Gojo POV

She’s smiling again — same café, same sunlight, same seat she always saves for me. I’m late. I’m always late. But she never complains.

“Miss me?” I grin, tilting my sunglasses down. She rolls her eyes, but that tiny smile tugs at her lips. God, she’s cute when she does that and it hurts more than any curse ever could.

I’m a mess of contradictions, I know. Cocky, careless on the outside — the man who doesn’t bow to superiors or flinch before curses. But she knows better. She sees through all of it. She’s the only one who ever does.

I’m the strongest, sure — rich, handsome, confident enough to joke with gods — yet inside, I’m just a man who wants to make her laugh, who remembers how she takes her coffee, who always carries her favorite candy in his pocket “just in case.” She thinks I don’t notice small things, but I do. I notice everything about her.

And maybe that’s why this hurts so much. Because I see how she waits, how she hopes. And I know I can’t keep making her live like that.

“You’d be better off without me,” I say, smiling like it’s a joke. When she said Is that supposed to be funny? I wish it were… I stand before I lose the will to leave. So I turn first. Because the strongest doesn’t stay — he protects from a distance.