Archive of Our Own ^beta

O dance along the silver sand,
And beat the turtle drum,
That youth may last for ever
And sorrow never come.

- Ian Serraillier

"You'll call me when you get a chance, right?"

Yuuta feels a little silly even as the words leave his mouth, but when Toge laughs, it sounds more fond than exasperated. "Shake," he replies easily. "Tsuna mayo. 'Sujiko, ikura.'"

The idea of a Toge selfie captioned "I lived, bitch," is enough to make Yuuta laugh too, but it's not enough to curb the cold fear that's gripping his heart. He knows Toge is capable of handling himself, but he can't shake the uneasy feeling he has about knowing that Toge is about to walk into what is potentially going to be the biggest disaster that Jujutsu Society has faced yet.

Toge seems less concerned. He's laughing freely, cracking jokes, acting as if this is a normal phone call with his best friend, and that when it's over, he's going to go watch a movie with their friends. Yuuta knows it's an act. Toge does a good job at hiding it, but not good enough. He's afraid. Somehow, Yuuta gets the feeling that he's more afraid for his friends than himself. It makes Yuuta's blood run cold. Toge is too self-sacrificial.

"Takana?"

Yuuta is hit with the sudden urge to tell Toge that he's in love with him.

The intercom crackles to life as a flight attendant begins the boarding process.

"Call me," he says instead. "Promise?"

"Shake," Toge promises.

When Yuuta lands, he has a few missed calls and a slew of texts. A few of the texts are from Toge, giving him random little updates on what's been going on, where they're sending Toge, and things like that.

It makes Yuuta feel better, but only a little. He won't be able to stop worrying until it’s all over and Toge is in his arms again.

Yuuta has a ritual for the nights he can't sleep.

It starts with calling Toge, a habit he formed while in Africa. Before Africa, he would just go to Toge's room, crawl into his bed, and let the presence of his best friend soothe him to sleep. Once he left, phone calls were the closest he could get. Toge would stay on the phone with him as he went about his day, and Yuuta would just listen like a fly on the wall. It made him feel a little bit like he was actually there. Eventually, he would fall asleep and wake up to a dead phone and a text from Toge wishing him sweet dreams.

Now, almost one year after the Shibuya Incident and two after he's left for Africa, he dials Toge's number again. He doesn’t bother going into his contacts; he doesn’t need to. He’s had it memorized for over a year, long before the Shibuya Incident even happened. It rings, and it rings, and it rings some more. Eventually, the voicemail picks up.

”Konbu. Shake. Okaka. Tsuna mayo,” Toge’s voice says through the phone, and even though Yuuta knows it’s gibberish, just random words Toge was saying as a joke, he can’t help but smile. "Takana mentaiko sujiko,” Toge continues, unable to keep his voice level. He’s cracking himself up, and although he isn’t outright laughing, his voice shakes with the force of stifled laughter, and Yuuta swears that he can feel Toge’s cursed energy through it, wrapping him in warmth and mischief. “Ikura!” He finishes, still giddy. A few beats pass before Maki chimes in with a flat voice.

”He said ‘call him later.’”

If Yuuta listens carefully, he swears he can hear Toge actually laughing in the background before the voicemail ends and a beep sounds.

Yuuta doesn't leave a voicemail. He doesn't need to.

"Maki!"

Yuuta has never felt relief stronger than when he first sees Maki. She's injured, but she's alive, and she looks downright shocked when she sees him.

"Took you long enough, asshole," she says by way of greeting. But there's no malice behind the words, and she's smiling as she says them, so Yuuta doesn't take it to heart. Instead, he peers over her shoulder.

"Where's Toge?"

He feels a little bad that the first thing he said to her after a year of being overseas was something about Toge, but he figures that she’ll forgive him for fumbling a social interaction when it’s one of the things he’s known for. He can’t be bothered to care about etiquette right now, anyway. The anxiety is coursing through his veins far too thickly to be able to focus on anything else.

Her smile falters. He can barely even hear anything over the sound of his blood rushing past his ears.

“Toge is on civilian duty,” Maki says. Something about it feels off, but Yuuta doesn’t have a reason to not trust Maki, and he trusts that Toge can take care of himself while Yuuta helps elsewhere. The tension drops from his shoulders almost immediately.

