today was the day zenin toji ran a blade through satoru's skull.

obliterated into shrapnel of bone, heart choking on its last pulse.

today was the day the sky wished to cleanse itself of its clouds, the breeze wished to kiss people's cheeks, and the birds wished to sing a little sweeter.

satoru was to repay.

reversed curse technique failed; suguru knew the moment shoko withdrew her bloodstained hands, laying them limp against the very same earth satoru died standing on.

satoru died.

he died without anyone to hold him—he died struggling to stay afloat in the cusp between youth and divinity, until the very last breath.

i'm okay, he had said, even with a hole through his chest, i'll handle him.

but satoru died alone.

suguru left him to die alone.

and when he got to the corpse holding the shape of his best friend too late, there was nothing else he could do but crumble to the ground, clutch satoru's body to his chest—there was nothing else he should do.

shoko could have said something, could have squeezed his shoulder, he didn't know over the screaming in his ears.

if satoru deserved to die, shouldn't suguru have died before him?

but the assassin must have known, that rather than dying, leaving suguru with the shambles of his heart was a crueler fate.

suguru clung to what was left of his heart, gasping into pink-matted hair clumped with blood and brain matter, eyes squeezed shut.

until he felt it: satoru's cursed energy. an abundance of the strength that suguru had surrounded himself with for the last two years, a miasma blanketing the thick of the forest.

perhaps suguru was grasping at dead straws; still he gently laid deadweight to the ground—and chased.

and so now he stood, head raised, the ground beneath his feet caving as yaga-sensei gripped his shoulder—a comfort or a restraint.

a curse.

satoru.

a convulsing chasm cradling the galaxies and secrets of the universe, endless stars pulsing in their blinding glory—though none quite as bright as its six blue eyes flowing in and out of order.

but suguru knew the second he laid eyes on this passageway to the infinite.

this was satoru.

or a whisper of him, a brutal echo of his last breaths—yet even then, the sorcerers gathered below brandished their techniques, bared the wet meat tucked under layer of skin.

suguru thrashed against yaga-sensei's grip, "let me go, let me go to him. i can take him, please, you can't—"

how could they even think of it? did their hollow skulls not comprehend that this was all they had left of their so-called savior, their god in the making?

all suguru had left of his best friend?

"you can't kill me, you can't kill me, you can't kill me," satoru's curse above chanted gleefully, a child gloating in their little game of tag.

he was only a child.

suguru frantically elbowed his way through the crowd of low-level sorcerers, numb to the aggressive swears and shoves back.

he could take satoru, he was the only one that could—they were the strongest together.

"satoru!" suguru yelled desperately, ripping through the hoarse of his throat.

all six of the curse's eyes rolled in their sockets, searching, until they each pinned on him.

"suguru."

that wasn't his name anymore. it couldn't be, someone now as satoru-less as him, yet—

"satoru," suguru gasped, "come down here, it's alright."

his voice shook something awful.

"let me take you home."