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It rains on the dawn of the end of the world.
Utahime rushes through Tokyo Jujutsu High's garden, cursing under her breath at the unexpected downpour and finding shelter on a gazebo, rain splattering over the decorated multi-layered roof, sprinkling just a bit through the open sides.
She sighs, and when she runs her hands through her damp hair to redo her ponytail, she notices she's not alone.
“Hi.”
“Dear God!” Utahime jolts, then gets embarrassed about it because what kind of sorcerer gets startled by their own wife?
“Nope, just me.” Shoko smiles ruefully, sitting on the bench that runs the back of the gazebo.
The smell of cigarettes clings to her clothes, overpowering the scent of wet grass blooming with the rain. There’s a pack next to her, half-empty, the other half just butts on her ashtray.
Utahime wrinkles her nose, and Shoko sheepishly looks away.
“I was looking for you,” Utahime says. “Smoke break?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
The worst part of it all is that she really means that apology.
“It's alright.” Utahime sits with her on the bench, trying to keep her distance because she doesn't want Shoko to get wet from her clothes.
Shoko takes off her white coat and wraps it around Utahime's shoulders, scooting closer anyway. “Sorry it smells like cigarettes, I just don't want you to get sick. Then you'd get me sick, and I wouldn't know what to do.”
“Very funny,” Utahime says.
Shoko laughs a little, her shoulder bumping against Utahime's. “Sorry we're stuck here now.”
The rain comes down like a wave, chilling the air with something colder than dread. Three apologies from Shoko in just four sentences.
“It's just rain,” says Utahime. “We can leave through it if we really want to.”
“Yeah—” The look on Shoko's face suggests she doesn't want to.
Shoko hasn't slept in approximately thirty six hours, Utahime is keeping count. She’s been keeping herself on her feet with quick touches of reverse cursed energy every few minutes.
Shoko claims it's refreshing enough to keep going, but it takes a toll regardless. The circles around her eyes are darker than ever, and her hands are shaking.
Her hands are shaking.
“Shoko.” Utahime takes them in her own, and even though her fingers are damp with rainwater Shoko's hands, dry as they are, are still much, much colder.
Reverse cursed technique or not, no one should stay awake and on their feet for so long.
It's a temporary solution, what Shoko is doing, trying to stave off blood loss with a bandaid. She did the same last year during Christmas Eve.
It can't happen again.
“I guess I'm a little—” Shoko sniffs, letting Utahime hold her hands still. “Ah, rattled.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Yeah, I guess you are,” Shoko says under her breath.
It’s been more than half a day since one of Utahime’s students died.
It’s been more than half a day since the world fell apart, cracking open from the center of Shibuya District through the rest of the country.
Perhaps Utahime should be thinking more about that. She should be worried and planning and scheming and trying to fix things, but right now what she truly wants is for her wife to get some sleep.
Utahime can’t fix the world, but she can make sure Shoko rests. At the end of the day that’s just as important, if not more.
It’s Shoko who pulls Utahime closer to her, burying her face in Utahime’s damp hair, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “Are you alright?”
Utahime’s ear ends up right over Shoko’s chest, against the steady and faint beat of her heart. “As alright as you are.”
Thirty six hours since Shoko last slept, even longer since the two of them last touched each other.
Utahime caught sight of Shoko among the wreckage, caught sight of her in an improvised clinic, caught sight of her moving with speedy precision through the beds of the injured.
But Utahime isn’t a doctor, and she had to focus on other things like settling her remaining students and helping to keep at bay the relentless waves of cursed spirits swarming the city.
A parting gift from the thing wearing the body of Shoko’s dead friend.
They hold each other alone in this small place, surrounded by a storm that rages in a multitude of different ways, hands gripping fabric and shivering together and trying to drown out what’s happening outside. Shoko is cold and Utahime is soaked but they don’t pull away.
If melancholy could be an embrace, it would be this one they’re sharing.
Shoko is the one to lean back first, turning her head to the side. Her bottom lip is trembling, but Shoko never cries, she always says she’s seen too much to cry, she calls herself desensitized and Utahime hates it when she does.
She cried at their wedding. Both of them did. The first and only time Utahime ever saw her cry.
There are apologies written all over Shoko’s body when she picks up the cigarette pack waiting on the bench. She’s not looking at Utahime, but there is still regret. She expects Utahime to say something, scold her perhaps.
But a simple “Can I have one?” is all that Utahime says.
Shoko looks at her now, and the sky keeps falling down.
They stare at each other, Utahime clutching Shoko’s coat around herself because she’s begun to feel the chill of her wet clothes. There are spots where Shoko’s sweater is wet, too, the spots where Utahime pressed against her.
It’s cold and noisy out here, Shoko is looking at her like she’s never seen her before, like she’s a stranger and not the woman she’s shared a bed with for the past six years.
Then Shoko sighs, taking the unlit cigarette out of her mouth, but instead of handing it over she carefully tucks it back into the pack.
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“No, you can’t have one, Utahime.”
Just as suddenly as it started, the storm slows down to a trickle, the hammering of water above them reduced to gentle taps. The sky is still gray, peppered with dark clouds, but the world grows a little quieter.
Shoko, offhandedly and as if she isn't thinking about it too hard, tosses the cigarette pack over her shoulder and into the rain.
