Chapter Text
It’s eerie. The buildings look the same. The trees have barely grown. If Suguru stepped back in time ten years, the only thing that would have changed is himself.
There’s something foreign and shameful about coming back to a place you once thought you’d never see again - like it will remember how you left without looking back, even as you’d been begged to stay.
It’s how Suguru feels – ashamed – to stand in the front court of Tokyo University over a decade since he’d given up on being one of its students.
But he’s been preparing for this moment for weeks now, and he’s not going to let his past regrets ruin anyone else’s happiness – even if it brings back memories more painful and wonderful than he can bear.
“You know where your first class is?” Suguru asks, not for the first time since he’d gotten off the train with Nanako and Mimiko some thirty minutes earlier.
“We found all of our classrooms during o-week,” Mimiko reminds him, sounding exasperated but amused. She shares a glance with her sister, but Suguru doesn’t notice.
He can’t stop looking around himself, glancing towards the doors into the main building, towards the opening of the carpark underneath, towards the paths leading in from the street. He’s not sure why. It’s not like he’ll find what he’s seeking.
“That’s right,” he says, still distracted, because they’d told him that when they came home from the first day of orientation.
Any excuse to linger.
“You don’t have to hang around, you know,” says Nanako. She can tell, of course, that he’s deliberately wasting time by asking questions he knows the answer to. “We know what we’re doing.”
He looks at them properly, at the way they look half-giggly with excitement and nerves. They’ve been waiting for this day since they found out they’d gotten into their chosen university, as excited as he was apprehensive.
“I know you do,” he assures them, warmly. “Give me a break. It’s not easy realising you’re both grown-ups now.”
“Don’t expect us home until late,” Nanako tells him, ignoring his affectionate words even as she latches onto his arm and hangs all of her weight, like she used to as a little girl. “We’re going shopping in Harajuku after to celebrate our first day.”
“Right,” he says, fighting the urge to ruffle her carefully straightened bangs. She’d probably insist on going back home to fix it, if he did. “I’ll see you home late than. Have a good first day.”
“Thanks, Suguru-Chan,” they both say in unison, and then they’re linking arms and rushing off towards one of the many imposing buildings. They don’t look back at him once.
Suguru watches them go right up until they disappear into their building, his chest tight with pride and nostalgia so strong it’s like he can taste the sweetness of it. He can’t remember feeling anything close to their excitement, for his own first day of classes.
The only thing he’d been excited for was finally sharing an apartment with his best friend, after spending so long in a tiny dorm side by side. In the end, even that hadn’t been enough.
He glances around him again, at the throngs of students steadily thinning out as they all find their first classes of the semester. They look incredibly young, younger than he can remember looking when it was him in their place.
Then he stills.
His veins fills with heat.
But that’s not possible, he thinks, weakly.
There’s a man striding across the courtyard – tall and loose-limbed, dressed in an all-black suit like it’s a wake. There are dark, round sunglasses perched on his nose, and familiar white hair falling across his forehead.
He’s walking alongside a student, mouth split into a wide grin and head thrown back with obvious amusement, despite the stony, hunched way his companion walks.
Just like that the last ten years haven’t happened. Suguru is eighteen again, and that longing inside of him is drawn right to the forefront.
He moves before he’s consciously thought about it.
He knows that silver hair – those sunglasses, that walk, that wide grin – like he knows everything else about himself.
His hand closes around a slender wrist.
“Satoru.”
The man freezes, turns. His eyes are still hidden behind the lenses of his sunglasses, but Suguru can picture the blue of them glowing with shock.
“...Suguru.”
Suguru can’t make himself say anything else. His tongue feels heavy and stupid in his mouth, useless for anything like an opening conversation. His fingers are still caught around Satoru’s wrist, preventing him from going anywhere.
Then Satoru straightens. Suguru feels his wrist-bone and tendons straining, as he curls his hand into a fist.
“Go on without me, Megumi,” he says to the boy, who’s been watching them both with eyebrows carefully raised. “I’ll see you after class.”
