nanamineedstherapy

[nanamineedstherapy]

Sometimes Sukuna knocks his knuckles lightly against your forehead, lips twitching with amusement as he leans in. “Hmm… kinda hollow in there, don’t you think?” he hums, tapping again like he’s inspecting a melon at the market. “Tch. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that, don’t wanna scare off your last brain cell. Thing’s probably hanging on by a thread.”

[nanamineedstherapy]

Third Wheeling Your Own Marriage

Elrdrich King!Haibara x Galatic Emperor General F!Reader F!Non-Sorceress CEO Reader x Gojo Satoru x Nanami Kento F!CHRO Reader x Higuruma Hiromi Previous Ch 28 - False Mother & The Remembered Father - Part 1 - [Tumblr/Ao3] A/N: Mixed POVs because I have no respect for structure, and they shift mid-sentence sometimes, so read like you're sipping scalding tea and trying not to spill. The next night, we’re in Megumi’s penthouse. The lighting? Sinfully warm. Almost like emotions are about to happen. Disgusting. Next Chapter will be the Finale.

Ch 28 - False Mother & The Remembered Father - Part 2

W H E R E

 A R E 

 O U R

    F A T H E R S

Her body levitated half an inch—

Then slammed down.

Hard.

Toji muttered through gritted teeth, lungs crushed beneath Infinity’s invisible weight, “I never said I’d bring Gojo and Nanami.”

Blood smeared his chin. His back had dented the wall. “I promised to bring a dad.”

He coughed. “He’s your dad from another life.”

They all turned.

Sukuna hadn’t moved yet. But something in the air shifted.

The kind of shift you feel in your jaw before a thunderclap. Static rolled across the ceiling like breath caught in a metal throat.

He stepped forward at last. Quiet. Controlled.

Kneeled beside her.

The woman—still unconscious, chest barely rising—looked drained of color. Lips pale. Hands clenched, as if holding something the rest of them couldn’t see.

Sukuna’s mouth opened—

And he did something no one expected.

No grin. No mocking threat. No prayer to himself.

He hummed.

Off-key. Strange. Soft.

A made-up lullaby that sounded like nothing and everything.

It didn’t belong here. It belonged to another world—another her. One who had whispered it to him when they’d been trapped in a warcamp between timelines. A life where she was his, and he’d never let her go.

He’d sung it to their children once.

And now, he sang it to these.

The moment the sound left him—

The lights dimmed.

The Infinity snapped back.

Her body relaxed. Arms loose at her sides. Legs falling still. Her fingers unclenched.

Toji’s nose stopped bleeding. The blades hovering around the ceiling retreated slightly—still sparking, still lethal, but no longer actively murderous.

The air became breathable.

They were watching now.

Not lashing out. Listening.

Kaori smiled faintly from where she sat at the girl’s side. “Guess they loved your voice.”

Sukuna didn’t respond. He just kept humming, brushing her hair gently aside, his fingers lingering against her cheek like he feared she’d vanish if he stopped.

Yuji blinked hard. “What song is that?”

“It doesn’t have a name,” Junpei whispered. “That’s the point.”

Toji, still half-dead from fetal-PTSD and bleeding out on the floor, groaned, “I’m not changing diapers. Just so we’re clear.”

Choso, watching it all unfold, narrowed his eyes. “Who even are you?” He seemed to be the only one asking the right questions.

“Don’t worry about me,” Toji said flatly. “I won’t hurt her. But you all need to make sure she stays knocked out until she gives birth.”

Junpei frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“No,” Kaori said, already checking pulse points again. “Staying awake is dangerous. If she regains consciousness while the twins are still semi-merged, they’ll either tear her apart trying to possess her body… or start learning how to walk mid-delivery.”

None of them liked the mental image that conjured.

Sukuna wasn’t listening; he was busy brushing hair aside from her face in a trance.

Like she was all his life’s waiting manifested into a singular moment.

Like she was the only thing he remembered.

Like she was the only thing he had left.

His voice didn’t falter, but his eyes did—just a little.

The red in them had never looked so soft.

“I’m here,” he murmured. “I’m not them. I’m not even afraid of you. But I will protect you.”

Toji exhaled. “They don’t want courage.” He looked up at the ceiling. “They want permission.”

Yuji struggled to lift his head. “Permission for what?”

“To exist,” Sukuna said.

No one argued.

They couldn’t.

The compression had resumed. Ratio-based cursed energy now pulsed in delicate, surgical rhythms. Every breath too sharp or shallow earned a retaliatory ripple of cursed feedback—microcuts inside the lungs, subtle but real.

Only Sukuna remained untouched.

“You’re protecting her too well,” Sukuna said quietly, eyes still on her. “You’ll destroy her in the process. Is that what you want?”

The room groaned.

The temperature dropped two degrees.

And then, a voice.

Not hers.

Not Sukuna’s.

A child’s voice, but not singular. Layered. Genderless. It echoed through her vocal cords, like something crawling up from her womb and using her throat.

W E

O N L Y   D I S T R O Y  

W H A T

  W A N T S   U S

T O    L E A V E

Kaori closed her eyes.

Junpei swallowed hard.

Toji muttered, “Great. They’re possessive. Just like every other man that’s ever loved her.”

The walls began to bend inward, faint groans of structural failure echoing through the steel beams.

Sukuna didn’t flinch.

He lifted one hand, knuckles gently brushing her cheek.

“Listen to me,” he said—not to the others, but to them. The twins. The fractured psychic storm brewing inside her. “They’re not here. But I am. And if you burn the world down before you’re even born, there’ll be no one left to hold you.”

Everything went still.

And then—

A pause.

A breath.

Then:

Y O U

   W I L L

H O L D    U S   ?

Not threatening. Not demanding.

Hopeful.

And that was the worst part.

Sukuna’s gaze shifted, just briefly, to Kaori. Then back to her face.

He nodded. “If you let her live long enough to meet you—yes, I will.”

The silence that followed was enormous.

Then, somewhere above the ceiling, a single, high-pitched chime rang.

Soft. Final.

A binding vow.

Accepted.

Toji flopped backward, arms spread, blood soaking into his shirt. “I still hate kids.”

Yuji wheezed, facedown on the floor. “I can breathe again. Oh my god.”

Kaori wiped her brow. “She’ll need full lockdown protocols. Psychic dampeners. Sedatives keyed to Six Eyes output levels.”

Choso finally stepped away from the wall, shaking his head. “They all felt like that?”

Junpei glanced at Sukuna. “He calmed them down.”

Sukuna didn’t reply.

His hand stayed on her jaw. His thumb never stopped moving. Just slow, repetitive arcs over her pulse point, like he was tracing the rhythm of a second chance.

Toji staggered to his feet, reaching for his pack of cigarettes. “Putting this shit on your tab,” he muttered at Sukuna. “You broke the womb. You pay the bill.”

The twins didn’t speak again.

But the temperature in the room had changed.

Not warm. Not cold.

Just—

Waiting.

---

A few days later. Somewhere, in the biophilic rooftop garden—

Under vine-wrapped steel arches and imported cedar trees, the ghosts of three broken hearts sat together beneath the moonlight.

Too ashamed to speak.

Too cowardly to name what they lost.

The elevator hummed. No music.

No words.

Just the groan of aging machinery.

Megumi stood apart, arms folded. Watching the floor number tick up.

You stood beside him.

Haibara’s hand rested at the small of your back.

Public. Subtle. Territorial.

He grinned at Megumi like a vulture in a suit.

Polite. Too polite.

Outside your old penthouse, after work, Gojo sat cross-legged beside a planter of dead lavender.

Takahashi curled in his lap.

The raccoon hissed as you passed.

You didn’t react.

Gojo stroked his fur like he was trying not to unravel.

Tears dried in salt-streaks on his cheeks.

“What did they do to her, baby boy?” he whispered. “Why doesn’t she know you?”

Inside, Nanami sat alone in your old office.

The wall still held your grocery notes.

Beside a photo of the three of you.

Smiling.

Back before you realized one day, you’d miss it.

---

In the bunker’s hallway kitchen space, Toji leaned against the fridge, shirt loose, cigarette unlit between his teeth.

Kaori—still stunning despite the crow’s feet she wore like war medals—sipped barley tea. Her laugh rang down the corridor.

Yuji, tall and built like a sportswear model turned mafia son, glared at them over his glass of water.

“You know, in my world,” Toji said, gesturing vaguely with the cigarette, “you’re a widow.”

Kaori’s laugh sparkled. “And in mine, you’re a corpse.”

Yuji choked. “Mom.”

She ignored him. “Explains why your wife thinks you’re dead. Funny girl, but she cries during mukbangs.”

Toji blinked. Then—slow grin. “Guess I owe her a haunting.”

Yuji slammed the glass down. “He’s flirting with you.”

“I’m married, sweetheart,” Kaori said dryly, patting her son’s shoulder. “Not dead. And he’s not my type.”

“That’s not what you said earlier,” Toji muttered.

“That’s because I lied,” she replied brightly.

Yuji stared in pained horror.

---

In the morning sun, the rooftop garden smelled like overpriced mulch and unresolved trauma. Lavender, dying. Basil, thriving. Somewhere, a solar-powered koi pond burbled like it was trying to file a noise complaint.

Gojo paced by the bamboo grove like a man who’d just remembered all his exes’ birthdays at once. Nanami kept his hands in his sweatpants pockets like he was trying to stop them from throwing a punch.

“Don’t nag me—”

“You’re not my wife—”

“Exactly! That’s the problem!”

Their voices echoed over the artificial breeze and the very suspicious koi.

“I’m not doing this anymore,” Nanami said flatly. “We were never even in love the way we needed to be. We just… existed. Like roommates who had sex too many times to keep pretending we were friends. Then it spiraled into coworkers who accidentally shared a mortgage and had exclusive sex in a stress spiral.”

Gojo squinted against the sun, hair wind-whipped and unfairly photogenic. “I thought we were doing okay.” Then his hair started making his nose itch.

“You’re confusing survival with intimacy,” Nanami said, deadpan. “And honestly? I can’t live with you without her. Not anymore. Not when everything feels like we’re circling the drain in matching pajamas.”

Silence.

Gojo swallowed. “You want a divorce?”

Nanami nodded once. “Yeah. I do.”

It sounded like a budget announcement. Not tragic. Just inevitable.

From two balconies down, a rich househusband holding an Aperol Spritz leaned over the railing. “Isn’t that the blindfold guy?”

“Oh my god, it is. Are they breaking up? I thought she was the one divorcing them.”

“No, they were also married. Like married-married.”

A crypto baron in sheer linen recorded from Penthouse 4B. He would post it on Threads with the caption #PolyFails.

Gojo spun on his heel. “I want to fix it! I’ve been trying—”

“You’re treating this like a mission,” Nanami said, gesturing vaguely like he was describing an MLM. “Like if you try hard enough, we’ll respawn into a healthy relationship. That’s not how trauma works.”

Gojo’s smile faltered. His mouth twitched like he was buffering grief. “So you’re just giving up?”

“I’m setting you free,” Nanami said, arms crossed like he was waiting for a train. “You’re not my husband anymore. We’re just… post-apocalyptic roommates.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Gojo muttered, lower lip wobbling like a sad anime boy.

Nanami shrugged. “Say what? The part that’s true?”

They weren’t shouting. Just mid-volume spiraling like emotionally repressed grad students still in love with their thesis partner.

“You eat cereal in the shower,” Nanami added. “I can’t live like this.”

A housewife shouted from her balcony, “Tell him, blondie!”

“Better than doing taxes at 4 AM like you’re laundering sorcerer money,” Gojo fired back.

Meanwhile, across the rooftop—

You crouched beside a very offended albino raccoon. Your silk nightgown was half-hidden beneath one of Megumi’s mom’s hoodies, and your thighs had gone numb from squatting glamorously for too long. You were nearly nine months fake-pregnant, and Takahashi glared at you like you’d betrayed him in a past life.

Haibara sat on the garden bench beside you, looking like the romantic lead in a prestige thriller. Black slacks. Moschino hoodie. That calm smile people wore when they were definitely hiding a weapon.

Takahashi puffed up and hissed like he ran on spite alone.

“You little bastard,” you whispered. “I raised you.”

He hissed harder. Lifted one paw like he was invoking divine judgment.

Haibara knelt and casually smacked it away. “Maybe if we offer jerky,” he said, unsealing a silver packet like it was a treaty. “He liked jerky in 2017.”

“He liked me in 2017,” you muttered.

Haibara looked at you like you were the center of gravity. “I still do.”

His hand rested on your ankle. Warm. Steady.

You were spiraling—rage or shame or both. The raccoon hated you. Everyone hated you. This wasn’t even your real body—it was a cosplay made of grief and god complex.

“Hey,” Haibara said, thumb brushing your shin. “You’re not broken.”

You looked up. His eyes said: I’ll burn it all for you. Even if you don’t ask.

And for a moment, you believed him.

Even Takahashi hesitated.

Then hissed again. Because Nanami had taught him big words like consistency.

“Do you think he knows?” you asked.

Haibara nodded. “He knows you’re not the woman who saved him. But he doesn’t understand why he still wants to sit near you. I relate.”

You sighed. “Maybe I should hiss back.”

“I support you,” Haibara said instantly.

“Even if I hiss at a raccoon?”

“Especially then.”

Takahashi hissed louder.

“Uncalled for,” you muttered. “You’re supposed to be my emotional support rodent.”

Haibara stroked your fake belly. “Congrats. Your unborn children’s first enemy shits in a flowerpot.”

You smacked his arm, grimacing.

Gojo and Nanami were now fully in their gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss divorce arc.

“You don’t even like me, Satoru.”

“I like you more than I like anyone else!”

“That’s not a high bar!” Nanami shouted. “That’s a cry for help!”

Then, without warning, someone from the 46th floor shouted down:

“LEAVE HER ALONE, SHE’S TOO HOT FOR BOTH OF YOU!”

“IS THE BLONDE GUY SINGLE?”

“I THOUGHT THE ONE IN THE HOODIE WAS RUNNING A CULT—”

“She is,” Haibara called back without turning.

A couple walked past. One of the tower’s wealthier tenants, hand-in-hand with her trophy husband. She glanced at your bump, then at Haibara.

“Wow,” she said, loud enough to echo. “Already adding another husband before that one’s even out?”

You blinked. Haibara didn’t.

He dragged you closer by the hem of your hoodie—effortless, like you weighed nothing—and leaned in, murmuring against your ear: “We’re not even staying here long enough for their gossip to matter.”

“No,” you agreed, a smile slipping out before you could catch it. “This whole building’s already rotting from the inside.”

Takahashi glared—raccoonishly offended.

Gojo and Nanami—mid-divorce, mid-soul crisis, mid-Nanago-KFC adjacent event, and mid-bamboo-staring contest—snapped their heads toward you.

“She’s not your concern,” Nanami said, curt.

“Yeah,” Gojo echoed. “She’s our—!”

“She’s not ours anymore,” Nanami corrected. Brutal. Soft.

Gojo deflated. “Right. But we still respectfully reject your slander.”

A neighbor scoffed. “So what, you’re fighting over the baby mama now?”

“Yes,” Nanami replied without hesitation.

Gojo elbowed him. “That’s not helping.”

“She’s also not yours,” Haibara added. Still smiling. Dead behind the eyes. “But do go on.”

Takahashi hissed again.

“I don’t like you either,” Haibara hissed back.

You offered Takahashi salmon jerky.

He smacked it away with the rage of someone betrayed by narrative.

“I think he hates me.”

“It’s fine. You’re just being rejected by a raccoon. In public,” Haibara said, laughing softly.

Gojo and Nanami’s argument had escalated into Final Boss: Philosophical Territory Phase.

“I don’t even know what we were anymore!” Gojo said, pacing. “Cohabitating ghosts? Sad DILFs? Trauma-bonded sleepover buddies with a joint tax file, war flashbacks, and a one-bedroom emotional range?!”

“You’re still in love with her,” Nanami replied, stretching like he was about to jog straight into the sun.

“You are too!”

“I’m letting her go.”

“Then let me go too!”

“That’s literally what I’m doing right now!”

They stood in silence. Stared at each other.

They stare.

Gojo sniffled.

Nanami cleared his throat.

“…Do you want to get ramen?” Gojo mumbled.

“If you’re paying.”

A long pause.

Gojo adjusted his blindfold like tear-proof lingerie. “We really did break up like bros.”

Nanami shrugged. “Would’ve been incredibly weirder if it was normal.”

Back on the bench, you finally bribed Takahashi, who had begrudgingly flopped a meter away—judging, but adjacent.

“This is progress,” you whispered.

Haibara took your hand. “If he lunges, I’ll jump in front.”

You smiled. “You’re too good to me.”

He met your gaze. “I was made to be your favorite.”

And for a second, everything else faded.

But then Takahashi sneezed, Haibara glared at him, and the moment was ruined like Gojo’s PR team again by the sound of Gojo and Nanami failing to navigate the elevator as divorced exes.

“Up or down, Kento?!”

“There are TWO BUTTONS, Satoru!”

You sighed. Haibara chuckled.

Takahashi hissed again—louder.

Haibara threw a cucumber slice at him.

Taka-baby ate it. Insulted.

Then, from the rooftop stairwell, someone called out:

“IS THE RACCOON OKAY???”

---

Song Rec: Bikhra by Abdul Hannan

---

She heard it first—long after midnight.

The staff had gone to bed. Megumi’s mother was finally knocked out from her sacred blend of sleepy sencha, prescription TCM pills, and a 200mg gummy smuggled from a Kyoto spa.

And then—grinding.

Not quiet. Not subtle.

Wet grit. Bone on bone.

She found him on the couch, half-buttoned, one bare foot braced against the table like he’d collapsed mid-email. His jaw was clenched so hard she swore she saw his temples twitch. The muscles in his cheek fluttered like something alive was trying to escape.

Despite the fake pregnancy bloating and AI-induced Braxton Hicks, she knelt beside him.

“Megumi.”

He didn’t stir.

“Megumi,” she tried again, softer this time. Her hand brushed his cheek like she wasn’t lying to his face every day. The motion felt... rehearsed. It was oddly motherly—the kind of touch that was more habit than affection, rehearsed in labs and spy simulations but never tested on real, living human pain.

He blinked awake with a hiss, not in fear—just confused. “Wha…?”

“Wisdom teeth,” she said. “Hurting again?”

He blinked once, then gave a small, dumb nod, eyes bleary with exhaustion. “I thought I was grinding through them in my sleep…”

“You were.”

It was 4:17 AM.

She didn’t let him argue. She’d already made the call.

By 5:02, they were in the underground garage, slipping into one of his Maseratis—only to find Haibara behind the wheel.

“You’re letting him drive?” Megumi squinted.

“He insisted,” she lied. Already nauseated from the AI’s fake fetal movements and Haibara’s real-life drifting. “Said you needed someone competent.”

“Competent? You remember how many times we fell off his Ducati when he claimed ‘he’d perfected it’?”

Haibara turned from the driver’s seat, sunglasses on despite the hour. “And yet you trust me with your life, brat.”

“You drove into a vending machine.”

“I meant to do that,” Haibara said, adjusting a rearview mirror he didn’t know how to use.

Megumi leaned against the headrest.

She sat beside him, pressing a cold gel pack to his cheek. The swelling was visible. The pain, not yet. He looked—soft. Frayed at the edges. Like someone who lived too much in silence and not enough in comfort.

He hadn’t shaved. And his thumb kept twitching like he was still typing out responses to crisis emails in his dreams.

She didn’t speak. Just sat there beside him. Pretending to be real.

Pretending this was what people did for each other.

His eyes stayed half-lidded, dark lashes resting on shadows carved from too many sleepless nights. “You’re being really nice to me,” he mumbled.

“I always am,” she replied, overly cautious.

“No. You were…” He paused, choosing the words like they might hurt. “You were colder after the coma. Not mean. Just... like someone had unplugged you. Like you were in the room, but not.”

Her breath caught.

“But now,” he continued, glancing over at her with that unreadable calm that only cracked when he was too tired to armor up, “you’re different.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out like something spilled from a broken speaker. Static and regret.

His gaze didn’t flinch.

She looked anywhere but at his gaze, which felt like it was cutting clean through the lie she wore like skin.

And for a moment, she wondered how much he was holding back.

What questions he never asked.

Whether some soft part of him already knew this wasn’t her—but loved her anyway.

He was too sleep-deprived to connect dots.

Her stomach turned. Guilt, maybe. Or code.

“Maybe I’m just hormonal,” she said, faking a yawn. “Comes with the whole come-pregnancy glow.”

That distracted him. “Right.Don’t joke. The twins. Everyone’s felt them kick by now—Nanami, Gojo, my mom, even Haibara. Everyone. Why haven’t you let me feel it yet?”

Her spine stiffened.

The AI in her body hummed a low warning. Threat detected. Sentiment spike.

From the driver’s seat, Haibara caught her eye in the mirror. His smile twitched—too knowing.

“Now?” she asked, trying to buy time. “You want to… now?”

Megumi was already reaching over. His large hand slid across the curve of her stomach like he’d done it before.

“I won’t break them,” he murmured, palm pressing flat. “I used to help bandage your hands when we were kids. Remember?”

No, she thought.

I don’t.

Because that wasn’t me.

Because you’re not even holding your real person right now.

The AI in her spine buzzed behind her eyes.

Simulate kick?

[Y] / [N]

Her hand twitched. She blinked.

Y.

The response was immediate—sharp, but gentle. Exactly where the AI mapped his hand’s pressure—perfectly timed, the AI knew exactly how big the “twins” should be and where to land it for max emotional destruction.

Megumi’s whole body went still.

Then lit up.

“That was—” he blinked at her, smiling like a child who just touched starlight. “You felt that?”

She nodded once. Couldn’t speak.

His hand lingered. Warm. Protective. Almost reverent.

“...You didn’t have to wait this long to trust me,” he said quietly.

His hand stayed there a moment longer, like he didn’t want to pull away.

And she almost cried. Because it wasn’t trust—it was cruelty, hiding behind kindness.

She turned her head, as if watching the blur of city lights through the tinted window. But she wasn’t seeing any of it.

Not the skyline.

Not the streets.

Just the way he looked at her like she was still his person.

“Megumi,” she said suddenly. “Why haven’t you used the salary I’ve been paying you?”

He blinked again, confused. “What?”

“I put you on payroll when I took maternity leave. You’re managing both companies now. You should’ve spent something. Even Haibara didn’t take his cut.”

“You know why,” he said softly, like it wasn’t even a question. “It’s not mine. It’s yours.”

“You’ve been running two though.”

“I’d do it for free.”

“Don’t,” she snapped too quickly.

Then gentled. “Don’t do that to yourself. You’re tired.”

He shrugged. “I’ve always been tired. I just… sleep better knowing you’re still breathing.”

And that was when the guilt surged.

Not because of the lie.

But because he meant it.

And he still smiled through the hurt. Quiet. Unshowy.

She nodded, afraid her voice would betray her if she tried to speak.

Then, mercifully—

“HAIBARA,” Megumi suddenly barked, snapping upright. “TAKE THE DAMN TURN—THIS ISN’T TOKYO DRIFT!”

Haibara, who had clearly missed the exit while fumbling with the windshield wipers, replied without shame, “You try taking an exit at 130 in a four-ton capitalist coffin.”

“You’re going to give her labor-by-whiplash.”

“Oops,” Haibara said cheerfully, easing into a lazy, illegal U-turn across four empty lanes like he’d just discovered what steering was for.

“I swear to God,” Megumi muttered, rubbing his face. “If you crash this car, I will personally remove your soul.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Haibara said, now calmly signaling with the hazard lights like that made anything better.

She almost laughed. Almost.

But instead, she just looked out the window, quiet.

All she could think was:

How easily people love the wrong versions of us.

How beautifully they carry the burdens we never earned.

And how none of them deserved to lose this much again.

Not him.

Especially not him.

She sat back quietly, cradling the cold pack to Megumi’s jaw, her AI-simulated belly still pulsing from the fake kick. Megumi half-dozed against her shoulder, warm and confused, while Haibara—the war criminal from 50,000 years in the future, technically from another universe—laughed at a road sign like he was auditioning for a sitcom where dads didn’t die and war never happened.

And just for a moment, in that slippery, pre-dawn unreality—it felt like a family.

Which was, of course, the most dangerous feeling of all.

---

The bunker’s medbay glowed dimly with low-spectrum LEDs hidden in the vines. Ivy curled down temperature-regulated glass walls, while high-frequency hums from vitals monitors whispered between pulse readings.

Sukuna sat beside her, barefoot on a floor that mimicked forest moss, legs folded under him like a monk in prayer.

She hadn't moved in days.

But her body—full with the strange shape of pregnancy neither mortal nor cursed—remained a battlefield of precision.

And he, oddly, had taken on the role of medic.

Not because he was told to.

But because he wanted to.

Sukuna hummed as he cleaned her IV ports. Tuneless. Gentle. His hands were steady, sterile gloves on, his breath even. Every hour, he checked her vitals himself. Didn’t trust the machines. Didn’t trust time.

Didn’t trust that he wouldn’t lose her again.

A soft smile crept to his mouth as he wiped her temple with a lukewarm cloth.

Her fever had broken.

Her lips were less pale.

The twins had stopped threatening murder for now.

“You look better,” he murmured, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Still sound asleep, huh? Lazy princess.”

He said it like a joke.

But his voice softened in the end, the way he used to speak to her in lifetimes long dead.

Like she was the last living relic of a future that had once been kind.

He adjusted the heating blanket.

Not too warm—her core temperature was still fluctuating. A fan turned slowly above, calibrated to reduce sweat pooling along her neck without risking a chill. Every movement was precise. Surgical. Loving.

And every few minutes, he whispered to her.

A pulse count. A story. A reminder: “I’m here. Still here.”

