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Four months after she has her first child, Suguru takes advantage of Satoru’s first longer mission to visit her parents in the countryside. When they’d called on her birthday she said she would visit soon, she rationalises, and two nights – barely three days – is the perfect amount of time to spend. Not too long, not too short. They’re happy to host. They want to see their first grandchild.
“You could do literally anything else with your time,” Satoru reminds her, throwing things into a bag. Suguru packs more methodically, checking as she goes to make sure she’s got everything. “If you’re desperate to be around disapproving elders you could visit my mother.”
They didn’t get married before they had a baby. There was no time and it wasn't legal anyway and Suguru had learnt to not care about what was proper, even if it meant she had to endure Satoru’s mother’s incessant complaining about her first grandchild being a bastard. Suguru made sure to remind her at any turn that she can’t complain, that having a bastard for a grandchild is the tradeoff for having one in any capacity, so she should stop concerning herself with legitimacy and stop sending Satoru messages with baby names she likes.
They picked one that was not on the list, of course. Gojo Ryusei is born almost two full years after his second cousin, right in the thick of the first real bad chill of the year. He comes out screaming and crying and Suguru forgets to be embarrassed about the fact that Shoko has seen entirely too much of her because he’s perfect, so perfect, even wrinkly and damp and wailing his head off. The cutest baby that Suguru has ever seen and so, so small.
He’s still so small, but he’s growing fast. She’ll forget to pay attention to how his weight fits in her arms one day then suddenly realise the cradle is not as neat anymore, her little boy just that little bit bigger, moving wildly. It makes her want to sit and do nothing but focus on him, day in and day out, but she’d go insane if she did that, if all she ever did was let herself be thrown up on and cried on.
Satoru doesn’t have the same qualms. She rejects mission after mission, foisting them off onto anyone strong enough, only taking what she has to, content to let herself be covered in baby vomit. She doesn’t even feel guilty about it. And Suguru knows, knows that it’s not a decision that Satoru made thoughtlessly, that childcare is hard work and they want to be good mothers and being a good mother means (at the very least) being there, coming home in time for dinner. But there’s a whole world outside of their room. There’s a whole world out there that needs fixing.
It’s almost worse now, Suguru’s age-old need to try and make the world a better place. There’s so much evil in it, so much hate, and she’d bought her baby into it anyway so she’s got to do something about it. She doesn’t want to admit she doesn’t know where to put herself, whether it’s better to stay with Ryusei or renew her efforts to make a better world for him, one where he won’t have to make the sorts of bad decisions that Suguru had to make. It keeps her awake when Satoru sleeps soundly beside her, long into the night.
“I’d rather die,” Suguru says finally, folding another bib into a tight space. Babies need so much shit.
Satoru scoffs. “And visiting your parents won’t kill you?” She pulls the mission report away from Ryusei quickly. He’s at the stage where he’ll grab something if it comes even mildly in reach of him, which has led to lots of messy incidents and more than a few strands of Suguru’s hair lost to the grip of a baby. “You could go to skiing, have a holiday, be with Mimi and Nana.”
She could. Suguru could do all of those things, but a little part of her really does want to see her parents. Whenever she sees Gojo Suzume look fondly at Ryusei, Suguru aches. Despite everything, she wants to see her parents with her son, she wants to see them fall in love with him just like Suzume did. She’s surprisingly good with him, even though it’s clear she had very little to do with raising Satoru in her infancy. “It’s because he’s not old enough to talk yet,” Satoru always grumbles. “He’ll spit his first word and she’ll disappear.” Suguru can understand that; her own problems started around the time she learnt to speak.
“I’m going to visit my parents,” Suguru repeats. She doesn’t notice how hard she’s gripping her t-shirt until Satoru unfurls her fists.
The house is exactly as Suguru remembers it, small and rickety, tucked away from the main road. Her father’s old car is parked in front, the porch light on, dim and yellow-tinged. She thanks the driver for helping her to unload her things, careful to make sure that Ryusei won’t wake again.
She raps her knuckles against the door once, then again, before her father opens it. Two years shouldn’t be a very long time to make a difference but Suguru managed to almost ruin her life in two years, so she knows exactly how much of an age it is. In the two years she hasn’t seen her father he’s gotten greyer, gained more lines on his face but not very many around his eyes and mouth. Not much joy, then, but he smiles when he sees her, smiles harder when he sees Ryusei sleeping in his carrier. “Is this my grandson, then,” he whispers, barely louder than the sound of the animals in the underbrush. “Come in Suguru, come in.”
