Tokyo had reached record temperatures that day. The sun was roasting the city, every street was a mirage from the bending light of its shine. The weather recently had been sending everyone either inside or to the nearest water source.
Yuji had gone to the beach with Megumi and Nobara in a futile attempt to escape the heat that had Japan in the sweaty palm of its hand. They had offered you and Sukuna a spot on the railway car there, but you knew that Sukuna was too exhausted from his recent missions to do any sort of going out. Not to mention the draining effect of the heat stacked on top of that. You were in the mood to just enjoy each other's presence.
The two of you were sheltered away in the darkness of his bedroom, lying sprawled out across the floor in front of his small rotating fan. Sukuna and Yuji never turned the A/C on. Since they had moved into their own apartment, the brothers had become rather stingy when it came to the bills. The air didn't start up until the room felt like a sauna, and it turned off much too soon to give relief.
Sweat continued to drip down the both of your spines, but Sukuna didn't seem to mind it. He was enjoying the peace of his day off, dressed against the heat in nothing but his boxer briefs and a tank top. He had his head resting in the cushion of your lap, his eyes were transfixed on an old leather notebook that he had stolen from one of the professors a few days ago. It was in a language you hadn't taken at the academy yet, but Sukuna tells you it was early notes on jujutsu from the old world.
You had been scrolling through your phone, occasionally showing him something you found amusing or anything that reminded you of him. He only gave you a reaction to maybe 10% of the material, but it was fun to see him roll his eyes, or scoff and wave your phone away.
The longer you remained in the same spot,however, the sweatier you felt and the more frustrated with the heat. You tried not to squirm under Sukuna's head, remaining as still as possible as though he were a sleeping animal taking refuge on your lap. Boredom, however, eventually pulls the last straw that has you stirring.
An idea comes to mind.
Sukuna glances up at you, as though he expects you to show him something else on your phone, but instead his attention is caught by the mischievous glint you feel twinkling in your eye.
"Wrestle me." You beam at him.
It was somewhat of a joke.
Compared to your boyfriend, it was clear who would win in a pinning tournament between the two of you.
Sukuna, who enjoys kickboxing in his spare time. Sukuna, who has never missed an opportunity for a fight in the decade that you've known him, who could dead-lift your torso with ease if he so desired.
Sukuna, who has never touched you with anything but heart wrenching gentleness.
His eyes widen at your command, the notebook he had previously found so interesting has been completely forgotten. He seems to catch the drift of your lack of entertainment, and quickly plays along. His surprise melts into an amused little smile.
"Oh yeah? Think you got a chance, kid?" He taunts, placing the book beside him. His attention now fully focused on you.
You snort, you were only a year younger than he was, but he loved to emphasize it when he could. Sukuna mistakes your noise as a scoff and cocks a daring brow at you.
You love when he’s in a playful mood.
"I could take you any day." You tease. Part of you is running for the hills inside, but another part is having fun with the big bad wolf. That was the constant state you were in with him. Sukuna didn't even have to try and he always had your heart racing.
Sukuna makes an impressed noise, "That, I'm well aware of. I don't know about in a fight, though."
You groan at his joke, shaking your head in disappointment, but Sukuna grabs onto your chin before you can get even one turn of your head out.
"Let's find out."
~
Ten minutes later, you're drenched in twice the amount of sweat as you were before, but Sukuna has barely lost a drop. He's got you twisted like a pretzel beneath him, holding your limbs in just the right way so that you're completely incapacitated in his hands.
Your first mistake was thinking Sukuna knew how to play-fight. The only person he had been remotely close with in your childhood was his twin brother, and the two of them had often "wrestled", but it only ended when one of them had blood dripping out of their noses. You learned early on not to question it. Having two boys as your childhood best friends had you turning your gaze from a lot of things, in fact.
The only thing you questioned now, was how you were going to get out of your current predicament. You were sure Sukuna was having a blast practically hogtying you with his hands, and now he knew how easy it was to get you in this position. It was a double whammy that would surely effect you in the future.
"Did you really think I'd go easy on you?" The weight of his chest presses into your back as he leans over you, sending hot breath over your neck. "How cute."
"Okay, okay! I give!" You whine, trying to wriggle out from beneath him. You had to admit that it was getting slightly painful, but Sukuna was well aware of your pressure points and where to stay away from. You still had one last trick up your sleeve, however.
Satisfied with your surrender, he nips at your ear with his teeth before he slides off of you and relinquishes his effortless grip. Before he can fully turn away, however, you're leaping onto his back like a monkey and tackling him into his mattress. It was a dirty tactic, but you had been wrestling your childhood best friend Yuji since the two of you were in elementary school, so you were no stranger to tricks of the trade. Especially the feign defeat card.
He blinks up at you. It was a difficult task to take Sukuna off guard, but you had accomplished it.
"Sucker." You playfully stick your tongue out at him, blowing a raspberry. Inside your chest, your heart is racing like a hummingbird’s wings. It’s almost like Sukuna knows this, because even though you’re the one on top of him, he’s still looking at you with an amused grin- unaffected by your change of position.
"You have a higher pain tolerance than I thought you did." He notes, tilting his head to the side like he's considering something. "What can we do with that new information, I wonder?"
It was another intimidation tactic. A good one. It had chills running down your spine. But, you weren’t going to let him win so easily this time. Suddenly, you were interested in how far you could push him, as well.
"Come on 'Kuna," You chide, your nose is practically touching his- a rabbit pressing against the snout of a hungry wolf. "Can't take defeat, my love?"
"Oh doll," His voice is a husky drawl, rough hands slide their way from their resting places on your hips to slip under the hem of your shirt and brush the skin of your waist. You try to contain your shiver. "You're playing a very dangerous game."