---

Post-op, the dental clinic was sharp-edged and expensive, the kind of sterile white you only ever saw in megatowers built by oil money or pharmaceutical tycoons trying to buy back their legacy. It didn’t smell like blood or antiseptic—just clean air and wealth.

Haibara waited outside, somewhere in the lobby, chewing through mints and giggling at tabloids.

Megumi was laid out in the chair, eyes glassy from anesthetics. One arm draped limply over the side; the other brushed against hers.

She stayed close. Watching.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

He blinked. His pupils were blown wide, but his expression wasn’t blank. It was raw. Open.

He chuckled once, low. “Remember when we buried that time capsule under the fig tree?”

She smiled like she meant it. “Of course.”

“We said we’d open it when we turned twenty. You had that stupid plastic ring from the vending machine.” His voice slurred a little. “You said you’d marry me if you found it first. I found it... and I gave it to you anyway.”

She didn’t laugh. Didn’t cry.

Just leaned over and booped his nosewith two fingers. “You were always sweet.”

Megumi’s smile wavered. His gaze, still fuzzy from the meds, lingered on her too long, but he pushed forward, eyes half-lidded. “You used to cry when I was sick,” he mumbled. “Said the world didn’t deserve me.”

She didn’t answer that.

Instead, she said, gently, “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

A beat.

His eyes drifted closed, then opened slower. Sobriety returned in pieces.

“You remember when Haibara broke his leg?” he asked.

She nodded, cautious.

“You didn’t leave his side for three days.”

She said nothing.

“You screamed at me,” he went on, voice quieter. “I tried to make you eat. You said he needed you more.”

Her head tilted, searching for the right lie. “I… don’t remember screaming. But that sounds like me.”

His hand found her wrist. Not tightly. Just enough.

“You don’t remember the ring,” he said, softer now. “Do you?”

She froze.

Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t answer.

And then, mercifully, a knock—

Haibara’s voice filtered through the door. “Ready to go?”

She stood too fast. Adjusted the curve of her fake pregnancy belly like it itched.

Megumi didn’t say another word on the ride home.

And Haibara, from the front seat, whistled some ancient tune like none of it mattered.

Like he wasn’t watching her in the mirror.

Like he didn’t already know.

---

The rooftop greenhouse hadn’t changed.

Still humid. Still crowded with flowers, moss, and black orchid vines that curled like memories.

The glass ceiling was still cracked near the northwest corner—where she used to sit during storms. Where she once said thunder reminded her of someone she used to be.

Now, the plants had grown half-wild.

Not dying.

Just… unpruned. Directionless. Like no one had dared to touch what she built.

Nanami poured the sake without ceremony. It was cheap, slightly metallic, warm in the throat. Gojo didn’t complain—he hadn’t tasted anything properly in weeks.

Megumi didn’t sit. He stood near the edge of the greenhouse, obscured from view by an overgrowth of green, hands buried in his trouser pockets. His gaze was locked on the skyline like it owed him answers. Like it might blink first.

“She’s different,” Nanami said at last. His voice was slow. Precise. Like a page being folded at the spine.

Gojo snorted. “Wow. Thanks. Insight of the century.”

Nanami didn’t react. “You know what I mean.”

“No, no,” Gojo muttered, tossing back a shot and grimacing. “Say it. Say it like a fucking adult, Nanami. Say it out loud.”

Megumi finally shifted. He leaned against a pillar of ivy—once part of a trellis she built with her bare hands. The vines had started choking it now.

Nanami’s fingers twitched against his glass. “You think she’s an impostor.”

Gojo’s eyes didn’t flinch. “I think she’s not our wife.”

The silence that followed pulsed. Alive. Like it had its own heartbeat.

“She’s cold,” Gojo went on, quieter now. “Like she’s wearing her own skin like a rented yukata. Like she studied how to move from a deepfake of herself and got most of it right—but not all. Not where it counts. Her eyes don’t follow Takahashi anymore. Her hand doesn’t fidget with her keys or pen out of habit. And she… she doesn’t react when I say something stupid. She used to threaten to beat me with a frying pan.”

Nanami didn’t look up. Just murmured, “Now she threatens with her silence. With her posture. Not her words.”

Gojo laughed once—short, bitter. “Exactly.”

Nanami finally met his gaze. “There are gaps. Behavioral ones. And I don’t mean trauma gaps. The real her would never let Haibara touch her that freely. Not like that. Not without reason.”

“Or say ‘I want a divorce’ like she was reading out a grocery list. Or forget the raccoon she nearly died rescuing.” Gojo's voice cracked slightly. “Or not even react to our very public breakup—she used to be the glue that held us together."

Nanami nodded, jaw tight. “She used to snuggle Takahashi into her arms like he was made of glass. Do you remember how he curled up in the crook of her elbow when I brought him in at night during the coma?”

“Now he tries to bite her face off,” Gojo whispered. “And she doesn’t even flinch. Just… tenses. Like she’s waiting to be punished.”

Megumi stepped forward and picked up the unused sake cup. Poured himself a shot, then held it in his hand without drinking.

“She remembered the time capsule,” he said.

Both men looked at him, startled. Like deer on LSD.

“Mostly,” Megumi added, expression unreadable. “She knew what it was. But not what was in it. Didn’t react when I mentioned the ring.”

He downed the shot in one go. Wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“She lied like she meant it,” he said. “Like she really believed I was the one misremembering.”

Gojo stilled. His voice was hollow. “There was no ring, was there?”

Megumi didn’t answer, but the way he poured himself another shot said enough.

Nanami looked away again, eyes glazed. “Do you remember how many hours she spent cataloging Takahashi’s diet? She handwrote every meal. In three languages. Then she cross-checked it with every medical journal you sent her, Fushiguro. Every vitamin. Every calorie.”

“She used to call him Taka-baby,” Gojo whispered. “Even booped his nose when he sneezed.”

“Now she winces when he climbs her lap,” Nanami said, almost under his breath. “Like he’s diseased.”

“And he hisses at her,” Gojo added.

Nanami’s voice cracked. “He never hissed at her.”

“No,” Gojo said. “He hissed at me. Constantly.”

Megumi looked between them, something hard twisting through his expression.

“How long,” he asked, “have you two known something’s wrong?”

---

Elsewhere, in the bunker, Choso was monitoring a blood panel, expression furrowed. The screen showed abnormal hormonal fluctuations, and a new tremor in her heartbeat frequency.

“She’s stabilizing,” he muttered to himself, but his voice wasn’t relieved. “Too stable.”

Uraume appeared beside him in a flicker of frost.

“She’s not safe.”

Choso didn’t flinch. “You mean the twins?”

Uraume shook their head. “I mean that the cursed energy signatures in New York match Geto Suguru. Impossible as it is—he’s not dead.”

Sukuna turned.

The air dropped ten degrees.

"This was his design," Uraume intoned, voice like frost forming on bone. "The assassination plot. He intends to render them into cursed objects—vengeance against Gojo Satoru woven into the act. Her survival was... an oversight."

Sukuna rose without a sound.

His eyes were already ancient again.

Gone was the softness.

Only violence remained.

“Where?”

Uraume extended the coordinates with a gloved hand, their voice smooth as ice over a grave. “The residuals converge beneath the ruins of Jujutsu Tech, woven through the defiled remnants of Kenjaku’s wards. His current nesting place.”

A pause, their breath frosting in the air.

“However, time is a luxury we lack. The curses gather there tonight in numbers even he would find… indulgent.”

Their gaze sharpened, blade-like.

“And when she gives birth, the resultant cursed energy will eclipse even Gojo Satoru’s birth. By then, Geto Suguru’s forces will have descended. Should we delay, saving her will be…”

Uraume’s lips curled, just slightly.

“…beyond even our interference.”

Toji appeared behind him, cracking his knuckles. “I’ve been dying to punch a priest. Let’s go.”

Yuji stood. Silent. Resigned. But already pulling his fingerless gloves on.

They moved fast.

Before leaving, Sukuna leaned one last time toward her unconscious form. “I’ll be back,” he murmured. “Don’t let them scare you while I’m gone.”

To Choso, he said, “If she gives birth—use the blood. Slow the hemorrhage. Split the ratio surges. Bind them.” His voice was a blade’s edge—sharp, with no room for error. “You’ll flood her veins with your blood the moment she tears. Not too much. Just enough to keep her heart beating until that Ieiri woman arrives.”

A pause. Then, quieter, almost amused: “And keep those twins of hers from clawing her apart. Their spawns never did know their own strength.”

He flicked a finger toward Junpei, who flinched. “You—run to Jujutsu Tech. Drag Shoko here by her hair if you have to.”

Then he turned back to Choso. “Track his cursed energy with Flowing Red Scale. If it so much as stutters… make it scream. That’ll keep him fighting.”

Then he leaned in, “Oh, and Choso? If you let her die… I’ll turn your ribs into wind chimes.”

Choso nodded. “I’ll keep her alive.”

Junpei moved behind him with an armful of medical restraints and cursed barrier charms. “Then we hold the line. However long it takes.”

Uraume tilted their head, amused. “How… sacrificial.”

The elevator shut behind them—Sukuna, Toji, Yuji.

Two of them, monsters in mourning.

Headed to destroy the ghost that tried to erase her.

---

Back in the garden, Gojo tilted his head. “Known? A few days. Suspected? Since she touched Haibara’s neck in public.”

Nanami rolled the cold sake cup across his forehead. “Since she stopped calling me by my name.”

Another silence stretched, quiet as rot.

The city lights below blinked like faulty neurons, stupid and oblivious.

Then Megumi said, too softly to be casual, “And none of you sorcerer supremes thought to tell me?”

“You hate us,” Gojo unenthusiastically mumbled. “We didn’t think you’d believe us.”

Megumi’s stare sliced sharper than his father’s knife. “Don’t project your guilt on me.”

Nanami sighed. “We didn’t want it to be real.”

Finally, Megumi sat down. Slowly. His voice came out tight. “When I was six, she pulled me out of a lake. I was trying to catch a frog. Fell in. Nearly drowned. She jumped after me. Couldn’t even swim.”

Gojo looked up, something softer flashing behind his eyes. “I remember. She told me that. When we were dating.”

“She used to say I was the only one who ever looked at her like she was someone worthy of the human experience,” Megumi went on. “Now? She won’t even make eye contact unless it’s performative. Like she’s checking a list. Like I’m just another task to complete.”

He poured another drink. Didn’t touch it.

“And Haibara,” Megumi said, quieter now. “He doesn’t remember what he made me promise him. When he was seventeen. When he swore he’d never try anything with her because he didn’t have the moral restraint she needed.”

Gojo turned sharply. “He doesn’t remember?”

“No,” Megumi replied. “He faked it. Badly. I pushed him. He agreed too fast. Said he was retired now, so it didn’t ‘matter.’”

His jaw clenched. “Like loving her now, being with her, was some loophole. Something he earned. Like a pension.”

Nanami leaned back, like he already knew. “He’s finally become fully selfish.”

Gojo said nothing.

Because for the first time—since the coma, since the pregnancy, since she’d walked back into their lives wearing a familiar face that felt twenty seconds off—while they all sat in the tall grass beneath their own silence, facing the truth like a noose.

Gojo finally whispered it. Less like confession and more like mourning.

“She’s not our wife.”

Megumi nodded once.

And this time, he drank.

Nanami pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Do you think the cursed coma scrambled her brain? Or is it possession?”

Gojo knocked back another shot. “Nope. Scanned her six times. During dinner. After. With Six Eyes, Reverse Cursed Technique. Every tool I’ve got. No cursed energy. No residue aside from the twins. Like someone poured holy water through her soul. Pure. Untouchably so. Kind of unsettling, honestly.”

Megumi, already pouring himself another, muttered bitterly. “Meanwhile, Haibara’s leaking cursed energy like a broken faucet. He never used to. Not even a drop. But now he’s basically humming with it. Started right after she woke up.”

Nanami raked a hand through his hair. “Did he at least tell you where the hell he was during her coma?”

“He said he was tracking the sniper,” Megumi said flatly. “But I don’t buy it. He’s never failed to locate someone in under a day. Not once. Now he acts like he’s half-awake. Just follows her around like he’s tethered. It’s a weirdly symbiotic thing to see them together now. Like she’s the only thing keeping him corporeal. Even Mom says his smile creeps her out now.”

Nanami perked up. “So… since I’m guessing you’re not friends anymore… can I finally throw him off the balcony?”

Gojo lit up. “Ooh! Can I run him over with her Jesko? It’s just rotting in storage.”

Megumi rolled his eyes. "I don't know what he was like in school with you two, but watching him fight now—and seeing how you two handled those bounty hunters—I can say one thing: Haibara isn't weak."

A pause. His voice flattened further.

"He's the kind of opponent that makes you want to rip your hair out. Insufferably strategic."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "And she’s—protective. You touch him, she’ll gut you before you finish the threat. Might even ban you from seeing the kids.”

Before Gojo could yell “I’m the strongest!” again, Nanami’s phone buzzed.

He answered it with a sigh. “…Yeah, Nanami speaking. Who is this?”

Nanami’s face drained.

Gojo leaned forward, slapped Nanami’s bicep. “Who?”

Nanami pulled the phone away like it had whispered a slur. “…Kusottare Naoya.”

Megumi blinked. “What’s kusottare mean again? I always forget. My Japanese is a little rusty.”

Gojo answered too cheerfully. “Aww, Mamaguro raised you well. It means many things: a dingleberry, a dipshit, a piece of shit, or a grade-A asshole. It’s Nanamin’s favorite insult. Even our wife knows it, and her Japanese itself is ‘Kusottare.’”

Then added, less brightly, “Naoya’s not dead?”

Megumi downed his drink. “I don’t keep tabs on the inbred lives of Tokyo, but I heard Maki and Mai are missing.”

On speaker, Naoya’s voice crackled to life. Bright. Mocking. Almost festive.

“Heyyy, Kento-kun~ Just calling to say I’ve got your cute little penguin wife. And her new boyfriend. Didn’t know you guys were expanding the polycule—I’d have applied!”

Nanami’s soul left his body.

Gojo and Megumi’s glasses slipped in unison. Then promptly shattered on the floor.

Naoya kept talking.

“Oh, and I’ve also got Higuruma and his girl, by the way. If anyone still cares. Honestly, no one even noticed they’d been gone. That’s so awkward, right?”

There was a beat.

Then:

“Anyway. You boys should come join us. It’s shaping up to be a proper party. Mahito’s here. Hanami, too. Jogo brought snacks. And…”

A smile you couldn’t see stretched over the line.

“…We’ve just sent out an invite for Sukuna.”

The phone cut to static.

And the greenhouse fell utterly silent—until the orchids began to tremble.

---

A/N: 💥⛓️ THE FINALE IS COMING: BRACE FOR IMPACT ⛓️💥 It’s almost time. After seven months, multiple character deaths (emotional and literal), raccoon betrayals, impostor wives, multiversal war husbands, cursed womb twins, and softboi Sukuna humming lullabies to unborn gods— this fic is finally arriving at the end of its arc. And no, I will not be normal about it. The next chapter is the finale. Everything will come undone— The lies. The fake memories. The marriages. The silence. And her.

Because the real question has never been “Who loves her most?” It’s “Who will still love her once the truth is known?” See you in the ashes.

Next Ch - Friday

All Works Masterlist

Tag-list = @lady-of-blossoms @stargirl-mayaa @dark-agate @tqd4455 @roscpctals99 @sxlfcxst @se-phi-roth @austisticfreak @helloxkittylo @itoshi-r @kodzukensworld @revolvinggeto @luringfantasy @xx-tazzdevil-xx @unaaasz @thebumbqueen @holylonelyponyeatingmacaroni @whos-ruru @helo1281917

[nanamineedstherapy]

Third Wheeling Your Own Marriage

Elrdrich King!Haibara x Galatic Emperor General F!Reader F!Non-Sorceress CEO Reader x Gojo Satoru x Nanami Kento F!CHRO Reader x Higuruma Hiromi Previous Chapter 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies - Part 2 - [Tumblr/Ao3] A/N: Mixed POVs because I have no respect for structure, and they shift mid-sentence sometimes, so read like you're sipping scalding tea and trying not to spill. The next night, we’re in Megumi’s penthouse. The lighting? Sinfully warm. Almost like emotions are about to happen. Disgusting. Next Chapter will be the Finale.

Ch 28 - False Mother & The Remembered Father - Part 1

Dinner with the Damned: Where No One Chews Loudly Enough

The next night, in Megumi’s penthouse, the lighting was warm—too warm. Just bright enough to expose the nerves beneath everyone’s skin.

It was the kind of dinner where even the rice looked self-conscious.

The air smelled like grilled fish, lemon, and impending conflict.

Across from you, the door creaked.

But the first thing anyone heard wasn’t the bell.

It was the scratching.

A slow, wet kind of sound—claws on steel, nails dragging damp wood. Then a high-pitched chitter. And then—“Let go of the fucking fingerprint sensor, Takahashi—”

The door swung open.

Gojo stumbled in, flushed and breathless, shirt wrinkled like he’d wrestled a goat in the elevator.

Nanami followed, too sober for how his pupils swam like he’d been sleepwalking for days. He held a bottle of plum wine like it was a dead bird.

And between them—cradled in a matte black Versace sling, stained with soy sauce and shame—was a five-month-old albino raccoon in a hoodie that read, I Bite Racists.

The moment Takahashi saw you—he hissed.

Loudly.

Not startled.

Territorial.

A who-the-fuck-are-you-and-where’s-my-mom kind of hiss.

The room stalled. The walls tilted.

Everyone froze.

You didn’t blink.

But something shifted—clean, surgical. A shard of glass rotating behind your ribs.

He was hissing at you.

The raccoon you’d raised out of a blood-slicked drainage pipe. The one you used to sneak into surgeries. The one who only ever slept curled in your sleeves—back when the bunkers still had eyes and the twins wailed like sirens.

The one who was Sukuna’s last victim.

And your first.

You remembered now—how you’d fused his half-gone body to metal legs with no anesthesia because you couldn’t let another one go. Not after Keiji.

Even Keji’s name was spelled different here. Even the story of the rescue was off.

She found this one in an alley.

You’d pulled yours from a bunker drain after Gojo had already died.

Yours wasn’t even albino. Didn’t even have the same name. But the eyes—

They were the same variant.

Different world.

Same ache.

And now? He recoiled.

Because to him, you were a stranger.

“Jesus,” Gojo muttered. “He’s never done that before.”

You didn’t respond.

Haibara's hand settled at the small of your back. Not protective—possessive. In that ancient, inevitable way.

Like he remembered owning your name, your shame, your oxygen—before language even existed.

You didn’t flinch.

But your face skipped a frame.

Takahashi hissed again, louder this time.

Retreated into Nanami’s coat like the woman standing before him was some uncanny imitation.

Because to him—you were.

Gojo unclipped the carrier, let Megumi scratch Takahashi’s ear.

Megumi’s face didn’t change. But his eyes flicked to you.

You smiled. Polite. Distant. Just confused enough to pass.

No whistle. No back-of-the-hand offering. None of the tricks that used to be muscle memory.

He didn’t say anything.

But he knew.

You cooed at the raccoon—once. Out of instinct. Out of obligation.

Takahashi snarled louder.

Megumi’s mother was the first to recover. “Come in, come in,” she said brightly, smiling like a knife. Like this wasn’t a minefield with no safe zones. “Shoes off. Manners on. We’re all civilized here.”

Gojo and Nanami bowed slightly, eyes to the floor.

But Haibara never lifted his hand.

His palm stayed firm against your back, thumb drawing spirals through the fabric like he was bored of their existence.

Like he was waiting for your skin to peel back into something familiar.

Gojo knelt in front of you.

Eyes wet. Mouth trembling. He looked like a dog that didn’t understand why it was left behind.

“He’s upset,” he said, gesturing to the raccoon. “He misses you. You used to carry him in your sleeve like some kind of forest witch.”

You blinked. “I… guess I did.”

You didn’t mean it.

It was the kind of answer someone gave when they remembered how to lie better than they remembered the truth.

Gojo’s smile faltered. “Do you remember what he used to do when he wanted to be picked up?”

You hesitated.

“He… rolled over?” you tried.

“No,” he whispered. “He danced. On his back legs. You taught him that. Said it made him look like a medieval court jester.”

You nodded.

The silence creaked louder than your voice ever could.

Nanami tactically cleared his throat. “We didn’t come here for a custody hearing. We came because Okaasan—I mean, Megumi’s mother invited us.”

“Which I already regret,” she muttered, pouring herself tea with the air of someone loading a pistol.

Takahashi growled under Gojo’s coat like he wanted to rip your face off.

“Animals are simple,” Haibara said. Calm. Gentle. But something in his voice bent the room—like gravity remembered itself wrong when he spoke. “He doesn’t like her new perfume.”

His tone was light, but it had that pull. That terrifying weight. Like the voice of someone who could collapse a sun and still talk about local produce.

Gojo squinted at him. He felt it too—Haibara’s cursed energy slip, just for a second.

Haibara smiled. Too many teeth.

Gojo stood, muttering to Nanami, “I’m just saying—he looks like a glitch in The Matrix. He’s got shadows in his irises. That’s not normal.”

Haibara tilted his head, clearly having caught that.

“Neither are cursed techniques. Neither is you being alive after Shibuya. And yet—here we are.”

Gojo stared with offensive confusion, but before he could speak, Nanami set the plum wine on the table with a quiet thud. “Let’s just eat.”

Everyone took their seats.

The lighting was moody. The table long enough to host either a summit or an exorcism.

At one end sat you, Haibara, and Megumi. You were eight and a half months pregnant—belly round beneath a silk gold dress that didn’t quite tie shut, hair half-done, slippers on. You looked like a woman who had survived worse dinners than this—and knew it.

At the other end: Gojo and Nanami. Red-eyed, dressed like men cosplaying as functional members of society.

Megumi’s mother sat at the center, sipping tea like a bored empress overseeing a circus of her own design.

Haibara on your right, Megumi on your left. Neither touched you, but their knees nearly brushed yours—battle lines drawn in the carpet.

You sat between them, face unreadable.

Polite in that way women get when they are absolutely fucking done.

Gojo and Nanami were... there.

They had bathed. They wore black suits. Gojo hadn’t worn his sunglasses indoors at night, but he still looked one heartbreak away from quoting Dracula’s failed romance. Nanami’s hair was slicked back like he was due either in court or at a club by midnight.

They were trying. You had to give them that.

Everyone was tired.

No one was okay.

Not even the fic.

Every guest had a reason to kill someone at this table.

No one was drunk yet.

That was the only thing going right.

The tension dipped—but didn’t dissolve.

Megumi placed a bowl in front of you. He didn’t touch you, but his fingers grazed your wrist as he handed you the chopsticks. His eyes searched your face for something he was no longer sure was there.

You didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

Gojo didn’t look at Megumi. He kept flicking his senses toward Haibara—like something was buzzing. Leaking.

Cursed energy spilled off Haibara in slow ribbons. Too ancient. Too vast. Crawling up the walls like it was looking for somewhere to hide. Gojo couldn’t name it, but it made his skin itch.

Still, his gaze kept snapping back to you.

You watched him.

And remembered a version of him long dead.

One who held your hand during war and abandoned it during grief.

One who wept into your shoulder after killing his best friend, then let your body rot beneath hospital sheets.

He hadn’t fought for you like these two were fighting for her.

He hadn’t gone to therapy.

Your Gojo had laughed once when you asked him to try therapy for his nightmares.

You wondered why she was softer than you.

Then you looked around the table—and understood.

She had support.

She had people who would’ve fought to keep her alive.

You didn’t even get your Gojo and Nanami to show up in court.

They just signed it off like it was some bureaucratic footnote.

Never even knew you were pregnant.

Just… died. Like seeing you again might’ve been too cringe.

Maybe your Nanami and Gojo had needed each other more than they’d ever needed you.

Then you turned your face, smiling faintly at Haibara—who had taught you how to live without softness.

Who was currently passing you alcohol under the table disguised as tea.

You had rebuilt yourself from shattered nerves and stolen technology.

Soldered bionic limbs to your spine.

Programmed synthetic organs.

Replaced innocence with automation.

Ethics with utility.

Love with design.

You ate your mercy alive.

So when Gojo said, “We miss you,”

It sounded like a child begging a star for light.

You offered him a small, cold smile. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Haibara leaned toward your ear and whispered something only you understood—an equation, a name, a memory from a war Gojo couldn’t even pronounce.

You didn’t smile.

But you stayed still. Steady beneath his hand.

Because the war was over, and you had already chosen your side.

And the ghosts at this table were just that—ghosts.

Shuddering, confused, hoping you’d pretend you still knew them.

You didn’t.

You never would again.

Because you weren’t her.

Their actual wife.

Hell, you weren’t even what you started out as.

Across the table, Takahashi snarled again—low and mournful.

Like he knew.

Like he could smell it.

This wasn’t the woman he remembered.

And it wasn’t the same Haibara either.

But nobody else knew that yet.

You flinched. Just a fraction.

But he saw it.

Gojo definitely saw it.

The white-as-cement raccoon had climbed into the chair beside you.

Little claws gripped the table’s edge like he was preparing for launch.

His pink eyes locked on you like he was trying to perform an exorcism with his walnut-sized brain.

He reminded you of your Sukuna.

The one locked in your timeline’s frosted prison.

Same unhinged eyes. Same scorched-earth spite.

Same singular-minded hatred for you.

Maybe you’d visit him when you got back.

He wouldn’t speak—hadn’t since his loss—but it had been a while since you annoyed him.

He still pretended to pray while glaring at you like a wraith priest with beef.

A look you still hadn’t deciphered, even after 50,000 years.

Sometimes you wondered why he hadn’t just ended it—let himself rot and return to cursehood.

