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Life hinges on balance. A feather weighted against a beating heart on the scale of judgement. In order for there to be a perfect world, there must be a vessel in which to store the imperfect. This vessel never sees absolution. It must be destroyed in order for everything it houses to be destroyed as well.
It was decided for Suguru long ago that he would be this vessel.
He couldn’t name the moment that this was decided. Perhaps it was as early as his birth, when he was gifted the innate talent to absorb and manipulate cursed spirits. Perhaps it was later, when he pushed himself to his limits to redefine his own understanding of strength beside the man he’d always considered the feather as counterbalance to his beating heart.
Or perhaps it was the moment that the bullet met Amanai Riko’s temple, passing through her skull and robbing her of the light in her eyes, on the tail end of his promise to take her home.
The exact moment doesn’t matter. It was decided that Suguru would be this vessel, and he is okay with this, because he knows that his are the only ideals that are unflawed.
He knows that he is right.
He’s tracking a cursed spirit to add to his collection when he meets you. The curse is still manifesting, in the closest thing to a fetal state that a non-human entity can be. It resides in the proofing oven of the oldest bakery on Sanbangai Street, sandwiched between a clothing boutique and a used records shop.
Each day, the curse grows stronger.
He doesn’t care to know what, exactly, is feeding this manifestation of greed and guilt and grief. He only cares to make it his own. Another useful tool, another knife for his sharpened collection, all glittering like incisors in the back of his head, teeth gently scraping cerebral membrane.
He likes to sit at one of the bistro tables within the bakery, paying two hundred yen for a small almond croissant that provides him no level of sustenance compared to the waves of energy put out by the growing curse.
There were always people that told him his energy was twisted, made different by his proximity to cursed spirits. Perhaps they were right. Suguru is aware that he is a monster. He is under no impression that he deserves salvation. He is the vessel—these things come with the territory.
It’s one of the many things that Suguru could choose to meditate on, though he stopped meditating the day he left Jujutsu Tech. There are too many voices inside his head, so many of them his own. Some of them not. Old friends, useless memories. So many voices full of doubt, another thing that Suguru left behind along with his former life.
He focuses on you because you are the one that does the baking. Each morning you lower dough into the proofing oven, let it breathe in the growing malice of the people in the bakery, the building, the entire city block, and take it out when it has risen so the sins can bake into bread.
The croissants never taste like hate. This is something Suguru allows himself to notice before his focus returns to the task at hand.
You will most likely be the one that the curse kills first when it reaches maturity. You are a non-sorcerer. You are oblivious to the danger lurking in your own proofing oven. Suguru cares little for you, though tries to be polite when he orders so as to not draw unnecessary attention towards himself.
He is unsuccessful. This becomes obvious when you, without fanfare, add something new to his daily plated croissant. The first words you speak to him outside of the commonplace give-and-take of cashier and customer are: “Do you not like chocolate? I have a few vanilla wafers I can give you instead.”
This is in response to him asking what the scalloped-edge chocolate biscuit is doing on his plate, dusted pretty with powdered sugar, the same as his croissant. The sweetest thing he allows himself these days.
He tells you that the biscuit is fine. Thanks you for it. He eats it at the table once he has finished his croissant. He listens to the murmurs of the curse, growing in its womb-like oven, becoming more and more sentient with each passing second. Suguru no longer meditates, but he allows himself to sit quietly enough to hear the employees speaking in the back, to tune everything out of his brain except for the voices past the swinging metal door of the kitchen.
"I think it was sweet," one of the non-sorcerers says. They begin to sound the same to him. Complaining and begging and sobbing. It’s all noise.
"It was embarrassing," you say. Your voice rings in his ears. Not unpleasantly. "He ate it just to be polite."
Suguru no longer mediates, but he sits with this information for longer than he perhaps should, lets it click against his teeth like butterscotch candy. One of the voices in his head that he no longer listens to teases him, says, You always were a heartbreaker, Suguru. He ignores it.
You have taken notice of him, and this will not change anything. He is here for a curse, and you will be the first to die.
It is difficult for Suguru to put a finger on when you started reminding him of Amanai. There’s something in the half-moon curve of your smile when you take his order, letting him tell you what he wants despite already knowing what he’s going to say. Something in the care with which you line up assorted treats in the pastry case, the action meticulous but seemingly effortless.
Or perhaps it is simply the death sentence you wear like a badge, so obvious to Suguru, though you do not feel its burden.
He once thought that a death sentence was an easy thing to change. That he could make a difference. Now that he knows the weight of a life taken, he has realized the futility in trying to save someone already condemned.