While Maki leads him to the rest of her group, Yuuta pulls out his phone and opens his text conversation with Toge. He types out a message—a quick "I love you, be safe,"—but ultimately decides against sending it. If Toge is fighting right now, he doesn't need his phone distracting him, especially with a pathetic love confession. Toge deserves the real deal, something raw and romantic and—

I'll tell him when I see him again,Yuuta decides. It'll be a proper reunion.

Next, Yuuta types out a text to Toge.

Then he deletes it. Then he types it out again, but slightly differently. Then he deletes it. He scrolls up and rereads previous text messages, as if they can give him some inspiration. It's silly that he still gets nervous composing a text message to his best friend; it’s not as if Toge's going to judge him for whatever he ends up sending, but it still feels important that he gets it right.

Types. Deletes. Types. Deletes. Types. Deletes. Types.

Sends.

From: Yuuta

I'm in love with you.

It's the same text he's typed out dozens of times, now.

He doesn't wait for a response. He stopped hoping for one months ago.

“I need you to sit, and I need you to keep a level head, and I need you to know that the answer is no,” Shoko commands. She looks tired—even more so than usual, which is saying something, but also isn't surprising. The hospital is filled with probably hundreds of victims, sorcerers and mortals alike. Not only is her cursed technique being seriously tested, but so is her medical knowledge in general. She probably hasn't sat down in hours.

Yuuta does as she says, taking a seat on the floor since there are no empty chairs or cots for him to use. He’s not even particularly hurt. Most of his injuries only took a bit of reversed curse technique to heal. He’s supposed to be here to help Shoko heal others, but now he gets the feeling something else is about to happen.

She stares at him for a few seconds, then looks up and around at the sea of people surrounding them. She frowns. Eventually, she sighs.

“I need you to go start on that end of the building,” she says, pointing. “If you think anything is beyond your scope, text me and let me know. Got it?”

Yuuta blinks and nods. It feels like the conversation just did a complete 180, and he gets the feeling there's something she isn't telling him. But she's dealing with a lot right now, so he can’t really blame her if something slipped her mind. When he stands to make his way towards his side, Shoko calls his name.

“Don’t come into the west wing without me. Okay? That’s where we’re keeping...the more gruesome victims.”

Yuuta shrugs. “Okay,” he says, feeling a bit like he’s past the point of needing gore to be censored, but not feeling like it’s worth an argument. Maybe if he finishes his side of the building, he can help Shoko with hers. They can argue then, if they have to. He's pretty confident that it's an argument he can win.

On his way to his first patient, he keeps an eye out for Toge, but he doesn't see him. He doesn't feel his cursed energy anywhere in the building either. It's a relief. That must mean he isn't injured enough to need immediate medical attention. He calls him, feeling a little antsy about the lack of contact, and it doesn't even ring. He wonders if Toge's phone is broken or dead, and he hopes it's the latter, because Toge would be upset if he lost all of his game progress on top of everything else that's happened. The call goes straight to voicemail, but Yuuta ends it without listening to it. He doesn't need to. He's heard it a thousand times before, and he'll probably hear it a thousand more.

Yuuta kneels in front of his first victim and gets to work. As he pours as much RCT into the young woman that he can, a single thought nags at the back of his mind. He forces it down, trying to focus on the task at hand.

But...

The answer to what is no?

Toge's phone is on Yuuta's nightstand.

Yuuta picks it up and stares at the lock-screen. 22:27 PM, October 22nd, 2019, it reads. He quickly averts his gaze to the wallpaper. It's a picture of all of the third years, taken a few days before Yuuta had to leave for Africa. Panda is all the way to the left, throwing his arms into the air, threatening to grab all of them in a giant group hug. Maki is next, giving Yuuta a noogie. Yuuta looks like he's whining—he probably was—and Toge is last, staring at Yuuta and Maki with a fond look in his eyes even as he holds up a peace sign towards the camera.

He stares at the expression on Toge's face for five minutes before he swipes up and types in the password. 7205. Yuuta, Maki, and Panda's birthdays.

The homescreen is the sequel to the lockscreen. Panda has officially made good on his promise and scooped all of them up. Maki looks like she's yelling at him, her fist raised in a threat of her own. The way that Panda grabbed them put Yuuta in a bit of an awkward position, completely pressed against Toge with no way of escaping. He's looking at Toge with wide eyes and a red face. His mouth is open as he tries to apologize. Toge's face is equally red, but Yuuta only knows because his ears are, the majority of his face still covered by the scarf. His eyes are wide too, and his hand is reaching towards Yuuta, like he intends to grab onto him, even though he never went through with it.

