zero o'clock

[softpunks]

nanami kento & gojo satoru // 3k
> written for the Timeless Zine; Post-Star Plasma Vessel Arc; Canon Divergence.

It occurs to Nanami, two months into cohabitating with a Gojo Satoru who is Gojo Satoru except in all the ways he isn’t, that the two of them make pitiful sights compared to what they once were.

“In what sense?” Gojo asks, because mind-reading is a newfound skill he’s apparently acquired since becoming a ghost. “That you traded exorcising curses for helping ghosts move on, or that I went from living like the dead to actually dying?”

It’s a good thing Gojo hadn’t emerged from the dead as a spectre, vengeful and bitter at the world. Still, it doesn’t mean Nanami is a fan of the inherent laziness that remains in Gojo, that he’s spent the past eight weeks since his first appearance in Nanami’s apartment trying to be one with the couch of his living room. The electricity bill has increased significantly because Gojo leaves the television on all day, watching on a streaming service Nanami doesn’t even recall subscribing to.

The additional expenses to note down are tedious; then again, so is visiting the graveyard to see Haibara’s tombstone, because that’s why there are so many ghosts that Nanami encounters who need his help in the first place. That doesn’t mean he’ll stop going, just as it doesn’t mean Haibara’s grave will stop being the quietest one in the cemetery. That might be the most pitiful thing out of them all, but it doesn’t mean anyone has to know.

Nanami looks at Gojo and searches for the words he’s been thinking of the moment he found Gojo like this, ghastly and ghostly, white-bright in his transparency yet dimmed out and void. He exhales a deep breath, feeling the exhaustion seep out of him. “Why are you here?”

They’re indoors and midnight inches closer. Nanami should be heading to bed now, but he can’t bear to enter his bedroom without expecting some sort of reply. Even though they’re indoors, Gojo always wears his sunglasses, and it’s effective in hiding what he truly feels when he says, “Because I died.”

== 

If the ghost thing only happens to Nanami because the elders bury Haibara in a civilian’s graveyard, the Gojo is a ghost thing only happens to Nanami because Gojo dies, and he has nowhere else to go.

Gojo shows up in Nanami’s living room even before Nanami learns of his death. Nobody thought to inform him, and it wasn’t something that even occurred to Nanami could happen, because this was Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer to ever live, and people like him always felt like they’d live forever in places they flourished, while people like Nanami withered away or went somewhere else to do so.

Back then, Gojo had been quiet, like he didn’t even realize where he was. He didn’t have the power of Six Eyes when he was a ghost, but his eyes were still just as haunting as they bore into Nanami. It was only because Nanami had grown used to ignoring ghosts he couldn’t help from his constant visits to the cemetery that he was able to turn away from Gojo and act like he hadn’t seen anything as he left for work the next day, but he did pick up his phone and call Shoko.

“Yeah, just last week—on a mission,” Shoko explained, sounding more tired than she’d ever been. “How’d you figure out something happened?”

Nanami thought about confessing that it was because he’d seen Gojo’s ghost lurking in his hallways, silent but ever-present, surprisingly harder to ignore than he’d been back when he was alive and back when they were in the college. He held back. It wouldn’t change anything. There would be no point in telling Shoko that Gojo was here when he wouldn’t be for long, because ghosts couldn’t wander the land of the living forever. She didn’t need that extra grief; not when she didn’t even seem to let herself feel the grief that she already possessed.

“He hadn’t called lately,” Nanami lied. “I was grateful for it, but I still wanted to see if everything was alright.”

“Sorry we didn’t tell you,” Shoko said. “Everything’s kind of a mess right now since Satoru’s gone. You were smart for leaving before it all went to hell.”

“I don’t think anyone could’ve seen that coming,” Nanami said. Shoko snorted, like she doubted it. He decided not to ask, because it felt like something only she would understand. It always felt like they were in their own world, after all—his three upperclassmen—and they didn’t want to share with anyone but each other. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.”

“Don’t be. It sucks that he died, don’t get me wrong, but also—maybe it’s not so bad. At least now, he can be with Suguru in the afterlife.”

Later that day, Nanami would return home and see Gojo there, draped over the television, still not having said a word. He would remember how Shoko sounded over the call, how her voice nearly quivered with something that could’ve been hope, because she couldn’t bear to grieve.

==

Gojo is the last person Nanami would ever want as a roommate, but as a ghost, he isn't so bad. Sometimes he does helpful stuff, like putting away dishes when Nanami’s too drained to do so, or half-heartedly attempting to throw the trash on garbage day when Nanami loses track of time until he sees the mess and remembers. Gradually, the silence dissipates; the first time Gojo speaks to him, it’s to make a comment about chores, and from there, they exchange banter, small talk made up of remarks or comments that they always did back when they were in high school. Never anything serious, never in ways that showed they really knew each other.

