#asdfaskldfhsd

[kikuneesama]

Happy birthday @enevera!! Here is a little something something, I hope you might like. I'm sorry I couldn't come up with anything cooler fsdklfsdaklf. I havent written in a while and idk with my brain yet. Anyway, wish you a great day and all good things. Sending hugs <3

Uh, yeah, this is I guess Satoru x Suguru x Shouko .... maybe

2064 words

unedited because im lazy.

There is this certain type of cigarette smell that transforms Shouko back in time whenever she smells it. It does not matter where exactly she is, Tokyo’s main station, the narrow ways between the high rise buildings of Ropponing, the long way up the road to the school, if she just catches a whiff of that smell it is like she timewarped back to being a teenager.

Maybe that is why she stopped smoking those brands of cigarettes completely.

Once you enter adulthood, many people in the country start looking back at their childhood summers with this nostalgia for a time that seemed almost too perfect to be real. Anime, movies, music and tv often discuss these summers, the longing an adult feels for them and how a time like this would never happen ever again.

Shouko hated this. Summers were hot, summers were sweaty and overtly sunny and full of bugs and cicada noise. As a kid she would hide in the basement, and now, as an adult, she was doing much the same. 

Her childhood summer, the one she longs for, happened when started when she was 15. It lasted for much more than four years and it smelled of chewing gum, wooden rooms and menthol cigarettes.

Being a person who can see cursed spirits didn’t make you a popular student with the other kids in schools. So for her first 8 or so years in school, Shouko tried to stay out of everybody’s way. That didn’t mean they didn’t whisper about her behind her back, thinking her interest in medicine and especially forensic sciences were odd. Still, she didn’t have it as bad as other kids like her, she was not bullied, she was mostly just left alone.

It was good to be alone. She knew how to cope alone.

It was an unusually warm April day, the cherry blossoms just falling down the trees when Shouko entered Jujutsu High for the first time. She was almost sweating in the black new uniform with the long sleeves. She was greeted by the headmaster, introduced to her teacher and told that she’d share the year with two boys. She wasn’t very interested in them.

Shouko heard Gojo Satoru before she saw him. The corridor with the student rooms was full of the noise of his laughter. When he introduced himself to her, with that sly smile of his, and told her who he was, what significance he had, how he was going to be unbeatable, Shouko guessed and guessed right instantly, that he was overplaying.

That he was lonely was obvious, even if you couldn’t see his eyes.

Geto Suguru was a different kind of boy. He was quiet, an outsider and he knew it. He was friendly, always overly courteous. He inquired about her medical books and anatomy posters and overall did some friendly small talk. Shouko guessed that he too had been mostly alone and instead of becoming louder, like Satoru, had just quieted down more. 

All three of them were similar in that regard.

At first she thought she'd never like either of them very much. 

And so classes began.

Getting to know both of them was a slow but rewarding process. Shouko had been right about Satoru, he had been isolated from other people most of his life so far and craved human connections. He would come by her room even when she was studying, hanging on her bed throwing balls at the ceiling and down until she told him to leave.

Suguru turned out to be a real nerd. Super interesting and classic and modern Anime and Manga, though he hid his addiction well. In his room he kept most of his Manga volumes under his bed and in the corner, all neatly packed and dust free, as if they were porn magazines. But if he was asked about it, he would never stop talking. Shouko sometimes spent evenings with him just sitting side by side reading in comfortable silence.

She knew the boys were doing things together without her too. That they spent time with just the two of them. One time she opened the door to Satoru’s room for this and that and they were laying shoulder to shoulder on his bed. 

At the time she had no way to explain the stinging she felt at being excluded from the intimate moment.

They were a trio. Most first years came into the school in Trio’s or groups of four, but none were as close as the three of them. It was impossible to mention Suguru without mentioning Satoru and Shouko too. Triple S, the first years called them once they graduated to year two, and they meant it in annoyance and admiration.

That second spring, Shouko brought the menthol cigarettes for the first time. She ignored the “That’s bad for your health” and “those stink” comments from Satoru whenever she put on one, and his dramatically waving hands if it was around him. Smoking was nice and a stress relief and made her feel good.

Smoking wasn’t allowed in the dorms or through the open windows as the smell could seep into the furniture and curtains, so Shouko often had to go outside to have some. Either of the boys, sometimes both of them, often accompanied her then, even if Satoru often pulled a face.

The smell of the cigarettes seeped into all of them anyway, their hair, their clothes, their minds that summer, with so many things happening. Shouko was watching the boys grow from the sidelines. Her career path was different and so they were often separated. But before and after missions they’d still all sit together, outside, on porches or in gardens and on benches, talking, laughing and the smell of Shouko’s cigarettes were always there too.