But you’d stopped trying to understand men like him.

Or Gojo.

Men who no longer comprehended you.

Because the Satoru Gojo you knew—

Even the one sitting in front of you, sadly stirring spaghetti—

Would’ve looked at your world, your work, with reverent horror.

But if he ever found out what you’d truly done—

He wouldn’t hesitate.

He’d kill you right here at this table.

And Sukuna?

He became a monk because you became something worse. Because even in his madness, people could still talk to him—his weird little customs, respect rituals, honor duels. But you remember the years when you stopped talking altogether. Listening, too. Except to your children’s cries.

Then Sukuna saw your cruelty and decided balance was restored by someone worse than him, so you replaced him.

He took that as his cue to permanently retire.

Didn’t even fight you for his sadistic morals.

Megumi tries offering Takahashi a grape.

Takahashi launches it at Haibara.

Direct hit.

Haibara doesn’t even blink. “I like him,” he says, smirking. “He has good aim.”

“Yeah?” Gojo mutters. “Then explain why he hates you.”

Megumi’s mom finally chimes in, still sipping tea like she’s judging a royal bake-off. “Yeah, it’s odd, Haibara. On video calls you used to show me tricks you taught him—like yanking Nanami’s hair while he slept. I could tell you were his favorite.”

Before Haibara can even attempt to speak—or sweat—Nanami breaks his silence. His eyes lock on yours. Flat. Honest. “We know we can’t undo what we did. But we’re here. We’re trying. Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?”

Haibara’s fingers curl tighter around your thigh under the table.

Megumi leans toward your ear. “You don’t have to answer. You don’t owe them—”

“It’s fine,” you say.

Except it’s not.

And Gojo knows it.

He watches you the way he used to after a fight—when your silence wasn’t cold or angry, just… off. Tilted. Like something inside you stepped out of sync and forgot how to return. A silence that meant the damage was already done.

The raccoon hops down from the chair.

Gives you one last hiss.

Then trots to Megumi’s mother and curls beside her with a long, insulted sigh as she coos nonsense at him while feeding him cooked fish from her plate.

Even he knows.

Even the fucking raccoon can tell.

But it’s fine; you are not here to win actor of the year.

You just need them to stay confused for a few more days.

“You both look,” you say mildly, “like you’ve seen death.”

“We have,” Nanami replies. “Each other.”

Gojo choked on his chocolate milk—yes, chocolate milk—the drink he'd specifically requested Keji to serve for this disastrous dinner.

Yes, it was intentional.

Yes, he’s a grown man having dinner with his wife, who is pregnant with his children, divorcing him and sitting with her next trophy boyfriend, who is currently cutting her fish with a smug grin while Nanami contemplates removing his own eyeballs.

Nanami, for his part, was still pretending to abstain from alcohol for your pregnancy’s sake. The pretense that you couldn’t drink with him.

Though the way his gaze kept flickering to Megumi's untouched whiskey glass suggested his resolve was crumbling faster than Gojo's dignity.

Megumi stabs a piece of tofu with too much force.

It disintegrates like his emotional regulation.

Haibara watches all this like a bored scientist studying particularly low IQ rats. There’s an odd little smile playing on his face.

“Why are you really here?” Megumi asks, slicing through the silence.

“To apologize,” Nanami says instantly. “To her.”

“And to you,” Gojo adds, eyes bloodshot but—somehow—sincere. “For treating her like an emotional vending machine with no refund policy. And for, you know. Killing, technically, my father-in-law. Your dad. Sorry.”

Haibara snorts into his glass of fake iced tea. It’s not tea. It’s straight-up rum.

You raise an eyebrow. “That’s a new one.”

Megumi snaps. “She’s not my fucking sister. I don’t even have a sister.”

Gojo ignores him, leaning forward. “We fucked up. We used each other to survive after Suguru died. We stopped seeing you. We… didn’t realize we were making you invisible.”

Nanami swallows and follows. “You deserved someone who could hold your grief. Not two men too cowardly to face their own.” He looks down. “We didn’t just cheat on you. We abandoned you while still living in the same house.”

The room falls silent.

Even Megumi’s mom’s cooing at Takahashi stops.

You exhale slowly, the pressure of your fake belly making it harder to breathe. “And if I say I don’t forgive you?”

“You’d be right,” Nanami says, no hesitation.

Gojo looks at your stomach. “You already have a family now. But we needed to say it anyway.”

Megumi shifts beside you. His knee brushes yours—subtle, anchoring. You don’t move. But it grounds you.

Meanwhile, Haibara pulls your other bare leg onto his lap under the table. His soft but large hand moves slowly, squeezing hard and sliding upward with a singular purpose and an unholy level of confidence. A hold that’s both possessive and obscene.

You almost choke on your water. Or is it prehistoric vodka for you?

Without flinching, you shove his hand away before it reaches its destination—but you don’t remove your leg.

Instead, you shift slightly, pressing the back of your calf up against his already half-hard cock with studied nonchalance.

But not before—with the over preparedness of a primordial god's wife with a warship—you tapped one deliberate finger against the side of your knee.

Camouflage activated.

Gojo’s X-ray eyes aren’t seeing shit.

Then you glare at him, sipping vodka like tea.

Gojo swallows hard.

Good.

Let him choke.

He looks awful. You didn’t even know he could grow facial hair, and yet—white stubble clings to his jaw like moss to a corpse. His hair is flattened, like he tried to wash it in a gas station sink. Nanami looks cleaner, but somehow more broken. Like a man who's trying to win you back using only prayer and depression.

They’re both wearing their we’ll-behave suits. Half-wrinkled. Half-defeated. Fully desperate.

Megumi’s mother sat between them and your… host-but-hostile trio, watching like they were stray dogs begging at a monastery gate.

She fanned herself faster, nose wrinkling in distaste. “You both smell like regret and cheap whiskey.”

Gojo cracked an unhearted grin. “It’s Dior, actually.”

She didn’t respond. Just sipped her barley tea like she was weighing the benefits of ritual exile.

At the other end of the table, you tried very hard not to look like a hostage.

You were eight and a half months fake pregnant, wrapped in one of Megumi’s oversized hoodies over a beautiful dress because you didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing you ugly.

Then back pain happened, and now your hair was half-tied, your face bare, slippers on.

Haibara refilled your soup without asking. His hand brushed your wrist.

Megumi’s eye twitched.

Gojo’s jaw clenched.

Nanami closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, like a man restraining himself from launching a chair across the room.

The soup rippled slightly from the psychic tension.

Even Megumi’s mother frowned in confusion.

“Congratulations,” Nanami said eventually, gesturing vaguely at your stomach like it was the elephant in the room. Which, to be fair, it was. “I heard you’re due soon.”

You and Megumi just stared at him.

Incredulous.

Gojo stared at Nanami as if this were the moment Nanami officially replaced him as the Village Idiot.

Haibara didn’t bother hiding his laugh.

“Next week,” Megumi’s mother offered instead, voice calm. Measured.

Gojo winced—not at the date. At the fact that you didn’t say it.

“Do you… need anything?” he asked. His voice cracked halfway through the word anything.

“A ride to the hospital? Nursery furniture? A paternity test?”

He added it with a smile, but his glare slid sideways—straight at Haibara.

No one laughed.

Megumi’s mother slammed her chopsticks down.

Silence dropped like a guillotine.

“She doesn’t need anything from you,” she said flatly, folding her fan with a snap. “Except silence. Divorce. Distance. And child support.”

“But she’s like—RICH rich. Court might make her pay me child support,” Gojo muttered, trying to sound casual, even though he hadn’t even signed the papers you never sent.

He wasn’t wrong.

You were cosmic ledger imbalance rich.

The kind of rich that ran out of numbers.

“And?” Megumi’s mother pointed her chopsticks directly at his face, like she was considering ceremonial stabbing. Violence: the language of exhausted women with nothing left to lose.

Gojo backtracked. “And she also hates taking money from us.”

Still not wrong.

But Megumi’s mother was ready: “So she’ll just raise your kids like a lab tech caring for leftover genetic waste?”

“Mom,” Megumi warned.

Gentle. Edged.

But she wasn’t done.

“You had her for nearly a decade. You wasted it. What do you want now?”

“Her,” Nanami said.

No hesitation. No blink.

The silence shifted.

Haibara leaned back slightly. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. But something warped in the air—enough to remind everyone that he was still the most genocide-happy man in the room. And he hadn’t even raised his voice.

Gojo’s tone frayed. Raw in a way that didn’t suit him. “We—fuck—we let her slip right through us. After Suguru, after everything, we just…”

His hands twitched like they were trying to catch the past.

“We mistook guilt for love. Thought if we held on hard enough, it’d mean something.”

Nanami’s laugh was brittle. Like stone cracking under pressure.

“Now we’re crime scene analysts, huh? Picking over memories like they’re evidence. Like it’ll change the verdict.”

He pressed his thumb to the side of his glass, dragging condensation into a slow, wet ring.

“She didn’t disappear. We gave her the knife and looked away.”

Silence again.

The wall clock ticked too loudly.

Gojo whispered: “How do we fix this?”

Nanami didn’t look up.

Just watched the ice melt to nothing.

“We don’t.”

His voice cracked.

He didn’t finish.

Haibara didn’t interrupt.

Megumi didn’t step in.

But you did.

“I told you I want a divorce. Not a daily soap ASMR.”

Your voice was soft. Measured. No venom.

No—worse.

Detached.

“We agreed,” Gojo said quickly. “But it wasn’t because we stopped loving you. We just… stopped being good at it.”

You nearly grabbed a knife and drove it through Nanami’s throat just to make Gojo watch—and then ask how it felt to be left behind.

Instead, like the well-adjusted woman you were pretending to be, you ground your bare calf against Haibara’s cock beneath the table—already hard, cargo trousers and all.

Above the table, you looked at Gojo with a wobbly pout and wide, stupid eyes.

Like that sentence physically hurt you.

“I don’t want to be someone you practice on.”

“You’re not,” Nanami said. Quiet. Steady.

Your gaze shifted to him.

“You were fucking each other.

You stopped talking to me.

Stopped listening.

And when I left, the only thing you missed was your routine.”

“That’s true,” Gojo said suddenly. “I killed Suguru. But I buried you.”

The words landed hard.

Jagged. Unresolved.

Haibara tilted his head, studying Gojo like a spiteful god solving an unsolvable equation.

“Poetic,” he said. “Did you rehearse that?”

“Shut up,” Megumi snapped.

The room stilled.

It was rare—Megumi raising his voice.

Rarer still when it was aimed at Haibara.

Haibara didn’t react.

He simply refilled your tea—your rum—with eerie, perfect precision.

Megumi’s mother sighed, surveying the table like she regretted raising even a single one of you.

“Maybe we should play a family game,” she said. “Like charades. Or Russian roulette.”

No one laughed.

Not even Gojo.

Then you looked up. At both of them.

“You don’t have to kill yourselves.”

Gojo flinched. Nanami’s breath caught.

“I know you’re drinking. I know you’re spiraling. But I’m going to ask for something I should’ve said a long time ago.”

You wrapped your fingers around the mug.

“Don’t kill yourselves.”

Your voice didn’t rise.

Didn’t crack.

It wasn’t cold. Wasn’t cruel.

Just final.

“I loved you. At some point.” You exhaled. “But it’s over. It’s been over.”

Nanami’s eyes were rimmed red—not from tears, but from sleepless nights and the long, slow ache of emotional constipation.

Gojo stared down at his empty plate like he could phase into it if he just focused hard enough.

Then Megumi’s mother clapped her hands once. Sharp. Clean. Like she was slicing the air.

“Excellent,” she said. “Now we’ve had our catharsis. Let’s eat dessert.”

Because no matter how badly she wanted you to start over with her son, she had given you a chance to choose first. And now that you had, she would respect it.

Of course, Gojo did something very stupid.

He pulled out a ring box.

Haibara tilted his head, deadpan.

“…Are you serious?”

He sounded halfway between incredulous and fascinated.

Like he was watching someone try to bake a cake with napalm.

Like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh—or rip Gojo’s jaw clean off.

Gojo fumbled the lid open.

“It’s not a proposal,” he said. “It’s the ring we should’ve given you before we gave each other the whole damn world.”

You stared at it.

It wasn’t the ring you used to wear. That one had been elegant. Cold. Designed for optics.

This one was rough. Handmade. The kind of thing someone actually thought about.

“I melted the old ones,” Nanami said quietly. “Didn’t feel right keeping them.”

Megumi’s voice sliced the room like a butter knife through drywall.

“You think that fixes it? That showing up like stray dogs and crying in our garden erases what you did?”

Gojo shook his head. “We’re not trying to erase it. We just… we don’t want that to be the last thing she remembers when she thinks of us.”

You didn’t say anything.

You reached across the table. Took the ring.

Everyone froze.

You turned it in your fingers. The engraving read: Our Lighthouse.

Then you slid it into the drawer beneath the table.

You didn’t wear it.

You didn’t throw it away.

You just left it. In someone else’s home. In someone else’s universe.

“I’m not coming back,” you said softly.

They both nodded.

“I still love you,” Gojo whispered. “Even if you don’t. Even if you never do again.”

Nanami didn’t speak.

He bowed his head like a man at a funeral.

Then they excused themselves.

---

The Psychic Siege of Toji

Toji had once gutted a curse beast from the inside out, grinning as it shrieked, guts spraying across his bare chest. He’d eaten curse meat on a dare. Killed half a clan for less than a cigarette.

But nothing—not even the cursed, bioengineered wombs of the Kuiper Wars or the mind-fucking chaos of the Zen’in compound—had prepared him for the screaming nightmare currently unfolding.

The woman—that woman—lay unconscious on the floor. Her body slack, twitching every so often like she was being electrocuted by invisible wires. Her veins glowed faint gold, iridescent like oil, and her stomach pulsed in tight, rhythmic waves. Like something inside was trying to claw out through her navel.

Not “something.”

Two things.

Twin fetuses. Hybrid chimeras of Gojo Satoru and Nanami Kento, fused by forbidden science and half-divine emotional trauma. And right now, they were fighting over who got to puppet their mother’s limbs.

Her body hadn’t stopped moving. And Toji—already impaled once by a spectral Ratio blade they’d generated—hadn't even seen the damn thing coming.

The blade had sunk into his shoulder like divine punishment. Nearly nicked his lung.

He was bleeding all over the carpet, insulted, feral.

And worst of all—the twins were talking.

Not with words.

With rage.

With curses not learned, but inherited.

With cries in infant thoughtforms, echoing through the walls like a psychic siege.

“Stop it, you little bastards. I am not your babysitter—” Toji bellowed at the air as a scalpel flew past his cheek, courtesy of her telekinetically flung medkit.

A second object—a slipper, hers—whipped toward his face. He caught it, barely. “Oh, fuck this.”

He staggered backward and grabbed the battered phone still sitting on the table.

Punched in a number he wasn’t supposed to know.

It rang once.

Picked up immediately.

“Who the hell gave you this number?” the voice snapped. Bored. Rough. Arrogant. Someone was going to die for this—one of his assistants, probably. Because this man didn’t get calls from glitched-out burner lines. Not unless someone had royally screwed up.

“Do you want to help or not?” Toji hissed, dodging another psychic assault. “Your girl’s unconscious, and her womb-spawn are trying to exorcise me.”

A pause.

Then a shuffle. A click. Background noise—shoes, laughter, someone humming.

“We’re on our way.”

“And bring a woman who’s given birth before. Preferably to sorcerers.”

There was a grunt of acknowledgment. The line went dead.

---

Back at Fushiguro’s penthouse.

The random guest bathroom hums.

Old pipes, flickering light.

Yellow, dim, and ugly.

Like a hospital waiting room trying to cosplay wealth.

Gojo paces across the tile in socked feet, raking his fingers through damp hair. “She didn’t hug him.”

Nanami leans against the sink, sleeves rolled up, watching the faucet drip. “She’s about to give birth. You’re overanalyzing.”

“She didn’t hug him, Kento.” Gojo’s voice is frayed. “She named that raccoon. Found him half-dead and nearly got raped protecting him.”

Nanami closes his eyes. “She was shot. Trauma changes things. You know that.”

Gojo turns. Jaw clenched. “She didn’t remember him.”

Silence settles like mildew in the corners.

For the first time in years—since they first fell in love with you—neither of them can read your expression.

And that terrifies them more than anything because you’d never been bothered to be good with a poker face.

“No,” Gojo whispers. “She looked at him like he was data. Like she was scanning a barcode.” He swallows hard. “She always smelled like old wood and ocean. Even after six fights, four back-to-back business trips, and two hours dragging CHRO out of a bar—she still smelled like herself.”

“Don’t go there,” Nanami warns.

“She doesn’t smell like herself.” Gojo steps closer. Voice barely audible now. “She smells like plastic. Like that fake perfume they use at AI expos. The kind they code to smell like comfort, but never get quite right.”

Nanami’s jaw tightens. “You sound unwell.”

“I sound like someone who knows his fucking wife.”

His voice drops into something darker. Slower. “Someone’s fucked with her head. Or that’s not her at all.”

Neither of them breathes.

And from the hallway,

Takahashi hisses.

Low. Deep. Like a curse.

Gojo inhales deeply.

Nanami exhales.

“You two go to the bathroom together now?” Once outside, Haibara’s voice cuts through the tension like a fork through raw meat. “Not even subtle. Disgusting.”

Megumi’s mother claps her hands once. Bright and sharp. “Well! Who wants a second dessert?”

Megumi stood to check on you.

You looked tired—slumped a little deeper in the chair, shoulders sagging beneath the hoodie.

Haibara took your plate. Refilled your glass without asking.

His hand brushed your wrist.

You didn’t flinch.

And in the quiet aftermath, the ring stayed exactly where you left it.

In the drawer beneath the table.

Not a promise.

Not a goodbye.

Just proof that grief can change men—

Even if it’s too late for that change to matter.

---

The Arrival of The Softcore Exorcism Squad

Fifteen minutes later, Toji hadn’t moved.

He was still bleeding. Still sitting on the floor. One eye twitching from the sound of the girl’s inhuman groaning.

Then—

BZZZT.

The air flickered like static.

A tall figure materialized in the hallway like he’d always belonged there. White shirt, inky black tattoos, hair swept back like a villain in a cologne ad.

Behind him: Choso, long raven hair loose down his back like ink poured with intention. Yuji in athleisure, pink hair tied and winded, holding his mom’s hand like a good boy dragged to hell. His mom looked too happy to be here. And Junpei—chewing gum, dressed like a reformed emo bassist in a boyband reboot.

“Whoa,” Yuji whispered, watching as the woman’s body jolted and a light fixture exploded. “She’s still unconscious?”

“Her kids aren’t,” Toji growled, wiping blood from his nose. “She’s not even a sorcerer. And they’re too much of one.”

“Chimeric pregnancy?” Choso blinked, inspecting her blood vessels. “You’re kidding.” He had seen her briefly before, but no one told him—Nanami and Gojo kept hovering, barely letting him near her before he left after Nanami returned without Sukuna once the two had killed Yorozu.

“She’s carrying the spawn of two Special Grades. And a mother who might not be a sorcerer, but has a trillion-dollar mind and the kind of rage you can’t program.” Toji groaned, rubbing his numb legs. “Her soul’s being torn in half.”

Yuji’s mom was already kneeling beside her, checking her pulse, the temperature of her skin.

“They’re not trying to hurt her,” she said. Calm. Steady. “They’re protecting her. From you.”

Toji scoffed. “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in being a dad. Especially not to telekinetic fetal murderers.”

Suddenly, the walls rumbled.

Cracks spidered across the ceiling.

The floor creaked beneath them.

Nobody moved.

Kaori—still calm—pressed her palms to the woman’s abdomen.

Yuji coughed. Blood dripped from his nose. A wave of ratio-based cursed energy sliced the air into perfect quadrants. Oxygen thinned in discrete intervals.

“Four-to-one compression,” Choso gasped, staggering toward the wall. “They’re using Nanami’s technique in utero.”

The ceiling groaned.

The air warped.

“Wait,” Junpei muttered, eyes narrowing. “They’re layering it.”

Another fissure snaked across the wall like a branching nerve.

The air shimmered.

Then warped.

Because on top of Ratio—

A pulse.

A ripple.

Limitless.

It formed a shell around her body. A womb within a womb.

And it throbbed.

Faster now.

Like a heartbeat preparing to end the world.

Toji coughed blood. “They’re not fucking around.”

“Not just Gojo’s Limitless,” Choso choked out. “They’ve got Six Eyes. They’re calculating energy outputs for every living being in this room.”

Yuji collapsed to a knee. Junpei followed, trembling.

Kaori didn’t flinch.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “If you flinch, you die.”

The air hummed.

Then—

SLICE.

Ratio blades burst from the steel walls like ritual inscriptions, carving elegant, brutal geometry into the pipes above.

Not killing.

Just warning.

The lights flickered. The room screamed.

Then, burned into the wall in molten, divine script:

W H E R E

 A R E 

 O U R

    F A T H E R S

Her body levitated half an inch—

Then slammed down.

Hard.

Toji muttered through gritted teeth, lungs crushed beneath Infinity’s invisible weight, “I never said I’d bring Gojo and Nanami.”

Blood smeared his chin. His back had dented the wall. “I promised to bring a dad.”

He coughed. “He’s your dad from another life.”

They all turned.

---

Next Ch 28 - False Mother & The Remembered Father - Part 2 - [Tumblr/Ao3]

All Works Masterlist

Tag-list = @lady-of-blossoms @stargirl-mayaa @dark-agate @tqd4455 @roscpctals99 @sxlfcxst @se-phi-roth @austisticfreak @helloxkittylo @itoshi-r @kodzukensworld @revolvinggeto @luringfantasy @xx-tazzdevil-xx @unaaasz @thebumbqueen @holylonelyponyeatingmacaroni @whos-ruru @helo1281917

[nanamineedstherapy]

Broo it's worse on an audio reader.

Reading my own fanfiction is basically just a rollercoaster of emotional whiplash.

20% of the time: “Hold on. I wrote this? This is fire. This is emotionally devastating in the best way. This scene is dripping with tension. I’m a literary perfectionist. Someone give me a book deal.”

80% of the time: “Straight to jail. Immediate prison. Why is everyone’s breath hitching?. I used the word ‘gaze’ three times in one paragraph like I was possessed. Did I think 'his eyes darkened' was profound? Why is everyone clenching their jaws? Why is someone whispering 'their name like a prayer' again?? No one talks like this. What is this dialogue. Why are there so many weird metaphors and em-dashes…”

[nanamineedstherapy]

Satoru, my guy...

WHO THE HELL ARE YOU POSING FOR!?

[nanamineedstherapy]

The Unsolicited Sister-In-Law/Aniyome/Bhabhi Promotion Arc

Jujutsu Tech Teacher Itadori Choso/F!Reader Summary: Modern Jujutsu Tech College AU – Choso is a young, grungy yet emotionally competent sorcerer-teacher, sharing faculty duties with Gojo, Geto, Nanami, Haibara, Sukuna (somehow not evil), Toji (we don't ask), and Shoko. You are a non-sorcerer administrative adjunct who somehow ends up in situations you don’t fully understand. A/N: First time writing Choso in main + inc SMAU. Song Rec: This whole thing came to me when I was drunk & this song started playing.

The faculty lounge smelled like three things: Shoko’s nicotine patches, Sukuna’s cologne (which no one had the guts to say was actually Axe Dark Temptation), and burnt microwave biryani.

Again.

Choso sat slouched on the faux-leather couch, chewing a protein bar like it had wronged him. His rings clinked against the water bottle in his lap. A muted bruise bloomed just beneath his eye—sparring with Toji again. Or maybe Gojo. Who knew anymore?

You strolled in, distracted as always, hugging a file folder to your chest, already launching into some ramble about receipts and budget approvals, unaware of how heavy the air was.

And how heavy he’d become.

“Morning,” you chirped, dropping beside him without looking. “Did Sukuna sign the requisition for the outdoor heaters or is he still pretending the courtyard fire pit is ‘environmental enrichment’?”

Choso frowned at you.

You didn’t notice.

You were used to his silences, the way he communicated with frowns and shrugs, with the occasional cryptic sentence that could mean anything from “I want coffee” to “I’m planning emotional arson.”

But lately, something was different. Not silent. Sullen.

Like he’d been wounded and just… let the blade stay in.

---

Weeks Earlier.

You didn’t mean it. You were just joking with Sukuna.

Trying to be casual, play off the way you’d been vanishing from group events, avoiding one-on-one time with Choso outside work. You hadn’t wanted anyone to assume things.

“We’re just good friends,” you said, brushing the conversation off with a nervous laugh.

Sukuna raised a brow. “Huh. Didn’t know you were ‘just good friends’ with someone who gives you his last dumpling and lets you wear his hoodies even in summer.”

You'd waved him off. “Choso’s just… like that.”

And somehow, those words got carried through the teacher group chat, probably via Geto or Haibara being nosy little shits.

---

Now.

The difference was subtle.

He didn’t send you music links anymore.

No passive-aggressive playlists full of angsty Japanese metal.

No half-burned CDs dropped in your desk drawer with cryptic Sharpie messages like “track 7 = how I feel about tofu.”

He stopped calling you “babe” in that low, gravelly drawl that never quite sounded ironic.

And most heartbreakingly of all…

He stopped calling you at all.

You were in free-fall and didn’t realize until it was too late.

“Choso?” You tapped his shoulder, concerned. “Are you mad at me or something?”

He turned to you slowly, eyes rimmed with faint kohl, expression unreadable. His lip curled—not in disgust, but restraint.

“No,” he said, voice deadpan. “We’re ‘just good friends,’ right?”

Your stomach dropped.

You opened your mouth, then shut it.

Fuck.