It’s fine. Nanami has never wanted anything more with Gojo, who typically embodies the idea to the point where it feels like he has to take up all the space in the room lest something terrible happen, where he crowds on everyone’s personal space because that’s what he’s been doing this whole time, crashing in Nanami’s apartment unwelcomed. Regardless, he wants change and leaving things alone is something Nanami can only do for so long.

So when he returns home from smelling like soft soil and decaying bones, head ringing with phone calls and the mundane, exaggerated complains of coworkers, to see Gojo, still in his living room like he’s lived here for years and not simply ten weeks, the restraint crumbles, and exasperation rises like a tide in Nanami.

“You’re wasting your time here,” he tells Gojo, who is curled up on the cushion like he’s the one who had a bad day. “There are better places you could go to, ones where you’re actually wanted—needed, where you belong.”

“I can’t exactly exorcize curses like this.”

“I wasn’t referring to returning to the college,” Nanami says. “I’m sure Getou-san is waiting for you on the other side.”

Even from beneath his glasses, Nanami is able to catch the way Gojo’s eyes narrow, the way his body coils in tension, the way he’s caught off guard by the bluntness of Nanami’s words. Nanami doesn’t expect an answer, but maybe there is truth to how they’ve changed from who they once were, how they’ve grown to be pitiful, because Gojo confesses, “I’m not ready to see him yet.”

Nanami raises an eyebrow, but Gojo isn’t looking at him. For all Nanami’s curiosity to unpack Gojo’s words, he knows he’ll never understand. Gojo and Getou have always belonged to a world different from Nanami’s, one more than life and death, one more than sorcery and curses. If there’s one thing encountering ghosts who have latched onto him out of desperation to leave, it’s to not ask questions, to let things simmer into a mystery and stay that way. If he can do that for strangers with ease, why not for someone who may not be a friend, but someone he could almost admit to being close to, in some convoluted way?

“You know that being afraid isn’t a reason to keep you here,” he says. “That’s not how it works.”

Surprisingly, Gojo doesn’t take offense to being called out as scared. He looks thoughtful instead. “You would know, wouldn’t you,” he muses, in a tone that clearly tells Nanami that Gojo’s thinking about something else. But in the end, he acquiesces, because he says, “Though I guess I do have some unfinished business.”

 ==

Nanami has encountered dead men lurking the streets because they missed their daughters, women who worried over people they’ve known for less than a year, teenagers and children who want to check on their friends; all these people taken from the world when they didn’t want to because they cared too much about those they left behind. There are times when what keeps a ghost tied to earth is personal fulfillment, but most of the time, it’s relationships that cause them to linger.

He doesn’t exactly expect Gojo Satoru to be that self-centered, but it still surprises Nanami, when he finds out that Gojo’s unfinished business comes in the form of two young girls named Mimiko and Nanako. Even then, when Nanami thinks about it, he supposes it makes sense. The girls aren’t really Gojo’s, and it’s not about them in the first place. It’s about Getou Suguru, because that’s how Gojo Satoru has always been, and Getou Suguru would’ve taken in Mimiko and Nanako as his own wards when he defected if not for the fact that Gojo killed in on the pavement of the busy Shinjuku streets.

“I don’t actually feel guilty about it,” Gojo says to Nanami, who only blinks. “Leaving those girls as orphans again. I didn’t—didn’t feel anything. What I did had nothing to do with them. I’m not like Suguru.”

Of course Gojo is nothing like Getou. To Getou, it had always been more than just himself. It was why he massacred an entire village just for two girls he met; it was why his resolve as a sorcerer cracked upon the death of the Star Plasma Vessel. Nanami didn’t have to be close with him to know that, because sometimes he felt that pull himself, to just destroy everything in his wake because it was all so pointless, that everything he tried to do was insignificant and didn’t matter to the very people it was for. But he chose to walk away instead, because the reality was that he might’ve understood Getou, but he didn’t have the power to carry it out.

Besides, when he’d look at Haibara’s grave, he’d remember that he didn’t really have the will to. Nanami is tired of death more than he’s tired of life. Helping ghosts only cements it, but there’s a reason there’s life in the word afterlife, and it instills something a little less fatalistic in him.

“But I do feel like he won’t forgive me if I see him and have nothing to say about how they’re doing,” Gojo adds.

Gojo is not the same as Getou. Or Nanami, for that matter. To him, it’s always been about himself, and Suguru. Their own little world.

