Suguru stared at Yaga with wide eyes, his pupils dilated, the muscles in his jaw straining.

"You're saying—" he almost choked on his own breath. He took a deep inhale as an attempt to steady it. "You're saying that there's a possibility she could be sentenced to death?"

Yaga's expression remained severe, a slight frown marring his face.

"It's always a possibility to those who threaten the safety of the sorcerer and non-sorcerer worlds," Yaga finally said. "Depending on what happens, it may or may not be considered."

"She's a civilian," Suguru hissed, throwing a hand to the side. "A non-sorcerer. How could the death sentence possibly be even brought up with so little information about her?"

"It's not for me to decide, Suguru," Yaga said. "The Council has agreed that if her cursed energy output is too excessive, it would be better for society to put her down altogether. This world is already crawling with so many cursed spirits that we're working overtime to keep them from multiplying, much less reduce their numbers."

Suguru stared at Yaga in horror.

If everyone became jujutsu sorcerers, their cursed energy output would be controlled, and thus, curses would cease to exist.

That was what Tsukumo Yuki had said to him not too long ago.

Then, in theory, you can solve the problem by killing all non-sorcerers.

Kill all non-sorcerers.

Despite his best efforts to banish those thoughts, they persisted.

They seeped into every fracture of his being, every pore, every gaping wound. Bleeding into him even when he wasn't consciously thinking about it—it had infected him, whispering doubts into his mind, crumbling whatever morals remained after Riko's death.

And now, as though these doubts and whispers had been laced with gunpowder, his body ignited in shock.

Kill all non-sorcerers.

That was how he responded.

The old words felt bitter against his tongue, and he had to steady himself on the threshold to the office to keep himself from retching.

"You can't..." Suguru hissed, realizing he had been holding his breath. "You can't do this to her. She's already gone through way too much."

Yaga stared him down.

"You're thinking on the basis of personal feelings, Suguru," the man said sternly. "However much I can see how your mission with Amanai has affected you, that doesn't mean you can neglect your duties as a jujutsu sorcerer."

"But disposing of a girl because she can release a little more cursed energy than what's considered normal?" Suguru insisted further.

He knew he was minimizing the situation, but it didn't matter to him. There was a rage surging in his chest, and a scowl twisted itself onto his features.

"Wouldn't it be more logical to teach her how to suppress it instead?"

Yaga shook his head.

"We're already over our heads with missions, Suguru. You and Satoru should know that more than anyone, seeing that you're the only two Special Grades willing to put in the effort. We cannot spare the extra hands to coddle a girl that the Council might deem as a threat."

"She is a girl—" Suguru hissed again.

"Whose cursed energy spawned a first-grade cursed spirit in the middle of a civilian neighborhood," Yaga said firmly, interrupting him. "Like I said, it is not my decision. The Council has directed orders. It is our job to execute them."

Suguru dug his fingers into his palm, feeling as though the pressure would rip the skin. The tendons in his jaw flexed as he stared at the ground with wide copper eyes.

"Then let me teach her," Suguru said through clenched teeth.

Yaga raised an eyebrow.

"We cannot afford to have you—"

"I won't neglect my other duties," Suguru spat, flashing a pair of rigid eyes up to meet Yaga's. "Besides, I'm being assigned to her anyway. I'll give her lessons once she's recovered, and I'll continue any busy work you need me to do in the meantime. Absorb cursed spirits with my technique, right?"

Yaga's expression descended into something dark and swarthy, a warning.

"Be careful with how much you are willing to bite off," he said.

"Are you doubting my abilities?" Suguru hissed.

The teacher and student stood locked in each other's glares. A vein twitched in Yaga's forehead, and he let out a low sigh, folding his arms together.

"Defiance is much too out of character for you, Suguru. Why are you so insistent on keeping this girl alive?" Yaga finally said.

Suguru let out a scoff, pressing his lips together tight.

"Aren't you the one who taught me that a life is still a life?" He growled.

There was a pause, and then Yaga burst into laughter, catching Suguru by surprise.

"Look at you," the man mused. "Using my philosophies against me."

Suguru dropped his gaze to the ground once more, feeling the boiling in his chest start to subside.

"Suguru."

He snapped his eyes back up.

Yaga was smirking, though his eyes remained grim.