“Right,” says Megumi, slowly. “See you later, Gojo.”
Megumi continues into the building without giving them another glance. Suguru barely notices. Nothing short of a gunshot could unfix his focus from the distinct shape of Satoru’s sunglasses.
Then Satoru asks, his voice curious and natural and, Suguru can hear it, just a bit guarded, “What are you doing here, Suguru?”
Suguru’s hand around his wrist suddenly burns. He lets go, his fingers curling, only to draw them through the underside of his half-tied-back hair.
“I’m just...dropping someone off,” he says, gesturing to where he’d stood with Nanako and Mimiko. Then he shoves his hands in his pockets and asks, “What about you?”
“I’m a professor here.”
“You are?” Suguru asks, unable to help his surprise. He offers a genuine smile. “That’s...unexpected, honestly.”
Satoru raises his pale eyebrows, the neat line of them visible above his glasses. “Well, it has been a while,” he says, with an edge that makes Suguru wince.
Satoru must notice, because his voice is unfairly softer, more forgiving, when he asks, “Did you want to come up to my office?”
Yes, Suguru almost says, because God he desperately wants to, wants to look at Satoru for as long as he can and stand in his presence and see what his office looks like.
If they go inside, he’ll probably take his sunglasses off.
“I-I have work,” he says instead, near stuttering at the twitch to Satoru’s mouth he swears looks like disappointment.
He reaches for his wallet instead, yanks out a business card and presents it to him with a hand that feels like it should be shaking but isn’t.
“Here, take it. My number...” he says, as Satoru slowly reaches for it, as their fingertips touch and a flare goes up his arm. He sounds pathetic even to his own ears. “Call me, please. We can get a drink and...and talk. Or something,”
“All right,” says Satoru, still looking at the plain black card. Then he slips it into the inside pocket of his coat and levels Suguru with a brilliant smile. “I’ll call you after work.”
He steps back, angles his body towards the front entrance of the building. In a matter of two metres he’ll be out of view.
“It was...” Suguru starts, before he can go any further.
Satoru pauses, tilts his head at him and waits.
Suguru, breathless still and almost incapable of any thought under than SatoruSatoruSatoru, finally finishes, “I’m so happy to see you. Satoru.”
Satoru smiles again – tiny, a barely-there curve at the corner of his lips. Familiar, but not like how he used to smile at him.
“Me too, Suguru,” he says, and then he’s walking away, his head lowered with one of his hands pushing the hair back from his forehead.
He looks back at him from the door. Suguru straightens, his chest filling up as he takes a desperate breath. Then Satoru waves and disappears inside.
In his absence, Suguru feels vaguely rubbish and jittery and insecure, like he’s just made a fool of himself in a way he doesn’t quite understand.
He probably didn’t look all that impressive, in his black sweats and green flannel, his old leather jacket, his hair half thrown into a bun with his bangs falling in his face. Even his boots aren’t tied properly. Compared to Satoru, in his all-black suit and polished dress shoes, he looks like a total mess.
Oh well. Satoru should be used to him looking like he doesn’t care about anything. It’s how he always looked back then.
Slowly, he starts for the main street.
He’d taken the train in with the twins that morning – had all but insisted on it for their first official day – but it’s only a ten-minute walk from the college to the tattoo studio, and it doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes either way.
And it’s a good opportunity to calm his racing heart, to metabolize the fact that this is the first time in over ten years he’s laid eyes on Satoru Gojo.
It’s so incredibly believable, to see for himself that Satoru has only gotten more breathtaking, in the cut of his jaw and the broader line of his shoulders. He wears his dark suit like it’s been tailored for him which, Suguru supposes, it probably was.
His wrist bone had felt so nice, beneath Suguru’s fingertips. He’d barely been able to make himself let go.
“Fuck,” he sighs, as he walks, ripping the tie from his hair and scrubbing his hand through it to knock out any kinks. Ten years and I’m back to where I was at seventeen.