It’s late, late enough that her parents would usually be asleep, but they’re up today, waiting for her. Her mother stands by the stairs, a whole head smaller than Suguru, with a not-quite smile on her face. “Hello, Suguru,” she says, and she’s heard her voice on the phone almost every week for two years, but there’s nothing like hearing it in person. It steals her away for more than a moment, and suddenly Suguru is no longer an adult woman with a baby but a teenager leaving home for the last time. “Welcome home, Suguru.”
She’s set up in her old bedroom, everything the same as it was before but cleaner, of course, because her mother couldn’t allow dust to linger more than two seconds before she was wiping it away. Everything is the same in this room, even the parts of it her mother hated, the peeling posters and stacks of CDs, notches carved into her bed and desk with the knife she’d taken home from Jujutsu Tech. There’s a crib shoved next to her desk, the already small room made smaller. “For Ryusei,” her mother explains, fluffing the sheets slightly. “How was the journey? Was it alright with the baby?"
“Could have been better,” she admits. Ryusei isn’t used to cars yet. Neither Suguru or Satoru can legally drive and Satoru prefers walking, anyway, straps Ryusei to her chest and takes him around Tokyo pointing to corners they’ve been to before. This is where your mama got too drunk and threw up, here’s another place she threw up, here’s where we had a heavy makeout sesh.
“You’re unmarried,” she says, looking down at Ryusei, at Suguru’s distinctly ringless finger. He’s sleeping, ignorant of everything until he’ll wake up for a night feed. “I thought you’d get married first.”
“It’s not exactly legal here,” Suguru reminds her. It’s almost surreal to be the one doing so. She’d endured at least ten years of phone calls reminding her of how impossible it would be to get married in Japan, and wouldn’t you prefer the security, Suguru, why not find a nice man and–
“Don’t your–“ she waves her hand “–don’t you people have something? An alternative?”
Suguru wants to laugh. “No. Of course we don’t.”
“What about abroad?”
“It wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t be valid here anyway.”
Her mother is silent for a long time, not doing much other than looking at Ryusei, as if she’s committing the image of him to memory. “He looks a lot like you,” she says finally. “And like her. One of your people’s tricks, then?” She didn’t think her mother remembered Satoru’s face enough to pick out her features on Ryusei but the eyes are a dead giveaway, Suguru supposes, beautiful and blue and alight with the kind of innocent joy that makes envy flare in Suguru’s stomach sometimes, hot and needy.
It’d been extremely complicated. There were multiple times where Suguru had been ready to suck it up and do what Satoru had originally suggested, which was acquire the sperm of one of her cousins and then kill him immediately after. But she had faith in Shoko, faith in Satoru, faith in herself. It took a lot of reversed curse technique and a lot of waiting, then even more hoping. Six months of it before Shoko did the ultrasound and said Congratulations, you’re going to be parents. It was worth it, she thinks, even with all the pain.
The other ones are frozen in the morgue if they ever want to try again. They haven’t discussed it, too tired with one, but they probably will use at least another. She doesn’t want Ryusei to be as lonely as she was. But she didn’t really enjoy being pregnant, if Suguru’s being honest. She doubts anyone really enjoys being pregnant, if the tuts and sighs and promises of worse to come were any indication. But pregnancy had been a necessary evil. Nine months of pains and aches and vomiting and nail biting, then ten hours of labour for her sweet baby.
Suguru had never really found out where her curses really went, if there was some sort of pocket inside her where they all sat. A second womb, or something, that could rapture or merge, suddenly, into the one where her baby sat, but Shoko had assured her that wasn’t the case. She’d been in Suguru’s abdomen and it looked normal. Completely average. And it’d been nice to know that while Ryusei was inside her, nothing could touch him. He was perfectly protected from everything, perfectly healthy, perfectly safe.
“I suppose you could say that,” she agrees, because she doesn’t think her mother wants to know all the freaky details of it all. “He’s a good baby, nothing like I was.”
Her mother frowns, wringing her hands in her lap. “You were a good baby,” she says, almost fiercely, fierce enough that it shocks Suguru into silence. “You were just particular, but who can blame you for wanting something done well the first time around?”
It’s not until her mother leaves the room that she remembers suddenly that there are still pill bottles far beneath her bed. Suguru leaves Kotsaru in his bassinet so she can crawl underneath it and fish them all out. The labels are faded but she can still just about make out what they are: risperidone, escitalopram, lamotrigine; antipsychotic, antidepressant, anticonvulsant. The bottles are not quite empty but not quite full and she doesn’t really want to be holding them but she doesn’t know where to put them, either. She puts them in her bag and decides to flush them down to the toilet later, just to be safe, then brushes the dust off her clothes.
