Fun. Sasaki Setsuko hadn't believed in the supernatural. Not really. The occult club was ostensibly just an excuse to hang out after school. It was there for... fun. And it was fun, because none of it was real. There was no consequence to make-believing in Ouija boards or chasing the next ghost story. There wasn't anything wrong with jury-rigging theories about why this sports team failed, or why that couple broke up, as long as no one was hurt in the process.
Her 'fun' had almost drowned Itadori. Ghost, malicious spirits—confirmation of forces beyond the bounds of sense and rationality. And apparently, they were everywhere. Hanako the toilet ghost, sentient sock monsters, and the quiet kid in class. Go figure. Imagine her surprise when she learned that the supernatural was not only near to the knuckle, but five-foot two.
Suzushina Yuriko: the city's top scorer, and the diminutive subject of many rumours. At school, they called her the cryptid, with pale features that 'could hardly be considered human, let alone Japanese'. Some said she was a delinquent. Some called her a curse. As it turned out?
She was just superhuman.
None of that mattered now, she could have been an alien for all Setsuko cared. Because in one act of selflessness, Suzushina had saved Itadori—saved them both— from the consequence of Setsuko's ignorant, harmless, 'fun.' And then she spent the weekend overcome with shame, because it shouldn't have taken a matter of life and death to make her question the rumours.
It shouldn't have taken her tears, and her expression, and the hurt in her body language to remember that fundamentally, Suzushina Yuriko was still a person.
It was muscle memory that led Setsuko, with the still crying Suzushina in hand, to the occult club room. Over time, it had become something of a second home to her, and now Setsuko hoped she could extend just a little of that comfort to the still crying girl holding her hand.
***
Fuck. That was embarrassing. Her face was a mess. Her cheeks stung, and her eyes were still red. She had really been about to do it. A month, under one even, and she nearly... She distinctly remembered thinking this would be fun. That it would get easier now. That if no one could hurt her anymore, certain thoughts wouldn't find their way into her mind anymore. She could reflect conventional attacks, maybe even bullets, but she couldn't reflect the idea. And that had almost cost...Fuck. It had almost cost more than just her life.
Yuriko and Sasaki were sitting in the clubroom. Tick, tick, the clock punctuated the silence, and neither girl spoke until the final bell drew the school day to a close.
"Hey, Suzushina-san."
Yuriko flinched. "Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
Now she was confused again. When would everything be simple again? "What for? You haven't done anything."
Sasaki, through her glasses, looked Yuriko in the eye for the first time in hours. "That's exactly why I'm sorry."
Tuesday, December 19th: Yare Yare.
"Found you!"
"Tch."
It was lunch again, and this time her planned distraction had failed. Yuriko hadn't accounted for Itadori colluding with Sasaki. She had seemed like such a sensible girl, too. Maybe she shouldn't have overlooked the fact that Itadori Yuji considered her a friend? Sasaki had called in a favour to distract the coach. That was fine; she'd plan for that next time. Next time, she'd get away.
"Iguchi and I are planning to see that new movie, you know, Psychic Kusuo after school today, you in?"
"Like hell," she scowled. Yuriko wanted to use her evening to learn how to obfuscate herself on cameras. No way was she about to waste her time watching such childish drivel.
"Judgement Knights of—"
Yuriko smouldered as she ate her popcorn.
"Judgement Knights of Thunder!" The speakers blared as Mr. Delulu-is-the-solulu dragged that 'Saiki' character into another one of his fantasies. He had her sympathies, truly.
Don't think about Geto. A disgusting feeling sat in the pit of Yuriko's stomach, rotting as the boys on either end of her laughed.
All you have to do is nothing.
Wednesday, December 20th: Tree(3)
"Fuck. That. You don't owe those mon—"
"Hey, Suzushina, wanna come eat with us?"
Yuriko snapped out of her recollection. Ugh. This time, they had gotten their 'friend' Iguchi involved in their interception tactics. She frowned. To her knowledge, they hadn't told him about her powers, and they had barely spoken at the cinema. Why's he acting like he knows me?
"Like hell," said Yuriko, but her traitorous feet led her to their table anyway.
Don't think about Geto.
Thursday, December 21st: The Monkey
Suzushina Yuriko was thinking about Geto. Really mulling over his words, as the school building fell behind her. He had been about to say monkey, hadn't he?
