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Inumaki Toge is a man of few words. Many have tried to ascribe rhyme or reason to his restaurant-menu patchwork of a language; most with a decisive lack of success, though there are a lucky few that have managed to grasp the ins and outs of his unorthodox vocabulary. It’s a short little dictionary, just barely too much to fit on a notecard, but the words themselves mean much less than the tone put behind them. It’s in those imperceptible lilts in emotion that Inumaki’s true communication lies, because one can only pronounce the word ‘salmon’ in so many ways until the word itself becomes meaningless.
Most childrens’ first words are a momentous occasion celebrated by their parents with joy, but the tradition is nowhere to be found within the Inumaki family. First words are anticipated with dread, the act of learning to speak a minefield no longer dormant and ready to explode. The gravity of cursed speech is hardly something a child can comprehend, how words can be so much heavier than the air on which they’re spoken.
And Inumaki Toge was a slow learner. He cursed people easily and often in his youth, always without a shred of intention behind it -- not that it mattered. Pain hurts just the same whether it was meant to be afflicted or not. Inumaki learned this the hard way.
Thus the Inumakis’ words are confined into ones that are harmless, to protect others from the inherited cursed technique of their birth. His mother left shortly after he was born. His father speaks only in famous paintings; Inumaki learned who ‘Mona Lisa’ was before he’d even met half his cousins.
Which is why when Inumaki started at the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, he felt as if the weight of the world was off his shoulders, because quite frankly, everyone there was just as weird if not even weirder than him. Aside from about a week of hesitation from his peers, he’d been accepted with open arms as one of their own. It probably helped that one of his classmates is a literal talking panda. What’s a nonsense dialect in comparison to that?
Life fell into a routine with his two classmates, until their strange brand of normalcy was utterly and abruptly torn into tatters by the hurricane known as Okkotsu Yuuta. Inumaki’s interest was piqued almost immediately; the two of them were both burdened with a power they never asked to bear, living a life slicing their feet on broken glass as they struggled to tiptoe around hurting others, leaving messy red footprints on the ground behind them in the most depressing sidewalk artwork of all time. The feeling was not mutual, at least not at first; but that mission of theirs to the mall changed everything, and like a switch had been flipped, they became inseparable.
Then December 24th happened, and the two became closer than ever before. A few days after the New Year, Yuuta went on one very emotional and tear-stained monologue about how he could never see his best friend in danger like that again, and now he almost never leaves Inumaki’s side.
These days, he and Yuuta spend most of their time together, both in class and out. Gojo’s caught them passing doodles between themselves so many times that he’s started a collage. Maki teased that they’re practically glued at the hip, more addicted to each other than Gojo is to himself; Yuuta had laughed at that one, especially when Gojo overheard her. Yuuta fits into a space in Inumaki’s life carved out just for him, the final piece of a puzzle Inumaki never even knew he was missing.
Which is why when he finds out Yuuta is leaving for a training journey, his world turns upside down.
“It’s not forever!” Yuuta tacks on, as if that does anything to ease Inumaki’s panic. “Just a few months of training. I’ll be back before you know it!” he says in that earnest voice that makes Inumaki question everything he’s ever known.
What can he even say? Don’t go, he wants to insist, but that would be selfish; Yuuta’s control over his massive cursed energy is still about as reliable as throwing q-tips at a dartboard and expecting them to stick. Please don’t leave me behind, he could plead, he could take his hand and never let go, cherish every piece of his being like he deserves to be cherished. You’re my best friend, the only one who’s ever truly understood him, the only one who’s even bothered to try.
I love--
But he can’t say any of those things. So instead he just says, “Tuna.”
He spends the rest of the day in a haze, grateful for the first time that his silence is typical. The week drags on with Yuuta’s departure looming like an execution. They had sleepovers three times, two of them because Inumaki ‘accidentally’ fell asleep on Yuuta’s couch while they were watching another low-grade action flick with special effects so bad Inumaki could’ve done better with crayons when he was a child.
Yuuta spends the time he’s not with Inumaki gearing up to leave; he’s packed all his clothes and visited doctors for his usual checkups, but hasn’t had a chance to get to the hairdresser yet, so he keeps raking his hair back into a sleek look that does traitorous things to Inumaki’s heart. Inumaki’s own hair is getting longer; he’d planned to trim it to his usual spiky length, but Yuuta said he liked the new look, and that was it. He might never cut his hair again. Inumaki is so beyond screwed.