---

2 Weeks Ago: A Flashback You Didn’t Know He Remembered.

You were naked in his bed, sunlight spearing through broken blinds, the air heavy with sweat and laundry detergent.

You reached for your shirt, but Choso stopped you, kissed your bare shoulder, murmured something soft and stupid like, “You’re my favorite part of the day.”

You chuckled. Didn’t answer.

You thought it was just pillow talk.

You didn’t know he meant it.

---

Back to Now.

“Choso, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what?” he interrupted, standing now, looming in that casual, terrifyingly hot way he did. “Didn’t know I told all my five brothers about you? That I said no to blind dates because I thought we were… something?”

The lounge was empty except for Shoko, sipping her bubble tea at the counter, watching with the horrified curiosity of a bystander at a slow-motion car crash.

Toji popped his head in, saw what was happening, and reversed out silently.

“Choso, I thought—”

“No,” he snapped, and it wasn’t yelling. He never yelled.

But it was worse.

It was hurt, concentrated into syllables that made your throat dry. “Don’t say you thought you were giving me space. That’s bullshit. You didn’t ask. You just assumed.”

You blinked. “I didn’t want to… get too close and ruin it.”

“Ruin what?” He bit out. “We were already close. I let you in, and you still treated me like I was temporary.”

That made your stomach sink.

You were quiet for a moment. Then, meekly spoke, “You never said we were dating either.”

“I didn’t think I had to,” he muttered, glancing away. “You call me when you are scared. You come to my place when you are drunk, sick, pissed off. You wore my hoodie to Nanami’s birthday party.”

“You said it matched your eyeliner!” You protested weakly.

“Oh my god,” Haibara said from the hallway where he had clearly been eavesdropping, clutching a snack bag like popcorn. “Just kiss already or die or something.”

“Shut up, Yu,” both of you said at once.

Chosos stared at you with hurt in his waterline and stormed off.

---

Later, in the Courtyard, Because Of Course the Confrontation Needed a Sequel.

You sat on the stone bench beneath the sakura trees that didn’t bloom anymore, hands shoved deep in your jacket.

Choso came out in a threadbare hoodie and his “emotional crisis pants” (ripped jeans with more holes than fabric). He didn’t sit beside you. Just leaned on the railing, looking out.

“They call you Aniyome, you know,” he said eventually.

You swallowed.

“Sukuna started it. As a joke,” he added. “Then Suguru said it unironically. Nanami deadpanned it at dinner and you laughed. I thought you got it. I thought you were in on it.”

“I wasn’t,” you whispered.

He looked over, eyes lined with more than kohl now. “Yeah. I get that now.”

A pause.

“But I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t mean anything, did you?” He said, Too tired to be cruel.

The silence stretched.

“I thought if I didn’t expect anything,” you admitted, “I wouldn’t lose anything.”

He turned fully to you now, eyes burning low like coals. “Well, surprise. You lost me anyway.”

And it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t like a movie.

It was real. Human.

The kind of fight where there’s no villain, just two people standing on opposite ends of a gap neither thought was there.

You stood slowly. “Do you still want me?”

His eyes snapped to yours.

“Not like… as a friend. Or a convenient body. As me. Clueless and emotionally constipated and all.”

He stared.

Then, walked forward until you were almost chest to chest, and his voice dropped an octave.

“Do you want me?”

The words were low. Angry. Longing.

Like the song in his head he refused to sing aloud.

You didn’t answer.

Instead, you leaned in and kissed him—slow, not like forgiveness, but like understanding.

And when you pulled back, he was smiling. Just a little.

“Okay,” he said. “But next time someone calls you aniyome, you’re not allowed to deny it.”

“No promises,” you teased, finally.

He rolled his eyes.

And from then on, when you walked into the faculty lounge and Choso passed you your tea, there was no confusion.

Only comfort.

Only knowing.

Even if Gojo still whistled the Kabira tune every time you sat down.

---

A/N: Communication: the difference between pining and pain. Did Choso have a right to be hurt, or should he have spoken up sooner? And more importantly—will Gojo ever stop whistling that damn song? Tag yourself—I'm Shoko watching this disaster with bubble tea in hand.

All Works Masterlist

[nanamineedstherapy]

Just finished watching first episode of Windbreaker & I understand now.

[nanamineedstherapy]

Third Wheeling Your Own Marriage

Elrdrich King!Haibara x Galatic Emperor General F!Reader F!Non-Sorceress CEO Reader x Gojo Satoru x Nanami Kento F!CHRO Reader x Higuruma Hiromi Previous Chapter 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies - Part 1 - [Tumblr/Ao3]

Ch 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies - Part 2

Sometime later, the izakaya wasn’t fancy—just dim and narrow, crammed with salarymen and the scent of charcoal-grilled fish. Neon slithered through the fogged window behind you like a curious eel. The place was alive with post-shift noise: chopsticks clinking, ice cracking in highballs, someone getting dumped on speakerphone in the corner booth. You loved it.

You loved it more with him.

Haibara lounged across from you like a sin dressed in Alexander McQueen—black tee, combat boots, and that worn leather jacket he never took off even when it bled through dimensions.

The light above flickered once, catching the shadows pooled beneath his eyes.

His veins glowed faintly—darker, subtly wrong.

Like lightning behind skin.

“Look at these creatures,” he murmured around a bite of chicken teriyaki skewer. “Getting excited over edamame. We used to break planets in half for sport.”

You grinned, sipping your ginger beer. “Yeah? And you’re gonna break your back tonight trying to figure out how mechanical cars work.”

He tilted his head like a curious animal. “Oh? I thought I’d be bending you over it.”

You choked.

“Don’t flirt with me like you’re not on health probation,” you hissed, but your lips curved.

You were already too soft for him. Always had been.

“You put me on probation. You forgot the part where I like rules. Gives me something to violate.” His voice dropped an octave, smoky-sweet. “I missed this. Us. Not being worshipped. Just... annoying each other.”

You set your chopsticks down, a little softer now. “I forgot how good the world smells when it’s not on fire.”

He hummed. “I forgot how good you smell when you’re not covered in someone’s blood.”

“Romantic.”

“Historically accurate.”

Your eyes locked for a moment too long.

His were tinged with that uncanny glow again, iris bleeding outward like ink dropped in water.

He’d been leaking dark energy in pulses lately, magnetic interference fucking with traffic lights whenever he walked by.

You’d have to stop using hair straighteners near him.

Still, he looked... human tonight.

Almost.

You reached across the table, brushing your thumb over the soft skin of his knuckles. “We’ve been alive too long, Haibara.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m just getting interesting.”

“And modest.”

“And in love.”

That caught you.

The way he said it—like gravity, like it hurt.

Like it was still news to him after 50,000 years.

He pulled your hand to his lips, kissed the pulse.

His mouth was warm, but the edge of static beneath his skin buzzed against yours.

He was fraying, you could feel it.

Still, for now—he was yours.

Later, at some luxury hotel, you weren’t sure how you made it up the floors.

Maybe you floated.

Maybe the gods carried you.

Maybe it was just Haibara's hand on the small of your back, stealing warmth and breath.

You barely had the door closed before he was on you—kissing like it was punishment, like he needed to remind your ribs who they belonged to.

He had you pinned against the closet door, his tongue hot and demanding, the cold metallic parts inside your bionic body humming faintly from his proximity. Magnets flickered.

“I want to ravage you,” he growled against your throat.

“You already did, my king,” you breathed, half-laughing as you wrapped your legs around his waist.

He didn’t need more words. Clothes vanished in seconds.

He was all mouth and hands, all curse-born need and very bad intentions. Your skin shivered where his fingertips lingered too long, leaving soft smudges of shadow like ash stains.

But then—

He paused.

Pulled back suddenly.

And wheezed.

Like… actually wheezed.

You blinked. “Babe?”

He staggered, pressing a hand to the wall.

His jaw clenched, pupils blown wide, sweat already misting over his temple. “Fuck. Not—now.”

You scrambled off him and went into caregiver mode faster than you could curse your uterus. “Where’s your backup node? Are you phasing again?”

“No,” he gritted, “You. You’re destabilizing.”

You checked your wrist monitor.

Your vitals were in the red. Of course.

Your dumb, overused, AI-patched brain had skipped a stabilizer dose.

“Shit.”

You nearly tripped getting the injector.

Laid back on the floor tiles.

Jabbed it into your port.

The hiss. The hum. You both stilled.

Haibara sat beside you, slouched, eyes still glowing faintly. “That’s hot.”

“You almost dying?”

“You, letting me stay. Even when I suck at timing.”

You closed your eyes, chest still rising unevenly. “We’re old, Haibara. Our bodies hate fun.”

He grinned and collapsed next to you, arms behind his head. “Speak for yourself. My fun just takes longer boot time.”

You flicked his forehead.

He caught your wrist and kissed your palm again. “Next time, you’re topping. Less cardio.”

You huffed. “Next time, you’re not allowed to glitch during foreplay.”

He looked up at the ceiling, and his voice came softer now. “When we first met, do you remember what I said?”

You nodded, eyes fluttering. “Yeah. You said I reminded you of Earth. Ethereal. Extremely rare. Wild. Half-dead. Hard to kill.”

He smiled, kissed you slower.

You didn’t say it out loud, but you remembered something else too—

how, when he took you to that izakaya centuries ago, it was the first time he smiled in color.

The first time you saw the man inside the war.

The soul inside the myth.

And here he was. Still glitching. Still yours.

Your body held him together now—your heart, your spine, your memories buffering his data every time he got close to unraveling.

You didn’t need starlight or crowns.

Just him, and the smell of yakitori in his hair.

Just him, and the warmth of his shadow around your skin.

Just him.

Always.

Then your neural network displayed a text.

Megumi F. 

Where are you?

Do you need me to come pick you up from the doctor's?

Mom’s worried. 

You and Haibara groaned in unison, got dressed and went home.

Later, Haibara pours tea in Megumi’s kitchen.

Too graceful.

Too perfect.Nanami watches him, from his penthouse’s window.

Not with jealousy.

But with suspicion.

He knows what performance looks like.

---

Next day, the morning sun spilled golden across the marble floors of Megumi’s penthouse—warm, clean, sterile. Nothing like the warm rot and cosmic decay of your palace back in the Haibaran Era, where the walls whispered your name and the air tasted like blood and devotion.

Here, the air smelled like coffee. Expensive beans. Roasted by hand. Ground to perfection by someone who knew how to wake a body with something other than war.

“Toast?” his mother offered, her voice a familiar softness that still managed to unsettle you.

She stood over the kitchen counter, plating breakfast like it was her mission to keep you alive by sheer maternal will. She had that softness all loving mothers carry—a softness earned from surviving harder days. She’d tied her hair back in a loose chignon, and her apron was already dusted in flour and affection. She hadn't stopped pampering you since you'd stepped into their home.

You smiled, or the imitation of it. “Just fruit, thank you. The babies are picky.”

She grinned, a hand brushing your stomach in passing like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Twins’ll want more than fruit soon. You’re all belly now.”

You blinked at her hand.

Touch.

You were used to command. Not touch.

Not this… casual, familial weight that didn’t demand anything.

Not like Gojo’s used to—demanding and thoughtless.

Not like Nanami’s, sharp and deliberate like a scalpel through skin.

But like Haibara’s hands, which always curled around your spine like you were something stolen from time.

“You’re glowing,” she added.

No.

You were running on a cocktail of stabilizers, adrenaline, and ancient grief.

But it was sweet that she thought that was a glow.

Across the room, Haibara sat on the sectional sofa, legs splayed wide like he owned the space. His fingers tapped over his knees. He was wearing a new hoodie, maybe the clone Haibara’s—a little small in the shoulders—and looking around like the place was made of glass he planned to lick.

You caught his eyes.

He winked.

Again.

Like this was a game and the prize was pretending to be normal.

Megumi entered the room like a shadow with a pulse. Half-toweled hair, compression shirt.

He didn’t look at you. Not directly.

He’d taken to pretending you were a satellite he had to orbit with exact velocity.

You wondered if his mother noticed the way he brushed by you with maximum surface area exposure, like maybe touching you on accident was an achievement he could report later.

“Morning,” he muttered, almost at the floor.

You blinked. “Morning, Megumi.”

His mother beamed. “Sit, sit. I made you your usual.”

You sat first, hands cradling the warm cup of miso soup she'd made for you.

Megumi settled across from you, too far to be close, too close to be distant. His eyes kept darting—shoulder, wrist, stomach, lips. Then away again.

He’s watching how she breathes. Haibara gestured to you with his eyes alone.

You didn’t respond.

Later, they told you to rest. Let the house swaddle you, they said—so you did, stretching out on the recliner by the balcony. Megumi’s tablet rested on your chest, open to Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard’s philosophy bleeding into your periphery as the city outside curled around itself, blurred by heat and capitalism.

Megumi's mother had gone to meet a friend.

Haibara was… quiet. Suspiciously so.

And Megumi?

He hovered.

He entered the room three times before he said anything, each time offering some excuse—a glass of water, a blanket you didn’t need, a dumb question about vitamin intervals.

On the fourth trip, he finally lingered long enough to speak.

“You comfortable here?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

You turned your head to him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He didn’t answer right away. 

Just sat on the ottoman beside your recliner and leaned his elbows onto his knees, fingers laced in front of his mouth like he was interrogating a ghost.

“It’s just…” he hesitated, “...you’ve changed.”

“Body horror pregnancy and cursed coma,” you said lightly. “Do that.”

“Not just that.” His eyes locked onto yours. Still that blade-edge of wariness. “You and Haibara. You used to keep space between you two. Now you’re...”

“Now we’re what?”

He flushed. Looked away. “Never mind.”

You felt Haibara’s presence before he entered. A subtle shift in electromagnetic pressure. The lights flickered just a fraction. His footsteps were silent. But you knew.

He walked into the room carrying a pear.

Yes. A pear.

And bit into it like a man trying to offend the laws of nature.

“I got bored,” he declared. “She sleeping?”

“No,” you replied.

Megumi tensed. “You could knock.”

“I could,” Haibara smiled, juice dripping from his lips, “but I won’t.”

The temperature shifted.

Megumi stood abruptly and walked out, muttering something about checking the sensors.

You turned your head toward Haibara, one brow arched. “Don’t torture him. We won’t be here forever.”

“Sure,” he said, licking pear juice from his thumb. “But you’re cute when you pretend not to enjoy the attention.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Oh, I know,” he leaned down, whispering at your temple. “I know you’ve always been hard to impress. But don’t insult me. He’s obsessed.”

You closed your eyes. “He was in love with her.”

“You’re her.”

“No,” you corrected, voice sharpening. “I’m not.”

Crack.

You looked down to see that you’d almost cracked Megumi’s tablet.

Haibara stood again, smile sweet. “Fair.”

---

Three days later, you had never eaten so well in your life.

Every morning started with soft rice porridge, ginger tea, and a low voice calling you "baby" like it was a prayer.

Not from a man.

From a woman with an iron soul and kind hands.

Megumi’s mother didn’t ask questions.

She didn’t look surprised when you shuffled out of the guest room, ankles swollen, blanket still clinging to one shoulder, and Haibara trailing behind you—sent to wake you but apparently fallen asleep himself—now yawning in a hoodie he’d definitely stolen from her son.

She just took one look at your under-eye bags, tsked, and started boiling lotus root.

"You don’t lift a thing," she said, swatting sleepy Haibara with a rice paddle when he tried to argue. "And you—don’t let her. Or I’ll break your fingers."

"Yes, oba," he said sweetly, eyes unfocused.

You sat on the chair like royalty with anemia. She brought you pickled mango slices on a ceramic dish. Braided your hair when it fell into your face. Refilled your water with that motherly look, like you were a glass about to crack.

For the first time in 50,000 years, no one asked you for anything. No decisions. No plans. No espionage.

Just—are you hungry?

And—do you want to lie down?

Later that night, Megumi’s mother kissed your forehead, fluffed your pillow, and left a little clay jar of belly balm on the table like it was a peace offering from the gods.

Then she left to visit her sister in Kyoto, muttering about how she’d be back in three days and that "Yu better not let her do a damn thing, or I’ll come back with my sandal."

The second the door shut, Haibara peeked out from behind the living room wall like a delinquent child whose babysitter had just left.

He tiptoed in, exaggeratedly humming the Mission Impossible theme.

Dropped onto the couch next to you like a bad decision with legs.

"You like being babied," he teased. "You almost smiled when she tucked you in yesterday. Scared the hell out of me."

You narrowed your eyes. "I’m in mourning."

"For what?"

You sighed. "My spine. My dignity. The air between my thighs."

He grinned, leaning in. "You still smell like thermodynamic decline. So not much has changed."

You side-eyed him, arms crossed over the hill of your stomach—empty aside from organs. "You’re awfully cocky for someone who cried when she made you soup."

"She cut the daikon into hearts," he deadpanned. "My mom dumped me, so whatever she does is a spiritual experience."

"You’re easy to please."

He shifted closer.

You felt the couch dip. His thigh pressed against yours, warm, intentional. He smelled like unpredictability and something knife-sharp underneath. Maybe it was the fact he’d been your shadow for days now after you’d waited for him forever. Maybe it was the lack of surveillance. But the air between you tightened like the drawstring on a gift bag neither of you had opened yet.

He nodded toward your belly, where the AI mimicked the first and only pregnancy you’d ever had, 50,000 years ago. "They used to move more at night, huh?"

"Always. Like a rave in there."

"You gonna name one after me?"

You scoffed. "God, no."

"Why not?" he whined. "Yu Haibara the Second. It sounds powerful."

You stared. "Why would I name my kid after a war criminal with impulse control issues and a superiority complex?"

He leaned in. Breath warm. "Because that war criminal has won you galaxies. And because you love me."

Your eyes flickered to his mouth. Just for a second. "I like your face. That’s not the same thing."

"Oh? What do you like about it?"

You smiled, slow and poisonous. "It’s very easy to punch."

He chuckled. Head tilting, a lock of brown hair falling across his cheek. "You know, Kaito told me if I knocked you up, he’d kill me."

"And…?"

He shrugged. "I told him he couldn’t kill his only remaining father and also that I’d risk it if you asked."

"You’re an idiot."

"You’re glowing."

You groaned, pushing him away. "Don’t use maternity app lingo on me. I will eat your eyeballs."

He grinned wider. "Yeah, but you’d let me watch. With my other eyeballs. The event horizon ones."

Outside, the cicadas screamed.

Inside, your body hummed with exhaustion and something meaner.

Or something soft that had never stopped burning under your ribs.

It felt like freedom.

Or the start of a new war.

Either way, you were resting now.

Fed. Tended to.

Dangerous in the way only the protected could be.

And Haibara?

He’d already kicked off his shoes. Like he planned to stay a while.

“It’s been forever since we watched a movie the old way,” he said. “Flat screen. Fixed timeline. No neural sync.”

“God, yes. I miss this era’s visual glitches. The lighting choices alone were a war crime. It’s all basically cave art.”

Haibara laughed—unburdened, unguarded—and pulled you closer on the couch until your head rested under his chin and your legs on his. Then he handed you the remote with a kiss on your forehead like a peace offering.

Or a dare.

---

Night fell with artificial silence.

You had retired to the guest room, sprawling in sheets that smelled of detergent and someone else’s life. The moonlight filtered in blue and soft through the curtains, casting a glow over your skin like fog.

A knock.

Then the door cracked open.

“...Can I come in?” Haibara’s voice.

You didn’t say yes.

You didn’t say no.

He took it as yes.

He crept in like something half-real, half-forgotten, wearing a black t-shirt with threads that shimmered wrong—stolen from Gojo somehow.

He slid beside you like he’d done it for a thousand years, because he had. In other timelines. Other galaxies. Other wars.

He curled a hand over your stomach, palm warm. “Still think we’re faking it?”

“No,” you whispered. “I think we’re lying about how much we like it.”

He smiled.

His skin was flickering again.

His fingertips translucent. His iris leaking shadow like ink from a torn page. The magnetic field in the room buzzed. The lights dimmed, then stabilized.

“You’re degrading,” you said.

“I’m fine.”

You looked him in the eyes. “You’re not.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?”

You reached up and touched his cheek, thumb grazing beneath his eye where the skin shimmered dark. “For how long?”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he kissed you.

It wasn’t urgent.

It wasn’t polite.

It was old.

It was devotional.

It was the mouth of a god worshiping a woman who’d rewritten his code with her own heartbeat.

But before it could become more—

The door clicked.

You immediately slapped the neural link behind Haibara’s neck, making him invisible.

Then looked.

Megumi.

Frozen.

In the doorway.

Frowning.

“Sorry. I—” He blinked, confusion flickering across his face as if the thought had dissolved midair. “I forgot what I came for. Never mind. Night.”

“Megumi—”

He shut the door.

You exhaled.

Haibara became visible again and rolled onto his back with a disappointed sigh. “Well. That went… nowhere.”

“You need to leave.”

“Kicking me out after the audience left?” He tsked. “Rude.”

“You’re a risk. And I’m exhausted. Go to your room.”

“But I’m your husband.” He grumbled.

“Out.”

He groaned but got up. “You owe me cuddles.”

You almost chucked a pillow at him. “Get out.”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead—quick, possessive. “Don’t forget me.”

You smiled but also slapped his predictable hands away before they could squeeze your boobs and unravel the last remaining brain cell between you two.

“Impossible,” you muttered as he winked and slipped into the shadows of the hallway, vanishing before Megumi could remember why he’d come.

The latch clicked softly behind him.

Silence rushed back in.

But the ache remained.

---

A rain-soaked skyline loomed beyond soundproof glass. It’s late—just past 2 AM—but neither of them is sleeping. Not tonight.

Haibara sat on the edge of the kitchen counter, hands wrapped around a half-finished mug of something herbal and steaming. The mug had a chip on the handle. He turned it over and over in his hands like he was trying to remember where it had come from.

Megumi stood across from him, silent, his arms folded. The corner lights were dimmed to a hazy amber, casting soft lines on the floor between them. His eyes, always unreadable to most, were sharp now. Focused. Not angry—but measuring.

“I’ve been thinking,” Megumi said finally. His voice was quieter than usual. Which meant it was dangerous.

Haibara didn’t look up. “You always are. And frankly, it’s exhausting. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“You remember the pact we made when you turned eighteen?”

The pause was immediate.

And telling.

Haibara didn’t answer.

Megumi took a step forward, not threatening—just deliberate. “You were going to MI6. You said that she needed someone with a moral compass. Said you were too volatile to be her guide.”

More silence.

And then Haibara laughed. Too lightly.

“That sounds like something I’d say,” he offered.

“Do you remember it?”

“…Yeah,” Haibara lied, and it felt like chewing tar. “Sure I do.”

Megumi didn’t react.

He was too well-trained for that. Too used to courtrooms and boardrooms and the kind of corporate warfare where blinking too slow could sign away your life.

Instead, he stared.

Cool. Still.

Like Toji used to when he wanted someone to confess without a word.

Haibara's knuckles whitened slightly around the chipped mug.

He had dealt with warlords, cosmic parasites, and planetary collapses. But few things were harder to outmaneuver than a grown-up Fushiguro Megumi on a truth hunt.

Megumi exhaled. "You're sure? Because the way I remember it—you said I was the fail-safe. That if you ever broke her, I'd know how to build her back."

There it was.

A bullet, slipped through layers of calm.

Haibara didn’t flinch.

Not on the surface.

But his entropy-worn mind started racing behind his neutral expression, scrambling through fractured data logs, half-erased neural imprints, corrupted files flickering in his internal black box.

Nothing.

The MI6? A haze.

The pact? A phantom.

Megumi’s face back then? A blur.

Even the clone version of himself was a stranger in the dark now.

Shit.

He couldn’t risk putting the AI in his spine online to scan the clone’s memories—not without pinging Megumi’s Wi-Fi network. And Fushiguro was too damn tech-savvy to miss it.

So, Haibara smiled slowly, the kind of smile that said, I am absolutely bluffing right now.

“You were practically a child. You thought you could fix people,” he said.

“You said I could,” Megumi continued to stare at him.

Another pause.

Then Haibara tilted his head, feigning fondness. “You were earnest. Smart. Dangerous in the way that only kids who believe in good things are.”

Megumi didn’t smile.

He just watched him. “And you said she needed someone like me. Someone who’d stay moral.”

“I was leaving, Megumi,” Haibara said smoothly now, the lie blooming like a flower in his throat. “Of course I said that. I wanted to believe you’d be the stable variable. That she’d have someone if I never came back.”

“And now?”

Haibara held his gaze. “Now I’m not leaving. I’ve already gone to war. I’ve retired. So I don’t need to pretend I’m noble.”

The air in the room stilled.

Megumi’s jaw flexed once, then stilled.

Something about the way he stood—it made Haibara shift, just slightly. Like something old and dangerous was blinking awake behind the boy’s quiet face.

“Back then,” Megumi said softly, “I didn’t believe you would ever break her. I didn’t think it was possible.”

A pause.

“And now?” Haibara asked, genuinely curious.

Megumi’s gaze dropped for a moment.

When it lifted again, it was calm.

Now he just looked tired.

“She doesn’t look at you the way she used to.”

The words landed harder than expected.

Because even though they weren’t lovers—never were—the version of her that was Megumi’s had always looked at Haibara with a kind of familial awe. Reverence. Like he was the sun she chose not to orbit.

This one?

His wife?

She laughed at Haibara's flirting.

She let him touch her.

She looked at him like he was hers.

But not like she remembered him.

But like, he was home.

Megumi turned away first, adjusting his collar. “Night.”

But he didn’t leave yet.

He waited by the doorway, back turned, as if giving Haibara a chance to call him back.

To confess. To say it all wasn’t real.

Haibara watched him for a long second.

Thought about it.

