ten.
sun eater.

▬

You're full of butterflies wings. Red spills from the places where you ripped them apart; gold skies rest against the melancholy sunlight. You still grin, though, even if a supernova drops in the night sky, going so hard and fast that it's visible to the human eye, your human eyes. 

Cruelty mocks you, bitingly.

Senseless.

You're being dramatic again. You pull out a cigarette over the balcony. If your eyes would focus you could make something happen; something that'll become a big enough problem that you have to solve right here right now; you could run away from your problems, then.

You're being dramatic again.

_

"Hey, Yorumiya?" Gojō asks quietly. 

"Yeah?"

"How did you escape being kidnapped?"

"I was—" you think, "— I think I was asleep. Then I woke up, then that curse— then— I was back."

You're slipping some of the important parts out of view. He says, "We though you were dead."

And you say, "I know,"

And he doesn't say anything, so you don't either. 

_

Ieiri knocks on your door, she calls out, "Yorumiya."

You respond in turn, "Ieiri."

The door stays locked and she stays on the other line. You don't open it; there's no plan to, either. "Yorumiya, c'mon."

"Don't－ I don't really feel like it." You say.

"Yorumiya－" her voice cuts, splintered in her mouth. "Yorumiya!"

"Yorumiya?" Says a small voice. "You're, you're supposed to tell me about the stars." Megumi sounds awkward, stilted. "You were, you said you would, are you a liar?"

You think to Kiomi, to Himiwara and Setsuna. "I guess."

"No! You can－you can make it true－" he shouts and－you can make anything true. You are a god, you are god, you are god you're god you're god god god god you are the era as a whole, the galaxy made flesh and bone; stardust in your fingernails because you're built from whale bones and shooting stars.

This is your anniversary! Happy earth day. You've been here a while, now. Almost nine years. You're barely grown up; if the body matched the mind you'd be eternal or nothing at all. A blip. Is that cruel of you? Is it? Is it?

"Can I?" You ask, mockingly. "Do you want to know the stars, Megumi-chan?"

"I wanna, open－I wanna open the door, please open the door?"

You hum at the whine in his voice, "There's this bright, bright star－Vega it's important because it's the fifth brightest star in the whole night sky, you know? It was used to track which way was North－ imagine seeing a star that bright, that sudden around twelve thousand B.C.E? Do you think they were scared?" 

It must've been terrible, it must've been riveting－ to know that there was something so far beyond them. Do they still wonder, you muse; do they pray to that sour god way up there? If your sister is a galaxy you are a star, nothing but a piece of a greater puzzle.

"Yorumiya, can you, can you show me, in the textbook? Can you show me－"

"No textbooks here," you say, singsongy. "just memory, imagine a state, Megumi-chan, imagine a galaxy; the sun, only smaller."

There's a hiccup on the other side of the door, "I don't get it, can you show me?" Nothing, then, "Please?"

This reminds you of your sister, in some stupid way, grasping at straws and crying over spilled milk. How pitiful of him, how pitiful of you? You should piece yourself back together, to be pretty, even one puzzle piece is better than missing one on the puzzle — what are you if not a universe in one picture? This is a contradiction, a metaphor — 

This is a mirror badly broken.

You should try gluing the parts together. You start with bloody fingers, prying the door, "Okay."

The door clicks open. Megumi fumbles in, Ieiri hot on his tail. They look just as tired as you, or— well, Megumi always looks tired — ever since Tsumiki got sick again. Too fast, and you look at that sickness that Ieiri can't fix and you think to yourself that you don't care enough about her to bring her back so she can steal Megumi and Ieiri and Utahime and Gojō from you. You had Kiomi leave and Himiwara hasn't called you back and Setsuna's phone keeps going to voicemail. 

Ieiri looks dead on her feet though, like she's been sleeping as much as you do, and that isn't very good for humans, is it? It isn't! She should sleep, she must be so tired! 

Something twists in your stomach. 

"We were—" her voice is clipped, "I was so, so worried about you— you can't just up and lock yourself in a room for weeks! You can't just— disappear again—"

"Like you can stop me, Kanyu-chan."

You smile, then, it's a sad thing. She seems to think so to, she looks away, at the groves in the wooden floor. Her shoes are still on when Megumi's already changed to slippers. You have three extra pairs — because Kiomi never came to your apartment and maybe she never planned on it. 

Ieiri punches you in the arm;  something in you cracks a little, a chasm spilled, a dam broken.

You grab her, hold her close and drop your head to her shoulder so she doesn't see you mourn－

"Shh," she moves her fingers along your back. "shh, it's, it's okay."

"Kiomi's favorite star system was－was alpha centuari, you know? She liked how much there was, so far away, so far that humanity couldn't get there with ten lifetimes－ she said, she said, she said that－"

"It's okay," she whispers into your ears, calming, human, she must be so tired you wonder why she even bothers－ maybe your presence sunk into her flesh, brain spazzing at your greatness－ "hey, Yorumiya, guess what?"

"Yeah?"