"This stays between us." He said, rising from his chair. He placed a large hand onto Suguru's shoulder, leaning forward so that he could whisper quietly in his ear. "Teach her. Then report back to me. I'll take care of the Council."

Suguru blinked wildly as Yaga strode past him and out the door, leaving him to stand in the office alone and baffled.

☾

Hina was already asleep by the time Suguru made his way back to the hospital ward. Shoko insisted that he leave, but the boy was determined to stay for at least a little longer.

"You know she's not going to wake up anytime soon," Shoko said, sighing. "I gave her some sleeping pills. She needs the rest so that her body can handle the reversed cursed energy therapy I'm putting her through."

Suguru shrugged, leaning against the wall with his arms draped over each other. He flicked a loose lock of hair to the side, his eyes trained onto the arrangement of flowers that was now propped up in a vase. 

The white ceramic was inlaid with gold in its cracks, set on top of the side table by Hina's bed.

"Have a smoke with me, then," he said. Shoko's eyes lit up. "I just want to make sure she's okay."

Shoko paused, and a small smirk creeped up onto her glossy lips.

"You're scared." She said plainly.

Suguru fluttered his lids.

"What?" He barked. "What makes you say that?"

Shoko pulled out a nearly-empty box from her pocket and drew a white stick out with her lips. She crushed the filter between her teeth a few times before she offered the box to Suguru, who snatched one out between his long, slender fingers. They both made their way over to the window, and Shoko ignited the end of her cigarette with a small lighter.

Suguru watched as the paper smoldered an orange glow and receded into the tobacco.

"Did sensei say something?" Shoko asked, flicking the lighter again and holding it out towards Suguru.

He leaned down and put the butt of the cigarette to his lips, crushing the filter between his teeth, and then puffing as he nudged the other end into the flickering flame.

"Less about sensei," Suguru muttered, taking a deep inhale before pressing out a plume of smoke. "And more about what the fucking Council told him."

Shoko chuckled darkly.

"She's on death row, isn't she?"

Suguru grit his teeth, but said nothing as he took another deep inhale, feeling the sharp pang of smoke hitting his flesh.

Shoko let out an exasperated breath.

"They're always doing this kind of bullshit," she whined, bending over so that her forearms rested on the windowsill. "Instead of finding real solutions to problems, the Council just orders every little nuisance to be killed off."

Suguru sputtered out a sinister chuckle to match.

"Tell me about it."

Shoko drew an inhale of smoke, hissing as she breathed through her teeth to let it stir in her lungs, before pressing it out through pursed lips. She flicked the ashes out the window.

"So what are you gonna do about it?"

Suguru slid cautious bronze eyes over to her, studying his classmate, before he brought the cigarette up to his lips once more.

"What do you mean?" Was all he said.

Shoko laughed.

"You know exactly what I mean," she replied, a sneer on her lips. "After giving her flowers and boba? You don't actually expect me to believe that you'll just let the Council dispose of her like that, do you?"

Suguru glowered. He turned his head away, the tip of his cigarette glowing amber as he took another drag.

"Of course not."

The corner of Shoko's mouth tugged up, but she turned to face out the window without another word.

The two finished their cigarettes and killed the embers in an ashtray before Shoko announced her departure.

"I'll be in my office as always. Goodnight, Geto."

Suguru bid his classmate goodnight, hearing her loafers click against the hospital tiles. He sat in the chair that was still at Hina's bedside, folding his fingers over each other as he anxiously pulled on his knuckles.

The steady stream of white LED light illuminated the room, making it seem sterile and colder than it actually was. There was the soft beeping of various machines she was still hooked onto, monitoring her heartrate, her blood pressure. The hum of the AC was a backdrop against the silence that hung in the air like humidity, clinging to his skin.

Suguru studied Hina's sleeping figure, which was curled under the crumpled flat sheet that laid fallen across her body. 

Her dark hair was a bit tousled, the dark half-moons under her eyes still prominent against the paleness of her skin. Her cheeks were stained a light rosy hue, and her lips were barely parted as she drew rhythmic breaths that made her bony shoulders rise and fall.

He hadn't noticed it before, but she was terribly skinny. 

She wore baggy clothes when they had met, and when he undressed her for Shoko's procedures, he was more preoccupied with the scars that marred her body than anything else. 