His fingertips flickered slightly—translucent at the edges now. Shadow slipping from his iris like ink in water. His entropy accelerating, feeding off stress, off emotion, off regret. The AI spine embedded in him vibrated slightly as it recompiled, scavenging memories from corrupted backups.

Still no trace of the pact.

Still no memory of the words Megumi spoke.

Only her face.

Always her face.

The dictator—the only one who remembered him before the war, before the darkness, before the fall.

And she was his.

Even if the boy in front of him didn’t want it.

“I’m not the same person anymore,” Haibara said finally. Quiet. More to himself than to Megumi.

And that, at least, was the truth.

Megumi glanced over his shoulder.

“Neither is she,” he spoke softly.

Then he left.

Haibara didn’t move for a long time.

The kitchen light buzzed once above him, casting a faint magnetic flicker—his mere presence warping the electromagnetic field around the room.

His hands were shaking.

Not with fear.

But with a deep, aching kind of sorrow.

He reached for his pocket. Pulled out a worn-out strip of film—the only uncorrupted image from his neural archive. It was of her, laughing. Back when the galaxy still burned in their name.

He stared at it until his vision blurred.

“Come. I’ll rub your back,” her voice called softly from the hallway. She must have woken up—his body had gone into overdrive again.

Not the girl Megumi knew.

But the one Haibara stole back from time.

The one who still called him her king.

Haibara closed his eyes.

Tucked the image away.

Walked toward the light of her voice like a man drowning toward shore.

And in the shadows, something inside him cracked.

Not from guilt.

But from the unbearable weight of being remembered wrongly.

---

On Monday, before work, Megumi’s mother handed Megumi a bowl of soup. “She’ll need someone reliable. Someone who doesn’t disappear.”

Megumi didn’t meet her gaze.

Just stared into the soup like it might tell him his future.

“She’s already someone else’s.”

His mother says nothing.

Because they all know—

No matter how soft the laughter.

No matter how warm the touch.

Something is gone.

Or something else has taken her place.

---

Toji didn’t exist right anymore.

Not when the things inside her—inside the girl who wore her face—started whispering before he even opened the reinforced door for his next attempt.

The hallway outside still hummed with psychic noise, air warping in waves like it was underwater.

He didn’t flinch when his radio fried itself again. The last five had, too.

The moment the lock disengaged, he felt it—

Like teeth in the base of his skull.

The twins were waiting.

They were not born. But they were not unmade.

They existed somewhere between matter and myth, between god and parasite.

Between Gojo’s craving for divinity and Nanami’s craving for control.

Chimeric, coiled, co-conscious.

And they were lonely.

Toji entered the room, barefoot. Shirtless. Drenched.

His knives were already drawn—though they’d proven useless here.

The air was cold, but the walls breathed.

You couldn’t see it if you looked too long.

But from the corner of his eye, he swore the wires coiled like veins and the light pulsed in sync with a non-human heartbeat.

The cot was in the middle.

She was strapped down—but Toji hadn’t done that.

Her eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell, shallow. But her fingers curled in tandem with something that wasn’t sleep.

Her belly was round. Artificially so, because now there were no actual vitals. No heartbeat. No placenta. Just a womb-shaped echo and presence.

The next ratio blade was already hovering near his neck.

Toji didn’t duck this time. Just sighed.

He was too old, too trigger-happy, too suicidal for this shit.

“You’re getting sloppy.”

The blade vibrated in place, whined like a tantrum, then launched itself into the metal pillar behind him.

A new one replaced it, already vibrating.

The ceiling groaned.

And then—there it was again.

That sound.

A girl’s voice—her voice—but split, harmonized, doubled. No.

Tripled. Like a choir made of nothing human.

One higher-pitched. One deeper.

And one that never quite landed in the range of human hearing.

Toji twitched.

Not because he was afraid.

But because the voice was too familiar.

Too specific.

His left eye burned.

Phantom pain, maybe.

He’d lost it years ago, got the dictator to make him a bionic one, but they—the twins—still seemed to see it or through it.

Another blade screeched across the floor.

This one didn’t aim for his flesh.

It carved.

Words.

N O

 M O R E

  T O J I

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t even bother asking what it meant. He’d done that before.

Instead, he walked slowly toward her, careful not to trigger the psychic tripwires—though it didn’t matter.

They knew every inch of this room better than he did.

Toji brushed a knuckle along her forehead.

Still warm.

“Are you bored?” he asked. “Or just pissed you aren’t born with fingers yet.”

There was silence.

Then, the blade stuttered midair. Corrected itself.

W H E R E

D A D D I E S

Toji finally looked at the ceiling.

At the peeling text. At the scrawl, like it was written with a scalpel and spite.

He didn’t move for a long time.

But when he spoke, it was more breath than voice.

“…They’re not coming.”

A pause.

Then the lights went out.

The only thing left was the humming.

And the wet sound of flesh shifting inside flesh.

Her hand twitched.

Then curled into a fist.

Then pointed—

Not at Toji.

At the wall behind him.

Toji turned slowly.

More carvings. Deeper this time. Letters gouged into titanium. Screaming, shrieking scratches shaped like language:

B R I N G

U S

  D A D D I E S

Then:

O R

 W E

  T A K E

  Y O U

Toji started laughing.

Not because it was funny.

But because, of course.

Because, who else would they choose?

Because, Gojo was soft and stupid. Nanami was determined but slow to realize.

And because, neither of them would survive fifteen seconds in a room with their own legacy.

And this girl?

This not-quite-mother?

She was already dying under the weight of it.

He could see it in the way her veins were darkening into colors a human body should not.

So Toji did what he had to.

“…Fine.”

The lights flickered once.

The scalpels hummed.

And the voices in the dark cooed:

W E

 K N E W

Y O U

W E R E 

T H E

U S E F U L    O N E

Toji shivered. Not from fear.

But because they were learning full sentences at an unborn age.

So he walked out, and tapped the implant behind his ear. A neural chime echoed in his skull, then, "Awaiting orders."

The voice wasn’t human. Not even close.

It was the sound of a black hole humming—smooth, infinite, and wrong.

"Hey, Max," Toji greeted, flicking his own blood off his eyebrow. "Gimme that fucker’s number. The one you flagged."

A holographic pulse flared in his retina: coordinates, security schematics, and a live feed of the target.

"Contact uploaded," Max purred. "Though I must note: the empress’s twins are off-limits. Direct harm risks… creative retaliation."

A muscle jumped in Toji’s jaw. The Dictator. His failed pseudo-daughter. The one who’d turned his abandonment into thousands of years of torture.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, rolling his shoulders. "Just fuckin’ sleep already. Last thing I need is the Time Cartel sniffin’ around ‘cause your code’s too shiny for this shithole era. She won’t bail me out this time. Emi and her wife are hell-bent on fighting me for breaking Kaito’s rules and shit. I swear that brat is just his blond father’s Xerox."

Max’s laugh was a glitch in his brainstem. "As you wish, Mr. Zen’in. Do try not to die before my next reboot."

Toji groaned. “Stop calling me that.”

But Max, stubborn as code and twice as petty, pressed on. “Last time you told me not to call you, Commandant of Interplanetary Daddy Issues.”

Toji opened his mouth, but Max was already gone—vanishing mid-snark, leaving him alone with the sterile tubelights, the stink of iron, and a phone number that might end in corpses.

He dialed. Something screamed in the background. No one picked up.

---

On the other side of town, the actual fathers were….

Well.

It was raining again.

Because of course it was.

The kind of high-society Tokyo drizzle that fell sideways and got into your eyes just when you thought you looked hot.

Gojo Satoru—former strongest, current emotional liability—was crumpled like a lawn chair in a damp, half-lit corner of the biophilic garden his wife paid for and no longer visited.

He took another sip of warm soju out of a chipped espresso cup he’d stolen from his own penthouse kitchen.

Didn’t taste like anything. Again.

“Do you think,” Gojo slurred, breath fogging the tall grass, voice half-lost in the ferns, “do you think she—like—knows?”

“Knows what?” Nanami replied beside him, dull.

T-shirt wrinkled. Sweatpants he’d stolen from Gojo, damp at the knees. Golden hair longer than it should’ve been.

He was sitting cross-legged on a soaked outdoor cushion, clutching the stem of a broken champagne flute like he might use it to end his own metaphor or just stab himself.

The apocalypse had truly begun.

Gojo blinked slowly. “Knows I never loved anyone the way I loved her?”

“You told me you loved Suguru more,” Nanami reminded him flatly, also slurring.

Gojo groaned into his hand. "That was grief, Nana. Trauma-coded shit doesn’t count. You don’t get to inventory what people say during post-homicide breakdown sex with their enemy-to-lovers-turned-husband—especially right after they’ve hollow purpled their decade-long homoerotic situationship. There were layers. Layers of trauma. Layers of technique."

“That’s not an excuse.” Nanami groaned, falling sideways on Gojo.

Gojo stared at the horizon. “I was grieving. And drunk on God knows what adrenaline. And also incredibly stupid. There should be a statute of limitations on what people confess when they’ve just murdered their best friend and slept with their co-husband out of emotional brain death.”

Nanami reached for the soju bottle. Took a sip. Almost threw up because even his special-grade sorcerer body with RCT did not like this much alcohol. Didn’t comment, just swallowed.

“She asked us to come home,” he said.

Gojo nodded slowly. “She also asked us to stop using her bed like a love hotel.”

“…Yeah. Didn’t do that either.”

They fell silent.

Somewhere in the garden’s ambient speaker system, soft jazz tried and failed to lighten the mood.

Instead it stuttered like a ghost trying to apologize.

Nanami cracked first. “I miss her, Satoru. Do something.” He didn’t whine until he was really desperate or drunk, which currently he was both—and trying to set a new record.

Then Gojo burst into tears with zero warning.

“I miss her so much,” he sobbed into the tall bushes. “And now she’s living with the serial killer and Megumi, and they have Fushiguro-san calling me degenerate gaijin! I’m Japanese, Nanamin!”

“She called me a buttered eel in a suit.”

“She’s not wrong.”

Nanami buried his face in his hands.

Gojo sighed, “I bought her an island once.”

“That was three months ago. She named it after Toji out of spite.”

“That wasn’t a prank?”

“She’s also microchipped the raccoon and put it on payroll. I think it’s richer than us.”

Gojo blinked blearily. “He bites me every time he sees me.”

“That’s called good instincts.”

They fell silent again.

And then, right on cue, there was a rustle behind the flowerpots.

A blur of pale fur and petty vengeance launched itself from behind a dying bonsai and landed square on Nanami’s head. It made a sound like a kettle having a breakdown.

“...Hashi,” Nanami tried to scold, but his words swam.

The albino raccoon—dripping wet and wearing what appeared to be a Burberry rain poncho—latched onto Nanami’s longer hair like a tax auditor with a grudge and began chittering threats.

“He followed us here,” Gojo whispered, horrified. “He’s stalking us.”

“He has separation anxiety,” Nanami replied, dead-eyed. “And 69 million followers.”

Gojo snorted, “Nice.”

Takahashi bared his teeth, hissed at Gojo like an indignant raccoon, and bolted. Leaving Nanami’s hair still intact.

And Takahashi’s private security detail—camouflaged in the shrubbery like a nature doc crew gone black ops—scrambled after him without missing a beat.

It was almost beautiful, how pathetic they were. Two men, one brain cell, no wife, infinite regret.

That’s when Megumi’s mother appeared.

No footsteps. No warning. Just the click of a lacquered umbrella meeting tile and the ghost of jasmine—sweet, sharp, and quietly contemptuous.

With full, flawless makeup, she stepped forward in a forest-green yukata, its fabric patterned with delicate Ukon cherry blossoms—their ivory petals barely tinged gold, like sunlight fading from porcelain. The embroidery trailed in slender branches, tiny flowers scattered as if the wind had caught them mid-fall. Mono no aware made fabric: the bittersweet beauty of fleeting things.

The indigo umbrella on her shoulder was no mere accessory—its five petals arched like a blue lotus in full bloom, the exact shade worshipped in esoteric Buddhism for piercing illusion. A flower of thresholds, of Fudō Myō-ō’s unyielding focus amidst chaos. Rain slid off its silk in rivulets, each drop hitting the tile with the precision of a yōkai crossing into the human world—drizzling elegance, disdain and cold heaven’s weeping around.

She said nothing.

Just watched them, her silence sharper than the hiding butterflies outside—the ones symbolizing spirits, or perhaps her own unresolved love: those false springs that bloomed too early, wrapped in ghostly elegance.

She lingered, letting the moment slice.

“You smell like divorce court washrooms,” she muttered finally, fanning her nose with a matching indigo folding fan with cranes in flight, unattainable as forbidden love.

Gojo tried to stand, tripped over nothing, and remained seated.

“Is she happy?” he asked, rain catching in his lashes.

Like a dog asking if its owners have a new pet.

Megumi’s mother stared at them, then exhaled long enough to drown them from the pressure of her disappointment.

That was the moment the universe decided that the karmic punishment just wasn’t enough, so Takahashi ran back in, screamed and launched himself off the flowerpot. He landed square on Nanami’s lap, latched onto his thigh, and hissed.

Nanami flinched but accepted the violence like a penitent priest.

Megumi’s mother stared at Takahashi—who was now chewing the hem of Nanami’s collar like a toddler with a vendetta—and then back at them.

“Have you both eaten anything?” she asked, voice low.

They both shook their heads like sad raccoons.

“You willing to beg?”

Nanami nodded. “We’ve been begging.”

“Willing to be humiliated?”

Gojo gestured to his entire existence and sniffled. “That’s our default state now.”

Takahashi bit Gojo’s ankle with precision for good measure.

Gojo winced but didn’t move. Just accepted it.

She studied them for a long beat.

Then, voice smooth as glass, she said, “Fine. Come to dinner tomorrow.”

They both blinked up at her.

“Dinner?”

“With her. With Haibara. With my son. In our house.”

Gojo hesitated. “Is it a trap?”

“Of course it’s a trap,” she said. “But it’s also the only invitation you’ll get, despite killing my husband, stealing my daughter and then abandoning her.”

Gojo didn’t meet her eyes again.

She turned to leave, clicking her umbrella shut with enough finality to trigger three pigeons to abandon the rooftop.

Halfway down the path, she paused.

“Oh—and please don’t sleep face down on the carpet again. The raccoon’s still in therapy.”

Takahashi, now curled smugly in Nanami’s lap, chittered in perfect agreement. Ominously.

Gojo shivered.

Nanami wept silently.

The rain, unbothered by human failure, kept falling. Sideways.

---

A/N: Don’t ask how long this has been sitting in my drafts. If it ruined you: reblog. If it confused you: good.

Next 28 - False Mother & The Remembered Father - Part 1 - [Tumblr/Ao3]

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Third Wheeling Your Own Marriage

Elrdrich King!Haibara x Galatic Emperor General F!Reader F!Non-Sorceress CEO Reader x Gojo Satoru x Nanami Kento F!CHRO Reader x Higuruma Hiromi Previous Chapter 26 - The Empress Is Bored - [Tumblr/Ao3]

A/N: Title says it all. Lies, fake pregnancy, broken ex-husbands, ancient entropy husband. Haibara eats pear. Gojo eats air. Megumi eats his feelings. Fic is ongoing. Don’t ask for softness. You will not find it here. This is a longform psychological sci-fi horror fic disguised as emotional cyberpunk pregnancy drama. Expect entropy, lies, possession, & love that forgets itself.

Ch 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies - Part 1

Outside the luxury hospital, early in the morning, the wind smelled of sakura, disinfectant, and something that never got to heal.

The doors hissed behind you.

Megumi walked ahead, like the shield he thought he always needed to be.

Haibara followed, one step behind like a shadow, learning how to be human again.

You limped between them, the fabric of your hoodie pulled too tight, as if it were bracing you against the weight of your own body. Your joints protested with every step, still sore from the injections the nurses administered—insisting, as if you weren’t accustomed to the seamless precision of AI-guided, pain-free procedures. The air felt too clean. Sanitized like your memory.

You walked slowly. Still tired. Still sore.

Haibara’s hand stayed warm against the small of your back. He didn’t touch too much—just enough to steady you. Just enough to remind the world that he was here now, and you were his to hold.

Megumi still walked ahead, car keys in one hand, brows furrowed in his usual half-shielded pain.

And then she stepped into the path.

A woman, maybe in her early forties—or older, but soft in the way mothers sometimes were when life hadn’t let them rest. She held a bento box and a folder clutched to her chest. She was clearly waiting.

Megumi stopped.

But when she turned—

You clocked it.

The same hair.

The same jawline.

And a faint, bitter sadness at the corner of her mouth that lived exactly where it did in Megumi when he was tired and pretending not to cry.

You slowed.

His voice fell to a hush. “Mom—?”

She nodded, silent. Her eyes flicked to you. Then Haibara. Then to you again.

It wasn’t unkind.

It felt… heavy. As though she were trying to place you in a story she’d never wanted to read—one she wished you’d never lived.

You’d had enough of being understood by people who didn’t bleed with you.

But before the tension broke, there was a yank on your sleeve.

“Come here,” Shoko said.

Her fingers felt cold.

They always were—cold even on that last day in Harajuku, after Shibuya and Shinjuku had gone to shit, when she died still refusing to tell Sukuna anything.

Shoko’s problem wasn’t that she wasn’t loyal; she was loyal to the wrong people for you.

You expected comfort. A cigarette. A joke. Maybe a hug.

But you were done being naive.

She dragged you around the side of the building, past the smokers’ bench, the one hidden from public view.

And for the first time, she didn’t meet your eyes.

You watched her swallow whatever words she’d been building in her throat.

Then you cut in.

“It’s fine,” you said, voice flat. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”

Her mouth twitched. “That’s not—”

“It is.”

You looked her in the eye. No venom. No accusation. Just resignation.

“You told me to rest. Said I was overworking. Pushed me into a maternity leave I hadn’t scheduled. All while Gojo and Nanami had time to fix whatever little redemption arc they were staging, right? While I was home, too exhausted to move?”

“You were burning out,” she tried. “I was protecting you and your fucking unborn children.”

“No,” you spat. “You were positioning me.”

Silence.

“You didn’t know Haibara was practically carrying me to the office every day. You didn’t know Megumi was running himself into the ground coordinating with my board so I wouldn’t lose control. So they wouldn’t take away my dream. And you foolishly let them do that because it meant I wouldn’t be around while your boys cleaned up their mess. And mine burned themselves out.”

“I was trying to give you space,” she said weakly.

“No, you were trying to buy your best friends time.”

Shoko didn’t deny it.

You wanted to punch her.

But you were pretending to be an upstanding member of society and not the one ruling it for the next 50,000 years and more.

So you did what you always did—you bled quieter. “I thought we were friends.”

That was what broke her.

Her mouth twisted as if she were about to say your name.

But you kept going.

“I thought you were the only one who’d get it. Who wouldn’t take sides. Who wouldn’t let loyalty to two man-children overwrite basic fucking ethics.”

Shoko closed her eyes.

Still no apology.

You let it hang.

She didn’t argue anymore.

She just looked smaller than usual. Sadder. Older.

“You didn’t know they were planning to assassinate me. Whoever ‘they’ are. Or maybe you did. But even then… it wouldn’t have mattered.”

Haibara winked at you from nearby, and you stifled a smirk.

She flinched as if you’d slapped her.

You continued, “You’ve known them longer—Gojo, Nanami. You grew up with them. Of course your loyalty wasn’t with me.”

“That’s not—fuck.” Shoko ran a hand through her hair, eyes wild. “I didn’t pick sides. I tried to save you from yourself. They love you—God, they loved you—but those… those freaks needed a mother more than a CEO, and you sure as shit know they can’t survive without their fathers. Whether you like it or not, they aren’t normal kids, and you are a normal human.”

You smiled, cold. Your kids had survived—no, thrived—in the future, even if it meant sacrificing and experimenting on your own body without anesthesia.

“We all pick sides, Shoko. Some just dress it up like it was a clinical decision.”

She took a step closer, her face creased in something you couldn’t name. Guilt? Pity? Familiarity?

“You’re not the only one who has suffered loss.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“No,” you said. “But I’m the only one who got swallowed whole by a marriage that had no love in it. A fucking black hole with a ring and kids I never wanted. And I was still supposed to smile. Still expected to say thank you when they remembered I existed between mission reports and ego deaths. You know what that feels like? To be erased and still be grateful? To be abandoned and still make dinner?

I was supposed to clap for men who threw me out like garbage every time the sorcery life got hard—which is always, Shoko. Always. Like I wasn’t a person with a brain or sentience, like I was just a pair of soft tits or a walking womb or some hyper-independent provider unit, and when I finally started to crack, they flinched like I was Medusa in my own fucking home.

They didn’t give me love, they gave me a fucking record—a marriage certificate stained black.

I didn’t need the money, Shoko. You know that. I could’ve bought them out a hundred times. Even a fucking million. I stayed because I thought love would be enough. And still—still—they couldn’t be fucking bothered to love me. Because apparently, that’s too much to ask from two grown men who think bleeding on the battlefield is easier than bleeding for someone else.

I didn’t have one husband, Shoko. I had two.

And both of them cheated on me.

Do you know what that fucking does to a person?

No, you don’t. Because to you, they were just your dumbass friends who made a mistake. Not people capable of pulling out your spine and calling it an accident.

You didn’t encourage it—but you didn’t do me better, either. You just… stood there. Like men do. Like people do when they stay friends with cheaters and abusers and go, ‘well, it’s not my relationship, right?’

Wasn’t it the same for you, Shoko?

You’ll say no. But you enabled it. Like silence isn’t a choice. Like neutrality isn’t another name for cowardice.

And now, if I die—when I die—pushing out these fucking kids I never asked for, who’ll take the blame?

Because it won’t be me. Not anymore. Because again, I NEVER FUCKING WANTED THEM.”

Silence.

She tried to speak, but you cut her off.

“It was okay. You thought you were helping. You always do. I won’t hold it against you. But let’s not pretend we were ever sisters. You’re Gojo’s. Nanami’s. You drank with them, laughed with them, fought with them, buried bodies with them. I’m just the woman they fucked and left behind.”

“That’s not—”

“You’re right. I’m just the woman they replaced.”

Her shoulders slumped.

You went on, “You’d have mourned me like a stranger. Don’t lie.”

She whispered, “No. We became friends. I’d have missed you.”

You didn’t buy it. “I hope things works out between you and Utahime. At least, don’t pick Gojo over her. Something tells me she won’t tolerate it.”

You weren’t angry anymore.

You were just—done.

And like clockwork—

Haibara appeared.

His hand slid across your shoulders. Casually. Proprietary.

Too casual, in fact—like he’d been doing this forever instead of hours.

“Hey, cookie,” he said, voice honey-wicked. “Megumi’s waiting.”

Shoko stared at his arm around you.

Her face shifted. Sharpened.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

She looked between you two like someone reading spoilers for a war she thought she could control.

Haibara didn’t look at her.

His touch was subtle, but his body language was clear—she's mine now.

And that was what burned.

Not that he was yours,

but that you’d given yourself to him—when you couldn’t trust anyone else to hold you like you weren’t already halfway dead.

Megumi rounded the corner just in time to see it.

His eyes caught on Haibara’s hand.

Something flickered behind them. Confusion. Then something.

He was calculating.

You knew that look. You’d seen it on Nanami before he’d gut someone.

You’d seen it on yourself.

Now Megumi thinks he has a shot.

Now Megumi thinks he can finally have you.

But he is wrong.

Because the woman they all want back—the broken one, the tired one, the good girl who forgave too much—she wasn’t here anymore.

And Haibara’s grin widened as if he knew what he looked like—a mistress, the wife left the husbands for. All charm and wrongness and dirty promises made at 3 AM under hospital sheets.

Shoko said nothing.

She just lit a cigarette with shaking hands and turned her back, walking toward where she thought Gojo and Nanami were hopefully still sulking.

You walked away with Haibara, toward the car, where Megumi and his mother waited like they never stopped.

Your spine hurt. Your jaw ached. Your skin still felt like a loan you hadn’t paid off yet.

But this was the first time in a while that you walked out of a hospital without losing anything.

Once inside, the car—a Maserati—smelled of leather, soft disinfectant, and secrets.

You were tucked into the back seat of an armored convoy with blackout windows and redundant shielding. Everything around you—temperature, air filtration, noise dampening—was tuned by Megumi’s private AI cluster. He didn’t even let your seat recline without confirmation.

You weren’t supposed to feel safe here, in this modern but outdated tech for you.

But you did.

That was the most terrifying part.

Haibara sat in the passenger seat up front, turned halfway toward you like a prince who thought he was charming. 

He fiddled with the touchscreen display like the ancient tech held nostalgia.

“Hey, Cookie,” he said casually, “I know you’re ‘pregnant’ and all, but if you keep sitting like that, I’ll have to report your posture to the Anti-Cringe Association.”

You stared blankly. “What?”

He smirked, frowning, a little confused. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

Megumi snorted beside you. “Anti-Cringe Association. It was a meme page from, like, 2012. Haibara used to follow them.”

“I did not,” Haibara protested. “You’re confusing me with someone else.”

“I’m thinking of the you who cried over those TikToks of octopus—mothers octopuses that birth their young only to die afterward,” Megumi said flatly.

Haibara scoffed, eyes on the windshield.

“You really think those TikToks are just sad fluff? I’ve read the papers—optic gland, semelparity, the works. Even if you hand-fed her every hour, she’d still stop eating, brood until every egg hatched, then shut down. Nature’s programmed that way. No amount of sympathy or shrimp cocktail changes her fate.”

You frowned.

You didn’t know what they were talking about.

And Haibara—beautiful, feral-eyed Haibara—caught it first. His gaze flicked to yours for half a second too long.

But he didn’t say anything.

Just flashed you that wolfish grin again like he was in on the joke, and maybe the joke was you.

