The dying song

Chapter V: Baby, it's cold outside

Happy birthday, Satoru.

2016.

Satoru. Utahime.

"What are you doing here?" she asked again, closing her arms around her chest, her gray hoodie looking bigger than her shape. Gojo scoffed, his hands in his pockets.

"I believe you could thank me before that and I should be the one asking what are you doing here, Utahime." Poison came laced in his voice but he couldn't care less; he felt utterly outraged. "Fighting in this place? In the middle of the night? Are you fucking insane? This is dangerous. I thought you had left to live a normal life, but if you wanted to keep fighting so bad you should have stayed."

That's what he had supposed. Didn't she leave to be happy? Wasn't this the reason why she left them? The reason why she left him .

"What the fuck is it to you anyway?" She was enraged, unspoken words stuck in her throat as she made her best not to cry. It was enough with the hard time she was going through, having to look for her alcoholic father in a place like that, and now the less she needed was the judgment she could hear in Gojo's voice, which made her feel smaller than she already felt. "I needed no help, much less yours. I was handling it myself."

"Oh, sure." his sardonic laugh grated on her nerves even more. "You were about to spend the night in prison, but you sure were handling it."

Her body trembled, confusion and tension in the way. Things weren't supposed to happen like this, she never wanted him to see her again in this state, where she was far from the Utahime he had known. Customers in the bar diverted their attention from them as the music started playing again, forcing them to go out, with her taking the lead.

She didn't know what to do, unsure of what her next movement should be.

Neither did he.

With eyes off to the side, she gripped her bag as if it could save her from this stifling situation. The night was cold. She had to cover her head with her hoodie to catch a little bit of the warmth she needed so much.

But it wasn't enough, though.

Suddenly, she felt him sighing, holding back a thought she could almost hear. But his voice came out softer than she expected.

"What's going on with you, Utahime?"

Avoiding his gaze, Utahime looked away. A passerby walked past them, staring at her with lust shining in his eyes; the stranger was visibly drunk but Gojo could hear him when he mumbled something about Utahime having too many clothes on and, in a fit of a silent rage, took him by the collar of the shirt without saying a word, just to throw him to the sidewalk one second later in warning.

It must have been her cursed energy, he thought. Not that it was her fault, but her energy was always alluring to sorcerers, even more so to civilians, acting as an 'amplifier' of their feelings and making them feel so good that it often got her in trouble in the past. Satoru remembered how much it worried him when she left, hoping that nothing happened to her during all those years she was gone, that no curse user could harm her just because of her technique. But now, she was there, in front of him—flesh and bones—and he'd do his best to protect her.

With a foot on the man's chest, Gojo took his glasses off, glaring at him with cold and sparkling blue eyes, scaring the shit out of him.

"What a pathetic chickenshit you are, dude. Who told you you have the right to talk to her like that?" he spat in disgust, releasing the man under his foot to kick him right in the rib cage after that. "Do yourself a favor and go the fuck away."