearing his gown and cap and signature shit-eating grin that was present no matter what version of Satoru she was with.
Wasting time wasn’t her forte. She’d already gone through this enough to know there was just no point in hesitating. She loved him and she knew with utmost certainty that she wouldn’t want anyone else in this life but him.
Jaw on the floor, a dark blush paints his cheeks and the tips of his ears. But he crushes her into him once he recovers, arms taut around her waist, all the while muttering into her hair multiple times that he felt the same.
When you share your secrets and sorrows and hiding places with me.
In this life, she comes across him with his shoulders carrying the heavy weight of the invisible; crouched with his head hung low in the alley beside her favorite convenience store.
She sees him like that every time she passes by and doesn’t think of approaching him until one particularly rainy day. She heads straight for him, hovering an umbrella over his thoroughly drenched head. He flinches but doesn’t move an inch.
“Isn’t it tiring to be crouching down like that almost every day?” She squats, trying to meet his gaze. “The convenience store is quite literally right there.” Their eyes meet.
She offers him a handkerchief from her purse to pat his head dry which he takes gratefully, as she drags him inside the establishment. She picks out a strawberry cream-filled bun for him and some spicy onigiri for herself.
“What are you doing?” He rasps, watching as she pays for the snacks. She hands him his cream-filled bun and walks to stand under the shed with him in tow.
“Y’know,” she carefully unwraps the plastic of her onigiri when she sees him tentatively take a bite of his bun, “someone once told me that sharing your secrets and problems with a stranger isn’t so bad sometimes. It might even help because there won’t be any biased judgments. If you need advice, I'd be glad to give it to you. If you need someone to share the weight of the world with for a while, then I'd be that someone too.”
He snorts. “That’s... a bit of an iffy offer, Miss. You have to at least know my name and I have to at least know yours.”
“Iori Utahime,” she says easily, casting him an all-knowing smile. “And you?”
Sweet cream on the edge of his lips, with one side of his cheek puffed into a balloon full of bread, Utahime’s hand itches to wipe it off for him. “Now why would I tell you? I can’t just give it to you. What if you're part of some human-trafficking gang and you're doing this to let down my guard?"
She rolls her eyes hard and huffs, turning away from him to train her eyes on the scene of the continuous rainpour. “I bought you food. And I’m being a complete Samaritan to you, sincerely.”
She hears him laugh, a breathy little sound, “Mhm, is that so? I guess I owe you now, Utahime-san.”
He discreetly moves closer to her, elbow bumping against hers. “Gojo Satoru. That’s my name,” He whispers. Utahime tilted her head– the dullness in his orbs was overshadowed, with some semblance of a grin forming on his otherwise weary face. He looked down at her, studying her face with interest.
“Care to listen now?”
I love how you play along with my bad ideas,
Utahime would know Satoru existed in the same period as her; she’d know that he was right there and that she could covet him again but she chose not to just for the sake of it. Technically, just because she’s spent past lifetimes choosing him doesn’t have to mean she always will. These were still her lives, and the fact that she’d met him in most of them when that was unheard of with every other person she’d come across didn’t have to mean anything more than it should.
If the universe wanted to continue fucking with her for longer, it’s only fair she at least tries to gain the upper hand.
She meets him again, and this time she ignores his lingering stares and averts all her attention to his best friend.
Geto Suguru wasn’t all that different from Satoru, in all honesty. He was kinder and gentler, but he had a hidden wickedness and mischievousness in him that came out full force in bed. A wickedness and mischievousness that rivaled that of Satoru’s. Having him was nevertheless a refreshing experience, and after enough time, she stopped picturing a certain someone else’s stupid face on him.
But she wasn’t in love with him. Not yet, she reminds herself– or perhaps, assures herself. Sex with Suguru was great and if this keeps up, she could definitely see herself fall for him if she hasn't even the slightest bit already.
Except one day, when he called her and when she had been expecting to stay the night, he sat her down by the couch seriously to admit that he was in love with a friend of his and that he didn’t want to continue hooking up anymore to pursue said friend.
She nodded in understanding. He cooked them both dinner after and she left with tinges of disappointment in her gut. She wasn’t sad, barely because she still didn’t fall for him until the end. She was disappointed because her plan to rebuke Satoru in this life was going to fail and she knew it.
She proves herself right yet again when she receives a message from the very source of her crisis the next morning.
I told you (*^▽ ^*)
What? She replies.
I told you that you should’ve gone to me instead.