Maki’s noticed, he thinks. Maki’s noticed, but she hasn’t said anything, and there isn’t much time left for her to do so. Inumaki can’t decide if he’s grateful or angry about that, until it’s just the pair of them left in the classroom two days before Yuuta leaves, and completely out of the blue she asks,
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t even look at him when she says it. Just keeps staring out the window. She says it like it’s nothing, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Inumaki can only sigh.
“Shake.”
The ghost of a smile tugs on the corners of her lips. “I thought so.” She drums her fingers against her desk. “Are you gonna tell him before he leaves?”
Inumaki stuns himself to find that he’s actually considering it. It’s a foolish thing to say when Yuuta has already given his heart to another; who is both dead and female, so Inumaki’s zero for two there. He knows the love between them far eclipsed unconventional -- a vengeful monster chained after death to suicidal boy spits in the face of the textbook definition of a complicated relationship -- she’d told him to move on just before disappearing and Yuuta agreed, but Inumaki’s not sure if he’s actually done it. He’s not sure if that means he has a chance, but he’s even less sure that he really needs one. Some things are just too important to say, no matter what the consequences.
That being said, he has no idea what the repercussions might be if those words departed from his mouth. The true nature of love is an obfuscated thing to Inumaki; speaking a confession out loud would be a complete shot in the dark. His eyes could open to a new palette of colors to paint in vibrant splotches over his monochrome world, or he could drop dead the moment the words left his tongue.
Inumaki learned early on that cursed speech was a double-edged sword. Depending on the power difference between the wielder and the target, the words could backfire to a far greater degree than the command ever carried. Yuuta is so far above him that ‘Run’ didn’t even work on him during the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, and that’s arguably his easiest command to control.
Whatever cursed words he’d utter to Yuuta would likely have about the same effect as firing a bullet point-black range at a concrete wall. It’d just rebound right back and shred through his heart. He couldn’t even make a dent in Yuuta -- not that he’d want to. Aside from Gojo, it’s unlikely that anyone can. Even Getou Suguru could only manage a scratch, and Inumaki telling that man something so simple as ‘Fall down ’ during their fight almost made him mute for life. It might have, if Yuuta hadn’t healed him so quickly after it happened. In fact, there are a lot of things Inumaki would’ve missed out on if Yuuta weren’t beside him.
Rika was ruined by Yuuta’s love. Inumaki doesn’t think he would mind being ruined by Yuuta’s love either; perhaps it would be less like a chain to his side, and more a string of fate tethering the two of them together. He’d rather not end up with his brains smeared at Yuuta’s feet, but if that’s the only way, so be it.
Inumaki once heard that only fools would trade everything for a moment in the sun -- but he thinks that a single moment basking in the light might be enough to last his whole lifetime. It’s small, but there’s a chance he might never see Yuuta again. The life of a sorcerer is an unpredictable one, fleeting, with an estimated lifespan so low it’s more fatal than a terminal illness. This could be his last chance to ever say something like this. It could be.
It almost makes him want to do it -- then his teacher’s voice echoes in his ears. Gojo constantly preaches that love for a sorcerer is always doomed right from the beginning, that love is the most twisted curse of them all. Gojo said there might even come a day when you have to plunge a knife into the heart you gave your own to, and you’d have to relive that agony every moment for the rest of your life. Inumaki doesn’t want to know why that was so specific.
‘Was it really not worth it? he wants to ask, but he doesn’t -- not just because he physically can’t, but because he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if the answer was, ‘Yes.’
So in the end, he decides against it. It is a worthwhile dream, but also an impossible one. Love is too dangerous, too reckless. His heart screams at him for believing such things, but his rational mind just barely manages to quiet its cries. He looks back at Maki and shakes his head, and her shoulders deflate as if disappointed. She carries on with their one-sided conversation like usual soon after, but Inumaki can tell something is off.
He doesn’t think much of it until the next day, when she catches him by the shoulder after class and whispers in a harsh and aggressive voice under her breath, yet imbued with a strange kind of softness Inumaki’s not sure he’s ever heard from her before.