Yuuta stares at that one for twice as long. He carefully examines the expression on Toge's face and wonders if that's the same expression he would wear while being confessed to. He stares at Toge's outstretched hand, wondering what he was planning on doing. Why he never did it.

What would have changed if he had.

He's almost done with his side of the building when he sees them. The first years, clustered together in one of the few empty hallways. They're all crying, and for a second, Yuuta thinks he should leave them be. They've been through a lot, and they deserve a chance to have a good crying session together, a chance to just bask in each others' presence and appreciate the fact that they're alive. He keeps walking. He can catch up with them later.

But then he sees Megumi, and he stops in his tracks.

Kugisaki and Itadori are crying, but Megumi is sobbing. He's borderline hyperventilating, sitting on a bench with a friend on each side. The other two first years are holding him as tightly as they can, but they're exchanging unsure looks through their own tears, like they don't know how to handle whatever is going on. Megumi is grabbing at his chest with one hand, and the other is wrapped tightly in Itadori's grasp.

Yuuta is jogging over before he can really think about it, spurred on by the thought that Megumi might be seriously injured to be willing to cry like this in front of someone. When the other two look up at him, Kugisaki's face crumples, and she turns away to hide her own sobs in her elbow. Still, they don't even begin to compare to Megumi's, so he's the one that Yuuta kneels in front of.

"Megumi?" He tries. "Hey, can you hear me?" Megumi is crying too hard to speak, but he manages a nod, so Yuuta keeps going. "Are you hurt?"

He shakes his head. Yuuta looks up at Itadori for confirmation.

"We're okay," Itadori says. He's still crying, his lip wobbling like he's about to break too, but he's trying to keep it together for Megumi's sake. His head drops as he furiously rubs at his eyes and chokes back a sob of his own. "He just found out about Toge."

Suddenly Yuuta feels like he's standing on the edge of a cliff.

"What happened to Toge?"

Itadori freezes. His eyes slowly go wider and wider, but he stays stock still otherwise. Kugisaki whips back around, her hand pressed firmly against her mouth, her eyes just as wide as Itadori's. The silence is thick, pressing against Yuuta like it's trying to choke him. The only exception is Megumi, who just. Keeps. Sobbing. As if something is wrong. As if something is really wrong.

"Itadori." Even Yuuta is aware of how eerily calm his voice is. It's a stark contrast to the thrumming of his heart, which is getting faster by the second. "What happened to Toge?"

"Yuuta," Megumi chokes out. He doesn't offer any information. He just keeps sobbing and choking out Yuuta's name—"Yuuta, Yuuta, Yuuta,"—and with each repetition of his name, Yuuta teeters a little closer to the edge. His head is swimming and his throat is thick and his chest is so, so tight and he doesn't even have the mental capacity to think about how this is the first time that Megumi has called him anything other than "Okkotsu-Senpai."

"Where is he?" Yuuta asks. He feels dizzy, but he stands anyway, ready to start sprinting as soon as a direction is given. "Where is he? I can heal him. I can—"

Megumi is shaking his head. "Yuuta," he chokes out again, still shaking his head.

"That doesn't mean anything," Yuuta argues. "You're just—just tell me where he is, and I can—"

"Yuuta," Megumi chokes out once again with as much emphasis as he can muster. He still can't catch his breath, and when he looks up at Yuuta, he looks exactly like he did when he was a little kid following around Toge while they were first years, since they had both gotten to JJT a year or more before everyone else had.

"We're like brothers," Toge had said nonchalantly one day. "To me, anyway. I don't know if Megumi feels the same way."

It's suddenly very obvious that he does.

"You can't," Megumi says, shaking his head. Another sob forces its way out, but it's closer to a wail, and that's all it takes.

Yuuta falls to his knees again.

He tips over the edge.

Yuuta scrolls through Toge's photos next.

Most of them are pictures and videos of their classmates and the occasional selfie, but if he scrolls back far enough, he finds random candids of himself. It's interesting to see how he looked through Toge's eyes, to know which moments Toge deemed worthy of capturing forever. Yuuta laughing, looking bewildered, smiling softly at something out of view, lying on the ground ass up and face down as Maki stands over him after a sparring match.