He invites himself over to her apartment a few hours later, and to her frustration, her heart picks its pace at the sight of him despite all her attempts. He grins down at her when she opens the front door, eyes ablaze with a challenge she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to refuse.
The question he utters barely registers to her ears as she’s already reaching for him– haphazardly shutting the door behind him and pushing his body to the wall to slot her mouth against his. It felt like coming home for the first time when he responded, kissing back just as eagerly, if not more.
Before you grow up and realize they are bad ideas.
“Utahime~ you troublemaker,” he chides like a mother, tsk tsk-ing as he walks with her weight draped around his back.
“Says you,” she counters against his nape. She’d already hurled all the meat she ate before they left the izakaya and she feared that if she talked any more she’d hurl the fluids of her stomach too.
As if sensing her thoughts, his grip under her knees tightened. “You’re not vomiting on me, woman. We’re almost there.”
She snorts. Leaning close to his earlobe she imitates a barfing sound and he squeaks, quickening his pace. She laughs and throws her head back, but that was an apparent blunder. Suddenly the night sky was spinning, suddenly her head was spinning. She fists his collar, “Satoru…”
“Swallow it back!!”
She makes it to her bathroom in record time. He holds her hair back into a makeshift ponytail as she sinks her face into the toilet bowl. When she’s done he wipes her mouth with a tissue paper, sighing. “Done?”
She gives him a silly smile, grateful for his ever-reliable service. “Mhm.”
(And in our times together I have many, many bad ideas.)
She’s lost count of the accurate number of lives she’s lived through by now; there were so many– reaching the point wherein she wouldn't even remember altogether. The memories of lives she’d lived before the current would be lost to her, and in the deepest recess of her brain, a voice would be thanking the deities who made it possible.
Unfortunately, no matter how tiring having all those memories was, they kept her resolve indomitable, tough as nails; unyielding to whatever was thrown at her.
Without those, she finds herself helpless against the cruelty of the hurdles the universe gave her in exchange for making her forget.
She tumbles into the dingy one-toilet restroom in the bar, half-drunk and half-sober. The rational part of her brain is blaring alarms that she probably shouldn’t do it here but the alcohol in her system is a bitch– encouraging the monsters to be incessantly louder than the alarms.
She takes one look at her pitiful reflection in the rectangular mirror before closing the cubicle door and sitting on the toilet, the dirty water on the seat seeping into her skirt but she pays no heed to it. She fishes for her cutter and rolls her right sleeve up languidly, uncovering harsh lines littered against the porcelain skin.
Her hand trembles but she hopes she doesn’t fail this time. Slash.
Slash. She hears two loud knocks and she curses loudly, attempting to tuck the blade back into the pocket of her skirt but it drops and clatters onto the floor wet with muck and her dripping blood, sliding halfway through the gap under the door; almost like it was mocking her.
Utahime didn’t lock the one outside. A baritone voice reaches her ears followed by footsteps, and in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the person who just entered from traumatizing themselves, she reaches for the lock of the cubicle door. Rainbow and white spots dance before her vision– she limps and the door opens against her, pushing and forcing her back on the toilet seat.
“..Fucking hell–” Her injured arm gets lifted from where it felt paralyzed beside her, something soft hastily being wrapped around it. She blinks amidst her slipping consciousness, mouthing at the person to just leave her be. Please.
It was a man. With one tight tug, she winces as he secures the ties and stops the flow of the bleeding.
“H-hey– listen,” he lifts his head and she meets wide cerulean pupils unbridled with panic and distress. “I’ll get you help okay? Can you still stay awake? Can you–” This person might’ve stopped the bleeding but she knows she’s already lost too much. She shakes her head weakly, toppling but he grabs her and holds her upright. A litany of curses rumbles against his throat. He throws her left arm around his nape and frantically carries her out of the room.
Utahime rests her forehead against the crook of his shoulder, an inexplicable feeling blooming in her chest.
She managed to stay awake for a few more minutes as the man ran with her in his arms. Just before she succumbed to the darkness, she wondered why his touch felt so strangely, intimately familiar.
“....Miss?” And safe.
The clock stopped for her for the first time.
When we meet as adults you're always much more discerning. I don't blame you.
“Do I know you?”
Utahime whips her head to her left where the handsome stranger who’d been nursing the same drink for the better half of the hour was sitting. She darts her eyes around, checking if he was talking to her or someone else, but he twists his body towards her and she gets her answer.
“I’m sorry?”