Megumi didn’t notice. He was too busy briefing his security team via voiceprint over the car’s encrypted channel.

“Gate Alpha-2 stays closed unless I say otherwise. No biometric bleed-ins. No media drones in Zone Twelve. And lock the medical deck’s protocols for her vitals. Full privacy stack.”

A nod. A pause. His hand settled on your thigh—just for a second—before he pulled away, fingers flexing like he’d touched something volatile.

You noticed. Of course you did.

You watched his fingers curl into his palm. Not a tremor. Just a measured reset.

You looked at him.

He wasn’t a boy she grew up with. Not anymore.

He was a CEO.

His reputation built on solving problems before his clients knew they existed.

A man who commanded extremely skilled bodyguards and international security networks like it was foreplay.

But right then, he was just a man who had almost lost you.

And didn’t know he already did.

Because you were not her.

The her he was trying to find in your eyes.

Megumi’s mom, in the seat beside you, kept twisting around with motherly fury.

“Did you eat anything yet? You didn’t eat, did you? You look pale. What’s she been craving? Megumi, did you log her intake? I told you to keep a nutrient diary—”

“She had soup,” Haibara offered. “And a triple chocolate brownie she claimed was medicinal.”

You flashed him a look. “It had magnesium in it.”

Megumi’s mom sighed in the way mothers do with huge disappointment over trivial things. “That’s not nearly enough protein. We need a full chart.”

“She’s fine, Mom. Feeding her is the only thing those two idiots have been good at so far,” Megumi said, deadpan but tight-jawed. “We’ll have Keji run a full dietary protocol when we’re home. I’ll call him over since she’s gonna be staying with us.”

“I want her monitored,” she muttered. “This isn’t just some corporate affair, Megumi. She’s carrying—”

“Let it go, Mom; we’ll take care of it at home,” Megumi muttered, flipping through the car's old glovebox with a half-smile. “Anyway, I still can’t believe, Haibara, you threw that can of Monster at Takana in the library. Dude cried and told his mom, you hexed him.”

You blinked. Haibara tilted his head.

You both did not know of this experience or any because of the fact that you didn’t actually grow up with Megumi.

Megumi looked up. “Come on. It was in senior year, well, your senior year. You remember, right? We were in the library watching that cursed documentary on sea otters, and you said something about ‘divine retribution’ and chucked the can?”

Haibara let out a short laugh—tight, almost performative, bullshitting his way through, again. “Yeah, yeah. Sea otters. Ruthless little guys.”

You nodded slowly. “Oh yeah. That was…” You trailed off, then gestured vaguely. “Classic.”

Megumi gave a soft, puzzled laugh. “That’s not a sentence.”

“Well,” you said evenly, “neither was your life until you stopped parting your hair down the middle.”

That DID NOT work. “I never did that.” Megumi frowned like he was seeing through you.

Haibara picked it up like a cue card. “Right, right. And wasn’t that the same night we made fake horoscopes and convinced the Salvatore twins their brotherhood was astrologically doomed?”

Megumi blinked.

“No,” he said. “That was after midterms, and that wasn’t you. That was me and her.”

He pointed at you.

There was a breath of silence. Not long enough to be awkward. Just long enough to be off.

“Oh, shit,” Haibara said brightly, laughing a little too loud. “Mandela Effect. I totally thought I came up with that.”

Megumi shrugged. “You always do. Memory of a goldfish, ego of a sea god.”

You smiled—tight, cold behind the teeth. “I mean, in his defense, he is technically older than the Ice Age, so… maybe his hippocampus is just dust.”

“Or was,” Haibara added. “Until you resurrected me with your thighs.”

Megumi’s mother—who’d been quiet until now—grimaced. “Mom ears. I really didn’t need to know this much, Haibara.”

And at the same time, a groan from Megumi. “Okay, gross. You are disgusting. And disturbing.”

But something in his tone had shifted.

Just a touch.

Not enough to call you out. But enough to pause.

You felt it.

He was squinting now—not at your words, but at the distance between your words and reality. At the rhythm of things that no longer quite matched the beat he remembered.

You recovered smoothly.

“Honestly,” you said, feigning mock offense, “for a guy who wore ankle-length jeans and drank ketchup on a dare, you’re throwing around a lot of judgment.”

Megumi’s mouth dropped, frowning harder. “What? That wasn’t me. That was Yusuke.”

“Oh,” you blinked. “Right. Shit. My bad.”

Haibara leaned in, tone cool. “She’s pregnant. Brain's soup. You remember how she used to forget locker combinations and accuse vending machines of scamming her?”

Megumi narrowed his eyes—half-smiling still, but quieter now.

“She never forgot my locker combo,” he said, too softly.

Haibara tilted his head. “Well. Must’ve liked you more than snacks.”

Another laugh.

But now Megumi was quiet.

Not suspicious. Not yet.

Just wondering—

Maybe they forgot.

Maybe he just wasn’t that important in tenth grade.

Maybe he just remembers more than they do.

Or maybe—

He didn’t say it.

Didn’t even let himself think it all the way through.

Just sat back in the seat, staring out the window as Haibara clicked the car’s touchscreen like he was rediscovering medieval tech.

From the rearview mirror, you caught your reflection.

And smiled just wide enough to scare yourself.

Then, because the universe never missed a chance to humble you immediately, the car hit a bump.

Despite the seat belt, you lurched forward, the faux baby weight throwing your balance off—

—and Megumi’s hand was suddenly around your shoulders.

No warning. No hesitation.

Just there.

Protective. Familiar. Like he’d done it a hundred times in a life you never lived.

You froze.

He didn’t move away.

Just leaned in, cheek brushing the crown of your head. Quiet. Steady.

You felt him breathe.

Like he was trying to memorize the shape of you. Or anchor himself. Or pretend—for a moment—that the timeline where you were his hadn’t collapsed completely.

You didn’t pull away.

Not because you wanted him. That was never the problem.

But because the way he held you made your skin remember who you used to be before you met your ex-husbands.

The girl who thought love could be soft.

That survival wouldn’t cost so much.

So you let him hold you like the world still made sense.

You let him lie.

Haibara watched from the front seat.

Said nothing.

But when you looked up—just a flicker, just once—his smile was already there.

A quiet, tired thing that said, I know. It’s alright.

You and Haibara didn’t hate Megumi. Not like the others.

Because Megumi wasn’t losing from cruelty or cowardice.

He was losing from kindness—

from rules he wrote for himself that never let him reach for what he wanted.

So you let him hug you.

Not as a woman torn between two men.

No, you only cared about Haibara like that.

But as a woman mourning the girl she didn’t get to be.

And maybe—just maybe—offering comfort to the boy who never got to be loved first.

---

Twilight soaked the rear hospital garden in spoiled wine—bruised purples staining the concrete and the sky. Shoko found them where she'd expected: slumped on the smoker’s bench reserved for chain-burners, end-of-life decisions, and doctors who couldn't face going home yet.

Nanami's hand clenched rhythmically against his thigh. Gojo cradled his head in his palms as if physically restraining whatever thoughts threatened to escape.

Shoko let the silence fester. Let it curdle between them like spoiled milk.

Then she spoke, her voice quiet and lethal. "What the fuck did you do."

Gojo flinched as though the words had physical weight.

Nanami's jaw ticked.

Neither answered.

"No, seriously." She stepped closer, the ember of her cigarette flaring. "What the actual fuck did you do, Satoru."

“I killed Suguru,” Gojo whispered.

Shoko scoffed. "Don’t insult me."

The words hit like a slap, not for their volume but for their precision.

“I stood by you,” she said, voice still cool, still steady, but sharpening now. “I told her she needed rest. Told myself you three just needed time. I—” Her gaze snapped to Nanami. “—trusted you.”

Nanami blinked once. Slowly. Didn’t respond.

“You lied. You snuck around like children. You fucked each other and played house, then told me to sit across from her and tell her it was going to be okay.” Her voice trembled once, but didn’t break. “You didn’t just lie to her. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen like that,” Nanami murmured, low and gravel-thick.

“None of it meant anything, right? Just accidents, just grief?” She hissed through her teeth. “Grow the fuck up. You gambled with a person. And she bled for it.”

Gojo finally looked at her, eyes rimmed red. “She forgave us. I thought…”

“And that’s what makes it so disgusting.” Shoko exhaled smoke through her nose. “You saw her softness and thought it meant permission. You watched her rebuild herself and assumed it was for you. No, EXPECTED IT WAS FOR YOU.”

She jabbed the cigarette toward the hospital behind her. “That man you both made me write off as dangerous—he’s the one she smiling beside now. Megumi and Haibara are the ones who have been steady, who don’t flinch when she falls apart. And unlike you, they didn’t need to be abandoned in cold blood to wake them up.”

Nanami shook his head. “Haibara isn’t—he’s dangerous.”

“And you think you are safe?” Shoko’s laugh was hollow, echoing off the cement. “He’s not pretending to be perfect. You two, though—you wore your guilt like medals. Thought it earned you something.”

“We didn’t use her,” Gojo said, too quiet.

“No?” Her tone cut. “Then what was it, exactly? Comfort? Routine? A place to dump your grief when it didn’t fit inside each other anymore?” She stepped forward, smoke curling around her like a curse. “You watched her break. You watched her crawl through that pain. And still—you acted like she was a fucking extension of your house, something that’d always be there when you came home drunk and bored.”

Silence. Dull, stunned.

“She’s not yours,” Shoko said simply. “Women aren’t some soft thing waiting to be picked up again. She left. She moved on. She’s happy now. And if she files for sole custody, I will support her.”

Gojo’s hands trembled. “She looked at me like I was a stranger.”

“You are,” Shoko said. “The woman you left behind loved someone who doesn’t exist anymore. And so did I, thinking I was helping my only remaining friends. But you—” Her voice dipped low, brutal. “You two made me look like a fucking fool. Lied to me. Smiled in my face. Let me stand between her and the truth.”

Nanami looked away.

“She called me her friend,” Shoko whispered, like that was the real wound. “She started trusting me. And I told her to go back to you. And that fucking Maya—”

No one spoke.

“So no,” she said finally, stubbing her cigarette out with more force than necessary. “I’m not defending you anymore. I don’t trust either of you. Not with her. Not with anything.”

She turned, steps loud in the hush that followed.

“And don’t you dare humiliate me again asking for help,” she said over her shoulder.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.

Back in the real world—or whatever fractured mirror of it this was—you arrived in silence.

The ash settled in their lungs like a verdict.

---

The staff were already waiting at the elevator: armed, tailored, polite. They opened the doors before you even stepped out.

The penthouse stretched above the city like a cathedral carved from obsidian and glass. Each room was tuned to its own climate, each window responsive to shifting moods. The kitchen prepped meals based on real-time hormone scans.

Megumi instructed his teams. “She’s going to stay in the inner suite. Make sure nobody else touches her security profile but Keji.”

“Understood,” they said in unison.

And there he was.

Keji: six feet even, gloved in black, with the resting face of a vengeance demon who’d picked up etiquette at Le Cordon Bleu.

He bowed. Crisp. Unreadable.

“Madam,” he said. “I'm glad you made it out. I'll be working from Fushiguro-san's penthouse in the meantime. I also support the decision to leave them. Passionately.”

You nodded, smiling softly, while Haibara stared at Keji with an unreadable expression. “I'm glad to see you again, Keji.”

He adjusted his gloves. “I took the liberty of burning their photos on your behalf.”

Haibara let out a low whistle. “I like this one.”

Megumi's mother handed Keji a folded list. “She likes fruit sometimes, in the mornings. But only if it's cold. She’s sensitive to temperature shifts. In the hospital, her feet would swell at night—I want anti-inflammatory protocols built into the bedding.”

Keji was already assigning teams their tasks through his tablet. “Consider it done, Okaasama.”

(Since Keji had a long-standing relationship with the family, he used to refer to the employer’s mother with deep respect. It literally meant “honored mother.”)

Megumi looked at you.

He didn’t say it aloud.

But you read it clearly in his eyes.

Welcome home.

And for a heartbeat, it almost felt true—

If not for the fact that somewhere under this perfect city...

Her children were getting ready to wake up.

And they were already looking out for their mother.

At night, the penthouse was too quiet.

---

The problem with Bunker-9A—17 kilometers beneath the city—wasn’t that it was a bunker.

But it was that Toji wasn’t breathing right anymore.

The air was cold. Damp. Off in a way that wasn’t just about temperature—something deeper, something cellular.

The kind of wrong that lingered in the lungs.

Lights flickered in time with screams that didn’t belong to him.

The walls pulsed with something psychic.

The twins—unborn, untrained, untouched by mercy—were playing with him again.

Small blades hovered in the air like promises. They glinted like gold, but they didn’t reflect light—only intent.

They hummed toward him.

And Toji dove.

One scraped past his shoulder. The wall blossomed open—scorched metal and soundless heat.

The other blade arced through the air, carving its message into the ceiling:

 N O

M O R E

   T O J I

The mother—the real one, the one sedated—lay comatose nearby on the medical cot.

But her fingers twitched. In time with their violence.

She wasn’t awake.

They were.

And they were using her body like a puppet.

Her lips twitched. Blood trailed from one nostril.

Then her voice—fractured, layered, echoing—said:

M A M A

 L I K E D

Y O U

  O N C E

Toji stumbled back, sweat sliding down his spine.

A ratio-blade whistled past his face.

Another line carved itself, fresh and clean:

W H E R E

 D A D D I E S

---

Not peaceful—engineered.

Every sound filtered, every breath muffled by technology so precise it felt hostile. Even the floor lights dimmed as you walked, like the building had learned to fear you.

Megumi insisted on preparing the guest suite himself.

You didn’t stop him. He moved like you were an open wound—familiar but fragile. Adjusted the thermostat. Fluffed the pillows. Set a water bottle on the nightstand, label facing you like it mattered.

The mint candle burned. A mistake.

That had been the other one’s favorite.

Still, you let him fuss.

You owed him nothing. But you let him linger in the doorway like something unfinished.

“I’m down the hall,” he said finally, voice cracking on the lie. “If you need anything.”

You didn’t answer right away. Just looked at him.

“...Thank you, Megumi.”

His gaze flickered—your hands, your stomach, your mouth. Then he nodded and left.

The door locked itself behind him.

You’d barely undone the pressure belt around your waist—belly aching from too many hours standing—when you felt it.

The air changed.

Not metaphorically.

The pressure shifted. No warning, no sound. But your spine straightened.

Something old.

Something remembered.

A knock.

Then, softly: “Let me in.”

You didn’t bother rolling your eyes. Just unlocked the door.

There he was.

Still wearing that ancient hoodie. Still looking like a war crime wearing soft edges.

He didn’t speak right away. Just leaned in the doorway, like it was always supposed to be this way.

“You look better,” he said finally.

You didn’t reply. Your eyes just lingered. Measured him.

He stepped inside. The temperature dropped two degrees.

Your stabilizer pinged.

His presence always did that. Messed with your system. Something in your cells remembered him, even if you didn’t want it to.

He moved to sit at the edge of your bed. Didn’t ask.

“You don’t smell like blood anymore,” he said, like it was worth noting.

You sat across from him, hands resting lightly over your stomach.

“Cologne,” you said.

He smiled. Quiet. Tired.

It wasn’t that he was older now. Just... eroded.

“You’ve been alone,” he said softly. “Too long.”

“So have you.”

He looked down. “I didn’t want to forget you. But I did. Sometimes. For minutes. I hated it. Felt empty.”

“And now?”

“I remember too much.”

A silence settled between you. Heavy, but not sharp. More like sediment.

“I’m not here for catharsis,” he added. “I just didn’t want to sleep knowing you were alone.”

You didn’t tell him you weren’t alone.

Instead, you nodded once. “Fine. But don’t touch me.”

His voice was low. “I’ll try.”

He slipped under the blanket beside you like a habit. Careful not to press too close.

You could feel the tension. Always could. That magnetic hum of him—not violent now, not chaotic. Just... real.

"You know," he said softly, "I've killed people who touched you in visions."

You sighed, getting comfortable. "I've killed people who tried to resurrect you."

His laugh was gravel and honey. "God, I love you."

"I know," you said, finally resting your cheek on the pillow.

Your leg brushed his by accident. You didn’t pull away.

"You used to let me curl my eldritch soul around you," he said. "Said I made the silence quieter."

"That was before."

"Before what?"

“Before, I still thought I’d die in your arms, but then I realized I’d have to outlive you too.”

His expression fractured.

You hated that look.

That human belief that pain proved love.

You weren't human anymore.

"I never asked you to save me," he whispered.

You turned fully toward him. "You'll never need to. I'm not built to let you die."

He was studying the sheets now, as if they might absolve him first.

The breathing synced. Always did.

“You were always good at pretending you didn’t need anything,” he murmured.

“I was always better at surviving than loving.”

“I noticed.”

You exhaled through your nose.

He didn’t ask for your forgiveness. Didn’t try to play God. Just lay there, staring at the ceiling, one hand close enough to touch—but not touching.

“You're the only constant left,” he said, voice barely audible. “Even when I forget everything else.”

You turned your head, slowly.

He met your gaze.

“You can stay,” you said.

A beat passed.

“No talking.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

The blanket shifted as you both settled.

He didn’t reach for you again.

Didn’t need to.

He was already closer than anyone had been in fifteen thousand years.

You weren't sure how someone who'd once obliterated solar systems could feel so gentle—but he did. Like the moment was glass, and he remembered the first time it shattered.

He shifted closer. Breath steady, eyes luminous.

"You know I'm unraveling," he said, lips nearly brushing yours. “That there’s not much of me left. That I’m forgetting entire timelines.”

“I know.”

"And you still kept me alive."

"I did worse," you said. "Rewired your neural lattice with my blood. Tethered your decay to my pulse. Made my body your memory vault."

His eyes glazed. Too bright. Too full.

"You're insane," he whispered.

"I'm loyal," you corrected. "Insanity's for people who think they have a choice."

He kissed your forehead.

You let him, shifting closer to his chest. His eyes were too clear. Pupils dilating as if drinking your voice.

“Yu?”

“Mm?”

"Why didn't you come sooner?"

He swallowed. "I was—"

The sheets were warm, his body—careful not to touch yours—radiating like a sun in fog. Familiar. Unsafe. Home.

You closed your eyes.

Not because you didn't miss him.

But because if you looked too long, you'd remember.

The nightmares. 15,000 years of watching his body dissolve atom by atom. That grin still on his face.

You didn't realize you'd slept until—

Bang.

The door jolts in its hinges.

You and Haibara jerked upright.

He was already halfway across the room, inexplicably holding a cookbook like it’d be a plausible defense. Your sheets hung off his hips like evidence.

You yanked them away before opening the door.

Megumi stood there, jaw tight, brows drawn like storm clouds. That flicker in his eyes—not jealousy. Something older. Meaner. A hoarded, burning thing.

"What's wrong?" you asked flatly.

He frowned. "Heard voices. Wanted to ensure you weren't..."

“Murdered in your sleep?” Haibara offered, grinning like it was a game.

Megumi ignored him. "Yeah. That."

He held up a chilled water bottle. "Thought you might need this. Didn't realize you had company."

Haibara moved too fast—out of bed, teeth gleaming. "Just checking her vitals," he lied smoothly. "She's still recovering."

"Mm." Megumi's gaze stayed locked on yours. Dagger-sharp. "And where exactly were you when she was bleeding out on the street?"

The air crystallized.

Your pulse stayed steady, but the pressure shifted—a reminder you weren't invincible in this skin.

Haibara didn't flinch. "Tracking the sniper. Locating the origin."

"And yet," Megumi said, smile thin, "no one could find you."

"I'm good at staying gone."

Megumi handed you the bottle, eyes still on Haibara. "She needs rest."

A pause. A nod.

Haibara stepped back. Silent.

But as he followed Megumi out, he glanced back.

His expression was unreadable.

Not regret. Not longing.

Something worse.

Like a worshipper who'd forgotten his god's name but remembered her wrath.

His face was ancient. Not angry. Not sad. Just... resigned.

Like time was a wheel, and it had crushed him once more.

When the door shut, the silence returned—razor-sharp.

You placed the new water bottle beside its untouched twin Megumi had already placed earlier, atop the hidden mini-fridge stocked with twenty identical backups.

Your AI chimed. The injector materialized midair.

Lying back slowly, you pressed the stabilizer against the silver port below your collarbone just as your ribs contracted like a failing airlock.

Click. Hiss.

Your bloodstream recalibrated audibly.

Your breathing eased.

But only just.

This wasn't medicine. It was a bribe to the body—tricking your failing cells into obedience, holding back the collapse for one more night.

You’re no longer whole. Haven’t been for years.

But you don’t need to be whole.

You just need to be enough to hold him together.

Haibara's condition was worse.

He didn't bleed the way humans do. He didn’t even die the way they do.

Worse in the way that gods rot when time forgets how to carry them.

After living over fifty thousand years, his body crossed a line nature never intended.

Just… unfinished.

His brain—part sorcerer, part engineered—was built to store everything.

Memories, dimensions, language, faces, timelines, all stacked like paper in a room with no walls.

But paper burns. Ink fades. Brains rot.

His memory is falling apart from the inside.

First came the names. Then places. Then faces. Now, entire decades flicker like faulty film. Sometimes he forgets what century it is.

But not her face.

He always remembers her face.

That’s the last part he’s trying to keep.

His body’s starting to show it, too.

His fingertips have gone translucent under certain light—like glass stained faintly with ink.

His veins pulse darker than they used to, tinged with something denser than blood. Something old.

The whites of his eyes have begun to shimmer faintly at night, like stars seen through fog, and a soft shadow bleeds from his pupils when he’s angry or trying to remember too hard.

He’s still beautiful.

But he’s not entirely human anymore.

Sometimes you catch magnetic anomalies around him—metal shifting slightly, lights flickering, radio signals spiking. Like the universe is being pulled into him just enough to remember what he is.

He’s becoming the dark.

Not a metaphor. A literal, quantum-level transition. His atoms are starting to lose cohesion, converting into low-mass dark matter: the kind that floats between stars and records nothing.

If he goes too far, there won’t be a body left. Not even bones. Just a void in the shape of a man who once loved you more than time itself.

You couldn’t stop it.

But you could delay it.

When his spinal AI began to fail—overloaded, fragmented—you carved a solution out of your own body.

Your own biology.

You didn’t ask for permission.

You anchored his failing systems to your heart, linked the dying core in his spine to the pulse of your blood.

Your body became his backup drive.

Your existence became his tether.

You did it because your brain was already gone—fried after years of genetic pregnancy acceleration, war trauma, hyper-aging, and too many resurrection surgeries. Your frontal lobe is a patchwork of scar tissue and quantum mesh.

But the AI inside you—symbiotic, smarter than any doctor—keeps sweeping your thoughts clean, moving old memories to far-off satellites, pushing pain into storage. You are no longer just a woman. You're an archive. You're a server. You're the last hard drive of a love so old it predates some species.

Every breath you take… buys him one more memory of you.

Every stabilizer injection… gives him a few more minutes of not forgetting your name.

He once said that if he ever died—really died—he’d become a ghost so vast it could swallow galaxies. He’d make the black holes weep.

But you wouldn’t let him go that far.

You made sure that if he was going to turn into something unspeakable… he’d still carry you with him.

And he does. Even now, when his voice falters, when his body glitches mid-step, when he forgets what war you’re in—he still looks at you with that same hunger.

That same reverence.

That same Haibara.

So no, you're not just alive for yourself anymore.

You’re alive for him.

You’re the last thing tethering him to life.

The last memory that still feels warm.

And if that means burning your own brain to keep his from falling into shadow—

Then so be it. Let collapse come.

Let the stars forget their own names.

He never forgot yours.

It wasn’t just survival anymore.

It was triage. For both of you.

And every breath you took—buffered by enhancers, indexed by code—was another day he didn’t vanish into data dust.

---

You were alone again.

And yet, somewhere down the hall, your ghost—your king—was real.

And waiting.

Haibara paced the glass-walled room like a caged predator, Tokyo's neon corpse sprawled below him.

No marks on his throat. No wife in his bed.

He wasn’t angry.

He was starving.

His fingers twitch toward the sheets he wanted to burn and the walls he wanted to shatter.

Instead, he sat on the sterile mattress and stared at the ceiling.

Gods don't sleep easy.

Gods remember.

The way your fingers had clutched the sheets when he brushed your wrist.

How his name still fractured your voice like a prayer.

And Megumi.

Fucking Megumi.

He isn’t someone you’ve known in your world. Not technically.

But the shape of him? The shape is familiar.

The kindness. The grief. The suspicion.

The knowing.

Haibara can’t keep this up much longer.

The lies were rotting his teeth. The quiet was peeling his skin.

The pretense that he doesn’t want to crack open time itself and crawl back into your skin.

Somewhere between the hum of electricity and the ache in his reforged spine, he murmured, "I'm here, cookie." Knowing you couldn’t hear him without your AI going online and immediately alerting Megumi. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. I’ll crawl through this timeline on broken knees if I have to. You know that, right?”

There was no answer.

Just silence.

Fifteen thousand years of it.

Tomorrow, he decided.

Tomorrow, he’d remind you what kind of monster had always loved you best.

And what kind of god would come back from hell just to sleep beside her.

---

The next morning, you sipped herbal tea carefully. The blend Megumi's mother had left you. It tasted like soil and sleep and regret.

Haibara wandered in, yawning exaggeratedly.

"Gods don't need sleep," you said.

He smirked. "True. But you looked cute kicking me out. Very dictator chic."

You rolled your eyes. "Don't start."

He stepped closer. Placed a hand over your head—light, reassuring.

You leaned into him. Just slightly. And he beamed like a man remembering the taste of victory.

Then Megumi walked in again.

His eyes scanned everything too quickly.

Still not asking—but watching.

And then, casual as a drawn blade, "Did you find out who shot her?"

