2Summary: Officially, there wouldn't be a funeral for Suguru, because Jujutsu society expelled him years ago. There was no way they'd want to commemorate a cursed user, especially one as infamous as Suguru. They'd sooner end up declaring the day a holiday and set up a festive celebration.
So Satoru ends up organising a funeral himself, alongside Shoko, because he never particularly cared about what Jujutsu society thinks.
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A/N: originally posted on ao3. Formatting this on my phone was a nightmare lol I highly encourage you to read the ao3 version instead
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It's cold in the morgue.
Shoko doesn't like the cold, or dead bodies, but they lack the appropriate staff for this type of thing — so more often than not, it's up to Shoko to deal with corpses, even though it's technically not in her job description.
Suguru's corpse lies in Shoko's morgue, hand folded over his torso.
She eyes Satoru as she tugs on her medical gloves, making sure they're snug on her hands. "I thought you told the higher-ups you hit him with Blue, and that there wasn't enough of him to carry back."
"Yeah, I did," Satoru smirks, draping himself over a chair. "You got a problem?"
"Not really," Shoko says. It's not exactly how she imagined meeting Suguru again. "I was just surprised. That's all."
She knew one way or another that Suguru's corpse was likely to end up on her table in the morgue, the same way most sorcerer's bodies did. She thought she was prepared for that, too. She just — foolishly, perhaps — thought that there was a little more time before she had to confront his corpse.
It's been a few hours since his passing. His body is cold to the touch.
"Well, he's definitely dead," Shoko says, examining what's left of Suguru. "No autopsy needed. He would've died of the blood loss eventually even if you didn't get to him. Yuta did this?"
"Yep, he did!" Satoru grins, "Yuta has come so far, hasn't he? He managed to hold his own — and then some. I'm so proud of him!"
Shoko doesn't know how Satoru still has the energy to smile when he's just killed someone close to him — close in a way that was different from anyone else — but it's not the first time she had to deal with Satoru's coping mechanisms, so she just hums an assent. "Not even I could've healed him if his entire arm got pulverised. I could reattach it if there was something left of his arm, but I can't regrow flesh on this scale."
She can feel Satoru's eyes on her as she works on cleaning the bloodstains off Suguru's face. Suguru looks — peaceful. In a way he hadn't when he was still alive, back when his workload was eating him up from the inside, when he had to keep pushing forward despite the loss. She's glad — at least he didn't die with hatred in his heart, cursing them for getting in his way.
But the ones he hated were never them at Jujutsu High, wasn't it? It was the non-sorcerors who were at the receiving end of his hatred.
Shoko always had doctor's hands, even before she cheated her way through med school. Always steady, never faltering, much like she always was.
There really wasn't anyone he trusted more than Shoko when it came to this.
"I can feel you staring at me," Shoko says, without looking up from where she was cleaning Suguru's corpse. "Are you that interested in helping?"
"No, thanks." Shoko may be used to handling dead bodies and embalming them, but it was never something Satoru was interested in. Especially if it was someone he used to know. He doesn't think he can stomach seeing Suguru like this any longer. He doesn't like this feeling at all, so he tries to divert Shoko's attention. "Is it even — I don't know — ethical? To have someone untrained helping you with embalming?"
Shoko raises an eyebrow. "Since when did you care for rules?"
"Good point," he says, scratching his head, "but I'll still pass on this opportunity."
"Satoru," Shoko says, pausing in her movements. "Why'd you lie to the higher-ups about this?"
Shoko prefers to be neutral when it comes to picking sides between Satoru and the higher-ups. She's secure in the knowledge that she'll always be too important to get rid of, and has no patience for being involved in the drama they produce. She's content here, doing what she does best. But it's not like she particularly minds helping Satoru once in a while — she's not really fond of how the higher-ups deal with things either.
"You know they wouldn't have given him a proper funeral," Satoru says quietly. "They would've just burnt his corpse and let his ashes scatter. There's… no meaning in that."
Meaning, huh. Something Suguru always craved.
"Yeah," Shoko says, looking back down at Suguru's face. "Did he tell you anything? Before he died?"
"He did," Satoru says, and smiles sardonically. "He said he just couldn't be happy living in a world like this. Guess we just weren't enough for him."
Satoru likes hiding under childishness, practical jokes, teasing, sarcasm, and a general air of unseriousness. Shoko knows that's just how he rolls with the intense pressure and loneliness that comes from being at the pinnacle of Jujutsu world. But Satoru can be a bit of an idiot when it comes to feelings, so she can't tell if he's just trying to process his best friend's death by making a bad joke, or if he really believes that.