“You look–” he continues to stare, the edges of his mouth turned downwards, “– familiar.” She raises an eyebrow.
Although if Utahime was being honest herself, the more they stared at each other, the more she started to share the same sentiment.
“Well,” something was pulling at her from the inside– a lot of things but the foremost being akin to guilt. She ignores it and gives him her prettiest smile, “we can start getting to know each other from here on out.”
Yet, always, you forgive me.
It all comes crashing down on her one afternoon. The clock starts ticking again.
Satoru finds her curled up on the floor of their bathroom, tears and snot running down her face.
“Baby…” He drops to his knees and pulls her into a hug. She tries to pull away but his grip was too strong. “Baby, hey, what’s wrong? Tell me.” His soothing voice only intensifies the pang in her chest.
“Make it stop… make it stop Satoru!!” Utahime wails against his collarbone. He slowly pulls back to look at her. “There’s too many, my brain can’t handle it. I–” She covers her face with her hands but he pries them away to wipe her tears with his own.
“Shh, calm down.” He stands up and guides her to stand up too, slipping an arm around her waist as they walk back inside the bedroom.
“What’s too many, my love?” He prods softly once they’re sitting on the mattress. She shakes her head, backing away from him.
“How do you still love me, Satoru?” She sifts through the bad memories, landing on the one where he found her in the restroom of a bar, bleeding. Fresh tears prick at her eyes, she looks at him. “I’ve– I’m not worth it. I’ve done too many bad things. So how?”
“Like what?” He gets closer again, wrapping a hand around her shoulder. By instinct and habit, she leans on him.
How does she start? Can she even tell him? How her mind’s suddenly the host of too many memories her body's never done and experienced before, how they’ve tormented her and will torment her again, especially the painful and tragic ones.
“Many.” Too fucking many.
“I don’t care,” he replies gently. He squeezes her shoulder, she feels the tears subside.
“You have to,” she insists weakly. You’re only saying that because you don’t know what I really mean.
“Utahime,” he kisses the top of her head. “I don’t care.” He repeats more firmly.
He comforts her with sweet, mellow words; repeats them like a mantra until she feels normal again. Until she allows herself to believe him.
As if you understand what's going on,
“Utahime you gotta finish it all,” Satoru nags. “Or do you want me to feed you? Does Utahime want the choo-choo train?”
“No,” she glares at him as she shoves a spoonful of porridge he’d cooked for her into her mouth. She was running a high fever when she woke up this morning so her dramatic boyfriend called in sick from work for the both of them. She argued that he didn’t have to call in sick for himself too but he argued back that he wanted to take care of her, tucking the bedsheets around her until she was all but wrapped like a burrito.
He places a palm on her forehead, humming. “It’s gone down now, hasn’t it? How do you feel?”
“Still sore, but feeling better.” He hums again, watching her finish the rest of the bowl and snatching it from her before she could stand. “Don’t move! I’ll be right back.” She grunts but obeys him, sinking into the futon wrapped around her as she watches the rerun of the variety show playing on the television.
He returns to her side shortly with a glass of water along with her medicine, placing it on the table. “Soo, rate Gojo Satoru’s Exclusive Boyfriend Service out of 100! How is it so far?”
“95/100. Wouldn’t recommend.” She takes the medicine and gulps down the water. Satoru gasps.
“Why is there a five-point deduction?!”
“95 because the service tends to be too loud and annoying. Otherwise, it’s perfect.”
“Alright,” he sighs loudly like he’s failed because he didn’t get a perfect review but he chuckles after. “And the ‘wouldn’t recommend’ part?”
“It’s Gojo Satoru’s Exclusive Boyfriend Service for a reason,” she emphasizes the ‘exclusive’ word. “Only I get to receive it.”
“Ah,” he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. “I love it when you say things like that. It gets me hot and bothered.”
She slaps his chest and his guffaws tingle her ears. Despite her annoyance, she laughs along.
And you're making up for all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist,
She’s spent too much time around him, spent too much going over the cycle with him by her side that in the lives they don’t meet, she always gets to refamiliarize herself with the weighty longing only he could quell.
She’s never lonely; there would be lives where she’d be alone for a while but she’s independent– it’s only completely natural that she was with her experience. She’d never felt the need to seek anyone out desperately, and to ensure that she’d make sure she found herself constantly in an environment surrounded by good people and friends that would come and go, filling the Gojo Satoru-shaped void in her heart. She’d live, and she’d done well enough time and time again even without him.