He suddenly curses his job, wishes he didn’t have a client already lined up for that morning and a full day to keep him routed in his impatience. What he wants is to turn right back around, run back to the college, and find Satoru’s office, because he’s a fucking professor at the best university in Tokyo.
“Of course he is,” Suguru says, and his voice is fond even to himself. What else was Satoru going to do but teach, when guiding others had always come so naturally to him. If it weren’t for him, Suguru doubts he would have made it into college at all.
I didn’t even get to see his eyes, he thinks.
He barely manages any conversation with his first client, even as he spends the entire morning hunched over her calf muscle tattooing various flowers and bugs while she chats in a strong accent about Venus being in retrograde or something he doesn’t understand.
When he finishes, moves on to half a dozen walk-ins with miniscule requests that take less time to tattoo than getting his station prepared, he lets Choso and Sukuna deal with seeing them off when he’d usually do it himself.
If he’s noticeably distracted throughout the day neither of them mention it, proving themselves unusually respectful. Though Suguru checks his phone every ten minutes in the hope that an hour has passed in the same span of time, he’s mercifully left alone.
Of course, he shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve been saving up their curiosity for when the shop gets a moment of reprieve.
“Who fucked you so good you can’t leave your phone alone?” Sukuna asks him, when their last client has left and it’s just the three of them in the otherwise empty studio.
Suguru’s hands still as he cleans up his station, then start again even quicker. If he finishes before two, he can fit in a smoke break in the back alley where he’ll hopefully be left alone.
“Oh, come on,” Sukuna drawls, when Suguru remains stubbornly silent. “Only good pussy makes a man act like that.”
“Really, Sukuna?” Choso sighs, rolling his head back. He presses his thumbs to the seemingly permanent shadows around his eyes. “Do you have to be so vulgar at work?”
“Chill, Choso, we all know you’re just mad you’re too chicken shit to pound Himiko,” says Sukuna, without looking at him. He levels Suguru with a devilish, expectant smirk.
Suguru sighs and glares at him. He’s known Sukuna long enough to pretend there’s any chance of avoiding this conversation.
“Firstly, you’ve known I’m gay since we fucking met,” he says, throwing a balled-up paper towel at him. “Two, it’s not like that. I ran into an old friend when I took the twins to college and we might be going out for a drink later.”
“Is there a three?” Sukuna asks, already sounding bored even as he squints his eyes at him.
“Three, the only good pussy you’ve ever known is the one you came out of.”
Sukuna’s eyes light up. “It was actually a C-section,” he tells him, unbothered by his remark. He reaches for the tub of lollipops they keep around for light-headed clients and sticks a grape in his mouth.
“So who’s the friend?” Choso asks, joining them to steal a cola-flavoured one.
“Went to high school with him,” says Suguru, shrugging. He wonders if the strawberry ones are still Satoru’s favourite. “And college for the first year until I dropped out.”
“Didn’t stay in contact, then?”
“No. Had a lot of stuff to deal with.”
Neither Choso nor Sukuna comment on that. They’ve strung together enough about his life from passing information over the last eight years to know what that stuff was.
Then Sukuna, breaking the silence in a way that has Suguru and Choso groaning, asks, “So he has good cock then?”
Suguru presses his palms against his eyes. “I don’t fucking know, all right?” he says, exasperated.
“But you want to know?”
Sukuna is, as always, infuriatingly perceptive.
“Yes, Sukuna, I want to know if my best friend from ten years ago has a good cock.” The words feel dangerously close to the truth, even if he does keep his tone annoyed. “I’m desperate for him to get my dick wet.”
“Called it,” says Sukuna, pointing the end of his purple lollipop at him. He’s bitten through it, like a fucking savage. “As I said – only good cock makes a man check his phone that much.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“Same sentiment. Let us know when you finally fuck him. I bet you’ve been waiting for this moment.”
Sukuna bares his teeth in a smile and pushes his swivel chair back across the tiled floor, waving as he travels the short distance to his station.
