Koi No Yokan (gojo x oc)

21. Hysteria

"Sorry, Amanai. I'm not even angry over you right now. I bear no grudge against anyone. It's just that the world feels so, so wonderful right now."

March 2006
Two hours later.

"I take it Amanai is dead."

Suguru's eyes are fixed to the floor, slouching on the medical bench across from me. "Yes."

My eyes close in a blurry mixture of fury, grief, and disgust, but when my face falls into my palms, I don't cry as I expected to. I just stay there, hunched into my own darkness, knowing that the one person who could cure all the many things I feel, is gone now. "I can't do this anymore." The desperate chasing of a goal that has no end. The continuous cycle of watching everyone around you die.

Suguru has found the will to stand, to grab my shoulders and look me in the eye when he says, "We can't stop yet."

"Please."

"We can't stop," he repeats.

"What more can we do? Satoru is—"

"We're killing him."

The words sound utterly foreign coming from Suguru's mouth. The hatred that fills them. I hardly think I've heard him correctly, "What?"

"The bastard who took Satoru and Amanai away from us, we're killing him. After that," he softens. I recognize the agony lurking behind the anger, "We'll run, and not think about Jujutsu for another second."

I straighten up. "Okay."

∞

Star Religious Group Headquarters
House of the Children of the Star

The sun has already set by the time we've arrived. By the time we've sat silently for half an hour, simmering with our feelings and thoughts.

"Mommy." The curse from before, the putrid worm-like one our attacker had used to store his weapons, was now crawling along the floor, looking up at Suguru. "Hug me."

I frown. "I don't understand."

"Mommy!" it stops at Suguru's feet.

"You don't have to..."

But he does anyway. He absorbs the curse despite his disgust, only insisting that we move further into the unknown.

The entire frontage of the Religious Group's headquarters has crumbled. The pillars smashed, a massive crater broken through several layers of the rubble. And standing in front of it all, is what's left of our attacker.

Even when he's not breathing, I hesitate to get closer. To look into his aimless eyes, or see the gaping hole of his left side, one that perfectly aligns with the crater in the building. Nothing about it makes sense. 

Regardless, we came here with one purpose. I look at Suguru, who I'm sure is considering the same thing. That our job is done, and we can leave this behind now. We can run away and start a new life for ourselves, chase a new dream of happiness and peace.

Yet, without a word, we step through the crater in the headquarter's walls. For the same reason Suguru absorbed the curse, it's what we're trained, programmed even, to do. It's all we know how to believe in.

There's a sick feeling forming in the pit of my stomach, one that intensifies with every step we take towards the booming applause, to the red light glowing through the walkway. We arrive at a pair of glass doors, ones that reflect our worn expressions back at us. They rattle from the immense thundering within.