She’s never lonely; but all she’d need is one tranced look at the way his face crumples with every expression animatedly, at the way his arms open wide in invitation for a well-needed warm hug after a long day, and at the way he jokes with his crass, middle-schooler humor in favor of making her crack a smile to muse how much of a blessing being intertwined with his soul was.
She’s spent too much time around him, but surprisingly-unsurprisingly, it’s also never enough.
And the ones where we just barely, never meet.
“Really?”
“Yeah, so I gave him the middle finger when he left. Some patients are too demanding and annoying. They act like they own the whole hospital when you don’t give in to their whims easily. Fucking pricks, Uta, I swear. One of these days, I might just use a scalpel to carve–”
“Shoko, no.” She cuts off her best friend from verbalizing a homicide. Shoko recedes but not before chuckling at the exasperation on Utahime’s face.
“Sorry. Violence is a tad too enticing sometimes.”
It was a grueling week for both of them, one where a good dinner and catching up in Utahime's apartment was able to remedy.
They took turns talking and venting about their workplace dilemmas and headaches until they finish eating. Dishes left by the sink to be washed tomorrow, Shoko sat comfortably on her couch, flipping through the channels tediously, while Utahime got them more beer from the fridge.
“Oh look, it’s that new drama everyone’s been talking about.” Utahime enters the living room and eyes her television with curiosity.
“Do you know what it’s about?”
“Not really,” she replies as she gets handed a can, muttering a thanks. “I’ve heard my colleagues talking about it is all. Apparently, the lead’s an insanely attractive rookie actor.”
“Insanely attractive how?”
“They were gushing while talking. Come to think of it they were probably watching his face the whole time.”
Utahime laughs but it dies down when, as if on cue, the episode transitions from a flashback montage to a scene panning out to show a handsome man holding an equally beautiful woman’s hand.
Beside her, Shoko quips out, surprised. “Oh, this must be him.”
And of course. Utahime would recognize that face anywhere.
“They were right. He looks hot.”
In the backdrop of her dreams and thoughts, within the spaces of old shared apartments that didn’t exist anymore–
“Utahime,” her friend nudges her, eyeing her with amusement. “Did you become a fan? He’s pretty hot, isn’t he? His eyes look a bit unsettling in my opinion but I guess they serve their purpose adding to his appeal. And his acting doesn’t seem half-bad.”
–In the center of her pulsing heart, she’d recognize that face anywhere.
She smiles and nudges her friend back, watching as the characters start sharing a sweet moment. She doesn’t know what episode this is nor at what point of the plot they're currently watching. The female lead’s hand raises to caress the strands of the male lead’s hair as he stares at her lovingly. It felt like peeking at a scene she’s lived through from an outsider’s perspective.
A scene into a lifetime that wasn’t her current.
She reaches for her phone and unlocks it, navigating to her browser to type out a quick search. When she gets her results, she laughs again before plopping it back down beside her. “Yeah, I think I became a fan.”
Gojo Satoru
Japanese Model and Actor
Gojo Satoru is a freelance model-turned-actor. He made his acting debut in supporting roles before taking on his first lead role in Melo-romantic drama 'Sayonara, Utahime' which is currently broadcasting on multiple streaming platforms.
I hate those. I prefer the ones in which you kill me.
Across her multitude of lifetimes, Utahime can admit that she was never the type to be engrossed in true-crime documentaries and films. She’s watched a few sure, but there were just some interests that lingered– like baseball for example, and said documentaries and films were never one of them.
Perhaps, she should’ve paid attention to them. She should’ve paid attention to how they showed the workings of the mind of a serial killer– how they were able to lure their innocent and unsuspecting victims in before shedding off their fake skin and performing the cruelest forms of torture on them.
“Interesting. I haven’t met a quiet one like you in a long time. Aren't you scared, sweetheart?”
Utahime’s breath hitches as she feels the blade that’s been teasingly running across the expanse of her throat suddenly halt. Her perpetrator is wearing a black blindfold but his voice is still as smooth and snug as she remembered. It was only a matter of time before he plunged that knife into her.
He coos next to her ear, “It’s almost making me not want to kill you anymore, y’know.” Satoru's a sadistic lunatic who murdered people in this life, and Utahime’s plenty thankful that she doesn’t have to see his eyes. Whether it was his concept or something she didn’t care, she just didn’t want to see his blue eyes alight and unhinged with what she knows is predaceous anticipation to see her blood and to add her corpse to whatever collection he definitely had.