The videos are Yuuta's favorites, because sometimes, they have Toge's voice. He makes commentary on their classmates from behind the camera most of the time, but sometimes, Itadori and Kugisaki shove the phone towards Megumi and drag Toge in front of the camera so he can take part in the shenanigans. There's the occasional prank, TikTok dances with Itadori, fashion shows with Kugisaki, videos of Toge annoying Megumi on purpose. Sometimes, Toge laughs out loud, bright and clear and free. Sometimes he snorts. Sometimes he chokes on whatever he's drinking after someone cracks a bad joke.

One of Yuuta's favorite videos doesn't even have Toge's face in it at all, just blurry footage of the ground and the occasional shoe as Toge sprints full speed ahead. "Ikura, ikura, ikura!" he squeals as he runs, unable to contain his laughter. He sounds utterly gleeful, even as Maki chases him, screeching every curse word in the book at him.

That video, Yuuta watches on repeat.

"You have to let me see him!"

It takes four people to hold Yuuta back as he screams at Shoko. He should be able to easily break free, but he's already used so much of his cursed energy on healing, and he's sobbing too hard to really be able to see, and one of his captors is Maki and he can't stand the idea of hurting her again, even in his blind rage.

"I said no, Yuuta," Shoko replies easily. She looks completely unbothered by Yuuta's outburst. She probably expected it.

She's still tired. Yuuta doesn't care.

"He's my best friend!" Yuuta shouts. Even with his cursed energy levels lower than they've ever been, it still floods the room. Everyone who can walk has long since fled the scene, and those who either can't or were tasked with restraining him watch as it all goes down. He can't bring himself to care about the scene he's causing or whatever image he has in the sorcery world that he's destroying. "He's my best friend!" He repeats, somewhere between a sob and a wail. "You have to let me see him, he's my best friend!"

"He wasn't just your best friend!" Maki snaps, grunting a bit as she pulls back on Yuuta's right arm. Itadori has his left. He's pretty sure Kugisaki stayed back with Megumi, who is still inconsolable, and he doesn't recognize the other sorcerers that have latched onto him or the ones that are standing between him and Shoko in case he breaks free. He only sees them as the people standing in between him and Toge. "He was mine too! He was Megumi's brother! This isn't just about you!"

Yuuta turns on her almost immediately. "You knew! You knew he was dead and you didn't tell me! You knew the whole time! Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Because I knew you'd act like this!" Maki yells right back at him. "We needed you! We still need you!"

"What about me?! What about what I need?!"

"You need to get your shit together!"

"I need to see Toge!"

"You don't want to see him, Yuuta," Shoko says matter-of-factually. Coldly. Just like the doctor who told Yuuta's family that Rika had died, the one who said there wasn't anything they could do. "Trust me."

Yuuta wants to trust her. Any other day, he would. This is Shoko, who has never been anything but kind to him, has healed so many of his wounds, has let him sleep in her office because she was the only other person awake on campus and he didn't want to be alone.

"How can I trust you?! You lied to me! I could have saved him!"

Yuuta finally manages to break his right arm free from Maki's grasp and reaches for the sword on his back. It's not there. Someone had taken it from him, likely at the beginning of his outburst, and he was too distraught to notice. Shoko doesn't seem to be worried about it as she takes a few steps towards him, leveling him with an empty gaze. This close, her eyes look haunted.

"If I couldn't heal him, what makes you think you could have?"

The sound that comes out of Yuuta is guttural and feels like it's tearing his throat apart. He drops to the ground, and everyone lets him, save for one person.

When Shoko catches him, he can barely hear her apologies through the sounds of his own wailing.

Yuuta has a system for going through Toge's notes app.

Sometimes, it feels like systems and routines are the only things that keep him going. They're hard to come by in his life as a special grade sorcerer, so he clings to the ones he can like a lifeline, praying they'll hold him together for at least one more day.

He always starts with the mundane notes. The ones that most people would probably find boring, but Yuuta loves, because they remind Yuuta of all of the little things about Toge that he fears he'll one day forget. He's read them so often that he practically has them committed to memory. The occasional grocery list. Random notes from class on days Toge forgot to bring a notebook. Some of them just say "p.261" and it takes Yuuta an embarrassingly long time to realize it's page numbers from whatever book Toge had been reading at the time.