Suguru gives him the finger and collects his smokes. After that conversation, he’ll need at least three to feel normal again.
The next few hours pass agonisingly slow.
Then, right as it reaches closing, a thought occurs to him.
What if he doesn’t call?
Suguru wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. It’s not as though Satoru owes him anything, should even want to see him at all after the way they parted. He could so easily have thrown that business card away the moment he was out of sight, brushed his hands of the interaction and forgotten all about it.
The thought makes Suguru tense with anticipation. It’ll be too final if Satoru doesn’t call, too much a declaration that there really is nothing left of their friendship anymore.
Suguru doesn’t want to believe that. Even after ten years apart.
Then his phone rings, so suddenly he freezes up from the surprise of it. It vibrates against the table he’s left it on, the screen lit up with the words Unknown Caller.
He doesn’t sound like himself when he answers.
“Hello?”
“Suguru?” Satoru says, clear and bright and wonderful, on the other side. “Is this a bad time?”
Suguru grins, his tension vanishing in an instant.
“No, you’re all right.” He glances around the empty shop. Sukuna and Choso have been gone for at least twenty minutes, and he only has to set the alarm system before he can go too. “I’ve just finished up now.”
“You still want that drink?”
“Yes,” he says, probably too breathlessly, too eagerly. “You have somewhere in mind?”
Satoru hums, warm and deep. “Can you meet me back at the college? It’s right around the corner.”
“I’ll be there.” Suguru stands, reaches for his bag and crosses to the front entrance. “Ten minutes.”
He punches the numbers into the security system and is out the door by the time Satoru has ended the call.
There’s an urge in him saying he should run all the way to the college, never mind how ridiculous he’d look, but he fights it down with the thought he doesn’t want to look wind-blown and red-faced when he sees Satoru again.
Still, he thinks he must get some strange reactions as he dodges around hand-holding couples and weaves through crowds to cut down time. The streets are busy, half the working population of Tokyo on their way to seedy Izakaya’s for whatever gets them through the night.
Satoru is already waiting for him in the same spot as where they’d last parted, when Suguru finds him ten minutes later. He’s got that black coat on, and a messenger bag strung over his shoulder, but his glasses are gone.
Suguru never expected to see those eyes again, even as he’d spent the last ten years longing for it in the back of his subconscious. It pleases him, that he hasn’t forgotten how blue they are, how all-consuming it feels to be looked at by them.
Then Satoru blinks at him and asks, curiously, “Did you walk here?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Suguru shrugs, gestures vaguely in the direction of the way he’d come. “I took the train today.”
Satoru doesn’t ask him why, even if he does look interested.
“So where are we going?” Suguru asks.
“There’s a tearoom around the corner,” Satoru says, with a smile and a grimace. “I don’t actually drink alcohol, so...”
“That’s all right,” says Suguru, quickly. “I don’t either, really. A tearoom is fine.”
“Should we go then?”
Suguru nods and steps aside, his heart punching at his throat in the way Satoru’s shoulder brushes his the moment they fall in beside each other.
There’s a strange feeling in his stomach, that unnatural nostalgia of relearning someone you used to know better than yourself. He thinks of all the things about himself that Satoru couldn’t possibly know, and wonders if he’ll be given the chance to tell them.
“Did you have a good day?” Suguru asks him as they walk, not quite sure what to talk about. “First day of classes, right?”
Satoru hums and flashes a smile at him. “It was good. Some of my third years brought in a cake as a welcome back.”
“They already bribing you to give them good grades?”
Satoru gasps. “My students are brilliant, they don’t need to bribe me!” he says, mock-offended even as he starts to grin in earnest. “Believe it or not, I’m a fantastic teacher. I’ve never had a student fail one of my classes.”
“I believe you,” says Suguru, grinning. He knocks their shoulders together, intentionally this time. “So do you teach lit?”
“I teach a few humanities subjects,” says Satoru. He’s got his attention on the road, waiting for a good time to cross. “Mainly literature, but linguistics and history classes too. And art history, since the last professor went part-time.”