“You’re too pretty, such a pretty little thing,” he sighs and caresses her cheek and she wonders if she’s the one who’s gone mad when she feels a wave of comfort despite her imminent demise. He kisses her cheek and if she can only ignore the very amiss fact that he's still holding a knife to her skin in his other hand, she’d be able to delude herself into thinking that this was just another moment from those lives where he took all the time in the world in his hands and put it into worshiping her and her body. He’d coo at her like he did just now and map her body expertly in ways only he knew how to.
But Utahime quickly gets pulled back into reality when she sees him angle the blade to her chest. He digs it in a little and dread fills her guts again. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to preserve your beauty as much as I can.”
The last thing she sees as blood –her blood– splattered and oozed everywhere, blurring her vision with red, was his smile.
“I’ll make a pretty marionette out of you. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Utahime takes her last breath, and completely true to her earlier musings; a few loose screws out herself and she thinks she'd have no one else she allowed to take and steal her life but him.
But when all's said and done, I'd surrender to you in other ways.
“No.”
“Hm? But–”
“No!” Utahime groans into her palm, “No more, you sex-obsessed freak. We’re here to wash, not to get dirty again.”
She heard him sigh from behind her, retracting both hands that were initially on her to assist in washing off the remnants of the soap suds but ended up firmly on her breasts, kneading them to allude to what he wanted. Again.
They get out of the shower without Satoru further fondling her to her relief. The steam escapes out the door as they wear the matching couple robes he bought somewhere online.
“C’mere,” he gestures for her to sit down on the edge of the mattress, and she complies. She hums a tune of a western pop song absent-mindedly, eyes half-closed as he blow-dried her hair for her, ruffling her strands softly. Ironically-not, it's within the thread of these quiet yet delicate moments does Utahime thinks she finds the strength to look back and continue; to feel grateful for her memories. Sharing these intimacies she's long sure she only shares with no one but Satoru.
“Can you sing something?” She opens one eye at him in suspicion. “Is there a catch to it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a feeling you’ll say something dirty after I sing.”
He smirks, still running his hand along her strands to dry them. “Nah. Just wanna hear your singing voice.”
She sings; she sings him a song with no literal lyrics, making the melody up on the spot but she can’t help but think it vaguely sounded like the one she made for him in that one life where they were childhood best friends and she’d sung to him to help chase away his insomnia.
“It sounds plagiarized, no offense.” She smacks his hand, and he ruffles her head even more and puffs it out into a lion's mane with a laugh. He puts the blow-dryer aside and unplugs it, before caging her with his arms swiftly, pushing her back down against the bed.
“And you’re right, there was a catch to it!” He starts unfurling the knot of her robe and Utahime groans again. She knew it.
Even though each time, I know I'll see you again, I always wonder–
“No, don’t.”
“...Satoru? Baby?”
“Don’t leave–” his brows were furrowed, and his arms were wrapped so tightly around her like she’d disappear if he loosened them even the slightest bit.
“Satoru,” she shakes his shoulder hard and his eyes fly open. “It’s okay,” she combs his hair and he closes his eyes again, shifting to pull her on top of him. “It’s just a dream.”
He stays silent for a while, minus his ragged breathing, before murmuring, “I dreamt that you left me for some other Satoru.”
“Hm?”
“Another Satoru,” he frowns, jaw ticking slightly. “He was trying to take you from me. Then some other guy named Suguru came, and then a–”
She pecks his lips, then another– until his frown melted away. “Idiot. No one’s taking me from you.”
It was so long ago that she barely remembers those people he just mentioned anymore, and yet here was Satoru, dreaming about his past self’s best friend and a person he hadn’t ever even met. If her memory was still serving her right, this would be the first instance he ever dreamt of the past.
Masking the surprise it instilled in her, she folds her hands on top of his chest, peering up at him with a teasing whisper, “Do you want me all for yourself?”
“Of course!” His tone takes on a possessive, fierce edge she can’t deny she loves. “You’re mine, Hime. I don’t care how much hotter they are or how much better their personalities are than mine. That could be a precognitive dream, so if you meet those people in the future and they try wooing you– the fucking nerve –don’t go. I’ll treat you infinitely better.” His eyes glimmered in the dark. “Don’t leave me.”
She shakes her head at his ridiculousness, shifting again to land a proper kiss on him. Pulling back, she giggles when he chases after her lips. “Gojo Satoru, I’m never leaving. I can't go anywhere else even if I wanted to, okay?” The reassurance was laced with a long-standing promise she’d kept not only to him but to herself. "You have nothing to worry about."