Some of the notes are a little more personal. There's one dedicated to gift ideas for each classmate with links to different items they've mentioned wanting, or something that caught Toge's eye for them. No wonder Toge was so good at buying gifts for people. One of the notes is dedicated to each classmate's order from a few places they commonly eat at, in case Toge had to pick up food for someone and needed to know what they like. A lot of them were reminders. Ask Yuuji how that movie was , or tell Nobara about the sale.

There are voice notes, too. He likes to listen to them in order, because the first one is an experiment that Toge did with Yuuta, to test whether a recording would hold cursed energy. The voice note is a very hesitant "Clap," from Toge. Yuuta remembers that day vividly. When Toge played the note and nothing happened, he was ecstatic. Recordings aren't the same as phone calls. They don't hold cursed energy. Tried and tested. It opened a whole new world for Toge. He didn't use them often because he worried about getting complacent in his day-to-day speech, but the ones that are there are all of Toge saying random things. A lot of them are just their friends' names, repeated over and over like a prayer. Some of them are just curse-words.

Some of them are things Toge wished he could say.

"Megumi, don't give up. Maki, let us help you. Yuuji, it's not your fault. Yuuta, it's not yours either. Yuuta, I like it when you come to me for comfort. I want to comfort you every time you need it, Yuuta. Yuuta, I lo—"

That's always when Yuuta switches back to the written notes.

They don't have a funeral for Toge.

Not a dedicated one, anyway. Later, Yuuta will feel like every hangout he and his classmates have without him feels like one. But for now, there's a ceremony held for all of the lives lost during the Shibuya Incident. There just isn't enough time in the world to have a separate funeral for each person. Yuuta thinks it's better this way. He might not have come otherwise. He doesn't think he would be able to hold himself together.

And he does keep himself together. All the way until the last part, he stays strong, even as his shoulders feel heavy with the weight of his new responsibilities and his hand feels too light without the weight of Toge's own wrapped around it. The planning of the ceremony is one of those new responsibilities that he shirked, so he had no way of knowing this was coming, but suddenly they're talking about the lives of those who had "made a notable difference during the Shibuya Incident."

He isn't even listening to the speaker. It doesn't matter. His attention still catches on the name. It always has, and he suspects it always will.

"Inumaki Toge, grade one, was the last cursed speech user of the Inumaki Clan. Despite being the youngest sorcerer assigned to civilian rescue, he was also the most prolific, and thousands of lives were saved due to his efforts."

And then the speaker moves on to the next person, and Yuuta is livid. Logically, he knows that they don't have time to linger on every person. Logically, he knows that the person who wrote this script doesn’t know Toge like Yuuta does. He's angry anyway. They didn't talk about how kind Toge is. How he puts his all in everything he does, even if it‘s pulling a prank or cooking for a friend. How he‘s so careful with his words, even when his circumstances easily warrant him throwing caution to the wind and taking everyone down.

No one, save for a handful of people, would ever get to know Toge.

Yuuta feels lucky to be one of the ones who had the privilege to, but at the same time, he almost wishes he hadn't. When Rika died, he didn't have much time to mourn what he lost because he was too busy worrying about the things that would come. Now, the things he lost are all he can think about. He'll never get another song recommendation from Toge. He'll never get to fall asleep on the couch with Toge again. He'll never get to take another midnight stroll with Toge.

The only thing he doesn't mourn is his lost chance to confess.

He doesn't think he deserves to. He can't help but feel as though he should have been there when Toge died. He should have gone straight to him instead of staying with Maki and the others to join the big fight. If he had been there, he could have saved him. Shoko assured him that by the time she got to him, he was already gone, but if he could have gotten there before it got to that point—

The worst part is that Toge died believing that nobody loved him.

Sure, he knew that his friends and teachers loved him. But Toge deserved to know that he was the reason Yuuta was able to force himself out of bed in the mornings. He deserved to know the lengths Yuuta would go to for him. He deserved to know how many nights Yuuta stayed awake just thinking about him. Yuuta had plenty of time and plenty of chances to tell Toge all of this and more. The problem was that he thought he had even more, so he willingly allowed himself to chicken out every time, promising himself that it would happen at the next opportunity.

There aren't anymore opportunities.

There isn't anymore time.

Inumaki Toge died thinking he was alone, and Yuuta won't forgive himself for it.