It lands on the wet grass, cardboard darkening before caving under the pressure of the water. Forever ruined.
“I wasn’t going to tell you to—” Utahime frowns. How to phrase this? “I know it’s been hard for you.”
“Yeah, it has,” Shoko says. “It’s been hard for you, too. I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Shoko, you couldn’t—”
“It’s alright.” She breathes out. Her hands are still shaking, and this time when Utahime grabs them both of their fingers are cold. “It’s alright, Utahime, it’s fine. I was just feeling a bit nostalgic, but it’s not worth it.”
“Okay,” Utahime says. “And not getting any sleep is also not worth it.”
“Do you know how many people are in that infirmary?”
“None in critical condition anymore, thanks to you.”
Shoko rubs her eyes with one of her trembling hands, and that brief second where her eyelids are closed stretches so long and so tiredly Utahime thinks perhaps she’s not going to open them again, perhaps she can’t.
It’d been a long, long night.
“Listen,” Utahime says. “I know it’s not that simple, I’m not telling you to just abandon everything.”
It’s not as simple. Caring so much about someone doesn’t magically fix things, doesn’t magically make the world an easier place. Effort is always needed.
“I asked Nitta-san,” she continues. “She can watch the patients through the night. You’ll still be on call, just in the next room over, she can wake us up if anyone needs you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead, Shoko, stop neglecting yourself.”
“You too, then.”
“What do you—?”
Shoko turns Utahime’s hand over, slides her damp sleeve up. Blood stains her wrist, a fresh cut she barely had time to think about on her way there. Ah. She forgot about it.
“You got this out there?” Shoko asks.
Out there is vague but she means the crumbling world. Yes. Utahime remembers now. She found someone in the wreckage, a non-sorcerer, and she cut herself trying to get them out.
A cursed spirit attacked, and the person Utahime was helping died.
“Yes,” she says. It was a few hours ago. How could she forget?
Too many other things in her mind.
“Sloppy. It could've gotten infected.”
“Sorry.” Now Utahime’s the one apologizing.
Without a warning, Shoko runs her thumb over the broken skin. Utahime winces and snatches her arm back but it’s already done.
The cut closes itself without a fuss, leaving behind only the dry blood and the last throes of reverse cursed energy. It’s a minute effort because it’s a minute wound, but it visibly adds more onto the weight that hunches Shoko’s back.
Utahime clicks her tongue. “That was unnecessary. It wasn't going to kill me.”
The rain falls down. Shoko’s lip trembles again. “I know that. But can you blame me?”
Then she stands, leaving Utahime behind.
“Where are you going?”
Shoko looks over her shoulder, standing on the edge of the gazebo, framed by the muted garden and the trickling rain.
“To sleep,” she says simply.
Utahime doesn't—entirely believe her.
Shoko's bottom lip is trembling with something that has nothing to do with the cold or the exhaustion.
It clicks then, as she watches Shoko walk out and into the rain, what happened, what she just said.
It wasn't going to kill me.
Utahime is such an idiot.
The sky strikes her as odd once she steps outside, once rainwater seeps into the fabric of her clothes again. The sun is setting, yet there are no colors, everything is gray, the clouds are thick and pouring down into the garden, water splashing at Utahime’s feet as she jogs towards Shoko.
“You’ll get sick,” Shoko says once Utahime catches up and stands in front of her.
“We’ll get sick, you mean.”
“Yeah, and what will I do?”
“Would you just stop for a second?”
Shoko stops trying to get around her, and Utahime stops trying to block her path forward.
The rain keeps falling down. It’s gentle now. It sticks Shoko’s hair to her forehead. It’s not strong enough to hide the tears running down her face.
“I’m sorry,” Utahime says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Shoko has seen and talked about death enough in her life, Utahime doesn’t need to add to that just to prove a point.
“Don't you think we should both just—stop saying sorry?”
Utahime smiles, just a bit, she’s not sure she has much left in her for anything else. “Agree.”
Everything is cold. Shoko’s cheek under her palm, Shoko’s tears mingling with the rainwater, wet fabric on her skin, heavy.
The breath they exchange when they kiss tastes like cigarettes but at least it’s warm. It’s the only warm thing. There’s not enough heat between them even when Shoko pulls her closer, they’re both shivering, it’s a little uncomfortable, the water is freezing.
Utahime doesn’t know how many hours it’s been since the last time she kissed Shoko, too many to count.
It should be dramatic, really, kissing in the rain. It should be revelatory or giddy like they’re in a movie, like they can pretend the water is washing away all of their troubles, but it’s really not.
It’s quiet, and it’s cold. And Shoko is still crying and Utahime is still wiping her tears away to no avail because it’s still raining, and there’s water everywhere, and Shoko is still crying.
“This stupid rain—” Shoko says, sniffling, looking away. “I hate it.”
Utahime’s thumbs follow the angles of her cheekbones, droplets sliding across skin. “I think it’s lovely.”
Sunrise still arrives even after the dawn of the end of the world.
There’s a kiss exchanged before the first beams of sunlight. Hands finding hands under blankets, fingers intertwining, a whisper of good morning.
And a sneeze.
“Told you you’d get sick,” Shoko says. “Now you have to stay here and drink lots of liquids and get lots of rest, it’s the only way of dealing with a cold.”
“Very funny.”