–Is this the last time?
“It’s been a while! How are you? Internship’s started taking up most of my time, so I couldn’t visit you as often as I wanted to.”
Utahime takes a shuddering breath as the gust of winter swoops on her, making her wrap her cardigan around her torso even tighter.
“It’s your birthday next week. I’ll be even more busier because midterms are coming up but I promise I’ll come to celebrate with you no matter what.”
He doesn’t respond–
“The students love me,” she brags. “They said they hoped I’d become a full-time teacher there once I graduate.”
–Of course, he doesn’t.
She continues. “I have a feeling the students would’ve loved you too and how carefree you would’ve been with your ways,” smiling because although he wasn’t responding, Utahime could almost hear his voice in the cold breeze.
“Uh-huh, and they would’ve loved me more than you! I’d be Great Teacher Gojo, Utahime,” then he’d laugh obnoxiously.
Utahime places new flowers on top of his headstone, as well as a bag of mini-chocolates from his favorite brand. She recounts more stories of the students and then of herself. How she’s such a catch that she got hit on while shopping, how she missed his jokes and his touch, and how she wished every day that she had more time with him before his illness took him from her.
She was no stranger to death. But no matter how desensitized she thought she was to the concept of it, losing her loved ones– losing him to it will always feel like getting doused with a hundred reality checks of grief. And although she knows she’ll always see him again, she’s stayed up all night recently wondering if she won’t.
“I’ll come back,” she stands up once she runs out of things to tell him. That and the fact that it’s gotten even colder. She blows warm air into her palms before tucking them into her pockets. She smiles again and hopes he’ll get reincarnated into a healthier body next time.
Hopes they’ll meet again next time. “See you, Satoru.”
Is that really you?
Inevitably, there were lifetimes where Utahime and Satoru weren’t meant to be.
Soulmate theory out of the equation– it’s like fate creates the both of them to be mismatched pieces of fabric, with Utahime sewing themselves into one patchwork of cloth regardless of so. She’d succeed most times, and fail and give up other times.
Especially so when he’s a controlling and mentally abusive piece of shit in this life.
Satoru isn’t someone she’ll always love, keep, understand, tolerate— sometimes loving him was like inhaling poison and watching herself deteriorate in its effects.
“The moment I leave this place, we’ll never see each other again. I’ll make sure of it,” she states as she packs her things to leave their shared apartment. Satoru scoffs like he's been wronged but she knows he’s been watching her pack without even the slightest trace of sorrow or remorse for their dismantled relationship.
“You’ll regret this, Utahime. You like making me sound like such a horrible person when you don’t have the slightest clue how much I put up with your whines and how much I’ve tried my fucking damnedest to–” She stops listening, tuning his voice out to focus on leaving the place as quickly as possible.
“No, I don’t think I won’t,” she replies coolly once she’s finally done. Zipping up her suitcases, she barely spares him a glance.
“My world doesn’t revolve around you.”
Sometimes, she’d just wake up to his face and barely recognize the man she loved across lifetimes without failure. No matter how hard she’d try to make it work despite the setbacks and hardships, she'd only feel the life getting wrung out of her, and if there was one valuable lesson she learned in her extensive experience with life, is that no matter how bound her heart was with his, she should never hesitate to unbind the ties if she’ll only end up losing herself. She already spent almost a millennia of happiness combined with him, so she doesn’t hesitate even for a second, even when Satoru follows her out of the bedroom with venom sprouting out of his mouth; each accusation and insult harsher than the last.
She slams the front door in his face on her way out.
She loved him, but she had to love herself more.
And what if you're perfectly happy without me?
“I'm just saying, Utahime,” her manager whined through the phone for what might be the fifth time this week. “Sometimes you forget that you're a nation-famous idol. You have to be careful.” Utahime walks leisurely along the path of falling cherry blossom petals. With the demands of her schedule and career, she barely had any time to relax and unwind like this, so she did whatever to negotiate with her management to give her a weekend break and they allowed it.
“I'm not a toddler, I'll be fine.” She feels someone small abruptly bump into her back. She ends the call after exchanging a few more words with her manager, before quickly turning around to identify who it was.
“I–” It was a little boy. “I’m so sowwy!”
How adorable. She pats his head and lowers her mask to show him her smile. “No worries!”
The little boy stares at her with astonishment, doe eyes sparkling and cheeks dusting red.