Shouko loved both of them. Each in their own way, but at best together. In those times she used to think that if she’d be able to live with them side by side forever, she would never need to marry. They would be family enough.

Suguru could endlessly talk about manga he had bought, new shonen jump issues and anime adaptations, but it was Satoru who brought in the story that finally helped her figure her mind out. It was a Shoujo manga, something Suguru would never touch if he could help it. Satoru was raving about it, the story of a protagonist who couldn’t choose between two suitors. “She loves them both,” Satoru exclaimed. “So she can’t choose! It's incredibly exciting to read.”  

“You can’t love two people,” Shouko said in reflex, but took the books anyway. To humour him.

Amongst all the relatively standard romance and reverse-harem tropes Shouko actually did find the narrative pretty interesting. The lead character did love both boys very clearly and struggled to decide who to pursue. Didn’t help that both guys had different personality traits that fit neatly into hers, but none of them was perfect.

When she gave the books back to Satoru she told him she liked it, but not without gritting her teeth a little. Still, he smirked, because of course he did.

Not long after that, at the height of sweaty summer, Shouko felt like hanging out with Suguru, so she made her way over to his dorm room, her arms full of books to study with. It was not locked, the door just leaning, so she pushed it lightly with her foot to have it swing open. Suguru was there with Satoru. 

They were kissing.

This time the sting felt much more real. She turned and ran away.

The moon was already up and Shouko had not found sleep yet. It was good that the boys were a couple, they were good, they worked together, they liked each other, right? That was good. She was just upset that this meant they’d do more things without her. That she’d be excluded more, because couples want to be alone. Right? 

“You can’t love two people.” So it was.

She tried to stay away from them a little more afterwards. They deserved to explore this thing on their own, without her around. Plus, in middle school she had always been alone, so she must be used to it.

But losing both her best friends at the same time was a hard pill to swallow. 

Not that they were actively excluding her. No Satoru still came around to annoy her when he felt like she needed cheering up, Suguru still invited her over if he had a new manga issue bought somewhere, or a novel to share, but Shouko blocked them off most times. They should spend time together, not waste it on her.

Shouko smoked more cigarettes than any other time before. The pain ate at her insides. Never had she thought that losing a friendship could hurt like that.

She thought of that manga again, that main character that loved both of the male leads equally as much. The tear it brought her to have to choose possibly, the fact that she couldn't. The fact that Shouko’s own reaction had been to immediately dismiss it.

Maybe that was it, she thought, a midnight in winter. Maybe she loved them both to equal measures. Maybe that was why this felt more like heartbreak.

The next week Shouko started observing herself around both of the others. How she felt when she was with each of them alone, how she felt when they were all three together. At the end of it, there was no doubt about it really. You could in fact love two people.

She didn’t know how to confess what she felt, too scared that she would ruin what little they had left. Satoru and Suguru loved each other clearly and they liked her well enough, but was that a good basis for an actual, real, relationship as three?

At least she stopped blocking their advances and started hanging out with them more again. More cigarette smoke and book talk and laughter. She was relieved to be by their side again.

One night, way later than Shouko was allowed to stay in the male dorm rooms, they were laying together on Satoru’s bed. Satoru was telling a story about the clan house his family owned, about one of the old guy’s that always came around to stare at him as if he was a rare jewelry item. Satoru was good at telling stories, always making them very imaginative and easy to follow.

Suguru smiled and laughed along too, even though in recent times he had grown so quiet and often looked tired. In hindsight, Shouko felt like she should have known something was not quite right with him.

Still, that night, she felt so at peace with both of them by her side. She slung her hand around Satoru’s - at least the one he wasn’t waving around– and then the other around Suguru’s. They let her, entwined her fingers with hers. And so they fell asleep eventually, just holding on to each other.

Shouko wondered the next morning if confessing was necessary. If they’d just continue being together like this, it was enough for her. 

-

The day Suguru left she found a note on her notepad in her dorm room. He had hastily scribbled it down right there, just three words, no other goodbye. 

He did not go to Satoru. He did not say goodbye to anyone else. Instead he scribbled something for Shouko, maybe in hopes she would understand.

It was something she recognised from Bleach, a popular manga at the time. A character, ready to leave her old life behind for ever, as a goodbye to friends, had left a note behind.

Goodbye, Halcyon days.

And though at first she did not understand what that meant, she instinctively knew the feeling those words wanted to convey.

To him, the carefree days of youth, the long summer of their childhood that they’d long for as adults, was over. 

Suguru was not saying goodbye to her specifically, he was saying goodbye to the version of him that had been in the last two or so years.

That day she went to smoke outside her dorm even if it was against the rules. She could not explain why, but the taste suddenly made her feel sick.

In the end, she never got to tell them.