Unmatched | ᴍᴀʜɪᴛᴏ

Chapter 14

His eyes were the worst. They couldn't hold secrets. They showed exactly what he was thinking. I let mine show, too. I let the ice thaw and showed him everything. Everything. I tried so hard to make him understand why I was doing what I was doing. I didn't know if it worked. I didn't know if he hated me. I hoped he didn't hate me.

"Say something," I said after a while.

My voice wasn't strong enough to talk, so I whispered. Itadori looked at me. I frowned when I saw that he didn't look at me with hate. There was no hate in his eyes, no disappointment, no anger. I have seen these things in the eyes of my parents all my life, so I knew what it looked like. This wasn't it. It wasn't pity, either. I didn't know what exactly it was. But it wasn't nothing, and that was enough for me.

"I understand," Itadori repeated.

There was no way I could have stopped the tears rolling down my face. "What?" I asked completely in disbelief. "You do?"

Slowly, but very firmly, Itadori nodded. His eyes didn't lie. And they told me that he did understand. "I just need to know something."

"Everything," I said.

"How long?"

That made me press my lips together. I wanted to say, "Too long," but I didn't. I told him the truth. "Almost four weeks."

He inhaled a sharp breath and leaned back a little. I could see in his face how he was working with the information I had given him. He didn't mention the curse with the patchwork face, and I believed that he tried very hard to forget that I had told him that.

"How many times did he show up?"

I didn't know exactly, so I counted in my head. "Seven. Including today."

Itadori nodded. "Seven times," he mumbled.

"Listen, I-" It was hard for me to say it, but I knew that I had to. I wanted to. "I'm sorry. I really am so, so sorry, Yuji-kun."

He looked up at me and nodded. There was actually even a smile on his lips. A small one, but still, I took what I could get.

"Why did you tell me? You could have just kept it to yourself."

I smiled. "I didn't want to keep any secrets from you. Especially not this one. This affects you, too."

He nodded, a grateful look in his eyes. "Are you planning on leaving?"

My face fell. I couldn't look at him, so I searched with my eyes for something else to look at. I fixed them on the blinds in front of my window. I wasn't sure if I knew the answer to this. Did I want to leave?

I looked back at him, and my eyes welled with tears again. "I love you so much," I said. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I just know that."

Itadori put his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into a hug. This was the first time I had ever been hugged. Ever. It felt weird. Not bad, but weird. Like that time when Itadori had slept in my bed. Not bad, just kind of wrong. I endured it, though, because I could feel him relaxing into the hug. I wrapped my arms around his muscular torso and held him. He held me. It was sort of nice. Mostly just very warm.

Gojo was back two days later. When I showed up for training, I froze in the middle of the doorway. He wasn't wearing his blindfold. He was wearing black sunglasses, but they had slipped down his nose so I could see his eyes as he looked over the rim of his glasses. I quickly had to remind myself to pick up my jaw from the ground. I didn't know if Gojo hadn't noticed my starstruck expression or if he just pretended he hadn't seen anything. Either way, I was glad.

My eyes widened with every step I took towards him. How? How was he so beautiful? He was my teacher! He was smiling at me. As always. I didn't have the strength to smile back. Wow. Had anyone ever been this amazed by him before? I liked to believe that I was the only one who found him very  attractive. I didn't like competition, even for imaginary things that only happened in my head.

"Are you ready?" Gojo asked.

I nodded. "I was born ready."

He laughed. "I believe that."

Apparently, I had gotten very good. He said that he didn't  like to compare his students, but I would soon surpass Fushiguro if I kept going like this. I laughed.

"Don't overestimate yourself, though," the sensei warned me and easily stepped out  of my zone of attack. "Special Grades are still very hard for you. You are not a grade one sorcerer."

I nodded, but something about the way he said it made me raise an eyebrow.

"They're unpredictable. Especially the newer ones we encountered. That tree one that attacked the school. The volcano head," he said, leaving the sentence with a suggestive tone.

Ah. Of course. "Yuji talked to you, didn't he?"

Gojo smiled softly and tilted his head a little so I could see his eyes even better. I might have spilled the truth right then and there. Just a few more  seconds of those beautiful blue eyes, and I would have told him all of my deepest, darkest secrets. But I felt like he already knew them. Those eyes knew everything.

"He only told me that I should watch out for you," he said.

I nodded wordlessly. Of course, he said that. Itadori might have trusted me with Sukuna, but he certainly didn't trust me with leaving school grounds. He didn't want me to meet that curse. He wanted me to stay safe. With him. Here. I wanted to stay safe, too, but I had to find out if that curse was safe. Maybe he could tell me about my parents. If not, then I would accept if he wanted to turn me into a curse. I would accept dying. Because if he didn't have anything to do with that night, I would have betrayed my friends for nothing. So dying would be getting off easy.

"Are you going to do something stupid?" Gojo asked.

"Everyone keeps asking me that," I replied.

Gojo laughed, suddenly very happy and light again. "Well, you do have a tendency to take on more than you can handle."

My jaw dropped again. "Kugisaki too? Really?"

He laughed and shrugged. "They're all just worried about you. Fighting four curses at once while she has her hands full with two is quite stupid, you have to admit."

I grinned. "I didn't have my hands full."

Gojo looked very amused. Oh, I liked him. "Yes, I heard. That's why we couldn't train for a week, right? Because you handled it so perfectly."

Putting on a nonchalant expression, I shrugged. "Ah, well. Isn't that the risk you take on by becoming a jujutsu sorcerer?"

Gojo's grin widened and so did mine. "You're far too clever for your own good, do you know that?"

I chuckled. "I've been told."