They find the girls easily enough. Since the beginning, Gojo has known where they are but not how they’re doing; all things considered, Mimiko and Nanako are doing well. They’ve found a nice foster home, and though their new guardians would’ve been the kind of people Getou might’ve resented—non-sorcerers who tended to dismiss the girls’ nightmares about gruesome curses popping up in the corner of corridors and the streets, the truth is that Nanami wouldn’t really know, because he’s never known Getou the same way Gojo has, and what’s important is that these people are kind to Mimiko and Nanako.

Nanami and Gojo watch the family from a distance, all of them in a public park with a playground. There’s a small glint in Gojo’s eyes, the kind that looks like relief. It makes Nanami realize he doesn’t know what they would’ve done if things were different, if the girls weren’t taken in by decent people; he doesn’t know if he’d look at Mimiko and Nanako and feel a pang in his heart that would compel him to do something he never thought of but would with unexpected certainty. He’s always seen himself as a man chained to solitude, but maybe he could break free from that, if given the right reason. Maybe this is what Getou felt, something he couldn’t regret doing despite not seeing it coming.

When Nanami glances at the girls and catches the familiar hair tie slipped onto their wrists, the kind he recalls seeing holding up long black hair and wrapped around the fingertips of Gojo’s fingers, the kind of thing Mimiko and Nanako don’t need but keep with them nonetheless, Nanami figures they might be the same.

“Is it always this uneventful?” Gojo asks, shortly after the family leaves. As they sit by the swings, Nanami feels both so old and so young at the same time. “Finding out what ghosts need to do to move on, I mean. I always thought it’d be more exciting than this.”

“It depends on the person.” The sun is setting. Work would normally be over by now, and he’d be making his way to the graveyard. “There’s no point in thinking about something that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

==

“So how’s this moving on thing supposed to go?” Gojo asks on the walk back, when the moon has risen and the streets have gone desolate and quiet. The graveyard is only five streets away if they turn right, and the trip back to the apartment would be seven minutes shorter if they go straight ahead instead.

“You’ll know when you feel it.”

Gojo looks amused more than annoyed at the vague answer. “Will you visit Haibara today?” For a moment, Nanami finds himself caught off guard by how easy he must be to read, but all Gojo does is curl his lips into something that could almost be a smile. Surprisingly, there’s nothing mocking about it. “When was the last time he spoke to you?”

“He never did.” Not once had Nanami ever expected him to, even when he spent most of his days surrounded by tombstones that had voices floating in the air, transparent figures taking the shape of what should’ve been bodies emerging from slabs of old stone. Haibara was kind, and though he didn’t deserve death, or the way he died, at least in its aftermath, he’d been given something he deserves—nothing that could trap him down here, remaining in a world that was living while he was not. “I don’t actually talk to him, when I see him.” At least, nothing truly worth of value.

“So you just go to his stone and brood silently?” Gojo asks. Nanami rolls his eyes. “It’s not only the dead that need to move on.”

“You make me miss exorcising curses,” he says instead, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge that Gojo may have a point. Doesn’t want to acknowledge that it might be why Gojo being here as a ghost annoyed him more than it should’ve, why he didn’t want to care if Gojo stayed but ultimately did.

Because maybe Nanami didn’t want to be reminded that Haibara left him when he could’ve stayed, even when not alive, even when not human. Maybe Nanami didn’t want to be reminded that he could easily pretend that Gojo was Haibara instead, with him, in another lifetime where they were pitiful but at least together in that pity. But Haibara’s grave has always been the quietest, and it’s the loudest reminder that echoes in Nanami’s ears and thrums strongly in his heart every day.

Nanami can’t begin to understand what Gojo and Getou are—were—to each other, and he knows he never will, but if he could grasp for something close enough to it, it might’ve been what Haibara meant to him. “At least they don’t say pointless things like you do.”

This time, Gojo really does smile. He looks both so old and so young at the same time. “Go home,” he tells Nanami, voice startlingly soft. Nanami thinks it’s a shame that he never got to know this Gojo, capable of being surprisingly gentle, and serious, and human, even when no longer so. But Nanami can’t regret it. He’s not here to be something that chains Gojo down. He’s never had the power to do something like that anyway. “I’ll say hi to Haibara for you after I see Suguru.”

“Haibara’s too good to end up where you’re going.”

“I doubt I’d end up somewhere bad. So long as Suguru is there, it’s good enough,” Gojo continues. “But if you really think that, then reserve everything you wanna say for when you finally join us. For both our sakes, I hope it’s not anytime soon. You better save on fun stories to tell. Who knows how boring it might be—out there.”

Nanami doesn’t reply. But when he walks down the road alone, feeling, for the first time, at ease instead of exhausted, he goes nowhere but home.