His hand presses to the small of Suguru’s back. They cross the street with Suguru’s entire nervous system burning.
“Damn, sounds like a lot,” Suguru spits out, even though all he can think about is the feeling of Satoru’s hand through the fabric of his t-shirt. “But you like it?”
Satoru sighs, and he sounds affectionate and soft as he tells him, “It’s the best thing in the world.” Then his hand presses once more into his spine. “Just in here.”
Suguru looks away from him.
Based on the facade, he never would have guessed there was a tearoom slotted between the florist and the post office that take up the majority of the store fronts. There’s only a plain brown door and a sign overhead spelling ‘Tea Room & Bakery’ to indicate its presence at all.
The inside is nice though, warmly lit and smelling of different spices. There’s only a few patrons, and a single server who smiles and gestures for them to take a seat wherever they please.
“Shall I order for us?” Satoru asks, as they find a chabudai in the far side of the room. “Ginger beer?”
“Yeah,” says Suguru, weakly. He asks, before he can help himself, “You still know my favourite drink?”
“Of course.” Satoru raises a hand to the server. “I haven’t forgotten anything about you.”
Suguru straightens, but then the waiter is standing over them with his notepad ready, and Satoru is ordering a ginger beer and a peach iced tea for them both, entirely unaware of the force Suguru’s heart beats with inside his chest.
By the time the waiter’s left, he can’t make himself mention it again.
Satoru runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. It stays for a second where it is, and then all comes tumbling back down into his eyes. It’s an action Suguru is keenly familiar with, even if it has been a while since he last saw it.
Suguru smiles.
“You look the same,” he says, without thinking.
Satoru raises his eyebrows at him.
“So do you.”
Then Satoru is reaching a hand towards him.
“But these are new,” he says, and his fingertip lightly touches Suguru’s eyebrow piercing, and then the ring at his nose. As he draws his hand away, his eyes flick to the tattoos crawling up the side of his neck. “And these.”
Suguru feels his face colour. He wants to catch Satoru’s hand with his own and press it against his throat.
Hoarsely, he tells him, “I get them done in my free time at the shop.”
“The shop?” Satoru repeats.
“Where I work. I’m a tattoo artist. Have been since...”
Since I left.
Satoru’s eyes narrow at him, but there’s no accusation.
Smiling slightly, Suguru adds, “Not quite as prestigious as a university professor, but it works for me.”
Satoru knocks his head to the side and takes a sip of his tea.
He asks, “And you like it?”
Suguru nods. “It’s the best thing in the world,” he says, echoing him.
Satoru hums and takes another sip of his drink. Suguru catches sight of the pink tip of his tongue, and flicks the piercing in his own against his teeth to stop himself from making a noise.
He drinks, to soothe the sudden dryness in his mouth.
“So you have a lot of these now?” Satoru asks, and he nods at the tattoos lining the base of Suguru’s neck and collar. The rest of them are hidden by his leather jacket, the material too stiff to roll the sleeves up.
“A fair few. I’ll show you one day.”
It isn’t meant to sound flirtatious, but it’s almost automatic, the small smirk he gives Satoru as he speaks – like they’re seventeen again and just waiting for this thing between them to ignite.
Satoru meets his smirk with one of his own, something sly and all-knowing in those ocean eyes.
Then his phone buzzes, and the screen lights up with the name Megumi. The sudden cool light has them both straightening - Suguru hadn’t realised how they’d been leaning into each other as they spoke.
“Sorry,” says Satoru. “I have to take this.”
Suguru shakes his head and smiles.
“Megumi,” says Satoru, grinning, with a far lighter, almost teasing tone. “What an honour! You never call me.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Suguru hears, down the other end of the line. He takes a sip of his drink, trying not to listen, but still hears as the boy asks, “Are you going to be home soon? Yuji is here and we’re ordering take out.”
Suguru can’t help but glance at him, disappointment flaring in his chest. He doesn’t want their evening to end so soon, even if he doesn’t have much of a right to Satoru’s time.