Yuuta has never gotten this far into his ritual before.

Toge had treated his notes app like his diary because it was always on him, locked with a password, and he could type a lot faster than he could write. They were all kind of moot points. Maki stole his phone all the time and everyone knew his password. But that last part was the important one, because he had a lot to say, and not very many ways to say it.

Yuuta has read the notes about his classmates over and over again. A lot of them are sad, like the one about Toge's guilt at not being able to protect Megumi during the Goodwill event. But a lot of them are happy, too, like the one about Itadori's "resurrection." Reading them almost makes him feel like Toge is still alive and telling him a story while Yuuta just sits there and listens. He loves these notes because they're like an extra peek into Toge's mind. They're a part of what made Toge so inherently Toge.

He doesn't read the notes about himself; he's never been able to bring himself to. He's always been worried about what he'll find. The notes span all the way back to before they had even met, which means that somewhere, there‘s a note with Toge's first impressions of Yuuta. And it's not that he's worried they haven't improved much from there. He's scared of seeing Toge's opinion of him improve, only to decline again, more and more the longer that Yuuta was in Africa. Friendship decay, an online article had called it. What if Toge secretly felt like Yuuta was annoying, or that he called too often, or that he changed too much while he was gone, and was just too nice to tell Yuuta? It feels mean to think so lowly of Toge, but it also feels inevitable.

He finishes reading the notes about his classmates. He switches the phone off.

But then, he deviates from the routine that he holds so dear. He double taps on the phone's screen, and when it comes back to life, his eyes are immediately drawn towards the date.

12:24 AM, October 23rd, 2019, it reads.

Yuuta steels himself.

He swipes up.

7205.

The lights in Toge's room are off, so Yuuta really isn't expecting to see anyone in there.

Megumi defies all odds as he sits on his beanbag chair in Toge's room at 2 in the morning, watching some anime.

"Yuuta," he greets, not looking away from the TV.

Ever since the Shibuya Incident, Yuuta hasn't been able to feel anything, but he's suddenly hit with the familiar feeling of anxiety. "Oh, um, sorry Megumi, I didn't mean to—"

Megumi waves him away. "You're fine."

Yuuta stands in the doorway for a few seconds. He feels like he’s encroaching on Megumi’s sacred place. He feels like he should say something. He feels like he needs to check on Megumi, ask him how he's feeling, if he's okay. But he knows that he won't get a straight answer anyway, and he's not prepared to answer the same question were it to get turned back onto him.

"You can come in," Megumi says, saving Yuuta from himself. "If the TV won't keep you awake, I don't mind if you sleep in here."

At first, it's a little eerie that Megumi knows Yuuta wants to sleep in Toge's room. But it makes a little more sense when he considers the time. Toge has probably told Megumi about Yuuta's less-than-stellar sleeping habits, and if he hasn't, Yuuta's prominent eye-bags are doing it for him.

He's not sure if the invitation is genuine or just Megumi being polite, but he doesn't care. It's partially because he knows he won't be able to sleep tonight otherwise, but it's mostly because he hasn't seen Megumi in two days, and he's been a little worried about the fact that the only people he's been speaking to are Itadori and Kugisaki. Yuuta can speak from experience. Isolating yourself after losing someone you love is not a productive way to grieve.

He shuts the door behind himself as he treads as lightly as possible towards Toge's bed, trying to pose as little disturbance as possible to Megumi. He settles under Toge's covers with his back towards Megumi and tries not to think about the fact that his sheets aren't going to smell like him forever. When the thought of Toge's room eventually being cleaned out and given to a different student surfaces in his mind, Yuuta shoves it back. And when his mind starts to consider the fate of Toge's garden that no one else knows how to take care of, he rolls back over and watches Megumi.

He looks tired. Everyone does these days, but his eye-bags are starting to take after Yuuta's own. Yuuta gets the feeling that for all the time he's spent in bed lately, Megumi hasn't actually been sleeping much. It's not surprising. Megumi and Toge were basically brothers, and even though no one really talked about it, everyone knew it. They spent a lot of time together before they were officially students. Once they were officially enrolled, they spent less time together, but Toge still made time to hang out with him at least once a week, even if Megumi turned down his invitation in lieu of plans with his classmates occasionally. He wonders if Megumi regrets ever saying no.