Dehumanising. Definitely not standard terminology, his 'daughter,' had had to stop him from saying it and that was presumably only because they'd wanted to appear affable. So, one faction maintained social 'order,' at least in matters that concerned 'non-sorcerers,' and 'curses' while the other...Huh. Toilet-bound Hanako. Maybe even that thing at Port Park. Terrorists. Terrorists had tried to recruit her. Worse yet, terrorists whose leader seemed to base his principles in social Darwinism of all things. Of course, having powers gave them an objective advantage over other people, who didn't, but come on. Darwin himself, whose theory was often appropriated by ill-meaning pseudoscientists probably didn't have any of his own. After all, her cursory perusal of world records only really showed an uptick in the performance of Japanese athletes. Maybe in this reality Darwin was a 'sorcerer', maybe he wasn't, but Yuriko seriously doubted that Geto himself, with whatever fuck-you power he had could have contributed to humanity's advancement even half as much as the various 'ordinary,' men and women had throughout history.
At first, she was more offended by the slight against science rather than the bigotry. But then she thought of Takada onee-sama. If she wasn't a sorcerer, would Geto see her as a monkey? A sentiment that bordered on blasphemy.
Yuriko watched the fluff of pink hair as he walked beside the girl with glasses. They slowed down until they fell in step with her, chattering inane pleasantries, and making sure they did it within her airspace as they reached the bus stop. She didn't negate the noise.
Transcending blasphemy, then.
What does that have to do with you? Her brows furrowed. All you have to do is nothing.
Friday, December 22nd: Inaction.
"Next Sunday, no one will be able to force you to do anything."
Something was going to happen in Shinjuku. Something that would shift the balance of power between those two factions. Whatever they had planned, Geto was sure that his merry band of nazis would come out on top.
So, she had a location, and a date, but not a plan.
"It's getting super dangerous out there."
A thinly veiled implication of a confrontation. Yuriko scoffed, it seemed like Geto's plan of attack was more a plan to attack.
"I know you're strong."
They had been spying on her. Presumably setting up challenges to test her. How long had they known? She had no context for how powerful other sorcerers were yet, but the very fact that they came to recruit her just a week before their battle implied that she was 'strong' enough to make a difference—maybe even be the difference.
If only she cared.
Do nothing.
Saturday, December 23rd: Sonder over Yonder.
"I've been trying not to pry, but—"
Yuriko sighed. "Go on."
This was a kidnapping. It had to be. Some kind of mental influence power—Measure Heart? Nothing else explained why she found herself at a park surrounded by the idiots trying to ingratiate themselves to her. To her powers. No, not idiots. Fuck.
Sasaki looked up. Looked at Iguchi and Itadori, as the former was buried in snowballs hurled by the latter. To anyone with eyes, it was obvious from her face that Sasaki thought better of the question she wanted to ask. She kicked her feet against the bench, as she said:
"Uhm, uh. Never mind. Could you explain how your ability works?"
No. Hell no, even. She didn't think she would. Explaining how your esoteric bullshit worked (in fiction at least, was she real?), was how a certain scientific 'Unknown Matter' guaranteed his position as the number two esper. Couldn't be me.
"Just think of it as a forcefield," Yuriko finally said.
"Is it up all the time?"
"Well, no, obviously not," Yuriko dragged a convincing rationale from the aether, one that hopefully didn't sound like a weakness. "If it was, then someone could get hurt just by bumping into me."
"Then you should probably be careful."
"Hm?"
"Oh, it's just, last time they ended up—"
Splat. Air resistance is probably what saved them. Thank goodness it hadn't hit her any harder; hadn't gotten into her eyes, or mouth. Now, Yuriko was just enraged, instead of flat out homicidal.
"Oh," she said as the clumps of precipitate fell away from her face. "Is that how we're playing?"
Itadori, out of the pair, was the only one who realised the danger. With a sputtered apology, he grabbed the laughing Iguchi by the sleeve and started running. A valiant attempt. A pity it wouldn't be enough.
Yuriko remembered the math she had used on Arahama beach and scaled it down to safer magnitudes. She stomped, and with a lesser expenditure of power, the boys became very much acquainted with the ground. Friendships forming all around.