One last wave of confidence sweeps through you as you lean down, just like he always did, to murmur lowly into his ear. "And you're losing."
That did it.
Sukuna grabs onto your waist so quickly, you barely have time to register it before he loops his leg around your knee and easily flips the two of you back to your original position. You're giggling beneath him as he gathers your face into his hands, pressing calloused fingers into your cheeks. You've gotten under his impenetrable skin. You didn't know it, but you always did.
No matter how strong a man is, he will always lose to the woman he loves.
Sukuna was slowly starting to accept that.
You can't be everything to everyone, but you can be everything to those who crave your kind. - Lady Macabre Beth
Source: The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún / Totsukuni no Shoujo / とつくにの少女
by Nagabe
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they “free” wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
― Jean-Paul Sartre
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems
― Franz Kafka, Amerika
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
― Viktor E. Frankl
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
― E.B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan
“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
― Kafka Franz, Diaries, 1910-1923
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
“And I want to be held down. I don’t know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
― Franz Kafka
I miss you. You, the love I never had.
—Seouldsoul2kpop
I have a thousand reasons that allow me to breathe, I have a love that makes my heart beat, it is a dream come true with whom I can fly, and with her hand in hand, the joy of loving.
i've seen (un)loving miya atsumu getting all the love it deserves but can we please talk about enigmatic kalopsia tho(???) never have i ever imagined that i'd be able to find such a good story of hirugami sachirou before. it's one of the most beautifully written fics ever ( but equally underrated). the boy and the story need so much more attention fr ! hopefully when kamomedai arc is animated he'll gain the fame he deserves and so will this story. (╥へ╥)
oh my, thank you so much for your kind words!
i was really excited to write that fic because i was getting to explore and work on hirugami!!!!!!! and yes, HE DESERVES SO MUCH ATTENTION AND LOVE! I’M MAD HE’S NOT NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED FOR BEING ONE OF THE (IF NOT, AND I’M SORRY OG HAIKYUU HUSBAND, KUROO TETSUROU) BEST HIGH SCHOOL MIDDLE BLOCKERS! AND HE’S SO FUNNY, SARCASTIC, WITTY, HE HAS A DOG (WHY IS HIS NAME KOUTAROU)- I CAN GO ON, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM AND HOW MUCH HE’S BECOME MY TOP HAIKYUU MENS.
I MEAN-
LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GREMLIN!?
LOOK AT HIM!?
SO BEAUTIFUL!? AND HE’S A YEAR OLDER THAN ME IN REAL LIFE!?
Okay, I’ll end my ramble here. I...I just...love him so much and he deserves all the hype and attention he needs.
I swear, the moment the next season gets animated and people will FINALLY see him for the absolute menace of a dork that he is, we’ll be there to say “WE TOLD YOU SO” and I’ll be anxiously waiting for when his nendroids will go on sale. And, no rush! It will take time for people (especially anime-only) fans to come around and see Hirugami. As for my fic, I don’t mind the views it has now, I’m actually happy that there’s a population of Hirugami stans and I know it will grow later. If it happens that they read that fic first before his proper introduction in the anime, I’m scared of the expectations they have of him (and if my portrayal was correct huhu).
FUN FACT:
it took me A WHILE to work on a title. i had to research some words, with philosophical meanings/deep meanings to them. i eventually happened upon the words of the title and decided to just put them together.
i struggled writing it a bit, because i had to relieve the horrible stories of my friends, who had difficult relationships with their parents. and because reader was a musician (very common in my fics lol), i had to rewatch some of my fave music animes or read fics.
‘til then, thanks again for the support (and my long ass rant about my love for Hirugami Sachirou)
i hate twitter… everybody has an emoji in their profile and every emoji has a secret hidden meaning that changes every week. how am i supposed to know if the mushroom emoji has become an antifeminist hate symbol or the blue heart stands for some insanely specific brand of anarchism? does the rat emoji mean you have a pet rat, or that you support the death penalty? how do you people keep track?
pairing: sakusa kiyoomi x f! reader genre: hurt to comfort wc: 3.5k warnings: none
a/n: written for the @heatwave2021 gift exchange, dedicated to the lovely yvonne @eightonenine
Kiyoomi’s concept of home doesn’t include you.
Growing up, home always meant nothing more than four walls and a roof over his head, meals to be eaten alone, out of reheated tupperware boxes. He’d never thought too much of it because that was just the way things were - his parents working late into their nights to further their careers, his much older siblings busy with their respective pursuits, too preoccupied to make much time for their quiet younger brother. He doesn’t have friends to invite over either. He’s too reticent, dark eyes a little too watchful and wary, driving away any potential playmates who he might’ve built friendships with. Motoya pops over once in a while, but he’s always been outgoing and popular so he can’t spend all his time with his moody cousin.
So it’s only natural that he’s unaccustomed to having someone constantly in his space when you move in with him, unused to the rustle of movement that comes with having someone else share his abode. Little things start to gnaw at him, eating away at his patience - the way you leave the dining chairs crooked, the way you leave your bag on the couch instead of the cupboard where it belongs. He starts to resent having to force himself to respond with affection which you always seem to freely give when he just wants to shower and hide in bed after a bad day at practice.
But emotional awareness isn’t exactly his strength, so he allows all this frustration to fester into poisonous words that explode out of his mouth when he returns to the apartment you share and you ask for a hug because you had a bad day at work. He doesn’t hear that a client yelled at you and your boss told you to buck up and your team was short staffed because there’s a vile buzzing in his ear that’s growing louder and louder and it’s driving him wild -
“Why do you always have to be so clingy”, he snarls, slapping your hands away, uncaring that you’ve taken a step backwards, clearly stung.
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