Idiot

When Suguru Geto woke again, the ceiling was white.

The fluorescent lights were much brighter than those in the dorm, bright enough to sting his eyes. The air smelled of disinfectant, with lingering traces of some medication.

It took him a few seconds to realize where he was.

The infirmary at Jujutsu High.

Shoko's territory.

He tried to sit up, but a sharp pain tore through his chest, as though someone had stomped on his ribs. He let out a muffled groan and fell back onto the bed.

"Don't move."

Shoko's voice came from beside the bed, cold as ice water in winter. Suguru Geto turned his head and saw her sitting in a chair beside him, wearing a white coat, a medical chart in her hand and an unlit cigarette between her lips. There were deep shadows under her eyes, as though she hadn't slept in days.

"How many days?" Suguru Geto asked, his voice so hoarse it hardly sounded like his own.

"One," Shoko said. "You were unconscious for a full day."

One day.

"What about Haibara?" he asked.

"Alive." Shoko's tone was flat, but Suguru Geto noticed the corner of her mouth relax slightly around the cigarette. "Not a scratch on him. He was behind you. You took the whole hit for him."

Suguru Geto fell silent for a few seconds.

"Where's Satoru?"

"Outside." Shoko tipped her chin toward the door. "He stayed here all night. Mr. Yaga called him away this morning to write a mission report. He should be back in about half an hour."

Suguru Geto said nothing. He stared at the ceiling, feeling the pain in his chest: dull, heavy, constant, as though something inside him were slowly swelling.

The remnants of that Cursed Spirit.

He still remembered. In the last instant before losing consciousness, he had felt the pain, despair, anger, and sorrow of the people the Cursed Spirit had devoured burrow deep into his mind, curling up there and waiting.

"Shoko," he said, "is there anything wrong with my body?"

Shoko turned a page in the medical chart without looking up.

"Severe Cursed Energy depletion, two cracked ribs, and varying degrees of damage to your internal organs, but nothing fatal." She paused. "None of that is a problem. Reverse Cursed Technique can repair it."

"Then what is the problem?"

Shoko closed the chart and looked up at him. There was hesitation in her brown eyes.

"Your Cursed Energy Core," she said. "There's something foreign in it."

Suguru Geto's heart sank.

"What kind of foreign substance?"

"I don't know." Shoko took the cigarette from her mouth and tapped it lightly against the table twice. "It isn't a Cursed Spirit, or a curse, or anything I recognize. It's mixed into your Cursed Energy, like a drop of ink in water. It's spreading very slowly, but it is spreading."

Suguru Geto remembered the Cursed Spirit's final attack before it died. It had injected its concentrated essence into his body, trying to merge with him. He had thought he had suppressed it with his Cursed Energy, but clearly, he hadn't entirely succeeded.

"How far has it spread?" he asked.

"It's still very faint," Shoko said. "But if it keeps spreading, I don't know what will happen. It might dissipate naturally, or merge with you, or eat away at you from the inside."

"Does Satoru know?"

"He knows." Shoko's voice grew quieter. "His Six Eyes can see it more clearly than I can."

"Geto." Shoko stood and walked over to the bed, looking down at him. Her face was expressionless, but there was something rare in her voice, something that could almost be called tenderness. "What exactly did you do?"

Suguru Geto looked into her eyes.

He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to say, I came from the future. I died once. I killed a lot of people. I'm a Curse User. I'm the leader of the Time Vessel Association. I'm the enemy Satoru Gojo killed with his own hands.

But he said nothing.

Not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't know where to begin. Those words were too heavy, too heavy for him to bear. They lodged inside him, leaving him unable to utter a single word.

"Shoko," he said, "I'll tell you someday."

Shoko stared at him for a few seconds.

Coming from Suguru Geto, "someday" sounded less like a promise than a sentence being passed. Shoko sensed something, but she didn't press him. She simply nodded, tucked the medical chart under her arm, and turned toward the door.

The door closed softly behind her, leaving Suguru Geto alone in the white room, listening to his own heartbeat.

Satoru Gojo came the following afternoon.

He opened the door differently from Shoko. She had pushed it open gently; Satoru Gojo kicked it straight open. The door slammed against the wall with a tremendous bang, startling Suguru Geto and instantly worsening the pain in his chest.

"Satoru Gojo, this is the infirmary." Shoko's voice drifted from farther down the hallway, tinged with exasperation.

"I know!" Satoru Gojo shouted without looking back. He strode over to Suguru Geto's bed and plopped down on the edge. He wore sunglasses and that black jacket, his hair as messy as ever, but Suguru Geto noticed that his lips were a little dry, as though he were dehydrated.

"Geto," Satoru Gojo said, "are you fucking insane?"

Suguru Geto blinked. "What?"

"I asked if you're insane!" Satoru Gojo raised his voice, but there was no anger in it, only a strange emotion that seemed to have been bottled up for a long time before finally bursting out. "A Special Grade Cursed Spirit! You told me it was intuition! You call that fucking intuition?!"

"Do you know what that thing was?!" Satoru Gojo took off his sunglasses, his vivid blue Six Eyes fixed on Suguru Geto. "That was a Cursed Spirit that had already evolved to Special Grade! Its Cursed Technique wasn't just compression and devouring. It could attack your mind, too! If I hadn't gotten there in time-"

"You got there," Suguru Geto interrupted, his voice calm.

Satoru Gojo's mouth hung open, but no sound came out.

"You got there," Suguru Geto repeated. "So I didn't die."

The infirmary fell quiet for a few seconds.

Satoru Gojo stared at Suguru Geto. The emotion in his Six Eyes shifted from anger to something more complicated, something between hurt and helplessness. He put his sunglasses back on and turned his head, refusing to look at Suguru Geto.

"You almost died," he said, much more quietly.

"I know."

"You don't." Satoru Gojo's voice dropped even lower. "Your Cursed Energy kept fluctuating while you were unconscious. Shoko said there was something foreign in your core, so I took a look. That thing was eating away at your consciousness. If it had spread just a little farther, you might never have woken up."

Suguru Geto fell silent.

Of course he knew. He understood the danger of that Cursed Spirit's remnants better than anyone. But he couldn't tell Satoru Gojo how he knew, couldn't tell him that over the next ten years, he had seen far too many similar cases. Whether the fusion of a Cursed Spirit and a human succeeded or failed, the result was always a disaster.

"Satoru," Suguru Geto said, "how's Haibara doing?"

Satoru Gojo snorted. "The kid cried all day. Kept saying, 'It's all my fault,' over and over. Nanami was there comforting him, but you know what Nanami's like. His idea of comforting someone is to keep saying, 'Stop crying, stop crying.' The more he said it, the harder Haibara cried."

The corner of Suguru Geto's mouth twitched.

"What about Shoko?"

"She's fine. Just hasn't slept enough." Satoru Gojo paused. "She stayed here with you all night. I told her to get some sleep, but she wouldn't go. Mr. Yaga had to drag her away in the end."

Suguru Geto closed his eyes.

His friends. The friends he had once lost and now had again. They were here, by his side, keeping vigil while he was unconscious, berating him when he woke, reaching out without hesitation whenever he needed help.

He had once destroyed all of this with his own hands.

He wouldn't destroy it a second time.

"Satoru." Suguru Geto opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. "Thank you."

Satoru Gojo tilted his head. "For what?"

"For getting there."

Satoru Gojo was silent for a few seconds, then reached out and gave Suguru Geto's shoulder a pat. It was neither too hard nor too soft, as though he were making sure Suguru Geto was still alive, that he was real, that he hadn't disappeared.

"Idiot."