He hadn't realized how unnaturally small she really was.

Was that another shade of abuse he had missed in the apartment?

Suguru's eyes grew dismal, pressing his mouth against his clasped fingers for a while.

There was little to go off of in terms of the investigation on what truly happened in apartment 206. Suguru merely had the cursed energy origins he'd detected, the few words that first-grade cursed spirit had uttered, and the evidence of the knife. 

Sure, it painted a misted picture of what might have happened, but Suguru knew assumptions weren't good enough. Not for the Council. 

Not if he were to convince them to spare Hina's life.

They would certainly pick any tiny cause for execution. Anything that seemed remotely threatening could be Hina's downfall—their downfall—because they loved to make up their own narratives. It didn't matter whether it was true or not. If the Council deemed it valid, they were more than willing to dispose of anyone that threatened their hold.

That was simply how the Council was.

Suguru spat out a breath.

Old geezers.

He once respected them as authority figures. They were wise gurus of jujutsu, studied hard and lived long lives to gain enough experience to dictate what was beneficial for sorcerer society and what was dangerous. What was needed and what was not.

But over time, as Suguru watched them grow weary of impeding threats, he saw them become increasingly more paranoid and erratic. Their verdicts rarely ever fit the crimes anymore, and in recent times, they immediately went for executions.

Disposal. Like garbage.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps they saw how jujutsu society was growing and adapting to the new challenges that approached. Stronger cursed spirits required stronger sorcerers to exorcize them—and stronger sorcerers undoubtedly meant their grip on their society's reigns would weaken once their authority was reduced to nothing but empty words.

Words that were no longer accompanied by the power to validate them.

Suguru knew that if he and Satoru really wanted to, they could slaughter the lot of them without even breaking a sweat.

And perhaps the Council knew that, too.

Suguru's expression darkened as he continued to stare at Hina's frame. He noted the protruding collar bones, the points of her shoulders, the frailty of her fingers.

This was who they wanted to execute.

A girl who'd experienced unmentionable horrors for years.

An outlier.

A liability.

Maybe non-sorcerers didn't deserve his protection. After all, the mass of cursed spirits in existence was their doing in the first place.

So if they didn't deserve it, who did?

Suguru clenched his teeth as he came to the realization.

Perhaps it wasn't the fact who deserved his protection, but what he would be protecting the masses from.

A common enemy.

He felt a crack in his chest, something shifting in his mentality like a pair of tectonic plates grinding against one another until they snapped into place.

Suguru felt his blood roiling as he sat there under the sterile white light, brooding a darkness in him that festered as the night descended and slipped away.

☾

Suguru didn't sleep that night. Not that it would have mattered anyway.

If anything, it spared him the nightmares.

But as the colors of dawn bruised the sky, chaos broke in the hospital ward.

Suguru heard the front doors slam open, and a flurry of nurses rushed past Hina's room with a stretcher. The sudden bustle startled Suguru from his incessant thoughts, and he jumped out of his seat and went to see the situation. 

His stomach dropped.

Running behind the nurses was a boy, just a year younger than him, his blond hair matted in blood.

Suguru couldn't stop his legs before they sprang forward, bolting after the mob of people.

Several nurses had to hold Nanami back as the others pushed the stretcher through the doors to the emergency operation room, the red light overhead blinking to indicate its occupancy.

"Let go of me!" Nanami screeched, flinging the poor nurses that tugged at his flailing limbs.

"Nanami!" Suguru called out, dashing towards his junior. He threw his arms over the boy and wrestled him to the wall, pinning him by the shoulders and locking eyes. "What happened?"

Nanami choked on the words that snagged in his throat, and he just threw his head back against the wall and sobbed, throwing his arm over his eyes.

Suguru didn't get to know what happened until he found himself in the morgue, Nanami sitting on a chair to the side, leaning back against it limply as he draped a towel over his eyes to soak up the tears that seemed to never end. His arms dangled at his sides, his legs sprawled, his mouth hanging in defeat.

A chair suddenly launched to the side, clattering against the steel drawers.

"Damn it!" Nanami hissed, sinking back into his seat.

Suguru stood over the steel table, frozen, staring at the body in horror.

Haibara Yu.

"We went to Sendai," Nanami said, huffing through the tears. 

Or perhaps it was rage. 