“I think you should do it,” she declares. It takes all his restraint for Inumaki’s eyebrows to not shoot straight to his hairline; he’s never had her pinned as much of a romantic, so this is quite a surprise. She drops her firm grip on the fabric of his collar almost as an afterthought, eyes swiftly looking away. “He’s not leaving till late this evening. Mull it over, okay? Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”
Inumaki blinks back at her. Logically, whatever nonsense word he says to her could just be taken as a promise, but he has a feeling she’ll be able to tell whether he’s being sincere or not.
“Takana.”
She seems satisfied with that reply, even though Inumaki himself isn’t sure what he meant. She walks away after that, leaving Inumaki to a maelstrom of thoughts.
Inumaki tries to go to bed early that night, convinced it’ll be easier if he’s unconscious while his best friend slips through his fingers, perhaps for the first and last time. After class they’d said a generic goodbye and he’d exchanged numbers with Yuuta’s new international phone, even if Inumaki really only ever texts in reaction pictures and emojis. Yuuta’s never minded. He says they always make him laugh, beaming back with a smile so bright it puts the moon and stars to shame. Sleep cruelly taunts him from the dark corners of his room, so all Inumaki can wonder is if Yuuta has actually left yet.
Yuuta told his classmates he was leaving because he was determined to prove he deserves to live, to unlock power within him that would allow him to belong, and god forbid, to let himself be loved. Inumaki has no idea how to tell him that he already is. Yuuta’s personal philosophy is needing to be needed, and Inumaki doesn't think he’s ever heard anything more selfless and beautiful in his entire life.
Yuuta feels so terribly, so deeply. He cries quickly and easily, and he laughs just the same. His is a glass strength, transparent and vulnerable; but like carbon under pressure, it can morph into diamond when it truly counts. Joining the school and freeing Rika released a floodgate of emotions locked inside him for over half a decade, the depth of his feelings more endless than the infinite abyss of the deepest oceans, the amount of love he has to give utterly limitless.
Yuuta’s emotions are like fingertips slipping from a window’s ledge. Everything about him is gentle and kind, but when Inumaki and his classmates’ bodies were bent in the wrong directions and Getou proudly declared himself as their attacker, it was like a black switch flipped in Yuuta none of them even realized he possessed. Inumaki had never felt that level of sheer murderous intent even from a curse, let alone a human being. It left him just as much in fear as it did in awe.
Yuuta is everywhere -- in dark clouds trawling before a thunderstorm, in a breeze blowing with the smell of summer as it blows springtime soft, in cut flowers trapped in vases weeping nectar from their petals before they wither. Panda once asked him how many times he’d tried to end his own life before coming to the school; Maki had promptly smacked him upside the head for the audacious question, then Yuuta replied it was so many times that he’d stopped trying to count. He said it so casually that it sent Inumaki reeling -- it took every ounce of restraint not to throw his arms around Yuuta and tell him right then and there how perfect a being he truly is, how Inumaki thanks gods he’s not even sure he believes in every day for bringing Yuuta into his life.
Yuuta is so beautiful, it hurts sometimes. Inumaki wonders how the cosmos came up with him, wonders where the comets and shooting stars through his soul even came from.
Instead he just patted him on the shoulder, rubbed a single terse circle into his back, and told him, “Konbu.”
His sorcerer grade isn’t what makes Yuuta special. Okkotsu Yuuta is special because he is Okkotsu Yuuta. Simple as that.
And Inumaki Toge wants Okkotsu Yuuta, in every way he can possibly fathom. It’s unthinkable that anyone at all would want to press their lips against Inumaki’s bloodstained own, intertwine their breath with a snake-eyed tongue dripping doom and destruction. Inumaki used to wonder if cursed speech could ever be anything beautiful, but even when he told a cherry tree ‘Bloom’ its flowers burst to life all at once, its branches rapidly decayed, then the whole plant was rotten and brown. He told a stray cat ‘Go to hell’ once, when he was a kid. Disappeared right before his eyes. He never saw it again. He hasn’t wanted to talk since.
But Yuuta makes him want, want like he’s never wanted anything else, want things he never even knew existed in the first place.
Something stirs deep inside him, an instinct, an impulse, and immediately Inumaki knows it isn’t something he can control. There’s so much that he wants to tell Yuuta; he could recite soliloquies so poetic they’d rival the great works of Shakespeare, or whisper sweet nothings into Yuuta’s ears when the silence got too deafening -- but he can’t. He hasn’t formed a complete sentence in over ten years. But that’s alright. He can condense all the words he needs to say into only three.
