Corpse Flowers [Jujutsu Kaisen]

🥀 Chapter Seventeen 🥀

Seiran had never had the patience for lies – they tasted foul the moment that they left the tongue, sour and heavy in the air, and yet people dressed them in silk as if that would make them easier to swallow. Perhaps that was something that Seiran despised the most: that liars always believed themselves to be clever, as though deception was a talent rather than a coward's refuge.

Lies tasted as if swallowing a Curse,

it was rotting from the inside out.

When a person lied, it rotted the very foundation between yourself and the other person, and trust was not something that built itself so easily once cracked. Seiran, in particular, had lived her entire life in the shadow of the sheer fragility of trust – a single false word could undo years of truth, and cruelest part was how easily it was done.

There were people who lied to keep the peace, and that was betrayal, that you were not strong enough to withstand the truth. And when people told the truth, it hurt because they did not care how it made you feel, how terrible it felt to know they trusted in your own strength to deal with the consequences of truth. Both were cruel in their own way.

lies robbed you of your strength,

and truth demanded you prove it.

For Seiran, she would rather hear an ugly truth – raw and merciless – than be soothed by something that was never real. Truth could cut externally, leaving wounds that stung and bled, but lies... lies rotted from the inside. They hollowed you quietly, poisoning the marrow of your trust until nothing solid remained. The cut of truth stung, but the decay of lies consumed.

Seiran did not like lying, and she could not abide liars. It was one thing to lie to others, she despised it, always had... but to lie to herself? That was the most wretched betrayal of them all. Seiran had lied to herself, again and again, that there, somewhere in that man, there still lingered a trace of the boy she once knew.

That Suguru, with his warmth and conviction, who made the world feel less cruel. The softness of his body the confines of her freedom. Seiran had clung to that lie as if she were a drowning woman, because the truth was too sharp to hold against the unending waves that one called life.

Even though that she knew better than most, Seiran fed herself the comfort of that foul taste of lies that resembled the Curses they consumed. She wanted against life for there to be something still left of him, something that she could reach, ignoring the malice that pressed against her skin, clutching at her throat. Seiran lied – to herself, and that was easier, for a time, than admitting that Suguru was gone.

And then there was Satoru.

Seiran had turned her hurt on him, as though his bright laughter and his unrelenting strength could shield from the sting of her harsh words. But the truth scared Seiran more – that she was lashing out against him because she knew that he was still here, still standing, and she felt so raw from loss that she punished him for it. She felt the weight of her cruelty – to think that it was justified, that he would be untouched.

More importantly than any of this,

Seiran had been lying to herself about Satoru.

The moon looked strangely complete tonight, and Seiran felt strangely sated under the wispiness of the shards of moonlight that filled the room. She laid still against the pillows, her body heavy with exhaustion but her eyes refusing to close. The room was hushed except for the faint rustle of fabric and the soft clicks of Satoru moving about. He was unhurried, almost domestic, as he tied back the loose strands of his white hair and set aside his blindfold on the nightstand, folding it with an absent care.