"We went there, and we had orders to go to a village just a bit further out. It was only supposed to be a second-grade, but it was a local deity. It was a deity. It should've been a first-grade job...!"

The body was cold, gray, and the wounds on his face had coagulated, a wide rip that dug into the muscle of his cheek. A white sheet was pulled over a majority of his body, up to his shoulders, and the material was soaked in blood from where the fatal wound ripped into his abdomen.

Haibara had been alive when they brought him in.

The doctors and Shoko did everything they could to save him, but he had lost far too much blood, and his liver was shredded.

Nanami let out another wail.

"It should have been a first-grade..."

Suguru swallowed back a lump that was beginning to rise in his throat, and lifted his hand to gently grab the hem of the flat sheet and pull it over Haibara's face, covering him completely. 

Yaga visited the hospital earlier when Haibara was in the operating room, but it was too late. His expression was grim, and he pulled Suguru aside to update him on the plans moving forward.

Uohara Jun was being put on hold until Satoru successfully exorcized the village deity. 

Not that it would hinder the investigation, anyway. Satoru would probably take care of it within five minutes of encountering the cursed spirit, and be back on the case in a matter of hours.

"I could have done it," Suguru told Yaga, his brows furrowed in rage. "You could have dispatched me."

Yaga looked at him with a blank expression.

"Satoru was already in the area," he said simply. "It made more sense for him to make a short detour rather than go out of our way to send you up there."

Suguru balled his fists as his side as he stared down at the grim white silhouette before him.

White like the memory of the cultists.

White like the hair of the boy who'd, alone, become the strongest.

Suguru flexed his jaw as he stood in the cold morgue, and then pressed his voice out through stiff lips.

"You have to rest now, Nanami. Satoru will handle the mission from here."

Nanami let out a dark scoff, heaving out a breath.

"Can't we just let him take care of everything from now on?" He growled.

Suguru blinked, staring down at the body.

He said nothing.

☾

Hina was awake when Suguru somehow made his way back to her room in the early afternoon. He dragged his feet to the threshold, and his eyes snapped up as he noticed her sitting up in her bed.

She was looking at him with round maple eyes, blinking in confusion as they fell upon his disheveled state.

"Geto-kun?" She said, her voice soft.

Suguru leaned against the doorframe and pressed his forehead against his arm, letting out a low sigh before he rolled his head around and stepped inside.

"Hey," he said to her, taking a seat in the chair at her side.

Hina stared at him for a while longer before speaking again.

"Are you okay?"

Suguru stiffened, the puffy shadow under his right eye twitching a bit.

"I've been better."

Suguru watched as Hina folded her fingers together in her lap, the IV tubes swaying with the movement of her arms as she nodded.

Nanami had retreated back to his dorm after several hours of sitting in the morgue, and Suguru didn't leave until he did. Shoko locked herself inside her office immediately after the doctors pronounced Haibara dead, and she hadn't emerged from there since.

Suguru felt a familiar emptiness seep into his chest, spreading like a drop of ink in a pool of water.

A hollowness he knew intimately.

Hina shifted in her spot, and Suguru's attention snapped up to look at her again. He hadn't realized his gaze had dropped to his hands.

"When I was a girl," Hina said, her voice just above a murmur. "I had a cat named Jagaimo."

Suguru raised an inquisitive brow.

"You named your cat 'Potato?'"

Hina smirked.

"I was six," she said. "And he was just a kitten when I found him on my way home from school. He was dumped on the side of the street, and he was so hungry he wouldn't stop crying. I took him home and begged my parents to let me keep him, and after an entire hour of me crying, of Jaga-chan crying, they finally said yes."

Suguru kept his gaze on her, and she continued.

"We grew up together, me and Jaga-chan. We took him to the vet to have him checked out, and we had to bottle-feed him since he was still so young. My mom would prepare the bottles and I'd feed him every two or three hours, and for a six year old, it was quite the responsibility to take up."

Hina paused to chuckle.

"Of course, at night my mom would feed him if he got fussy. But otherwise, he was mine. And he was a good cat."

Suguru remained quiet.

"He was very protective of me. He didn't even let my dad near me sometimes, and when my parents fought, I'd shut myself in my room with him and he'd purr on my chest while I cried." Hina hesitated. "He'd always wait for me by the window when I came home from school, and he'd do little figure-eights around my legs and meow really loud, as if he was yelling at me and telling me how much he missed me."