"Satoru," she says, pursing her lips as she searches for the right words. "You know that isn't what he meant. He cared about all of us. Enough that he was angered and frustrated that we kept getting hurt and losing our lives. That's why he left. In a very strange way, he wanted us to be happy and safe."
He cared, Shoko doesn't say, and that's what destroyed him in the end. Some truths are just too painful to be voiced.
"I know," Satoru says quietly, then sighs. "Well, don't mince your words. You never hid how you felt about him becoming a curse user."
"Yeah," Shoko says, lips tugging into a smile against her will. "That was so stupid of him. One of his worst ideas. Stupid idiot."
"Our idiot," Satoru says, fondness leaking into his voice and the way he looks at Suguru's corpse.
"So what's the plan?" Shoko asks him, as if he has experience masterminding secret funerals before.
"I don't know," Satoru shrugs. " You tell me, since you're the mortician here."
She snorts. "You do know I don't actually have a mortician's license, right?"
"Aw, Shoko, you've never let that stop you," Satoru grins. "You're still the one with the most experience when it comes to burying bodies."
"Way to make me sound like a serial killer," Shoko sighs. "Anyway, we should ask Yaga if he wants to join us. He'd probably want to come."
It's close to midnight, but Satoru phones Yaga anyway and puts his phone on loudspeaker mode. The sound of his phone dialing Yaga fills up the room as Shoko looks at him expectantly as they wait for Yaga to pick up. He and Yaga don't phone each other often outside of business-related matters, so Yaga will pick up even though its pretty late. Probably.
It reaches his voice mail.
"Phone him again," Shoko commands. "He's probably busy with the clean-up after the battle, so there's no way he's asleep yet."
This time, Yaga picks up. He doesn't bother with pleasantries. "Satoru, I hope you have a good reason for calling me at this time of the night."
"Yeah, well," Satoru casts a glance at Suguru's corpse where it's lying on one of those metal beds Shoko has in the morgue. "We have something here that you might be interested in."
There's a moment of silence, punctuated by rusting of something — paperwork, perhaps, since a pretty big portion of Jujutsu High got destroyed, and it's part of Yaga's responsibilities as the principal to maintain Jujutsu High's properties. "Is it something against Jujutsu regulations?"
Satoru can't really answer that, and neither does Shoko, because lying to Yaga might bring a lot more trouble to him, so they don't say anything.
"Look, I don't want to know. Just be careful." Yaga heaves a sigh, and hangs up on them.
Liar, Satoru thinks.
Satoru knows Yaga cares. He's one of the few people that understands Satoru and can get along with him. Yaga has always been a solid rock for them ever since they were in Jujutsu High, but Satoru used to hate how roundabout Yaga always was. Like beating around the bush when they were assigned that mission with Riko, instead of telling them outright how he felt about the situation.
And he's doing it now again. Satoru knows Yaga would want to see Suguru one last time and say his goodbyes. Yaga was a good teacher, but he would've been even better were he not bound with obeying the higher ups.
But not everyone was like Satoru, strong enough to be unfettered, strong enough to do whatever he pleases.
It's always the stupid higher ups. Time and time again Satoru has to smother the urge to kill them.
It's not easy for Yaga, so Satoru can't really resent him. Not when he remembers lost Yaga himself looked the following weeks after Suguru defected.
( "Satoru," Yaga says, cutting through his disbelief. "I don't get why this is happening either."
Yaga buries his head in his hand, face shadowed. And Satoru realises that some things can't be solved even though he's supposedly the strongest.
What good is having all the power in the world if power can't save his best friend?
Yaga confronted him after he let Suguru go when they met in Shinjuku.
"Sensei," Satoru has to ask him. "I'm the strongest, right?"
"Yes," Yaga said. "And full of it too."
Normally, Satoru might laugh and poke fun at him, but he didn't have it in him to do so on that day. Hard to do so when it feels like the only constant in his life has been upturned.
Suguru's gone.
"But… Apparently, it isn't enough for me alone to be strong. I can only save… those who are already prepared to be saved by others." )
"I guess it's just up to us," Satoru says to Shoko.
They sneak out to bury Suguru next to his parent's plot. Not really sneak, per se, since Satoru just teleports them there. But they still probably look suspicious as hell, standing in the graveyard at midnight with a body bag.
Thank goodness for barrier techniques. Shoko sets up a curtain so civilians won't see them and dial the police. Satoru digs the hole. Technically, Satoru could do both on his own, but Shoko looks like she wants something to busy herself with, so Satoru lets her. It doesn't take long anyway, before they're lowering Suguru's body down. Satoru takes one last look at Suguru's face again.
