Monday, December 18th, 2017.
Can you see the world?
Her response had been her own lie, if only by omission. Strictly speaking, no, Suzushina Yuriko could not see the world the way he implied 'somebody' could. But practically? Yuriko stared impassive out the window. If 'world' meant the Earth, then she could technically feel it. Spinning dutifully beneath her feet. Beneath the classroom. And it was the classroom too. That large, pervasive vector that brought about the day-night cycle. Eastward on its own axis. Approximately 360 degrees every day. She could feel the 'world' wobble as it rotated through physical space. Its Milankovitch cycles. And if she just reached out. If she just performed a calculation that was pitifully simple compared to the effect it would extract, she could—
"Suzushina-san."
"Hm?"
"I never, uhm. I never got to thank you for, uhm. You know..."
Sasaki Setsuko stepped in front of the window, and into her line of sight.
"Tch. It's fine, I was returning a favour."
Normally, Yuriko would have been a little more irritated being knocked off the tracks of her train of thought, but in this instance, the distraction had been a course correction. She'd been thinking a lot about Geto's words; of all the information he voluntarily provided—barebones by design to stoke curiosity— as well as the information he hadn't meant to divulge.
"You remind me of someone"
The wistful tone. The regret. Then later, disgust, aimed at Itadori Yuji. Then that story. What could she infer?
"Oh! Uhm, here's your jumper back."
"You're still here?" No wonder Accelerator just muffles shit all the time. Yuriko mentally devoted a portion of her calculative power into studying the sound waves around her.
Sasaki set down a paper bag, drawing more than a few eyes to her table. Even accounting for the bag itself, the vector of its weight was a few Newtons greater than it should have been if she was only returning the jumper. Surely enough, a cursory glance revealed that the bag was filled with clothes; all but one of which she hadn't donated to the toilet victim. Yuriko flinched. Itadori...had he...?
"It's not what you think!" Sasaki sputtered. "I just. Uh. Sorry if I'm overstepping."
The classroom was filled with whispers now. Not for the first time, Yuriko questioned the sanity of the school's upper management. All that had been done over the weekend was the establishment of caution-tape barrier around the wrecked bathroom and the building it was connected to. Classes on that side of the school, had been simply moved. Was the last week really that important?
Rumour had it that some 'contractors' had been called in, and they'd found no sign of foul play, and no further cause for concern. A cover up; likely from the other faction. After all, the monk cosplayer clearly seemed to care little for societal propriety, at least as far as 'non-sorcerers' were concerned.
Is that what her life would become if they found her? Would she spend her days rubbing sealant into the cracks that formed where mundanity met the supernatural? What was it he had said? Conscription? Yuriko already believed that she was strong. It would take a degree of self-deprecation not even she could muster to believe otherwise. Yet she didn't delude herself with notions of complete invincibility. Everything had a weakness, even if hers wouldn't be conventional. Doll; rope; voodoo?
If what Geto had said was true—and she took every word from his mouth like it had flowed from the dead sea—then one faction would see her lead a life of servitude, while his own was content with letting her do whatever. You know, as long as it didn't contradict his unspoken mission. Disgust, aimed at Itadori. Yuriko considered the likely doctored, likely redacted, story about the village he'd told her. She widened her parameters: his unspoken vendetta against 'non-sorcerers'.
Speaking of 'non-sorcerers.'
"You are. Overstepping, I mean," Yuriko spat. "You can go now."
Sasaki's shoulders dropped as she finally stopped blocking the view. Yuriko could hear the whispers shift—grow harsher as the girl ambled towards her desk. And of course they listened in. Of course they were passing judgement. That was all fine. As long as it got them to leave her the fuck alone. She didn't need the gratitude. She would take them, but she didn't need the handouts, either.
Yuriko only hoped that the 'thanks' which clawed its way up her throat was heard by nobody else.
***
During the lunch break, Yuriko found herself walking toward the Western courtyard. Itadori had tried to follow her; tried to accompany her with complete disregard for her not-so-subtle efforts to remain as invisible as possible. To thank him for his efforts, she had sold him out to the coach at her earliest convenience. Now the boy was running laps, presumably breaking records and hopefully the notion that they could 'friends.'