Ryusei makes a noise from the bassinet, one that Suguru has come to associate with general dissatisfaction. He’s a good baby, such a good baby, and so pretty too. He looks so much like her. He’s got her hair, her nose, her mouth, but he does have Satoru’s eyes. Not as bright but still blue, but they change week by week, sometimes greenish, sometimes more purple. Eye colour doesn’t stabilise for a long time, apparently. Gojo Suzume had been openly disappointed – no white haired Gojo scions for her to parade around – but Satoru had told her to shove it. He was perfect.
She runs down the hall to wash her hands then runs back down the hall and into her room, picking Ryusei up before his little grunts turn into full blown wailing. She almost brings him to her chest before she stops: what if she hasn’t gotten all the dust off her clothes? She puts him back down, strips out of her jumper so she’s left in only the thin cotton t-shirt underneath and finally, finally, allows herself to comfort her baby.
He snuffles into her neck, grasping at her hair almost immediately. “I know, I know, it’s scary,” she mutters, dropping a kiss to the top of his head. “You haven’t slept away from home before, not since we bought you back from Shoko’s.” She still couldn’t bring herself to admit she’d given birth in a morgue, even if it’s only to Ryusei, who has no knowledge of death, of suffering.
She can’t wait for him to start talking. If he’s anything like Satoru, he’ll probably never shut up, and Suguru will have another little chatterbox in her house who takes silence as a challenge. He grips her hair tighter, tugging until pain blooms in her scalp and she’s got to tug his hand away. Ryusei grips onto her thumb instead, trying to shove it into his mouth. She’s glad she washed her hands. “I love you so much, do you know that?” Ryusei stares up at her with fathomless blue eyes, lids drooping. She’ll have to put him back to bed soon. “You probably don’t know anything else, but I hope you know that.”
Suguru wakes up to Ryusei in an unusually bad mood. She stumbles down to the kitchen to feed him after brushing her teeth, making a bottle while he wails into her neck. It’s only her father at the table, her mother off doing something or the other, and if he’s annoyed at the sound of a baby screaming their head off first thing in the morning they don’t show it, eating breakfast as Suguru slumps into a free chair, Ryusei only marginally quieter with the nipple of a bottle in his mouth.
“Does he cry like this often,” her father asks, when Ryusei decides he’s tired of eating and goes back to wailing. Suguru places him over the rag on her shoulder, burping him the way she usually does, even with his screams in her ears.
“No, he doesn’t,” and he’s just as non-plussed at the bite in her voice. Always so placid, so unemotional when compared to her and her mother. “It must be because he’s in a new place.”
He hums, going back to his newspaper. “Babies are very hard. Children are very hard, no matter their age.” he says. It’s not the first time Suguru’s heard this but she understands it more and less now that she’s got a child of her own. She knows in her heart that they were only trying to do the right thing, to fix her, but they’re still trying to fix things that aren’t wrong about her at all. They can’t accept her for who she is, don’t even consider doing so, but claim to love her.
She can’t imagine treating Ryusei like they did her. Even the idea of it makes her sick.
It makes being back so weird, because she knows they know. There’s none of the pussyfooting she used to do, the rushed denials. It was shameful — she was ashamed — but it’d been instinct to deflect. Never easy but never hard to do. But Suguru has a baby with her lesbian lover and there’s no denying it, now, no use deflecting it, and the past two years have been horrible but they’re taking it in stride now, as if all they needed to do was see Suguru and know she wasn’t backing down on this. It’s not acceptance – she’s not dumb enough to confuse acceptance with whatever this is – but it’s not what she’s used to either. She almost wishes they would tell her she was making a mistake, that she’s an idiot, because at least that would be clearer than whatever they’re doing now. At least then she could leave and not feel guilty about it.
“Is that why I don’t have siblings,” she asks, because she’s never asked before. Never thought to ask before. “Children are very hard?” Because I was hard, she doesn’t say.
Her father must hear those words anyway, because he gives Suguru a knowing look, the same one he used to give her when she would fall back on her routines. Not disappointment but something close. “Your mother and I only ever wanted one,” he says, waving her away. “And we’re happy with the one we have.”
He ruffles her hair like he used to do when she was a kid, begging him not to go to work. A placating hand on her scalp, heavy and warm, enough to make her pause long enough that her mother could wrap and arm around her and tug her away. She still pauses now, staring at her father as he picks up his briefcase, his travel mug. He stops by her to consider Ryusei one final time, pressing two fingers to his forehead. “Ryusei,” he says. “That’s a good name.”