Haibara didn't flinch.

Not really.

"Not yet," he said smoothly. "But I'm very good at revenge. You should know."

Megumi squinted. "I don't know you anymore. You just disappeared like we didn't need you."

A pause.

A soft chuckle.

"Sure," Haibara said. "Let's go with that."

You took another sip of tea. Watched them.

One man who was your husband.

And one who might have been yours in another life.

And you knew—the mirror's crack was spreading.

---

Next Ch 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies Part 2 - [Tumblr/Ao3]

All Works Masterlist

Tag-list = @lady-of-blossoms @stargirl-mayaa @dark-agate @tqd4455 @roscpctals99 @sxlfcxst @se-phi-roth @austisticfreak @helloxkittylo @itoshi-r @kodzukensworld @revolvinggeto @luringfantasy @xx-tazzdevil-xx @unaaasz @thebumbqueen @holylonelyponyeatingmacaroni @whos-ruru @helo1281917

[nanamineedstherapy]

The Cleanest Line

Satoru Gojo x F!Reader + Alpha!Nanami Kento

Omegaverse (but make it dystopian no power AU), less-smut-focus, plot-heavy, dark sci-fi, psychological, a lil bit feral.

Summary: Not your usual Omegaverse. No soulmates. No scent kink. Just systems of control, state-sanctioned affection, and the slow rot of being wanted for what you represent—not who you are. If that lands, you’ll know. If not, it wasn’t meant for you. File under: cyberpunk grief, bio-political horror, quiet longing. “This felt like Psycho-Pass fucked Black Mirror, had a baby with DHB, and that kid married Fallout in a neon chapel.” – @mullermilkshake (Not an Omegaverse reader. Obsessed anyway.) TW: Suicidal ideation, mentions of male sexual assault, reproductive coercion, sugar baby contract. Song rec: “Shift (Alt Version)”—courtesy of @mullermilkshake, best consumed during Nanami’s club scene. (Purple lights. Hollow eyes. Let it rot something.) A/N: This fic is complete in concept, structured in full. Updates will follow. Thanks to @madwomansapologist for the original conversation that sparked this. And to @mullermilkshake—for the ruthless encouragement, the line edits, and the unholy enthusiasm.

Ch - 1: Artificial Devotion

The club was cold.

Not in temperature—nanogel walls sweated pheromone condensate, and the neon strips lining the ceiling ran in slow, breathy pulses to match the alpha-major rhythm embedded in the music—but cold in the way that places become when you walk into them hoping to die.

Nanami Kento nursed a drink he didn’t want, watching his colleagues pretend to enjoy each other's company. All around him: glossed-over omegas wrapped in synthetic lace, alphas bragging about their quarterly bonuses loud enough for the AI bartender to adjust their alcohol ratios mid-convo.

He didn’t belong here.

He wasn’t even sure he belonged anywhere.

Thirty-seven years old, in a city run by precision-coded intimacy and behavioral sync algorithms, and still too human to find solace in the way life had softened into something preprogrammed.

He had told himself that he’d come tonight to blow off steam.

What he didn’t say—not even to the digital assistant that monitored his vitals—was that he’d considered leaping from his office balcony earlier that afternoon.

Briefly. Coldly.

Like a man checking for rain before stepping outside. Not dramatic, not desperate. Just… tired. He hadn't known what exactly he was living for anymore.

The club pulsed like an artificial womb—slick, violet lighting; walls exhaling perfume-grade pheromones; AI bartenders offering cocktails calibrated to your mood profile. His colleagues laughed, their laughter pre-loaded with something synthetic. Happiness was a setting now, not a feeling.

He sipped quietly, drinking the kind of liquor people ordered when they had nothing left to prove. His fingers itched from the edges of his suit—custom-tailored, thread-count in the thousands, nanofiber-enhanced for pheromone neutrality. He wore it like armor. Because in this world, alphas weren’t allowed to be tired.

And Nanami Kento was so, so tired.

Then he saw them.

At the far end of the club—past the scent diffusers, past the private glass booths pulsing with dopamine-sync strobes—were two omegas. Kissing. Messily, unprofessionally, like they hadn’t gotten the memo that they were supposed to perform chastely in public.

One was undercut-white-haired, pale-skinned, tall, even more than Kento, and devastatingly beautiful, almost pretty in a soft way, but athletic enough that you’d second-guess reading him as an omega.

The other—

The other was so soft Nanami felt sick.

Small-framed, wide-eyed, dressed like someone who didn’t know what they had or how it could be taken. Except she did. It was there in the stiffness of her spine, in the way she smiled like she had claws in her pocket. Still, her laugh sounded like something unfiltered—something from a childhood not yet eaten by the city.

They danced like no one told them they shouldn’t. The tall one—29, Satoru, the AI in Nanami’s neural HUD whispered, flagged from old security archives—kept his hand pressed to the small of her back. Not sexual. Anchoring. Possessive. Instinctual. Like he’d taught himself not to flinch every time someone got close enough to smell what he really was.

One of them was... radiant. Hair catching the light like gemstones, laughter spilling out like water over clean glass. The other—striking in a way that made people pause, second-guess. Not just because he was an omega, but because he refused to shrink himself. Lean but solid. Shoulders squared. Movements practiced. Calculated masculinity, tailored to hide his designation in plain sight.

He still tried to find out her name.

But like all cosmic jokes, she was untraceable. No social records. No work profile. No digital footprint except her face caught in Satoru’s archived posts like a ghost he carried forward.

Nanami didn’t say anything. Didn’t approach. Just watched. Quietly. Then he left the club before midnight and deleted his suicide plan from his biometric scheduler.

Nanami didn’t kill himself.

That night, he went home and told the AI to dim the lights. He took a pill and laid in bed, letting it dissolve on his tongue while the system softly narrated his vital signs. “Your heart rate is elevated. Should I initiate meditation protocol?”

He turned it off.

He dreamt of them.

Even then, a year ago, Nanami had felt it—something wrong in his bones. Not envy. Not lust. Something worse. Hope.

A year later, they lived in his penthouse.

Not his, technically.

Nanami had paid for it, signed the contract, but he’d never set foot inside.

It was an arrangement.

Satoru had strictly only agreed with this living situation—smirking, self-assured, the scent of defiance and desperation threading beneath his perfectly calculated smile.

The girl—the omega, Nanami reminded himself, trying not to give her a name in his head—hadn’t said anything at first. She let Satoru speak for her.

Which made sense. Childhood friends, raised together in the cracks of the system. Both omegas. Both determined not to be destroyed by it.

What Satoru was willing to give wasn’t companionship.

It was access.

Nanami would never touch them.

That was the first line.

He’d fund their living—apartment, bills, security upgrades—and in return, Satoru would send content. Homemade videos. Just the two of them. Sometimes playful, sometimes unbearable in their intimacy.

Not pornography in the traditional sense. Something worse. Or better.

Nanami couldn’t decide.

He hated himself for watching.

Hated himself more when he didn’t.

He’d never been there. He paid the rent, the maintenance fees, the AI subscription plan for their domestic system. He wired money into a private omega protection fund. He received videos every Sunday, each one timestamped and watermarked.

It wasn’t porn.

Not really.

They didn’t perform.

Sometimes it was Satoru pushing her against the glass window, sunlight catching the outline of her body as if she were being worshipped by the city skyline. Sometimes it was soft, tangled limbs and muffled giggles, her wrist looped lazily around his neck while his eyes looked somewhere past the camera, like he was daring someone to turn it off.

Sometimes Satoru didn’t appear at all. Just her, on her stomach, whispering what she’d eaten that day. Her voice always had a tiny upward lilt, like she wasn’t sure if he’d listen. He always did.

Nanami didn’t touch himself to the videos.

It felt wrong.

Like praying in the wrong direction.

And now… things had changed.

It started subtly. A message on his secure line from her. Just one at first:

“Thanks for the apartment. It’s really nice.”

Nanami hadn’t known how to respond. He’d stared at the words for an hour before sending: 

“You’re welcome.”

Then some logistics: 

“Do you want the next video to be in the bath?”

Nanami let her decide.

Then more came. Curious, polite, always late at night.

Then one, weeks later: 

“Do you like talking to me?”

He hadn’t known how to answer.

But he had.

And now, he couldn’t stop.

Satoru didn’t know, not at first.

Or maybe he did and pretended not to.

But the tone of the videos changed.

The kisses grew sharper. The glances darker. Satoru began looking directly at the lens, sometimes.

Not in seduction. In challenge.

And Nanami… wanted more.

But Satoru hated him.

Of course he did.

Nanami had money, power, an alpha designation.

All the things Satoru never wanted—but needed. Satoru would’ve sold pieces of his soul to keep her safe. Nanami was just the buyer.

And she?

She started texting him.

At first, she asked practical questions.

What kind of shampoo do you use? Do you want different lighting in the videos?

Then it changed.

Have you ever been in love? Does it scare you to be alone?

Nanami answered honestly.

Because he didn’t know how not to.

He started checking his messages during meetings.

Leaving his AI on read.

He told himself it was harmless.

But Satoru noticed.

In the next video, his grip on her thigh was possessive. He stared straight into the lens like a threat.

It wasn’t just about sex.

It was about territory.

Nanami was trespassing.

So Nanami thinks about biology often now.

He wasn’t a fool.

He knew omegas weren’t safe.

Not in this world. Not even beautiful ones. Maybe especially not them. They were luxury assets. Like watches, like cars. Accessories for alphas to parade at tech expos and corporate galas. Something to flaunt. Something to break.

He’d seen what this world did to omegas. Especially beautiful ones.

Male or female—it didn’t matter.

If your scent was sweet, if your body responded, society would wring you dry and leave you doped up on suppressants in a clinic ward.

Even male omegas weren't spared.

If you didn’t wear the right modulator or travel with a protection drone, you were a walking target.

Nanami had seen it happen.

A male omega sobbing in an alleyway behind a corporate tower, slick on his thighs, scent torn out of control. No one helped. They just stepped around him like a glitch in the system.

Satoru knew that too.

And that was what Satoru fought against. Every breath he took was an act of rebellion. He worked out obsessively. Changed his gait, his posture. Wore a synthetic pheromone mask in public, registering neutral. His muscles weren’t for vanity—they were armor. Nanami knew the signs. He’d read too many case files.

The irony was that Satoru would’ve made a perfect alpha.

He had the spine for it, the ego.

The raw violence coiled just under the surface.

The only thing he didn’t have was the biology.

And still, Satoru never let anyone else care for her during heat. Not once. Even if it wrecked him. Even if it meant holding her through three-day highs on nothing but stubbornness and instinct. Even if it meant pretending he couldn’t smell her crying from another room when she thought he was asleep.

That’s why Satoru hid.

He wore synthetic scent blockers and took hormone suppressants. He worked out not for vanity, but to pass. His body a shield. Muscles built out of fear, not desire.

When Satoru looked at her, it was like his whole nervous system reoriented.

Nanami saw it.

Saw the way Satoru watched her in heat, as though his biology demanded he give everything—and still, he never touched anyone else.

No one else during those days. No play partners, no safe rut havens.

Just her.

He didn’t just love her.

He was defying his own body for her.

Keeping them off the streets should’ve made Nanami feel righteous, noble.

He was the one protecting them, after all. Feeding them.

He wasn’t exploiting them—he told himself that often enough.

But the truth was, he envied Satoru.

Hated how naturally they belonged to each other. Hated that he was the outside variable. The one they used, not the one they chose.

Then one day—

She asked to see him.

Not Satoru. Not the AI. Her.

“I think it would help. Ruru’s upset.”

“But I want to try. You’re not a stranger anymore.”

The phrase hit Nanami like a brick.

Not a stranger.

Nanami had frozen when the message came.

Not because he didn’t want to—but because he did.

Too much.

He hadn’t felt like a real person in years. Not since his own designation had turned into an executive liability. He wasn’t a man. He was an alpha unit—pre-programmed for dominance, responsibility, sacrifice. He hadn’t been touched with affection in a decade. People touched him for status. For gain. For fear.

He agreed.

Satoru allowed it, reluctantly. Nanami knew it wasn’t out of trust—it was pride. Satoru needed to prove something. That she’d come back home after. That whatever he had with her was immune to money and desire and every other transaction coded into the world’s algorithmic guts.

They met at a rooftop bar in District 8. Neutral scent zone. No pheromone amplification allowed. No synched lighting to manipulate mood. Just glass, wind, and silence.

She wore blue.

A long-sleeved dress, modest, simple, but her scent still reached him faintly when she leaned forward.

Not expensive. But it looked like she’d picked it because she liked how it felt. Not for him. For herself.

Satoru sat next to her, one arm draped casually along the back of her chair. Not touching, not claiming. Just… there.

Nanami didn’t know what to say. They didn’t talk about the arrangement. Not directly.

He took a breath but couldn’t smell them—not with the room’s filtration—but he could feel the weight of them. The bond. The history. A gravity so dense it warped space around them.

He thought: I’m an intruder.

He thought: I want to stay.

They talked. Mostly her and Nanami.

Satoru stared at his drink. When he did speak, it was precise. Measured. But underneath—rage. Fear. Resentment of biology.

Not jealousy, exactly. Something older. A wound too deep to scab.

When she smiled at something Nanami said, Satoru’s fingers twitched. Not out of anger, but like a muscle remembering pain.

Nanami saw it.

Saw the way he leaned in after, nose brushing her neck, like he needed to remind himself that she was still his.

That they were still real.

That Nanami hadn’t rewritten the bond just by being better.

The only thing Satoru asked him was why he never tried to meet them earlier. Nanami said something about boundaries.

The girl smiled faintly. “Do you ever wish you were someone else?”

Nanami looked at her, then Satoru. “Every day.”

And then, a silence so complete it buzzed.

He went home that night and didn’t open the new video.

He sat in silence, AI lights dimmed to night mode.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

He wasn’t ugly. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t unkind.

But he wasn’t needed either.

Not like Satoru was.

He couldn’t sleep that night.

His AI assistant dimmed the lights further, played calming synthwaves keyed to his biorhythm, but nothing helped. He lay awake, feeling Satoru’s gaze still boring into him.

Not threatening. Just… knowing. Like Satoru could see the exact shape of his desire and found it pitiful.

Nanami wasn’t angry.

He just wanted something real.

Not bought.

Not bartered.

He wanted her to text him because she missed him.

He wanted her to laugh at something he said, not because it was part of the game, but because it was him.

But in this world, omegas weren’t people.

They were collectibles.

Dress them up, parade them at galas, fuck them behind closed doors.

Male, female—didn’t matter.

The cruelty was non-discriminatory.

Satoru had survived that.

Refused to bend to it. Refused to let her bend to it.

Even if it meant breaking himself in the process.

Nanami knew now that Satoru wasn’t pretending to be an alpha.

He was something else entirely.

A shield.

And Nanami wasn’t sure if he wanted to break that shield… or be the one she chose when she finally didn’t need it anymore.

He started to fantasize—not about her naked. 

But about breakfast. About pouring her tea. About Satoru frowning when she tried to climb on counters barefoot. About small, trivial acts that didn’t belong to someone like him.

He didn’t want to own her.

He wanted them to want him.

And that, he knew, was the cruelest desire of all.

Because wanting her meant wanting to be chosen over someone who had already given up the world to protect her.

And what had Nanami given?

Nothing.

Just money.

He stared at the last message she sent before bed.

“Today, I thought about what it would be like if we all had dinner. Like a real one. You cooking. Satoru making fun of your apron. Me stealing dessert.”

Then:

“Would you want that?”

His fingers hovered over the reply.

Then dropped.

“Yes.

More than anything.”

---

A/N: This isn’t about heat. It’s about hierarchy. If something stayed with you—cool. If not, scroll. For the masochists still here:

Next Chapter Next week

All Works Masterlist

[nanamineedstherapy]

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A post shared by Jules (@softkuna)

Actor playing Sukuna in the play 😏

[nanamineedstherapy]

Jujutsu High 2006 Class ‼️

[nanamineedstherapy]

I'm not gonna text them back but I'm currently going on a date and depending on how it does, I'll have more writing material.

It's not really a date but actually I called my archenemy to fight at a kids playground 😏🤭 (he's human embodiment embarrassment of Naoya)

And thank you for calling me gulab jamun, no one ever called me that before 🥺💞

How's your day going my rasmalai 😏

I fucking hate june.

It's always shit for me.

I have literally never experienced a good month of June.

Everytime it's either traumatic or it's just straight up flaring my MDD & PTSD.

I'm this close to texting my ex situationship or my yandere ass ex bc I'm tired.

Not bc I want them but bc it's hard being strong independent woman with no one to ask about my day.

Which tbh they don't really do either.

[nanamineedstherapy]

I fucking hate june.

It's always shit for me.

I have literally never experienced a good month of June.

Everytime it's either traumatic or it's just straight up flaring my MDD & PTSD.

I'm this close to texting my ex situationship or my yandere ass ex bc I'm tired.

Not bc I want them but bc it's hard being strong independent woman with no one to ask about my day.

Which tbh they don't really do either.

[nanamineedstherapy]

​when you’re mad and he send you this as an apology because Satoru knew you love cats and Megumi

Oh, I’m too soft for this 🥺

@nagseo524

[nanamineedstherapy]

Instagram link

I'm pretty sure you remember our conversation about Sukuna's breastmilk..... Now, I need your reply to this.

First off HIIIII Barbie!!! How have you been?? I missed are philosophical talks about Sukuna's tiddy milk :P

Second, I do not play minecraft because i have 47 tabs open, 6 of which are unsent apology texts, and i can't commit to building anything that isn’t emotional codependency. but i have watched pewds scream at creepers since 2013 and i know enderdragon lore deeper than i know my dad.

Thirdly. They are mad the enderdragon is hot now??? be serious. she’s got face tats, a lollipop, and that one black hoodie every situationship owns. This isn’t misogyny, this is tumblr sexyman industrial complex phase 93.

Also. The artist drew Sukuna breastfeeding Gojo. BREAST. FEEDING. him. ( I am yet to see this masterpiece) Why would they care if the dragon’s “mid” or not. She’s genderfluid, chain-smoking, has a switch in her pocket, and will ghost you after 3 dates. She is mother and deadbeat dad.

Final note: Sukuna’s milk would canonically taste like cursed protein shake and regret.

[nanamineedstherapy]

Third Wheeling Your Own Marriage

A New Couple is in Town Elrdrich King!Haibara x Galatic Emperor General F!Reader F!Non-Sorceress CEO Reader x Gojo Satoru x Nanami Kento F!CHRO Reader x Higuruma Hiromi A/N: Haibara's Ending is Finally Here Part 2 Previous Chapter 26 - The Empress Is Bored - [Tumblr/Ao3]

Chapter 26 - The Empress Is Bored - Part 2

Internal Mind Mapping Sequence: Fragment 001

Anyway.

Here's how I became the punchline of God's longest-running joke.

It started, obviously, with the cheating.

No lipstick, no accidental touches, no gut-wrenching mistake with a stranger.

Not even fun cheating.

Not even “oops, I tripped and fell on his dick” cheating.

No.

My two dumbasses—Gojo and Nanami—my husbands—plural, yes, we don’t do small—cheated.

With each other.

That was the joke.

Like I wasn’t even enough emotional labor to split between two grown men with the combined communication skills of a teaspoon.

I wasn’t just insufficient.

I was obsolete.

Redundant emotional labor in a throuple where I was supposed to be the glue.

I was the axis they bent around, until they didn’t.

Until they folded into each other like I was a misprint in the plan.

So I divorced them. Quietly. Legally. One of them cried. (I won’t insult your intelligence by saying who.)

Kicked them out without even any alimony from me.

But the universe?

Oh, she wasn’t done clowning me.

Because it wasn’t enough to shatter a woman mid-pregnancy with twin gods.

No, that would be mercy.

Instead, I got a tragedy arc.

I gave birth half-conscious, spine shredded from the inside out.

Pelvis cracked open like a cathedral floor mid-earthquake.

No cursed energy to patch it up.

Just a body that couldn’t scream loud enough for how much it hurt.

I woke up paralyzed.

No legs.

No safety net.

No Megumi—he didn’t exist in my universe.

No Haibara either—I only knew the name because Gojo used to mutter it in his sleep sometimes, like a prayer or a punchline.

I don’t know which.

I had nothing. No sorcerers. No clan. No family—I lost them long before, around the time I refused to keep being their punching bag.

Toji had helped me once, years ago.

Neighbour. Not friend. Not savior.

Just someone who happened to hear the screaming through the wall and did something about it.

He didn’t stay. He couldn’t. And I didn’t ask.

Then Sukuna came.

Not this world’s Sukuna.

Not the pining, reincarnated half-curse of this world.

Not your suave, half-possessed martyr with tattoos and trauma.

Not yours. Mine.

The real one.

Original flavor. Bloodborne eyes like extinction.

The Shibuya-Shinjuku one.

He saw my infants as threats—cosmic anomalies, living errors. Wanted to turn them into cursed objects like collectible sins. Said they smelled too much like their fathers. Said they'd unravel the world if left unchecked.

He wasn’t wrong.

But I didn’t care.

And what happens to the girl who never belonged to anyone?

Who grew up invisible, disposable, until two gods in human skin offered her something resembling permanence?

What happens to her when those same gods choose each other, die anyway, and leave her behind with nothing but their howling offsprings, and a body that won’t move?

She survives.

Barely.

I didn’t scream when they told me—not when I woke up, paralyzed, staring at two twins with split-colored hair like their fathers and no features of mine.

About Shibuya. About Nanami.

I remember blinking. Just once.

The doctor asked if I understood. I said yes. I didn’t.

Sukuna chased us like a bloodhound on meth.

But I still had hope.

Gojo was just sealed.

He would come.

Of course he would.

He was late for everything.

Maybe he’d bring those glitter-stained flowers for the kids and a new switch for me.

Say sorry. Laugh and say it wasn’t real, that he’d fix it, that we could fix it even if not me.

I’d even take him back. For the twins.

He’d be here for their Omiyamairi. Their Okuizome.

Might try to feed the babies actual sweets or make a joke about their first meal being takeout sushi.

Instead, he didn’t even come to see his fucking kids.

Then, on the day of his fight, I sat in a wheelchair with Kaito on my lap. His small fingers curled against my sleeve, gripping tight without understanding why.

I gestured toward the screen—toward his father.

Kaito didn’t smile. Didn’t react. No flicker of recognition crossed his face, no warmth sparked in his eyes.

But he latched on.

Emi had stopped crying.

She wasn’t watching the fight.

She was watching the colors—watching the way his purple bled across the screen like a storm unraveling.

The sound of the broadcast droned on, but it felt distant.

Felt hollow.

Because neither of them knew.

Not really.

But I did.

I knew he’d come. 

Then I saw...

He died.

Not for me.

For the children, probably.

I tell myself that sometimes. On good days.

The twins wouldn’t latch. They just cried.

Like they were waiting for fathers that would never come home.

And I?

I waited, too.

For something to make sense.

For the pain to mean something.

For their bodies.

Because here’s the part people don’t get.

Yes, I left them. Signed the papers. Threw them out.

But love doesn’t die on command.

You don’t scrub it off like a curse mark.

I loved them both.

Inconveniently. Entirely.

And in losing them, I lost the last part of myself that had ever wanted to live like a human being.

Slowly it sank in—the fuckers died.

One in Shibuya, one in Shinjuku. 

Both exits so cinematic they might’ve been choreographed by the fates themselves.

Like they needed their deaths to mean something, as if I wasn’t already bleeding significance enough for all three of us.

I didn’t even get to stand while I was left holding the twins. Literally.

Then Sukuna, once done with Yuta, Yuji, and whoever else bled loud enough to entertain him, turned his gaze on me.

No—worse.

On my fucking kids.

You think you know fear?

Try being paralyzed, holding two premature gods in your lap, while a man made of ancient famine and planetary-level ego sniffs the ground like your children are rot he’s owed.

Gojo and Nanami were gone. I had “divorced” them, sure. Signed the papers. Said the words. But love doesn’t dissolve in courtrooms. They were the only ones who made me believe I was human, once. Not an accessory. Not a mistake. Just… a person. Held. Kept.

And now they were gone.

And I couldn’t even walk.

The twins wouldn’t latch. They screamed day and night.

Their cursed energy flared every time they cried—which was often—until it was thick enough to set off seismic sensors.

They were 3 months old and already emitting energy levels that made grown sorcerers sweat.

They didn’t know how to turn it off.

I didn’t know how to teach them.

Only their fathers could’ve taught them.

So we hid.

Because that’s all I could do.

In bunkers I built before the world went to shit—paranoia pre-dated my grief. I was a trillionaire before I was a widow. CEO of the most powerful gaming-tech and AI firm on the planet. Every bunker had a fake floor under a fake life under a decoy firewall with a heartbeat monitor keyed to my pulse.

It wasn’t enough.

Sukuna hunted like it was instinct. Something primal and unspeakable. His cursed technique could sift through satellites, sniff out despair like blood in water.

My tech failed more every week. His rage didn’t.

We made it two months in Bunker-016 before the kids blew a hole through the ceiling with an emotional surge.

Keiji died that day.

He’d been with me since the IPO. My shadow.

Former assassin turned jujutsu bodyguard. Always in a suit, always two steps ahead.

He didn’t flinch when I screamed.

Just threw me in the emergency evac chair, handed the twins to me like they were just briefcases, and told me not to look back.

I didn’t listen. I saw him fight. I saw him die.

I remember his shoe landing sideways like it didn’t know he was gone.

After that, I stopped sleeping.

We moved every three days.

Ate protein sludge. Hooked up nutrient bags to the babies’ feet when they refused formula.

My back rotted inside out from bed sores.

I couldn't lift my legs anymore without throwing up.

I started hearing things.

People whispering in vents.

Nanami humming in empty hallways.