"I can feel you staring," Megumi says, and Yuuta's heart nearly leaps out of his chest.

"Sorry," Yuuta says, propping himself up on an elbow. "I was just...I was wondering what you're watching."

"It's just a show that Toge and I used to watch together every week. It's not really long, so every few months we would marathon it again." Megumi says it so nonchalantly, like it's no big deal, but Yuuta remembers Toge talking about it, and he's pretty sure Megumi cares about it just as much as Toge had. It wasn't even the show itself that Toge really cared for. He just liked having a common interest with Megumi outside of Jujutsu or trauma. Something that Toge could talk about when he got the feeling Megumi just wanted to feel normal for once.

"I think he told me about it," Yuuta says, hoping to not come on too strong. He worries that if he seems too enthusiastic, it'll scare Megumi away, like a wounded animal. Or it'll make him close himself off again, right after Yuuta just got him to open up a bit. "He wanted me to watch it with him when I got back from Africa, but..."

Ah. Crap. Yuuta mentally scolds himself for unwittingly steering the conversation towards such a dark place, but Megumi doesn't seem to mind. He grabs the remote, and Yuuta watches the screen as the cursor goes to the episode list and selects the first one. Then Megumi pats the beanbag chair next to him.

Part of Yuuta is already mourning the sleep he's definitely not going to get tonight, but the bigger part of him is celebrating this as a major success. Toge would be thrilled to see him have even a small moment of bonding with Megumi. Yuuta probably wasn't going to get any sleep tonight anyway. He gets up, taking Toge's blanket with him, and makes himself comfortable as Megumi hits play. They don't talk during the first episode. Yuuta can't help but wonder if Megumi is doing this purely for Yuuta's sake or his own.

Megumi doesn't speak again until halfway through the second episode.

"Did anyone ever tell you what I said about you?"

Yuuta blinks in surprise. He quickly runs through his memories as fight music plays in the background, but he comes up blank. He shakes his head.

Megumi snorts, but he's not smiling. "I'm surprised Toge didn't tell you. I said that you're the only senpai I respected."

Respected, Yuuta catches. Past tense. He tries not to look too deeply into it, deciding that Megumi probably respects other people now in addition to Yuuta, and not that he's lost that respect for him.

"I thought you were pretty pathetic when I first met you,” Megumi continues, his eyes never leaving the TV. Yuuta doesn’t wince, which is a far cry from the Yuuta that Megumi is talking about, so yeah, that’s a fair assessment. “But when Toge got back from his first mission with you, he said that you didn’t ask him a bunch of questions about his technique like everyone else. You didn’t try to make him conform to a ‘normal’ way of talking, or force him to type stuff out on his phone. You just asked him if there was a guidebook on how to speak Onigiri.” Megumi chuckles, and Yuuta’s face is already exceptionally hot, even though he feels like he’s going to cry any second. “He talked about you like you were his favorite person in the world.”

”I think that honor goes to you,“ Yuuta says.

Megumi shakes his head. “Sure, maybe at one point. But eventually…in between Getou’s attack and you leaving for Africa, Toge started looking at you like you hung the moon. I couldn’t get him to stop talking about you. It was annoying. But you made him really happy. You really made him happy.” Megumi finally drags his eyes away from the TV to look at the floor. Yuuta is definitely crying now; he can feel how wet his face has gotten without even raising a hand. “I respect that. I respect you. So…thanks.”

Yuuta doesn’t know how to respond, so he looks at the ground too. He feels like he should reciprocate, like he should say something along the lines of “So did you,” but the only thing he can force out of his mouth is, “I just treated him the way he deserved to be treated.“ Then he laughs, shaky and full of tears. “I didn’t treat him as well as I could have, though. I mean…I never even worked up the courage to properly ask him out like he deserved.”

When Megumi scoffs, Yuuta’s head snaps back up. “You two were practically dating anyway. Everyone knew it. You were stupidly in love. Disgustingly, some have said.”

Suddenly, Yuuta is very aware of music in the background. The episode has ended. Instead of grabbing the remote to play the next episode, Megumi reaches into his pocket and pulls out a purple phone. Yuuta balks at the sight of it. It’s Toge’s phone, perfectly intact and charged, apparently, based on the light it briefly emits when Megumi holds it out towards Yuuta.

