Unmatched | ᴍᴀʜɪᴛᴏ (ꜱᴜᴋᴜɴᴀ)

Chapter 26

In my eighth grade, there was a girl. Hina. I never liked her, but my narcissistic, egotistical personality couldn't have her dislike me. She was a few months younger than me, but we never used honorifics. We had a few classes together, and she and her friends always sat with me. I didn't like any of them. They were bratty, boring, ugly girls. All they talked about was boys and boys and boys. We were thirteen. What did they know about boys?

But me, when I was thirteen, I had kissed five people. Three boys and two girls. The girls were just experiments because I had never kissed someone and felt what I had been told you were supposed to feel. But the girls hadn't changed anything.

Now, of course, I knew that it wasn't because the boys were boys. Now I knew that it was because they weren't Mahito.

But back then, Hina was my third experiment. She and her friends were walking home from school with me. They all had to leave along the way. First one girl, then the next. Two of them were sisters, so they left together. Hina and her closest friend had the longest way in common with me. When we walked home, I never talked. They knew that I never talked, so they never made me.

But they both liked me. I was a good actress. I smiled when I needed to, and I never said rude things. But on the inside, I despised them. That other girl, she wasn't pretty like me. She wasn't smart like me. She was dumb and I was convinced she would never pass high school. I didn't know why Hina liked her so much.

When the other girl turned into her street, Hina and I were alone for another few houses before I had to leave for mine. I don't know why I did it. I just kissed her. I held her hands together and kissed her like the boys had kissed me. She didn't like it. Not because I was a girl, I think. But because I hadn't asked.

"You're always talking about kissing and sex as if you have any idea what you're talking about," I said to her. "Obviously, you don't. You and your friends, you talk all day long, but you have no idea about anything."

She only looked at me. There was no surprise in her face when I said that. It was as if she'd always known that I was thinking rude things like this but just never saying them out loud.

"You aren't actually a good person," she then said. "You're like a spider, luring flies into her net just to kill them."

I laughed loudly, making her flinch. It was satisfying to make people flinch. For once, I wasn't the one on the receiving end. "Spiders don't actually lure flies into anything. The flies are just too stupid to see the net and realize that it's sticky."

She walked away and cried on her way home. I stood on the sidewalk and watched her until she was out of sight. I laughed. A lot. And then I went home, wiping the smile off my face. My parents had turned me into a horrible person.

I had known that back then, and I knew it now.

Mahito didn't look at me like I was a bad person. He looked at me like I was an angel. In his and my twisted view of the world, I was maybe some kind of angel. He touched me like he knew exactly where my net was sticky, but he didn't care because he was a spider, too. I was only going with Geto, I wasn't going to die. As far as I knew. But Mahito seemed to take it so hard to be separated from me. I didn't think that Geto would do anything to me. Mahito wouldn't forgive him.

It was impressive how a man could put on a smile, but you could see the loathing behind it. Geto had mastered that skill. When he took me into a restaurant, he gave the lady working there the biggest smile I had seen on his face yet. She took us to a table in the corner, and we sat down opposite of each other.

It was the first time that I could actually look at him with objective eyes, without Mahito right next to me, stealing everyone else's spotlight. Geto was an attractive man, I'd known that. But just how attractive he was, I had had no idea. He had stitches across his forehead, which confused me a little, but it was nothing compared to the stitches Mahito had, so I didn't feel uncomfortable or the need to ask.

He was looking at me, too, but our eyes never met. I could see him scanning me again like the first time we had met. Yesterday. It seemed like ages ago to me. A waitress came and took our orders. She left. Geto looked at me. I looked at him. Our eyes met. He smiled.

"You know what we're doing, don't you?" he asked.

I frowned, looking around. I had wondered why he would take me to a restaurant, but I hadn't thought it necessary to ask.

"Eating, I suppose," I said stupidly.

Geto laughed and leaned back in his chair, eyeing me with that slightly superior look of his. "Don't play dumb. I know that you're not."

I smirked, dropping the act. Fine. "I know what you're doing. What we're doing."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise at my correction. "You're a human," he pointed out.

I chuckled. "Good observation."

"What makes you think Mahito won't dispose of you when we're done and you're no longer useful?"

I chuckled again, but Geto stayed serious. He was amusing me, and I think he knew it. And he didn't like it. I leaned back in my chair, too, holding eye contact with the man.

"I would be fine with it," I eventually gave him my answer.

He smiled again. "Because you're sure that that would never happen?" he asked. He was making fun of me.

I shook my head and dropped my smile. "No. Because if Mahito doesn't want me anymore, then there is no more reason for me to be alive. There is no place else for me in the world. I won't go back to Jujutsu High, that's for sure."

"Because you won't be welcomed back?" Geto assumed boldly.

I grinned. "Oh, I think I would be welcomed back just fine if I told them you're still alive."

I could see in his face that he hadn't expected me to say this. "So you know who I am."

I nodded. Of course, I knew who he was. Suguru Geto. The second years had told me all bout him and The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. We weren't allowed to talk about him, though, because apparently he had been a good friend of Gojo's, who had killed him. Or so they thought. I didn't know what exactly had happened and why he was still alive, but I also didn't want to know. I already knew enough, and I was sure that sooner or later, Gojo would know, too, without me having to tell him.

"No, I won't go back because I don't want to be there," I answered his earlier question. "That's why I left in the first place. I want to be with Mahito. If he doesn't want that, then I will die."

Geto nodded. I couldn't tell if he believed me, and that frustrated me. I could usually always tell what people were thinking. Normal people, at least. Not Gojo or Geto. They were mysteries to me.

"What if I told you he sent me to kill you today?" Geto asked.

He was asking too many questions. I wondered if Mahito even knew that he was asking these questions. What did he think we were doing?

"Then I wouldn't believe you," I said.

He grinned at me as if he had just caught me in a trap. "See? You talk big, but it's only because you think you know that you're safe from him. You think you don't have to be scared of him."

Again, I shook my head. I wasn't in a trap. He hadn't caught me in anything. "Wrong again. I meant everything I said. But if you were to tell me that he wanted me dead today, I wouldn't believe you. He didn't even want to let me go earlier. But when the day comes, I swear to you, I won't fight him. I will never fight him. I am devoted to him, and I always will be."

Geto nodded. He seemed finally satisfied. The waitress came back to bring us our food. Neither Geto nor I touched it. He was still watching me, and I looked back at him. I wouldn't break eye contact first. He wouldn't break me. I was there for Mahito and Mahito only. Geto didn't scare me.

"Do you think you can change him?" Geto asked.

I didn't hesitate. "I don't want to change him."

"Why?"

"Because I like that he's someone where people have to tell me that I should be scared of him."