Convergence

Part 3 : Chapter 7

Hello,

I'm back :) Sorry for keeping you waiting

I love gojohime so much ahaha

.........

It had now been two weeks since Utahime had left the Tokyo hospital.

Two weeks.

By the standards of the jujutsu world, it was nothing. By the standards of her body, her restless nights, and the memories that returned to haunt her at the slightest moment of silence, it felt like an eternity.

She had quickly resumed her place at Kyoto Jujutsu High. Missions, reports, students, familiar hallways. As if nothing had happened. As if she had never come so close to dying.

Sometimes she caught people stealing glances at her face. Eyes lingering a second too long before awkwardly looking away. Discomfort. Pity. Curiosity.

Utahime ignored them.

She no longer hid her scar.

On the contrary.

She wore it with pride.

If men could proudly display the marks of their battles like trophies, why should she hide hers?

The first few days had been difficult. Terribly difficult. At the hospital, when she had first seen her reflection in the cold bathroom mirror, her heart had tightened in her chest. She had been afraid. Afraid of how others would look at her. Afraid that she would no longer recognize herself.

But those thoughts had gradually worn away.

Day by day.

The wound that now crossed half her face was more than a scar. It was proof.

Proof that she was still alive.

Proof that she had survived where so many others would have vanished.

She refused to mourn something she had never chosen.

All her life, people had tried to make her bow her head for reasons she never understood. Her origins, her gender, her weaknesses, her failures.

This time would be different.

The scar belonged to her.

And she would not let anyone decide for her how she was supposed to feel about it.

Yet despite all her determination, there was one image she could not forget.

Her parents' faces.

The immense relief that had crossed their features when they learned she was alive. Then the worry. That quiet, lingering worry only parents know how to carry. As though, even after she had escaped death, they still feared that something else might be taken from her.

That was probably what had hurt the most.

Far more than the scar itself.

...

Every day, she called Satoru.

Without exception.

Officially, it was to check on Tsumiki.

Unofficially...

She would not have known how to explain it.

The teenager remained trapped in the same medically induced sleep as on the first day.

No improvement.

No decline.

A cruel balance.

As if her soul were suspended somewhere between two worlds.