She was angry with him, as a teenager. Real, vivid, unexpected anger. While her mother did too much, he did nothing and she hated him for it. A coward who never cared enough to say something. He was rarely ever home anyway and when he was her parents spoke in tight whispers about her, arguing until her father grew tired of arguing. Grew tired of her. Sometimes it feels like her father works in loops, operating on some kind of script she’ll never make sense of. Unlike Suguru and unlike her mother too, he’s a man of numbers, not words. At least, that was the excuse her mother has always used. He didn’t know what to say because he’d never learned how to say it.
But Satoru was a woman of numbers. Tight, neat, rows of numbers and letters, all used to explain the universe. To explain little random things too. Satoru never had any interest in poetry or literary essays or books, nothing of that sort, but she knew the language, anyway. She knew what to say, how to say it, what cadence to take. Suguru had accepted her father’s silence – his choking – for so long, long enough to create a manual in her head to transcribe every little thing he says and draw out the real meaning. But she’ll never know, she’ll never really know what he means. Not unless she asks. And Suguru can face down curses and council members and fucking Gojo Suzume but she will never have the courage to ask.
She’s not sure if she hates her parents anymore, is the thing. She watches her mother play with Ryusei, lowering him down to the few flowers in her bed that can bloom in winter. She’s smiling, laughing, pressing her cheek to his cheek as he giggles.
No, she doesn’t hate her parents. She doesn’t even really dislike them or like them. She does love them, though, and it breaks through her apathy. It makes her care when she shouldn’t. Ryusei’s peal of laughter breaks through her thoughts and when Suguru’s eyes click into focus, he’s got a camellia tight in his grip, shaking it at her. “Is that for me,” she coos, face brightening for Ryusei as her mother brings him closer. She knows that he’s not actually giving it to her, that he’s not old enough to know what giving even is, but she can pretend that when he drops the flower into her lap he is. “Thank you, baby.”
“You know, he looks so much like you,” her mother says, adjusting Ryusei’s little hat, and it’s so different to how she said it the night before, so much lighter and happier. It’s how Suguru wishes she had said it the first time, but she can’t scrub her mother’s expression from her brain, the tight twist of her lips. “You were such a cute baby. He’s just like you were.”
“Satoru’s mother says he’s just like she was.”
To her surprise, her mother doesn’t shutter off the conversation at the mention of Satoru. She even smiles, albeit a bit wistfully. “Ah, every mother wants to see her baby again, even if it means lying to themselves and others.” It’s mean and impolite but it forces a laugh out of Suguru, bubbling out of her throat before she can even think to try and swallow it down. She holds up Ryusei right next to Suguru, just far enough that he doesn’t kick her in the face. “I admit…the eyes are–but our noses, mouths, ears!” She tugs his cap down just a little, exposing his dark hair that he has so much of, even though Suguru had prepared herself for a bald baby. “Hair. We have strong genes, huh?”
Ryusei looks like Suguru, who looks like her mother, who looks like a mother that Suguru never got to meet. Be thankful for it, her mother had always said, your grandmother was not a nice woman.
It makes her feel guilty sometimes, because she’d never considered her mother a nice person, either. Dutiful, yes, and steady, but never really nice. Not in the sweet way other people were nice. But her mother’s mother had been so horrible that Suguru had never met her. She didn’t like her mother all the time but she’d never imagined a world in which Ryusei would not meet her. She wanted him to grow up with her in his life, to think of his time with his grandmother fondly, even if it remained eternally complicated between her and Suguru.
“Are you thinking of having another?” And of course she’d ask that. That question is Suzume’s current favourite, nevermind the fact that she only has one herself. “Don’t look at me like that, I don’t mean it that way. I know what it’s like for people to push like that.”
“Then–”
“You just don’t seem like the one and done type.”
Ryusei clamours for Suguru and she takes him into her arms gratefully, a pudgy hand batting at her face. She can’t wait for him to grow up, to have likes and dislikes and opinions, but she likes having a baby. Even with all the dirty diapers, vomit, and sleepless nights. She won’t know what to do with herself. And it's true. Suguru’s not the one and done type. She sees Mimiko and Nanako, Megumi and Tsumiki, and she envies them. Even Maki and Mai she envies. There is no one who grew up in the same house as her, no one who knows what it was like.
“It’d be nice,” she admits, bouncing Ryusei on her knees. Gently, gently, because she knows from experience that he’s quick to hurl. “In a few years, maybe.”
She thinks of her fantasies. Two kids, both with dark hair. One with Satoru’s eyes, one with hers.
Later in the day, her mother suggests they take a walk, stretch their legs and do something other than sit around, so Suguru bundles Ryusei up into his winter gear and she pulls on her coat and they set out.