“I.. I saw you on TV! Pweety!!”
“Haruki!!”
Utahime lifts her gaze and sees a woman jogging towards them.
“Don't go running off like that!” The woman kneels as she scolds the boy, before turning towards her.
“Ah–” her eyes seemed to widen with recognition, before bowing her head lightly. “I'm sorry. Was he bothering you?”
Utahime shakes her head politely, chuckling. “Not at all. Your son’s adorable.”
“Haru~” She stiffened, skin prickling a little at the sound of the voice. “There you are. You nearly gave your mom a heart attack.”
The woman stands up, holding the boy, Haruki's hand. And there before them was a walking Satoru. Haruki quickly lets go of his mother's hand and runs to him.
“Tou-chan!”
“Huh? Why are your cheeks red–” he glances in her direction and her chest throbs. He gives her an apologetic tilt to his lips before looking at his son again, teasingly asking, “Haru-chan, do you have a crush?”
The boy only denies it, stuttering loudly before taking off again in the opposite direction, Satoru following with more teasing remarks. The woman bowed lightly again before catching up to her husband and son.
“Have a good day.”
“You too.”
Utahime could only watch as the family got farther and farther away, as Satoru strolled with an arm around his wife, holding his son's hand with the other.
Ah, but I don't blame you; I'll never burn as brilliantly as you.
“Gojo Satoru, you’re cutting the circulation off my hand.”
“Huh?”
“Your hold, it’s too tight.”
“Ah–” He loosens his hold but doesn’t let go. “Sorry.”
“It’s..” they’re both staring at the reflection of her marred face in their vanity mirror. She got into a life-threatening car accident a week ago, and she’s just removed the bandages around her face. A huge red scar now ran along almost the entirety of her left cheek, over her nose bridge, and barely grazed her right cheek.
“It’s pretty,” he continues for her. He makes eye contact with her through the mirror, fixing her with an affectionate and reassuring stare that melted her insides. “You’re so pretty, Uta.”
Utahime was shocked upon seeing how much bigger it was than she initially thought, but it ebbed away quickly the more she got used to the new look. The tissue was still tender, and it’d take months before it completely healed but she didn’t mind. She was only thankful she survived.
“I’m okay, it doesn’t bother me,” she tells him softly, tentatively reaching for her face with her other hand that he wasn’t holding. She stops and decides against it when it was one inch shy of making contact, wincing. She rolls her shoulders.
Satoru grabs them and twirls her around so that they were facing each other. “Just so you know in advance, I’ll be kissing the scar every day when it heals.” She’s taken back to how frazzled and worried he looked when she first opened her eyes post-surgery. He’s composed now but he eyes at the tissue still with a hint of sadness.
“I almost lost you,” he told her then. Voice hoarse and eyes red-rimmed, and Utahime thought of the dozen –or was it more than that?– times she’d lost him. Her stomach churns at the memory of his slouched image, hand clasping hers much tighter than he had just now.
“Okay,” she grins widely, in hopes that it’ll infect him and completely dissipate the remaining fear in his system from the past week. She wraps her arms around his torso and rests her ear against his chest. “I’ll look forward to it.”
It's only fair that I should be the one to chase you,
“Next!”
The staff calls out as the person she’s signed the copy of her book for bows with barely concealed excitement and moves along with the rest of the line.
She glances at the length of it and at the imperceptible head at the very end before smiling at the new person in front of her and signing their copy too.
It goes on like that longer, she converses shortly and exchanges pleasantries with them until it was down to the remaining two people, both being men.
“Utahime-san, is there a happy ending for her?” The former of the two asks, referring to the main character in her story.
Smiling indulgingly, she whispers, “Don’t you think it’s better if you didn’t know?”
He groans and she giggles, waving as his time finishes up, moving and making way for the last person in attendance at her event.
“Name?” She opens a palm out for him to hand his copy, biting back another giggle when she opens the front page and sees ‘Marriage Registration Signature Here’ written down on the left corner along with a crooked line below it.
And a pretty ring.
“Gojo Satoru, and did you mean it? What you said to the guy before me, I mean.” She signs away, humming. “Was it really meant to be an open ending?”
“Well, Gojo-san,” she closes the page and hands him back the book. “Think about it like this: Tsumiki will remember time and time again, and the cycle continues forever– until the very fabric of the universe itself gets tired maybe, but at least she had her brother. She wouldn’t be alone in remembering anymore because he’d be sharing the burden with her the next time they met. If you think about it like that, it’s a happy ending in disguise.”