Inumaki throws off his covers and bursts open his door, the chilly air of the dormroom hallway biting at his face. He dashes through the maze of corridors until he reaches the foyer, and it is then that he learns he is not alone.
Gojo is leaning upon the banister at the far end of the entryway, limbs loose and head tilted back against the railpost at the base of the stairway. His blindfold is held crumpled in his palm, white bangs dusting a fan of icy lashes, a peaceful grin slipped across his face and a veil of mist in his gaze. Liquid moonlight pours in through the slats on the windows, cutting his torso into luminous stripes. Inumaki skids to a halt in front of him.
Gojo rolls his head towards his student. “Forgot to say goodbye?” he asks softly, even though his tone says he knows it’s a lot more than only that. Gojo knows, it seems. Perhaps he’s known the whole time, which really wouldn’t be all that surprising.
“Okaka?” Inumaki wavers. He can see his own reflection mirrored between the broken clouds in Gojo’s eyes: he looks panicked, desperate, like he’s right about to lose something too precious to let go. He hadn’t even realized he was trembling, but apparently he is.
Gojo smiles at him with the gentle warmth of a winter fire, his gaze tracing a path out of the building as if drawing a map. “Well, what are you wasting time with me for?” He gestures towards the exit to the temple. “Go after him.”
And there it is. The answer to the question Inumaki never dared to ask him. Gojo’s expression is nostalgic and wistful, distant memories penned in invisible ink scrawled across his features like an open book; and for the first time, Inumaki can read his cryptic language. Gojo is looking at Inumaki like there’s a sliver of hope buried somewhere deep beneath the tombstones in his graveyard heart, like he might still have one last shred of faith despite the immortal heartbreak of taking the life of the one who was dearest to him, like he knows all the worst parts of what love is but still wants Inumaki to have it anyway.
‘So it really was worth it?’ Inumaki asks without words, and Gojo silently replies,
‘It was.’
So Inumaki runs.
Inumaki runs, his thoughts racing ahead of him at the speed of light. Maybe he could be happy, with Yuuta. Maybe it truly is possible. But maybe at the end of every happily-ever-after lies an inescapable tragedy, because even after a long and beautiful life together, someone still has to die first. Sorcerers always die alone, Gojo says.
Die alone. He never said they have to live alone.
So maybe dying alone is okay. Maybe the loss and sorrow pale in comparison to the joy of a life beside your one and only. Maybe the pain of kneeling before their body is dulled by the memory of holding them close, and weeping above a gravestone is hushed by the ghosts of their fingertips wiping away your tears. Maybe going home to an empty house is a little less lonely if you can still see their shadow walking beside you, and when you finally reach the end of your own life, it’s alright, because now you’ll be together past the end of time itself.
It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, Inumaki read once. Yuuta feels that way about loving Rika. Gojo feels that way about loving -- someone. Inumaki’s not sure if he feels that way, because he hasn’t lost Yuuta yet; but he could lose him . He could lose him, or maybe the other way around. It is an immutable truth: one of them will inevitably die alone.
But he loves Yuuta. He loves him so much he can barely breathe. Even if Inumaki loses his own life in order to say this, Yuuta is worth it. Nothing else matters after that.
Inumaki casts open the doors, barely hearing how the wood splinters and crackles like thunder behind him. Wind whistles throughout the temple and the courtyard, humming in a choir between the ceramic tiles of the rooftop, against the weathered timber, and out through the tiers of pagodas. Just ahead of him, Yuuta is walking away, his silhouette vanishing into the dim light of dusk left by the sunset, his back towards the only place he’s ever been able to call home.
This might be the end, Inumaki thinks. It might be.
His footsteps thunk hollow as he bolts down the wooden staircase, and his feet crunch against the gravel when he reaches the seam between the temple and the walkway. He rips off his collar so hard he forgets to undo the zipper, shredding the fabric into mangled strips.
“Yuuta!”
Yuuta whips around almost violently, eyes wide as the moon rising above them, but Inumaki supposes that’s an appropriate reaction to hearing his name spoken by his best friend for only the second time. Inumaki clenches his fists, gathers up all his courage, inhaling what may very well be the last breath of air into his lungs.
“I love you!”