A ghost of a smile appeared on Hina's lips, and Suguru watched as it faded away just as quickly.

"And then one day, my parents vanished. They just disappeared. I didn't hear anything from them, and when I came home from school that day, the house was locked, and I could hear Jaga-chan calling me from inside. I think he was confused because I wasn't coming in."

Hina choked on a breath.

"I sat on the steps for hours, waiting for them to come home. Eventually, I realized that maybe they'd never come home, and I started to cry. And when night fell, a group of men approached me. They grabbed me and dragged me away, and I could hear Jaga-chan screeching from inside the house."

Suguru flinched, knitting his brows together as he peered over at Hina, who hung her head so that her hair draped over her shoulders like curtains.

"I escaped from them at one point and ran all the way back home, but when I pulled on the doors, they were still locked, and Jaga-chan was gone. I went around the perimeter and found that he'd chewed and clawed his way out through the screen of an open window. I looked everywhere for him, and went into alleys I probably shouldn't have gone in, but he was my cat. He was family. The only one I had left."

Hina lifted her face to look at Suguru, and he saw her cheeks were glistening with tears.

"And then I found him. He was on the side of the road, and he was gone. I think I sat there for an hour or something hugging him and crying before...Ojisan came up to me."

Suguru's ears pricked up, and he leaned forward in his seat.

"He wasn't actually my uncle, but he told me to call him that. He said that he'd take care of me. And he looked nice—nothing like the group of men who'd taken me earlier. And since I was twelve, scared, and didn't know any better, I took his hand and followed him home."

Hina collapsed backward and folded an arm over her eyes.

"I was held captive for six years. Until the day we met."

Suguru blinked his eyes slowly, trying to register everything Hina had just told him. Sifting out the tidbits of information she offered.

Her parents vanished without a trace. A man she called Ojisan took her in and held her captive. She escaped the day they met. And though he'd originally thought she was around sixteen, she was actually eighteen.

Bronze eyes narrowed as he drew his lips taut.

"And what about Jaga-chan?" Suguru asked softly.

Hina sniffled, her breath hitching as she tried to suppress the sobs.

"Ojisan told me he'd have someone bury him. But he never told me where they did. So I never saw him again."

Suguru only nodded, taking in a deep breath. He leaned his forearms onto the bed and lifted his gaze back up to Hina's face. She was still covering her eyes.

"Hina-chan," Suguru called to her.

Hina shuddered, her throat continuously constricting and retracting, before she pressed out a shaky breath through her lips and lifted the arm off her eyes. She sat up, sniffling, and smoothed out her hair before folding them neatly in her lap.

"Yes?"

Suguru's expression hardened.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Hina's eyes grew unwavering, and Suguru was stunned by how steady they had become, despite being wrecked only a few moments earlier.

"You lost someone today," Hina said simply. "Shouldn't you allow yourself to grieve a little, Geto-kun?"

Suguru flinched. His voice sputtered in his throat as he tried to find the words to respond. 

He thought of Haibara, the liveliness he'd always bring that balanced out Nanami's dreariness.

He thought of Riko, the epitome of innocence and youth and light. The smiles he and Satoru got to give her in Okinawa.

They didn't deserve to die.

And in that moment, Suguru felt everything crashing down on him. All the pain he'd shoved to the side, all the emotions he'd tamped down to continue his work. 

Keep fighting. 

Keep protecting. 

He couldn't protect if he was hurting.

Exorcize. Absorb.

That's all he'd done this past year. Ever since Riko had died.

Exorcize. Absorb.

It killed him inside.

Over and over.

Like a dam finally bursting from the pressure of a flash flood, Suguru suddenly felt everything—everything—all at once. Never in his life had he ever felt such a crushing weight, and it devoured him.

He could only hold Hina's figure in his trembling gaze, silence cursing his tongue, and she watched him patiently with warm eyes.

He balled up his hands on the mattress, shaking in rage, his head dipping as he felt his shoulders flex.

"He was a kouhai," he whispered finally, his lip quivering, teeth clenched. "Only a year younger than me. He was sent on a mission that should've been within his capability, but the Council fucked up. He was killed in battle. And it's all the Council's fault."

. • ° ✰ ° • .

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