It’s a familiar trail, even now. Suguru finds herself doing what Satoru does, pointing to all the little spots she remembers and whispering what happened there: the tree that she’d scraped her leg on; the crack in the road that her bike had lurched over; the intersection where she rejected her first boy. She stops, suddenly, when she realises she hasn’t shared one good memory with him. Ryusei’s not interested in seeing any of that anyway, pressing his cheek to Suguru’s chest. “Ah, I suppose this isn’t a very fun trip down memory lane,” she allows, patting his head.
“What are you two whispering about?” her mother asks, rubbing a finger across Ryusei’s cheek. “It’s hard to believe you grew up here.” She points down a path, to stone steps that lead further into the undergrowth. “You used to pretend to be a Ninja there, and you’d be hacking at the bushes with sticks you found, even though you had terrible allergies.”
“I don’t remember that,” she whispers. She used to play inside a lot. Puzzles, drawing, reading. Solitary activities.
Her mother hums, nodding as if she expected that. “You were really young, then I guess you stopped liking that kind of thing.” She pushes her hair behind her ear, smiling at the memory. “It must be different in the city, right? A different kind of childhood.”
It’s so different. Once Suguru starts talking she finds that she can’t stop. She tells her mother all about the baby sensory classes, the park, the swimming pool, the petty little feud she has with another parent (“That, at least, is familiar,” her mother jokes). She tells her about how at first it was hard to take public transport with a baby but now she prefers it to cars, how it’s cold now but she can’t wait to see Ryusei in the summer, when he’s older. She tells her that she’s worried he’s not warm enough, sometimes, even though she knows it's safer for him to be too cold rather than too hot.
“Of course he’s warm, look at him,” she says, touching the fabric of Ryusei’s snow suit appreciatively. It’s white, which is impractical, but Satoru had been drawn to the little teddy bear ears stitched on them. “Feels expensive.”
“Satoru got it.”
She looks like she’s about to say something else when they hit the intersection, her mouth snapping shut at the sight of a woman. She stands up straighter, tilts her chin back in the split second before the woman looks up and sees her, waving frantically.
“Kumiko, Suguru!” She’s vaguely familiar, her voice pitched but slightly scratchy. She still can’t place her. She tilts her head slightly, pasting a sweet smile on her face. “And this must be little Ryusei, oh Kumiko you must be so proud.”
“Ah, Mayumi, thank you so much,” and Suguru remembers her now.
It had been Mayumi who’d commented to her mother that her skirt was too short when Suguru was still in junior high, even though her skirt was the same as everyone else's. She was just tall, even back then, and horribly self conscious about it. Her mother had come home and sewed an extra strip of fabric onto her waistband so her skirt would come down lower, muttering about Mayumi and her big nose that she always sticks where it’s not welcome. Then she lectured Suguru about the importance of being proper, about dressing nicely and looking good and being polite and not cavorting with boys and–
She’s so much older than Suguru remembers her being. There's a new hunch to her shoulders, a new sharpness. Suguru has changed too. She’s no longer that girl who’s too tall for her skirt, Getou Kumiko’s daughter with all those rumours circulating her. She’s a woman, now, with a baby and a job and everything she’s ever wanted and more. Almost everything.
“I heard you’re married?” Mayumi asks, cutting off her train of thought. Suguru remembers to keep her smile on her face, even if it warps slightly. “Well, I just assumed, but I don’t see a ring…”
“You know how babies are,” she says, tilting her head a little so her hair falls into her face. Mayumi’s eyes dart between all her piercings: her gauges, her lips rings, the spiked bar through her eyebrow she’d gotten done the week she knew she was serious about having a baby. She should have taken them out – Ryusei likes to grab everything – but she’s given up a lot for this kid, she’s not going to give up her piercings too. Mayumi would have a heart attack if she saw what was under her clothes. “It’s a choking hazard.”
It’s a bullshit response but not one that Mayumi can really deny. “Ah, It’s a shame you don’t visit more. Your mother always tells me you're so busy in the city with your job so you can’t visit as much anymore, but I guess with the baby that won’t be a problem anymore.”
It doesn’t even cross Suguru’s mind to lie about this. “I work from home mainly, with the baby and everything. And sometimes I attend meetings, go to the office.”
Mayumi’s face immediately contracts into that disapproving expression that Suguru is so familiar with. “Suguru, you’re very dedicated, but isn’t it best to stay at home and stop working? He’s your first and he's still so young, you know.” Mayumi reaches out as if to stroke Ryusei’s cheek and Suguru moves without thinking, pulling him just out of reach. She doesn’t know where Mayumi’s hands have been, what she’ll leave on him, what she’s got lingering in her home. No. Better she stays just out of reach.
“I see, Mayumi-san,” she says cooly. “But that’s none of your business.”