She didn't mind being cordial while they were sharing a living space. After all, the alternative was either eviction, or blunt-force trauma. Maybe some combination of both? But Yuriko didn't need, or desire, 'friends.' She could barely remember the last time she'd had one, and she hadn't even seen the girl in years. Then again, it had been years since she'd been to the village her mother was born in.
A numbness settled on her chest like a snowflake. If she followed that line of thought, she knew she'd spiral. It was her fault after all.
Focus, bug.
Besides. There was the distinct possibility that she was walking toward danger. Or not. Whatever the case she couldn't allow herself to be distracted by ghosts.
She'd felt that same presence presumably for a week now, flittering in and out of her range of perception, yet it never moved. Friday had given her the clearest 'view' of its position so to speak, and she should be converging on it right about...now.
Yuriko didn't know what she'd been expecting, but a thermometer shed? If it weren't for the new way she saw the world, she wouldn't have spared it a second glance. With its withering facade, and earthy musk, at best she'd have wondered just how long it had been there; how many winters it had weathered, before carrying on her unmerry way. No doubt, most people would have.
But she wasn't 'most people' anymore.
Yuriko approached the shed, engaging her barrier, and wrinkled her nose like she'd smelled something awful. She braced herself, as she unlatched the lock through her sleeve, like she was touching the door handle of a public restroom. The presence intensified as Yuriko prepared to face—
"There's nothing here..."
The space inside was positively foul. It reeked of... many things within her mind's eye. Like someone had crammed an entire war into the smallest space they could find. Like someone had left behind a rotten piece of meat and let it seep into the wood for millennia. There was a lot of verbiage she could ascribe to the shed, but the one thing it was, was undeniably empty.
"Aw," rang an overly saccharine voice from behind. "Poor Suzushina-chan, you're not gonna find anyone who likes you in there, either."
Wow. She really needed to stop getting blindsided by 'most people'. In a way, they were a bigger threat to her than someone like the monk she had met. At least she could detect people like him—like you, too— for kilometres. Something to work on, she supposed.
"Look what the cat dragged in," a second voice quipped.
Yuriko looked over her shoulder. Two girls, neither of whom she recognised, or had ever spoken to. It was a long list. She assigned markers of identity based on their appearances for convenience—Tall for the tall girl, Microbe for the short one (they were both taller than her). Yuriko took in their smirks, and their body language: arms crossed, hands on their hips like they were Regina George's back-up dancers— confrontational. Quintessential mean girls. Joy. It was obvious that they'd been looking for her.
"We're outside, dumbass," said Yuriko, Tall flinched. "What do you want?"
Microbe scoffed. "Uh, as if we'd want anything from you Cryptid," she turned to face Tall, who Yuriko considered naming Player-Two instead. "She like, thinks she's the centre of the world, or something."
"Yeah! It's giving pick-me! But... since she asked, I guess she could start with leaving Haruto-kun alone."
Who?
"So... you did want something." Yuriko shot them a flat look.
"Rude! Don't interrupt Aiko, she was just getting there."
And who?
"Thank you, true friend!"
"You're welcome, true friend! Like, I would kill for you. Really."
"Bestie..."
Yuriko's stomach turned. Her disgust was palpable. Eclipsed only by the disgust she had heard in Geto's tone. Yuriko even put in the effort it would take to express that on her face. With any luck, Microbe's ambition would collapse one day, and Tall would be her sacrifice.
That was enough of that. Yuriko shifted her attention to the passive calculations she was performing on soundwaves. A simple reflection would do the trick, but then the girls would also hear an unnatural echo. One that didn't particularly lend itself to discretion if she planned on using the 'mute' button in other circumstances.
So, Yuriko let their inane and aggrandising chatter become numbers in her mathematics. A Fourier transformation deconstructed the sound waves of their voices into frequencies, before rotating their phases and splicing together an 'inverse sound.' Yuriko then applied this sound to the air molecules around her. The result? Only the ambient environment was now audible.
Player-One and Player-Two remembered she was there and started trying to lower her intelligence again by speaking to her. They floundered as their lips flapped flippantly, framing words she couldn't feasibly, or even functionally fathom. A spike in the frequency on her graph told her they were shouting now. Or maybe she could tell from their bulging veins, or the redness in their faces. Maybe from the way Microbe stomped her foot on the ground as Tall had to physically pull her back. Yuriko felt her scowl warp into a smirk, and it only exacerbated their reactions.
Eventually, curiosity got the better of her.