You persist, however, with your foolish actions. Offering him a cup of coffee to go with his croissant, of herbal tea after he has told you that he’s not a fan of caffeine. Putting little biscuits on his plate each day—sugary cocoa batons and heart-shaped butter cookies and brightly-colored macarons.
There is a creature borne of the filth of humanity brewing in the proofing oven in the kitchen behind you, and you’re trying to provide quality customer service.
Suguru has long been disgusted by non-sorcerers, but this is just another thing that makes his days drag long—that makes waiting for this curse difficult. Every day that he’s forced to interact with you is another moment he has to look upon a human resigned to their lot. No ambition. Happy to work their fingers to the bone for nothing but scraps.
Salvation is the last thing that Suguru deserves—he knows this—but he also knows that he has at least lived his life with more purpose than the non-sorcerers he interacts with. You disgust him with your simplicity, with the human way in which you’ve come to believe you deserve nothing better than the minimum, with the quietly pleased look you get on your face when he thanks you for the food. It’s disgusting, he tells himself, despite the fact that some mornings he wakes with the curve of your smile still etched into his subconscious.
It is not until your efforts to manipulate him into some kind of symbiotic relationship cease that Suguru realizes what about you, exactly, reminds him of Amanai.
The day that things change, you are one of two people at the bakery. This is unusual—though the front isn’t often well-staffed, he can usually feel the muted energy of three or four non-sorcerers running around in the back, doing mundane tasks that will fulfill them until they die. You greet him with a smile, but it is more tired than usual. There is no half-moon quality to it, no quiet radiance.
Suguru cares little for you—for this bakery, for anything but the curse he is here to acquire—but old instincts force him to ask what is wrong. Too polite, too gentle, too kind. You’re a bleeding heart, Suguru. These are things people used to say of him before he slaughtered a village of humans that didn’t have the capacity to be kind, to be grateful. Before he learned what a heart really looks like when it bleeds.
“We had a bunch of people quit with no notice,” you tell him. The skin under your eyes is lighter than usual. Make-up, he realizes, and he wonders briefly how dark the circles are that you have hidden. How badly you slept last night because of stress that you have never seemed to succumb to before.
The power of the curse grows daily, its influence reaching tendrils further and further, drilling into the hearts and minds of anyone it can reach. Perhaps you have finally succumbed to it.
“The owner, um. He…” you begin to say, but a sharp look from the older woman behind the pastry case quiets you. You apologize to him though you have done nothing. Wordlessly, you tap his order into your register and plate his croissant, never fully looking at him, though you have had no problem meeting his eyes before.
Suguru knows that his convictions are true. He knows that he is right. That although he bears the weight of his own sins, he is only doing what is best for the world.
However—it is, perhaps, something of a shame that he is right. It was that light in your eyes that reminded him of Amanai. That ineffable quality to find joy in the mundane, to wish for nothing more than to live your life how you want to live it. It’s a freedom that not many have. That Suguru has never had. It was decided for him long ago that he would be the vessel. That he would never see absolution.
And Suguru is okay with this. He has always been okay with this.
Despite everything, it saddens him that your freedom and joy must be sapped out of you before your inevitable death. Amanai died with the idea in her head that her saviors were going to take her back to her home. That she would live freely, the way she wanted to, with the people she loved, because Suguru foolishly believed that he was strong and that his counterbalance made him stronger.
But he is not a god. He is not anything more than what he has always been. He is simply the beating heart on the scale of judgement, bearing sins like arteries.
You will die just as every other non-sorcerer dies: alone and afraid. And Suguru will let it happen, because he knows he is right. He has to be.
When Suguru walks into the bakery and sees blood soaking the tile floors, he believes it is time to collect his curse. He calls his allies to him, twisted figures that fight beside him in shadow, and allows the stores of his cursed energy to flow through his limbs, alighting each bone, each knuckle and joint, with a thrum of power that quiets his too-loud mind.
It is when he walks into the kitchen, stepping over the corpse of the harsh-looking woman that had silenced you the other day, that he realizes he has been too hasty in his judgement. The curse still grows in the proofing oven, its skin stretched taut over too-long bone, its sharpened teeth gnawing at its own arms. It laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and there is no blood on its hands.
The watery breath that Suguru hears from the body crumpled at his feet is not that of someone with a wound delivered by a curse—but, rather, a human.
Though Suguru kneels for no man, he kneels for you. You’re still breathing, though your throat is cut rather badly, blood no doubt making its way into your esophagus, slowly drowning you.
More gentle than he has been in a long, long time, he brushes your hair back from your face. Runs his knuckles down the curve of your cheek. You’re a bleeding heart, Suguru. Pleading eyes meet his. You cannot speak, but he can hear you asking him for help. Begging, just like every other non-sorcerer on their death bed.