Her eyes widen, looking up at Suguru like she doesn’t recognise her. She’d been so obedient back in the day, humming and ducking her head, but she’s not that little girl anymore. She hasn’t been that little girl for a long time.
Mayumi scoffs in offence, looking to Suguru’s mother for answers. She doesn’t say anything, but it doesn’t take words for Suguru to know she’s mad. She smiles a tight smile, placing a hand in between Suguru’s shoulderblades. She fights back the urge to flinch. “We really should be going, Mayumi,” she says, already resuming their walk. “It was good to see you. Send your daughter my regards.”
Mayumi only huffs, sending Suguru one last baleful look before she continues on her way, not looking back as she walks away.
“You shouldn’t be so rude to your elders,” her mother admonishes, walking down the street, her voice pitched low like someone might hear her. There’s no one else around, no one but Mayumi who’s walking in the opposite direction. Her voice is tight with anger, and Suguru feels so much like a child being scolded that she feels sick to her stomach. “You know how Mayumi is, would it be so hard to grin and bear it? She’ll never let me hear the end of it now. She’ll tell everyone how rude you were.”
Maybe if Suguru was younger she’d let it go, she’d duck her head and clench her fists and trail after her mother like a good little girl. Maybe if she took her meds and went to therapy she’d be able to quash the sharp flare of anger inside of her. Maybe if she was a better person she wouldn’t spit back, “why should I?”
She stops suddenly, turning back to look at Suguru, her face warping as she looks at her daughter. They’re the same in this way, too, always so quick to anger. “What?”
“Why should I ‘grin and bear it’ to make Mayumi-san happy?” she continues, hot and irritated and wishing she was anywhere else, anywhere else in the world. “To make you happy. When will you give up and realise I will never make you happy?”
“Suguru–”
“No, I’ve had it!” She wants to rip all her hair out, claw her eyes and mouth off her face and drop it in her mother’s lap. Here, there’s nothing tying me to you anymore, you can let me go now. “It’s not–it shouldn’t be a child's duty to make their parents happy. If you’re unhappy with your life, with me, that’s not my fault–”
“It is your fault!” She exclaims, sharp and shrill. Suguru reels back like she’s been slapped in the face. “One daughter, all I have is one daughter, and all I ever do is worry about you. Of course I’m unhappy! All I ever do is worry! I will always worry. I–I–you need to live a good life, Suguru, a proper one. With someone who can take care of you the right way–”
“You never took care of me the right way!”
“You never let me!” Her voice startles all the birds out of the tree. Suguru watches them fly away. “And then you were gone.” Her shoulders start to shake and Suguru’s mother digs her nails into her palms like that will stop it, like she can stop her tears through sheer force of will. If Suguru didn’t have Ryusei in her arms she’d be doing the same. As it is, she’ll have to submit to the possibility of crying freely. “That stupid school took you away and I couldn’t do anything and–”
“Oh my god...” She sits back on her haunches, cradles Ryusei’s head to her chest, whispers I love you into the hat that Nanako had so lovingly knitted him. “I like my life. Let it be.”
“How am I meant to sit by and let my child ruin her life?” she says, steamrolling over Suguru. It’s every fight they’ve ever had: Suguru too tired to keep up her anger, her mother too angry to care. “There’s no security, no safety, and you’re still–” she cuts herself off, as if unable to say the words.
“Still what? Still Unstable? Still crazy?” She doesn’t answer and Suguru scoffs. “Great. You still think I’m crazy. Great.”
She continues to stay silent but Suguru can hear her ragged breathing, can see the harsh rise and fall of her chest when she tilts her eyes skyward. Ryusei fusses against her, slightly perturbed by the yelling but otherwise fine. He’s never had anyone fight in front of him like this. She tucks her nose to his skull, right by that dreaded soft spot that she’s so terrified of, and breathes in deep his baby-smell: powder, milk, fresh linen.
She doesn’t know what her mother thought, if she figured that Suguru would have her own child and suddenly understand why she did the things she did. If anything, Ryusei has made her even angrier, has made her more resentful of her misguided parents than teenage Suguru had ever imagined she’d be. She hates herself just as much for her guilt, for punishing herself for the thought of killing them for over a decade. She could have done it. Her not doing it should be enough of an apology.
Suguru rises, standing back to her full height. She’s taller than her mother by far but she’s never felt it. She’d always felt so small beside her, felt like nothing more than a speck of dust in that terrible holiday after the XX village mission where Suguru had come home and done nothing but wallow until Satoru had had enough and taken her back to Jujutsu Tech. Her mother hadn’t cared then, waving her hands when Suguru emerged from her room to tell her she was going back to school. It’s fine, she’d said. Do you want some food to take back with you, she’d asked. She hadn’t known what to do with her. When her mother sees dust she itches to wipe it away.