Yuuta’s breath hitches; the courtyard stills. The wind doesn’t dare keep howling, watching with bated breath as the world unravels. For less than a single fraction of a second, Inumaki thinks that nothing’s going to happen; then he feels a thrum in his blood that starts as at the base of his throat, the first sign that his technique has activated. It starts out as a dull trickle, inflating his lungs with the urge to cough, and then it’s like his cursed energy can no longer stand the constriction and bursts forth all at once. It surges through him like a flash flood, an unstoppable tide that latches onto his ankles and pulls him into the undertow.
It doesn’t hurt at all, or maybe it’s the worst pain he’s ever felt in his life. Something arcane pulses throughout the nexus of his veins, soothing like a mountain well spring, scorching through his body like molten lava. A soft sensation splits into his brain like a hot knife, melting away at his consciousness. His body is warm all over, his every nerve succumbing to frostbite. He feels like he’s about to die, or maybe live forever. It doesn’t make any sense, this duality, until all of a sudden it does; for maybe love is a tangled mess of contradictions, a chaotic series of convoluted curves and lines with no real order to them, but perhaps true power lies in such opposites. Maybe love is the power to give it all and take everything away. Yuuta’s love stole Rika’s humanity, but bestowed her with something from the great beyond.
It is only now, as his whole body drowns in feeling and his heart swirls like magma, that Inumaki understands the true nature of love. It wasn’t just Rika. Love turns us all into monsters. Love is a beast that devours sanity, a creature that eats away at a rational soul and leaves a reasonless spirit behind in its wake. A spirit with the capacity to commit atrocities beyond comprehension for the one it loves, yet simultaneously create something so heavenly that no language living or dead could ever hope to describe it. Love is just as beautiful and mysterious as it is horrible. Love is gentle and love is violent, love is filthy and love is pure. Love is patient and love is kind, love is reckless and love is desperate. Love is hard to learn, and we pay dearly for it. Love is priceless. Love is wanting to protect something more than yourself.
Love is something that can bring forth an angel and create a hero, or drag demons from the thrones of hell and into a blackening heart. There’s a saying that says ‘ a hero would give you the world, a villain would ruin the world for you.’ But Inumaki can see now that love rises far above such a primitive dichotomy. Love is not a hero and love is not a villain; love is the willingness to be both. He’d give Yuuta the world on a silver platter, if he had the power. Or he’d raze it all to the ground and suffocate on the ashes. Love is not black, love is not white, love is not even a shade of gray. Love cannot be seen at all. Love is not something that can be given a color.
Then the feeling is pouring out from his chest, gushing out through the rungs of the left side of his ribcage, the muscle beneath it seizing and contracting, and all the while Inumaki refuses to break Yuuta’s gaze.
My heart.
You can have it.
It’s yours.
If what Gojo said is true and love is the most twisted curse of all, then it is a curse he will gladly bear for the rest of his life, even if that only lasts a few more minutes. Being a sorcerer is truly hell. And with hell in your heart and your head and burning in pyres all around you, how can one possibly find it within themselves to love? But love in the face of such death and adversity proves that miracles come from people, that this innate capacity of ours can never be stolen from us, even if the spirit itself is shattered. It is a dream one can have even when they aren’t sleeping, guarding off the nightmares of consciousness like a knight in shining armor. Inumaki is distantly aware that there are tears streaming down his face, and if he’s not mistaken, Yuuta’s cheeks are damp as well. Echoes of starlight streak across in his vision, then his chest feels strangely empty.
Yuuta’s not breathing anymore. Maybe he can’t, or maybe he just isn’t. Time slows as if wading through sand underwater, until Yuuta finally chokes out,
“...Toge?”
And in that moment, the burn in the back of Inumaki’s throat becomes unbearable, and the acrid tang of an iron-copper alloy coats his tongue. He coughs once, red blots the gravel in a spattered mess at his feet, then a black curtain swallows the stars.
----
An ill-formed attempt at hiding the shuffling and clattering of medical tools is what finally brings Inumaki back to the world of the waking. He has no idea how long he’s been out, or even how he’s alive at all; when he’s able to muster up the energy to crack open his eyes, it’s morning, the early sun blinding his vision with a white-hot light. He’s lying flat on his back in the school infirmary, tucked into the cot closest to the window, cotton sheets far too cheap for an institution of their resources scratching at his shoulders.
It’s not long until a voice grabs his attention. “Oh? Sleeping beauty’s finally awake?”