Sasaki erupted into laughter, and Yuriko had to stifle the insidious surge of endorphins that were inundating her own brain. Stop, she begged the muscles in her face. You don't trust them yet. Focus on anything else.
And so, she took in the park. The field of white stretching as far as the eye could see. She focused on children flinging solid water at each other, like it was the only thing worth doing. She focused on the air; on street vendors who sent the park awash with the smell of sweet potatoes, with meat buns and oden. A mother stood aside—with a wonder too young to wear her face—as she watched her toddler plunge gloved fingers into the snow for what must have been the first time in his life.
Yuriko looked at the now-mound where Itadori and Iguchi had finally recovered enough to escape. They should have looked miserable, inundated by the frigid blanket as they were, but they were smiling; both boys. Ready to tempt fate by preparing another snowball to send her way. Sasaki was tittering on the bench where they'd been sitting.
This was the world Geto Suguru wanted to destroy.
And as much of a hypocrite as it made her, Yuriko wasn't having that.
***
Saturday, December 23rd: The Fall.
She grabbed her mother's Walkman and slipped out of the house when she was sure he was sleeping. There was a construction site. It was supposed to have become housing, years ago, but the contractors fell afoul of the law, and so lawsuit after lawsuit, nothing was done, leaving behind only the condemned ruins of something that could have been. It bothered her on the first bus ride to Itadori's house—that that damn 'building' was so close.
The cassette slipped into place as she walked.
School bag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning.
Waving goodbye, with an absent-minded smile.
She couldn't believe that she'd been planning to do nothing, once again. Yuriko had been telling herself that she didn't care. That she had no reason to insert herself into the conflict, but she was currently living with one of them. No matter how short it had been, Itadori Yuji, a 'monkey' in Geto Suguru's eyes, had opened his home to her, and asked for nothing in return. It was illogical. It was insanity, but he had done it.
So, it wasn't that she didn't care—you didn't almost end the world out of a lack of care—it's that she was scared. Voodoo. Scared of being noticed. Scared of getting hurt. Scared of being the difference, terrified of making no change at all.
Her barrier should protect her from conventional attacks. Should. Irrational as it was, one fight had not been enough to break her from her fear of harm.
She knew the math was correct. Primitive, compared to Accelerator's, but there shouldn't be an upward limit for how much concussive force it could circumvent. Because it wasn't a barrier. It was a direction altering field. But there was a difference between knowing something and putting it into practice.
As her feet crossed the threshold, Yuriko remembered her reasons for replicating Accelerator's shield. Sure, part of it had been ego and sure, there were practical reasons, but above all else, she had built it to withstand. To let her breathe. To let her fall.
Yuriko felt like she had been falling all her life— from the frigid exosphere of her father's company where there was no air, to the mantle of the earth, where her mother lay. The fact that she was still falling was the proof of her existence. She had to accept that.
She mounted the stairs as the song reached its crescendo, rising further and further away from the earth. She could feel the structure shifting under her, still as unsteady as it had been the last time.
She had been here before, and nothing much had changed since the last visit. The ledge, still crowned with feathers where birds had found rest. Discarded steel girders sprawled beneath her. Sendai sprawled beneath her. She stood ringed by the sky, as she had done then too.
It had been too much. The guilt. The blame. The guilt because of the blame. She had been so tired without her. Without the brush in her hair, and the loving hand on her head. Slipping through my fingers— Yuriko hadn't known how to live without her mother, and her father hadn't seemed to want her to learn.
She had been here before. But last time, she had expected to die. This time, it would be a test of whether, or not, she deserved to live. Suzushina Yuriko stepped off the ledge, and like a meteor, she fell.
'Yuriko,' her mother says as she strokes her cheek. 'My light, my love.'
Air rushed past her ears. For a moment, she could be convinced that she was flying instead, if she ignored the numbers. Memories, she had no hope of redirecting flooded her mind, and she left the sky behind.
'Kill me. Please. It has to be you.'
But then the ground. It warped around Yuriko, like a car finding rest in a tree. Clumps of mud tore through the air at speeds that defied reason, and a girder bent around its own counter force.
Wind broke like an oath, then whimpered into silence.
She laid in the crater her descent had made, unbothered, unharmed, and utterly unblemished. Nary a stray hair out of place. She was immaculate. The girl closed her eyes and simply smiled.
This time, she could change something. With her own two hands.