She looks at her mother now, takes her in. She’s so small and so big. So resolute and so afraid. Her hands tremble by her side. “Not crazy,” she says eventually. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Suguru. Just…”
It doesn’t matter what she thinks she is, Suguru realises, it doesn't matter what word she’ll eventually use to fill that gaping silence. The pain is still the same, lancing clean through her, even now. She nods, holds Ryusei closer to her, and they walk home in silence.
Despite the very public screaming match they’d had, her mother still makes dinner. She sets the table while Suguru makes Ryusei a bottle, settling him into the crook of her arm as he feeds. She picks at her food, eating just enough to not spark another argument. Her mother is silent opposite her. The spot where her father should be is empty.
She wonders what it would have been like if he’d been around more, if she’d be better for it. Or if she’d simply be ruined by his presence, rather than his absence.
“I didn’t think you’d make it this far,” her mother says, voice perfectly placid like she just wants to get the horrible truth out as quickly as possible. Suguru’s chopsticks rest on a piece of chicken before drawing away. She doesn’t feel like eating anymore. She looks up, meets her mother’s gaze head on. It’s like looking into her own eyes. “There was always the possibility. You know. We both know. We all knew. But then you were twenty, twenty five, and thirty-one, now, and you have a child. Can you blame me for wanting you–for wanting you to do it the right way? For wanting to make sure you’re happy?”
“I’m thirty-one,” Suguru reminds her, as if to say I’m older, I’m wiser, I’ve got a kid of my own. Can’t you trust me to know what’s best for myself? “I’m not a child anymore, mother.”
Her mother frowns where others would smile sadly, eyes drifting towards Ryusei in her laps, trying to reach for the food on Suguru’s plate. “Oh Suguru, has being a mother taught you nothing? You’ll always be my baby.”
Later, Suguru lies awake for most of the night staring at the ceiling, eyes occasionally flickering to the places that used to give her nightmares. The corners of her room, the gaps under her cabinets, the slit of moonlight coming in through her curtains.
Her mother had always come when she called, back then, cradling Suguru to her chest and saying there’s nothing there, it’s all in your head, let's go to sleep and be done with it now. It’d been comforting then. She can’t lie to herself – the memories still bring her comfort.
Suguru had planned to kill her parents once. She knew exactly what she’d do, how she’d do it. She had allowed herself to admit that it would have been hard but she would have done it anyway, and it wouldn’t be the first or last hard thing she had done. With a sword, to keep them at a distance (not her hands, never her hands), even though that would have resulted in a bloody mess. But she’d wanted it, she wanted to see the blood that she’d come from, see it red and wet and still warm.
She only turns to look at Ryusei, to watch him sleep soundly in his crib. Her crib. And once upon a time, her mother’s crib. Passed from mother to daughter to son. If he wanted to kill her one day would she let him? Would she struggle? Would she understand why? Suguru closes her eyes and tries not to think of her mother watching her sleep just like this.
Breakfast is silent the next morning. Her father eats and leaves them both at the table, a kiss to his wife’s cheek and then to his daughter’s. It’s another echo of her adolescence. Suguru is sick of it now. “I probably won’t be able to see you off,” he says regretfully. “It was nice seeing you again. You should visit more often. Or maybe we can visit you.”
“It’s fine,” she says, and she’s not shocked to find that she means it. “You should. We have a guest room.” She doubts they’ll take her up on the offer anytime soon.
She waits to hear the front door slam before exhaling quietly, going back to her breakfast. Her mother’s barely eaten, watching her instead, like she’s afraid Suguru will disappear if she looks away. She’s right to be afraid – it wouldn’t be the first time she’s done something like that. She suddenly feels much older. She doesn’t know what made yesterday so different, so fraught. When her mother finally speaks she doesn’t expect an apology – she doesn’t know what to apologise for and Suguru is finally tired of telling her. For years she’s wondered if something had to give and it has finally given. She doesn’t know if she should be thankful for that.
As expected, it’s not an apology. “I’m giving up,” she says, and she sounds so defeated, so hopeless, that Suguru has to blink back pinpricks of pain from her eyes. “I understand now. You’re right. You’re not a child anymore. I’ve got to trust you to live your life.”
“That’s not what I want.” Not even close to it. “I want you to accept me.”
Her mother eyes her regretfully. She hadn’t been able to place that emotion before but she can now. It doesn’t bring her the clarity she thought it would. Does her mother regret her or how she raised her? Suguru shuts her eyes tight and drops her chin to her chest. She doesn’t want to know. “I’ll try, Suguru. Someday. I promise.”