She doesn't move, "That Tōdō kid is a pain in the ass－"

And you laugh, because what else are you supposed to do? Louder, you laugh louder, and you lift your head and Ieiri is smiling at you and you think thank you－

It's an ugly thing that curls up in your chest just to die there. You do it anyway, it sinks into your bones.

You want to look at this from her perspective, eight months ago－ give or take－ the both of you went to a bar on the stipend you get for jobs like this and you disappeared. You couldn't be contacted. Gojō Satoru could not find neither you nor a body within three months, and standard procedure says you are dead. Then another three months later, you appear again.

If that were you, you think you might be raging－ hysterical. The kind of flood  that swallows you whole. Makes your teeth pink with half-hearted bloodstains. You wonder how she forgave you for disappearing again.

"I'm sorry," you say. "I wasn't －"

"Thinking, don't." Her voice gets cut by a sharp breath－ "Don't do it again. I won't forgive you, you know－ if－ if you do it again." She rests her head in the crook of your neck, her breath tingling on your neck. "Don't disappear. I can't lose everything, everyone."

Like a hunter circling kill, you wrap your arms around her.

"I pinkie promise." You say. "Swallow a thousand needles and cut my pinkie off."

"That doesn't really work," she says, her voice right by your ear, "you can just grow the finger back. "

"Shuddup," you laugh, "it's the sentiment."

"Since when we're you sentimental, Yoruya?"

"The same time you and me started smoking together, Kanyu-sensei."

"It's, we've been friends for a while, right?"

You laugh, "Absolutely."

"Call me Shōko." She says, "You don't like your first name, right?"

"Yoruya is basically the same thing, you've been calling me that the whole time anyway."

"Thats－ shit, I've been calling you by－"

You laugh. It's less bitter, this time around.

"Yuromiya." Megumi says from behind you, promptly smacking your thoughts from wandering, "You still have to tell me about the stars, look!"

He must've scrambled from your room, because he's holding one of your old textbooks from your second degree in astrophysics. You don't know why you double down on what to do, but you did.

You know his hunger must be as ravenous as you; he spits things out just as fast as he swallows them! Black blood seeping around his feet－ his eyes go from bright green to dead purple if you catch them at the tight time, you wonder if Shōko -chan knows. You wonder if she's scared. It's a thrilling kind of thought! Really!

"Okay! Okay! You got me. What, what, what do you want to learn about, Megumi-chan?" You say, enthusiasm sips into your voice because he's almost thirteen, and his sister is a corpse that he prays is alive and－ you'd say the guilt could swallow you whole if you wanted. You wouldn't want to pity yourself, that's a pity party! Those are the worst! "What stars, what constellation? What do you want to know, Megumi? What did you want to know?"

You stripped your divinity off a monster much bigger than you but－ not your sister, never your sister.

"What if I tell you a story instead? About the biggest star? A legend, a folktale. Swear it's true－"

"I don't want stories, tell me about the stars－" he hisses.

"Aw, let me tell you first, then I'll tell you anything you want? Okay?"

Shōko laughs behind you.

Megumi thinks about it, "Fine."

"There's a family," you start.

_

There is a family, of too many to count, for the father remaries again and again and he is immortal; so there is a family too grand to count. The father is a grand as well, he is large and strong and powerful, he rules with an iron fist and iron teeth and he is everything that is cold and biting. The god of gods, the strongest elephant among the ants of humanity. He is not a benevolent god. Not in the slightest.

He makes anthills just to crush them; he is cruel, bàba, they call him. Bàba is evil, you see. His smile is sharp and hot, he is the sun and he will burn crops if there are not sacrifices at his alter, but－ bàba has a wife, now. Her name is māmā, just as every woman before her, it seems, it's a name just as cruel as her husband, and she is to be his last wife, he says; so the story goes, she gives birth to his last son until the next wife comes to be. The son is like a half-eaten cherry. He's frail, weak, an ember among inferno's. It's pathetic. He's weak, but but but, the eldest daughter of bàba is not. She's quite the opposite. She is the strongest of his children. The kin of his first wife.

Her name is unknown. They call her other things, though. Hopes and prayers in the middle of the night, redemption, reconciliation, reckoning.

She's the best of them, the strongest in that family of theirs— stronger than that father, so —

The youngest is no longer the youngest, for bàba has found a new māmā.

So he is no longer the weakest, and with a taste of power, he in turn comes to spite bàba, and so he kills bàba and— the first supernova is born, and when bàba inverts on himself and becomes a black hole, the son has killed the sun and in that moment he is a god. The weakest one around, but that just means bàba was weaker than him, that all jus grandeur was a Russian and nothing more. As bàba falls, though, the son decides to grant him one last wish, to be seen by everyone around. A symbol of the end of a tyrant's rule, that wishes do come true.

And so the father is dead, with nobody to bear his crown.

(So a shooting star is a candle light, don't waste its brightness.)

_

"That's not true." Megumi says, huffing. "And you're a terrible storyteller."

"Gah! My heart, Megumi-chan! My heart!" You croon. Megumi hisses and scoots away from you. 