“Oh, where from?” Satoru eagerly asks, and then he cuts himself off. “Wait, doesn’t matter. Just get me something sweet.”
“All right,” says Megumi, and then to somebody on his side, “He’ll have honey chicken and rice. And a pack of those assorted mochi ice creams.”
“Ahh, you know me so well, Megumi,” Satoru exclaims, practically singing the kid’s name. “I knew you cared.”
“Fuck off,” is the response he gets. Suguru coughs into his fist to hide a laugh, but Satoru is laughing too. “It’ll be here in twenty. Be on time or we’ll eat the mango mochi.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“I won’t let him, Gojo-Sensei!” says another voice, and then the line disconnects. Satoru grins at his phone, for a moment, and then turns to Suguru.
“Are those your students?” Suguru asks.
“Oh, technically.” He stuffs his phone away, sips the last of his drink, and then tells him, “Megumi’s kind of my kid. Yuji is his friend but he’s in a few of my classes too.”
He doesn’t seem to really appreciate the shock of what he’s just said, based on the easy way it had come from his mouth.
But a kid implies a partner. A family.
“You have a kid?” Suguru asks, weakly, his heart lodging itself somewhere in his throat. “How?”
“I mean, it’s not like I birthed him myself, Suguru,” says Satoru, with a teasing flick at his shoulder. “His dad died, and he asked me to take care of him and his sister. Not long after you...”
He trails off.
After you left.
They both can’t seem to make themselves say it out loud.
Suguru wants to ask a million different questions, starting with the fact that he’s taken in two kids that aren’t his own, but he can’t bring himself to ask any of them. The relief in his stomach is almost sickening.
So no partner then.
But it does feel ironically close to his own situation.
“You need to go, don’t you?” he asks, before the silence can linger into something uncomfortable, more loaded than it already is.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Suguru has the last of his ginger beer and stands, clawing down his disappointment. They still have the walk back to the college, anyway, which is more than he has the right to ask for.
“Come on,” he says, throwing cash down on the table. Then he offers Satoru his hand, instinctual and easy. Seventeen once again. “Can’t have them stealing your mochi ice cream.”
Satoru takes his hand to be guided out of the tearoom, but he drops it when they’re back in the streets. Suguru doesn’t reach for it again, even if he’d like to.
They start back for the college without talking.
Suguru doesn’t know what to say, and yet a part of him does. Apologies, explanations, confessions, all things he’d thought over the years and never had a chance to tell him. Not until now.
But his mouth stays closed, and the longing remains.
The college looks unnatural, dark and abandoned, when they wander into the parking lot. It’s only been half an hour, but in that time the sky has darkened completely and all the lingering students have disappeared. The lights in the main building are off, save for one near the top floor.
Satoru leads him through the parking lot towards a black sedan, unscratched and undented, detailed to perfection with windows tinted dark enough Suguru can’t see the interiors.
It looks far nicer than Suguru’s road bike, even if he does keep it in good condition. It probably cost his wage for the year.
“Do you want a lift home?” Satoru asks him, his keys already in hand. The car lights flash with a small beep. He’s looking straight at him, the corner of his mouth pulled up like he’s trying to tempt him with something more.
“No, it’s okay,” Suguru says, taking a step back. He brushes his bangs out of his face, watches Satoru track the movement. “It’s too far from here. And your dinner is waiting.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Thanks anyway.”
Satoru shrugs and opens the driver’s door.
“Satoru,” Suguru says, before he can get in. Satoru pauses, looks up at him. “Will you call me again?”
Satoru gives him a crooked smile.
“You have my number,” he says. “You call me.”
Then the door closes, and Suguru is stepping back as he reverses out of his spot, as he beeps twice, as he drives off and disappears into the streets all whilst Suguru is still contemplating what his last words might have meant.
Unconsciously, he starts moving. The train station isn’t far, but it’s a twenty-minute trip back to his place and he suddenly desperately wants to be home, where he knows with certainty he’s wanted. Nanako and Mimiko will hopefully be there by now.