"Hey, Shoko," Satoru pokes her. "Do you think it's appropriate for us to bury him next to his parents who he murdered?"
Satoru still can't phantom how Suguru could've stomached killing his parents, with how good they were to him and Suguru both. They'd visited a few times. The first time was when he and Shoko pestered Suguru into letting them stop by after completing a mission nearby. Suguru had made them promise not to mention anything about curses.
His parents had welcomed them with open arms — after berating Suguru for not giving them a notice in advance as he and Shoko laughed at him in the background. Then proceeded to fuss over a little blood that had stained Satoru's uniform, even though there weren't any visible scrapes on Satoru himself since Shoko had already healed him.
( "I'm fine! Really!" Satoru had said, bewildered.
"It's just — ketchup! He's pretty clumsy, so he spilled some on himself," Suguru fumbled.
"Clumsy?" Satoru howls.
"Just ignore them," Shoko says as they start arguing again. "They do this all the time." )
Suguru's parents were warm. So unlike what Satoru himself knew from his own family. He almost found himself jealous of Suguru.
"I don't know," Shoko said, "but I think it's fitting. Maybe his parents can knock sense into his thick head and nag him in the afterlife."
Satoru snickers. "Yeah. Serves him right."
When they're done they just sit together beside Suguru's grave, leaning against each other. Shoko takes out a cigarette. Satoru stares into the distance and wonders where it all started going wrong.
It's cold out there — at midnight in the middle of a graveyard — even though Shoko has a jacket on. She lights her cigarette, letting it warm her insides with a buzz of energy.
Even through his blindfold, she can tell Satoru's gaze is distant, light-years away, and his thoughts are whirling in disarray.
"Satoru," Shoko gives an exhale, cigarette smoke curling up in the air. "It's not your fault."
He watches the smoke dissipate in the wind. "How can you say that? If I had noticed earlier... I could've—"
"No, you couldn't have," Shoko cuts through his trailing thoughts with her surgical precision. "Suguru is — was — a little too pig-headed. He wouldn't have listened to you once he made up his mind."
"Still. I could've reached him. Towards the end... We were drifting apart. We barely carried out missions together."
"I was there too, you know," Shoko says.
"It's not the same."
"Was it really that different?" Shoko frowns. "He was my friend too. You were always busy with missions, but I rarely ever left Jujutsu High. He always stopped by for a medical check-up after missions because I forced him to. I tried talking to him. I tried to be there for him!"
But maybe it really wasn't the same. Shoko remembers back in their first year when all Satoru and Suguru did was bicker, and she was just too uninterested to be involved in their conflicts. She'd watched the way they looked at each other during their second year and resigned herself to being the third wheel when they finally got their heads out of their asses and confessed. Except that they never did, and here they are in the end.
The three of them didn't exactly have the close-knit camaraderie that the current students have. They never felt like a solid team, not like the current students. Satoru and Suguru were a pair, the strongest, and Shoko was the one who was always neutral, content that she'd always be safe in Jujutsu High because of the preciousness of her technique. And so Shoko didn't have to go out for missions like the two of them did. She didn't have to risk her life like they did.
And eventually they weren't really a team at all, Satoru and Suguru both strong enough to take missions on their own. But she would always be safe in Jujutsu High. Not like them. Never like them. She never wanted to be like them either, content to just watch things play out, secure in her own position. But it didn't mean that she didn't care.
Suguru broke because he couldn't accept that sorceror's lives were always sacrificed.
"Satoru," she says. "The blame isn't on you, if you insist on thinking like that. I wish I could've done more, too. But casting blame can't help anyone. Sometimes… You just can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. He chose his own path. We chose ours."
"I know that," Satoru murmured. "I just wish he would've... Let us help."
"Me too, Satoru," Shoko says, tired, eyes dry. "Me too."
( The pain is ever-present, but Suguru has always had a pretty good tolerance. He can ignore it in favor of studying Satoru. He knows the look in Satoru's eyes. He's sorry he put it there.
"It's just… in a world like this, I couldn't be truly happy…"
He just wanted a world where the people he loved could smile, unburdened by their birthright of cursing and being cursed. But if he has to die by Satoru's hand, he's fine with it.
He no longer feels pain or anger anymore.
He's just tired.
Satoru leans down. "You were always my one and only. That hasn't changed. You know that, right?"
It's what Suguru craved, and what he was afraid of in equal measure, but he can't help but smile. "At least curse me a little, wouldn't you?" )
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