She promises. She’s made a hundred promises in her life, all of them kept. For better or for worse. She’s not going to let her life hinge on this someday but– “Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”
She finds the pills in her bag right before she leaves. Risperidone, escitalopram, lamotrigine; antipsychotic, antidepressant, anticonvulsant. Evidence that, once upon a time, her mother had been desperate to do right by her. She'd missed the mark, kept on missing it. Suguru rolls the pill bottles back under her bed. Next time she'll get rid of them, she promises.
By the time Suguru’s back in Tokyo, back in their apartment, Satoru is back too. Like before, she enlists the help of the driver to get everything up stairs, bidding him farewell before moving to unlock the door. Satoru beats her to it, swinging the door open and pulling Suguru into her arms. Ryusei gets squished between them but he doesn’t seem to mind, his squeals high pitched and his little limbs starfishing when he sees his mother. Satoru smells clean, like Suguru’s soap and deodorant and fresh linen.
Suguru probably smells like a car, or something, or of dirty diaper, because she’d had to change Ryusei in the car. It took almost three hours to drive back home and by the time the driver pulled onto her street she was sick of everything, including herself. Satoru presses a kiss to her mouth, sweet and insistent, and Suguru can’t help but grin into it. Fuck, she’s missed her.
“Good visit?” Satoru asks, already taking Ryusei out of her arms. He goes easily, continuing to starfish as Satoru tries to get a good grip on him. She presses kisses all over his face, holding him above her head and bringing him down until his forehead touches hers. “Did our baby enjoy the weekend with his stuffy grandparents? No you didn’t, of course you didn’t.” Ryusei babbles, blows a spit bubble, babbles some more. “Very disappointing weekend. That's fine, I’ll make up for it. We can go to the park and–”
“He had fun,” Suguru interrupts before Satory can list every little thing she wants to do with their baby in the upcoming week. And it’s true, if only because he’s a baby and finds it fun to try and eat his own toes. Suguru’s fucked up relationship with her mother had washed right over him. “It’s not like he’d have much more fun with your parents. They’d put a kunai or something in his hand.”
“Apparantly I liked that,” Satoru hums, picking up some of the bags Suguru had come with and setting them on the kitchen island. “I teethed on a kunai, apparently. This is so much food.”
“It’s from my mother.” She’d packed it all up while Suguru packed up her room, bringing it to the car while she strapped Ryusei into his car seat. Lovingly packaged, all of Suguru’s favourite things to eat.
When Suguru was finally leaving, they’d stood in the cold for a second before her mother threw her arms around her and they stayed like that for a long moment before drawing back and returning to their original positions. She’d always be her mother’s daughter, she’d realised, the same way Ryusei would always be her son. Same hair, same nose, same wicked mouth. There was no use trying to outrun that anymore. She was tired of trying to outrun it. “It was good to see you, Suguru,” she had said, and for one small second Suguru had let herself believe she was making her mother proud, that she was lighting the candle in her that only Suguru could ever light. She had the rest of her life to continue to disappoint her, she’d rationalised, let her dream just this once. She’d put so much effort into believing that she’d forgotten to speak.
Satoru frowns, her mouth a stubborn slash on her face as she takes out packaged containers of food with one hand, the other bouncing Ryusei lightly. “Was she nice?” she asks. Then, like Suguru is a child, “did you have fun?”
She didn’t have fun. It was stressful and she honestly hated it more than words would ever explain. They spent a lot of time doing nothing but she could sleep for a week and still wake up tired. She probably needed to talk to someone about her issues. But it was worth it, she thinks, to finally look at her mother and gain some new kind of understanding in the lines of her face. Suguru prefers to be realistic now, she’ll never be at peace with her parents but her mother had got this thing right, at least: she understands now. All she wants from this life, now, is to understand. There’s no greater gift that anyone could give you.
Satoru stares at her expectantly. She hums, nodding, and peels off the lid of a container so she can pick out a piece of chicken teriyaki. The sauce sticks to her fingers and the chicken’s cold, obviously, and not very good like this, but she can taste the care her mother put into making it. She can’t take care of her like she wants to and Suguru will never come home but she can do this. And this is good. “It was fine,” she says, then smiles up at Satoru. “Were you worried?”
“I’ll always worry about you, Suguru.” And even though Satoru’s frowning, she can’t help the way her lips curve into a grin. It’s the same words her mother said to her but it sounds so much better coming from Satoru’s mouth. Just as genuine but sweeter.
Suguru takes her face in her hands, stares into those blue eyes for a second. Just like Ryusei’s, she thinks, then kisses Satoru again. And again and again and again until there’s nothing in the world to worry about.