It’s strange—Suguru always knew you would die, but this feels wrong. It feels like your life has been cut off too early. Someone else, greedy, has taken the kill from that which had already claimed it.
Suguru doesn’t even notice the man standing at the other end of the kitchen until he starts yelling. It’s unintelligible, not worth wasting the energy to try to understand. Your skin is warm. He wouldn’t expect this from someone who has lost this much blood. “Was it him?” he asks you.
He means many things by this. Was it him that caused you to lose that spark of joy you always seemed to carry so effortlessly? Was it him that stopped you from sneaking whatever extra biscuits onto his plate that you could get your hands on?
Was it him that hurt you?
You nod.
There are many ways to create a monster, and Suguru has seen plenty of them. He is the product of plenty of them. So he will continue to do what is expected of him: the monster, the god, the sorcerer—the human.
And Suguru no longer meditates, but if he did, and if he gave himself time to listen to one of those voices that have again and again expressed their doubts, he might consider that perhaps, this whole time, he has been wrong. Perhaps the blood on his hands has stained more than skin. Perhaps—though he does not deserve salvation—there is a chance that it could somehow be allowed.
This, he realizes, is a foolish train of thought. Suguru has been a monster for far too long to pray for forgiveness.
How does one stop a monster from repenting? By giving it reasons to be monstrous.
In an instant, the man that hurt you becomes nothing but blood and tissue caked into the far wall of the kitchen. It’s an unpleasant sight, but not as unpleasant as the one before him—you, haloed in blood, your shaky fingers entwined with his, skin glowing in the halogen aura of the overhead lights.
It could be holy, this image of you.
He thinks, if things were different, he might have spoken to you. He might have asked your name, your hobbies, your aspirations. Why you feel the need to cling to life this dearly, despite its mundanity. He might have known you—such a delicate notion. Bird-bone fragile and tucked into the breast pocket of his coat like a good luck charm.
So many things he might have done. So many things he must do.
Days from now, Suguru will learn that the man he splattered across the white-tile wall was the owner of the bakery. That he had beaten his wife to the brink of death just days before, causing most of his workers to quit, excluding the two employees that didn’t have a security net to fall back on. That he made bail, came to the bakery to hide, and had lost his temper when you protested. Humans do terrible things when forced to face their own actions.
However, at this moment, all Suguru knows is that you’re rapidly losing both blood and consciousness.
You are a non-sorcerer. You are amongst those he has condemned to death because of the pain you bring to the world. The negative emotions that are so strong, so potent, that they can create beings that take pleasure in maiming and killing the sorcerers that put their lives on the line to protect those that will never understand the lengths of such sacrifice.
But it’s difficult for Suguru to find the negative edge to the half-moon smile you gave him as you tucked a few extra Belgian waffle cookies underneath the flaky edge of his favorite pastry. You’ve never brought pain to him with your offerings, with your warm skin and kind heart—and he is the monster. He is the one that is supposed to thrive in pain. He is supposed to be the vessel for it.
But he wonders: what happens when a vessel reaches its limit?
Suguru learned the weight of a life taken at a very early age. He has seen countless die, many at his hands, many at the hands of others. It’s a silence that sits in the eddies between bones, in the filaments of each muscle, pulling a body taught enough to crumble inwards.
The weight of a life saved is much more profound.
Everything in him seems to be pulled outwards, things that were once forgotten drawn to the forefront. Suguru no longer meditates—but he takes the time to sit under a blooming gingko tree in the Shinjuku Gyo-en Park, just upwind of the river. He takes the time to breathe in the scent of spring, the breeze of new life replacing old rot. He takes the time to ponder the value of your life versus another.
You’re a bleeding heart, Suguru. Perhaps he is.
Not every life is precious. Not every soul is kind. Suguru knows—though he has come to realize that the things he knows are not always set in stone—that his path cannot be diverted. He is just the same as the current that propels the river in front of him, as the way the chrysanthemum blooms sway in the wind. Nature has its course and Suguru has his.
You, however, were worth staunching the flow of fate. He watches, silent, unmoving, his legs crossed beneath him, as you walk across the bridge further down the river, laughing prettily at whatever the non-sorcerer that accompanies you has just said.
Suguru thinks that out of everything he has ever done, preserving your half-moon smile was the most important.
He knows that he can never touch you again. The tides of your life are inextricably tied to all he stands against. But he can at least make sure that no matter what happens from here on out, you will still be able to smile.
All vessels have limits. All monsters have souls.
Suguru is under no impression that he deserves salvation—but when he sees you taking joy in the simple act of being alive, throwing your head back in a laugh and exposing the bone-white scar that runs across your throat, he thinks he might have found it.