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In retrospect, they were doomed from the start.
From the moment Satoru died, and became a god. When he carved out half of Fushiguro’s body with Hollow Purple and watched the man die with the name Megumi on his lips, uttered like a blessing, like a curse, and felt nothing but satisfaction. When he hunted down said curse— and he is a blessing, Satoru would later decide— and found it to take the shape of a little 6-year-old boy whose hair spikes like a sea urchin and whose gaze is perpetually unimpressed to the point that Satoru is almost embarrassed just to exist. When he stepped into the empty apartment of said boy and his sweet sister for the first of countless times.
Satoru should’ve known. The Six Eyes should’ve told him. His gut should’ve warned him. Turn heel and leave, that the boy is a spitting image of his father, who held a gun to Riko’s head and—
He stayed. One night, two, then visits every week and weekend and leaving money for their groceries and cooking for them every Friday. Trips to the park, the mall, the zoo, and aquarium. Doctors visits and school meetings, where the teachers would stutter and struggle to comprehend how a 20-year-old came to care for two small children.
Because I killed their dad, he thought wryly as he batted his eyelashes over his sunglasses at the stunned teachers while Megumi sent him a death glare to his side. Because I killed their dad and don’t feel bad about it. Because I killed their dad and enjoyed it.
He would sometimes catch Megumi sleeping at the dining room table.
Waiting for someone who was never coming home, a half-finished crayon drawing of him and an adult, holding hands with Tsumiki and another adult. Smiling. The outside light would be on, the kitchen light on, and Megumi’s head resting in the crook of his arm on the wood. Satoru would slide the paper out from under him and stare at it.
He’s not coming home, Megumi had said when they’d first met, seeming resigned to the fact that his father had seemingly abandoned him. But he still drew pictures. He still waited.
I killed their dad and don’t regret it, Satoru would think when Megumi would stumble onto the couch in the living room that Satoru claimed as his bed whenever he stayed over, shellshocked from some distant memory of a dream that left him with tear tracks clinging to his cheeks.
I killed their dad and would do it again, as Satoru would drop Infinity, just this once but it was never just once not anymore, just so Megumi could tuck himself against his side and sleep. Just so Satoru could wrap his arms around the boy and pull him closer, and actually touch.
He knew, is the thing. He tells himself in retrospect that he should’ve known, but he always did. It would never last. Hot summer days of cutting sticky melon and playing baseball, then laughing when Tsumiki threw a pitch that landed Megumi with a black eye. Blowing bubbles with her in the park while Megumi read a book somewhere in the shade, before dumping the soapy water on his head. Sitting on the rooftop, constantly alert and careful of the two little bodies sitting beside him, and tracing constellations in the stars.
They wouldn’t stay kids forever and that became even clearer when Megumi summoned his first shikigami, when Satoru had to wrap a small cut from his first curse, when he watched the boy exorcize for the first time. They were hardly kids at all, not when there was never an adult around to let them be in the first place until Satoru threw himself into their lives with no experience and hardly any life lived himself, intending to keep an eye on two brats— well, one brat and one princess— until those intentions of distantly watching changed into making bento lunches and teaching to tie shoes and wiping tears and packing little Pokémon backpacks for school.
They would grow up and Megumi would become a sorcerer and Tsumiki whatever she wanted and he’d always watch over them, just in case, but he just wished he had more time— they had more time. That things would slow down for a day, for a moment, and Satoru could watch static on the tv while feeling the rise and fall of Megumi’s chest on his side as he slept.
Maybe if, he thought, holding the boy close and tight, willing Infinity to slow time to a halt, maybe if.
I killed their dad and I’d do it again if it meant having this.
But, this is all in retrospect. Because Infinity does not work like that, never truly meant infinite. Because Megumi is 15, and Tsumiki was 17. Because in a box, sealed away where no time passed and all the time passed all at once, Satoru presses his hands against the sides of infinite space and the edges of confinement and wills time to speed up.
Stretches the limits of infinity until it means nothing and he begins to forget the feeling of sea urchin spikes and tiny hands holding his and the plastic of a Pokémon backpack and the sun on his skin. The sounds of giggles like wind chimes and scoffs and conspiratorial whispers that evolve into raucous laughter and his name being called, beckoned, wanted.
Satoru thinks, now, he understands why Megumi waited. He always understood, but being a god means overlooking inane details, papering over gaps and holes before pouring cement into them and forgetting they were ever there.
Tsumiki had pointed to a ring he wore. Is that yours? she’d asked.
No , he said. It was given to him by a dead man before he died, slid onto his finger with the ghost of a smile, and secured there with a promise. I took it off a corpse, he told her.
Tsumiki shrieked and Megumi wrinkled his nose and Satoru laughed. And that night, he sat across from Megumi’s sleeping form on the table, spinning the ring on his finger and wondering if corpses could walk, talk, promise the way the one he knew had. He finds out later, much later, that they can.
The seal breaks, eventually, and don’t ask Satoru when, he is released. At the bottom of the sea behind barriers and other useless precautions that would never be enough to hold him. He comes back and observes the corpse that bears a face he recognizes, a voice he hears too often in his dreams, and decides some holes are better left cement-filled ringed reminders.
In retrospect, Satoru always knew this would happen. Because Infinity is protection but it doesn’t extend past him and no matter how close or tight Satoru held on, it’d never be enough for anyone else.
The marks on Megumi’s face are a weird imitation of the mud war paint Satoru would sloppily draw on his face. His hair pushed back from his face, a grin pulling at the corners of his lips. If Satoru were completely delusional for a brief second, he’d be able to imagine it was any other day five years ago, when Megumi was 10 and still let Satoru do ridiculous things to him because it made him laugh.
Megumi’s eyes are blue, like the sheets of his bed that he asked Satoru to buy him when he was 7. His eyes are red now.
I killed his dad and now I have to kill him.
Sukuna speaks and Satoru thinks of Toji’s last word.
Megumi, he’d said. Blessing or curse.
They were doomed from the moment Satoru accepted the ring from a man who came the closest to making his heart stop, with just a look and a few words whispered beneath his breath, who wouldn’t live past 27. Or maybe it was after that when Satoru let Infinity down for just a moment so he could relish in the feeling of having someone in his arms, safe, for once. Or it was when he blew a hole in the side of a man and felt nothing but glee when he dropped dead.
He’d rather have a bottomless hole and forever wait at that table for someone who’s never coming home than have another story about a corpse.
One ring is enough.