"I want to learn about Orion!"

"Hm, kay, kay," You laugh, "Orion is a mostly visible throughout the world, which is really cool. It is one of the most conspicuous and recognizable constellations in the night sky, real big and bright. It is named after Orion, a hunter in Greek mythology, in the modern day, anyhow. Its brightest stars are Beta Orionis and Alpha Orionis— think Gojō-san's blue and red. It's got a bunch of cool kinds of backstories, like in Chinese, Orion is one of the Sieu — or Xiù. It is known as shēn or shēnxiù, three— for the stars in Orion's Belt! This version, which is over three millennia old, I'll have you know, contains a representation of the three stars of Orion's belt on top of a man's head— with the bottom portion— representing the sound of the word was added later, if you read the－ in my room there's a book scribbled Night Light it's all the mythos about stars. Stars are all about folklore, Megumi. It's how you make sense of things you can't understand." You say. "A lot of cultures called it hunter, though I can't understand it."

"You don't get death in a lot of ways, though. Hunting is just a monster and a protector spurned into one." He says, turning into the next page of his book.

Maybe he's right, that there's more than one way for someone to die, "Yeah, yeah I get that, people can be dead to you without really —"

"Suguru isn't dead." Shōko says, suddenly. There is a pause in the air. "It's, he's got this cult－ he massacred this village－ I phrased it wrong when I said it－ "

"Then why－" you think, "was Gojō so upset when I came back. I thought he was angry because I was alive when－"

"Because you're friends, Yoruya. "

Oh. Oh. "Oh."

"Did you think－"

"He said I would die despite having infinite power, the power to stop anything, really." You tilt your head, you should end this conversation for Megumi. Gojō is his sorry excuse of a father figure, and you already know how delicate that relationship is. "I kind of figured he didn't like me much."

"Oh no－ do you－take everything we say seriously?" Her voice cracks, "When－"

"Probably." You say, in turn. "Though, I keep trying to get the jokes I— "

"You're so dense— we— gah!" Irritation crosses her face like a knife, bleeding at the ends outward, "Megumi, do you hate Satoru, genuinely? I won't tell."

Megumi shuffles for a little, mostly tucked out of the conversation and reading your textbook. He looks up and tilts his head. "Promise?"

He sound so young, you want to coddle him. "Promise." Shōko says.

"No," he says, "he's annoying, like a— an older brother."

"Oh," you say, "when my big sister said things, she meant them.. She was always right, too."

Shōko looks at you and for a second she looks like she's swallowing something bitter, sour, wrong, "Middle kid syndrome."

"I was the youngest, then." You laugh, "My father remarried so many times I lost count— he died a couple years ago, the year before I moved to Tokyo to do my degree."

Years, eons, the time slips past your fingers, sand! Falling before your eyes like a waterfall! The ocean in your mouth, spewed out like a curse! You are the god and a god, the weakest elephant usurped the strongest, so what does that make you now? Are you just god? Your sister was stronger than your father, though, than the god you built yourself from. 

"How big is your family?" Shōko coughs.

"Y'know," you say, grinning widely, like a wild animal that fears a predator. There are too many, like all the grains of sand it the world. "I never thought to keep count."

"Well, whatever," Megumi says, snidely. "your nēsan sounds like an asshole."

You tsk and tut, "Don't curse Megumi, its not nice." 

Megumi snarls and you can see Shōko's hands tremble a half-hearted amount, like she's looking at a young calamity— but she isn't looking at you, how strange! How strange! Her eyes are wide and locked unto Megumi for half a second before her shoulders intense and Megumi laughs. 

"I'm thirteen, not eight, Maki-kun and Mai-kun are going into Jujutsu Tech next year. I'm basically an adult."

At that Shōko laughs with him, "Oh, kid, no." It spurns into a cackle, "Me and Yoruya and everyone else— we're barely adults— and were like, wait."

"Yeah, Megumi-chan, you're a baby to me, so cute!"

He says gibberish, confidently.

"What—" you laugh, "—was that?"

He grumbles, "When we first met, you said I was— something." He makes a half hearted attempt, face red.

"Adorable."  You say. "That's what I called you. It means cute, and it's still true, my cute little nephew!"

"Nephew?" He and Shōko say at the same time.  You laugh because it's all so silly!

"I'm like you're uncle, and Shōko is like your aunt, and Satoru is like your big brother slash dad— and Tsumiki-chan is your sister! Utahime is like another aunt or something, you've got such a big family, Megumi-chan! And— we all love you so much!"

"That's.." his face pinks itself like a tomato, or enough to rival it in the very least, ".. shut up."

Shōko laughs, teeth shining against your dim room light, "Yeah, well— what if I don't? What if I keep talking, Megumi?"

"Then－ well, just. I － I love you too, I guess." He stutters out.

You grin, "You hear that Shōko-chan? Megumi loves us."

He coughs, red-faced once more, and Shōko laughs－ you don't think you're being dramatic again when you know it's one of the prettiest sounds you've ever heard.