My own voice, echoing from the baby monitors.

I stayed alive for one reason: they couldn't.

Not without me.

The thing about trauma is—it doesn’t kill you. It eats your morality first.

So when the tech started failing, and the walls felt thinner, and the kids’ energy cracked through steel and firewalls, I stopped hoping for rescue.

I started engineering it.

We had tech prototypes I wasn’t allowed to sell. Neuro-linked exoskeletons. Black-budget AI surgical units. Brainwave readers that could write code straight from trauma responses.

And I used them.

I injected stem cells from my own spine into carbon wiring. I mapped my neural pain responses to synthetic muscles. I fused nerve endings to military-grade bionics with duct tape and threat models.

I dissected cursed spirits.

I kidnapped criminals. Sorcerers.

Anyone strong. Anyone desperate.

I told myself they were volunteers.

I stopped asking for signatures.

I cut into the skull of a philosopher who used to write treatises on AI ethics—uploaded his brain into a memory chip just to get his notes on godhood.

I wired my chair to my spinal cord.

When the machine walked, I screamed.

When I screamed, it walked better.

Eventually, I didn’t scream anymore.

Eventually, I stood.

On legs made of synthetic nerves, grafted metal, and everything I had once sworn I’d never do.

I wasn’t a mother anymore.

I wasn’t even a person.

I was function. Firewall. Empire.

In under 11 years, I pushed the planet’s tech forward by 80.

My bunkers were invisible to satellite.

My AI could read intent before people formed words.

Every person who even thought of harming my children triggered kill protocols in servers buried beneath extinct volcanoes.

The twins grew up learning not to cry too loud.

And Sukuna?

I fought him for years.

Sometimes it was a chase. Sometimes a massacre. Sometimes a cold war with no witnesses.

Until one day, he just stopped.

Shaved his head.

Sat cross-legged in the dirt.

Called himself a monk.

Never spoke again.

I don’t know if I broke him.

Or if he just looked at me and saw a mirror.

Now I rule an empire built on dead men. My men.

Every living thing is tagged and tracked.

Every AI and satellite on the planet carries my grief in its code.

I don’t let my children out without armed shadows and androids.

Call me Darth Vader if it helps. He lost his legs too. But he still needed a master.

I didn’t.

He was a coward. And I wasn’t stupid.

I was the final girl. But the story didn’t end.

Because morality’s a luxury for people who aren’t prey.

So—naturally—I snapped.

I’m not proud. But I’m upright.

I went from disabled mother of two to biomechanical Emperor-General in… what? Eleven years? Tops?

Then came Haibara.

Not your Haibara.

Not sunshine-in-a-body, not the tragedy people romanticize postmortem.

Not the Haibara who dies like a prayer someone forgot to finish saying.

The main monster.

Born in a fractured timeline and carved out of nuclear grief.

Not yours. Not mine. His. Another reality.

Naturally strong. Immortal. Looks like heartbreak in boots. He watched his own world rot and decided love was real, but governments were optional.

In his world, Gojo died during childbirth. Never developed Six Eyes.

Never even opened them.

And the version of me from that world? Was born a Nanami.

Kento was never born.

She inherited the mantle.

She married Haibara—that Haibara.

They were gods and knives in love.

But his technique wasn’t meant for humans. It was… eldritch. A living thing.

A curse that grew teeth and memory.

It gave him power, yes, but also bloodlust.

He turned when he started noticing that the people had gotten desensitized.

She saw it coming.

Tried to kill him before the spiral finished.

Died in his arms, whispering that she loved him more than anything.

He never forgave Nanami.

He crossed timelines looking for another chance.

Looking for her. Or something close.

And then he found me. Scarred. Mostly-machine. Fully armed.

He looked at me—cracked bones, AI-stitched spine, babies on my chest, blood still drying—and just said, “Yes. That one.”

Like I was a feral cat hissing under a war machine, and he thought, “wife material.”

And I let him. After he spent 11,000 years convincing me.

Because when the world tries to eat your babies, you grow fangs.

He didn’t love me like he loved her.

He loved me beyond her.

Beyond himself.

Not a rebound. Not a substitute.

He isn’t loyal to any version—only to me.

Only to this twisted, vicious, bionically-wired echo of who I was supposed to be.

He wants this insanity, because it’s his.

And I loved him, too. In the way only people who have stood inside annihilation and screamed back can.

You don’t understand what “I’d do anything for you” means to him.

Most people mean “I’d take a bullet.”

He means "I rigged their bloodstream with nanobombs in case you get nervous."

He means "The planetary death toll was acceptable."

And I let him.

Because I stopped thinking in morality.

I started thinking in survival.

So yeah. I became her.

The woman who built an army of AI-controlled exosuits. The woman who made the planet’s tech curve scream 80 years ahead because she wanted her kids to walk in peace. The woman who cracked time, spat on quantum laws, and turned grief into architecture.

I broke time. Stole quantum blueprints. Hacked grief into architecture.

But people forget—

I wasn’t always like this.

I used to laugh.

Bake cookies.

Be afraid of the dark.

Now I own it.

Because the rent’s due.

And I’m the fucking landlord.

And this version of me—the girl in this reality?

She's soft.

She has friends.

She wears hoodies with pixel mushrooms on them, makes jokes about capitalism, and thinks heartbreak means crying alone in a bathroom stall.

Adorable.

I wonder if she'll survive what I couldn't.

Or worse—what I became.

So yes. We built a life.

The kids call him “Dad.”

I sent androids to drag Toji out of his feral exile.

They brought him in like a wounded wolf with a job to do.

Because you can’t trust humans. But machines?

Machines remember the mission.

A machine knows loyalty if you treat it right.

Humans would take it as entitlement.

I know something isn’t right with me.

But it’s what’s kept me alive.

And then…

Haibara fell.

Not in battle. Not in glory.

He got sick.

Cell death. Neuro-splintering. A slow-motion unravel.

I cloned him. Again. And again. And again.

Every iteration collapsed.

Too unstable, too sentient, too aware.

He fought sleep.

He fought regeneration.

He fought death.

So I put him in a deep cryo-coma. 15,000 years, suspended.

Waiting.

While I hunted for a cure across the multiverse.

Remaining clones were coded to search for resonance.

To ping me when a solution emerged.

But they degraded. Snapped. Went insane enough to end planets.

One found your world.

This soft, sweet, idiot timeline.

That clone wasn't even supposed to interact with her; he was coded not to.

She’s a version of me, yes—but one with hope. Joy. People. Friends. Megumi.

He was coded to observe and report.

But he fought his code, his biology. 

Something no one walks out alive from me for.

He fell in love.

My creation betrayed me for her.

And when I looked at her, you know what I thought?

That I wasn’t jealous or even sympathetic.

I just pity her.

weak.

Weak girl.

Wearing my face.

Soft hands that never held death.

Eyes that never saw gods bleed.

I pity her. Not because she has him.

Because she never had to earn him through hell.

So I woke my Haibara. The true one. The god-sick original.

And now I’m here.

In your perfect little rotting world.

To replace you.

I will not leave until he lives.

Even if I have to wear her face, her name, her memories.

Even if I have to slit every version of myself open to find a cure.

Switching places through dimensional bleed is effortless when you’ve had 50,000 years to perfect it—when time is no longer a constraint but a well-worn path, carved into existence by the weight of your own inevitability.

It’s not skill anymore. It’s instinct.

And when most of your body is machine—wires woven with memory, circuits infused with the echoes of thousands of choices—it’s less about movement and more about placement.

You don’t slip through the cracks in reality.

You decide where the cracks will be.

And when you’re smarter than God, the universe stops being a question and starts being an answer you’ve already rewritten.

Even the clone thought he was the real one.

I let him believe it.

Let him love her like she was me.

Then I killed him. Your Haibara.

Clean. Tactical. Necessary.

Her Haibara died with your face in his hands.

But my version of him?

The true Haibara.

He’s… still sick. Still dying. Still strapped to a bed of code and cryo-fluid. Still fading.

And I’m running out of timelines.

So now I’m here.

In your perfect little rotting universe.

Laughing like a cat who already ate your kids.

And I will not leave until he lives.

Even if I have to break every law of reality and ethics to do it.

Even if I have to erase every version of myself to make it happen.

You don’t understand.

You think I’m trying to play God?

No.

God’s slow.

God has feelings.

God lets children die and calls it “mystery.”

God lets infant animals get raped by man and calls it “karmic debt.”

I’m just the only woman in the multiverse smart enough to fire him.

Because now?

Now I am something else.

And the universe better pray it does not meet me again.

Because the compatible human is here.

---

POV: Alt-Her from this Reality

After asking for him, you’d promptly passed out again.

Shoko had told them it was normal—expected, even. She’d used phrases like delayed neural synchronization and cognitive whiplash . Coma-brain, she’d called it, with a shrug and the same weariness you’d once admired in her.

So they’d filtered out—Gojo, Nanami, Fushiguro, Mom—all of them. Off to eat, take meds, pee. Do human things. Small, necessary rituals to soften the edges of grief.

Now the hospital hums with a silence that isn’t peace.

It’s maintenance-mode silence. A kind of stillness that doesn’t cradle but waits. Like a waiting room at the edge of the universe. Cold. Fluorescent. Too clean. Too white. Like it’s been scrubbed of the people who were here a minute ago. Like even their ghosts were disinfected.

You're awake. Barely.

Your skin itches beneath the sheets. The babies are asleep. Your mouth tastes like old pennies and blood suppressants. Somewhere under the hum of machines and far-off doors, the air hurts. It presses in on you—not with weight, but with emptiness.

Something’s missing.

The kind of missing you can’t name. Not a thing. Not a person.

A presence.

You feel it like a skipped heartbeat.

You’re not alone.

“Hey.”

The voice comes from just beyond the curtain. Familiar. Casual. Low.

But off.

Sweet in the way knives are—gleaming before they turn.

“They told me you were alive,” the voice says. “But I didn’t believe it until now.”

Your breath stutters.

“…Hai?”

He steps in before you can ask again.

Same crooked grin. Same tired eyes. Same bastard-sweet voice that used to hand you candy after tests and call you “cookie” like it was a prayer and a joke.

He looks… almost right.

Like a photo printed with just slightly off colors. Like someone wearing his face through a lens with 1% distortion.

Still—your body moves before your brain catches up. You wrap your arms around him, IV lines tangling, and whisper, “Where were you?”

He hesitates— just enough. Then a soft pat on your head, awkward and worn-in. “There there, lil cookie.”

You want to cry. Or maybe scream. Or maybe just hold him until the hole in your chest stops bleeding.

“I lost my phone,” he mutters, still patting with one hand. “There was this, uh… train thing. Fire. Real dramatic. But I’m here now, okay?”

“I was awake,” you whisper. “Hai—I felt everything. And you weren’t here.”

You pull back. Look into his face.

You’ve never hugged Haibara like that before. Never needed to.

He always came when you called. Always.

But something inside you feels hollow.

Like something already slipped away.

And maybe you do believe him. Just for a second.

Because you need to.

“Can you help me get to the bathroom?” you ask.

“Of course,” he says too quickly. Like he rehearsed it.

He slips his arm around you—strong, stable. Too strong. Haibara was fit, sure, muscular even, but he wasn’t this—not impenetrable, not precision-guided like a tactician trained to navigate you like a liability.

You chalk it up to adrenaline. Shock. Hallucination. You’re recovering. The brain makes ghosts out of anything it can.

The walk is short. Your legs are jelly. The walls tilt like a dream’s ending.

He drops you at the bathroom door and gently shuts it. “Yell if you need me,” he calls.

You nod, then stumble toward the sink.

Turn on the faucet.

Cup your hands.

Cold water. Anchor.

You look up into the mirror.

And freeze.

There’s someone behind you.

It’s not a reflection.

She has your face—but sharper, older, wrong. Her hair’s styled with surgical precision, like war dressed up for a funeral. Her skin’s paler. Lips darker. She stands wrong—the way predators do when they know you can’t outrun them. She's dressed in matte-black biotech armor, half AI, half curse-metal. Her eyes glow faintly at the seams. Her presence hums.

Not kind. Not you.

Behind her, you spot him.

Toji.

Leaning against the wall like this is casual. Like he didn’t die more than a decade ago.

“Hi, kid,” he says.

Your breath disappears.

But something is wrong, he looks younger than the age Toji died in.

You were with Megumi and his mom on Mount Asama when he scattered his father’s ashes.

“Mr. Fushiguro?” you croak.

He shrugs. “Zenin. Never married.”

You don’t make it to the door. Your legs barely twitch before—

CRACK!!

Your face hits the mirror.

She slammed you. Once. Hard. Glass shatters like regret into your mouth. The sink blooms red.

“Be fucking careful,” Toji snaps, stepping forward. “She’s pregnant.”

“I was too!” she screams.

The sound rips from her throat like it’s been waiting 10,000 years to leave.

Toji flinches. Toji. Flinches.

You slump—but she catches you. Gently. Cradles you like broken glass. Not a stranger. Not a killer.

Like someone holding the version of themselves they lost a long time ago.

She presses her forehead to yours. Your blood streaks down her face like warpaint.

Then she stands, straight.

Turns to him. Calmly.

Her voice is scorched earth. “This little trauma-club dropout in the hospital bed? She’s not your kid. I am. I was your failure. I was the mess you left. So don’t you dare come here acting like Father of the Fucking Year.”

Toji scoffs like he’s tired. “I’m not your father. I didn’t raise you, Little Ghost.”

"Little Ghost" sounds like a curse he can’t exorcise.

Like her or even your name never meant anything but afterthought.

She doesn’t scream again.

She just holds your unconscious body tighter.

Because even though she's the one who broke you—

She still remembers what it was like to be you.

Before she lost her Nanami and Gojo.

Before she became the villain in every mirror.

Before the future turned her into this.

And outside, beyond the layers of sterile rooms and AI-monitored corridors, your Haibara is already dead.

You just don’t know it yet.

But your body does.

And somewhere deep in your nervous system, a scream is still waiting to surface.

“No shit,” she hisses, stepping between you and Toji’s gaze like a guillotine.

“But you could’ve helped when Sukuna was after us. But you didn’t. So now you don’t get to pick her. You don’t get to nod at her like she’s something earned. If you even look at her again, I will drop you into a pocket reality made of fucking child support collectors and fish sauce. Do not test me."

Toji lifts a brow. Shrugs. “I’m not interested in raising kids. Never was.”

“You should be interested in obedience,” she snaps. Her voice turns jagged, staticky—like a radio tuned to war crimes. “You're lucky I even brought you here. Her version of you died during an escort mission with a bleeding-out middle schooler. You owe me for killing the Zenins and making you clan head. You owe me for fixing you.”

He steps forward, slow. “You planning to stay long?”

She smiles—sweet, lethal. “Long enough to sterilize this timeline of mistakes.”

And then Haibara steps in again, hers.

He lifts the unconscious girl in his arms like she’s a thing to be stored, not saved. He glances at her face with an eerie kind of reverence. Then hands her off to Toji, who’s already dragging her away.

“She’s lighter than you,” he says once Toji’s left with the girl. “She doesn’t even flinch the same.”

She tilts her head. Not smiling. Not blinking.

“Do you miss her, Yu?” she asks softly. “Or your old one?”

He grins wider. Shows teeth. “I don’t even remember their name.”

She beams. “Good boy.”

Then she kisses him. Fast. Wet. Claiming.

It's not about passion. It’s about property.

He kisses back harder, hunger deep and ugly in his throat.

Toji grimaces from outside the window, loading the girl into a chute.

She breaks the kiss and licks Haibara’s bottom lip, slow. “You are so cute.”

He picks her up in one smooth motion and puts her on the counter, “I’ll show you cute.”

Her breathless laugh is interrupted by his kisses.

---

The bathroom is silent now, just her. She pulls gloves over her fingers, wipes down every surface. Then steps into your place.

Literally.

She changes into a similar hospital gown like you were wearing. Tears it in the same places. Reapplies your bandages with identical pressure. Stuffs her ankles with gel weights until her feet swell just like yours had at 34 weeks. Adjusts the tension in her face with microcurrent pulses until her expression settles into the same coma-soft, sleep-deprived weariness.

Even the bruising under her eyes is correct.

She stares into the mirror.

Practices your breath pattern.

Matches the little hiccup in your inhale, the flutter when you whisper “Hai?” like he’s still yours.

The hair is next. She deliberately tangles it. Pats it flat on one side.

Adds the glint of old dried blood in places Megumi’s mother didn’t reach.

She even copies your limp.

Every step she takes toward the door is a performance. But her audience doesn’t know they’re watching a replacement.

Not yet.

Haibara comes back in like a sentinel.

He tries to kiss her again, this time trailing lips down her collarbone, but she pushes him off with two fingers and a narrowed eye.

“Later,” she mutters.

He grins like a good dog.

He’s copying this world’s Haibara a bit too well, and she’s still deciding if she likes it or hates it or can pretend it’s roleplay.

They step into the waiting room.

You—not you—walk through the hospital doors like nothing’s changed.

Like you weren’t dead. Like you didn’t just beat another version of yourself into unconsciousness and dump her with Toji, who may or may not betray you for her.

The air smells like flowers someone left in case you didn’t wake up.

The kind of funeral-ready lilies that rot if ignored.

Gojo’s already there.

Perched on the armrest of a hospital chair, one leg bouncing like he’s forgotten what stillness feels like. His glasses fogged, sleeves soaked—he’s been crying into the crook of his elbow like a child. Or a man who never stopped being one.

He sees you.

And he breaks.

“Baby—” he chokes. His body moves before his brain does. Feet stumbling. Voice too thin. A shadow of his old cocky rhythm.

He crashes into you.

You let him. You fold your arms around him exactly as she would—exactly how he remembers.

But your muscle memory isn’t love. It’s just repetition with blood.

He clings like a drowning thing. Wraps his arms around your waist like he’s trying to fuse his ribs to your bones.

“I thought—I thought I lost you,” he whispers, voice hoarse with guilt. “I could’ve stopped the hit. I couldn’t—fuck.”

You reach up. Take off his sunglasses. Fold them carefully and tuck them into his hoodie pocket.

You stroke his back like she would’ve.

Like you did in another life to your Gojo when he came home tired from missions.

You clock the change in his gait, the looseness in his grip.

The way he smells more like dried sweat than six eyes.

He’s gone soft around the edges. Or maybe he was always soft.

“Oh, Satoru,” you coo sweetly. “You never know anything.”

He laughs. Wet, broken. Doesn’t realize that was an insult.

Across the room, Nanami stands stiffly.

Collar slightly skewed. Hair longer.

There’s a new scar above his temple, but his eyes—tired in that way that makes you wonder if he slept standing upright at the door.

He gives a slight nod. “We’re…glad you’re safe.”

You smile. Soft. Sweet. Razor-sharp.

“I am. Now.”

You study him like he’s an equation with missing variables.

There’s a blankness in your mind where his image should be.

Like something’s been redacted.

Your heart trips over itself trying to recognize him, but there’s nothing.

No scent memory. No sensory trigger. Just a phantom ache.

It pisses you off.

You stare at him longer than necessary.

Try to memorize him now, in this light.

The line of his jaw.

The angle of his watch.

The slight flinch in his eye when Gojo holds you like he already lost you.

Your smile is flawless. “Kento,” you say. “You look tired.”

And somewhere behind your voice, behind your pulse, behind the noise of Gojo sobbing into your gown—

Their wife bleeds in a car with Toji.

Unconscious.

Forgotten.

Unaware that her life has already been stolen by someone with her face, her memories, and a hunger to burn this timeline clean.

Haibara—the imposter, but yours—lurks by the fruit basket someone brought. He’s sipping from your mug like he’s earned the right. Sits too comfortably in your chair. His back leans against the sunlight like it’s an accessory he designed.

When no one’s watching, he winks at you.

But you see it—the tightness in his grip. The way his fingers wrap the mug like they’re waiting to crack bone. You don’t wink back. Not here. Not yet.

He’ll get his reward later.

You let go of Gojo.

Megumi hovers near your hospital bed, stiff. Watchful. His arms crossed, body angled protectively—toward you or away from everyone else, you're not sure.

He looks at you like you’re holy. Or fragile. Or both.

“You should rest,” he says quietly.

You shake your head. “I’ll manage. You’ve done enough, Megumi. You always do.”

His shoulders lower. Like you handed him absolution for a sin he never confessed to, for something he never said out loud. Like he’s still waiting for the punchline of your survival.

Nanami’s now holding a paper bag. Artisan kimchi, most likely. Your craving. The one that made your hands tremble at midnight, the one that gave you nosebleeds and hallucinations and that blood-pressure spike that almost took you and the twins both.

But then in your time, he never handmade it for you.

He sets it down gently. Comes closer.

You clock the way he studies your stomach—tight and swollen under the gown, distorted with movement. For a split second you wonder if the AI is mimicking the cursed signatures right. Then one of the twins kicks hard enough to visibly ripple your side. He flinches.

Perfect. It’s working perfectly.

“Still active,” he mutters, clinically.

“Still yours,” you reply, flat.

He blinks, eyes softening just slightly. His jaw shifts—tiny micro-expressions that once made you feel chosen.

Now they just feel like camouflage.

Like he’s searching for a version of you he thinks is still in there.

Nanami reaches out as if to touch the bump, then stops himself.

Too late. You’ve already noted the hesitation.

A timeline ago, he would’ve kissed your belly, whispered something about happiness, and pressed his forehead there like it held absolution.

Now?

You turn your head. Look away.

Quiet falls.

Deliberate. Heavy. Uninterrupted.

You let it stretch.

Let them believe the silence means peace.

Let them believe that the coma mellowed you. That pregnancy softened you. That this whole ordeal bleached the violence from your bones.

Let them dare to dream.

And then, in the gentlest, most honeyed tone your throat can manage—

“Anyway… now that we’ve all cried and trauma bonded… I want a divorce.”

Silence.

The word is a guillotine.

Megumi looks alive for the first time in his life.

Gojo’s smile freezes. He blinks like you’ve just spoken French. Or Latin. Or poison.

Nanami’s jaw tightens so hard you hear his teeth creak. “This isn’t funny,” he says, voice low.

“It’s not meant to be,” you reply lightly, already walking toward the bedside chair to sit over it like a queen shedding armor. “You’ve had your fun cheating, I’ve had my fun forgiving. Now we’re all bored, aren’t we?”

Gojo’s hands rise, twitching. “W-wait. We talked about this. You said you forgave us. We didn’t even—”

“Oops, forgot that part. Should’ve taken it in writing,” you interrupt. “Like you both forgot me when you fucked each other behind my back. Or next to me. Either way, you lost your vote.”

Nanami steps toward you, controlled. Measured. Calculated. “Darling, this is emotional whiplash. You just woke up. You’re not—thinking clearly.”

You turn, smile like a blade unsheathed. “I am. I’m thinking clearly for the first time since I married you two. And I’m done.”

“But we’re—” Gojo’s voice cracks. “We’re a family.”

You laugh.

Not cruel. Not mocking. Just a little too amused.

“Yeah? A family where I do the childbearing, the espionage, and the emotional laundry while you two do psychological foreplay in hotel suites until your sudden and violent deaths? No thanks.”

Gojo sinks. Drops into a chair like the weight of your words knocked him out of the air.

Nanami stands frozen. But the fracture is in his eyes now. The slow crumbling of whatever plan he thought he had to win you back.

“I’m moving in with Haibara and Megumi,” you say airily, checking your phone. “Shoko cleared me. Your services are no longer required.”

Haibara throws up a triumphant peace sign behind them. High-fives Megumi, who immediately glares like he wants to press charges. He’s still trying to figure out where the hell Haibara’s even been.

“You don’t mean this,” Gojo whispers. His voice is shaking like a streetlight in wind. “Please, you can’t mean this.”

“I do.” You grin. “I mean every syllable with my whole spine.”

Nanami moves closer, slow.

His voice dips—gravel and steel. The one he uses before an interrogation. Before a clean-up.

“Darling,” he says. “Think carefully.”

You tilt your head. One hand on your belly. The other already dialing the next life. “Think carefully before what, Nanami? You raise your voice? Raise a hand? Try it.”

A long pause.

He doesn’t.

Of course he doesn’t.

Because no matter what happened, one thing was absolut, Nanami or Gojo would never hit you physically.

You said it to hurt him, to make him think you’ve lost all faith in him.

Because you're not the soft girl with ambition in her eyes anymore. You’re a god in skin.

You turn to Megumi. The only one who still looks at you like he sees something worth protecting.

“Megs, sweetheart?” you ask softly. “Can you take me home? I’m exhausted.”

He blinks. A little stunned by the intimacy of your tone, still echoing from a childhood when you bandaged his knees. “O..of course.”

You nod toward Haibara. “Yu. Grab the bags.”

Haibara sets down the mug. Slings both bags over one shoulder like a victory banner. Leers at Nanami and Gojo on the way out like he’s won a prize in a war he wasn’t invited to.

And as you pass them, you murmur with the softness of a lullaby—

“Try not to cry too hard. You’ll ruin the hardwood.”

---

Later that night, Gojo is on the balcony, half-drunk. Crying into an old bottle of aged sake he once saved for anniversaries.

It tastes like ash.

Like melted sugar.

Like you don’t want him anymore.

Inside, Nanami still stands in the kitchen.

Shirt unbuttoned. Pulse jumping in his neck.

He hasn’t moved since you left.

He’s still staring at the door.

Like if he stares long enough, you might come back.

Or maybe he’ll see you step out bloody, limping, begging for help.

Because somewhere, in some locked wing of the hospital, one question still hangs in the air:

Did they bring the wrong woman home?

And if so—

Where is the right one still bleeding?

---

Next Chapter 27 - Counterfeit Gods & Pregnant Lies - Part 1 - [Tumblr/Ao3]

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