Unmatched | ᴍᴀʜɪᴛᴏ

Chapter 42

Long before our Fast & Furious or Marvel nights, Itadori and I had started the movie nights just the two of us. It was when no one knew that he was still alive. Gojo had given him movies to watch with his cursed corpse as training for his cursed energy. When I visited him in the evening after my excessive physical training with both Nanami and Gojo, he was always on his sofa watching something.

When he realized that this was happening, Gojo gave me a cursed corpse, too, and told me, "You might as well train while you're watching movies with him anyways."

My cursed technique was nothing more than a hypothetical to him. Of course, I couldn't have expected him to let me use it. It made me dangerous, something he desperately tried to avoid. He didn't want me going crazy like his best friend had. He didn't want to lose anyone else. So, I never used my technique and never told anyone what it was.

But Gojo told me many times that I was very skilled in controlling my own cursed energy, and he was sure that it had something to do with my technique. He taught me how to feel other's cursed energy, how to see residuals, and how to hide my own. According to Mahito, I had subconsciously been hiding my residuals the entire time, but I hadn't known that then when Gojo taught me.

It was hard for me to keep Itadori a secret from the others, but it was especially hard to keep myself a secret from all of them. I didn't want to let anyone in. I didn't think I needed to let anyone in. But spending so much time with Itadori and him telling me things about himself made me want to open up, too. I forbade myself that at first, telling myself to stop being so whiney. I should focus on training, not on making friends.

But Itadori was stubborn, and so was I. Both parts of me were stubborn; the one wanting to open up, and the one wanting to stay closed down. It was a constant battle until the first part of me finally won, and I realized that I did need to open up. That was what I had always wanted: just someone to talk to. Someone I could tell things about myself, like my hopes and dreams. I had always wished for a friend. And now I had one.

It stayed that way. I had one friend. Fushiguro and Kugisaki were there; they were nice, too (most of the time), but we weren't really friends. I knew it, and they knew it, though they always insisted on the opposite. But I knew that I wasn't able to open up to them the same way I did to Itadori. Maybe because I had known him longer and more closely. Or maybe because I felt that one friend was enough.

When the exchange event came and Itadori was revealed, I thought I had lost my friend. They had known him before me. But I had known him longer. All those weeks when they thought he was dead, I was there. I knew him better than anyone else at school, and he knew me better than anyone else in the world.

For a while, I really thought we were soulmates. I knew that he didn't like me in that way, and I didn't like him like that, but I always thought that we were meant to have found each other. He was the exact opposite of me, and he was completing me like a puzzle piece. He was the funny and happy part of me that had died a long time ago, but when I was with him, it seemed to slowly come back to life.

For a while, I thought that he was the only one who would ever make me feel alive.

And then I met Mahito, and my whole world changed.