"You hear me, bitch, Haruto-kun is mine!" Microbe managed. At this point she was completely out of breath and even foaming at the mouth a little. "But it's always 'she's-so-smart' this, or 'she-looked-at-me,' that. Wow, 'she sighed.' Damn it! If it wasn't for you, we'd already be dating!"
Yuriko blinked. "I... don't even know who that is."
"Then stop looking at him!"
Her brain stalled. That was dumb. No, that was beyond dumb, it was asinine. She regretted dropping her noise-cancelling, but it was too late. Yuriko had already heard that, and what she heard, she could never unhear. Her poor IQ score; she'd never taken one, but she imagined that whatever it'd had been would have dropped, like she'd been huffing nothing but lead since the day she was born.
Was nobody going to give her time to think? Why the fuck was she caught up in this drama between who, who and who? And it wasn't just today. It was this fucking week. It was this fucking month. It was the constant balancing act: straddling across criminality and wanting to have a future, like she was the Colossus of Rhoades. Just non-stop nonsense. Was the world going to give her a break? Like, just five fucking minutes to breathe? She was just trying to make sense out of this constant stream of bullshit, and Michelin Men, and the subterfuge and Itadori and danger and—
Wet. Odd, it wasn't snowing. Why did her cheeks feel damp? Yuriko saw Thing-One and Thing-Two take a step back. A befuddlement that had nothing to do with their usual states of existence was etched into their faces. She put a palm to her cheek, and it came away glistening. Crying. She was crying. And these fucking morons were the ones who saw her do it. Saw her break first. And it wasn't that she was sad. She was fucking furious.
She was so angry, it sent the power within her out of her voluntary control, whipping out in frothing waves that they couldn't perceive. But Thing-One and Thing-Two would say they got through to her. That they made her sad. They were probably gonna gloat about it, the accomplishment of their worthless lives. Gossip was a small thing to deal with, but that was just it. She didn't need another thing to deal with. She didn't need another battle. She was just so tired.
So, Yuriko took one more look at the world. At that pervasive vector that permeated everything. Her, them. At the unseen force that encompassed this fucking school, and its idiotic populace, that encompassed Takada onee-sama, Itadori Yuji, her and her stupid fucking father, and she took hold of it. She felt the number come to life in her mind, and with that came exhilaration. She wondered if the girls still found the look on her face amusing, because they took another step back.
Yuriko knew she could end it all then. In that moment. One thought, and it would all be over. A course 'correction,' and everything would be hurtling towards the sun, or away from the solar system as it too pulled away. In a single fucking thought—she could simply say stop, and inertia would handle the rest. Gloat about that in oblivion.
"Watch out!"
A warning shouted. A warning too late. With the clang of a bucket, and the slosh of a liquid, Tall and Microbe took an impromptu, standing, baptism.
"Ew, it's salty!"
"What the—Sasaki! What the hell!" Microbe cried. Her foundation was running, and so was she.
"It's just saline! Aaand, they're gone," Sasaki picked up the bucket that had landed facing away from Yuriko. An amateurish trajectory, but one with the clear intent to exclude her. Yuriko watched Sasaki Setsuko hoist the bucket up, heard her muttering about how she'd have to refill it, and she regained enough control of herself to speak.
"You don't..." she choked. "You don't owe me anything!"
Sasaki paused for a moment, like the concept eluded her. "I disagree," she finally chuckled.
"I—you won't get anything from me just because—"
"I wasn't counting on it," she smiled, her voice soft like a sublimating snowflake.
Sasaki liberated a handkerchief from her pocket. A generic, white cloth that she extended it towards Yuriko until it hit the arbitrary border of her redirection field.
"Oops," Sasaki rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand. "Sorry, I'm overstepping again, aren't I?"
And there it was. An expression that asked nothing of her—that wasn't pity, that wasn't dishonest. Was it not unique to him then? Was it a face that everyone could make? No, some subconscious part of her in that moment concluded that Sasaki must have also been unique. It was the only way she could reconcile with the fact. Because why, otherwise had people chosen to keep such a miracle hidden from her?
"Stop it. Just stop!" Yuriko sobbed, as she dropped to her knees. "It could have finally been over. I could have finally—"
Sasaki followed her down, holding her handkerchief all the while. She stayed with her for a moment, making obvious efforts to look away from Yuriko's face as she extended the cloth again.
This time, it made it through.