He thinks of this boy, Megumi, who orders Satoru’s favourite dishes and speaks comfortably to him over the phone, who evidently lives in the same house, who invites friends over to that same house and who probably has no idea who Suguru is or what he once might have meant.
But Satoru had said to call him. Suguru shouldn’t need an invitation clearer than that to know Satoru wants to see him again.
On the train midway home, he pulls out his phone and writes, half-nerves half brutal, all-consuming hope,
Is texting allowed?
6:14
He expects it will take a while to receive an answer, knowing Satoru still could be driving home and will be occupied by dinner with his kid, surreal as that is to think of, but he gets a response almost instantly.
As if it wouldn’t be.
6:16
Did you get home all right?
6:16
My Mango Mochi was safe, if that’s what you’re asking.
6:17
I’m glad. I know how devastated you’d be otherwise.
Can we meet again soon?
6:18
Yes. Whenever you like.
6:18
Tomorrow? After work again?
6:18
Sure. I’ll meet you outside the college, same as today.
6:19
I can’t wait
6:19
Me too.
6:19
He spends the rest of the train ride and the walk to his apartment not even bothering to hide his smile. There’s no one around to see it anyway, at least not until he gets home.
Mimiko is in the kitchen, when he comes in, holding two hot chocolates and looking at him with her eyebrows up.
“How was your first day?” he asks, smiling warmly at her.
“It was really good,” she tells him, and in her usual fashion doesn’t offer any more information than that. Instead, she takes a careful sip of her chocolate and says, “I didn’t think we’d be home before you.”
Suguru nods absently. He rubs at his mouth, and then asks, more consciously, “Do you remember that old friend of mine from high school?”
“Satoru Gojo?”
Suguru nods. “He’s a professor at your college,” he tells her, with a small shrug that she’ll see right through. “I ran into him right after you guys left. We were having a drink just now.”
“Really? That’s so cool!” says Nanako, materialising in the hallway as if summoned. “What does he teach? Mimiko, we should introduce ourselves tomorrow!”
“No, don’t,” says Suguru, with a twinge of panic. “I haven’t seen him in ten years. He wouldn’t know who you both are.”
“We can tell him though.”
“Nanako, he wants to tell him himself,” says Mimiko, sighing and passing her one of the mugs.
Nanako pouts, then brushes away her look of disappointment before it’s given the chance to manifest properly.
“Fine,” she says. “We’ll leave him alone. But you can bring him here one night for dinner once he knows about us.”
They both fix him with an irrefutable stare.
He doesn’t need convincing, but it’s a valiant effort all the same.
“Sure,” he tells them, with an easy nod.
They share an eager grin.
“It’ll be fun, Suguru-Chan!” says Nanako, already moving back down the hallway. “We’ll plan something really special.”
“We’ll plan something appropriate,” Mimiko amends, following her.
Suguru breathes in deeply, and let’s it all out in a rush. He’s sure whatever they have in mind will be good enough for Satoru, at any rate. If the opportunity even comes.
“Goodnight, girls,” he calls after them, and then the doors to their bedrooms close in unison.
It’s early to sleep yet, even if Suguru does want the next day to come. He hasn’t eaten since that morning, barely has any appetite at all with his state-of-mind, and the only thing that seems vaguely appealing to him is a cigarette out on his bedroom balcony.
He makes himself something anyway, is leaning against the kitchen counter five minutes later half-heartedly getting through a couple pieces of buttered toast and a tea that doesn’t taste nearly as good as the drink he’d shared with Satoru.
Looking around his apartment, it’s easy to picture how Satoru would be there, how he’d lean against door frames and drape himself over the couch like he belongs, how he’d steal Suguru’s clothes and sleep beside him in bed if it got too late for him to head back to his place.
It’s how they were in high school, and in that first year of college, unable to be parted. Suguru doubts much will have changed at all, if not for that ten-year break. They might have been closer than ever, if he wasn’t so afraid.