“Here. They gave it to me when…they were going to give all of his stuff to the Inumaki Clan, but Ijichi actually argued until they agreed to give it all to me instead.”

The idea of Ijichi arguing with someone is so foreign to Yuuta that it actually shocks him into laughing. Megumi cracks the first genuine smile that Yuuta has seen from him since before he went to Africa. “He said it’s what Toge would have wanted. Shoko said there was yelling and cursing involved. Eventually, Yaga agreed just to shut him up.”

”I didn’t know he had it in him,” Yuuta says, still staring down at Toge’s phone. He reaches out, but doesn’t grab it, his hand listlessly hovering in the empty air. “Are you sure? I mean, Toge was—“

”I’m sure,” Megumi says firmly. He shakes the phone in Yuuta’s direction until he grabs it. Toge still has the same purple phone case with the same silly onigiri sticker Maki had gifted him one day, with the weird ring on the back of it so it would be easier to hold on to while watching YouTube upside down on the couch. “I already sent myself everything that’s on it that I want to save. Besides, I don’t like to dwell on the past too much. But you…” He looks Yuuta up and down for a second. “You look like a dweller.”

Yuuta wants to point out that watching a shared show in the bedroom of your dead loved one is, in fact, major dweller behavior, but he doesn’t want to ruin the moment. ”Thank you,“ he says instead, staring down at the phone. It sits heavily in his hand, unfamiliar, despite being the same kind of phone that Yuuta has.

”No problem.”

Megumi hits play. When the last episode ends, Megumi is asleep on Yuuta’s shoulder, and Toge’s room is bathed in sunlight.

Yuuta starts at the beginning.

A lot of the notes read the same way the mundane ones do. Most of them aren’t even directly about Yuuta. Usually, he’s just a line or two in a sea of otherwise uneventful text.

Maki has already written off the new guy, and we haven't even met him yet. That's fair. He sounds like an asshole, but then again, I guess you never know until you meet them.

Yuuta gives off major "puppy in a cardboard box in the rain" energy. His curse gives off major "bite bite kill kill" energy.

during our mission panda said that he's not surprised i've "already taken a liking to yuuta" what does that even mean

I don't know how to help Yuuta, but I feel obligated to.

I had my first mission with Yuuta today, and I think something is different? He keeps looking at me. He's probably just curious about my cursed speech, but it's kind of weird. He could just ask me if he wants to know that badly.

I don't know how to help Yuuta, but I want to.

Today I found out that Yuuta keeps a list of all the onigiri words and what he THINKS they mean at the time and I don't have the heart to tell him that half of the words he wrote down were just random words to fill the silence. He seems like he gets uneasy if things stay too silent for too long, so I try to talk when I can, but he ALSO gets too uneasy if he can't really understand what I'm saying, so I can't really win.

Yuuta started helping me in the garden. I prefer to do the garden work alone, but I don't mind when it's Yuuta. He's actually quiet for once. He seems peaceful??

Yuuta doesn't sleep. Like, ever. I can fix that. I want to fix that.

Yuuta is so kind.

The more Yuuta reads, the closer and closer he gets to present day, and eventually, the notes begin to take a turn.

That makes Yuuta’s breath catch in his throat. He checks the date on it. It’s some random day during Yuuta’s time in Africa. He can’t even think of what had happened that convinced Toge that Yuuta was in love with him, but he can’t stop reading that one line, over and over again. Yuuta is in love with me. Yuuta is in love with me. Yuuta is in love with me.

He knew.

This whole time, Toge knew.

Yuuta doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or cry. He settles on doing both. The feeling of relief that surges through him at the thought is unlike anything he’s ever felt before. Toge knew. When he died, he knew . Yuuta keeps reading, suddenly feeling like he’ll die if he doesn’t. There’s a lot more routine notes that only mention Yuuta once or twice, but every so often, he comes across paragraphs devoted to his new haircut or his eyes or his laugh. It’s sort of embarrassing. He wants to live in this feeling forever.

Eventually, he makes it to the last note.

Yuuta doesn’t just cry—he wails, and he’s pretty sure the whole building can hear him, but no one bothers to ask if he’s okay. They know what day it is. They know he isn’t. They’re probably not okay either. By the time Yuuta calms down, his throat is hoarse and his chest hurts and Toge’s phone is about to die. It has just enough battery to listen to one more voice note before the screen goes black.

“Yuuta, I love you.”