It’s Ieiri, the school physician. She’s leaning against some piece of medical equipment Inumaki couldn’t name even if his life depended on it, twirling a pen between her slender fingers.
Yuuta is nowhere in sight.
Ieiri leans forwards and uncrosses her legs. “You’re wondering what happened, aren’t you?” she asks him.
Inumaki almost laughs at the understatement so severe that it’s almost comical. His mind is still trapped in a daze, his brain feeling like a wrung-out sponge. His body feels like it’s been disassembled and put back together just slightly differently, but he gets the odd sensation that it wasn’t Ieiri who’s responsible for it. Where is Yuuta?
He nods both cautiously and fervently at the same time.
“I’m not sure even I understand the specifics, but -- you gave him your heart, kid.” She folds her arms across her chest languidly, as if she’s nothing more than amused. “Like, literally. If he hadn’t given you his in return, you really would’ve been in trouble there.”
Inumaki’s hand flies to his chest. He can still feel a pulse lingering just below his skin, caged behind his ribs like a gently-beating drum. So he still does have a heart, somehow. But if there’s a heart in his body, then Yuuta--
Inumaki’s eyes spring wide with panic. “Tuna?” he says weakly.
Ieiri just waves him off. “Calm down, he’s fine. I told you that you gave him yours, right? He still has it, you just have his now instead. Equivalent exchange, or some shit -- who even knows? This isn’t alchemy.” She shrugs nonchalantly, like she hasn’t just described something that should be functionally impossible without a team of world-class surgeons. Then again, jujutsu has worked in stranger ways. “Hey, don’t blame it on me. I never even touched either of you. That was a risky move there, but damn if it wasn’t one hell of a confession.”
It takes a few long seconds for Ieiri’s words to fully register with him, but when they do, they slam into Inumaki’s chest like a barrelling truck.
Yuuta gave me...his heart?
The words strike him at first as impossible, but his soul tells another story. Yuuta is nowhere in sight, currently tucked off in economy class on an international flight to somewhere, but the sheer weight of his presence throughout every fiber of Inumaki’s being is unmistakable. It sounds like a fairytale, a chimerical fantasy he could never have come up with even in his wildest dreams, but there isn’t a shred of doubt in his mind that it is the truth.
“Sujiko?” Inumaki asks, instead of, ‘But why?’
Ieiri just chuckles and shakes her head. “He stayed by your bedside all night, you know. He would’ve waited for you to wake up, but Miguel said they had to leave, and it was now or never. He practically had to drag Yuuta away from you. You really didn’t hear what he said to you right before he left?”
What he said? Inumaki screws his eyes shut, trying to concentrate. As memories slowly creep their way back into his consciousness, Inumaki faintly recalls lips brushing against his cheek and Yuuta’s mouth forming words, a hand pressing against his own, fingers lacing into his -- and all of a sudden and all at once, Inumaki becomes acutely aware that there’s a foreign metallic weight encircled around his fourth left finger.
Before the sun woke from its slumber and the sky was still blanketed gray, there was a soft clink of metal against metal as Yuuta detached the ring from the chain around his neck and slipped it onto Inumaki’s finger, whispering something he still can’t quite remember into his ear. Wiping away the sleep from his eyes, Inumkai holds out his hand in front of him and admires how the gilded band glints in the creeping rays of dawn, a kaleidoscope of colors coalescing into a prism on the ceiling above him. He can just barely feel the impression of the words engraved on its inner surface, pressing against the soft underside of his finger like an unspoken promise. The chromatic spectrum on the infirmary ceiling blurs in his vision; so Inumaki blinks away the impending teardrops, but not before a few of them fall.
“Man,” Ieiri says from the edge of his periphery. “Soulmates have nothing on you two.”
And it is now that Inumaki begins to understand why Yuuta gave him his heart. They’re bound together by something far greater now. He exhales a shaky breath, Yuuta’s heart beating a steady tune rhythmically in his chest, feeling like it belongs there more than his own ever did. No matter which one of them dies alone, a life together will be anything but. Love must be a beautiful curse -- or maybe it isn’t even a curse at all. In fact, Inumaki is sure that it isn’t. He knows what the opposite of a curse is now. Love is a blessing.
And with that, the last and most precious of his memories returns to him in full. He holds the ring close to his chest and almost hears Yuuta right there beside him, repeating the words Inumaki finally remembers him saying just before he left.
“I love you too.”