“For her?”
“For her,” she agreed. For me. She watches, amused as the man just stares at her. That’s my idea of a happy ending. Tsumiki and her are one of the same, after all.
The idea of writing her story into a book had been marinating in her thoughts for a long time now, and she only got around to finally doing it in this life, dedicating her whole career and education to this path. Utahime had just wanted more people to be privy to her secret, in a roundabout way.
And now, and now—
“You seem to have way more questions, Gojo-san.” He nods with a heaving sigh. He blatantly flips the front page open before quirking an eyebrow at her.
“Will I ever get my answers to them?” He’s already smiling boyishly and triumphantly, and it widens when she raises her hand and the elegant band glints on her finger. Distantly, she hears shocked squeals and sounds of camera shutters. “Well,” Utahime stands up from her seat and grabs his face gently. Satoru already teasingly warned her the night before that he’d make a scene for the headlines today, that he’d thought of the best way to reveal to her fans that their beloved author was already in a relationship with her first and –his words– No.1 fan.
“I guess you’ll have a whole lifetime–” and more she doesn’t say but something shines in his orbs and she knows he still somehow caught it at once, “–to find out.” He pulls her in before she does and their lips meet in the middle.
When they pull away from each other she only shakes her head as her now-fiancé winks at the excited crowd of her fans and bystanders alike, mouthing proudly whilst pointing at the sheen stain of her lipstick on him that he was her big little sexy secret. He trains his eyes on her again and she doesn’t resist when her emotions mix and bubble and push her to kiss him again, harder.
Ears focused on the chatter and cheers, she barely noticed the wipe of his thumbs against her wet cheeks.
Satoru’s voice is velvety, and she gets grounded back to where she was at the moment. She gets grounded back to him, and all his antics and endearing ways that keep her tethered to him.
No matter what, no matter when. "They already love me, babe."
"Not as much as I love you."
He exhales out an astonished laugh, ghosting his thumbs on the skin below her eyes before dipping his forehead to burrow it against her shoulder. “Heh. Seems like Hime-chan doesn't mind her big little sexy secret being revealed as much as I thought~"
Whichever he meant, he wasn’t wrong. And there’s also the fact that for the first time in such a forsaken period, can Utahime say that she was on cloud 9; undisputedly, radically, and weightlessly happy.
Across ten, twenty-five, a hundred lifetimes,
In the past, whenever Utahime was bored out of her mind she racked her memory hard to remember the exact number of lives she’s lived through thus far.
The last instance she did that, she remembered the count being somewhere between thirty-eight to forty-eight. It’s long doubled– no, tripled and then quadrupled since then, so the counting streak got all but abandoned.
She’d pity herself in the night, and daydream of her existential crisis in the day, wondering if she lived so horribly in her first life that the universe sentenced her to an inescapable, never-ending hell that’ll go on for as long as the world will continue to evolve and rotate its axis; an infinite race against a clock that’ll be moving and ticking forever.
It’ll continue to tick, and she’ll continue to carry her memories. She’d meet new people and perhaps reunite with one specific person, then part ways; meet again, and part ways, live, and then die–
Lather, rinse and repeat. All over again.
Until I find the one–
But time makes it easier. She started reminding herself: Time makes it easier, after pitying herself in the night, and: He makes it easier, after daydreaming of her existential crisis in the day.
He makes it easier.
If her book’s main character Tsumiki had her brother, then Utahime had Satoru. Her eternal companion– her constant, whom she doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with but that was more than fine.
Gojo Satoru can be all kinds of aggravating; he can be downright immature and inconsiderate, he can be too good at compartmentalizing his emotions and playing mind games with her, and he can piss her off so badly she’d think he was sent from hell as the devil's incarnate to punish her even more and forget she’s chased him for a consecutive stream of lifetimes.
–Where you'll return to me.
But he can be all kinds of sugary-sweet not unlike the ones he consumed on copious amount too. He can willingly embarass and clown himself if it was at her expense, he can hold her tightly and kiss her so perfectly she'd fuse into him and his bones, and he can be everything and anything she'd want him to be without trying at all; willing to catch the moon and all the planets in the solar system for her if she ever asked for them.
In the end, it’d always be him.
If he was there, it’d be him. If he was there and wasn’t driving her insane, it’d be him. If they can, it’d always, always be him. No one else but him.
Gojo Satoru makes living her fate out easier.
And Utahime would never decide having it any other way.